Wednesday, June 24, 2015

6.2 First Impressions

6.2 is now live and I spent a couple of hours there running around so it is time to share my first impressions of the zone because that is the type of stuff I do here.

The Zone...

The zone is dull and dreary and they really need to turn on a nightlight or something.  It is way to dark for my liking and being someone that happens to be color blind it makes finding things rather hard.  It reminds me of my first impressions of rift when talking about the first zone I was in.  It looks really nice but it is too dark to see anything, it all blends together for me.

Navigating...

I kept running right past paths that I did not notice were paths which made navigating the place a bit harder.  Not sure if it is was just me not noticing the minor color difference of the path because of the color blindness or if others would have the same problem, but it most definitely was not an enjoyable experience trying to navigate my way around there.

This is something that of course time will fix.  As I spend more time there I will get to know where all the paths are as I find them and it will be easier on my alts.  Just wish I had not wasted so much time running around trying to find my way somewhere only to notice, "oh, there is a path right here", that I had passed six or seven times already without having noticed it.

Herbs...

Speaking of issues with color, for me being an herbalist was a good thing as it gave me a chance to grab a few felblight on my first day there but it was bad because the herb nodes are the same exact color as the ground on which it grows.  Even with the little dot appearing on my mini map I had a huge problem finding the herbs and in a few cases I just gave up trying to find it and moved along.

It is nice that they now have that little outline, which does help some, but you have to hover over it to have it become outlined, which kind of defeats the purpose if you can not find it to begin with.  But with the outline and the dot on the mini map I was able to find most of them.  Either way, I would most definitely not complain if they changed the color of the herbs and honestly I wish they would.

Being A Hunter...

For disclosure, I play the best class for stuff like this, a hunter, so your mileage might vary based on my experiences in battle as I mention them.  Battle on T2 and getting around on a decently geared hunter was not bad.  I will admit it was a hell of a lot easier on me than it might be for most classes and will be for classes with less gear.

Stables...

I do not currently have one but I do plan to fix that.  There are so many mobs that getting knocked off or stunned, or trapped, or what have you so just nothing more than an annoyance and it is worth losing a building to take the stables so that does not happen.  Beware of the chains you can pull on T2.  Many a time I ran through stuff and they finally knocked me off my mount and I was surrounded by a dozen or so mobs.  For most classes this means instant death, for a hunter it means lots of loot or feigning death, either way, a non issue for me, but still annoying as sin.

I wish blizzard would get over the idea of trying to force us to fight stuff we do not want to fight and ditch this dismounting idea.  If I wanted to stop and fight every mob I passed, I would stop and fight every mob I passed.  So until I get flying when they add it, a stables seems required if you plan to spend any extended time on T2.

Fast Spawns...

I did not spend an excessive amount of time on T2 the first day, there were still other things that needed to be done so I did them as well, but from the time I spent there I did all the daily and weekly quests that were offered.

They seem to have their spawn timers in the zone off a bit, or at least it seemed that way on my server, a medium sized server that actually looked a little on the low side of medium based on what I was expecting from a patch release day.

Some zones it was easy to get overwhelmed in because the respawn timer seemed to be clocked to over spawning mobs.  There were times I pulled three mobs and they respawned before they had ever even died meaning I had six, the three I pulled and the respawn of those same three before the first three died.

Admittedly as a hunter it was no big deal but I can see some classes, even with these non-elite mobs, being in deep trouble really fast.  I do not mind fast spawn timers, even more so on release day when more people are going to be there but if things were spawning too fast on release day, I really hope they tone this down a bit, or make that a lot, before it starts to slow down, which we will probably see by next week.

Slow Spawns...

Other areas suffered from the exact opposite.  There were a dozen people looking for mobs and nothing there to fight.  There is nothing fun about twelve people spamming AoE trying to tag anything that spawns as they fight over mobs.

It makes me wonder if blizzard notices this stuff and plans to adjust it.  Some players just over spawn mobs and others don't seem to spawn them at all.  There seems to be no rhyme or reason to any of it.

One quest, to kill the demons, will take forever and a day to finish unless you go up to the throne of Kil'Jaeden and fight the elite demons.  All the other areas that the quest marks as having demons were always completely empty of demons, as in not a single one to find.  Each area had a dozen people, at least, camping waiting for them to spawn.  The throne was the only place I found demons with no problem but that might have a little to do with those mobs all being elites and perhaps not many could handle them yet.  At least not solo like a hunter can.

Elite Mobs...

As a hunter I had no issue with the elite mobs however.  Even with my pet in a damage dealing spec I was able to take an elite without ever worrying about healing it.  Two elites at the same time were not much of an issue either.  Perhaps a mend pet here and there was needed.  At three elites I needed to be a little more active with the heals but it was manageable as well.  Four elites was when it started to be a little bit of a challenge but I think a pet in tank spec it could easily be a none issue.

So it is not like the throne was not a viable area to farm demons, but it is that I do not see other classes being able to handle them solo and absolutely not anyone without at least heroic gear and / or an excellent understand of their class and its abilities.

Gathering for Felblight...

My hunter happens to be an herbalist so of course I was gathering some herbs while out there.  For the sake of writing about it today I kept track of how many herbs I picked and how many felblight I received.

I picked a total of 57 herbs and ended up with 5 felblight from them.  This seems to fit within line of the 10% it was suggested would be the rough drop rate of the blight.  But I will warn you that this was filled with a lot of random number generator madness.

I received just one felblight in my first 31 herbs, I actually had thought I might never see one as my first one did not come until herb 22.  Then I got lucky and manged to snag 3 felblight in my next 4 herbs.  Then I only ended up with 1 in the rest of them.  So it is really feast or famine, which does fit blizzards standard design practice with everything.  You either gets lots, or almost none.  It seemed like that for me.  Got a tiny bunch at once and not much otherwise.  But it did average out to around 10%, so the average is really what matters when talking numbers.

One good thing to note is that even on release day there seemed to always be a lot of herbs to pick.  So it is not like you will not be able to find anything to gather.  Perhaps this was because people were more worried about objective that first day, but I hope it stays as is.  With a fair amount of nodes for everyone.

Hunter Gathering...

Being a hunter while gathering once again reminded me why I say hunters are the best gatherers in the game.  With so many mobs, some respawning too fast in some areas, and lots of competition for herb spawns, having a pet fight while you pick herbs is priceless, once again proving that hunters do indeed rock.

Felblight Pricing...

I did notice the bots are out.  I only saw one, a human paladin, which I reported and suggest you do the same if you run across them.  I stopped to pick an herb and this paladin just appeared out of nowhere on top of a ore near me then disappeared once it was mined.  Suddenly he reappeared on top of another ore in my view, mined it, and disappeared again.  Being I do not recall paladins having stealth, being able to move faster than even a mount can move, or having what can only be called teleportation, I am sure it was a bot.

Prices on my server were 750 gold per felblight when I logged in after work and were down to only 500 already when I logged off a couple of hours later.  A pretty huge drop if you ask me.  I would have expected felblight to be a hell of a lot more on the first day.  There were people selling 50 and 100 of them at a time.  So it seems either a lot of people are running bots or some people found an awesome place to farm them that I hope I can figure out where that spot is before blizzard nerfs fixes it.
World Boss...

For now killing the new world boss would be the best way to farm felblight if you have a lot of alts.  I only did the world boss on my hunter thus far  as it is the only character to have opened T2 so far and he received 6 felblight from the kill.  A friend got 12, so I can guess that the range is at least 6-12 from the world boss.

I did manage to win a 705 cloak that does not have as good of stats as the one I am wearing now, which happens to be a crafted one I can upgrade to better than that.  But for the time being, I will use it and just upgrade the cloak last if I do not get one to drop from the raid, so I can say I actually started this patch with something I have not seen in months, a kill that rewarded me something I could actually use.  Please say this is a sign of things to come for me.

As far as the world boss fight it seemed rather simple but it did supply me with what I will cruelly admit I laughed about in amusement as half the raid died just a few seconds after the pull.  We still downed it without incident.  Well, without incident for half the raid that is.

Fishing for Felblight...

One more thing on the felblight front.  I did a little fishing, as in really little, and in five casts I caught one felblight.  Woot, I guess.  With such an extremely small sampling, do not read anything into it other than, yes, you can get felblight from fishing.

Barrage...

Word of warning to all hunters out there with barrage on their hot bars.  Be careful where you are because it really hits everything.  On T2 there are some areas where mobs rain down from the trees, and I mean that literally.  There are mobs in the trees and if you hit barrage it will go straight up over you and hit them.

Saberon...

This barrage issue is mostly an issue in the elite saberon area.  I pulled three elite saberon, which is about the most my pet could take in a DPS spec and even that was a little rough at times.  These saberon are harder than anything you could find at the throne with those elites.  Even the named elite mobs in the throne do not hit as hard as one single normal everyday elite saboron.  So imagine my surprise when I hit barrage and suddenly my hard pull of three elite saberon had three more rain down on me.

Admittedly as a hunter I always have feign death which makes this entire thing a non issue but it was kind of funny in an oh crap sort of way.  I did everything I could and did manage to beat them all, but it was a bit of a work out for my poor pet because some of those guys hit like a ton of bricks.

Blackfang Claws...

Not sure if it is just me but it does not seem like the saberon drop a lot of claws.  If you want to get all the goodies, meaning a follower, a pet and two mounts you will need 7600 claws, if I added correctly.  At a rate of 2-3, it seemed, this could take a fair bit of time.  Being all the saberon, at least all the ones I ran across, are elites, this makes for something that might be better done in a group.  Sadly the claws are not like apexis crystals were everyone gets them off each mob.  The claws are for the person whos loot is is only.

I did find the perfect farming spot for reputation and claws however.  Please forgive me for not sharing it just yet as I want to get to exalted and get my 7600 claws first before I share.  It is a tiny space with an instant respawn and not enough for multiple people to hang out there and farm.  I will gladly share this farming spot later however.

I am just hoping that grinding up to 7600 claws also is enough to get me to exalted.  Or vice versa even, that once I hit exalted I have the claws I need.

Bag Space...

And blizzard is at it again.  Giving up more junk to clutter our bags, like the previously mentioned claws.  There seems to be some things that could, or should, be currency that are going in your bag along with other junk taking up space at the moment.  In time I hope there are not to many things I will choose to keep a hold of but at the moment until I figure out what I need to keep or want to keep, my bags just seem a lot fuller than I like them to be.

Baleful Gear...

I killed a lot of stuff while exploring and doing all the quests for the day as well as a few rares here and there as I stumbled across them.  I received a total of 4 baleful items, so it seems they are not raining them down on us on T2 like they did on T1.

I clicked on all four of them and three of the four turned into 650 items and one was an epic upgrade to a 675 item.  For alts this will be a pretty nifty thing, even more so if with that small sample rate can be true of 25% of them upgrading.  I wonder if my bunker factors into that, but my bunker will be getting replaced with a stables.  Only makes sense, the bunker replaced the stables to begin with.

Reputations...

Now to the reputation grind.  I did not do anything special toward it, just quests.  I was not lucky enough to get any of the drops for the reputation items and did not check the price on the AH.  Actually forgot to look.  But a guild mate got a mission for one of them when he logged in.  So it does not seem like they will be easy to get but at the same time it does not seem like they are just giving them away either.

I did not log into all my characters, only three, and none of them had the mission for the reputation piece.  Maybe I will be lucky and some of the others will get it sooner than later, it will make the trip to revered, and then exalted of course as I like to finish them, much easier.

Apexis Crystals...

I killed a few rares, which a hunter can easily solo all of them (the ones I ran into at least), thank you very much and did all the quests, but not all the bonus zones, and managed to snag just over 16,000 apexis crystals yesterday, so it seems like they will not be all that hard to grind out.  A guild mate taht did all the bonus objectives of the day and was on few a few hours more than me said he had collected 28,000 already, so if you choose to really grind them out, it sure seems like you can.

He was running a heroic geared warrior so that might be why he had decent success, but I do worry about if my alts that are not so geared would be able to see that sort of success.  They do not have the gear he or I did and I do not have the skill in them I do with my hunter, so I wonder if they can manage well enough to grind effectively.  Sure my alts can not kill stuff with the same reckless abandon that my hunter can, but it seems like with a group it could be an effective way to gear them in 695 gear if you are willing to invest the time.

Jewel Crafting...

The only other character I started work on yesterday as far as entering T2 was my druid, which happens to be my tank and my jewel crafter.  So in an effort to play catch up with it and knowing I need to get to T2 to start collecting the jewel crafting patterns I started it off.

I did not get so far as to finish the entry questing but I did tank a mythic skyreach.  I was not sure if I could get the item I need for the haste gem from skyreach before I actually opened up T2 but I really wanted to test out a mythic dungeon and figured I might as well do it on my tank.  My tank might find a piece of gear they could use in there and my tank needed the jewel crafting item.  So while my hunter I would do better at, it did not exactly need anything from there, so my druid went as a priority.

For the record, in case you were wondering, even if you did not start the quest line to learn the new gems yet the item needed to learn the gem that drops from the last boss in mythic skyreach does still drop for you if you are a jewel crafter.  I just can not learn it yet, but at least I have it when my druid reaches that point in the quest line.

Mythic Dungeons...

For a mythic dungeon skyreach did not feel very mythic.  I was expecting some wiping on trash maybe and a few pulls on each boss to get used to it.  It went much much better than I expected, to say the least.

I went in a full guild group which might be why we did not really experience any issues.  We did wipe twice, one on the second boss do to someone screwing up and once on the third boss do to mistake in tactic.  Second time we just ignored the adds and killed the boss and it was easy.  The first boss was a joke, as it normally is, even got my dancing buff as a tank and everyone loves a dancing bear.  Last boss, same as in normal and heroic, was the easiest boss in there.

While the bosses seem to hit harder and have a boat load more health they are, as bosses normally are, telegraphed with everything they do.  So there is no actual challenge there other than handling the mechanics correctly and doing the required healing and damage.  The real difficulty of the mythic dungeons was the trash.  We did not wipe on trash at any point but a few pulls did get a little hairy.

Our group had 2 CCs in it and we used them.  Two CCs seem to be more than ample to make it an easier run.  Some trash fights were really annoying, like the ravens (woohoo flying bear) and some took a long time, like the one we mistakenly had 2 healers up at one time and it took us something like 10 minutes to kill the damn things.  But the trash was the only time we were ever in real danger.

Now, as a warning, don't just go jumping into a mythic and think all will be fine and dandy because I said so.  Remember, I was in a guild group and that is a huge difference.  Based on the experience of a few guild mates that told me of their adventures from using the group finder for a mythic dungeon, the place was an absolute nightmare.  One person said they wiped on every single trash pack, some times multiple times.  In over an hour they only managed to get to the first boss.  That is why he was glad to drop group and come with me.  Others said they never even made it past the trash pulls to even get to a boss.

You can find a group with the group finder but you still need to make your way there yourselves.  There is no queue system and instant zone in like we have with heroic and normal, so if you plan to do one, make sure you are willing to travel some.

It seems the number 1 reason for mythic failures based on what I have heard so far are tanks thinking that they can pull everything and it is no big deal and the number 2 is a healer or damage dealer thinking they are better than they really are.  You might be able to handle it with one lesser DPS, but a healer without the numbers will mean an instant wipe.  Heck, who am I kidding, the main reason for mythic failures is the tank reason.  Every person that said they had an issue was because the tank went in and pulls 20 mobs or broke the CC people tried to use and caused a wipe.  Get a decent tank or you are not getting these done.

One good thing of note is that we will all be really over gearing these soon most likely and maybe I can get a carry for someone like my rogue into them which will be cool.  At the moment however carrying a poor player like me on my rogue could make the fights hard and maybe undoable in some cases unless the others are extremely over geared.

Shipyard...

My shipyard looks beautiful, there is no doubt about that but it is missing something I really would like to see blizzard add sooner than later and that is a flight point.  But not sure how good of an idea that would be to add really.  With blizzards track record if they added a flight point it would probably still not be direct and take longer than running.  But seriously, that was my only real complaint about the shipyard, it was annoying running back and forth.

I did find the fact that the guy who makes the ships is out in the middle of nowhere and I can see a lot of people having a problem finding him.  Even had at least a dozen people in guild ask where to find him because he isn't exactly in the shipyard like people might expect him to be.  Heck, I even asked where the hell he was on voice chat when I was first doing the quest.  It might seem to be a weird space he is in, but lets be honest, it is actually a very good space.  He needs room to build the boats and it needs to be in the water where it can sail from, so it might seem like he is out in the middle of nowhere land, but actually he is exactly where he should be when you think about it.

I just thought of another thing I would love do, to change it a little.  I want to hire some construction workers to move my mission table to where my other mission table is, so in a few weeks when I am back to just logging in for missions I do not have to run all the way down to my docks on all my characters.  Just seems like a timer waster.  If anyone finds construction workers capable of moving it tell them you know an elf that is a great tipper that will hire them in a heartbeat.

Otherwise the docks look really nice, blizzard did a find job with the art work for them even if you can tell, by placement of our garrisons and the path needed to get to the docks, that this was not part of their original plan.  With that knowledge, they did a fantastic job.

The one thing I am not looking forward to, on alts at least, is that to upgrade your shipyard you need to reach honored with one of the factions and for alts, whom of course are played much much less, gating the progression of my shipyard behind a reputation is a rater unwelcome addition to the game.

Rares...

They need to give the rares more life or a shorter respawn timer.  On more than one occasion a rare spawned were I could see it and it was dead before I could get to it.  This is with people in current gear, imagine how it will be in a month, two months, six months.

A hour spawn timer works when a mob takes 10 minutes to down, people might have a chance to get to it if it lasts a while, but when I can down a rare in less than 10 seconds in some cases and I am not really all that geared, they need to have a much shorter respawn timer.  I am thinking 15-20 minutes max.

In one case I saw a rare spawn, took one step toward it and it was dead.  I am not kidding when I say it lasted less than 2 seconds.  It just so happened that it spawned right on top of some people that were there questing, they all turned and attacked and it was dead.  I was in range of it, right clicked on the mob and took a shot with my hunter the second it spawned, and it was dead before my arrow hit it.  It died in the length of one shots travel time. There is no denying that rares have too low of a heath pool now and it is only going to get worse as the expansion goes on.

Hunter Tip of the Day...

There are pools of fel all around T2 that give you a debuff that if it stacks to 10 you die.  But each stack increases the damage you do by 5% while increasing the damage you take by 5%.  As long as you are not playing a petless spec you should never be taking any damage.  So walking around with a 9 stack on you, while dangerous should you misstep, can be huge is downing this super fast. 

I'd suggest to be on the safe side until you know where all the fel pools are is to walk around with a 5 or 6 stack, you should be really safe with that and it gives you a nice 25-30% damage boost.  We, as hunters, don't care about taking additional damage because if we are doing it right, we are not taking any damage to begin with.

More...

There is more to talk about, but I will leave it at that for now.  Need something to write complain about tomorrow too.

30 comments:

  1. Felblight -- YMMV. I collected 196 ore, 43 fish, and 96 skins before I got my first Felblight. It was beyond frustrating. I ran some rep stuff for about an hour with a guildie, and he collected 7 just in the course of doing that, but of course I got none.

    Even after I got my first one, they came extremely slow, and I ended the day with a total of 3. There just has to be a better way to implement this drop rate algorithm. They seem to fall out of the sky for some people and be almost unattainable for others.

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    1. Wow, that is horrible, and here I was getting upset when I did not get one in my first 20 herbs. That is beyond dreadful.

      I wonder how there is one guy on my server selling them by the stack saying he has thousands in stock already. There has to be a farm spot we do not know about yet.

      Sorry to hear about that dreadful luck, that is like my luck sort of luck and I would not wish that on anyone.

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  2. We have very similar impressions Grumpy. Hate the darkness and coloring of the zone. I'm not colorblind, but my old PC requires low graphics settings and it's awful. I had the same complaint about the dark parts of Spires. I fished for Felblight and had decent luck. Got one from almost every pool, and in a few cases two. Also couldn't believe how cheap it was for day 1. I think prices may rise once people start being able to actually buy the new patterns (grumble). Great tip on the buff from the goo on the ground. I habitually stayed out of it.

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    1. I jumped right into it and danced around a little bit singing "free damage". I try to take advantage of things like that when they come around. I don't find anything wrong with it but I can understand if the other classes do get upset that they can not get away with it.

      Can also do it as a tank if you are grouped with a healer. Nothing there seems to hard hard enough that another 25% will kill you when you have heals backing you up.

      I despise the coloring of the zone. It is the pits, really. I did not mind spires personally, it is actually my favorite zone this expansion, but this is horrible.

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    2. No healer needed tbh. Had 9 stacks but took them off at one point, I was too stressed I would get 10 and die.

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    3. 5 or 6 is the safe number. Allows for a few missteps.

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  3. First impression for the patch, 2,000,000th impression for WoW... I am well and truly sick of orcs and orc architecture. If I never see another orc once WoD is gone, it will be most welcome. I hate them. I hate them. I hate them.

    I built a mage tower going into this to ramp up crystal gathering for the mount and other goodies. Given how quickly they are coming, I'm thinking I'll either convert back to a War Mill or Stables. I might choose stables until I can fly and then go War Mill for the free token. We'll see.

    The reputation needed for the shipyard may mean I don't fully complete it on alts. It may depend on how quickly and easily I get the mission pets and mounts. If I can get them on my main within a month or two, then I can't see my alts making a major naval push. If not, I may need to rethink this. I got the Cinder Pup first thing, so that is one off the list.

    In the first 24 hours, I had a significant reduction in the number of treasure missions across my 100s. Could be bad luck, but given that they mentioned some change, I'm assuming this is the new normal. Too bad.

    I second your call for faster respawns on rare mobs. They melt and it is most frustrating. I would also like to see the areas for bonus objectives clearly marked on the map for the Hand of the Prophet daily.

    And yes, the zone is too dark and too uniform in color. My eyes differentiate dark colors much more poorly as I age and this zone fully realizes this limitation.

    I got 11 felblight from the new world boss. Easy.

    I wish there were better travel lanes around the citadel in the center of the map. I ended up taking flights back and forth to avoid the crap on the ground. May not be as much of an issue with a stable and, of course, won't matter at all when on a flying mount. I intend to flip Blizzard the bird each and every time I fly over the citadel at that point.

    I never got to any of the saberstalker areas, nor did I do any pet battles on the first day. Hope to do both some tonight.

    Nice to have something new to do. At this point, almost anything would have been welcome.

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    1. But why do you hate orcs? They love you. ;)

      I think stables until flying sounds like a solid idea and I will likely be doing the exact same thing myself.

      Oh, marking the bonus objectives, I forgot about that one, you are so right. I hate they are not on the map. You just have to stumble along until you get lucky enough to run into one. Not a very fun thing if you ask me.

      Perhaps it is part my age as well as the color blindness that is the problem for me but combining the two makes the zone a nightmare for me really. I will be happy when I am done with it and never need to go back. I hate the zone. Still hate gorgrond more, but this is a very close second.

      I am going to try the pet battles this weekend when I have more time. Weekdays my time is really limited to so try to maximize effectiveness which means grinding first, pets later for me.

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  4. Have you killed Fel Rangari Anaara yet and tamed your Fel Wolf? That was my first move, as soon as I logged in I water-stridered over to her and got me a fel wolf. Already had plenty of comments from people asking how to get it. Well, maybe only like two. but it feels good, nonetheless.

    I can't remember what they're called, but there are some little fel demons that are like, spritely goblins, little things. And you can barrage down a pack of ten or 15 of them up in kiljay's thrown area. Makes that quest realll easy. Couple things you have to avoid with barrage, but you can always fd and retry in 20 seconds... :-P

    One of the first things I did (after getting my fel wolf, of course), was farming some saberon claws and buying the three totems to summon the special guys. I hadn't gotten a chance to do them on the ptr. I was expecting them to be more like brawlers guild type fights, but they were just normal hard-for-anyone-who-isn't-a-hunter (or warlock) fights, had basically no mechanics hunters had to deal with. Anyhow, while farming the claws to purchase the totems, I had to change up my game plan. Like yours, my pet could only handle about three of the saberons at a time. 4 with glyphed mend pet. But I quickly noticed it was much faster to just trap / wyvern one or two, and kill one at a time. Especially as marks, they just burn down so quickly when I'm single targetting (and not having to waste gcds healing my pet).

    There's a cave I found on the ptr that has a bunch of skitterers in it (crab things that you can skin). I probably shouldn't say this, but oh well. They have a great drop rate for fel blight. Could be I'm just having crazy luck, but I pulled 18 fel blights from skinny maybe 50 skitterers. Got another dozen from all the rest of the time I spent skinning stuff (like the dinos, or riverbeasts, etc). Looks like, as a skinner, I'll have to intentionally go farm fel blights, as most areas of tanaan don't have skinnable mobs. It's good to have found the high yield mobs quickly though.

    On the down side, I thought I needed 15, then 30 fel blights for both upgrades for the gun, but I actually need 30 then 60... so I'm a lot further away than expected.

    I also think the ship yard is very beautiful. However, I find it incredibly boring at best, and unreasonably frustrating at worst. I've already played the mission game, leveled fifty billion followers and got them all in 675. Why would I want to play it again, with followers that get destroyed if they don't succeed? I mean, it's not like I need the resources for anything else, so I can insta rebuild ships, it's just... annoying... They did the original missions much better, with the shorter mission lengths for low level missions, and the long mission lengths for high level, high reward missions. starting off with once every four hours is frustrating.

    But it is beautiful.


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    1. Nope, I have not, but then again I still have not gotten gara on my main either. On an alt yes, but not on my main yet. I like to save stuff like that for later when I am bored but maybe I should do this one sooner than later as there will surely be a lot of help to kill the mob now making it tons easier.

      I saw the imps you were talking about, a group of three, and that was it my whole time there. We can use a lot more of those if you ask me. Took me longer to do the damn demons than all the other quests combined I think. But that is partly my fault for trying the other areas first and not finding anything. Once I went to the throne it moved quickly.

      Yeah, without heavy AoE your are better doing one at a time it seems as they go down faster and it keeps the damage off your pet meaning no need to hit mend pet at all, which in turn also makes it go by faster.

      The losing of ships is annoying. If it were not for the achievements, as I am into that sort of thing, and the legendary needing it, I would rather skip the shipyard myself. As you said, been there done that, no thank you. But we have to do it, it is not exactly optional.

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    2. yeah, i would be happy doing the shipyard very, very casually. maybe looking at it once a day at most "hey, cool boats". But the knowledge that I'm hurting my raid team by not having it done as fast as possible is very frustrating.

      I think, as someone who enjoys hunters, you'll like the Fel Rangari Anaara fight. it only takes maybe two minutes solo. Not a long quest chain like gara. I said on the podcast a couple weeks ago, that I think PvP hunters won't even have to think about killing Anaara, as they're used to flaring if someone vanishes, tranq'ing large buffs, interrupting, Master's Calling, etc. I'd think a regular PvPer wouldn't even notice that they'd killed a special NPC. I'm curious if that's true for hunters from the good ol' days of huntering, as I'm told our toolkit used to be used much more often.

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    3. So much for blizzard saying that garrisons would not be mandatory. I really would love to get into the minds of the people that work there and see how they consider the garrison not mandatory.

      The flare is the only thing I would have to get used to using. I interrupt, tranq and masters call naturally anyway. I rarely use flare.

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  5. whoa great tip about the 10 stacks. I died and didn't know why. will try to keep a few stacks on me to aid my dps (tank spec prevents dismounts).
    --
    regards,

    regardsanon

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    1. You're welcome, that is a fun little buff to use to your advantage, but be careful not to get too many stacks or you could accidentally kill yourself. I think 5 or 6 is perfect, more if you want to play it a little risky and 9 if you are extremely careful.

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  6. As for respawns, there are a few places where you can 'claim a strategic location' by killing waves of adds. I had my warlock voidy out, plus a bodyguard. The three of us couldn't handle all the adds that came at us. Maybe it was the addition of the boss that spawns if you are doing well.

    As for baleful gear, I got about 8 pieces (2 proc'd at 675!), mostly through the millions of treasure chests all over the starting area. Yes, I am using HandyNotes so I was finding more than normal share (lots at tops of towers via grappling hook). It got to a point where I was looking for all the various toys and upgrades. Ended up replacing a staff I had been using for a month now, with a dagger and off-hand from treasures. In addition, I picked up about 4 different toys during the night.

    After making it through the starting quests to open T2, I went back and ran Highmaul again for more aborgator stones, then The Pit apexis daily for the flying achievement.

    Bit miffed that the 100-treasures found achievement that they implemented, does NOT count all of the Tanan treasures!

    I tried my hand at 2 of the legendary pet battles, but evidently don't know what I am doing. With my 'elite' crew, I was only able to get one down to 25%.

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    1. Spots like that are great for farming apexis crystals. Assuming the ones you mentioned drop them, it might be a good idea to keep that in mind should you ever want to farm up a large amount. I like farm spots like that where things keep spawning.

      So your baleful seemed 25% like mine. Still another small sample but maybe that is what the rate is, 25%. That would be kind of cool.

      I need to run highmaul once more to get the last stones I need for it but now that new stuff to do is out I think I might put that off for a bit.

      I clicked on one of the legendary pet battles not thinking and I had a team with 2 beasts in it. It was a flying pet. Needless to say I did not do very well. I'll probably head back there and do it after I got the rest of the stuff done.

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    2. I was very happy to see a naval battle come up on my radar for 10 abrogator stones. My two ships have a 92% chance of success so it seems likely that I should have 80 very soon.

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    3. Good luck. Even a 92% is no sure thing. I did pass a 36% one yesterday. Woohoo, a little luck for me.

      I have yet to see any quests for goodies like that. A guild mate already got the mount from there the first day. That was lucky.

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  7. Navigating in Tanaan is a p.i.t.a. Several times, I just said screw it and used Aviana's feather or hearthed to my garrison and then took a flight path back. Definitely looking forward to when we can fly in there...

    Somehow, I never get dismounted by mobs... Maybe I'm good at zigzagging through them or something.

    I agree that the respawns in some areas seemed too fast and too slow in others.

    I started to go up the hill for that demons quest but after seeing how long it took just to kill one of them... I went back down and just waited for the little ones to respawn...

    The Elite demons weren't hard to kill, just time consuming. I tried using that Fel Sludge buff/debuff at first, but I just found that my pet took way too much damage that way. I need to try it again with the debuff just on me and not on my pet as well.

    I got 4 felblight yesterday from skinning a few things.

    I still need to do the world boss and try Mythic dungeons.

    I'm already sick of the shipyard. The low success rate for missions and chance of ship destruction just really bugs me.

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    1. I've done the same thing where I would heart back to my garrison to fly back instead of trying to run back. This zone is proof positive why flying is indeed needed in the game. Poor ground design demands it.

      Let your pet die and revive it if it gets any stacks. I do not think your debuff does not pass to it. So having it on you should not matter. Your pet dying however removes its stacks. Or better yet, just dismiss your pet while you are dancing in it for your buff so the pet gets no buff.

      I too am already sick of the shipyard too. I really do not want to do more garrison missions. Not sure why they added more.

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  8. Dude, don't replace bunker with stables in GARRISON. Do that in Nagrand outpost, so you get your riding goat and be done with it. There's a dwarf in your Tanaan's main base which allows you to pick any of your outpost bonus to use in Tanaan, so you pick Nagrand's stables and be happy.

    Me myself use the massive AoE from Talador, but whatevs.

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    1. I use the AoE as well. Artillery strike is great for farming saberon reputation. Run like a mad man, round up about 10 of them, drop artillery strike, watch the reputation roll in.

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  9. Story wise I appreciate that the king was there for this, but honestly, it just seems like half of the story is missing. I mean, that has been the case this entire expansion but why is he here? How does he know this group, that isn't coming to our world, is so huge of a threat that we are chasing them down?

    I took my 660ish geared druid there, with Leorajh, and did okay. I'm not too skilled of a player but even I could solo most of the rares. I actually had more problems with your standard elite ogron (or whatever they are called) or the Saberons than an rare.

    I got 5 felblight with a meh amount of skinning. My condolences to you Fiannor.

    I had the exact same thought about the flight path to the docks. 1) If their whole concern is getting us out of the garrison, the nominal "going to the docks" isn't really doing it. If you had the flight path there people might be outside already and then just go. Okay, maybe not but they could try 2) it just makes sense to have a flight path near the docks. I kind of think there should be one in Stormwind near those docks too. Don't move the original, just add a second. No reason you can't have two. Orgrimmar could have two as well.

    I'm pretty disappointed in the nerf to the boxes from the salvage yard. I don't have anything to replace it yet, and it still is some free stuff, but I had 40-60 boxes I had been to busy to open which got hit with this nerf. So now I'm only getting 2-3 things per box as opposed to 4-5.

    I am still annoyed at the possibility of losing ships. And over all, it just hasn't been very interesting yet. Add
    in the long time between missions and the "long" distance away from the follower table and it just screams bad design.
    By the way, I finally settled on a name other than Lurking reader, but I'm holding off using it until I can be sure I can get a matching blog address. Not that anyone will steal my name, but in case I can't get the blog name.

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    1. For this expansion most of the story seems to be missing. It all seems to out of place, out of character, and out of the vibe of the game as a whole. I do not think they handed this alternate reality or time travel thing with any degree of skill and it shows.

      The saberon elites seem to be the toughest ones I have seen there. Even worse than the rares, I agree.

      They are hard pressing nerfing gold making and it shows. But they are upsetting a lot of people along the way. They need to learn to be a little more deceptive in their actions. They could have left salvage boxes the same and give me 21 silver low level greens from it instead of 47 gold BC weapon greens from it, and maybe I would have chalked it up to bad luck. But they outright nerf it and everyone sees it. Not sure who is running the show over there, but they are not really all that bright.

      Ship missions are a bit annoying. I have yet to start any 2 day one. I would rather start a 4 hour one with 30% chance to succeed than a 2 day one with an 80% chance to succeed. If I am spending 2 days doing something I will not risk a ship to do it. Sorry. At least if it fails a 4 hour mission I can get another ship running. It won't feel like I lost days worth of progress. So yeah, I am not liking losing ships either. I might not mind if I did not need to level them, but if I need to level them I sure as hell do not want to lose them.

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    2. The thing with the gold is, rather than doing the nerf to gold that impacts everyone, they could have done something that impacts only those at the top.

      Say diminishing returns after 10 crates per day/per character. It slows down gold and doesn't hurt alts much. That may have hurt you (sorry Grumpy) but the people that were never making much wouldn't be impacted. There will be upset people, and rightly so, but they will be smaller in number than the EVERYONE blanket they are doing now.

      I wouldn't necessarily like that but it bothers me that they are obviously trying to change something about gold and it is likely the high-end people, but in doing so, all they are doing is hurting the low-end earners.

      I look forward to hearing about your Blackfang claw area. So i can work on my rep and claws.

      Two quick questions if you know - Am I right that, as of now, T2 baleful gear is only BoP and there isn't any BoA stuff? I was going to look for more information on this but haven't had much chance yet.

      The three Saberons that you can summon, where would you rate them? I saw Del irium call them hard-for-anyone-who-isn't-a-hunter. I was going to try soloing them but didn't want to waste claws if I had no chance.

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    3. Or perhaps cap it at 10 crates per day, going with your idea. As in you can not receive 10 from missions per day and after that you do not get any? Just an idea.

      Here is another blackclaw area that works for a group, if you can get a healer and 4 DPS together, do not even need a tank. All take the artillery strike talent and run around and aggro massive amounts. Once rounded up fire two strikes, everything dies. Move to next area. A couple of people in my guild did that last night and went from starting to half way through revered in 2 hours.

      I am going to have to see if I can get a group to do that this weekend. Way faster than my solo area. But yes, artillery strike is a must, even when solo.

      I thought baleful was supposed to be BoA as well, but seems they changed it. Everything that you buy or get as a drop is BoP. However, all missions from the shipyard reward a BoA version of it. So that seems to be the only place to get the BoA versions, at least that I have noticed thus far.

      I did them as a hunter, so hard to say how other classes will do. Will bring my alts through this weekend. But a warrior friend of mine, in gladiator spec, told me the first and third were super easy and the second did hurt but they managed it. He is a 675 item level. From what he said, and knowing I only needed to hit mend pet on the second one, I would say it seems the second one is the only one that really hurts. I'll try to give more feed back as I bring more characters through there later. But yes, as a hunter, easy peasy.

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    4. That crate idea would be good too. Anything other than this blanket nerf that really takes some of the fun out of it. Maybe there are internal things we don't know about but I'm doubtful of that. And this is also a good example of why having good open communication with your player base is useful

      I'll keep an eye out for the BoA gear from the shipyard but I'm not sure that interests me enough to chase that down.

      Thanks for the thoughts on the Saberons. I'll probably try it soon.

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    5. I wish they would all be BoA, I had liked that design. Was awesome for sending them cross server to my characters on other servers.

      I would actually send all the ones I could cross server to a sever I needed gold on, disenchant them and sell the sha crystals. I must have made over 100K last expansion that way. Probably more.

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  10. I am still way behind on all this Tanaan stuff. I have done a few pet battles against those legendary pets and caught a few more, but rep-wise I am so behind. I have no idea how to get my shipyard to level 2 (but all I have to do is ask a guildie I suppose) and I freak out about losing boats. The most of 6.2 I've seen is the raid, really. I can't wait till non raid days so I can actually sit down and explore!

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    1. Do all the entry questing and finish 15 missions. That should get you to level 2. Remember when you get the headhunters to honored to buy the battleship plan, which you need to further it along to level 2 as well.

      I am looking forward to getting into T2 with my alts this weekend. #1 will be my druid to get some baleful healing gear.

      We tried to get a run together last night. Had 2 main tanks on, 11 main damage dealers on, but only 1 geared healer. So we attempted the 4th boss with me healing on my bear. Bears do not make good healers. I only have a 663 healing set and boy oh boy could you notice it. We got the boss down to to 20% range a few times but with 15 people and and only 2 healers, me being one of them, I just could not do it. So want to gear up the healing set in case I am needed again. In truth, I was actually surprised, even for normal, that we made it that far into the fight with me healing. Druids are OP. :P

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