So I Can Get Valor From Some PvP but Not From Some PvE? Where is the Logic Blizzard?

I'll be the first to say I like the return of valor, it makes content long forgotten worth repeating, such as dungeons or LFR, but I am not exactly sure the way they are adding valor back is the right way to go.  Firstly there is no valor gear.  So collecting valor to upgrade gear is still RNG based.  Sure you can get the valor in a set way, but having something worth upgrading still depends completely 100% on RNG, which is a failed design to begin with.

But lets put the glaringly obvious fact that blizzard has completely screwed up the addition of valor without adding valor gear and look at the even larger glaring issue that pertains to something they did add, and not something they didn't.

Valor will be attained in the following ways:

• Your first random heroic dungeon per day.
• Each mythic dungeon completed once per week.
• Each raid finder wing completely once per week.
• Completing the weekly bonus event quests. (except for the pet battle one)

At face value everything here seem perfectly logical.  They are all well thought out and reasonable ways to gain valor.  Some people are complaining that the pet battle bonus event does not offer valor when all the other bonus events do but even if I do sympathize with their reasoning that because all other events do grant valor as a reward, the pet battle event should as well but I am going to have to side with blizzard here on this one, which if i am doing that must mean there is a good reason as I do not often agree with blizzard it sometimes seems, and say that the pet battle bonus even should not offer valor.

There are 2 solid reasons why the pet battle event should not offer valor and I will gladly share them, even if the blues have only shared one of the two reasons themselves.

1) The pet battle weekly is account wide.  This means I can pick it up on my hunter, do it on my hunter, and turn it in on my mage, for example.  It is not a quest for my hunter.  It is a quest for me, as the player, not me as the character I am playing.  As such, I can only do it once no matter how many characters I have.  So which one of my characters should I get the valor on?  What if I want it on all of them?  No can do, you can only turn it in on one character, as it is an account wide quest.  It is one and done no matter how many characters you have.  So I agree with blizzard, and this is the reason blizzard has given.  A very solid reason if you ask me.

2) This one blizzard has not said, but it is another very solid reason.  And there is also a reason why blizzard has not said this one, as you will find out shortly after I finish explaining it.  That reason is that pet battles are not PvE content.  Pet battles have noting to do with PvE, nothing to do with PvP, heck nothing to do with lore or quests or reputations or anything else in the game.  It is it's own stand alone mini game.  With that said, it makes no sense for a bonus event that honestly has nothing to do with PvE to award a currency that has uses for PvE purposes, and more importantly, only PvE purposes.  Like it or not, that is a very reasonable explanation for why a non PvE bonus even does not offer a PvE based reward.  Because it shouldn't.

Now, being we just explained why the pet battles are not offering valor, for two extremely valid reasons in my opinion, we need to look into what another bonus event does offer valor.  The battleground event precisely.

Why does PvP offer a PvE reward?

It is a very solid question, one I would love to see blizzard answer without just throwing their standard lines at us.  Give us a real and honest reason why someone should have to PvP to increase their PvE power.  Did they not learn anything from mists with their legendary quest line fiasco? Horde hated the 45 minute to an hour wait times, alliance hated the losing 39 times to get the wins they needed.  Win or lose, most people that were a solely PvE focused player liked it.

It seems that blizzard did not learn anything from their past mistakes.  They once again dangle the carrot telling PvE players, "hey, if you want to make the most out of your PvE gear the fastest you can, you have to PvP."  While it is true no one will be "forced" to do it and it most definitely is not "mandatory" the majorly of player who like to feel that they are doing all they can to better their gear will feel "forced" to do it and in their mind it will feel "mandatory".  So just because it isn't mandatory doesn't mean it will not feel mandatory for a great many people.

Just like I have two completely fair reasons why the pet battle bonus event should not offer valor I feel it would only be best if I do the same for why I believe the PvP bonus event should not offer valor as a reward either.

1) Just like pet battles, PvP has nothing to do with PvE.  While there might be a mild connection, such that you can PvP in PvE gear and you can PvE in PvP gear, they are two separate parts of the game.  Even blizzard has acknowledged that by the announcements for legion where they are splitting the two further apart than they have ever been.  So they can not play ignorant to the fact.  Unless they plan to start giving PvE players conquest points as a reward for finishing the weekly dungeon bonus events and killing raid bosses, they should not be giving PvP players valor for completing their battleground events.  It is as simple as that.

2) Just like valor does nothing for the pet battler, because it is not like you can level pets or increase their rarity with valor, it does nothing for the PvP player.  It is a completely useless currency in PvP.  You can not buy PvP gear with valor, you can not upgrade PvP gear for valor, you can not use valor to get enchants for your PvP gear even.  Bottom line is, valor is 100% useless to the PvP player.

All that said, if you do both normally, kudos to you, you can benefit from it.  But for everyone else, it makes no sense what so ever.  But there is something that makes even less sense than a PvP quest offering a reward that can only be used in PvE and that is the general focus of the entire game in PvE, raiding, not offering a reward that is used for PvE power.

Why doesn't raiding offer valor?

Sure, you can say looking for raid offers valor, but that is not what I am talking about.  I am talking about organized raiding, not random group raiding.

Lets look at what valor is intended to do this time around.  It is intended to boost the power of PvE gear a tiny bit to help people feel like they are getting stronger as the expansion goes along.  This is something all MMOs require.  As soon as people stop feeling as if they are advancing, they stop playing, in large amounts it seems.  To keep people playing you have to keep them feeling like they are moving forward, getting stronger, even if it is only 10 item levels at a time on one single piece of gear.

So even if all you are doing is farming content and not pushing it, having a little boost to your gear allows you to go from doing 88K on that farm boss to 90K on that farm boss.  It makes you feel as if you are still growing stronger as time goes on even if you are not pushing any new content for yourself, be it moving on to heroic or mythic.  You still will get to see your character grow stronger week by week, and people like that, they really really like that.

See, that is what the valor is being added for, to make people feel as if they are growing stronger.  But in some cases, and for a great many guilds out there, that feeling of getting stronger is not just about feeling stronger, it is about getting stronger. 

If you are that normal mode guild stuck on archie, having the entire guild being able to add 10 item levels could help push you through.  If you are that heroic guild just starting progression and hitting the gorefiend wall that seems to effect a great many guilds when they first got to it, those 10 item levels for everyone can actually mean the difference between downing it or continuing to wipe.  And then there are guilds like mine, with only 15 or 16 decent players, at best, that will never get to see a mythic.  Maybe, just maybe, we might be able to get a couple of bosses down if those 16 all had 10 extra item levels so we can carry a few slots with people doing heroic numbers in a mythic.  Or perhaps you are a group that have been working mythic but each boss becomes a new challenge, those 10 item levels for everyone can make that new challenge a hell of a lot more bearable in the dull drums of a late expansion when people start getting bored and wiping tends to tire people out more causing them to quit by turning and 50 wipe first kill into a 25 wipe first kill thanks to having a higher item level.

You see, the item level boost, while nice for everyone, is actually required for raiders.  And not just high end raiders, raiders of all skill levels from normal to mythic.  Allowing a normal guild to get their first archie kill, allowing a struggling guild to get past gorefiend on heroic, allowing guilds like mine who thought mythic was out of the question to think, once again, we might actually have a prayer of seeing a few bosses if we were higher geared so we could carry a few lesser players, and of course, the better guilds working through their first progression on mythic will have a more enjoyable time with it, or even the best guilds that already have everything on farm by making their farming go much smoother and faster.

So those valor upgrades will effect raiders, actual raiders, more than any other players in the game.  Yet for some reason, one that completely escapes me, you can not get valor from raiding.  Why?  If you can get valor from PvP and PvP gear can not even be upgraded, why can you not get valor from raiding when those people not only can upgrade their gear but very well might be the people that need to do so the most.

Now with my piece said, I would like to end by adding, why no valor from our first of each challenge mode each week too?  It could breath more life into it and isn't that what valor is supposed to be meant to do, at least this incarnation of it.

So my question is this blizzard...

Why can we get valor from PvP when we can not upgrade PvP gear but we can not get valor from raiding when we can upgrade raiding gear?

I do not see the logic behind this at all.

The Less Skill Required, The More Fun the Content is

The title of this post is something I just mentioned in a comment to someone with regards to the timewalker dungeons and some issues he had in it.  The line refers to random group content only.  And I 100% completely believe it to be true.

The problem with the timewalker dungeons (which I have none, I love them) is that a lot of "bad" players run into them thinking they can just plow through them like they do a current dungeon and they meet their demise.  This happens by the tank not being able to take all the damage, the healer not being able to keep up with the healing, or the damage dealers just not doing enough damage to down the mobs in a timely manner.

These players are the ones that think they are good players because "I can solo heroics if I wanted to" and do not realize that their gear is scaled down.  The first time they run into something where they might need skill, and they do not have their over geared characters gear to carry them through it, they fail.  Miserably.  Welcome to timewalkers.

There really is no reason to ever wipe in a timewalker dungeon.  I've done them all.  I've done them with great groups, I've done them with poor groups.  I've done them as tank, as healer and as damage dealer.  I've done them on characters I was good at and characters I played quite poorly on.  And one thing I am absolutely certain of is that these dungeons are a push over compared to what they originally were.  They are easy, very easy.  Assuming you do not try to play as if you were are over gearing it and try pulling the entire dungeon at once.  Yeah, that won't end well.

To illustrate my point I am going to play a game of make believe, because that is just fun to do.  We are going to take a group of "poor" players and put them in 710 item level gear.  We have Bob the rogue, Ann the hunter, Dave the Mage, Megan the healer and Tom the tank.

They are "decent" in the idea that with enough practice they can eventually get things down, or can at least sneak in and do well enough to not be kicked in a pug so they can get a few bosses down here and there, but each on their own is a poor player.

Now in this make believe world lets send those players into two random dungeons together.

Enter Dungeon #1: Upper Backrock Spires Heroic.

They walk in and start pulling, the tank is taking little damage, the healer is able to keep everyone up with hots only for the most part and the DPS are all on different targets but everything is dying fairly quick.  They are not even stopping the mobs from operating the canons and they don't even notice they are there because things are going down so fast.

They get to the first boss and screw up a bit, Dave the Mage even dies trying to deactivate the things when he jumps down but Megan uses the battle rez on him and he is back to trying to open them again.  The boss goes down pretty quick even if they do not do the fight right, so to speak, because they over gear it.

Second boss comes and they do not interrupt, the boss switches focus to a damage dealer and because no one was interrupting, the healer just heals them through it.  They stand in bad a little too long, the two adds with the boss go down seconds apart because of split DPS instead of one at a time nice and fast as intended.  The tank does not even hold aggro on all three as the adds routinely attack the damage dealers instead of the tank and the healer still has no problem.

On the way to the next boss they get knocked back into more mobs, and then still some more, pulling the entire room.  The tank goes into panic mode and instead of rolling his coodowns he hits everything at once, but it works and they get by because the DPS is so OP.

The rest of the dungeon goes like this.  Mistakes, misusing of abilities, abilities not being used at all, ignoring stuff because the healer can heal through it, you know the deal, the standard poor skilled pug thing.

When all is over, everyone had a great time.  Things got slaughtered, things moved fast, and with the exception of Dave, who wears tissue paper as armor, no one died.

Enter Dungeon #2: Ahn'kehet, the Old Kingdom, Timerwalkers

Tom the tank runs in and pulls a pack with a spell flinger, not one of them or even two of them, but three of them.  With the lowered gear scaled closer to correctly, but still pretty OP for this content, the poor players are not downing the mobs as fast as they just were in the last dungeon they did.

Being the mobs are not going down, that means three spell flingers are up.  Being the group does not know anything about stunning or interrupting the spell flingers start flinging spells and the tank goes down faster than a thai hooker, then the healer melts and everyone else follows suit pretty quickly.

They reassemble, tom the tank blames the healer for not healing him, megan the healer says he went from 100 to 0 instantly, and she is not lying, and the damage dealers just sit back and let them argue because to them, it is both the tank and the healers fault.

They go in and pull again, doing the same thing.  One mob less then before because that is all they killed, one mob, and it was not even a spell flinger.  This attempt ends in the same way the previous one did, with the tank dying, the healer dying and then the damage dealers dying.

After playing the blame game once again where Megan calls Tom the worst tank ever, even after she said in the last dungeon "You are so easy to heal Tom, you take no damage, you are a great tank" they go at it again and decide that perhaps they will only pull one pack this time.

They do just that and they do a little better.  The spell flinger is getting casts off as the damage dealers are attacking what seems to be everything but the mob they should be focused on and the tank, of course, can't be bothered interrupting an ability that does 80% health damage to him.  The healer struggles to keep him up and keeps struggling, until the end when Tom dies and then Bob pops evasion and evasion tanks for a few seconds before it goes down.

Wow, that was really hard for these poor players.  If only they knew how to interrupt, how to stun, now to focus damage, how to actually do damage at decent level in this gear instead of letting the gear carry them like normal, it would have been no problem.

They move on to the next two flinger packs and do it as they did the first, with 2 pulls for each pack.  Their repair bill is already a nightmare and they have not touched the first boss.

When the first boss comes it ends up being another wipe fest as Tom does not pick up the big add, and unlike the second boss in UBRS where the healer, when over geared, could heal through the damage that was being put on to the damage dealer, that was also over geared, this time a lower scaled geared healer could not keep up the lower scaled geared DPS that was getting beat on by the add.  They wipe.

It happens a second time too before the tank realizes that he needs to pick up the add.  Surprise surprise, who would have ever thought that the tank should do that.  Bad Tom.  After they down it, Dave says some of his gear is broke so he is heading back out to repair, everyone else follows to take the chance to repair and when outside they all come to the conclusion that it is not worth finishing this dungeon.

So when this is all over, before it is even finished, no one had any fun because the content required skill, something this make believe "test" group did not have.  No fun was had by anyone, well, except for the spell flingers perhaps.

I like the timewalkers dungeons.  They are a fun throw back and they are extremely easy when compared to the original ones, but even if I do like them, I freely admit, I love blowing through a heroic dungeon now even more.  I love the fact I can basically solo them, and so can anyone else in decent gear.  It is just flat out fun to blow things up.  Anyone that says otherwise is lying.

While I can interrupt, stun, knockback, trap, tranq, etc, in the timewalkers, and while I do find them fun, doing things where you do not need to do any of that because you can just destroy stuff is just more fun, sometimes at least.  And in my opinion "sometimes" means "in random groups".

I am of the opinion that anything that uses the random group making system should never, not in a million years, include anything that requires any modicum of skill.  Leave that stuff for raids, mythic dungeons, and other content were you assemble a group yourself and don't let the system do it for you.

The reason people remember BC and wrath dungeons so fondly is because at the time they were released, when they were new and no one knew what they were doing and they were still a challenge until they were learned, we needed to assemble groups by hand. 

Look what happened when they added that same concept with cataclysm.  The cataclysm heroic were no harder than the wrath or BC ones on release.  But they were random groupings.  And what happened there?  Dungeons are too hard happened.  Sorry, they were not too hard, they were never too hard, they were easier than wrath heroics, they were easier than BC heroics, but they allowed random grouping.  That is what made them hard.

Come to think of it, I did not need those make believe examples, all I needed was the cataclysm heroics.

With guild = awesome fun, a bit of a challenge, but felt great doing them.

With random grouping = Curl up in a ball crying while whimpering mommy or it was great.  A flip of the coin, random if you will.

Bottom line is, for random content, the less skill required, the more fun the content is.

Monday Random Thoughts

- After last weeks debacle with blackhands arm I did not do LFR on any alts this weekend.

- I would only end up being screwed again and lets face it, no one likes that.

- Even more so no one likes customer service that does everything but service the customer.

- So I figured I would do something I had not done in a long while.

- I leveled an alt.

- With the awesome leveling this expansion it was nice to do it again.

- They really did a bang up job with the leveling experience this expansion.

- Thanks to flying it was even faster than I remembered.

- Totally forgot I had about 20 of those mission flasks that gives +300% to experience for 15 minutes.

- Or the 20% extra we can get from the garrison vendor.

- Just leveled straight out with none of that and just my rested to work with.

- I made it from 92 to 100 in one sitting.

- I was still rested when I hit 100.

- It took around 3 hours and 30 minutes to do those 8 levels.

- So... yeah.   I did not need any bonuses from anything.

- It was actually perfectly smooth with just rested.

- I was able to get to the end of the zones, gather all the followers, and then move along perfectly.

- I guess if you wanted to speed it up and not get the end of zone reward for a free blueprint and all the followers you could do it much faster.

- That is just not me, I have to get all the followers as I level because I know I would not go back for them.

- With flying you could basically move from objective to objective.

- It made it feel very efficient and enjoyable.

- I might actually go back and level some more now that I have flying for the lower characters too.

- The only thing I dread is the garrison building up again on a new alt.

- Leveling all those followers, buildings, etc.

- But I had no problem.

- I also had 9 of those +1000 garrison resource things from missions to pass to an alt.

- And 5 of those +50 item level to a follower things to pass along.

- So it made the "hit 100" hate a lot less hateful for me.

- I stopped leveling because I started to hate hitting max level.

- The idea of building a garrison from scratch killed me.

- Of leveling followers I already leveled 10 times already on other characters killed me.

- Of basically feeling like I was so far behind it would take forever to catch up.

- That was the biggest downfall of garrisons if you ask me.

- You always felt like you needed to play catch up, or at least I did.

- As soon as I hit 100 I went to nagrand, had hit 100 in spires and finished spires before moving on, and did just enough to get the 3 followers from there.

- I then did the DPS proving grounds, as I leveled as a windwalker on my monk and had no tanking gear.

- As per standard, DPS proving grounds was no issue what so ever.

- I then decided to give the tanking proving grounds a chance, as a fresh 100 with only 3 650 pieces I had passed over and leveling gear, for DPS, otherwise.

- I was actually worried, I had not tanked on my monk since week one of SoO really.

- I finished ToT with my monk as my main tank and the day SoO came out we stepped into normal (now heroic) and I got my ass handled to me by the third boss.

- Had no trouble on the first, none on the second, but the third boss, when the tank needed to go in and there was this one hit that hit for 600K, and I only had 500K life, there was nothing I could do.

- You might not remember but when it first came out you could not decrease it.

- You had to be able to take the hit.

- It could not be absorbed either, so guard was useless.

- It was a pure hit and if you did not have 600K health, you died.

- So I died, I switched to my bear who had no issue with it and never went back to my monk.

- A few weeks later they made it so absorbs worked and now even a monk could take the hit.

- Too late for me, I had already given up on the monk.

- Side note, we still downed it that night, I just did not go in.

- So you didn't "need" to go down.

- I still hated they added a mechanic that a low health tank, who is low health by design, could not handle it unless they are over geared.

- One of those "oops" moments where something, some how, escaped the designers.

- Not sure how.

- And it was not like my monk was under geared.

- It tanked all of normal (now heroic) ToT and the first 8 heroic (now mythic), so it was not like it was under geared.

- If anything, it was over geared to start normal (now heroic) SoO.

- Sorry, I am sounding bitter.

- Probably because I am.

- I was having fun playing a monk tank and that ruined it.

- Oh, back to the proving grounds.

- So it had been a long time since I tanked.

- I took serenity for my level 100 talent.

- Played around with my binds a little.

- And then attempted the proving grounds with no bonus armor gear at all.

- Hot damn I forgot how many buttons monk tanks had.

- My fingers were all over the place like a mad man.

- I loved it, an active play style class, just as all classes should be.

- I felt like I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

- Probably because I didn't, it had been so long.

- Cleared through bronze with no problem, do not think my health ever dipped below 95%.

- If it even got that low.

- Silver was a bit more of a challenge, but I was moving along nicely.

- Love all the monk movement.

- Love my ox so much I want to give it a big hug.

- Interrupts, movement, knockdowns, slows, additional taunt thanks to the ox, xuen taunt and DPS if needed and I called it, oh my the tools I have.

- While I did hit a few rough patches and needed to be a little more proactive with my own survival in silver, I managed it easily.

- I have now done the tank challenge on all tanks, DK, warrior, paladin, druid and monk, and I can say, by long and far, the monk tank was the easiest one to do it on.

- Out of practice, did not level as a tank as I did with the other four, and it still was so much easier on my monk.

- So I figured, let me try gold, this is kind of fun.

- I did not manage gold.

- According to the game at least I didn't.

- According to me, I did.

- Not even sure how I failed it.

- I made it to the 10th round, I was at roughly 60% health the healer was at 100% health and there was 15 seconds left on the timer and suddenly the "you have failed" message popped up.

- Excuse me?

- I am alive, the healer did not even have one mob remotely close to her and she was at 100% health, and the few mobs that were alive were on me and well handled.

- Heck, I would have even killed them all well before the 15 seconds was up.

- So how did I fail?

- Does the tank challenge have one of those exploding things like the DPS challenge does and I missed it?

- I do not ever recall seeing that one before and I have done it before on other characters.

- Or am I a victim, once again, of some stupid bug.

- Needless to say, making it to round 10, and beating it, which in reality is what I did, with no tank gear was kind of fun.

- And a little bit of a challenge for someone like me that was never great at monk tanking to begin with and was way out of practice.

- So I had fun with it.

- After that I figured it was dungeon time.

- But not as a tank, want to get gear first.

- So I set loot to brewmaster and started doing some dungeons as a windwalker.

- I did the 5 timewalker dungeons first.

- Got a whole 2 pieces of loot in 5 dungeons, how exciting.

- I must say I really suck as a windwalker.

- I know it is hard to tell in timewalkers, some people will say, but it really isn't.

- Your gear is balanced out so unless you are stacking "perfect" gear for it, everyone is on an even playing level and all that matters is skill.

- And skill wise, I sucked compared to everyone else.

- In comparison, on my hunter I rarely see myself doing less than 60% damage just hitting anything, most times 80% or more of the damage on boss fights.

- I greatly out skill your average pug goer.

- So being last on my monk, with the average pug goer, shows that I really am a little bit on the major league suck side.

- But by the 5th dungeon I was getting the hang of it.

- I was "with " the pack instead of well below it.

- Woot woot, I am finally "average" on my monk and all it took was 5 timewalker dungeons.

- I might have only won a couple of pieces of gear, but I bought a few more with the badges from the dungeon, and got a 700 item from my cache, so I was on the way to gearing up.

- I was also now high enough of an item level to enter a heroic.

- So I started the legendary quest line with sky reach and moved on to the others with direct queue.

- The groups I got were mostly good.

-  One run had an OP hunter doing 70K, one had an OP tank that was top DPS, and the others looked like the basic group of people that were there because they needed to be there, just like me.

- The only "issue" I had was in the first one, skyreach.

- We wiped on the third boss 3 times, the healer said it was because we were not killing the birds right.

- I said, with one ranged and the low numbers we are all doing, ignore the adds, kill the boss.

- They argued with me saying they kept being killed by 5 or more birds on them.

- I said, that is because you are killing them, leave them alone.

- After some back and forth I got them to at least give it a try my way, and we killed it.

- There were only three birds up when it died.

- See, don't kill the birds.

- Why do I have to debate about everything with people.

- I surely don't know it all, but if you are going to argue with me, at least have the common courtesy of doing it when you are right.

- I hate arguing with people that are wrong and will not accept that fact.

- After the fight no one said anything.

- You would have thought at least one of them would have mentioned that the first time we killed no birds we downed it.

- Either way, the rest of the runs were smooth.

- As the runs went on my DPS steadily increased, based on practice no doubt.

- It is not like I won any gear, because I didn't.

- Until the last dungeon where I won a weapon with a gem slot, but that was when I was done anyway.

- Even squeezed in a world boss and won nothing and coined gold.

- Got the 680 ring and was all was done with dungeons.

- Finished all my tanaan stuff and killed a bunch of rares to get a few baleful pieces.

- When all was said and done, from 92 to 100 and the 680 ring, took me 8 hours total.

- I spent longer at 100 than to get to it.

- And I logged off with everything in my garrison being a level 3 building already, so that is one hurdle out of the way.

- Also started up the shipyard and have 5 of the 15 missions needed to get to level 2 already.

- Now to remember to log into that alt each time I am on to level the followers.

- Which I know I will forget.

- I was 658 when I logged out.

- Now to start collecting stones and doing the LFRs for the first time.

- Or maybe I will just say screw it and level another alt.

- I think I am going to get a few more into the expansion, up to 92, and let them start collecting rested and garrison resources.

- All while my other characters collect more of those +50 follower pieces, +1000 garrison resource pieces, and whatever else I can send their way.

- If only I could send follower gear upgrades otherwise.

- Now that would rule.

- I think alts should have recruited followers at max level.

- That would have made the alt process more enjoyable.

- I dread having to level them all again.

- Nothing is more annoying than having to do something you already did when it wasn't fun the first time.

- Well, it was fun the first time.

- But it really isn't after that.

- So that was basically my whole weekend.

- That and one alt raid run that I tanked the last 2 bosses I needed to on normal.

- Would you believe, not sure how it worked out, but even if I killed archie a while ago, I had never tanked Soc or Tyrant on normal.

- Weird huh?

- I guess a main tank was always around when we killed them.

- Oh well, now I have killed them on my tank on normal at least.

- Maybe in a few weeks I might be killing them on my monk.

- Who knows.

- And remember, I have not even looked into BoEs or any crafted gear yet.

- So I think 658 on day one is okay.

- More so when you consider no raids yet, no BoEs, and no world boss loot.

- Just what I was lucky enough to scrounge up, which was very little.

- Most of that item level is all thanks to the timeless vendor gear.

- Someone said he sold weapons, I did not see weapons.

- Maybe that is the BC one only and I have to wait for the BC event.

- So I shall wait.

- I am in no rush.

- I think that will be the key to trying to enjoy the game again.

- As weird as it sounds, it will be to "not" play it as much.

- Have a great day.

What is Your Favorite Post- WotLK Raid?

I saw someone post this question on the MMO-C forums and as I do not post there and I thought this would make an interesting topic, I stole the question to answer it myself here.  I guess it makes sense because I do tend to babble on and instead of boring people there I can bore the people that came here, sorry.

The reason I think this is a great questions is because all you ever hear asked is what your favorite raid and most of the time you would hear either Ulduar or Kara as the answers.  Some people might have other favorites, but usually number three ends up being icecrown citadel.  All three are from wrath or before, so having a question about favorite raid after wrath is a fantastic question.

For the record if you were to ask me over all my answer would be Ulduar.  I could go on and on for days about the things I liked about Ulduar from the fights themselves for the most part, to the lore, the art, the scale, the wings, the activated hard modes and the ability to tailor the difficulty of a fight in multiple different ways without the need for 4 separate difficulties like we have now, just to name a few.  But enough about me talking about my favorite raid of all time and on to talking about my favorite raid in the post WotLK world.

This was a question that surprisingly was a hard one for me to answer.  I went over the raids in my head thinking about the looks, the feel, the fights, the mechanics, you name it.  A raid is more than just a raid if you ask me, there is much more to them than poking a few bosses with a stick until they fall over dead.

After my own personal soul searching on which raid hit a cord with me I could still not come up with a decision on what my favorite post WotLK raid was.  I was stuck with two raids in mind and I could give neither the edge.  So I will give you my favorite two raids post WotLK.  Remember, this is just my opinion which of course is greatly influenced by the raid groups I was in while doing them of course.  Because remember, a major part of enjoying a raid is being in there with people you enjoy raiding with.  Or at least it is to me.

Blackwing Descent:

This was the first raid that popped into my mind when the question was asked.  Even after evaluating what I liked and disliked about the various raids over the years it stayed at or near the top of my list.

We can even remove the fact that this raid gets some points from me for offering the best title ever in the history of the game.  When you defeated Maloriak on heroic you received the temporary title of name, slayer of stupid, incompetent and disappointing minions.  Does not title not describe our entire lives playing this game perfectly or what?  What we do is go into a raid and slay stupid, incompetent and disappointing minions, as well as their bosses.  I have never been a fan of long titles but this is one I would proudly wear if it were a permanent one.

The zone was well designed.  It looked like we were getting into an area of blackrock mountain we had yet to explore and  we had already had so much history there.  Including hiding in the very entrance we would use for that raid later to get all the mobs there for the last fight of blackwing lair.

The narration from Nafarian when we moved from one disappointing minion to the next was a great piece of voice acting and was humorous as well.  I think it fit the feel of the zone perfectly.

As for the raid itself the fights were all interesting.  The only fight I really did not enjoy much Magmaw, and it is not like I actively hated it, it was just the one I liked least.  Perhaps it was because when the expansion launched I was stuck taking it, or perhaps it was because when we found another tank to do it as the token hunter with the skills to do so I put myself on bitch duty the entire time, which while fun, does get played out after a while.

This raid also happened to include my favorite fight ever in the history of the game as a tank.  I loved tanking the adds on Maloriak.  I know if you would ask 100 tanks about it 99 would say they hated it.  Well congratulations, you just met the one that loved it.

It was my favorite fight ever as a tank and I would gladly do it again.  It helped even more that as a warrior I had some skills I could play around with that allowed me to keep the adds slowed near indefinitely.  So it was a game of keep them together, keep them slowed, and whatever I do, do not let them touch me... ever.  I told the healers, do not worry about me while I am kiting adds, I won't need any heals.  It made for a fun and unique challenge and I soaked it up.  It is the only fight ever I actively wanted to tank and would switch off my main to do so.

The last fight in the raid, against the previously mentioned Nafarian, was quite the challenge for my guild, more that suitability for a mid level guild to have a straight forward challenge to end a raid.  I think it was the challenge that made me enjoy it so much.  A worthy opponent indeed.

If there was anything I think I disliked it was that there were so few bosses and the fact that some of the trash was actually harder, much much much harder, than the bosses that were behind them.  And yes, I am talking about them darn dwarves in front of Atramedes.  We must have wiped 20 times on the dwarves but one shot the boss.  As funny as it might sound, that experience is also part of why I consider this one of the best raids since wrath.  Because we really had some fun with those dwarves kiting them all over the place.  It still brings a smile to my face just thinking about it now.

There was the elevator boss and the humor that came from that, watching the mage jump and slow fall to his death pulling Nef, or trying to save himself at the last moment blinking back to the ledge.  Or people who looked like they made it and still managed to die, or the first time I ever saw someone take a resurrection while on an elevator and then appear where the cast finished, not next to the person that cast it, and end up dying all over again.  Good times, good times.

Now, as I wrote that, I do believe Blackwing Descent wins, the other raid that had tied it in my mind no longer does.  As I wrote more and thought about the good times, the fun fights, and everything else that happened when Blackwing Descent was out, the other raid just can not compare.

In case you were wondering, the second one was going to be Blackrock Foundry.  Hey, I guess I like the motif.  I liked the wings, the design, the layout, the story that fit with the expansion, the bosses, at least most of them, and the progress through it.

What had ranked it so high on my list until I started writing about Blackwing Descent and noticed that was indeed my favorite was the fact that there were so many new and innovative fight mechanics in it, or at least not ones that had been over used.

I liked the moving floors, even more after being on bitch duty doing belts for over a year in SoO because I got to see everyone else do it now.  I loved the trains.  Sure it was a set pattern, sure you could download an addon to make it a non issue really, but it was a great new type of encounter that I really enjoyed.  I liked the beastmaster fight that was really a council type fight but presented in a different type of way.  It also reminded me a little of Ulduar hard mode activation.  Depending on which mount he went to first he had different abilities through the battle, so you could fine tune it to your raids strengths.  I could go on and on like balcony jumping and hands and bomb dance and so forth, but no need to.  I guess Blackrock Foundry will be my #2 post WotLK raid.

I find it kind of funny that my two favorite raids post WotLK are from the two worst of the three expansions since, my opinion of course, but it goes to show you that even if I like raiding, raiding isn't the be all end all of the game.

So what is your favorite raid in the post WotLK world?

Tuesday Random Thoughts

- I did other things this weekend before I decided to sign off for the remainder.

- See yesterdays random thoughts for that story.

- So I felt I needed another random thoughts to talk about the other things.

- Did some soloing on my bear.

- Just because.

- I actually wanted to get the druid toy from firelands (which only drops if you are on a druid) so was only going to solo for that really.

- I never tried it on heroic on my bear, not sure if I could solo it.

- I know I can do it on my hunter.

- Heck, I was doing it on my hunter last expansion before the buff to our numbers in old raids.

- Last week I accidentally did it on 10 man on my druid, did not make the same mistake twice.

- 25 man has more loot baby.

- Made me think, I should try it on heroic, even on a bear.

- 25 firelands was a joke even as a tank.

- I do not think any of the fire even so much as singed any fur.

- No Alys mount, no Rag mount and most importantly, no toy.

- Boo hiss hiss boo.

- I then did stonecore, just once while passing through, no mount.

- Then throne of the four winds 25 heroic, of course no mount.

- Just so you know, you get 125 gold from the bosses doing it on heroic there but only 25 (or was it 40?) doing it on normal.

- So doing it on heroic is better, gold wise.

- If you are soloing anyway, always go for the more gold option if you ask me.

- Not sure if the mount drop chance is better on heroic or not, but I think it is.

- So on a subconscious level it really helps me think I will get it sooner than later.

- But so far my drop rate on it is a very solid and well rounded 0%.

- I then went and did ICC.

- Felt different doing ICC because I actually did the healing boss where I usually skip it on my hunter.

- Woot, more loot to vendor.

- I did not get the mount but something else dropped.

- I got the Precious Ribbon.

- I must have killed that dog over 100 times when it was current, probably more, and maybe another 100 since then on various alts and I had never seen that drop.

- Like ever, not even once.

- And I got it on my druid.

- Now I just wish that when I was in bear or cat form you could actually see the ribbon.

- How awesome would that be?

- Either way, I put that bad boy on right away and my druid shall be wearing it for a long time to come.

- A few guild mates wanted to try a challenge mode.

- A "new" tank wanted to see what they were like.

- He has tanked, but never tanked anything like challenge mode.

- He is usually a fill in tank for normal mode night and is not that great at that just yet, he is still learning.

- I knew we were in for a long run, and it was, took us nearly two hours to complete it.

- We must have wiped 20 times if not more.

- And I still enjoyed myself.

- We did not get gold, silver or even bronze, never even came close to bronze really.

- We tried different approaches, I gave the tank some advice, he listened, adjusted, he learned.

- It took a while, but he managed it and I would like to think he came out a much more knowledgeable tank than he entered.

- Goes to show once more something I always say.

- It is not wiping people (me at least) mind, it is the wiping with strangers that people hate.

- He was a stranger to me, mostly, before the run began.

- After two hours of wiping, learning, adjusting, perfecting and then succeeding while talking on voice chat, we are strangers no more.

- The dungeon was a hell of a lot harder than it needed to be with lesser players, but it was satisfying when we finished it even without a medal.

- I just like to play, what else can I say.

- I don't so much mind a few bumps in the road.

- While I would rather get a gold of course I would not call my time, time wasted.

- Even if some people might.

- Hey, people need to learn somewhere.

- People taught me, I teach others, circle of gaming life.

- Like I said in the random thoughts yesterday, I was having a good weekend.

- Even with no mount drops, an extremely long challenge mode, and dealing with LFR, I was still having fun.

- Until blizzard put the kibosh on that.

- Oh well, those were my other random thoughts for the weekend.

- I did pop on last night and saw a second response to my ticket saying the same thing, they could not give me the severed hand.

- This time around I, once again, reminded them that you can in fact get it, even if you killed BH already, I also sent them to go read about it.

- Sent them to forum posts where people said the GM gave them the arm.

- Sent them to wowhead where people said the GM game them the arm.

- Sent them to see people, person after person saying the got the quest item even after they killed BH already that week.

- Told them, once more, how I had received the arm on my druid killing BH the second time in a week.

- Told them, in no uncertain terms, that they had two options, one was to act like they did and be unhelpful about it and two was to credit me the quest item I rightfully deserved.

- I ended by asking them to forward our entire conversation to a supervisor and pointed out, with the game losing over half of its player base, is it really a good course of action to take the former of the options I mentioned.

- I hope someone gets a reprimand there.

- I don't want them fired, I just want them to see that their job is to help the player, not make more players want to quit.

- I'd bet you dollars to donuts that they do not forward the note to a supervisor.

- I will not get any sense of "closure" on the issue.

- And I know that.

- I just wanted to vent.

- That made me happy, for the moment at least.

- So I joined a pug for a heroic BRF, just for fun.

- A few guild mates and random people.

- No voice chat.

- For them at least, me and the 4 guild mates I was with where on voice chat.

- It was funny how people did not know what to do, and never spoke up.

- I have no problem with people not knowing, I will gladly take the time to explain.

- We offered to explain a few times in chat.

- They decided to play stupid, or be stupid, I'll leave that decision up to you.

- We killed 5 bosses in about 40 minutes and called it a night.

- We were not looking to clear, just to vent a little steam killing things.

- The game is still good for that sometimes.

- Was nice to raid something that was not "serious" for a change.

- Had a 729 DK and a 722 hunter in there for the first boss.

- I did not even think 729 was possible.

- Not sure why they were there.

- But I switched to my hunter for the first boss only, just to see how I compared at 702.

- Both me and the DK finished at 68K, him 16.7% of damage done and me 16.4%.

- The hunter was third, well behind both of us, the rest of the group was just lower geared pug people.

- DK dropped group, so I switched to an alt.

- Was fun putting the pressure on someone in such better gear.

- Even if the fight was a better fight for me than him.

- Heck, I don't even think 68K was my best on that fight and I have not done it since I was in 680ish gear.

- We wiped a few times, still had fun.

- People on voice chat to talk to make it so much better.

- We were placing bets on who would be the first to die to an avoidable mechanic.

- Then one of our players did and we did not let them live it down for the rest of the night.

- Good times, good times.

- Have a great day.

Monday Random Thoughts

- With the announcement of some new stuff, even if not new "content", being added soon in 6.2.3, I tried to get back into playing a little this weekend.

- My priest, who had managed to get nearly all the runes they needed from garrison quests, went to take a trip through BRF LFR to collect the quest items.

- Two things became abundantly clear after the runs.

- I really suck at my priest now.

- Perhaps lack of practice and not fully embracing going back to the bubble only healing style.

- And the second thing was, Blizzard does not want people playing the game.

- It went smooth enough to start.

- I did not have great groups but I went through all 3 of the LFRs collecting the items I needed for the quest with little problem.

- Like I said, not great groups but no toxic behavior and no wipes.

- So in this world, of warcraft, it really was a series of great runs.

- Exactly what this elf needed after last week.

- In my endeavor to get back into the game everything was aces so far.

- Until I had to go back to kill blackhand and collect his severed arm.

- We wiped, which was not the problems, not even in the slightest.

- I expect wipes from people that never did the fight or people on characters which they had a lesser skill level playing, which is what I am guessing were the type of people there.

- The problem was, no severed arm.

- Stuff happens, so I put in a ticket and figure it is getting late, I will come on Saturday with the quest item in my bag and start collecting tomes in HFC LFR on my priest.

- That is when the second thing became abundantly clear to me, that blizzard does not want people playing the game.

- I get a response to my ticket, in very reasonable time mind you which was nice, that tells me I have to wait until next week to get the severed arm.

- Excuse me?

- I was on the quest, I killed the mob needed for the quest, the quest item was not given to me.

- How can you possibly tell me I have to wait until next week?

- Just credit the damn quest item.

- I was trying.

- I was enjoying myself.

- I was actually getting into the game and was looking forward spending a weekend playing it.

- And then blizzard tells me they will not even credit me a quest item that is supposed to drop 100% of the time from the boss.

- I could understand if there was a "chance" for it to drop and I did not get it.

- But it was 100% and it was not awarded to me.

- I am not a happy elf.

- I held up my part, I played the game, I gave them a chance.

- They just do not want me playing.

- Why do I keep giving them more chances?

- Your guess is as good as mine.

- If not for this I would have posted about all the other things I did this weekend.

- But because of this, it is all I have to say.

- I reopened the ticket, I explained, politely, my stance and I have not logged back on since.

- Sure, they could have credited me the severed arm by now.

- But it is too little too late.

- They should have given it to me when I put in the first ticket.

- Hope you had a better gaming weekend than I.

- Have a great day.

6.2.3 AKA "If we had done this earlier we might not have lost over 5M subs."

The 6.2.3 preview came out and I would be lying if I did not say it brought a smile to my face.  And it bought a smile to my face for more than one reason.  One being the obvious reason and that is there is now a reason for me to log in again. I've been looking for that for a while this expansion.  Something that makes me feel as if I am advancing my character.

The other reason is of course coming the the basic human nature of people like to be right, they like to be able to say I told you so, and I did tell you so.  They are adding a few things I said the game needed since it was still in beta.  Such as a reason to do dungeons or LFR, namely valor.

One thing being added is Mythic Raiding Cross Realm and it should have come a hell of a lot sooner.  There is only really one reason why there was no mythic cross realm raiding earlier and that is to preserve the world first race.  I could most definitely see how cross realm being enabled could taint the race for world first, but I never quite understood why it was not enabled as soon as one of those guilds claimed the title.

What this addition is missing is one other change that is needed for cross realm mythic raiding to really work and reach the level or awesomeness it is capable of.  The loot lockout design, like the one they use for normal and heroic, needs to be adopted instead of the raid lockout number like mythic uses now.  I don't know about you but I hate getting into a mythic pug, downing the first boss, and the group falls apart and my mythic raiding is done for the week.  That is a major buzz kill that not only makes you apprehensive with joining pugs but can ruin your week if you do join on. So they need to add that change.

I could say that they need to change it to offer a 10 man version of mythic raids but that is a post all on its own.  Lets just say that the loss of 10 man raiding at its highest level has quite possibly destroyed more guilds than horridon did.

They are adding another set of dungeons to the timewalking rotation, this time it is Cataclysm Timewalker Dungeons.  I am glad to see more added to the mix of course, but unless you are new to the game the cataclysm dungeons are really not that far removed and I don't think need to be rehashed just yet.  I would have really preferred if they saved these for next expansion to add them then, instead of shoving them into the mix now.

Not saying I won't do them of course because you know damn well I will.  Grim Batol, Lost City of Tol'vir, Stonecore, Throne of Tides, Vortex Pinnacle and End Time are going to be part of the rotation.  A few too many as well.  I believe they should have keep slowly adding things, but it seems blizzard is in full on panic mode and offering us a lot more than they need to.  We will also be seeing Pit or Saron and Magister’s Terrace added to the wrath and BC mix, respectively.

They added a new mount as well, the Infinite Timereaver, that could drop from any timewalking boss when doing the time walker dungeons, which is nice.  But I know my luck and will not count on it.  Over all my characters I must be well over 2,000 stonecore kills and I still do not have that mount, so no holding my breath here, but it does give a tiny bit of added motivation to do it.

They are making some interesting changes that I would love to think they did not flesh out yet like Baleful Tokens Up To 695 now when you get lucky and get an epic upgrade instead of only to 675.  But I question, what of the upgrade to 695 pieces?  Will they now upgrade it to 715 or something?  We will have to wait to see.  Maybe you just do not need to spend the extra to get it to 695 now.  I am rather sure that is what they are going to do.

They also changed the loot in mythic dungeons so that now Mythic Dungeons Can Drop 725 loot.  When you get an upgrade instead of it being 705 all the time it can be 710, 715, 720 and for those extremely lucky few, 725.  I am not lucky of course, but it is a tiny motivating factor to do them again.

When doing mythic dungeons now you will also have a chance to looting a new Heirloom Trinket that goes to level 110.  While I am not sure of how good these trinkets are, I know I will want them and maybe you will too.  Once more, motivation, something that blizzard had failed so horribly at this expansion, is being added in 6.2.3 for some people that might seek these things.

They will also be ending the arena season so they can start a new Arena Season 3 for those people that are into PvP and need added motivation to keep plugging along.  As a non PvPer I am not exactly sure what they is needed, if I want to kill someone I want to kill them, what season it is does not matter to me.  But don't judge that by my take on it, as I said, I do not participate in the seasons, at least not since wrath, so someone that does is probably going to really love this.

It should be noted, even for PvPers, that the gear that is available from PvP will be better than even heroic HFC in many cases, so if you want the best gear, even if you are not a PvPer, and you are not doing mythic raiding, it looks like blizzard is telling you to try out PvP.  Not really sure if I like this idea as a PvE player as I believe that the best gear for PvE should come from PvE but you can get 715, 730 and even 740 gear from doing PvP as soon as season 3 comes out.

A new Majestic Grove Warden mount will be available, for a limited time only.   When you kill archimonde on heroic or mythic you will get a quest item that sends you to moonglade for a small bit of story and this mount as a reward.  They did not mention when this limited time event will end, but if I had to guess I would say it will end when 7.0 comes out, which seems only logical as they intend to give the mount only to those people who killed the last boss of the expansion on heroic or higher a mount for doing so when it was current.

The biggest and bestest addition to 6.2.3 in the opinion of those elf, one that had me smiling from one pointy ear to the other pointy ear, is that Valor is Returning.  Why it has taken blizzard so long to realize that removing it was an error that I pointed out last expansion when they said they were removing it is beyond me.  Apparently there is not one single person that works at blizzard that has any say on the matter that realizes that you need to have some sort of motivation for people to keep doing dungeons and raids once they are done with them.

You can get valor from running heroic or mythic dungeons (during bonus events it seems) and LFR, each wing, once per week.  Needless to say this not only gives us a reason to run content was have thrown on to the scrap pile a long time ago but it will surely increase the quality of players in this content making the runs more efficient and more enjoyable, by a long shot.

With valor's return the Item Upgrade Vendors will be returning as well allowing you to upgrade your gear twice, at the moment, in increments of 5 levels per.  This will give many people more than ample reason to keep running that old content.  Something the game really needed, and needed from release.  The lack of valor, in my opinion, is the single worst things this expansion has had to deal with because it made all content one and done.  Valor was the great motivator that makes people keep doing things even after they have done them.  It makes content repeatable.

There is one glaring absence here however, the lack of valor gear.  I would love to see gear, equal to T2 gear, at an item level of 695 available for valor.  For those people that are not the grinding type that will spend their daily time in tanaan having a valor gear option for gearing just makes sense.  But at least they are adding something which is better than nothing, which is what we had before.

If you want to read the 6.2.3 preview from the horses mouth you can check it out here.  At the moment it seems to have a lot of potential to get me back into doing things as I surely will be grinding valor, it is what I have been asking for all expansion so of course I will do it, but what do you think, is there anything you like about it or would like to see added to it?

And no, I have no clue when 6.2.3 is coming out, but when you hear the announcement of the PvP season ending, it will be 2 weeks after that, if blizzard holds to their pattern.

Hunter Changes for Legion I'd Like to See

I will start this off with the given, I would like to see the one change we know about not changed.  I do not believe you should every switch the focus of a class which means a ranged class should stay a ranged class.  With that said, I would like to see survival stay ranged.  I am a firm believer that if they wanted hunters to have a melee spec they should have added a 4th spec and not changed one that is already in game.  There are people that love survival, have played it for years and even still play it even if it is in a horrible place right now.  They play it because they like it.  While I never was all that fond of survival I sympathize with them and agree with them 100%.  They should not have their spec stripped away from them.  If blizzard really wanted hunters to have a melee spec, they should have added a 4th spec, end of story.

But for this post I am going to work with the idea that like it or not, survival is melee now and I am going to base the things I would like to see from the different specs based on that fact.

1) Aspects Return... More so for Survival.

I would like to see our aspect bar return, no matter what form.  Put pack and cheetah back on the bar and give us some extra ones.  Perhaps something along the lines of the old viper, except it now greatly increases the generation of focus for a reduction in ranged attack power.  It would be very situational of course, but I could see there being a place for it.  It would bring a tiny bit of a micro game back into it.  When there is a downtime between phases switch to viper to refill your focus bar.  Maybe shoot those steady/cobras with viper so you could switch back and do more aimed shot/kill commands.  Would it be worth it?  You be the judge.

I'd like to see fox make a return too.  Was it really being abused by some people so much that warranted its removal?  Nope, it wasn't, a blue said so much.  Was it being used so little that they figured it worthless?  No one has said so much but being we know it was not being abused this is the only other reason it could have been removed for.

Let me explain something simple to blizzard.  Abilities like this, even if very rarely used, are what gives classes flavor.  Removing these abilities in the name of removing bloat is a mistake.  Abilities like this are not bloat, they are flavor.  "Bloat" abilities are abilities that need to be used all the time on a regular basis.  Remember the old affliction warlock 14 abilities rotation?  Yeah, that is button bloat.  Having an extra "tool" you use on rare occasion is not bloat.  Bring fox back as a raid cooldown.

But what I would really like to see done is two aspects added for survival.  So they could use it like a warrior uses their defensive and gladiator stances.  Lets say we bring the old aspect of the beast back, with its attack power bonus in melee, for when the survival hunter is DPSing and we add another aspect of the turtle maybe?  One that increases dodge and parry by 30% and converts agility to dodge and parry.  Something along those lines, so survival can tank or DPS.  Oh yeah baby, I would dig that and I might actually start liking survival.

2) Survival as a Tank Spec.

Lets face it, we lost a ranged spec, nothing is going to change blizzards mind.  But I would like to see them do something like I mentioned with the aspects that allowed survival hunters to be like protection warriors, where they can either tank or DPS depending on which stance/aspect they are in.

What is the least represented role in the game?  Tank. 
What is the most represented class in the game?  Hunter.

It does not take a rocket scientist to put two and two together here.  If you give the most represented class in the game the ability to fill the least represented role in the game even if only a tiny amount of said hunters try out tanking it would have a major impact on filling that most needed role.

Lets add to the fact that there are already too many melee specs in the game and too few reasons to bring them to a raid.  And then add to that they are already adding one melee class, which is a hero class next expansion.  They do not "need" survival to be a melee DPS, but it surely could not hurt to have them as a tank or DPS.

If blizzard is going to force a ranged spec to switch to melee, at least let them be in melee doing something that is needed, tank.  And lets face it, from a very selfish standpoint, I would love to have an instant queue on my main.

3) Instant Aimed Shot.

I really despise blizzard for their handling of marksman this expansion, or the warlords in general but that is another story.  I firmly believe that blizzard knew that aimed shot should be instant but because they could not think of any tier set ideas they decided to give it a cast time thinking they could use the reduction of cast time, or removal of it, as a tier set bonus.

I do not like the idea that you "need" a tier set for your rotation to feel natural.  I want to see aimed shot become instant as a base line.  They already used the "bonus" factor of it I do not think that seeing an instant aimed shot for MM next expansion is out of the question.  Many times things we see in tier sets end up base line in the next expansion, and this is one I would like to see.

4) Volley Return.

I can see volley making a return for either survival or marksman.  Albeit I would prefer it to return to MM and it become a viable way to AoE as MM really has none, it does seem like it could be something that might very well fit with survival, depending on how they design it.

Could you imagine vollry for survival being an AoE that roots everything in its radius?  Yeah, I can really picture that.  A survival hunter running after his prey and it keeps getting the jump, or is that blink, on them and getting away so he throws a volley in the air and arrows come down pinning the enemy so survival and pounce on them and do what they do best, go for the kill.

Okay, it sounded like I enjoyed that a little too much, but that is because it sounds cool.  Be is a survival catch up thing, that also does some damage or a viable AoE source of damage for marksman, I would really like to see volley make its return.

5) I Want to Keep my Toolbox.

Okay, I am going out on a limb here.  We have not heard anything yet but I have a pretty good track record of predicting things like this.  We are going to be losing most of our toolbox, the fun stuff that makes being a hunter so damn awesome.

The change I would like to see is one that doesn't change our toolbox.  Be assured that we will be losing concussive shot, masters call, freezing trap, ice trap and flare.  Maybe we will be losing things like disengage and deterrence too.

I do not want to lose these things.  That is the change I want.

With the advent of having a PvP leveling system were you unlock PvP skills blizzard is going to be removing a lot of abilities from class that they deem to be PvP focused abilities.  This means things like concussive shot and masters call are on the top of the list of things we will be losing and no longer have available in our general toolbox.

I am certain that some of my favorite abilities, and yours too maybe, will be moved to the PvP tree and gone forever from PvE use and I dread that.  Trim other classes if you must but hunter always have and always should be known for their massive toolbox.  I want to keep my toolbox.  So the change I want here, is to not change, but being I am sure they already removed that stuff, the change I want is for it to be given back to use for PvE uses.

6) Marksman to Have a Pet.

I am all for MM being the petless spec.  An archer class has its place of course.  However with the advent of these artifact weapons that means most hunters, myself most likely, will level as BM and most likely switch to MM (if MM is doing well) when we hit max level and these weapons will screw everything up.

If I level as BM that means I will level my BM weapon.  So if I reach 110 and switch to MM I will be entering dungeons that first day with a level 100 weapon not upgraded.  Sorry but the prospect of that is not very appealing.

You think we hunters have it bad?  How would you like to be a healer and leveling in a DPS spec and then try to heal your first dungeon with a level 100 weapon.  Not very appealing, and in our case not as bad as the poor healers that level as DPS to switch to healing at max level, but still an issue none the less.

Unless blizzard does the right thing, and when have they ever been known to do that, and have the weapon level with the player so all specs level together, if I intend to play MM at max level I would like to level as MM and I would like to do with with a pet.

I know they plan to have MM be the petless spec, but I really want an option to have a pet out if I so choose to have one.  Hunters, at least in warcraft, have always had the option to have a pet and I want to keep that option.  But blizzard already said screw hunters by changing a life long ranged class to a melee for some odd reason so it makes sense they would also say screw what people like and remove the option to summon a pet completely for MM under any circumstances.

Perhaps this is more a change I want to artifact weapons than one for MM.  But if artifact weapons are not fixed so I will not need to level it multiple times for all specs, then the next best thing needs to happen in my opinion, and that is let me have a pet as MM.  Poor healers would still be screwed that way however.  This whole situation does not look good for blizzard to begin with.  Perhaps I could make an artifact weapon post and what I would like to see happen with them.

Well, those are some of the things I want to see, the things near the top of my want list for hunters in legion.  What do you want to see for your class?

Some Things That Could Have Made Garrisons Better

I consider garrisons to be the best and worst addition to the warlords expansion.  I really liked having a place of my own, it felt right and it shows that the game does have a place for player housing, even if that is not what garrisons were and surely not what they were intended to be. 

In the same way however the fact that the garrisons were so important, for making gold, for getting gear, for maximizing professions, for getting crafting materials, feasts, savage bloods, etc, they felt more like work than they did fun.

Because of that reason I only have a few alts this expansion.  I did not want to level more alts because I know me and I would have felt I would need to maximize my garrison on all my characters.  While the leveling experience was the best it has ever been in my opinion this becomes the first expansion I have fewer max level characters than the previous one.  And not just slightly fewer, about one third of the max level characters I had last expansion.  Really odd being leveling was so great this expansion, if it were not for garrison I would have had more max characters than ever before.

So for as much as I liked garrisons, I really think they hurt the game a much as they helped it.  At least for myself.  They where awesome, but they were work, and no matter how much you love your job if you feel like you are doing nothing but that job you will start to hate it.  That is not an opinion, that is a fact.

I think there are a few things they could have done to make the garrisons way more friendly and less work like as well as making them closer to player housing and less like a mini game in your own little space in an MMO.

Fewer Missions, More Followers:

I think limiting us to 25 followers was a mistake.  If we wanted to have 100 we should be allowed to have 100.  Instead of limiting the number of followers we had they should have limited the number of missions we had.

It would work the same, sort of.  The reason to limiting us in followers was to assure we could not 100% all missions, which most, or at least many, of us managed anyway with only 25 followers.  So that really was a non issue and no real excuse of limiting us to only 25.

If they had missions spawn at a rate of one mission every 4 hours, even if you are offline, than that would mean a maximum of 6 new missions a day.   If they let them stack up to a total of 50 missions before they stopped spawning new ones until the old ones were done, that would mean you could go for quite a long time without visiting your mission table, without having the feeling that you are missing out on something by not doing as many missions as possible.

Having more followers active would make everything easier to 100% but at that late game stage getting 100% was not a problem anyway.  So people could log on once a week and with their 100 followers they could send all their missions out.  In a case like this, with so many missions going out at once, it surely would have lead to a great many of those missions you could not 100% because the people that could do so with would be out on other missions.  So you could wait for them to come back to 100% them or risk them if you know this was the only time you would be on all week.

It would decrease the feel that you needed to log on every day as often as possible to get the most out of your garrison mission table.  Which just so happens to be the #1 compliant I heard at the beginning of the expansion.  And is still a problem when leveling alts when you also need to level the new followers which means logging in as often as possible to do as many missions as possible so you can level your followers as fast as possible.

I believe that fewer missions and more followers would have eased some of the issues people had with garrisons early on, and the problem that some still have trying to log in as often as possible to do every mission all the time.

Mine and Garden Workers:

Like the mission suggestion I believe the mine and garden could have been made to feel less mandatory, or less work like, if you will, at the very least if our workers actually, you know, worked there.

I said this in beta, I said this on release, and I will say this once again.  If you assign a worker to your mine or garden they should do the mining and herb gathering.  It is their job, they are your follower, they should do the work.  Simple as that.

They could have capped it at one stack of each item would be gathered before you picked it up from them, so they could not stock up an endless supply.  They could have even set it up that people received 20% fewer materials if their followers gathered the materials, because they are not as skilled as we are, that is why we are leaders and they are followers after all, and I do believe a great many people would have been glad to use than option instead of feeling like "I have to get to all my mines and now I have no time for anything else." which happened to a great deal of us, myself included, at the beginning of the expansion.  I cycled through characters and by the time I was done mining all of them I noticed my play time for the day was done.

Professions Building Bonuses:

Professions buildings were nice and all, but they became another thing people felt they needed to do.  They felt to make as many crafting materials they needed to keep their profession building running 24/7, and they were not wrong.  I did it, you might have done it, and many many people did it.  Logging on to all their characters to make sure they were maximizing the materials gathered from their profession building.

They should have ditched the work order idea and had it tie to the actual crafting you do.  That little crate in front of your professions building would still fill up with materials, but in a different way depending on the level of your building and crafting skill.

When you did your daily cooldown and received 10 burnished leathers, your storage would get 2 additional that you needed to pick up from there, at level 1 of course.  A level 2, when you did your daily cooldown 5 were added there, at level 3 it could be 10.

In addition, whenever you crafted something there was an 10% discount on the cost to craft it and the materials would appear in your professions building cache.  With a level 2 tannery it would be 20% and 30% for a level 3.  And there would be a small chance to proc a double return.  Say you just created a level 6 upgrade to leather gear and surprise surprise, 105 burnished leather and 18 felblight just appeared in your cache.

There would be no cap on those caches, you could let it build up and clear it out whenever you wanted to being you earned those materials from your very own crafting, but I could see the need to add some cap if they felt strongly about it and I would not be adverse to that if they wanted to add one.

Having a worker in the building, as well as adding bonuses they currently do, would increase the chance of having a proc to get more materials returned when crafting something.

This would give profession building a worthwhile reason to have them, and to level them for greater recovery, but it would remove the number one complaint people had, that they had to keep refilling orders.  Not like it was a big deal, but many people felt like it was just busy work, and it was.  There would no orders to be placed, just craft, and get a bonus for crafting with the building, sounds good to me.

Blueprints:

Account wide blueprints, 'nuff said.

Okay, since when have you known me to keep anything that simple.  Let me expand.  Being we would be having fewer missions over all, meaning fewer gold missions and fewer salvage crates, there would be less of a gold influx into the game than there is now.  As such the expense of buying the blueprints with all characters would become a bit more of a burden on those that are not very good at making gold.

So account wide blueprints would just make more sense with these changes.  However even without these changes with the advent of account wide this and account wide that, account wide blueprints should have been a no brainer to begin with.

Trophy Room:

Not like those monuments we have now, those can stay as is, I am talking about an area were we can display trophies.  Lets say anything you have a feat of strength for you can scroll through and display it.

An area with lets say 2 display places for a level 1, 4 for a level 2 and 8 for a level 3.  A place where you can put up your trophy for cutting edge garrosh, or high warlord, or whatever you have that you might be proud of that is a feat of strength.

This would lean more toward connecting garrisons a little more to a player housing idea, and I see nothing wrong with letting it be such.  It would be cool to invite your friends to your garrison and they can see your accomplishments.  It would also mean, if at least only in this one small area, each persons garrison was individual instead of cookie cutter. 

Needless to say that with less pressure to log in every day and do everything there every day, the garrison would no longer be a place where you hung out as often, so some personal touches would not be such a bad idea I think, even if just for yourself.

Armor Dummies:

How about a place where you can put armor that is in your void storage on display.  A dummy you could dress up with all the pieces of that set.  You could have as many as a dozen dummies that you could display your tier sets on, your personal designs on, and even more importantly, a one button outfit change when you click on a dummy that has a set on it.

When you click on one of your armor dummies there would be options to add, remove, or wear.  If you choose to wear a price would pop up and if you click okay it instantly transmogs you to that gear set on that dummy.

Transmog fans rejoice, this is exactly what you wanted, you just did not know you wanted it until I told you about it.  Sure this is another thing that more fits player housing, but why not, it would have been a pretty cool addition.  Not to mention it would be something additional that would add a bit of a personal touch to garrisons and step away a tiny bit from the cookie cutter we all have.

Skins:

Why must all alliance be humans and all horde be orcs?  We should have been allowed to skin our garrisons anyway we wish.  If I wanted a night elf design with night elf buildings I see no reason why I should not have it as such.  I can already have all night elf guards, which I do, so why am I stuck with an all night elf run garrison in a human city?  It just does not feel right.

They could even go further and offer skins for any faction in which you are exalted with.  So you could have hodir designs, consortium designs, or even klaxxi designs.  Talk about choices and the chance to have something different.

Sure there is the "would you sacrifice a raid tier for that" argument but please, go take a long walk off a short pier if you are coming out with that uninformed response to something that is nothing more than artwork.  There is no coding, outside of the switch skin coding which would only need to be made once and done, not once for every skin, so it is all just art work.

While it is true you can not just "throw more people at it" for many things in the game as there is so much more involved, any artist can make art assets provided they have the skill as an artist, so you can in fact "throw more people at it", don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Again, more of a player housing of an idea than the garrisons we have come to love and hate, but there are a lot of people that would have liked this option and I do believe having this option would have made them better, even if I doubt I personally would have cared to change the art on any of my characters outside of that of my main.  But I would not have minded seeing that option there.

Non-Mandatory:

When warlord was first announced at the first blizzcon blizzard said they were not going to be mandatory.  When people voiced concerns on the beta blizzard said they were not going to be mandatory.  At the second blizzcon blizzard reiterated that garrisons were not going to be mandatory.  When warlords was released they said garrisons were not mandatory.  When 6.1 came out they said garrisons were not mandatory.  When 6.2 came out they said garrisons were not mandatory.

I guess that blizzard and I have a completely different definition of the word mandatory.  But I guess it all depends on what you intend to do.  For the things I like to do, it was, in fact, mandatory.

If you wanted to experience the entire story through the campaigns, a garrison was mandatory.  If you later wanted to experience the later campaigns you not only needed a level 3 garrison, but you needed the shipyard upgrade too.  If you wanted to open the flight point to the area were the garrison would be, you needed to have a garrison.  If you wanted the portal to ashran, you needed a level 3 garrison.  If you wanted to do the pet battle daily, the good one, you needed a level 3 garrisons just so you could get the level 3 pet menagerie.  If you want to do the weekly events, like the timewalking quest, the pet battle quest, the PvP quest, the mythic dungeon quests, etc, you need to have a level 3 garrison.  If you wanted to do the tanaan quest line you needed a garrison.  If you wanted the tanaan base flight point you needed a garrison, if you wanted the tanaan dailies, you needed a garrison, if you wanted to buy the upgrade pieces for 695 gear, you needed that tanaan base which means you needed a garrison.  Oh, and if you ever wanted to fly on draenor, you needed the garrison.

I could go on and on with all the things you need a garrison for but the be all end all is this, being the expansion is about raiding and nothing but raiding.  If you wanted to complete the legendary quest line, you needed a garrison.  No ifs ands or buts about it, you could not do this without the garrison, a maxed out one at that with the level 3 shipyard addition as well.

I don't know about you, but garrisons seemed pretty damn mandatory to me, even if blizzard still keeps saying differently.  They say things like, "You can get to draenor without a garrison" and "You can get to tanaan without a garrisons"  but seriously blizzard, look up the definition of mandatory.

I think garrisons would have been 100% better if it did not feel like they were 100% mandatory.

So what changes do you think would have made garrisons better?

Monday Random Thoughts

- I finished my second ring this past week.

- Still do not think I will ever come close to the number of capes I had on alts last expansion.

- The only reason I have a second ring finished is I have been tanking a lot again lately.

- So my tank has had the chance to get more kills in.

- But LFR sucks worse than it ever has so I really do not like bringing my alts through there.

- So that means no legendary for them.

- It was a great part of last expansion, even if LFR did have bad moments when it was new.

- Remember the maze boss in ToT when it first came out?

- Heck, remember the maze boss even after it had been out for well over a year?

- More than half the raid still always died.

- But over all, it was doable.

- This expansion, not so much.

- Or at least not worth the effort.

- The reward, namely the ring, is so horrible and lackluster, that I do not have the desire to get it on alts.

- Now if the cooldown was a personal one and not a group one, so I can use it when I wanted to for my own uses, I might be more inclined to get more of them.

- Hey, I am the one that did the work for it, the least that should happen is I get the benefit from it and can use it at my discretion.

- What brain dead employee came up with this idea of having other people be able to use my ring?

- And what dim wit gave the green light to add it to the game?

- I really wonder who the hell the people making the game now are.

- They sure as hell are not gamers.

- But back to the ring.

- I tanked a direct run to the end through the portal with a mano and archie kill only this week, but with only 5 tomes left I figured I would try to give LFR a shot to finish it.

- Heck, if I end up tanking even more kills as time goes by, might as well get a ring on that character so I can upgrade it right?

- Been tanking more lately, but usually only a few bosses a week.

- And, as odd as this sounds, the drop rate for tomes seems to be at least double in LFR, so I figured I would knock it out this week.

- I did, and for parts of it there were no problems.

- First one I got into was a slow ass run, but no wipes.

- Half the raid was doing DPS you would expect from someone in 610 gear doing their first dungeons.

- And being that is the standard level of game play I see from most players, even ones that consider themselves raiders, and blizzard did not design LFR for the standard average player, the fights took too long and were a lot harder than they needed to be.

- I swear healing iron reaver in LFR has to be the most challenging healing I have ever done in my life.

- And while I am by no means a great healer, I have healed some very challenging content before, and compared to that, iron reaver in LFR takes the cake.

- But we did not wipe.

- So I can not complain really.

- Nor would I, a run with no asshats and no wipes is a dream come true in the LFR, even if it does take a lot longer to down bosses than it should.

- I got 3 tomes from the 3 bosses.

- Second one I got in on, the first boss was down already and the last boss was mano which I already killed so I was not going to stay for it, as I was only there for tomes and the second boss was the only one I could get one from.

- And I got one.

- Zhul took 4 wipes and 4 stacks of determination to get the kill.

- Did not make a difference that people in the know kept saying kill adds from before the first pull happened and all throughout the fight.

- No one listened.

- It was not the four stacks that helped kill the boss, it was the fact that we lost a bunch that dropped out.

- Oddly, the ones that rage quit were the ones that were doing it wrong.

- It is like "you idiots can not get it down even if it is my own fault so I am going to leave to find another group to carry me instead of actually learning the fight."

- So between half the damage dealers that did not switch to adds leaving, and some people kicking out others that had no add damage, we ended up getting replacements that did switch to adds.

- It was night and day.

- Sure you can say the 4 stacks helped, how could it not, but the fact most of the new people switched to adds, the fight went down fast, smooth and easy.

- And more importantly, I got a tome.

- 4 for 4 in tomes so far.

- Told you LFR has a higher drop rate than the real raid.

- I did 12 bosses and 13 bosses the previous weeks and got a total of 3 tomes.

- 3 tomes in 25 kills.

- I just got 4 in 4 kills.

- Yeah, LFR has a higher drop rate.

- Call it anecdotal evidence if you must, but I am convinced by my own experiences and the reports of dozens of others that have experienced the same thing.

- The drop rate for tomes is MUCH better in LFR.

- Next run I got into "the wind" boss where they are already fighting, and wiping, on the trash.

- This does not bode well.

- I thought the DPS was bad in the first group I had?

- Oh I was wrong.

- This group makes that first group look like gods walking on azeroth.

- Lets not even talk about throwing the orb.

- No one picked it up at the start, so when the wind came I grabbed it in threw it to someone.

- Do I really need to say the next line because you surely already know it.

- That person held it the entire fight.

- We wiped to the enrage timer.

- Not to some orb throwing error.

- The orb throwing is not really important in LFR, but I wish people would do it, you know, to learn, so when they get there later I do not have to teach them.

- Yeah, the DPS was that bad.

- Worse than the group I said was filled with half the group doing DPS you would expect from 610 item level player.

- We wiped a couple more times to the enrage boss before we got it down.

- When we did get it down, with a 15% buff I believe, we barely missed enrage again.

- Worse than a poor group was the fact I got no tome.

- I really wanted this done already.

- But really I can't complain, 4 out of 5 is still pretty darn good.

- I started to think to myself, why did I decide to rush it?

- The rest of this raid is going to be a nightmare if the first boss is any example of what they are capable of doing.

- Even if I only downed a few bosses each week on my druid I would get it sooner or later between normal and heroic clears.

- And if I get into a full clear again next week 1 more would have to drop right?

- Maybe?

- Hell, I will just stay and see what happens.

- We get to the next boss and one of the tanks (I got brought in as a healer not as a tank) says with the DPS we had on the last fight we will never be able to do this fight.

- I agreed, did not say anything in chat but he was 100% right.

- The boss gets pulled, with time warp on the pull, the top 5 of the DPS charts looked something like this.

- One hunter doing 48K, a warrior doing 23K, and then 3 classes I do not recall doing 18K, 16K and 15K.

- The remainder are much lower.

- My wrath spam on the pull had me at 7th for a short bit.

- And I am a healer... with wrath.

- That is the top five, on the pull, with all their burst, trinkets procing and time warp.

- I sure as hell hope the tank knows what to do because that is the only prayer we have right now.

- When we knock the boss out of the machine one tank jumps in.

- The other tank tanks him where he lands in the middle of nowhere.

- The add comes out that need to be tanked and interrupted and neither of those two things happen.

- The one "good" damage dealer that switched to him immediately became the tank for the add.

- And proved even hunters doing good DPS for an LFR can still be huntards, he did not last very long as a tank.

- I was pouring heals into him and could see at least one other healer was too.

- Did he feign death?  No.

- Did he deterrence? No.

- He just face tanked it and died and then the add went on to kill me and the other healer, because we had healing aggro.

- Gee thanks.

- It then went on to kill others that were foolish enough to attack it.

- Where were the tanks during this?

- The active tank was tanking the boss of course, as adds ripped apart the raid, he noticed nothing.

- The tank that got into the machine was beating on the boss with everything he had.

- Did it matter the boss had a shield on?  Of course not, he kept beating on it.

- Because that "immune" message must not mean anything important right?

- I swear I think I have discovered the worst two tanks to ever tank the LFR.

- Sad part is, one of those very tanks was the same person that was smart enough to realize that we did not have the DPS for this.

- Guess that doesn't change the fact he can still be a bad tank, because he was.

- When he went back into the robot a total of 3% was off of the boss.

- And entire transition phase and 3% was taken off the boss.

- /cry

- Do I really want to finish the ring this badly?

- I am already here, I want to see what happens.

- Round two goes the same, mostly.

- The tank moves the boss to the add this time and actually tanks it.

- Too bad the big bad machine tank was of no help what so ever, again.

- The horrid DPS in this group was out DPSing him because he kept attacking an immune boss.

- This guy must have taken his stupid pills this morning, doubled dipped in them even.

- People said between pulls that the boss does not take damage when the add is out.

- People in the attempt kept yelling to stop attacking the boss.

- But nope, none of that sunk in.

- We kick machine tank and oddly enough a bunch of the lower than low DPS leave again.

- They have their "You guys suck, I will find a better group to carry my sorry ass" jive going.

- I offer to switch to tank figuring being I have done it on normal and heroic LFR should be no problem and the fact I never tanked it in LFR meant nothing.

- The healers revolt and tell me I am not allowed to.

- I was only 3rd in healing partly due to lack of practice and two very well geared healers ahead of me.

- So when those very well geared healers said they needed me, I listened.

- They were way better than I, and they are in a better place to judge what is needed, so that idea got scratched.

- Did not take long to get a new tank however, 5 or 6 minutes actually, which is really good.

- Next attempt some DPS jumps in the machine, has no clue what he is doing, it was accidentally.

- No biggie, it happens, someone types out instructions on the fly, the DPS does a fair job with it.

- We still wipe.

- I thought third time was a charm, maybe it is forth.

- A few more poor DPS drop and we get lucky enough to replace them with better numbers.

- Once again for the day my group downs a boss so super easy that it makes you think it was not the 15% buff, it was the people in the group.

- And really, it was the people in the group and not the 15%.

- Sure the 15% helps, but we had a tank that knew the machine and actually got in it, the other tank moved the boss and tanked the mob he was supposed to tank instead of letting it kill people, and we had numbers, numbers that were higher because of better people, not because of 15% alone.

- There was an 80K, a few 60K and a bunch over 40K.

- Not to mention the tank doing over 80K myself in the machine.

- We seemed to have weeded out nearly all the slackers, woohoo.

- Next fight would be a breeze with this group.

- But I did mano already this week, so no reason to stay.

- And more importantly, I got my tome.

- Woo f'n hoo.

- So more reason not to stay.

- I got out of their like a bad out of hell.

- Or is that a crow out of darnassus?

- "Bat out of hell", that sounds like an awesome name for a blog about a troll druid that does a lot of LFRing.

- Either way my druid now has a completely useless legendary ring too.

- Versatility?  Really blizzard?

- How about reduce damage taken for the entire raid by 50% for 6 seconds, kind of like the DS tanking sets had.

- That would have been awesome.

- How about increase bonus armor by 50%.

- That would be a survival and DPS boost at the same time, you choose when you use it and for what purpose, burn or survival.

- Oh wait, that would not work, I have no control over my own ring.

- Boo!

- As horrible as it all was, it was awesome just the same.

- I have not had a Hell-FR horror story to tell in a while.

- And it also means I logged in this week to do something other than just raid.

- Even if it was... to raid... sort of.

- I look back on it with both horror and humor.

- It is funny seeing what we put ourselves through sometimes.

- But it is scary that this is one of the reasons I am not playing much this expansion.

- There is no fun, simple and easy thing for me to do with my alts that gets a decent reward worth the effort.

- Always loved the dungeons for valor gear situation.

- If that was still in game I would be playing the hell out of the game.

- But no dungeons worth doing, no valor gear, and blizzards OCD nature of trying to force everyone into raiding, which means LFR for the vast majority, ruined it for me.

- Sorry, but after that experience, I truly believe that LFR should drop better than mythic gear.

- Because that is the only thing that would make doing it on a regular basis worth it.

- And funny part is, even if LFR dropped item level 800 gear, I probably still would not do it on most of my alts.

- It is not fun.

- Reward needs to equal effort.

- Sorry, but wiping with strangers needs a much greater reward.

- I've said it before and I will say it again.

- I do not mind wiping 100 times with guild to down a boss, I still find that fun, but wiping even once with strangers that can not be taught and refuse to learn is not fun.

- So blizzard needs to do what they can, in my opinion, to make it so random groups don't wipe, or it is not fun.

- And when we play for fun, shouldn't the desire of the game makers to be to offer fun?

- Find me one person that "likes" wiping with strangers and finds it fun and I will show you someone on some really powerful drugs.

- Or in need of mental help.

- Blizzard needs to work on adding fun back into the game.

- Each persons fun is different but for me spamming dungeons for valor and buying valor gear for alts was fun.

- It was also easy more often than not, which is partly what made it fun.

- Things like that are important to the game, things people can do that are fun.

- Fun needs to be added or their subs will just keep declining.

- And flying?

- Sorry, added it way to late to be a saving grace.

- BTW, am I the only one that still uses ground mounts around my garrison if I am just going to the basic buildings sometimes?

- My gnome really loves his pink tailstrider.

- I had intended to log on and do some archaeology on my main this week.

- I wanted to get back into playing a little more.

- But in the end, I could not bring myself to do it.

- I do not feel motivated to play.

- And the sad part is that I am open and receptive to playing.

- I want to play.

- I just can't find anything worth playing for.

- That is a big problem as I see it.

- When someone wants to play, they are looking to play, and they still can not find a reason to do so.

- Seems I am not alone either.

- Friday night was always a busy night in my guild, which still has a fair deal of active players many nights.

- But this friday, I was alone online.

- During the after work/school times I was alone.

- During the dinner time push there was one person that cycled through their characters.

- And at the prime time, when we used to always have over 30 on at most times and at least 15 at bad times, I was alone.

- Well not completely alone, there was one person on remote chat.

- They just were not saying anything.

- The game seems to be in a really bad place right now.

- I hope it gets better.

- I've taken a long break and I want to start playing more again.

- I am just having my trouble finding my motivation.

- Can't figure out what to do, and with no one else on line, no one to talk to either for inspiration.

- Sad times indeed.

- But try not to let it get to you, I am trying too.

- Have a great day.