Monday, April 1, 2013

Monday Random Thoughts

- The last couple of years I would usually do an April fools post but being it is a monday I will just go with my standard random thoughts.

- Check out "Character Copy Hitting Live in Mists" from last year.

- Or check out "New Addon: Easy Button" from the year before.

- Maybe I will write one for this year later.  For now those are my only two April fools ones if you are so inclined.

- Now to some random, not so random thoughts.

- Back to the LFR for another story but my end random thought about it might not be what you would expect.

- Forgotten depths.  2 wipes on first boss, wipe on the way to second, 3 wipes on second boss, 3 wipes on the way to third boss, 5 wipes on third boss.

- Decision about the run?  Excellent.

- What?

- No one bitched, no one complained, people worked together, explained, did not get uptight or fustrated and start calling people names.

- See, it is not the wiping in the LFR that is the problem, it is who you wipe with that is the problem.

- Wipe with some decent people and it is bearable, even if their playing skills might be something best called lackluster.

- I still say that the LFR is way to hard for the people it is aimed at.

- I still say that spending that much time with a group of people I will never see again is a waste of my time.

- But I will also say I have nothing to complain about with that group.

- How is that for a random thought?

- Wipe city and it was still a good run.

- I would like to thank the people in that run for restoring my faith that there are some decent people in the game.

- Was amazing to see people ask what happened, explain what happened, and work together to make sure it did not happen again.

- BTW, after as many attempts as I have had doing nests I can say, with some degree of certainty that the nest spawns are not random.

- Jump down at the start point go clock wise twice, the go to the lit upper one and clockwise once from there then to the one dead center over the boss and back to where you started.

- Three attempts doing it with my priest and six doing it with my shaman both being the nest healer and it was always that order.

- So either I was oddly lucky getting the same order 9 times in a row or that is the order they always take.

- Should make being on the nest crew so much easier.

- They still need to nerf the ever living hell out of that boss, I do not think I have ever wiped on an LFR boss that often.

- I've been rotating pets to make some cash on some of my lesser played servers lately.

- The new raptors, that I have over 10 of each still, sell for over 2K on one of my alt servers, I am selling at least one per day it seems.

- Even when I run out, they only sell for 200 on my main server, so I will keep flipping them between servers.

- My gold capped main server can easily gold cap an alt server in time if this keeps up.

- I started a guild on that alt server and have all my bank tabs and 4K left over in just one week of flipping pets and not trying all that hard.

- I wonder what other pets I can flip like that.

- I think I will make my second horde character to reach 90 a DK.

- I am really loving the OP nature of blood DKs.

- Doing the quests on the island is insane as is soloing the rares.

- Of course with my luck it is still woefully under geared because in three weeks of doing the 6 LFR bosses I can, 6 coins each, and I have only won one item and it was something I could not use.

- One for 36 might as well be zero for 36.

- So much for increased drop rate.

- Either way, at a 462 item level I can pull 20 mobs on the island and do roughly 140K DPS mowing them down.

- I can not wait to see what will happen when I start to get some gear.

- At the moment I am gearing with all DPS gear.

- Being I do not actually tank randoms or raids with it I do not need actual tank gear.

- And I am starting to think with active mitigation working as it does I do not even need actual tank gear.

- If I need some dodge and parry I can reforge into it.

- Even with only four tank pieces I see no survivability issues with the content I am doing.

- That is what I call over powered.

- It is a lot of fun too.

- Going from under 20% life to full life and back down and up again while I deal with the incoming damage from pulling 20 mobs and try to even it out and get a few down is exciting.

- I have not died yet doing that.

- Cross my fingers, because I just jinxed myself.

- Thinking of race changing a few of my characters.

- I am starting to really dislike the shorter and taller characters a lot more lately.

- Gnomes are the worst offender.

- Being line of sighted by a pebble.

- Having to swim in bodies of water everyone else just walks over.

- Doing the first boss in HoF messes with me big time thanks to camera angles from being so short.

- And so many other things.

- It might be time to kiss my gnomes goodbye.

- But what to change them all into?

- Panda's maybe?

- Humans might be better being it seems reputation is all everything is about lately and that 10% really does make a huge difference.

- I was thinking about it for new players, they would still need to do that reputation grind.

- Why have they not removed it from the first tier yet?

- You can get to the 480 item level a lot faster with some valor pieces, but you need the reputation to get them.

- So while spamming randoms to get to 460, then hoping a praying for drops to get to 470 and hoping and praying for drops to get to 480, you will be capped, over capped, with nothing to do with that valor all thanks to reputation.

- Yeah, they should just remove the reputation requirements for gear from the last tier.

- Just look at my DK, I do not play it often, sure, but it will never get to 470 at this rate.

- And I refuse to waste my spirits to make it 476 gear or 496 gear.

- And I refuse to spend 18K for the 496 pieces and 8K for the 476 pieces that will just be replaced by even the lowest of LFRs if and when I get lucky enough to win something.

- Buying stuff from those item selling sites is starting to look like a better idea every single day.

- For less than 50 bucks I can have both 496 pieces and a few assorted 476 pieces.

- Odd how 50 bucks seems less expensive to me that spending 50K in game gold for all the same things.

- I guess that is because it takes a lot shorter of a time to earn 50 buck real life than it does to earn 50K in game.

- Not to mention I can earn that 50 bucks while typing this at work yet I can not make that 50K gold while sitting here at work.

- While I have never used a site like that, I am starting to think I should.

- I can actually see a lot of new players or players with less time using those sites a lot now to help skip the need for the reputation grind.

- Or maybe I should start buying pets and selling those, that is legal in game.

- I've seen people on multiple servers selling the card game pets anywhere from 25K-200K and you can buy them for 3-5 dollar at amazon.

- Seriously.

- Actually I think that is what I am going to do when I am done here.

- Buy a few 3 dollar pets and sell them for the gold to buy the items.

- But I know me, I will just hoard the gold and not want to spend it.

- I have the gold but I just hate spending it because I always think, what if I need it for something later.

- But later never comes.

- When all my alts are sitting between 30K-90K and I do not do anything on them, you know I am a penny pincher.

- I guess I can get the pets to keep them, I do need a lot of those card pets.

- I have bought card mounts before.

- The two hippogryphs, corrupted and blazing, I bought them both.

- I love them, they are my favorite style of mounts, I could not resist.

- So why not buy the pets too.

- Speaking of mounts, I must say I love those new bubbles on the isle and hope they add them everywhere there are quest hubs from now on.

- The instant dismount is awesome.

- No more will we have Mr check out my humungous mount standing on quest givers.

- And the added bonus of getting away from mobs is awesome.

- I can not tell you the number of times I was on a mad dash saying, make it to the bubble, make it to the bubble, with a trail of mobs ready to rip me limb from limb on my tail.

- You've done it too, admit it.

- Those quest giver bubbles are a stroke of genius.

- One word to the wise however, if there are no quest for that bubble that day, that bubble is not there.

- I found out the hard way.

- Run, run, run, safety is in my reach, oh crap there is no bubble there, keep running, we can do this.

- It was rather funny.

- Even funnier on a gnome because they really have that cartoon character running for their life look about them.

- Gnomes are great for funny characters, I also notice that I tend to be a lot more free spirited when playing one of them.

- Said thing I am going to race change them all thanks to their height and game play issues bought on by that height issue.

- They are really fun to play if you live them up to their hype as the silly ones.

- No race plays silly and fun better than a gnome.

- Or a human named budd.

- Did the entry to cata again and it amazes me budd is still alive.

- He is so stupid.

- I leveled my monk to 85 this weekend.  And lock to 88.

- First time doing some leveling in ages it seems.

- Speaking of ages, I do not think I have used my farm in months now.

- I could be using those to my advantage, but never have the free time to do so.

- I have a friend with 11 maxed farms on the same server.

- He never needs to farm for materials any more because he actually farms for whatever he needs by using them now.

- He can do up to 300, with luck, golden lotus a week if he wanted to, which is beyond awesome.

- I was upset when I read that the farm was actually intended to be a one expansion thing.

- I thought it was just the standard blizzard bad planning and bad design that was the reason it was tied in the way it was, I was hoping it would be a new part of the game that grew with us.

- I like the idea that my horde characters, that do not have a maxed alchemist or herbalist could farm their herbs for flasks up.

- Was such an awesome money saver and as I mentioned, I love saving gold.

- Perhaps they will change their mind.

- I mean at one point they said there would never be flying in the old world and there is now.

- It would surely be easier to update what you can grow on the farm than it was to update the old world so we could fly in it.

- Like I said in one of my suggestions a long time ago, they could have done better with the farm and made it throughout the game.

- Farming those motes of air in BC would have been nice wouldn't it?

- But nooooo, they couldn't do that, that would be fun and useful and nice to have.

- I said it with my starting review of the expansion and it seems I was right, the farm comes off as a one expansion thing, and it is, now we know that.

- Sad time, very sad times.

- For farmers at least.

- Amazing how I have not farmed in months but I would still miss it if it were gone.

- See, when I talk about options, that was the perfect example.

- If I needed the herbs or something else, I had the option of using my farms or going out herbing.

- That is what options are, blizzard needs more of that design and less of this grind this or get nothing.

- What options are their for 522 gear?

- Raid for drops or raid for rep to buy some, but not for all slots, valor items.

- Raid or raid?  Not really any options as I see it.

- I always joke that blizzard and math do not have a friendly relationship.

- Well, I don't think they have a friendly relationship with a dictionary either, otherwise they would look up what the word options means.

- Well that is all for today, try not to get fooled and remember to read my old april fools stuff for some fun if you have the time.

- Have a great day.

8 comments:

  1. I'm starting to think that either I must be very lucky with my LFR groups, or that having 2 geared raid tanks on vent makes all the difference. I've run LFR however many times for weeks there have been. So that's what three for first wing, two for second? I haven't wiped once, not on any boss, not on trash, not on anything. Oh people have died, many many people have died, but I haven't and we have never wiped. Well we can't wipe if one person is alive at least and I've never died, though I've never been the only person left alive either. Sometimes there's just been like three of us, but that's enough.

    So yeah grab your two guild tanks and have them go LFR with you. Maybe then you'll one shot every single boss. I mean I'm not the worlds best player, but I am an actual raider, just like you, and unlike most of whom queue for LFR. We don't flood the LFR with guildmates, the least I've run with is three, myself, my co-tank and a dps. Still we one shot everything, maybe we've just been lucky, perhaps that's it. After all it isn't tanks that kill bosses, it's the dps. The tanks can keep themselves alive but the healers are needed for the dps, so the healers need to be good to keep the dps alive so they can kill the boss. Perhaps I'm wrong then in drawing the conclusion that having coordinated tanks is what makes LFR a non-wipefest.

    As for gear on alts I gave up my alts as it took too much time. Perhaps now with the rep commendations it might be easier, but with my loathing of LFR, and the fact that it still requires a fair bit to cap, I just can't be doing with it. I cap my main really easily because I'm getting valor while doing stuff I need to do, but I don't have the time or inclination to repeat the same content multiple times. However, did you hear that they were putting in bad luck insurance? I thought of you when I read that.

    I like my gnome monk, he's sort of my main alt, I've even raided on him a bit. I've never had trouble with the height difference, hadn't really noticed one in all honesty. My main is a human though, and yeah that rep bonus is good. I'm honored with Shado Pan Assault already, wish their gear was a bit nicer though. I have valor to spend but don't much like the stat itemisation.

    Yeah for current raid gear there isn't any options outside of raiding, or at least going in LFR to get the rep, to then buy the 522 gear from the raid faction. Maybe they should have put a piece or two with Kirin Tor, but given how easy it was to get exalted, that wouldn't have been much of a gate and they seem fond of those this expansion. It personally doesn't affect me but for those with alts rep gates really suck. Maybe they should make you only have to get exalted on one character and then you can access the quartermaster on any of them.

    Happy easter :)

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    1. I've never had a wipe going with guild tanks and even one guild healer to make sure they stay up. Leave it up to random and it becomes wipe city.

      You are right however that tanks do seem to be amazingly important in the LFR. More so then normally. Not trying to put down the role of course as I play one too, but in the real raid with real raiders tanking, for me at least, seems to be the easiest job. In the LFR it is completely the opposite.

      Just take the first boss. One tank that should not have the boss has the boss and it is a wipe.

      But the responsibility goes all the way around. Same first boss, on my priest, healers were healing their asses off, more HPS from everyone than I had ever seen in an LFR, can you ever remember when the lowest healer was doing 60K HPS? We had to make up for DPS standing in everything, tanks not switching, etc. And we wiped. All thanks to DPS that sucked ass, excuse my language.

      Or the sixth boss, where I was the only one that knew nests and no other healers wanted to do it. Okay, send the top healer down there, not the brightest idea, but lets roll with it. We wiped 3 times before the healers up top got enough of a buff to handle it and me, just healing the nests, was still third in healing done. How sad is that?

      But in the end, tanks that do not know what they are doing is wipe city. 5th boss, face a head the wrong way and it is a wipe. Forth boss, do not grab the bets before overzealous DPS get to them, wipe. Etc. You get the idea.

      Like I said, when I go with guild it is no problem, when I go random it is a huge problem.

      I think my issue is more that I have 5 characters I am currently running through them and only one can go with the guild tanks and my tank runs as DPS because I do not have another tank to go with me and I would never in a million years do them with a tank I do not know because it is pot luck on what you get. And to be completely blunt, 95% of the people in LFR are not smart enough to know where the issue is, and if the other tank screws up and blames it on me they would not be smart enough to know it was not me that was the problem.

      I am in the same place with valor gear. I am buying things just to buy them now, not because they are really great. They need more valor options and better ones. Even more so if they are going to restrict it to only raiders can get it.

      I've been saying that since the get go. Once you get exalted on one character all characters get shop access for that faction. It would have been the best design if you ask me.

      Same to you, happy bunny day.

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    2. Yup that's what I meant. It was forcibly brought home to me recently that it's dps that kills the bosses. So I wasn't sure whether I could draw a cause and effect conclusion between having 2 guild tanks and no wipes or not.

      5 characters?? 5! Wow, I knew you had a couple of alts but 5! You are just like my friend, he has at least 5. I don't know how you manage it. Well actually I said that to my friend and he said that I could as well but a) I'd have to want to do it. b) I'd have to spend less time achievement hunting, mount farming etc. c) I might have to play more and I already play a lot anyway. Well either way it's beyond me now. In Cata I kept 5 characters raid ready, my main and 4 alts, but in cata particularly at the end it was so easy. I got one of those 4 alts geared in one day, not a days played time, but just playing one day. That was too easy, I said it at the time, but I did like the convenience of it. My raid needed a ranged, so I got one ready and I managed it at short notice. Convenient yeah, but that was too easy. I would have personally liked some more of a middle ground, and a gearing model that didn't make LFR (which I loathe, I may have mentioned that several dozen times) practically compulsory on the ladder. Maybe the new heroic scenarios will help, they apparently are supposed to drop LFR level loot.

      I like tanking and for LFR it's what I prefer as I always go with my co-tank friend. Going as dps when you're a tank at heart is kinda painful. However, my problem is the dps gear is much better than the designated 'tank' gear on the first 6 bosses. I can't get any good upgrades really going as tank, but I don't want to go as dps as I want a smooth run. So I'm really pleased they are apparently going to add some way for you to choose which spec you get gear for, irregardless of what role you are currently playing, in 5.3. It'll be a bit late unless my current luck streak continues (zero drops so far) but for the next raid tier, and for the future I think it would be great. The only problem is the queue takes a while with double tanks, but you are pretty much guaranteed a fresh run, so swings and roundabouts.

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  2. The last lfr I did took longer than a raiding night...
    The tanks really do make a difference. I was lucky and we had some patient tanks but we still wiped a lot but they said it's Ok, we'll get the buff so we will kill it faster. It was an interesting idea and worked.
    I also think similarly about game gold and outside money... It is a lot easier to earn money outside a game than to get it in game. I often have friends showing me the bargain pets they got on the ah or bmah and it's more gold than I own. I would much rather get the tcg on ebay than pay gold. ..

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    1. There are a few good places to buy pets. Ebay is one, I buy from amazon as well whenever I am there buying stuff. I find it better to spend a few bucks then to waste gold on a vanity item. My gold would be better used for things that help my character and as much as I have always liked collecting pets it really does not help my character any.

      Same for me. I raid 2 hours when I raid. I've had multiple raids over 2 hours in the LFR recently and now a new one is coming today which will be harder than the first two this tier and people still can not do them. It scares me.

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    2. I follow the gold making community and I've often heard it said that it would be more cost effective to spend hours working minimum wage and buying gold than actually spending those hours earning gold in game. Pathetic but probably true.

      I've never really paid attention to TCG items, but I might do some price checks now just to see the $:G ratios.

      I was hoping I could say I hit the 1M mark in Monday random thoughts... but I'm only at 997K...

      I've noticed some 535 items popping up on the BMAH... they're going for over 100K... That just seems crazy. I'd consider 20-30K maybe... but not over 100K for an item that will get replaced next tier.

      I did a bunch of the Isle of Thunder achievs over the weekend. At least most of the ones that are unlocked so far. Still need to kill one rare. I've found it's easier to kill most of the rares solo than in groups.

      I also went out and killed a bunch of dinomancers to get my Tome finally. I was inspired by the PTR notes that we're getting more stable slots.

      Tamed Skoll on Sunday morning. Was trying to see if I could find any rares for Frostbitten/Bloody Rare since it was early Easter sunday, but didn't find any that I needed. Found Skoll though. So I have 4 spirit beasts now.

      I forgot that a new LFR is coming out... ugh... it's basically the only way I get to see the content and I have to do it if I want to gear up, but it's such a pain.

      It really seems that with each new LFR, the encounters get harder and less rewarding. DS was the easiest and most rewarding. MoP LFRs seem to get progressively harder but without having increased rewards. Now we can get 502 fear instead of 522 valor/normal gear and the only way to get rep for valor gear is to raid...

      Speaking of that, I still can't understand Blizzard's excuses why the iLvLs have to increase so much with each tier.

      The gear this tier just has too much secondary stats... I cannot get rid of all the hit/expertise. Sitting at 8.85% hit... Just another reason why they need to get rid of hit/expertise and the equivalent stats. Having caps on certain stats is stupid when the gear scales up so much with each tier. At the beginning, we couldn't get enough hit/exp to cap, and now we're wasting stats because we have too much. It'll be even worse with the next tier.

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    3. Looked up the Spectral Tiger on eBay... The card gives both mounts apparently. Ebay $540... US AH avg (for both) about 1M G.

      So about 1000g is worth about 50 cents at that level.

      So that 535 neck for 125K gold on the BMAH, is about $60... nope, no thanks...

      And that new vendor mount yak for 108K gold is about $50... nope, too much.

      Now, I kind of wish I hadn't looked up the prices...

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    4. If they ever sold gear for 10 bucks I would buy it. I agree 535 gear for 60 bucks is a bit out of line but look at the item selling places, they are selling the 522 gear for over 200, so 60 is actually good in comparison.

      One of the pets I saw on the market on my server that sold for 200K I bought on amazon for 3.85 last week. I messaged the guy offering him 20K and he said, no way, I've sold three this month at 200K why would I sell for 20K. Makes me want to put mine up for 199K and buy a few more. :P

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