Monday, March 18, 2013

Monday Random Thoughts

- I noticed a few of the little things they changed but were not in the patch notes this weekend.

- Or maybe they were but being they were little things I over looked them.

- There are now ports in the peak for monks.

- About time if you ask me.

- Don't know if you ever found yourself stuck there but I have.

- Try to have someone pick you up on a flying mount and as soon as they take off, you die and return.

- Try to hearth and you die.

- Use stuck character and you die.

- There was no way out of there.

- Had to have two people go to the stone in front of the stocks and summon me out.

- So yes, the port to SW and Org being there is a huge quality of life change.

- Another beauty of a change that I did not realize was you can not be knocked out of a pet battle by a mob any more.

- Sure, they will attack you the second the fight ends, but no more attacking you mid fight.

- How many times were you landing the winning blow and a mob knocked you out?

- Many times for me.

- How many times have you been farming for a rare and a mob attacks you and you accidentally kill the critter that finally had the rare in it while fighting the mob that attacked you?

- Yeap, happened a few times to me too.

- I read about a lot of pet changes but did not notice this one and this is the biggest pet change I've seen in my opinion.

- I love it.

- There were a few other little changes I noticed that I did not recall reading about.

- Good changes.

- I got to kill the world boss on dino island this weekend.

- Missed out on it last weekend by 15 minutes, I logged in as they were killing it, a few minutes earlier and I would have been there.

- We turned dino island into northrend, there was white everywhere.

- You could not even see the ground.

- Took seven raid groups to manage it.

- It was a complete clusterfuck, but it was really fun.

- I always said doing things in bigger groups was fun but assembling and controlling them is was hell.

- This was the perfect case for that.

- I had never been in something this large and it took nearly 2 hours to get everyone together and get a good pull going because of that many people.

- Not to mention there were horde there trying to disrupt things by pulling mobs into us and pulling the boss to wipe us.

- Sometimes, for things like that, I wish it were a PvP server, we would just kill the jerk and be on with it.

- But on a PvE server, he griefed us over and over.

- There has to be some rule against that.

- I am sure it would have been a lot easier on a larger server with more people but for my server this was a momentous task.

- I think that makes it all the more exciting.

- Of course I won nothing, and nothing with my coin either.

- With my luck would you expect anything different?

- Speaking of luck I would like to send blizzard a big F you.

- They said they increased the drop rates of the other raids but I am living proof they didn't add any bad luck protection to allow everyone to take advantage of that.

- Ran a lot this weekend to try and get some of those mostly underplayed alts up to 480.

- Didn't work.

- First character, ran all five of the raids.

- 16 bosses, no loot off any of the 16.

- 16 coins used, no loot off any of the coins.

- 32 chances for loot and not one piece?  Yeah, F you blizzard, there is no such thing as increased drop rate.

- Also, to add insult to injury there, not one sigil of power or one sigil of wisdom.

- That character will sit another week at 470.

- Second character, ran all five of the raids.

- 16 bosses, 1 piece of loot, I'll tell you want it was later, you will love this.

- 16 coins, no loot off any of the coins.

- Sigils?  Not a single power or wisdom.

- You believe that?  2 characters, 32 bosses, still not one sigil of wisdom or power?

- Now to that one piece I won, the damn sha touched weapon.

- My hunter ran it multiple times each week and never got it, an underplayed alt, first time ever doing Terrace and they get the sha touched weapon.

- Blizzard just loves laughing at me as it continues to screw with me.

- If I did not know better I would think there was a GM that watches me play and manually decides what loot I get, just to screw with me.

- And the worst part is I will never get the gem for this character because I do not play it often enough and apparently the sigils do not drop any more in the LFR.  At least not for me.

- Third character, time to beat a man while he is down.
- 16 bosses, 5 pieces of loot.  No, it is not as good as it sounds.

- I only have three 496 pieces on that character.

-  I won the lesser version of all three of them.  Two of one of them.

- So I had only 3 pieces of decent gear on this character and that is all that dropped, so basically no loot at all.

- Now for this 5th piece, ready to laugh?

- First time running Terrace on this one as well, sha touched weapon drops.

- Son of a bitch this game f'ing hates me.

- Well at least I got an upgrade of sorts and guess what?

- I got a sigil of wisdom too.

- So they do still drop.  48 bosses to see one sigil between them, but they do still drop, really rarely.

- So we are up to 48 bosses, 48 coins used, 6 pieces of loot, only 2 usable, and one sigil of any sort.

- Doesn't seem like increased drop rate to me at all.

- Next character, 19 bosses, the original 16 and the new 3.

- Used a coin on all, even if there was not much it could use from the first 16 this character is an enchanter, and is on the legendary quest line, so the loot and sigils would still be put to good use.

- No sigils in the 16 bosses.

- No loot from the 16 bosses either, not even with a coin.

- New raid, nothing from any of those bosses either.  Even with coins.

- 67 bosses down, 67 coins used, only 2 useful pieces on one sigil.

- Last character I did not bother with the originals, just figured I would knock out the new one.

- 1 hour 15 minutes in queue.

- Tank drops as soon as we zone in.

- Why?  Really, I would like to know.

- I can see dropping after you notice you are in a bad group maybe but the second you zone in?

- 10 minutes later, after the one tank thinks he can solo tank the trash and wipes us, twice, another tank joins.

- 30 minutes and three more wipes later we finally make it to the first boss.

- We wipe, people leave, we wait 20 minutes to get more people to continue.

- 6 wipes, 2 hours 15 minutes of my life already wasted and still not one boss down.

- We go again, down the first boss, I get nothing, get nothing from my coin.

- We wipe again 6 times on the way to the second boss and change our cast of characters many times.

- Nearly an hour later we get to the second boss, over 3 hours into this LFR attempt now.

- We wipe on the boss, people leave, we keep getting people join and drop seeing we are at the second boss.

- Maybe they wanted the last boss, maybe they wanted a fresh run.

- I tab out and start watching the walking dead online while waiting.

- I watch a full episode, still do not have a group for the second boss, even if we do still have 18 people.

- I just give up like I should have when I saw the hour wait time to begin with.

- Over 4 hours of my life I will never get back.

- Blizzard needs to do something about this.

- Maybe, just maybe, if I at least got something off the first boss it would not be so f'ing annoying and frustrating.

- But to be put though this hell over and over and still not win any loot makes me think why do it?

- If I had a chance for loot it might be worth it, but look at my luck, I have no chance for loot.

- And I am not just talking my bad luck with drops but the 4 hours to down one boss in the LFR?

- I should be able to get all 6 LFRs done in 4 hours.

- Including the wait time for all of them.

- So when all was said and done, if you want to include my main as well who did not win a damn thing this week either, I downed 76 bosses, used 76 coins, got a total of 6 pieces of loot and only 2 of which I could use.

- Oh, and about those baggies having better stuff in them now.

- I had just gold in every single one of them, nothing bonus or extra in any of them.

- Blizzard really needs to fix the luck factor because it really eats at me sometimes.

- Like the hunter in the last run I did last night complained he has won 2 pieces off every boss and didn't need any because he has a 510 item level.

- I just wanted to say, how about spending more time reading how to play your class instead of reading your item level, how it is possible for a 510 item level hunter to not break 40K on any fight.  I could go BM and not do a damn thing and my pet will do around 40K all on its own at a 497 item level so I am sure you can do better with a 510.

- Yet it is the horrible players like that who win gear.

- I will say I do like those tokens that drop off the warbringers and warscouts.

- That is the only reason I am on my alt kick now and running them all.

- I actually have something to use the valor on without having to do dailies with them because I used the BoA reputation tokens to get them all to revered.

- See how much more enjoyable the game would have been for alts if that wall was not there to begin with.

- Add to that the lower cost of the older valor items, and even those lesser played alts will be 480 soon.

- I like being able to get one piece of new gear with valor each week if I cap and not have to worry about reputation.

- For me, that is perfect for alts.  Absolutely perfect.

- Now if only I could win something in the damn LFR.

- My win rate for the week was below 4%.

- Seem like the game is still me against the world.

- It is an uphill battle when you have no luck and the game loses fun really fast when you never win anything.

- You would think they would throw you something once in a while, just to make you feel good, even if it is not something you need.

- If I won more often then I can just say, darn, did not get want I need instead of saying, darn, I got nothing at all.

- I have a healer sitting at 484 that is still wearing a green 437 piece.

- Just let me replace that one piece, please.

- Not going to happen.  I'll eventually give in and buy it with valor.

- I keep waiting because I figure a drop will come.

- Time to give up that hope, don't you think?

- Have a great day, may your luck be better than mine.

15 comments:

  1. Has anyone ever figured out how gear drops are calculated?

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    1. I think I read somewhere that the LFR drops were supposed to be 15% chance and coins would up it to 30% chance. Not sure where I read that however.

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    2. you know, I really really dislike IE10. Ok, now that that rant is over, interesting....

      I tried to goggle my question and really did not find an answer that wasn't 1 to 3 years old - some answers said "random" (HA- like a computer can generate a 100% random number) to 50% - you either won it (50%) or you didn't (the other 50%).

      I am thinking like you though - the program sees you are on (your toon) - negative 90%, the type and amount of gear you might need, generating another negative 75%, now giving you a whopping negative 165% chance to the random (HA!) roll. Hmmm, you owe Blizzard money! Congratulations.

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  2. Did ToT lfr on the first day without too much trouble. Several wipes on Council but otherwise OK.

    Got two items off Horridon though... Cloak and Chest... Both were upgrades. I'm usually not that lucky.

    Finally finished Champion of Chi-Ji. Rather uneventful for how long it took...

    Also finally found Blade of the Prime. Last relic that I hadn't found. Already had the Relic Hunter achievement, but I still wanted to find the last ones.

    I'll already be revered with Kirin Tor tonight after a few more dailies and I haven't done them most days. Seems the rep is coming in fast.

    I got 3 Key to the Palace of Lei Shen this week. Don't need the gold or the charms though so haven't used them yet. I want to work on the achievs but haven't seen any good achievement guides yet.

    Ran 1st half of HoF on Friday night. The first boss is really fun, especially for a 'max damage on the move' hunter. Blade Lord is ok after learning the 12% trick. Garalon is alright; not sure what it's like to have pheromone duty though. Wind lord is fun as long as people handle wind bombs properly. On all our attempts and two kills, I've only blown one bomb. Go Me! :)

    But then it's Amber-shaper... I absolutely despise that fight. The idiot encounter designer who came up with the Mutated Construct mechanic should be keelhauled, tarred and feathered, etc. Not only is there no way to practice the vehicle mechanics without wiping your raid repeatedly, you can't control who gets hit with it.

    First attempt, we didn't make it past phase one, people just screwed up.
    Second attempt, first Construct in phase 2 is a healer. I think he missed the interrupt so we wiped.
    Third attempt, same healer and then me. Never done it before so trying to figure out how Blizz laid out my buttons since I use non-standard keybinds and tried to figure out the 5000 things DBM was showing me (of which, 4997 were useless). I interrupted the things by sheer dumb luck really and then died. So my construct killed everyone.
    Fourth attempt, repeated order of third attempt. I interrupted the things but raid wasn't killing me fast enough. I had to eat a pool... and then another... missed an interrupt while trying not to run out of energy... wiped the raid.
    Then 2nd tank had to leave so we called it a night.

    Supposed to go back in there on Friday this week... I'll probably give my spot to someone else. I had fun doing MSV. I had fun doing HoF up to Amber-shaper. I had fun wiping on Jin-Rohk a few times just to see the encounter. I even had fun through most of the many wipes we had during Heroic DS progression last expansion.

    But Amber-shaper is not fun. I hate vehicle fights. I skip those quests and ignore those mechanics whenever I can. I'd rather do a several minute elite solo with my turtle than do a 15 second fight while controlling some stupid ass vehicle. I'm a hunter. I want to play a hunter. I do not want to play some orange goo elemental thing where if I miss one quick-time event, the entire raid wipes. Oh, and I hate quick-time events in any game. If I wanted interrupt duty, I'd have played a rogue, but I've never even had an interrupt until this expansion and even then it's pretty useless. So asking a hunter to control a vehicle that they've never seen before and interrupt spells which they're not used to doing, and having the raid wipe if the person screws up, and having someone on the team "yelling" at you to do this or do that while you're still trying to figure out what the hell is going on... Nothing about that is fun.

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    1. That sucks... comments can't be more that 4096 characters. Had to split it up.

      At least with the vehicles in Ulduar, we learned to use them on trash before doing the boss. I've done the vehicles on the trash in Firelands before Alysrazor, but two people volunteer for that; it's not randomly assigned and it's easier to learn since it's just aiming the stupid fire chickens. Amber-shaper is vehicle fight at it's worst. Anyone who enjoys that must be a masochist.

      Tried doing Oondasta again yesterday but they couldn't get the groups organized well and there were too many bossy people "commanding" others what to do. Constantly yelling /range 10 is useless when there are 100+ people in a small area. We couldn't spread out that much even if we wanted to and the range indicators don't detect people outside your group anyway. It was just stupid. I left them after about an hour of wipes and mis-pulls, etc. Needed to wash my car before it got dark anyway.

      Well, need to go get my last 80 vp for the week. Ciao.

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    2. Tried Oondasta again last night too, amazed it was up so soon after downing it, but it is impossible to get that many people together on a monday night.

      Not to mention there was a horde player that kept pulling it on us and trying to kill us which made it annoying. It was one of those few times I wish I were on a PvP server. We would just kill him and camp him so he stopped being a jerk but on a PvE server there is nothing you can do. Had around 100 people report him for griefing but nothing will happen. He was doing it during saturdays kill too and nearly 150 people reported him then and he was still there to do it last night. Blizzard just does not care.

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  3. The game hates you, man. :-)

    That drop rate is awful.

    On the loot bags: out of the ones I got (20?), one contained a pet, all other bags were just gold, as usual. The pet was one of those you get from the egg that Oracles sell, so, meh, I already had all of those. :-)

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    1. Just gold in all of them for me. Nothing special at all. Heck a friend got one with 8 motes in it, not spectacular but I would have taken that in a heart beat. Something is better than nothing right. lol

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  4. Regarding the "higher" drop rates in LFR, for me personally the rate has probably been a bit higher but not significantly. I originally had the drop rate at 10% or so (I've probably killed 200 or so LFR bosses, maybe more, across toons), now it seems more like 15%. I'd hoped for 25% to help gear alts faster but if it is that high, I'm not seeing it yet. As for the failbags, mostly just gold so far (although for some reason I prefer the random amounts even if the average is still the same) but I've picked up a pair of Blood Spirits or whatever from two separate bags so far. I haven't seen any gear but since I've now seen a couple of 476 BoEs drop for rolls in LFR (always needed by someone, of course), I may have mis-read that they could be found in the failbags.

    As for ToT LFR, I've always lived by the rule of thumb that for new LFR content especially, you want to go as early in the week as possible... that's when the folks who have a clue tend to run. It isn't a perfect system, the elitists are out in full force. I did a run on Tue that went well, one wipe on Council when half the raid died to quicksand but that was fixed on the second attempt. My Sat attempt was much worse and much longer, probably 2.5h for a clear and had about 8 or 9 wipes. I did get lucky with a run on Mon, had a surprisingly competent group for bosses 2 and 3, only two wipes on Council and a cleaner Horridon one-shot than I'd seen yet. DPS giving the tanks a chance to stack up the adds = win. Re-queued for the first boss to get the achievement and had a typical Mon run... door trash wipe, OT who took about 3m to zone in and, far as I could tell, had never actually tanked before... also had a set of gear almost entirely unenchanted and ungemmed. Got the kill of the first boss but only after a couple of wipes.

    Also, do people think we're impressed when 5 players are still alive with a boss at 50% health and they manage to survive for 5 more minutes before dying to the enrage? Just wipe it already.

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    1. I noticed a lot more world drops in the LFR too lately. Thought it was just me. You are right however, there is always someone that rolls need on it and in that one rare case there wasn't, someone DEed it and said, oops, I did not notice it was BoE. How is that for funny?

      I had one of those on the third boss in HoF, lost half the raid to crush right at the start, three healers were locked out, it was an accidental pull by someone, and still people kept it going for three or four minutes. Dude, the second half the raid died on the pull and three healers were locked out, wipe it. Those people amaze me.

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    2. Actually, that's the one fight where I think half a raid CAN do it themselves right off the pull... mostly because I've had a few runs where that's actually happened. Having 3 or 4 dps who are actually capable of getting the leg buff will compensate for 8 dps who don't and if people aren't being crushed, the healing requirements are actually pretty soft... most of my toons can self-heal through whatever zone damage exists. Generally speaking, the players who survive the crush either by having better gear (ie. more health) or better awareness (ie. hit a defensive cooldown) are less likely to trigger crush in the future and are at least capable of performing better, making the fight easier overall. There are a few fights that can actually benefit from a paring down of the original group, that's one of 'em.

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    3. If the three healers are disc priests, even bad ones, with some decent gear and aware players like you mentioned, hell yes, it could be done two healed even. Disc rules on that fight in LFR. As least from my experience.

      I think sha is another one in LFR that can be healed super easy by a disc priest. I swear if you have a smart group that kills adds you can solo heal it atonement style without ever really even casting a heal.

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  5. Not sure what you mean about being knocked out of pet battles by mobs, did they make your pet phase with you now? That was the only problem previously, you'd phase and not aggro, but your pet wouldn't, it worked fine if you just pet battled with your pet dismissed.

    Sounds like you had terrible luck in the LFR's, sorry to see that mate. I've actually done 8 characters LFR's since the patch to get them all to 480 for chances at the pets in the new lfr and found the drop rates much much better, plus with the solo scenario handing out elder charms like candy I could bonus roll everything and if I needed one specific piece on an alt? Keep running that LFR and you're not eligible for normal loot but you can keep on coining it. Don't let it get you TOO grumpy, RNG can hate you sometimes but it does even out if you keep going, friends and guildies are what makes it worse! Seeing guildies get the sea turtle followed by 'catch 50 fish' achievements when I was at 16k fish caught trying for it nearly drove me nuts.

    Katzbalger-Arthas (US)

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    1. He's talking about companion pet battles.

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    2. I had the issues with mobs attacking me while pet battling on all classes, not just my hunter, at least I think so.

      Like the one in townlong for the daily. If you did not kill that one guy and finish the battle fast enough he would respawn and attack me as he walked past. Was beyond annoying.

      At least I think it has happened on other characters and not just my hunter. I have to look into that. Never thought it was my pet that was being attacked and not me. You have me trying to remember if it attacked my other characters. lol

      I know my lucky streak will come, it has too. I have had fairly decent luck battle pet wise this expansion so far, so I'll take that as something.

      I was doing the same thing this weekend with all those trove coins. Have to love all those free coins for leveling up those alts.

      Now I need to learn how to do frost DK, so I can gear up my DK, no way in hell I would EVER tank a LFR with the people in them. But at least I will have a whole mess of coins to use right off the bat.

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