Wednesday, September 11, 2013

My First Impression From Timeless and Flex

As was my plan I headed straight to timeless island like perhaps hundreds of thousands of others did.  From the feel of it I would have guess all those hundreds of thousands where on my server.  It is one of the things I do like about being on a smaller server.  New hubs are a lot more manageable.  But that does not mean they are not frustrating at all.

The island was very frustrating.  Some of us deal with it, like I did, and others just give up.  Had a few guild mates just say "fuck it" and quit.  Not the game, but running the island for now.  They just logged off.  Rares would pop up and someone would be just a few yards away and it was dead before they could get there.  A chest would be seen and before you could make two steps toward it, it was gone.  I deal with it, but some people it just frustrated beyond belief.

I guess when connected realms come it will be even worse.  I wonder if blizzard will ever use their technology to balance things out so instead of having 500+ people all reaching for one treasure chest they limit the people in a zone.  I am sure they could do it.  It will be a lot worse once connected realms come.  Heck, I would have never guessed we had as many 90s on my server as I saw there.

Coins and gear tokens drop like candy.  I sent a bunch to my least geared character and got them from 470 to 484 already and there are still pieces I can get from there.  I've vendored off at least 40 of them already, as most all my characters have everything 496 or better to begin with.   When you go there, have a lot of bag space, they will be filled faster than you can imagine.

I don't think I have seen the whole place yet but I did spend about two hours there and was able to get some shots in on a few rares.  I do see one HUGE problem with rares however.  Once I died and when I got back to the rare I was not able to loot it.  I had hit it.  I was hitting it from 100% to 20% when I died.  So I should have been eligible for loot but apparently I wasn't.

I died on a second one but the graveyard was what seemed like a million miles away.  By the time I made it back, and I did not dilly dally, I went straight there, the mob was gone.  Again, I should have gotten loot from that one.

So the mobs are not giving credit where they should if you die, and if you die in some spots you will not get loot because the bodies despawn way too quickly.  They need a lot more graveyards there.  Most of the graveyards are miles away from where you are most likely to die.  Those were the only two times I died to mobs on the island and both times I can say I experienced that insane run back first hand.  I was put about as far from where I needed to be as possible.

So they need to add some graveyard, they need to fix the loot problem, and they need to keep the bodies from despawning that quickly.  Those would be my gripes for the rares.

Most of the island rares I was able to handle solo.  As a matter of fact I killed three of them and did not even notice they were rares, I thought they were just elites.  So they were pretty simple for a hunter in decent but not awesome gear.  536 for reference.

Just like any other fresh quest hub there will always be griefers.  There were many people standing on quest givers with mammoths.  Standing on vendors you needed to buy things from with their mammoths.  You know the type.  For those that have that happen I will let you in on a little trick.  Bring your camera in, first person type of in, as in all the way.  Stand as close as you can to where you know you need to click and then change the camera angle to looking up from the ground.  You will be able to click the feet of the mob you need to talk to no matter what is covering it.  Works 100% of the time, at least from all the times I have been forced to do that.

Another bug I would really like to see fixed is the AoE bug when it comes to PvP.  Back in BC they changed it so AoE will not accidentally PvP flag you but when they added the thrall cloak quest line in cataclysm they broke it and AoE will now hit flagged targets and flag you.  I am surprised that they have not fixed it yet.

Either way, it was damn fun doing some world PvP on the island even if I did not exactly intend to do so.  My first accidental flagging was when I opened a treasure chest and got attacked by a bunch of mobs.  I got my 535 upgrade piece, not sure what I will use it on, and I killed all the mobs, but I ended up flagged in the process because there was a horde rogue there that was flagged.  He owned me, that is the only way to explain it.  I was not exactly at low health but I was hurting and started to revive my dead pet from fending off all those mobs to begin with, but him getting a jump on me before I even noticed I was flagged sealed my fate.

The next time I accidentally flagged myself while trying to click on the ladder to get on a boat, I clicked on a horde shaman instead.  It did not fire or flag me at that moment, I grabbed the ladder and started to climb, but being I was still targeted on the shaman it shot them as soon as I got to the top.  Just my bad luck that he had 2 buddies with him.  I pulled out all stops.  Killed the shaman and then died shortly after.  Opps, was not intended but at least I killed him.

We were both put at the same graveyard.  Oh my god, the hell that is going to be on a PvP server where everyone is spawning in the same graveyard.  I can see it already.  Awesome. 

I started to mount up, was not going to kill the shaman again.  First off it was accidental, second, he did not have his friends here this time and if I was able to kill him with 2 other people he had no chance against me 1 on 1.  I am not that type of player were I am going to kill him just because he is an easy kill.

Just as I was about to mount he hits me with a flame shock.  You have got to be shitting me, is exactly what passed through my mind.  Okay, I'll fight.  I spun around, called stampede, blew everything, and he was dead within seconds.  Dude, I was leaving you alone, what did you attack?

I then saw a rare while running around still flagged and a DK thought it would be funny to kill me while I was killing the rare.  Sadly it did not work out that way for him.  I kited him and the rare and killed them both and collected my loot.  I hope when he got back to his body there was no loot on the rare for him as there was no loot on that one for me earlier.  Would be poetic justice.  No kill on me and no loot on rare.  If only he helped kill the rare and then tried for me, he might of at least got some loot out of the deal.

Got flagged again while fighting another rare and it looked like everyone in the area did.  We started this long and drawn out but extremely exciting war up there on the bridge.  I would guess there were about 15 or so alliance and 20 or so horde.  We pretty much went back and forth killing here and there.  Was a great deal of fun.  It ended up with just three of us alive.  Oddly enough, the three that were alive was me and the two people I was in group with.  Woohoo, go team.  Put a hunter that knows how to kite in a group with two healers and unless you are a PvPer, you are dead.  Simple as that.  I am guessing the people there were not PvPers.

We were still flagged when we ended up at an event.  No fighting went on during the event, but as soon as it ended a hordie attacked.  They did not last long because I had picked up two more people on our way there and five on one meant me had no prayer.  When we mounted up to leave one of the healers slacked off behind a little and he came after her.  She called out in vent that he was back and after her, we turned around and went back and stomped him once more, just for good measure.  It is a small island, if you are going to pick on someone in a group, make sure the rest of the group is far enough away that you can kill the person before they get back.  Word to the wise there.

I think I got more honor kills, world wise that is, on the island in one day than I had the entire expansion so far.  It was kind of fun.  I always liked world PvP.  Not killing for an objective, just killing for the sake of killing.  Sadly I am sure this will not continue too long.  Even if the wilds was meant for PvP there never was any on my server, neither was there any on the island of thunder.  But this there was.  I liked it, but I still think blizzard needs to fix that bug where AoE flags you.  It is just wrong.

I joined a few groups for the celestial kills.  The cat seems easiest.  All of them were not much of a problem however once you saw the mechanics.  The huge fighting area however did tend to be an issue.  It was like I was out of range more than I was in it.

I made my 5K coins without even thinking about it.  They really are everywhere.  Little boxes all over the place.  Mounds of crystal, mounds of dirt, all things you can pick up.  Gathering gets you coins, killing regular mobs gives you coins, killing elite mobs gives you coins, killing rare mobs gives you coins.  I don't see how the 5K coins will be a problem for anyone.

I like my new cloak, even if I do not show my cloak because it would mess with my mog.  But it does look like I have wings.  If you are a hunter and want to force proc the wings casting mend pet seems to do it.  They look kind of cool and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt it procs all the time.  And that is not just exaggeration, it really does seem to proc all the time.  The visual is unmistakable.

I got my first chance to test hunter DPS when we got together to do a flex run.  Bursting nicely still and even with the cloak I do not see a huge boost to my numbers but more importantly, I do not see huge drop in my numbers either.  I would say I feel roughly in the same place I left off last patch.

If that is what is intended then they did well.  I did have some issues here and there but I quickly adjusted.  I hit my bind for readiness at least three times even if it is not there.  I needed to change my stop casting silencing shot macro to a stop casting counter shot macro.  The biggest adjustment was the arcane shot.  I often fired one and then did not have enough focus for my signature ability.  Oops, that is going to take some getting used to.  Just a matter of practice I guess.  I found myself focus capping again even with the increased cost because I was becoming overly cautious about not having focus for the bigger abilities.  I'll smooth it out.

My burst as survival seemed to actually go up in 5.4.  I was easily pulling 350K even messing up a bit which I think is nice being I only recall bursting between 270-310 usually.  Once I smooth it out it might actually be better than it was.  I believe that thrill of the hunt feels almost mandatory as survival now but I have to look up some numbers to make sure.

It was procing so often during AoE that between that and the cloak it was almost a constant flow of lines flowing out from me either by the cloak or my multi shot.  If I had to take a wild guess I would say I think that the cloak attacks are procing it.  Which of course would be a bug that is going to be fixed, but on AoE packs my thrill of the hunt was lit up for the entire fight.  Yes, the entire fight.  I am sure that is not intended but I must say it was awesome fun.

As for the flex raid we went with a full 25 people and it was not until the 3rd boss that we had any problems.  With a mix of players from 480 item level up to 540 item level and only 7 of the main 10 that had full ToT and some heroic experience, we were able to pass through the first two bosses with ease.

If I had to guess I would say for most people the first boss will be harder than the second.  We lost nearly all the raid at the end of the first boss and were still able to pull it out with just one tank, one healer and 5 damage dealers.  The second fight.  No one died.

It helped that the tanks knew what they were doing and were both geared and experienced.  But I would say that difficulty wise the fights did not seem that bad for a 25 man.  I can see some progression being needed on the later bosses and surely the third boss will need some testing to get people in and out, as we did wipe a few times on that one, but everything seemed doable, even that one which we wiped on seemed doable.

Admittedly we had a few really well geared characters there so the ease of flex might be a bit over stated from what I am saying.  It probably is not that easy, but I can tell you that it would be doable with a group of people that can follow mechanics even if they are not pulling 200K or better.

So maybe flex is exactly what it is intended to be.  I'll let you know how it turns out when we all bring in our alts that we are not so great at and then make a decision how easy it is.  But for people that where doing normal ToT it surely seemed easy.  Not LFR easy when you can do it with half a raid of horrible players, but Jin' Rokh easy where once everyone can see the mechanics and follow it, it should not be a problem.

I do like the little proving grounds thing on the third boss and was surprised to see how many people failed it.  It seemed healers were failing it left and right.  That might be the biggest test when pugging flex becomes in vogue, which you know it will once people know the fights.

To anyone that is planning on raiding, I suggest at least taking a peak the the proving grounds, because you are sure has hell going to stand out like a sore thumb if you die every time you go into it during that fight.  I already have a short list of people that were on our 25 that lost their spot until they can figure that out.

On the world boss I ended with the standard gold and gold.  Could not get the cloak boss because, as I suggested might happen, there were not enough people on my server to make a group.  Lots of people that wanted to join but could not get there.  There were just not enough cloak people on my server that were on at the time.

Speaking of not having a cloak.  We did manage to find a way to get people there without the cloak.  No, I am sorry, I am not going to tell.  Still not sure if I will use this information to try and gear up some people that are behind, or just leave it as is and do nothing.  I'll ask the readers here.  If someone does not have the cloak do you think it is wrong to have them in on a kill?  I know it is not intended for them to be able to, but they can get there, so should they get a kill?

I did not share it with the people because I did not want to abuse a bug, or let people even know it was there.  Even if it would have benefited me to be able to do that boss yesterday.  Trust me, I was tempted to just get everyone I could up there just so we could do that boss.

I did not get any of the island achievements, but then again I was having so much fun PvPing and just killing random things, that I don't really mind.  So far the island seems like it could be fun, for a while, but I wish the rares dropped valor like the rares on the the other island did.  Otherwise, I see this place being a ghost town sooner than later.  I'll be around to get all the achievements and enough coins for everything, mount included, but I do not see there really being any people that would be there outside of toy collecting, achievement collecting or rare bosses very soon.

Flex seems to have potential, I am not ready to pass judgement on it right now after just one run through it.  Lets see how it does in smaller groups or in groups with people that were not geared from ToT normal in there.  Then and only then will I really make a decision on it.  Lets see if it can be the beer league it was intended for.  The first and second boss, sure, beer league.  Not sure after that.  At least not yet.

Well, being I got the cloak out of the way, it is time to do some research on achievements because tonight I go achievement hunting. 

Have fun all, timeless might not be really timeless and only have a limited window of use, but it is fun right now, so enjoy.

28 comments:

  1. You mentioned the cloak boss, Ordos. You can do that cross-realm actually. My server is like yours and not too many people with cloaks early last evening, so a friend got me an invite to a cross-realm group for him. He was not on the PTR so no one had prior experience, but his abilities sounded ominous (including 5 minute enrage on boss with 650 million health). However, he was surprisingly easy to kill. We had 35 in our group. Could easily do it with 30, so maybe tonight your server will have enough people, perhaps not exclusively a guild group, to take him down. He is on the Nalak level of difficulty, so he is really a loot sack; or in my case, a gold sack.

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    1. I would love to get a kill in but I will most likely have to do cross realm. There were people trying to recruit for it for a while but it never got off the ground so cross realm seems like the only option, at least as of last night.

      Maybe, as you said, tonight might be better.

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  2. I also had trouble with the Focus management on arcane shot when I logged in. The feel was just different. I ended up switching to BM, which I'm not as used to (I generally run SV). Switched to ToTH, and it was easier to get the right "feel" for it (where I didn't have to keep my eyes glued to the a focus bar). Still, even by raid time in the later evening, I was still missing some signature shots because I thought I could squeeze in an extra arcane, but really couln't.

    I also had a lot of trouble with a bug (in both SV and BM) when I had Blink Strikes on, during the first boss in 25n. I had to re-call my pet 2 - 4 times each fight. Eventually switched back to MoC (I'm still not convinced which will end up better DPS), and that solved the problem for the rest of the fights...

    I also really enjoyed the world PvP. We had tons of CRZers on the isle, I wondered how many of them were from PvP realms who just didn't want to put up with patch day there.

    ~Delirium

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    1. Heh. Yeah, for the first time ever I had a buddy on a high pop realm ask ME to bring HIM to my mid-pop realm, I'm always the one abusing him... I'd already experienced the issues on his realm (I have a toon there as well) and the island was basically constantly crashing, lag was at 2+ minutes and it was impossible to do anything.

      MY realm felt like HIS realm normally does. Was a weird turnaround but worked out well that I could finally return the favour.

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    2. @ Delirium

      That was the killer, thinking you could get that arcane in and then seeing you do not have enough focus. I say give it a week and we will be used to it. As it is now it caught me more than a few times and I am sure it will get me a lot more as I am getting used to it.

      Ah, that is why I was losing my pet every few seconds. Thanks. I thought it was just the good old pathing error blizzard is so fond of giving us. Over to crows for me now too.

      @Anon

      That is one thing I worry about come connected realms. There should still be a "small" realm option. Because I would make a max level character on there just to move for release day things.

      Need two accounts to work that, but I have two accounts.

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    3. I saw mentioned somewhere that there would be a few realms that would remain uncoalesced due to time zone issues... if you want a guaranteed small pop realm you might try to track those down.

      (I have no idea where I saw that info, unfortunately, but I'm positive I did, if I come across it again I'll post it here)

      Still, though, by day 2 and WITH CR (I saw some * toons running around TI) things had slowed down a lot. Doesn't seem worth making or even transferring a 90 toon on another realm just to get a 1 day head start. But then, that's just me. ;)

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    4. I agree, it would not be worth it. Just wait a day and let everyone else get done first. A few people in my guild did that and skipped day 1 completely. Smart move.

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  3. Your comment about not being able to get the loot is actually how it's worked forever... if you release and the boss dies before you're able to rez you'll lose your kill credit. I've missed out on a few kills over the years due to that but normally if the mob is anywhere close to dead I just stay down until after the loot roll. I don't *LIKE* that, I'd rather they encourage people to get back into the fight, but it's nothing new.

    I'm also not sure about the AoE PvP thing that you mentioned, I often used AoE (monk AoE, so SCK/FoF) on mobs with PvP flagged folks in the mix and never got flagged. The one time it happened I was trying to loot a mob and a PvP flagged dude just spawned in under my cursor as I was clicking... so I can't verify the issue you mentioned.

    That reminds me, though, quite a few times I had PvP flagged folks just spawn right in my area... far too often to be people just logging in at that moment. I wonder if there IS some sort of "max player" thing going on behind the scenes where we don't see everyone on the screen who's actually there. And yeah, I actually put in a suggestion that they bring back the invisible box mechanic that showed up at the beginning of MoP (and annoyingly, not since) to keep that from happening.

    And man, that boat with the ladders... not sure I'll be doing that daily chest every day. There was a LOT of griefing going on there last night.

    The Xuen fight sucks for melee, the chain crackling lightning mechanic wipes us out within a few hits, even when I ran out to a save spot at range I was still targeted with every hit. Maybe with dedicated healers it'd be doable but... it's a world boss. There's one other mechanic that was blowing me up on that fight but I can't recall what it was. Glad you found it easy, though. :)

    What visual are you referring to for the cloak? The only thing I noticed was the white ... paw thing on my back that wasn't quite centred which seemed to indicate that the proc was READY, not that it had procced (it would happen between fights when I wasn't doing anything). I never noticed the actual proc but I do have my camera back far enough that I may just not have noticed.

    Yeah, I think the changes to Arcane Shot were specifically for Thrill of the Hunt... higher damage and less focus capping. I've always run TotH so it'll just make it better for my hunter.

    As for the longevity, don't forget that for 50K tokens you can buy an upgrade token for an i535 piece... I probably picked up 20K tokens last night alone (with a lot of one-time-only chests in the mix, though) so those upgrades could keep the Island in play for months as people use it to gear up alts. There are worse ways to gear up than grinding mobs for currency... plus, that's where the tier world bosses are.

    I think you made the right call by not screwing with the legendary boss. Stuff like that would get noticed.

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    1. Using 50k TI coins to buy an upgrade token is not the best use of coins. You are MUCH better to go into the cave with the chests where you can buy a key for 500 coins.

      If you spend 50,000 coins on keys, you end up with 3 upgrade tokens, a lot of gear tokens, gold and about 30K TI coins reimbursed. This was reported on the forums from testing it on the PTR. If you search for it you will find it.

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    2. That was the first time I have ever experienced that. I guess you learn something new every day. Never had that happen to me before.

      It might be the way some of the abilities work. But I am absolutely 100% sure I got flagged (the first time) when I did a gliave toss and multi shot on the mobs because I didn't even see the horde player, and I have name plates on at all times.

      I didn't really notice the others but, maybe I tabbed to them, not 100%, but I would guess it must be gliave toss as that is the only AoE in my single target rotation.

      There are two visuals. One is the wings, as I call it, and paw as you do. If you are just standing there doing nothing and hit mend pet, it pops up.

      The second is in battle, it looks like a massive multi shot going off. So you can tell when it is going off as that visual is much tighter than multi shot and it is a different color. It seems to proc every few seconds during heavy AoE phases.

      I am not sure I would go for the 535s on my main. On my alts, sure I will, but 50K will still be easy to get if you are willing to grind it. But that is the key, willingness to grind it.

      Just look at the forums and see people crying that 5K for the cloak is too much. Most players do not have the willingness to actually work for that 535 gear. It is fine for me and you maybe, but most will just say screw the island.

      I do not think it will keep people there longer because they would not want to grind. And I do not think it will keep me there longer because I will grind everything I need in one weekend. Might go on alts, but once a main is done, they are done. Except for world bosses which are come, kill, leave.

      Thanks. I don't think I would ever do anything knowingly wrong. If there was a group there, the one person that found it would have joined of course, but I doubt anyone would notice one person.

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    3. I took my hunter out a bit last night to test and wasn't able to flag for PvP in combat when I had a normal mob targeted... used normal single-target rotation, so it included Glaive Toss. I'm running a tank pet but I did turn off Thunderstomp (don't need extra mobs pulled in) and I didn't use Multi-Shot, so it's possible that one of those would flag you. I'll do more testing at some point next time that toon is out there.

      As second Anon says, it looks like the key chests are the best use of surplus coins vs buying the 50K upgrade tokens.

      That hasn't been my experience, there were charm farming groups in the Barrens right up to the last day of 5.3. There seem to be plenty of people who are willing to grind for an advantage.

      (now, if they'd known that they could get lesser charms as quickly/easily on the island as you can, they might not have...)

      I did see a bit of an update to that, apparently via the seagull express you can get to the Ordos general area without the legendary but you won't be able to get to Ordos himself. So, yanking someone across the gap (or whatever process you found) should be safe, turns out. Plus, there's a nice chest out in that area (guaranteed upgrade token) that shouldn't require the legendary to get so it's likely that the gap jump is just a convenience for those with the legendary. If someone without a legendary manages to somehow get into combat with Ordos, though, different story, that shouldn't be possible.

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    4. I would have guessed gliave toss was doing it. I guess during AoE spam it could always be possible as I am tabbing I accidentally target someone. I am pretty sure I did not however. But as all my abilities are set to auto target (macros) it would not be the first time I accidentally auto targeted a PvP target. I'll usually just kill them and move along however. ;)

      Could the fact my abilities are all auto target macros make it that it will flag me, even if I do not directly target a flagged player? I might need to check that out. It could very well be my own macros that are doing it.

      Yeah, that chest is great. You can fly someone over the gap on a two seater mount no problem and they will not get sent back unless they enter the courtyard. The bug I mean is different, it allows you to actually fight him. I am sure it will be found out and fixed soon enough.

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    5. One update based on 2nd @Anon's comment, they apparently hotfixed the key chests to drop fewer tokens... so that MAY not be a significantly better way to farm them yet. We'll have to wait to hear what the new drop rate is to know. I'm guessing it'll be roughly the same as 50K coins, Blizz giving folks a chance to use or ignore RNG based on personal preference.

      I killed Ordos a couple of times last night and I'm still not sure what happened... he "died", I got failbags (and gold with bonus rolls), I ran down to leave but the door was closed, then suddenly Ordos tears down the stairs (wasn't he dead?) wreaking havoc all over the place. I don't know if it's a bug or if it's supposed to happen. Doesn't feel like that's planned, though.

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    6. Same thing happened to be on Ordos. Killed him, popped on my mount to sell stuff and he respawned right on top of me, like within 30 seconds of killing him. I died, along with a dozen others that did not leave there ASAP.

      So for future reference, when he dies, hightail it out of there.

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  4. I have to echo Grumpy's comments about tons of people. I have no idea where all the people on the Timeless Isle last night came from. My server has seemed so dead recently, but there were people everywhere on the Isle last night.

    It didn't prevent me from getting things done, but it probably took a bit longer to find 5 rares than it normally would have. I just did other stuff in the mean time.

    Regarding not getting credit, I noticed that a lot of the mobs are not faction tags or at least that wasn't working properly. The elite mobs should all be faction tag, but I never got loot if I helped somebody kill a mob. I had to tag it myself to get loot.

    I died a bunch on the Isle, but that was mostly due to falling damage while trying to do the jump puzzles or getting pummeled while soloing elites in Ordos's area; they have abilities that can easily dish out 400k+ in one shot.

    Didn't have any PvP mis-adventures. In fact, I wished I could talk to Horde a couple times to give someone friendly advice about a jumping puzzle or whatnot.

    Ditto on the ability changes... I was focus starved a lot. Going to take some time to adjust to the more expensive Arcane Shot.

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    1. I noticed yesterday there were many people that when you hovered over them their names appeared differently and it said "coalesced realm" with the realm name.

      So I think they are from other realms, as if they already started playing with connected realms. Odd thing is, the realm names I am seeing are ones I never saw on my server. If I had been asked to guess which servers I would be merged with I would have guessed it would be with the same servers I often see in LFR and the such, but looks like I might have been wrong there.

      Those elites in Ordos' area are brutal. And they respawn fast and they are tight. So kiting is brutal. I did manage to kill one of the rare spawns up there solo however. It was not pretty. The two adds he has with him that I took out before I pulled him respawned while I was fighting him. I just kited in a circle as my pet died and killed him and then FDed. That was exciting, but really hard. I would not do it again, that is for sure. But at least I now know where there will always be a blazing chest.

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    2. Yeah, I got that chest and I killed the Flintlord that spawns over there. I got to where I just camo'd most of the way.

      Also for those Yuangol's, they have that annoying charge so you have to stay close to them, even when you pull. So I would camo up close to them before having my pet attack. It made things easier but it was more time consuming.

      post by a Blizz MVP:
      "Yes. "Coalesced" is the term for someone who's in a CRZ with your realm. You'll see it in the tooltips. It should also display what you can do with that person ("Group, Whisper"). Presumably there will be a different tooltip for someone in a Connected Realm.

      Connected Realms are "part of" 5.4 (as in, all of the necessary code should be in the client), but they aren't "turned on" yet."

      So Timeless Isle is a CRZ apparently.

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    3. Yeap, that is what I saw, someone that said "group, whisper".

      That is where all those horde players came from that were running around flagged trying to get everyone else to fight.

      I wonder if they are from a PvP server that got thrown in with us by accident, or of they are just PvE server PvP heroes. You know the types, Pvpers that roll on a PvE server just so they can think they are good.

      I swear, it did seem like every player on the island was flagged for PvP day one.

      Yeap, that is the guy I am talking about. Pulled one add, then the other, then him. The two adds respawned as I was fighting him. They have an insane respawn rate and I hate that I have to manually hit growl. That is just stupid.

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  5. Oh god the lag on our server yesterday. To give you an idea of how many people were doing celestials, they were dying(defeated) in under 20 sec, most of time getting stuck at 0% because their role play was still in progress.
    And greifing , looks like griefers come out of woodwork everytime there is new content patch. There were people stand on chests while clicking it and not looting it and going afk so that others cant loot it. Thankfully the slightly out of reach chests were free of morons like that.
    Regarding the armor token , they are everywhere, chests ,mobs.Even if those tokes are kinda useless to someone with just a main or having geared alts, its really cool for people who can use it. Its a stroke of genious, giving away 496 gear like that,getting those tokens have a psychological effect, 'hey purples ', makes you feel like if you spend some more time in the isle you will get something use for alts and they were not kidding when they said wait for 5.4 if you wanna see alt friendly content.
    Also that makes me feel silly about trying to getting geared on my druid a week before 5.4. But hey, that gear will be useful when i do arenas on him.
    Not getting credit thing when releasing has been there for years. You could miss out on achievements or worse, loot/legendary drop tokens. That's why they disabled releasing while the raid group was in combat, it was a widespread issue.Must something fundamental with game code that they don't wanna fix and it might cause numerous other issues if they tried to fix it.
    Downed 4 bosses on normal, dint had time to try flex, but the fights were interesting , specially that norushen fight. But I am seeing a theme of fuck the melee here, in which 5th boss took the cake, there wasnt a second I dint had to move to avoid a ground targetted aoe or a cleave or some other shit,i was surviving because of feint but other melee were not so lucky.
    Got decent drops, legs from celestials with a coin roll and won tier chest from 3rd boss.Funny how much difference few ilvls can make, went from 543 to 547 and sim dps went from 219k to 248k. Yet to see a patchwerk fight to see if I can roflstomp the single target dps.
    straws, champion of cupcake club
    -kazzak-eu

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    1. I only had three characters that could even use anything from the island. I tried to make sure all my alts were over 510 by the time the patch came and I was basically successful with the exception of those 3. But those 535 pieces are nice. Already got 2 on my main, they would be minor upgrades "if" they have 2 secondary stats on them. Most people I have spoken to that used the 535 upgrade ended up with 1 secondary stat on the item which basically makes it lesser than a 522 in many cases.

      Congrats on the upgrades. That is a huge boost for just a couple of items. Wow.

      We have not stepped into normal yet but hopefully we will this week at some point. I did get 2 upgrades out of flex for my main. Nothing on my tank who ran last night. We did not get past the third boss on flex however.

      Think it was that we did not have enough DPS. Funny how without the core damage dealers, the rest of the people that want to raid, just can't do things on their own. Now that I ran with alts and some lesser players, I can say Flex mode is not beer league. You need at least 7-10 good players there. can't just go with a bunch of average players that just want to have some fun. There is no fun to be had there for average players that are not really raiders. We wiped three times at 10% and called it a night. I would like to see if I can use flex to make some of those people better. I told all those people to get their butts to the proving grounds. I can not believe that half of them could not get the test done. I think I get spoiled from running with the 10 man where everyone does well. It is tainting my view. lol

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    2. @Anon

      Dude, fuck the melee has been Blizzard's call to arms for the entire expansion. I've raided semi-seriously with both melee and ranged toons, these days I'm actually BETTER as a melee (all things being equal) but I find the fights to be so much easier in a general sense when playing ranged. More time to react, less impact if you can't or don't react, more time spent dpsing and less time spent worrying about upcoming mechanics. At least 3 of the first 4 bosses are stationary, one less thing to deal with, but lots of spawned adds on all of them more than compensates for that small perk. These fights are all quite beneficial to multi-dot classes, too, and you don't see a lot of those classes punching the boss in the face, either.

      @Grumpy

      If you got stuck on the 3rd boss you may have made the mistake we originally did, not sending enough melee into the portals early enough... first attempt we only sent 1 in at a time and we hit the enrage at, maybe not coincidentally, 10% or so, second attempt we sent in 2 and got a relatively easy kill with a mix of dps skill (half at ~140K+ by the end of the fight, half under 80K... basically a mix of geared mains and undergeared alts/fill-ins). That was with only 14-15 total toons, though, might require a bit of tweaking at 25 but you'll likely be able to send in one more than you did at a time and be successful.

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    3. @Anon 2

      In a way I agree, for some fights. I am not very good at melee, below average at best I would say, yet on many fights when I would go as my rogue I was destroying people. Some fights I felt useless on, but over all melee seems to have many more stand and deliver moments compared to ranged who always need to move. Makes me glad my main is a hunter and moving does not hurt me like a caster.

      I think if we had 2 more mains in there we would have been okay. I was tanking and never went in and still managed 50K and beat 4 of the damage dealers and almost beat a few others. Just a few too many lower geared and lower skilled people. I do believe it could have been done if we did not call it a night, but it was really hard with lower people. We only had 3 people over 140K (as you mentioned) and they were all 180ish. But those where also the only 3 mains.

      Seems that 10% number is hitting a lot of people. Maybe there is something to it I am missing and we might have done it even with lower DPS. Some could not get their test done, so I just did not send them in at all and put them on add duty. I would like to see them relax the enrage on flex, after all it is supposed to be a beer league thing, there should not even be an enrage.

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    4. I disagree completely with removing the enrage timer, flex is supposed to be roughly equivalent to Wrath normal raids... those weren't ROFLstomps. They were easier than Cat/MoP normals but they still required a decent group with appropriate gear and performance. It isn't LFR but only with friends. You absolutely have the freedom to bring a wider range of players than you can in normal but they still have to do more than 50K dps as a dps. I mean, really. That isn't too much to ask. :)

      BTW - haven't seen ANY bloggers talking about proving grounds yet, either success or failure. Is everyone ignoring 'em in favour of other things or did everyone get gold in half an hour, shrug and figure it wasn't worth bragging about?

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    5. I found the Cata and MoP raids a lot easier than the wrath ones (not counting ToT) but I think that has more to do with the fact I became a better player than I was in wrath. I am still baffled by people saying "wrath easy". Ulduar and ICC were harder in my opinion than nearly all bosses that have come since in normal mode.

      I personally have not even touched them. I've got too many other things I want to do right now. As I mentioned a few times, to me, proving grounds is filler content and would have been better served coming in 5.5.

      When things start to calm down and I am done with all my achievements, shao to exalted, and have managed to fit getting all my alts in there weekly for their 535 pieces, then I might, just might, have some time for the proving grounds. It is scaled content, so it has not "best if used by" date on it like actual content does. So no rush in my mind.

      I am sure once many people get around to finishing what they want to get done first you will see some people talking about it.

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  6. I am wondering if maybe it was the cloak proc that doesn't follow the normal flag rules. I had it happen once as well on my hunter alt where I don't know how I got flagged.

    I was seeing a lot of people doing the bloody coins thing as well, while standing at choke points to get people just trying to get to the rares that are up the path.

    I found that on high pop realm almost all of the mobs on the island were basically permanently dead but celestial groups were going non stop. On lower pop there was always something to kill, but no one was doing celestials. I had to do cross server to get my alts their celestial kills. So high pop had it's advantages, and low pop had it's.

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    1. It could very well be the cloak proc that is doing it. At the moment I am still leaning toward it might have something to do with my auto target marcos but that would actually make a great deal of sense.

      I logged on to one of my 90s on a higher pop server than my normal and to my surprise, even after hanging out there for an hour, not one celestial group went on. Neither side. Odd how things happens sometimes.

      Low pop servers have bad and good about them. Good is there are always things to kill, bad is trying to find a group for the world bosses when you would like one.

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  7. About the extra 496 items tokens, if you have an enchanter toon, you can use it to redeem and then disenchant the items. They become Sha crystals. :)

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    1. Yeah, I am loving that. I have a plate enchanter and a cloth one. Makes me wish I had a leather and a mail one as well.

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