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.