- Now that I got the missions complaining out of my head on to other, actual, random stuff.
- I might not have a new 100 for this week, but I do have another 99.
- Two of my 92s, which is where I would bring people in during the entry phase before I stop, are now 93.
- I did enter a new character this weekend and figured I would go until rested wore off.
- It made it to 95.
- So the only classes I have yet to step foot on draenor with thus far are my lock, paladin and monk.
- I am guessing next week I will have another 100.
- The 99 for sure will get there.
- Can't believe I have leveled 2 characters from 92 to 93 just from doing missions and the mine.
- Even more so that I stopped doing the mine during weekdays completely.
- Just do not have the time for that with as many alts as I have.
- It takes longer to do the mine than to do everything else at my garrison combined, so to conserve time I stopped mining during weekdays when I have less play time.
- So let me get this straight.
- I am the commander of all forces here on draenor according tot he narrative correct?
- I have many, some famous, followers that do whatever I tell them to do whenever I tell them to do it right?
- So how come I need to mine my own ore and pick my own herbs every day?
- It makes no sense.
- I think part of assigning a worker to the mine or garden should mean they do the work for you.
- Would really save a ton of time.
- Just does not seem right for the commander of all of azeroths forces on draenor to be mining his own ore.
- Don't I have people for this sort of stuff.
- Have you been to the outhouse?
- Go there.
- Not only for the achievement but because every time you go there you get a buff that increases your movement speed.
- Because you are feeling lighter of course. ;)
- I don't like Talador much, am I alone with that feeling?
- I love spires.
- Bet that means many people hate it.
- Usually the zones I like the many people hate.
- Loved dread wastes in mists, people hated it.
- Loved uldum in cataclysm but many people disliked it.
- Loved the basin in wrath but, oh wait, everyone loved the basin.
- Well, wrath is a different story, a special case.
- And I didn't say every zone I liked people disliked, I just said usually it seems that way.
- I hate the peaks and mountains and the getting lost and having to go around stuff in spires, I'll give you that.
- But I love the story, the setting, the flow, the elite mob quests, the flavor, it just feels like a very complete zone to me.
- Add to the fact it offers the best base experience for kills, quests, and everything else, and that is even without taking the building for the 20 percent experience boost.
- Why is it that you get more experience questing in spires than you do in nagrand?
- You get more quest experience from completing a quest in spires than you do in nagrand?
- I know the change in experience needed from level to level does not hugely increases each level like it used to, but you would still think that at worst a quest in the top zone would give you the same experience as a quest in the previous zone.
- I bet they nerf spires experience instead of increasing nagrands.
- Personally I believe they need to increase nagrands.
- I love it for the gear it gives, can get to the 610 heroic level just from questing there with some luck, but for experience, I now stay in spires until I finish the zone.
- They need to increase the apexis crystal cap.
- I can think of two reasons why they should do this.
- One reason that works for everyone that plays, and one for weirdos like me.
- The reason for everyone is simple.
- The last, most expensive piece, cost 20,000, with a cap of 20,000 that could lead to some unnecessary decisions that should not need to be made.
- Lets say you have 19700, do you do the daily and waste 500 because it will be wasted over the cap, or do you grind 300 to get the 20,000 piece.
- Or maybe it would be like valor, and if you are at 19700 even if you do the daily it will not let you turn it in because it would put you over the cap.
- Valor was like that.
- If you were 10 away from the cap and killed a rare on the isle of thunder which dropped 15, you could not pick it up because it would put you over the cap.
- So there is one reason, that effects everyone, that I think should be more than enough reason to have the apexis cap increased.
- Now to weirdos like me.
- The most expensive piece would cost 36500 to completely upgrade.
- I hate wasting things.
- I would rather collect all 36500 and buy the piece and upgrades all at once than buy one piece at a time and upgrade it little by little.
- So I would not be adverse to making the cap 40000 instead of 20000.
- But I am weird that way and accept that.
- Either way, for everyone, if the highest piece cost 20000 the cap should be more than 20000.
- Please blizzard?
- Did you noticed part of their stealth patching, and nerfing, of some things, that the armor pieces for your followers now stack.
- Well, some do and some don't, for some odd reason.
- I have two stacks of upgrade armor by 3.
- One of 6 and one of 3.
- They two will not stack together however even if they both are the same piece with the exact same wording.
- Wonder why that is.
- Maybe one is from missions and one is from salvage boxes?
- Only thing I can think of that makes them different.
- Nice quality of life change.
- Saved so much space on some of my characters.
- I only use armor on epic characters.
- Maybe I should stop waiting.
- Will need to reevaluate my decision on that some time.
- So for some of my 100s with no epics yet, that means I have a lot of armor stacked up.
- Ever notice you get one or the other.
- Or maybe it is just my bad luck.
- One character has 8 upgrade to a 615 weapon pieces and no weapon upgrade by X otherwise.
- Another character has 15 upgrade by X weapon ones and no base weapon pieces.
- Maybe next quality of life change is to make the follower upgrade pieces account bound?
- How awesome would that be?
- That would be on a really high level of completely awesome if you ask me.
- Which is why I don't expect it to ever happen.
- I managed to get the achievement [Savage Friends] this weekend.
- The one for three exalted draenor reputations.
- And oddly enough, I do not have three exalted draenor reputations.
- I only have two.
- I think, completely guessing here, that is it counting the skyguard from BC as one of my exalted reputations for draenor.
- Maybe they are one in the same.
- I mean the pet you can buy from them this expansion is the same pet as the one you can buy from them in BC.
- Either way, I have some sad news to break to everyone.
- The trading post level 3 bonus of 20 percent increased reputation gains is not account wide like we expected.
- A quest that offered me 250 reputation gain still only gives 250 reputation on an alt.
- Sad face.
- It would make sense to have that one account bound.
- Grind the reputations on your main, get a 20 percent boost to them on your alts.
- Makes perfect sense to me, but it does not work that way.
- Do you think it is a bug or intended?
- I am thinking intended because that was the only level 3 building bonus that was account wide.
- Maybe it was not intended to be.
- I would not complain if they did fix it to be account wide however.
- My main now has 22 epic level 100 followers, so many that I am deactivating ones that have duplicate abilities so I can level more followers.
- Need to have them all epic and 100 you know.
- Obsessive much?
- Yes, yes I am.
- Got a follower mission for 645 boots yesterday, awesome right?
- Got 661s this week from the raid.
- Just my luck right?
- There are a few slots a 645 would be an upgrade for and I don't get those.
- A guild mate seems to get exactly what he needs, every time.
- I would love to see what it is like to be a lucky person for once.
- But over all I have not had horrible luck so far this expansion, better than I normally do if anything.
- But nothing like some people.
- A guild mate came to warlords late and just got to 100 this week and went dungeon spamming.
- Two dungeons he got loot off every single boss, all either warforged or with a gem slot, and get this, he got a 665 drop from trash in each one as well.
- And both 665s were things he did not get loot from off the bosses.
- Then he kills the world boss and wins not one but two pieces.
- So, just hits 100 and 2 days later he is completely decked out with an item level higher than mine.
- I wonder when blizzard is going to start selling luck potions.
- I would buy them, because I want that sort of luck.
- I work my ass off grinding, doing professions, running dungeons, get nothing.
- Think along to grind all those mobs for exalted and not even one 665 drop.
- Blizzard really needs to add something into the game that actually rewards effort and stop letting everything be based on luck.
- I would really like that.
- May your luck be better than mine.
- Have a great day.
Monday, December 8, 2014
Monday Random Thoughts
- This is part one of two random thoughts today.
- But nothing random about this one, it is all on one topic.
- Just felt like venting, so I am random thought pattern venting.
- Skip this one and wait for the next one if you don't want to hear complaining.
- But if you read here I am guessing, my complaining is what entertains you.
- So hope you are entertained.
- No new 100s this week to report on.
- Might have one new one next week, depending on how motivated I am to play.
- Blizzard killed my motivation to level more characters with their changes to the salvage yard.
- It will come back I am sure, but I am no longer excited about getting more characters to max so I can get the level 3 salvage yard and churning out as many missions as possible.
- I had put in multiple bug reports this weekend about getting small bags of salvage instead of the big crates of salvage I am supposed to before I decided to put in a ticket about it.
- When it was one it was a bug report, when it was two, I put in another bug report, but after the third one, it was more than a bug report, I wanted a real answer and not just to report a bug, so I put in a ticket on how the level 3 salvage yard was broken.
- Turns out it wasn't, blizzard changed it without thinking anyone would notice.
- They really have balls don't they?
- Stuff like that should be announced, not working perfectly one hour and then when I go back an hour later is has changed.
- The ticket said it would take 4 days but the reply was rather quick, less than 24 hours.
- At least the GM I got was very polite and he sent a well explained response to my ticket.
- Color me surprised.
- Most ticket responses are just stupid generic cut and paste answers to something you never even asked.
- I thanked the GM for their response but did not close the ticket and marked the issue as resolved.
- It is not resolved, my level 3 salvage yard is still not giving me level 3 salvage, so no matter how well he explained it, it was still an issue.
- I said I appreciate their clear, accurate, informative and quick response but I the change was not acceptable.
- Simple as if you have a level 3 salvage yard you should get level 3 salvage.
- So the change is not acceptable.
- I know they will do nothing about it but I asked the GM to please revert my garrison to the way it was.
- No matter what his response is after that I will close the ticket.
- He gave a great response and explained their reasoning perfectly.
- I just needed to make myself heard that I was not happy with the change.
- If we do not let blizzard know we dislike a change, they will take it as meaning we like it.
- Can't let that happen.
- Blizzard could have fixed this in other ways but no one there is smart enough to realize that.
- They could have drastically reduced the drop rate of big crates for lower level missions.
- That might even have gone unnoticed.
- It is not like people were getting filthy rich off the darn crates anyway.
- Out of all the people in my guild with the level 3 salvage yards they have going and a few being on all the time to start new missions as often as possible we never saw much.
- I would say, combined, we had done near 5000 missions.
- We, as a group, received 2 665 items, and 1 645 follower piece.
- So we were not exactly overflowing with over powered goodies were we?
- So I have to ask blizzard, was giving us the big crates for the small missions really giving away too much?
- No, absolutely not.
- As the GM explained it was more about not wanting to make people feel as if they needed to log in all the time to keep missions going.
- I can understand, I felt that way myself.
- Was even trying to squeeze in missions before I left for work.
- The first time in many years I was logging into wow before going to work.
- I was enjoying the game, that is why I was doing this.
- Blizzard can't have that, can't have people enjoying the game.
- How dare we enjoy the game.
- That can not happen.
- Now, who cares.
- Not like I am going to get crates from the smaller missions any longer.
- So no need to make sure I have 20 running at all times.
- Once again blizzard made a change to save us from ourselves.
- The figured people would burn out fast from having to log into characters all the time to keep missions running.
- So if they made those missions worthless, we wouldn't burn out on them, because we would not do them.
- That is why they made this change.
- How exactly did something blizzard do to save us from ourselves work out the last time they did it?
- Do you remember?
- I do.
- The gated august celestial and shado-pan reputation behind golden lotus reputation so we would not feel as if we had to work on all of them at the same time.
- It went over like a lead balloon.
- No one liked it.
- Blizzard should stop trying to save us from ourselves.
- So I do, in a way, appreciate the change to salvage in saving me from myself, but it really did decrease my enjoyment of the expansion a fair deal.
- No longer do I feel like rushing characters to max to level to get them all the level 3 salvage yard.
- No longer do I feel the need to log in as often as possible.
- No longer do I feel like even when I am not playing I should check back every so often to send out new mission.
- No longer do I have the one thing I was really enjoying about the expansion.
- Sure, we now get big crates at a 100% drop rate for 100 missions.
- But there is a huge difference.
- Lower missions needed 1 character, 100 missions need 3.
- So you could do more lower missions.
- Lower missions took 30 minutes to 2 hours at most, 100 missions thae 4 hours to 10 hours mostly.
- So you could do more lower missions.
- Lower missions needed one skill to complete, some 100 missions needed up to 6.
- So it was easier to finish lower missions.
- Lower missions had a better base rate of success starting at 35% to 50% sometimes where as 100 missions start a 0%.
- So success rates on lower missions were better.
- Lower missions just needed a follower, sometimes any follower, 100 missions need specific followers at specific item levels.
- So it was more likely to have the right people for lower missions.
- See, lower missions were just easier, more often, and as such worked as content that kept me coming back to send them out again.
- Now I sit there with 10 level 100 missions and no team that is capable of doing them at a reasonable success rate.
- So I don't send anyone out.
- Or I send groups out with a 60% or less chance and personally I hate doing that.
- So what was fun and exciting 2 days ago is just another boring piece of junk presented to you by blizzard, the people that could even ruin a day in heaven.
- Making changes where none were need.
- The blizzard motto is, if people are enjoying it, remove it quick.
- I wish I had more random thoughts right now.
- But I don't.
- I am completely baffled by this arbitrary change for no reason.
- Why remove something that did not need removing?
- Another one of blizzards knee jerk reactions to fix something without thinking first.
- Not like it even needed fixing to begin with.
- But as I mentioned, they could have lowered the drop rate of the crates on low level quests and it could have went by completely unnoticed.
- But instead, they did this?
- Do they think before they act?
- This is proof they do not.
- Sorry to leave you a one topic random thoughts, I will make another one later that is more fitting for random thoughts.
- Have a great day.
- But nothing random about this one, it is all on one topic.
- Just felt like venting, so I am random thought pattern venting.
- Skip this one and wait for the next one if you don't want to hear complaining.
- But if you read here I am guessing, my complaining is what entertains you.
- So hope you are entertained.
- No new 100s this week to report on.
- Might have one new one next week, depending on how motivated I am to play.
- Blizzard killed my motivation to level more characters with their changes to the salvage yard.
- It will come back I am sure, but I am no longer excited about getting more characters to max so I can get the level 3 salvage yard and churning out as many missions as possible.
- I had put in multiple bug reports this weekend about getting small bags of salvage instead of the big crates of salvage I am supposed to before I decided to put in a ticket about it.
- When it was one it was a bug report, when it was two, I put in another bug report, but after the third one, it was more than a bug report, I wanted a real answer and not just to report a bug, so I put in a ticket on how the level 3 salvage yard was broken.
- Turns out it wasn't, blizzard changed it without thinking anyone would notice.
- They really have balls don't they?
- Stuff like that should be announced, not working perfectly one hour and then when I go back an hour later is has changed.
- The ticket said it would take 4 days but the reply was rather quick, less than 24 hours.
- At least the GM I got was very polite and he sent a well explained response to my ticket.
- Color me surprised.
- Most ticket responses are just stupid generic cut and paste answers to something you never even asked.
- I thanked the GM for their response but did not close the ticket and marked the issue as resolved.
- It is not resolved, my level 3 salvage yard is still not giving me level 3 salvage, so no matter how well he explained it, it was still an issue.
- I said I appreciate their clear, accurate, informative and quick response but I the change was not acceptable.
- Simple as if you have a level 3 salvage yard you should get level 3 salvage.
- So the change is not acceptable.
- I know they will do nothing about it but I asked the GM to please revert my garrison to the way it was.
- No matter what his response is after that I will close the ticket.
- He gave a great response and explained their reasoning perfectly.
- I just needed to make myself heard that I was not happy with the change.
- If we do not let blizzard know we dislike a change, they will take it as meaning we like it.
- Can't let that happen.
- Blizzard could have fixed this in other ways but no one there is smart enough to realize that.
- They could have drastically reduced the drop rate of big crates for lower level missions.
- That might even have gone unnoticed.
- It is not like people were getting filthy rich off the darn crates anyway.
- Out of all the people in my guild with the level 3 salvage yards they have going and a few being on all the time to start new missions as often as possible we never saw much.
- I would say, combined, we had done near 5000 missions.
- We, as a group, received 2 665 items, and 1 645 follower piece.
- So we were not exactly overflowing with over powered goodies were we?
- So I have to ask blizzard, was giving us the big crates for the small missions really giving away too much?
- No, absolutely not.
- As the GM explained it was more about not wanting to make people feel as if they needed to log in all the time to keep missions going.
- I can understand, I felt that way myself.
- Was even trying to squeeze in missions before I left for work.
- The first time in many years I was logging into wow before going to work.
- I was enjoying the game, that is why I was doing this.
- Blizzard can't have that, can't have people enjoying the game.
- How dare we enjoy the game.
- That can not happen.
- Now, who cares.
- Not like I am going to get crates from the smaller missions any longer.
- So no need to make sure I have 20 running at all times.
- Once again blizzard made a change to save us from ourselves.
- The figured people would burn out fast from having to log into characters all the time to keep missions running.
- So if they made those missions worthless, we wouldn't burn out on them, because we would not do them.
- That is why they made this change.
- How exactly did something blizzard do to save us from ourselves work out the last time they did it?
- Do you remember?
- I do.
- The gated august celestial and shado-pan reputation behind golden lotus reputation so we would not feel as if we had to work on all of them at the same time.
- It went over like a lead balloon.
- No one liked it.
- Blizzard should stop trying to save us from ourselves.
- So I do, in a way, appreciate the change to salvage in saving me from myself, but it really did decrease my enjoyment of the expansion a fair deal.
- No longer do I feel like rushing characters to max to level to get them all the level 3 salvage yard.
- No longer do I feel the need to log in as often as possible.
- No longer do I feel like even when I am not playing I should check back every so often to send out new mission.
- No longer do I have the one thing I was really enjoying about the expansion.
- Sure, we now get big crates at a 100% drop rate for 100 missions.
- But there is a huge difference.
- Lower missions needed 1 character, 100 missions need 3.
- So you could do more lower missions.
- Lower missions took 30 minutes to 2 hours at most, 100 missions thae 4 hours to 10 hours mostly.
- So you could do more lower missions.
- Lower missions needed one skill to complete, some 100 missions needed up to 6.
- So it was easier to finish lower missions.
- Lower missions had a better base rate of success starting at 35% to 50% sometimes where as 100 missions start a 0%.
- So success rates on lower missions were better.
- Lower missions just needed a follower, sometimes any follower, 100 missions need specific followers at specific item levels.
- So it was more likely to have the right people for lower missions.
- See, lower missions were just easier, more often, and as such worked as content that kept me coming back to send them out again.
- Now I sit there with 10 level 100 missions and no team that is capable of doing them at a reasonable success rate.
- So I don't send anyone out.
- Or I send groups out with a 60% or less chance and personally I hate doing that.
- So what was fun and exciting 2 days ago is just another boring piece of junk presented to you by blizzard, the people that could even ruin a day in heaven.
- Making changes where none were need.
- The blizzard motto is, if people are enjoying it, remove it quick.
- I wish I had more random thoughts right now.
- But I don't.
- I am completely baffled by this arbitrary change for no reason.
- Why remove something that did not need removing?
- Another one of blizzards knee jerk reactions to fix something without thinking first.
- Not like it even needed fixing to begin with.
- But as I mentioned, they could have lowered the drop rate of the crates on low level quests and it could have went by completely unnoticed.
- But instead, they did this?
- Do they think before they act?
- This is proof they do not.
- Sorry to leave you a one topic random thoughts, I will make another one later that is more fitting for random thoughts.
- Have a great day.
Friday, December 5, 2014
Some Observations and Comments on Yesterdays Q & A
It was really the first question I answered here I wanted to complain about but I went and dragged out a few more that I could do a little bitching about for fun. It has been a while since I went on a full out complaining streak, so I might be a little out of practice. Lets have some fun with the clueless devs of WoW, shall we.
Question:
Spirit as a secondary/primary stat. It's super discouraging that we as healers don't have any enchants, gems, or flasks with spirit. The nerfing of that crystal recently you get in the inn was hard hit also. My question is: What is spirit? Secondary stat or Primary stat? Why can't we have it on either gems and enchants or flasks? It should really be treated as one or the other. It just seems unfair as the odd one out, when tanks even get a stam flask to use.
Answer:
It's your best secondary stat as a healer, similar to what Armor is for tanks. Early on in beta, you actually could get Spirits gems/flasks/food, but we found that it undermined part of the point of consumable philosophy. We removed primary stats from gems and enchants in order to add some player choice and allow players to customize their secondary stats in a post-reforging world. If you want to try a crit-heavy build or want to stack mastery on your healer, you can use our profession system to accomplish that. But if Spirit were an option, it would clearly be the correct choice, and you'd never for a moment consider using any of those other secondary stat options. So in the interest of preserving some interesting choice, we removed Spirit and Armor food/gems/enchants and balanced healers around that change.
My Comment:
I have two major problems with this answer.
1) What is it, a primary stat or a secondary stat? You completely ignored that part of the question. You call it a secondary stat and then say you decided not to make gems and enchants for it. Well, being gems and enchants are for secondary stats and you call it a secondary stat there should be gems and enchants for it.
Stop the double talk and tell us what it is and then back that up by treating it as what it is. If it is a secondary stat then have gems and enchants for it. If it is a main stat then have flasks and potions for it. If it is a bonus stat, then do not count it toward the stat budget on the item. Spirit (and bonus armor) is a stat without a home. It is half a stat. Start treating it like either a main stat or a secondary stat or make some major changes otherwise. Don't call it a secondary stat, clump it with the main stats, and then do nothing for it one way or the other.
2) You want gems and enchants to give people choice and do not want spirit to be an option because it would be the correct choice. Hate to break it to you numb nuts but there will always be a correct choice. When numbers are involved there is always a right and wrong. That is not up for debate, that is an absolute concrete fact. You can debate the numbers maybe, but it will end in right and wrong. So sure, if you want to try a crit heavy build you can have one, but if it is the wrong choice it will still be the wrong choice.
Stop trying to say spirit is not an option to add gems and enchants for because it would be the correct choice and you want to give options. There are no options. The correct choice will always be the correct choice.
If anything adding spirit would actually allow for more choice. Someone really good with managing mana will have fewer or no spirit gems and enchants, someone that is average might have some, and someone that is a rookie might have all. You see, that gives choice. Leaving it just basic secondary stats mean the best stat is what you add so if haste is your best stat you make everything haste, no questions asked. No choice involved.
Adding spirit adds choice. You add lots when you are starting and slowly remove some as you get better gear and better at managing your mana. How do you not see that as choice. Spirit gems and enchants would offer choice, a hell of a lot more choice than the other secondary stats which are based on numbers and not of fell of use like spirit is. Seriously, did you even think before you said that line that spirit would offer no choice. Think mcfly think.
Question:
What's the deal currently with your stance on flying, any new developments, or insights?
Response:
Overall, we’re happy with how ground travel in Draenor has played out thus far, and we’ve heard a lot of feedback to that effect as well, though we of course recognize that there are players who feel differently. We’ll have more to announce about our 6.1 patch plans in the very near future, but as the focus of our endgame outdoor content remains in the main Draenor zones, our reasons for disallowing flight in 6.0 continue to apply in 6.1. Whether you’re navigating your way to Orumo the Observer in Shattrath Rise, trying to reach a treasure cache atop a column in Spires, or working your way around the ledges encircling The Pit, you’re engaging in gameplay that simply would not exist in a world with unfettered flight. It was never our intent to make large-scale navigation of the world inconvenient, and in 6.1 we’re going to be improving our flight path system to always take the most direct route between two points, even if you have not discovered some of the intermediate nodes. Please keep the feedback coming – if you’re unhappy with the design, some of the most helpful feedback would be specific examples of situations or systems that feel frustrating without being able to fly in Draenor.
My Comment:
First, I am glad you are happy with ground travel. Forgive me if I put absolutely no stock in your opinion on the matter as you are being paid to have that opinion. If blizzard sent me a check each week to say how no flying was great I would be touting the complete awesomeness of it here every single day too.
Now to your examples.
Orumo the Observer is not hard to navigate to without getting into any battles, or too many battles. All being on the ground does is slow down you getting there, not increase the fun of getting to him because lets face it, who on this earth thinks it is fun to have to stop for meaningless and useless battles on your way to something you actually want to fight. I'll hazard a guess here and say no one.
Caches in spires are not fun jumping puzzles. On my night elf, which is my main and I am pretty good with movement and jumping with it so I managed to make the jumps and snag the stuff easily, no big deal. On my mage, a gnome, who jumps differently and I am not as used to moving on it all this ends up being is an effort in frustration. I can not tell you how many alts I have already said, screw it, I'll wait for flying, while leveling them. I know many people that hate jumping games with a passion and have never even once in my entire life playing this game have I met anyone that said they enjoyed them and wished there were more of them because the are so fun. So no, jumping to get to stuff is nothing more than annoying at best.
Circling around the pit is engaging gameplay? On what universe do you live in where running in a circle is fun? Are you secretly a dog that gets a kick out of running in circles chasing your own tail? No, it is not engaging gameplay. Never has been. Never will be. What the hell are you smoking?
Now I actually like being on the ground right now but I would like flying. It would make archaeology less annoying, my pet collecting more fun, my rare hunting more efficient and my game play over all more satisfying. Simple that that.
If I were to say that so far this expansion I have gotten on a flight path 20 times having forgotten something I had wanted to do or seeing a mission pop up finished just seconds after I took flight I would be greatly under estimating. Each time that happens I say, I wish we had flying because I would just turn around and land and do what I forgot.
And please stop with the we will make fight paths better line until they are actually going to make an attempt to do so. While I admit they are slightly better this expansion, they are still much longer than they need to be. They still go from point to point to point to point to point to destination instead of from point A to point B. They also still move way to slow to be a reasonable replacement for flying. So forgive me if once again I do not believe a word that comes out of your mouth when you say you will make flight paths better. I've been listening to it for so many years. Something you say but have no intention of actually doing has a word for it, a lie. So stop saying it. You are not ever going to make fight paths direct, at least not in the middle of an expansion. Maybe at the start of the next one, but we will not see any reasonable or adequate changes now so stop pretending like we will.
I am all for keeping us grounded for "new" content. I don't mind leveling on the ground. I don't even mind grinding and doing dailies on the ground right now. But once 6.1 comes out all the release zones of draenor will be old content and we should be allowed to fly. There is no real reason to keep us grounded in old content. Heck, I believe that flying should be enabled in places like timeless island and the isle of thunder now as well.
In the end what it comes down to is if you personally like it so much and think it works great, so you want to be on the ground, there is nothing keeping you from being on the ground even once flying is available. So if you really truly believe the garbage you are shoveling that you like it grounded, add flying once 6.1 comes out when all the release content is now old content and stay on a ground mount. Everyone wins that way. And we will point and laugh at you as we pass you wasting your time traveling on a ground mount while we are actually getting somewhere where we will be playing the game. Playing is always more enjoyable than traveling. Always.
Question:
Scenarios were a great thing for DPS to jump in a quick queue for and do for slightly less rewards than a heroic. Is there any chance we will see end game scenario queues even if it is for the leveling scenarios already in game?
Answer:
That was definitely one of the great benefits of the scenarios for sure. We don't anticipate having queued scenarios for WoD atm (although I wouldn't rule them out for future expansions), and we do have some ideas for how we can significantly improve dps queue times, but they will take some time for us to make happen.
My Comment:
Why did you not include any in on launch? They are cheaper to make, production wise, than dungeons because the scenes are already in game and you do not need new art. They can use all models already in game. They can tell a story. They make for faster queue times for damage dealers. I really do not see a downside to having them in game. I have yet to hear even a remotely reasonable explanation for why blizzard effectively removed content for no reason other than "we didn't feel like making it". Sorry to break it to you, but removing content is a bad thing. Maybe one day someone that works there will figure that one out.
Question:
Could you elaborate on how you would shorten DPS queue times?
Answer:
We could potentially allow another dps in a dungeon and use scaling tech to accommodate both 5 and 6 player groups for them.
My Comment:
No, just no. Why would you do this? So the under geared healers that will be doing them now have 4 idiots standing in the fire to heal? No thank you.
How about make a reason for people that can tank and heal them to spam them and then DPS queue times will go down. And no, baggies are not an answer. Try justice and valor and allowing them to convert to honor and conquest, as well as giving worthwhile things to buy with them and you will see how fast those queue times drop as everyone and their mother that has a tank or healing offspec and seriously over gears them starts spamming them to get something worthwhile from them. Valor and justice are an awesome incentive, as all previous expansions have showed, when there is something worth buying with them. Oh wait, you removed those too because you are obsessed with removing content. Sorry, forgot about that. I'll try to not mention you removing content for no real reason again. I am sorry.
Question:
Is there any consideration into redoing the run animation for Night Elves?
Answer:
Yes, I believe that's on the list of things to refine, potentially in patch 6.1. Don't quote me on that though. =]
My Comment:
Too late, already quoted you on it.
The real question is, when night elves were released on beta many people complained, myself included, instantly, about how dreadful the run animation was. It was not like it was an isolated incident where it was just me that disliked it. There were countless forum posts, blog posts, you tube videos, you name it, all talking about how horrible it was, making fun of it, asking for something to be done and not only was nothing done, it was completely ignored from the designers. Why?
This should have been fixed on beta. At least for a company that actually listens to any feed back seeing the huge outcry over this it would have been. Shows blizzard does not listen and if it is not changed in 6.1 it will just further show they do not listen. This is the single most complained about thing (out side of same face) that I have seen about the character remodels. How does this get over looked?
Well, that was fun. Was nice to get my grumpy on again. Leave it up to the devs to give me few good things to chew on for fun.
Really, I still do not get it. Spirit would offer no choice? Really. Really. Spirit is about feel, not numbers. And lets even pretend it was a flat number issue, what is the difference between stacking haste or stacking spirit. Best would still be best right? No choice my ass.
Have a great day.
Question:
Spirit as a secondary/primary stat. It's super discouraging that we as healers don't have any enchants, gems, or flasks with spirit. The nerfing of that crystal recently you get in the inn was hard hit also. My question is: What is spirit? Secondary stat or Primary stat? Why can't we have it on either gems and enchants or flasks? It should really be treated as one or the other. It just seems unfair as the odd one out, when tanks even get a stam flask to use.
Answer:
It's your best secondary stat as a healer, similar to what Armor is for tanks. Early on in beta, you actually could get Spirits gems/flasks/food, but we found that it undermined part of the point of consumable philosophy. We removed primary stats from gems and enchants in order to add some player choice and allow players to customize their secondary stats in a post-reforging world. If you want to try a crit-heavy build or want to stack mastery on your healer, you can use our profession system to accomplish that. But if Spirit were an option, it would clearly be the correct choice, and you'd never for a moment consider using any of those other secondary stat options. So in the interest of preserving some interesting choice, we removed Spirit and Armor food/gems/enchants and balanced healers around that change.
My Comment:
I have two major problems with this answer.
1) What is it, a primary stat or a secondary stat? You completely ignored that part of the question. You call it a secondary stat and then say you decided not to make gems and enchants for it. Well, being gems and enchants are for secondary stats and you call it a secondary stat there should be gems and enchants for it.
Stop the double talk and tell us what it is and then back that up by treating it as what it is. If it is a secondary stat then have gems and enchants for it. If it is a main stat then have flasks and potions for it. If it is a bonus stat, then do not count it toward the stat budget on the item. Spirit (and bonus armor) is a stat without a home. It is half a stat. Start treating it like either a main stat or a secondary stat or make some major changes otherwise. Don't call it a secondary stat, clump it with the main stats, and then do nothing for it one way or the other.
2) You want gems and enchants to give people choice and do not want spirit to be an option because it would be the correct choice. Hate to break it to you numb nuts but there will always be a correct choice. When numbers are involved there is always a right and wrong. That is not up for debate, that is an absolute concrete fact. You can debate the numbers maybe, but it will end in right and wrong. So sure, if you want to try a crit heavy build you can have one, but if it is the wrong choice it will still be the wrong choice.
Stop trying to say spirit is not an option to add gems and enchants for because it would be the correct choice and you want to give options. There are no options. The correct choice will always be the correct choice.
If anything adding spirit would actually allow for more choice. Someone really good with managing mana will have fewer or no spirit gems and enchants, someone that is average might have some, and someone that is a rookie might have all. You see, that gives choice. Leaving it just basic secondary stats mean the best stat is what you add so if haste is your best stat you make everything haste, no questions asked. No choice involved.
Adding spirit adds choice. You add lots when you are starting and slowly remove some as you get better gear and better at managing your mana. How do you not see that as choice. Spirit gems and enchants would offer choice, a hell of a lot more choice than the other secondary stats which are based on numbers and not of fell of use like spirit is. Seriously, did you even think before you said that line that spirit would offer no choice. Think mcfly think.
Question:
What's the deal currently with your stance on flying, any new developments, or insights?
Response:
Overall, we’re happy with how ground travel in Draenor has played out thus far, and we’ve heard a lot of feedback to that effect as well, though we of course recognize that there are players who feel differently. We’ll have more to announce about our 6.1 patch plans in the very near future, but as the focus of our endgame outdoor content remains in the main Draenor zones, our reasons for disallowing flight in 6.0 continue to apply in 6.1. Whether you’re navigating your way to Orumo the Observer in Shattrath Rise, trying to reach a treasure cache atop a column in Spires, or working your way around the ledges encircling The Pit, you’re engaging in gameplay that simply would not exist in a world with unfettered flight. It was never our intent to make large-scale navigation of the world inconvenient, and in 6.1 we’re going to be improving our flight path system to always take the most direct route between two points, even if you have not discovered some of the intermediate nodes. Please keep the feedback coming – if you’re unhappy with the design, some of the most helpful feedback would be specific examples of situations or systems that feel frustrating without being able to fly in Draenor.
My Comment:
First, I am glad you are happy with ground travel. Forgive me if I put absolutely no stock in your opinion on the matter as you are being paid to have that opinion. If blizzard sent me a check each week to say how no flying was great I would be touting the complete awesomeness of it here every single day too.
Now to your examples.
Orumo the Observer is not hard to navigate to without getting into any battles, or too many battles. All being on the ground does is slow down you getting there, not increase the fun of getting to him because lets face it, who on this earth thinks it is fun to have to stop for meaningless and useless battles on your way to something you actually want to fight. I'll hazard a guess here and say no one.
Caches in spires are not fun jumping puzzles. On my night elf, which is my main and I am pretty good with movement and jumping with it so I managed to make the jumps and snag the stuff easily, no big deal. On my mage, a gnome, who jumps differently and I am not as used to moving on it all this ends up being is an effort in frustration. I can not tell you how many alts I have already said, screw it, I'll wait for flying, while leveling them. I know many people that hate jumping games with a passion and have never even once in my entire life playing this game have I met anyone that said they enjoyed them and wished there were more of them because the are so fun. So no, jumping to get to stuff is nothing more than annoying at best.
Circling around the pit is engaging gameplay? On what universe do you live in where running in a circle is fun? Are you secretly a dog that gets a kick out of running in circles chasing your own tail? No, it is not engaging gameplay. Never has been. Never will be. What the hell are you smoking?
Now I actually like being on the ground right now but I would like flying. It would make archaeology less annoying, my pet collecting more fun, my rare hunting more efficient and my game play over all more satisfying. Simple that that.
If I were to say that so far this expansion I have gotten on a flight path 20 times having forgotten something I had wanted to do or seeing a mission pop up finished just seconds after I took flight I would be greatly under estimating. Each time that happens I say, I wish we had flying because I would just turn around and land and do what I forgot.
And please stop with the we will make fight paths better line until they are actually going to make an attempt to do so. While I admit they are slightly better this expansion, they are still much longer than they need to be. They still go from point to point to point to point to point to destination instead of from point A to point B. They also still move way to slow to be a reasonable replacement for flying. So forgive me if once again I do not believe a word that comes out of your mouth when you say you will make flight paths better. I've been listening to it for so many years. Something you say but have no intention of actually doing has a word for it, a lie. So stop saying it. You are not ever going to make fight paths direct, at least not in the middle of an expansion. Maybe at the start of the next one, but we will not see any reasonable or adequate changes now so stop pretending like we will.
I am all for keeping us grounded for "new" content. I don't mind leveling on the ground. I don't even mind grinding and doing dailies on the ground right now. But once 6.1 comes out all the release zones of draenor will be old content and we should be allowed to fly. There is no real reason to keep us grounded in old content. Heck, I believe that flying should be enabled in places like timeless island and the isle of thunder now as well.
In the end what it comes down to is if you personally like it so much and think it works great, so you want to be on the ground, there is nothing keeping you from being on the ground even once flying is available. So if you really truly believe the garbage you are shoveling that you like it grounded, add flying once 6.1 comes out when all the release content is now old content and stay on a ground mount. Everyone wins that way. And we will point and laugh at you as we pass you wasting your time traveling on a ground mount while we are actually getting somewhere where we will be playing the game. Playing is always more enjoyable than traveling. Always.
Question:
Scenarios were a great thing for DPS to jump in a quick queue for and do for slightly less rewards than a heroic. Is there any chance we will see end game scenario queues even if it is for the leveling scenarios already in game?
Answer:
That was definitely one of the great benefits of the scenarios for sure. We don't anticipate having queued scenarios for WoD atm (although I wouldn't rule them out for future expansions), and we do have some ideas for how we can significantly improve dps queue times, but they will take some time for us to make happen.
My Comment:
Why did you not include any in on launch? They are cheaper to make, production wise, than dungeons because the scenes are already in game and you do not need new art. They can use all models already in game. They can tell a story. They make for faster queue times for damage dealers. I really do not see a downside to having them in game. I have yet to hear even a remotely reasonable explanation for why blizzard effectively removed content for no reason other than "we didn't feel like making it". Sorry to break it to you, but removing content is a bad thing. Maybe one day someone that works there will figure that one out.
Question:
Could you elaborate on how you would shorten DPS queue times?
Answer:
We could potentially allow another dps in a dungeon and use scaling tech to accommodate both 5 and 6 player groups for them.
My Comment:
No, just no. Why would you do this? So the under geared healers that will be doing them now have 4 idiots standing in the fire to heal? No thank you.
How about make a reason for people that can tank and heal them to spam them and then DPS queue times will go down. And no, baggies are not an answer. Try justice and valor and allowing them to convert to honor and conquest, as well as giving worthwhile things to buy with them and you will see how fast those queue times drop as everyone and their mother that has a tank or healing offspec and seriously over gears them starts spamming them to get something worthwhile from them. Valor and justice are an awesome incentive, as all previous expansions have showed, when there is something worth buying with them. Oh wait, you removed those too because you are obsessed with removing content. Sorry, forgot about that. I'll try to not mention you removing content for no real reason again. I am sorry.
Question:
Is there any consideration into redoing the run animation for Night Elves?
Answer:
Yes, I believe that's on the list of things to refine, potentially in patch 6.1. Don't quote me on that though. =]
My Comment:
Too late, already quoted you on it.
The real question is, when night elves were released on beta many people complained, myself included, instantly, about how dreadful the run animation was. It was not like it was an isolated incident where it was just me that disliked it. There were countless forum posts, blog posts, you tube videos, you name it, all talking about how horrible it was, making fun of it, asking for something to be done and not only was nothing done, it was completely ignored from the designers. Why?
This should have been fixed on beta. At least for a company that actually listens to any feed back seeing the huge outcry over this it would have been. Shows blizzard does not listen and if it is not changed in 6.1 it will just further show they do not listen. This is the single most complained about thing (out side of same face) that I have seen about the character remodels. How does this get over looked?
Well, that was fun. Was nice to get my grumpy on again. Leave it up to the devs to give me few good things to chew on for fun.
Really, I still do not get it. Spirit would offer no choice? Really. Really. Spirit is about feel, not numbers. And lets even pretend it was a flat number issue, what is the difference between stacking haste or stacking spirit. Best would still be best right? No choice my ass.
Have a great day.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Best Pets for the Lone Wolf Marksman Hunter
To the people that know what the new level 100 lone wolf talent is the title of this post might be a little confusing and for those that do not know what it is, when I explain it, they too might find the title confusing. But just bear with me for a few moment while I explain why pet selection as a marksman hunter (or survival) with the lone wolf talent actually matters.
Lone Wolf is a level 100 talent only marksman or survival hunters can choose. When using this ability the hunter can choose to not use a pet at all and if they do not have one some of their abilities will hit for 30% more damage. Steady shot, aimed shot, chimaera shot and kill shot for marksman and arcane shot, explosive shot, black arrow and cobra shot for survival.
The lone wolf hunter can provide a myriad array of buffs that pets could offer even without the pet making them a quite efficient buff machine to give nearly any buff the raid might be missing without the need to carry around the appropriate pet to supply that buff.
While you can still have a pet out while using the lone wolf talent you will lose that 30% damage boost to your abilities while you do. So because of that, as a lone wolf hunter, you will never want to have a pet out.
As you can see, everything about using the lone wolf talent just screams not to have a pet out. Even the idea of me making this post saying what pets you should carry with you while in lone wolf will surely get a few hunters calling me a noob. I can take it because I really believe in the fact pet choice still matters.
Nether Ray:
The nether ray is an draenor (outlands) animal that has been around for a long time but with the introduction of warlords and the changes with abilities the nether ray now offers an ability to non beast mastery hunters that they never had before.
Ancient Hysteria, the hunter version of bloodlust / heroism / time warp is offered by this pet and it is not exotic meaning that any hunter can have one and for the lone wolf hunter having a burst haste pet that can offer bloodlust / heroism / time warp might come in handy at some point.
We, as a lone wolf hunter, would be forced to dismiss our pet after using its buff to get the maximum out of it for ourselves (but that is debatable I am sure), but even with a 3 second cast time on dismiss pet being able to offer that huge burst haste buff in a group so everyone else would greatly benefit from it out weights the three seconds we, as the awesome hunters that bring everything that we are, would lose because of it.
Crane:
What was something only a Quilen could do in mist as an exotic beast the Crane is not an exotic beast meaning all hunters can get it and it can now provide their Gift of Chi-Ji which is a battle resurrection. This means that all hunters can now get a pet that is capable of providing the ability to raise a fallen ally.
As a lone wolf hunter we can supply so many buffs we often forget there are some very useful abilities we could be using that we don't, if only we had the right pet. After doing a five man random where the tank died and no one in the group could revive them, what could have been a nice and easy kill with just one little whoops on the part of the tank or healer or both it ended up being a wipe. From that point on I decided that I would never be caught off guard again. I would carry a crane with me. I leave it on passive and most definetly without growl on, so it does not accidentally attack and get themselves killed as soon as I summon them, and I can now revive the broken pile of plate on the ground we refer to as our tank.
Losing a few global cooldowns to revive the tank and prevent a wipe, or to bring up a healer when in need, so we can down the boss instead of walking back after failure is well worth the loss in DPS to call out that baby can cast a revive saving the day for everyone.
Moth:
Moth, like the crane, has a battle resurrection ability, which is called Dust of Life. Sadly with the change to battle resurrections in raids this means nothing having a second one on you, but to mix things up, and effectively have two battle resurrections at other times, you can have a moth in your crew as well so when in a five man or out in the world doing your daily or what have you, you can revive two of your lesser skilled, or unlucky with life fellow adventurers. Unless it has been patched, you can cycle pets to revive more than one person.
Turtle:
There are occasionally some things you can not face tanked or effectively kited. For those times being able to pull out a trusty tank pet can be invaluable. My favorite tank pet, for sentimental reasons, I admit, is a turtle that I named after my pet turtle. Any tank pet will do but having a tank pet can be a good thing to have even as a lone wolf hunter when out in the world.
Be it to take the hits from a brutal opponent that is not susceptible to narrow escapes webs or concussive shot or binding shot or ice trap (oh crap we have a lot of slowing stuff still) or something you accidentally pulled and just want to get away from, having a tank pet to send in to take the aggro so you can kill it, or escape if you wish, can be invaluable. I'd suggest that every hunter even of the lone wolf variety have a tank pet on hand at all times. You never know when you are going to run across that rare that just needs killing and your turtle can take a hit better than you can.
Last but not least, every hunters favorite pet...
Sporebat:
Why? Because it is a sporebat, duh. It hits bosses for a billion with its enormous man parts and can make rogues bleed from their anus. Death Knights too.
But in all honesty, I would say leave that fifth spot open. Who knows when you will come across some beast out in the world that looks awesome and you just need to tame that baby now. The open space will allow that.
Are there any pets you make sure to carry around even when you are using lone wolf?
Lone Wolf is a level 100 talent only marksman or survival hunters can choose. When using this ability the hunter can choose to not use a pet at all and if they do not have one some of their abilities will hit for 30% more damage. Steady shot, aimed shot, chimaera shot and kill shot for marksman and arcane shot, explosive shot, black arrow and cobra shot for survival.
The lone wolf hunter can provide a myriad array of buffs that pets could offer even without the pet making them a quite efficient buff machine to give nearly any buff the raid might be missing without the need to carry around the appropriate pet to supply that buff.
While you can still have a pet out while using the lone wolf talent you will lose that 30% damage boost to your abilities while you do. So because of that, as a lone wolf hunter, you will never want to have a pet out.
As you can see, everything about using the lone wolf talent just screams not to have a pet out. Even the idea of me making this post saying what pets you should carry with you while in lone wolf will surely get a few hunters calling me a noob. I can take it because I really believe in the fact pet choice still matters.
Nether Ray:
The nether ray is an draenor (outlands) animal that has been around for a long time but with the introduction of warlords and the changes with abilities the nether ray now offers an ability to non beast mastery hunters that they never had before.
Ancient Hysteria, the hunter version of bloodlust / heroism / time warp is offered by this pet and it is not exotic meaning that any hunter can have one and for the lone wolf hunter having a burst haste pet that can offer bloodlust / heroism / time warp might come in handy at some point.
We, as a lone wolf hunter, would be forced to dismiss our pet after using its buff to get the maximum out of it for ourselves (but that is debatable I am sure), but even with a 3 second cast time on dismiss pet being able to offer that huge burst haste buff in a group so everyone else would greatly benefit from it out weights the three seconds we, as the awesome hunters that bring everything that we are, would lose because of it.
Crane:
What was something only a Quilen could do in mist as an exotic beast the Crane is not an exotic beast meaning all hunters can get it and it can now provide their Gift of Chi-Ji which is a battle resurrection. This means that all hunters can now get a pet that is capable of providing the ability to raise a fallen ally.
As a lone wolf hunter we can supply so many buffs we often forget there are some very useful abilities we could be using that we don't, if only we had the right pet. After doing a five man random where the tank died and no one in the group could revive them, what could have been a nice and easy kill with just one little whoops on the part of the tank or healer or both it ended up being a wipe. From that point on I decided that I would never be caught off guard again. I would carry a crane with me. I leave it on passive and most definetly without growl on, so it does not accidentally attack and get themselves killed as soon as I summon them, and I can now revive the broken pile of plate on the ground we refer to as our tank.
Losing a few global cooldowns to revive the tank and prevent a wipe, or to bring up a healer when in need, so we can down the boss instead of walking back after failure is well worth the loss in DPS to call out that baby can cast a revive saving the day for everyone.
Moth:
Moth, like the crane, has a battle resurrection ability, which is called Dust of Life. Sadly with the change to battle resurrections in raids this means nothing having a second one on you, but to mix things up, and effectively have two battle resurrections at other times, you can have a moth in your crew as well so when in a five man or out in the world doing your daily or what have you, you can revive two of your lesser skilled, or unlucky with life fellow adventurers. Unless it has been patched, you can cycle pets to revive more than one person.
Turtle:
There are occasionally some things you can not face tanked or effectively kited. For those times being able to pull out a trusty tank pet can be invaluable. My favorite tank pet, for sentimental reasons, I admit, is a turtle that I named after my pet turtle. Any tank pet will do but having a tank pet can be a good thing to have even as a lone wolf hunter when out in the world.
Be it to take the hits from a brutal opponent that is not susceptible to narrow escapes webs or concussive shot or binding shot or ice trap (oh crap we have a lot of slowing stuff still) or something you accidentally pulled and just want to get away from, having a tank pet to send in to take the aggro so you can kill it, or escape if you wish, can be invaluable. I'd suggest that every hunter even of the lone wolf variety have a tank pet on hand at all times. You never know when you are going to run across that rare that just needs killing and your turtle can take a hit better than you can.
Last but not least, every hunters favorite pet...
Sporebat:
Why? Because it is a sporebat, duh. It hits bosses for a billion with its enormous man parts and can make rogues bleed from their anus. Death Knights too.
But in all honesty, I would say leave that fifth spot open. Who knows when you will come across some beast out in the world that looks awesome and you just need to tame that baby now. The open space will allow that.
Are there any pets you make sure to carry around even when you are using lone wolf?
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Blizzard Takes 1 Free Day Back
I am not really in the mood to make a "complaining" post but I do believe something needs to be said about the complete ineptitude of blizzards server management team in regards the recent patch which was to include the new raid, the new world boss, and the trinket changes. Instead of doing my standard post I've decided to do something a little different this time around in an effort to save myself some time and have some fun with it in the process.
You see, when I get home from work today I plan to submit a ticket asking for reimbursement for the time lost. No, I am not going to be asking for 1 free day of game time. As I have mentioned here before in a post last week, 1 free day of game time is a slap in the face to every person that plays the game. One day of game time means nothing, or damn near close to nothing. I want a real and actual reimbursement for the time lost and what that lost time equals to me.
I know I will not get anything, but voicing my opinion to blizzard makes me feel better, even if I know they completely ignore me and do not care about anything I say. I am nothing more than a cash cow they are milking for my subscription fee and as long as I am paying it they really do not give a shit what I have to say. Even if I ever quit, they still would not care what I have to say because there will always be some other sucker they can squeeze for cash and that is all that matters.
So here we go, the ticket I plan to copy and paste from here and send to blizzard as soon as I get home from work today.
Please be aware, this is me being a complete and total smart ass. I am not actually demanding these things, I am just sending this to them so they see what one days worth of play time is actually worth, and it sure as hell is not worth crediting me one day free play time. Not even close.
Dear Blizzard,
I was excited to be able to try to the new raid and world boss out when I got home from work yesterday and after multiple times extending the maintenance even when you announced that it was done I could still not log in.
I tried multiple times over the course of the night every 15 minutes or so to get on. Some 6 hours later, when it was time for me to go to bed because I have work the next day, the game was still not up even though you had stated many hours earlier that maintenance was over. You made absolutely no effort to convey what was happening or address why servers were still not down. You left us out of the loop and feeling as if we do not matter by never updating us on the progress. And no, do not say to see twitter, I do not play "twitter", I play warcraft. If I am looking for warcraft updates I look to warcrafts webstie, not to twitter. You did not clue us in on what efforts were being made or what the time excepted for this to be fixed was.
As such, you wasted my entire night trying to log in when I could have choose to do something else if only you had been open and honest and told me that the game would not be in a playable state at any point last night. Being you said nothing except maintenance was over, I was left believing, all night long for 6 hours, that it would be up any minute. Some honesty would have been a nice addition here even if you are not exactly familiar with that concept.
I would like some reimbursement for my time in game that was lost. My list of demands are as follows as these are all the things I lost do to down time when you said the servers were up, even if they weren't.
I would like the proceeds from 4 level 3 mines, and 5 level 2 mines.
I would like the proceeds from 4 level 3 herb gardens and 2 level 2 herb gardens.
I would like 40 big crates of salvage being I average 30 to 40 a day and being it is your error the least you can do is reimburse me on the high end but if you feel like being petty 30 will be fine too.
I would like 803,000 gold deposited into any one of my characters accounts, as that is what I was expecting to make today. There were 4 healing trinkets at 48K, 49K, 50K and 50K respectively, that on the auction house I had intended to buy and flip for 250K after the buff. As I know they would have sold at or near that price, that is gold lost because of your down time and I expect that gold to be credited to my account.
I will be kind and not request more gold for other trinkets I intended to flip but were unable to thanks to your error, but if you are feeling generous you can send an addition 2M gold which would be quite reasonable based on what I could have made but you denied me the chance to do so.
I would like the 800 apexis crystals I would have received from doing my daily.
I would like an additional 30-50 apexis crystals I could have expected from killing mobs for the daily.
I would like 10 or so primal spirits I could have expected from killing mobs for the daily.
I would like the roughly 3,000 council reputation I would have amassed while farming for reputation.
I would like the invasion I would have triggered from doing that waiting for me in my garrison.
I would like the last 2000 arakkoa reputation I needed to get to exalted I planned to finish today.
I would like the invasion I would have triggered from doing that waiting for me in my garrison.
I would like the estimated 150-200 gold I would have looted during that time.
I would like the estimated 2,000 gold in vendor trash I could have expected to loot during that time.
I would like the estimated 30 assorted greens I would have gathered while farming all those things.
I would like the estimated 3 assorted blues of 573-621 item level I normally get while farming all those things.
If you would be so kind you could also send me one random 665, which with all those things is not out of the realm of possibility that I could have seen.
I would like all the experience my followers lost from not being able to send them off on missions.
I would like all the garrison resources my followers lost from not being able to send them off on missions.
I would like all the gold and other assorted goodies my followers lost from not being able to send them off on missions.
I would like the rewards from the two inn quests I would have completed or at the very least the quests put in my quest log as I was unable to pick them up myself.
I would like the proceeds from all the profession cooldowns on all my characters.
I would like all my work order boxes emptied and placed in my bags and then refilled to be full of work orders again for all my characters.
I would like that day I lost back blizzard but being you can not rewind time, just send the the list above and we can call it even. I am sure I forgot stuff, so even giving me all the above mentioned, you are still getting off easy.
And no, do not add another free day on my account, that is a slap in the face. I did not lose a "day" in those terms. I lost a "day" in terms of what I could have done that you denied me the chance to do. I do not need game time, I need what I would have done yesterday done and only you can do that now.
Time can not be replaced, the time you stole from me is lost and can not be replaced with a free day of game time, but I would be willing to accept if you replace it with the proceeds of what I lost from having lost that day.
Thank you for your time, I expect to see all the items I requested in my mail without 24 hours.
Have a great day.
You see, when I get home from work today I plan to submit a ticket asking for reimbursement for the time lost. No, I am not going to be asking for 1 free day of game time. As I have mentioned here before in a post last week, 1 free day of game time is a slap in the face to every person that plays the game. One day of game time means nothing, or damn near close to nothing. I want a real and actual reimbursement for the time lost and what that lost time equals to me.
I know I will not get anything, but voicing my opinion to blizzard makes me feel better, even if I know they completely ignore me and do not care about anything I say. I am nothing more than a cash cow they are milking for my subscription fee and as long as I am paying it they really do not give a shit what I have to say. Even if I ever quit, they still would not care what I have to say because there will always be some other sucker they can squeeze for cash and that is all that matters.
So here we go, the ticket I plan to copy and paste from here and send to blizzard as soon as I get home from work today.
Please be aware, this is me being a complete and total smart ass. I am not actually demanding these things, I am just sending this to them so they see what one days worth of play time is actually worth, and it sure as hell is not worth crediting me one day free play time. Not even close.
Dear Blizzard,
I was excited to be able to try to the new raid and world boss out when I got home from work yesterday and after multiple times extending the maintenance even when you announced that it was done I could still not log in.
I tried multiple times over the course of the night every 15 minutes or so to get on. Some 6 hours later, when it was time for me to go to bed because I have work the next day, the game was still not up even though you had stated many hours earlier that maintenance was over. You made absolutely no effort to convey what was happening or address why servers were still not down. You left us out of the loop and feeling as if we do not matter by never updating us on the progress. And no, do not say to see twitter, I do not play "twitter", I play warcraft. If I am looking for warcraft updates I look to warcrafts webstie, not to twitter. You did not clue us in on what efforts were being made or what the time excepted for this to be fixed was.
As such, you wasted my entire night trying to log in when I could have choose to do something else if only you had been open and honest and told me that the game would not be in a playable state at any point last night. Being you said nothing except maintenance was over, I was left believing, all night long for 6 hours, that it would be up any minute. Some honesty would have been a nice addition here even if you are not exactly familiar with that concept.
I would like some reimbursement for my time in game that was lost. My list of demands are as follows as these are all the things I lost do to down time when you said the servers were up, even if they weren't.
I would like the proceeds from 4 level 3 mines, and 5 level 2 mines.
I would like the proceeds from 4 level 3 herb gardens and 2 level 2 herb gardens.
I would like 40 big crates of salvage being I average 30 to 40 a day and being it is your error the least you can do is reimburse me on the high end but if you feel like being petty 30 will be fine too.
I would like 803,000 gold deposited into any one of my characters accounts, as that is what I was expecting to make today. There were 4 healing trinkets at 48K, 49K, 50K and 50K respectively, that on the auction house I had intended to buy and flip for 250K after the buff. As I know they would have sold at or near that price, that is gold lost because of your down time and I expect that gold to be credited to my account.
I will be kind and not request more gold for other trinkets I intended to flip but were unable to thanks to your error, but if you are feeling generous you can send an addition 2M gold which would be quite reasonable based on what I could have made but you denied me the chance to do so.
I would like the 800 apexis crystals I would have received from doing my daily.
I would like an additional 30-50 apexis crystals I could have expected from killing mobs for the daily.
I would like 10 or so primal spirits I could have expected from killing mobs for the daily.
I would like the roughly 3,000 council reputation I would have amassed while farming for reputation.
I would like the invasion I would have triggered from doing that waiting for me in my garrison.
I would like the last 2000 arakkoa reputation I needed to get to exalted I planned to finish today.
I would like the invasion I would have triggered from doing that waiting for me in my garrison.
I would like the estimated 150-200 gold I would have looted during that time.
I would like the estimated 2,000 gold in vendor trash I could have expected to loot during that time.
I would like the estimated 30 assorted greens I would have gathered while farming all those things.
I would like the estimated 3 assorted blues of 573-621 item level I normally get while farming all those things.
If you would be so kind you could also send me one random 665, which with all those things is not out of the realm of possibility that I could have seen.
I would like all the experience my followers lost from not being able to send them off on missions.
I would like all the garrison resources my followers lost from not being able to send them off on missions.
I would like all the gold and other assorted goodies my followers lost from not being able to send them off on missions.
I would like the rewards from the two inn quests I would have completed or at the very least the quests put in my quest log as I was unable to pick them up myself.
I would like the proceeds from all the profession cooldowns on all my characters.
I would like all my work order boxes emptied and placed in my bags and then refilled to be full of work orders again for all my characters.
I would like that day I lost back blizzard but being you can not rewind time, just send the the list above and we can call it even. I am sure I forgot stuff, so even giving me all the above mentioned, you are still getting off easy.
And no, do not add another free day on my account, that is a slap in the face. I did not lose a "day" in those terms. I lost a "day" in terms of what I could have done that you denied me the chance to do. I do not need game time, I need what I would have done yesterday done and only you can do that now.
Time can not be replaced, the time you stole from me is lost and can not be replaced with a free day of game time, but I would be willing to accept if you replace it with the proceeds of what I lost from having lost that day.
Thank you for your time, I expect to see all the items I requested in my mail without 24 hours.
Have a great day.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Follower Leveling and Mission Advice
Your mission table at your garrison contains a mini game in its own right, one filled with randomness but not completely lacking in the need for planning and preparation. In an effort to work a plan of attack for the most important missions I decided that I would share my findings and opinions on building up to complete these quests in a hope it can help others level their followers and properly prepare them for missions.
Leveling Your Followers:
The more active you are the more missions you can do, it really is as simple as that. Even if your followers fail at their missions they will receive some experience, but of course you want to try to succeed when doing thenm as success offers more experience and sometimes great rewards.
1) Available Missions:
What missions you have available at your garrison depends on what level followers you have. Missions offered to you are usually equal to the level of your characters, which in some cases can cause problems leveling them. To avoid running into a series of missions with low success chances and or mostly missions which you can not do I suggest you keep a few low level followers active.
By keeping a few lower level followers active you will assure you have some lower level quests. For example, if you keep a level 92, a level 94 and a level 98 active when your others are all at level 100 you will most likely see a selection of 92, 94, 98 and 100 missions available for you at your mission table.
Why do we want lower level missions you might ask. The answer is simple. We want them because they are more likely to have a higher success rate. This means more salvage boxes if you have a salvage yard, which you should have, and more rewards, be it gold, experience, garrison supplies, gear, what have you. They are also usually shorter meaning you can do more missions with your time.
It is also worth noting that even if you only have one level 100 you will start getting 100 missions that require 3 followers, which of course you will not be capable of doing with any reasonable rate of success. This extends to when you start to gear followers. As soon as you reach 615 on one follower you will start getting missions that require three 615 followers. Same goes for 630 and 645. So I can not stress enough that when you start to gear your followers, as inviting as it might seem to pile all those upgrades into one so they can get to a high item level, do not do that, or you will be flooded with a bunch of missions for high item level followers and only have 1 follower capable of doing them. More on this gear leveling later. Slow and steady wins the race in this case.
2) Leveling Past 100:
You can level your characters past 100. There are rarity levels of uncommon, rare and epic. Every follower can become an epic and you should keep doing as many missions as possible once you reach level 100 until you get every follower to epic.
Once a follower is epic it will gain an additional main ability. This ability is completely random, so my epic of Delvar might be different, much different, from your epic Delvar. This is also why during this post I will speak about abilities of your followers, not specific followers. Because which followers have which ability is random past their preset starting ability.
Past the rarity leveling, for which epic is the maximum a follower can get which awards the additional ability, there is gear leveling. With your salvage yard, which I suggest you have, you will be getting follower upgrade items to upgrade their gear level. Along with the dwarven bunker /war mill, should you have it, which could supply a few more upgrades, you can start gearing up your followers in two specific slots only. A weapon slot and an armor slot. You can only apply gear to a level 100 follower regardless of quality. Currently the max item level any follower can be is 655.
So just because your follower has reached level 100 does not mean their leveling is over. You will need to keep working on them until they are max rarity and max item level.
3) Gearing Your Follower:
The salvage yard and the dwarven bunker / war mill are the only two ways, outside of the occasional mission, to get gear for your followers. I suggest everyone have a salvage yard. You can use a bunker / mill as well if you wish to speed things up but that is entirely up to you as there are other buildings in the same slot size which are options that many like whereas there are very few decent choices for small slots making it so that putting the salvage yard in one of the small slots goes without saying.
I suggest when gearing followers you do not funnel all gear into one follower because you will start to trigger missions based on your followers item level that you have no chance of ever completing, as mentioned above.
There are two types of gear upgrades you can get for your followers. A flat +3, +6 or +9 increase to armor or weapon and a base 615, 630 or 645 armor or weapon upgrade.
Now, this is all going to depend on how much space you have and are willing to invest as well as your luck getting these upgrade items, but here is my suggestion for leveling up your followers with gear.
Wait until you get the base pieces, as in the ones that say equip a 615 item level weapon. The reason for this is that if you invested two +3 weapon upgrades into a character they would now have a 606 weapon. If you later use the 615 weapon one on them it would give them a 615 weapon and forget you ever added the two +3 upgrades. So you would end up having a 615 weapon only whereas if you saved those two +3 pieces until you had the 615 applied and then used them you would have a 621 item level weapon.
If you are unlucky, like my druid who as 28 +3, +6 or +9 pieces and is stockpiling them, and no they do not stack so you need space to do this, you can of course give up and put them into one of the followers instead of waiting until you get the base piece. That is completely fine. Just do not use a base piece on a follower that already has some upgrades because it would be wasting upgrades, and there will be many followers you want to gear up that you can use it on later.
4) Max Gearing For Missions:
In the final step of leveling your follower, after it is epic and you have started to apply some gear to it, you will open new missions as you level up. When you have at least one follower at each 615, 630 and 645 item level it will open up new quests that require all followers to have a 615, 630 and 645 item level.
As that is the case I suggest you try to level your followers, at least as best you can, close to each other. It would be better for you to have three different 615 item level followers than to have funneled all that gear into one follower and that one follower be 645.
If you have three followers at 615, you will open up the 615 missions and might have a chance to finish those missions, should you have the right talents. If you have one follower at 645 you will unlock the 615, 630 and 645 missions and you will not be capable of doing any of them. Unless you think your luck is good enough to complete a 0% or 7% or 11% chance, at best, mission on a regular basis.
One might ask why you would need more than 3 followers maxed out and the answer is two fold. One is the more followers you have the more missions you can send them out on meaning more boxes, more gear, more rewards, etc. Two is that not all 645 epic followers are equal. They might all have two main abilities and three lesser traits but they might not have the ones you need.
It is entirely possible to have three followers completely maxed in item level and rarity and get a level 645 quest and still no real reasonable chance at success. That missions might require certain skills your 645 followers just do not have, so having a nice mix of followers high up will greatly increase your chances at success. So yeah, you need all your characters up high, not just one or three.
The Big Mission:
If you are like me the most important missions will be the raid missions. The raid missions offer you raid quality gear equal to one level higher than your current raid progression. This means that if you have never done a raid, as is where we all are right this moment until the new raids are out, if you get a raid mission it will offer you a piece of random 655 gear. Once the raids are out if you finish normal your raid quest can offer you one piece of 670 heroic raid gear. If you finish heroic the raid mission will offer you one piece of 685 mythic gear. And last but not least, if you finish mythic the raid mission will give you one piece of mythic gear and a nice little chunk of gold.
These missions are rumored to have a two and a half week cooldown between when they will appear, so you can not really gear up this way but even if you only get one piece of raid gear equal to one level higher than that character has ever raided every two and a half weeks, that is nothing to sneeze at, and is even something that could be huge for an alt.
As these are the hardest missions to complete you want to build your follower team around completing them. Not only so you can get to a 100% completion rate on them but so you can basically do every other mission that might pop up with the same all star cast of followers.
1) Preparing For The Big Mission:
There are 4 different raid quests. These 4 quests are the exact same no matter which one you are going for, the 655 item one, the 670 item level one, the 685 item level one or the 685 item level plus gold one. So you basically need to build a team to handle each of the four of these to assure you have the right team to get to a 100% completion rate, or as close to it as possible.
Unlike a lot of the missions you might be used to seeing, these missions are not as simple to set up the right team to counter them. You will need to be able to counter 6 abilities. Having the appropriate traits for the team make up won't hurt either, even more so if you happen to be missing one of the 6 ability counters you need.
This is why I said you want to keep leveling all your followers past 100. Not only will they all need to be over 645 item level but they need to be epic. Not a suggestion, they really do need to be epic. Sure you can get by with less if you are lucky, but if you want to get to that 100% chance to complete it, they absolutely need to be epic.
When a follower is epic they get a second random ability. The name of the ability is of no real consequence, but what it counters is. That is how we refer to things here. If I mentioned a follower has the Massive Strike ability that does not mean he has it, that means he has the counter for it.
2) Knowing The Counters:
There are nine different abilities you will run into and across the four raid missions you will encounter you will need to be able to counter every one of them in one or the other. The logic behind the counters is rather simple really. For example a blood DK follower might have the bone shield ability which would naturally counter the massive strike ability. But remember, even if Delvar, for alliance, comes with the massive strike counter, once he reaches epic he will get another counter. It could be anything really, as the system is random. So I can not suggest him specifically should you run into something with massive strike and danger zones. Maybe my Devlar might be perfect because my second ability counters danger zones, but yours might not have that same second ability.
So when picking your team do not pick by the name of the character because you like them. Do not pick based on the class of the character because you think a priest might be good for the fight. Do not pick by the spec of the character because you think a tank might be perfect for it. Pick based on what abilities that character can counter. It is entirely possible to find yourself with a hunter from the inn that just so happens to have the counters for massive strike and wild aggression, something you might think would be more natural for a tank to have.
Do not let judgement on the followers cloud your vision. The best follower for the job is the one that counters exactly what you need to counter. Who or what the character is otherwise is meaningless. Unless it is Nat Pagle, because he is awesome and can solo all the raid quests (disclaimer: just kidding if you didn't notice that).
Danger Zones: (DZ) An ability that effects a target area and must be avoided or escaped.
Deadly Minions: (DM) An enemy with powerful allies that should be neutralized.
Group Damage: (GD) An ability that deals damage to multiple party members.
Magic Debuff: (MD) A dangerous harmful effect that should be dispelled.
Massive Strike: (MaS) An ability that deals massive damage.
Minion Swarms: (MiS) An enemy with many allies. Susceptible to area of effect damage.
Powerful Spell: (PS) A dangerous spell that must be interrupted.
Timed Battle: (TB) An enemy that must be dealt with quickly.
Wild Aggression: (WA) An unpredictable enemy whose aggression should be controlled.
3) Building Your Team:
Once again I will note, I can not give you names because the abilities past the preset on a few are random. I will only tell you what you need to counter. Whichever follower you have that can counter those abilities is the best to use.
Note: It does not seem to matter where your characters are placed in the group, as long as all the abilities are countered you can reach 100%. For example, if the first guy you put in counters something from the first enemy and the third enemy it is just fine.
Quest 1:
Enemy One: (WA) (DM)
Enemy Two: (MaS) (TB)
Enemy Three: (DZ) (PS)
Bonus Trait: Swamp
Quest 2:
Enemy One: (WA) (GD)
Enemy Two: (GD) (DZ)
Enemy Three: (MiS) (MD)
Bonus Trait: Gronslayer
Quest 3:
Enemy One: (MaS) (TB)
Enemy Two: (MiS) (MD)
Enemy Three: (DM) (TB)
Bonus Trait: Ogreslayer
Quest 4:
Enemy One: (WA) (DM)
Enemy Two: (DZ) (PS)
Enemy Three: (DM) (TB)
Bonus Trait: Plains
Note: You can use the supreme manual of dance to add a trait to any single character which would add the dancer trait that counters danger zones. Be aware you will also lose something random in the process, even if the item does not suggest that.
The idea is to get enough followers with the appropriate skills to be able to match all the possible combinations. There will be a little luck involved as the second counter is always random so it is quite possible that you will need an inn to recruit people and level up many followers to epic to find the perfect team.
In theory the absolute worse case, should you find all counters exactly as they are listed, is you will need 12 followers maxed out in both gear and rarity. While that does not sound hard, getting the perfect abilities might prove to be so.
It is true that you can lower that number considerably. For example, as you might have noticed, every fight that requires (WA) also needs a counter for (DZ) so if you happen to have someone with both abilities you can lower that required number of followers you would need to have maxed out to 10.
Being I am just writing this up now I have not delved into what would be the perfect set up to look for in terms of the minimum number of followers needed to do this. But even at 10 or 12 it should not be too hard to get all those characters to epic and at or above a 645 item level, even if it will require a bit of time to do so.
Even if you can only match 5 of the 6, which is much more likely early on unless you get perfectly lucky with abilities, you can still push your chances at success well over the 90% mark with traits. If you are capable of matching the bonus trait you will push your completion rate up. Also, depending on the members of your group, for example, like if you have a dwarf and another person has the trait that increases success rates when grouped with a dwarf it will help. Having a follower with high stamina which increases success rates on missions over 7 hours, as these are, will also prove helpful. So even with only 5 abilities it is entirely possible to still get a completion rate well over 90% thanks to traits. Of the one of these I have done so far I only had 5 abilities but thanks to traits I had a 93% success rate and won myself a piece of gear from the highmaul raid before it even came out.
The Ultimate Follower Mission Garrison Build:
For my alts that I rarely play but might consider using later down the line, so I might like for them to have a few decent pieces of gear, I have devised a plan of attack to make sure that my followers are up to the task of completing missions with maximum efficiency. This will allow those alts to get at least one piece of normal mode raid gear every couple of weeks. Not to shabby if you ask me for a character that I do not intend to really leave the garrison with much after it hits max level.
1) Large Buildings:
Slot 1:
Barracks: The reason for keeping that starting barracks is for two things. First is that at level 1 it opens patrol missions, which will help level followers and often are shorter missions which means you can send them out more often meaning more chances at getting salvage.
Once the barracks reaches level 3 it will allow you to keep 25 active followers instead of 20 which can be both a quality of life thing and make it easier to keep enough followers on hand to do each and every possible raid mission that pops up.
Slot 2:
Dwarven Bunker / War Mill: The reason for this building, like the barracks, is two fold. At level 3 the dwarven bunker will give you one seal of tempered fate which allows you an extra roll on gear. For an alt that you rarely get into a raid, and play less often, it would be easy to forget to pick up your free roll coins, this assures you get some extra rolls even if you forget.
The main reason for the bunker / mill however is for your followers. Work orders have a chance to give follower gear upgrades. You will need a nice selection of 645+ followers if you want to assure you are going to finish those raid missions so having a way to gear them up faster is, without a doubt, a good thing.
2) Medium Buildings:
Slot 1:
Inn: At level 2 of the inn you can start recruiting followers and this is huge. You will be leveling followers like crazy to try and find the best team to get those missions done, this means you need to luck into them having the right abilities for it. You will at least be able to start by looking for which one ability they will have for sure which is a start. After they level up you will just hope and pray that their second ability is what you want. For example if you can really use someone that counters (MS) and (DZ) you can choose to search for recruits with (MS) and keep leveling them to epic until you get lucky enough to get one that procs (DZ) as its second ability. Sure it could take a while, but for an alt, all they have is time.
The level three inn also opens up treasure missions which will be a perfect thing to do while waiting for your new raid mission to pop up. You will have, with this set up, a massive collection of well geared followers, might as well put them to work on treasure missions so they can make you some gold while you wait for the next raid mission to appear.
Slot 2:
Trading Post: A trading post is a great way to generate some garrison resources and being you will need resources for bunker / mill work orders this works as a nice counter point. Not to mention if this is an alt just farming up some gear in case you ever play them that would mean you most likely have a main, or mains, to funnel them anything they would ever need for their work orders.
3) Small Buildings:
Slot 1:
Salvage Yard: There are no ifs, ands, or buts about the salvage yard here. Every character should have one because it is great for followers so of course a follower mission alt will have to have it. If there was ever one building that you could call a no brain needed decision, this is it. Once you reach level 2 you can start getting follower upgrade items from the salvage yard and that is when this building really starts to work.
At level 3 your garrison missions will start giving you big crates of salvage and in those, aside from the follower item we are already seeking, you have a chance to get 665 BoE items which are either good to sell, use, or send to another alt that might need it.
Slot 2 and 3:
Whatever you want can go here. There really are no other great follower centric buildings that can be put into these spots. Maybe a storehouse for quick access to your bank, where you might have upgrade items stored to save some bag space, could be a good thing. But that is entirely up to you. There are no really solid must have choices here.
There you have it, a garrison that is built with the sole intention of building up your followers gear level so they could in turn get your alt gear so they can easily play catch up if you ever decide to play them. This build might also work suitably for someone that has zero intention of ever raiding as it would be the only way they will ever be able to get raid gear.
Hope my babbling helped you some, good luck on your missions.
Leveling Your Followers:
The more active you are the more missions you can do, it really is as simple as that. Even if your followers fail at their missions they will receive some experience, but of course you want to try to succeed when doing thenm as success offers more experience and sometimes great rewards.
1) Available Missions:
What missions you have available at your garrison depends on what level followers you have. Missions offered to you are usually equal to the level of your characters, which in some cases can cause problems leveling them. To avoid running into a series of missions with low success chances and or mostly missions which you can not do I suggest you keep a few low level followers active.
By keeping a few lower level followers active you will assure you have some lower level quests. For example, if you keep a level 92, a level 94 and a level 98 active when your others are all at level 100 you will most likely see a selection of 92, 94, 98 and 100 missions available for you at your mission table.
Why do we want lower level missions you might ask. The answer is simple. We want them because they are more likely to have a higher success rate. This means more salvage boxes if you have a salvage yard, which you should have, and more rewards, be it gold, experience, garrison supplies, gear, what have you. They are also usually shorter meaning you can do more missions with your time.
It is also worth noting that even if you only have one level 100 you will start getting 100 missions that require 3 followers, which of course you will not be capable of doing with any reasonable rate of success. This extends to when you start to gear followers. As soon as you reach 615 on one follower you will start getting missions that require three 615 followers. Same goes for 630 and 645. So I can not stress enough that when you start to gear your followers, as inviting as it might seem to pile all those upgrades into one so they can get to a high item level, do not do that, or you will be flooded with a bunch of missions for high item level followers and only have 1 follower capable of doing them. More on this gear leveling later. Slow and steady wins the race in this case.
2) Leveling Past 100:
You can level your characters past 100. There are rarity levels of uncommon, rare and epic. Every follower can become an epic and you should keep doing as many missions as possible once you reach level 100 until you get every follower to epic.
Once a follower is epic it will gain an additional main ability. This ability is completely random, so my epic of Delvar might be different, much different, from your epic Delvar. This is also why during this post I will speak about abilities of your followers, not specific followers. Because which followers have which ability is random past their preset starting ability.
Past the rarity leveling, for which epic is the maximum a follower can get which awards the additional ability, there is gear leveling. With your salvage yard, which I suggest you have, you will be getting follower upgrade items to upgrade their gear level. Along with the dwarven bunker /war mill, should you have it, which could supply a few more upgrades, you can start gearing up your followers in two specific slots only. A weapon slot and an armor slot. You can only apply gear to a level 100 follower regardless of quality. Currently the max item level any follower can be is 655.
So just because your follower has reached level 100 does not mean their leveling is over. You will need to keep working on them until they are max rarity and max item level.
3) Gearing Your Follower:
The salvage yard and the dwarven bunker / war mill are the only two ways, outside of the occasional mission, to get gear for your followers. I suggest everyone have a salvage yard. You can use a bunker / mill as well if you wish to speed things up but that is entirely up to you as there are other buildings in the same slot size which are options that many like whereas there are very few decent choices for small slots making it so that putting the salvage yard in one of the small slots goes without saying.
I suggest when gearing followers you do not funnel all gear into one follower because you will start to trigger missions based on your followers item level that you have no chance of ever completing, as mentioned above.
There are two types of gear upgrades you can get for your followers. A flat +3, +6 or +9 increase to armor or weapon and a base 615, 630 or 645 armor or weapon upgrade.
Now, this is all going to depend on how much space you have and are willing to invest as well as your luck getting these upgrade items, but here is my suggestion for leveling up your followers with gear.
Wait until you get the base pieces, as in the ones that say equip a 615 item level weapon. The reason for this is that if you invested two +3 weapon upgrades into a character they would now have a 606 weapon. If you later use the 615 weapon one on them it would give them a 615 weapon and forget you ever added the two +3 upgrades. So you would end up having a 615 weapon only whereas if you saved those two +3 pieces until you had the 615 applied and then used them you would have a 621 item level weapon.
If you are unlucky, like my druid who as 28 +3, +6 or +9 pieces and is stockpiling them, and no they do not stack so you need space to do this, you can of course give up and put them into one of the followers instead of waiting until you get the base piece. That is completely fine. Just do not use a base piece on a follower that already has some upgrades because it would be wasting upgrades, and there will be many followers you want to gear up that you can use it on later.
4) Max Gearing For Missions:
In the final step of leveling your follower, after it is epic and you have started to apply some gear to it, you will open new missions as you level up. When you have at least one follower at each 615, 630 and 645 item level it will open up new quests that require all followers to have a 615, 630 and 645 item level.
As that is the case I suggest you try to level your followers, at least as best you can, close to each other. It would be better for you to have three different 615 item level followers than to have funneled all that gear into one follower and that one follower be 645.
If you have three followers at 615, you will open up the 615 missions and might have a chance to finish those missions, should you have the right talents. If you have one follower at 645 you will unlock the 615, 630 and 645 missions and you will not be capable of doing any of them. Unless you think your luck is good enough to complete a 0% or 7% or 11% chance, at best, mission on a regular basis.
One might ask why you would need more than 3 followers maxed out and the answer is two fold. One is the more followers you have the more missions you can send them out on meaning more boxes, more gear, more rewards, etc. Two is that not all 645 epic followers are equal. They might all have two main abilities and three lesser traits but they might not have the ones you need.
It is entirely possible to have three followers completely maxed in item level and rarity and get a level 645 quest and still no real reasonable chance at success. That missions might require certain skills your 645 followers just do not have, so having a nice mix of followers high up will greatly increase your chances at success. So yeah, you need all your characters up high, not just one or three.
The Big Mission:
If you are like me the most important missions will be the raid missions. The raid missions offer you raid quality gear equal to one level higher than your current raid progression. This means that if you have never done a raid, as is where we all are right this moment until the new raids are out, if you get a raid mission it will offer you a piece of random 655 gear. Once the raids are out if you finish normal your raid quest can offer you one piece of 670 heroic raid gear. If you finish heroic the raid mission will offer you one piece of 685 mythic gear. And last but not least, if you finish mythic the raid mission will give you one piece of mythic gear and a nice little chunk of gold.
These missions are rumored to have a two and a half week cooldown between when they will appear, so you can not really gear up this way but even if you only get one piece of raid gear equal to one level higher than that character has ever raided every two and a half weeks, that is nothing to sneeze at, and is even something that could be huge for an alt.
As these are the hardest missions to complete you want to build your follower team around completing them. Not only so you can get to a 100% completion rate on them but so you can basically do every other mission that might pop up with the same all star cast of followers.
1) Preparing For The Big Mission:
There are 4 different raid quests. These 4 quests are the exact same no matter which one you are going for, the 655 item one, the 670 item level one, the 685 item level one or the 685 item level plus gold one. So you basically need to build a team to handle each of the four of these to assure you have the right team to get to a 100% completion rate, or as close to it as possible.
Unlike a lot of the missions you might be used to seeing, these missions are not as simple to set up the right team to counter them. You will need to be able to counter 6 abilities. Having the appropriate traits for the team make up won't hurt either, even more so if you happen to be missing one of the 6 ability counters you need.
This is why I said you want to keep leveling all your followers past 100. Not only will they all need to be over 645 item level but they need to be epic. Not a suggestion, they really do need to be epic. Sure you can get by with less if you are lucky, but if you want to get to that 100% chance to complete it, they absolutely need to be epic.
When a follower is epic they get a second random ability. The name of the ability is of no real consequence, but what it counters is. That is how we refer to things here. If I mentioned a follower has the Massive Strike ability that does not mean he has it, that means he has the counter for it.
2) Knowing The Counters:
There are nine different abilities you will run into and across the four raid missions you will encounter you will need to be able to counter every one of them in one or the other. The logic behind the counters is rather simple really. For example a blood DK follower might have the bone shield ability which would naturally counter the massive strike ability. But remember, even if Delvar, for alliance, comes with the massive strike counter, once he reaches epic he will get another counter. It could be anything really, as the system is random. So I can not suggest him specifically should you run into something with massive strike and danger zones. Maybe my Devlar might be perfect because my second ability counters danger zones, but yours might not have that same second ability.
So when picking your team do not pick by the name of the character because you like them. Do not pick based on the class of the character because you think a priest might be good for the fight. Do not pick by the spec of the character because you think a tank might be perfect for it. Pick based on what abilities that character can counter. It is entirely possible to find yourself with a hunter from the inn that just so happens to have the counters for massive strike and wild aggression, something you might think would be more natural for a tank to have.
Do not let judgement on the followers cloud your vision. The best follower for the job is the one that counters exactly what you need to counter. Who or what the character is otherwise is meaningless. Unless it is Nat Pagle, because he is awesome and can solo all the raid quests (disclaimer: just kidding if you didn't notice that).
Danger Zones: (DZ) An ability that effects a target area and must be avoided or escaped.
Deadly Minions: (DM) An enemy with powerful allies that should be neutralized.
Group Damage: (GD) An ability that deals damage to multiple party members.
Magic Debuff: (MD) A dangerous harmful effect that should be dispelled.
Massive Strike: (MaS) An ability that deals massive damage.
Minion Swarms: (MiS) An enemy with many allies. Susceptible to area of effect damage.
Powerful Spell: (PS) A dangerous spell that must be interrupted.
Timed Battle: (TB) An enemy that must be dealt with quickly.
Wild Aggression: (WA) An unpredictable enemy whose aggression should be controlled.
3) Building Your Team:
Once again I will note, I can not give you names because the abilities past the preset on a few are random. I will only tell you what you need to counter. Whichever follower you have that can counter those abilities is the best to use.
Note: It does not seem to matter where your characters are placed in the group, as long as all the abilities are countered you can reach 100%. For example, if the first guy you put in counters something from the first enemy and the third enemy it is just fine.
Quest 1:
Enemy One: (WA) (DM)
Enemy Two: (MaS) (TB)
Enemy Three: (DZ) (PS)
Bonus Trait: Swamp
Quest 2:
Enemy One: (WA) (GD)
Enemy Two: (GD) (DZ)
Enemy Three: (MiS) (MD)
Bonus Trait: Gronslayer
Quest 3:
Enemy One: (MaS) (TB)
Enemy Two: (MiS) (MD)
Enemy Three: (DM) (TB)
Bonus Trait: Ogreslayer
Quest 4:
Enemy One: (WA) (DM)
Enemy Two: (DZ) (PS)
Enemy Three: (DM) (TB)
Bonus Trait: Plains
Note: You can use the supreme manual of dance to add a trait to any single character which would add the dancer trait that counters danger zones. Be aware you will also lose something random in the process, even if the item does not suggest that.
The idea is to get enough followers with the appropriate skills to be able to match all the possible combinations. There will be a little luck involved as the second counter is always random so it is quite possible that you will need an inn to recruit people and level up many followers to epic to find the perfect team.
In theory the absolute worse case, should you find all counters exactly as they are listed, is you will need 12 followers maxed out in both gear and rarity. While that does not sound hard, getting the perfect abilities might prove to be so.
It is true that you can lower that number considerably. For example, as you might have noticed, every fight that requires (WA) also needs a counter for (DZ) so if you happen to have someone with both abilities you can lower that required number of followers you would need to have maxed out to 10.
Being I am just writing this up now I have not delved into what would be the perfect set up to look for in terms of the minimum number of followers needed to do this. But even at 10 or 12 it should not be too hard to get all those characters to epic and at or above a 645 item level, even if it will require a bit of time to do so.
Even if you can only match 5 of the 6, which is much more likely early on unless you get perfectly lucky with abilities, you can still push your chances at success well over the 90% mark with traits. If you are capable of matching the bonus trait you will push your completion rate up. Also, depending on the members of your group, for example, like if you have a dwarf and another person has the trait that increases success rates when grouped with a dwarf it will help. Having a follower with high stamina which increases success rates on missions over 7 hours, as these are, will also prove helpful. So even with only 5 abilities it is entirely possible to still get a completion rate well over 90% thanks to traits. Of the one of these I have done so far I only had 5 abilities but thanks to traits I had a 93% success rate and won myself a piece of gear from the highmaul raid before it even came out.
The Ultimate Follower Mission Garrison Build:
For my alts that I rarely play but might consider using later down the line, so I might like for them to have a few decent pieces of gear, I have devised a plan of attack to make sure that my followers are up to the task of completing missions with maximum efficiency. This will allow those alts to get at least one piece of normal mode raid gear every couple of weeks. Not to shabby if you ask me for a character that I do not intend to really leave the garrison with much after it hits max level.
1) Large Buildings:
Slot 1:
Barracks: The reason for keeping that starting barracks is for two things. First is that at level 1 it opens patrol missions, which will help level followers and often are shorter missions which means you can send them out more often meaning more chances at getting salvage.
Once the barracks reaches level 3 it will allow you to keep 25 active followers instead of 20 which can be both a quality of life thing and make it easier to keep enough followers on hand to do each and every possible raid mission that pops up.
Slot 2:
Dwarven Bunker / War Mill: The reason for this building, like the barracks, is two fold. At level 3 the dwarven bunker will give you one seal of tempered fate which allows you an extra roll on gear. For an alt that you rarely get into a raid, and play less often, it would be easy to forget to pick up your free roll coins, this assures you get some extra rolls even if you forget.
The main reason for the bunker / mill however is for your followers. Work orders have a chance to give follower gear upgrades. You will need a nice selection of 645+ followers if you want to assure you are going to finish those raid missions so having a way to gear them up faster is, without a doubt, a good thing.
2) Medium Buildings:
Slot 1:
Inn: At level 2 of the inn you can start recruiting followers and this is huge. You will be leveling followers like crazy to try and find the best team to get those missions done, this means you need to luck into them having the right abilities for it. You will at least be able to start by looking for which one ability they will have for sure which is a start. After they level up you will just hope and pray that their second ability is what you want. For example if you can really use someone that counters (MS) and (DZ) you can choose to search for recruits with (MS) and keep leveling them to epic until you get lucky enough to get one that procs (DZ) as its second ability. Sure it could take a while, but for an alt, all they have is time.
The level three inn also opens up treasure missions which will be a perfect thing to do while waiting for your new raid mission to pop up. You will have, with this set up, a massive collection of well geared followers, might as well put them to work on treasure missions so they can make you some gold while you wait for the next raid mission to appear.
Slot 2:
Trading Post: A trading post is a great way to generate some garrison resources and being you will need resources for bunker / mill work orders this works as a nice counter point. Not to mention if this is an alt just farming up some gear in case you ever play them that would mean you most likely have a main, or mains, to funnel them anything they would ever need for their work orders.
3) Small Buildings:
Slot 1:
Salvage Yard: There are no ifs, ands, or buts about the salvage yard here. Every character should have one because it is great for followers so of course a follower mission alt will have to have it. If there was ever one building that you could call a no brain needed decision, this is it. Once you reach level 2 you can start getting follower upgrade items from the salvage yard and that is when this building really starts to work.
At level 3 your garrison missions will start giving you big crates of salvage and in those, aside from the follower item we are already seeking, you have a chance to get 665 BoE items which are either good to sell, use, or send to another alt that might need it.
Slot 2 and 3:
Whatever you want can go here. There really are no other great follower centric buildings that can be put into these spots. Maybe a storehouse for quick access to your bank, where you might have upgrade items stored to save some bag space, could be a good thing. But that is entirely up to you. There are no really solid must have choices here.
There you have it, a garrison that is built with the sole intention of building up your followers gear level so they could in turn get your alt gear so they can easily play catch up if you ever decide to play them. This build might also work suitably for someone that has zero intention of ever raiding as it would be the only way they will ever be able to get raid gear.
Hope my babbling helped you some, good luck on your missions.
Monday, December 1, 2014
Monday Random Thoughts
- I have two more level 100 characters.
- First was ranged DPS, second melee DPS, third tank and forth healer.
- I can stop here if I wanted to.
- I won't.
- But there is no rush on anything else really.
- I can fill each role now and that is always my intention.
- I actually could have stopped at three being my druid can tank and heal.
- My druid was third to hit 100.
- I was 610 item level the second I hit 100 which is pretty nice.
- Went into proving grounds and had a little issue being druid self heals and defensive cooldowns seem quite lacking and the healer it gives you as a tank, in a word, sucks.
- Stop DPSing you moron, heal me once in a blue moon.
- After failing twice because I was not aggressively using cooldowns I changed my tactic to play as if I was with a completely worthless healer and it worked.
- I guess that is because I was with a completely worthless healer.
- I thought maybe it was just the healer in the proving grounds that made me feel like a sponge just sucking up the damage but once I did a dungeon, with a pocket healer for honest feedback, it turns out that is all druids are.
- He said he has healed many druids so far and that they are, by far, the hardest class to heal.
- Glad it is not just me.
- So maybe it was not the proving grounds healer.
- Bears just take insane damage.
- And what happened to my FR?
- I used to be able to heal myself for a respectable amount, now I could use a bandage from two expansions ago and probably gain more health than FR gives me.
- Maybe I need to level another tank because druid tanks, even more so in the first tier while healers are still gearing up, are not going to cut it.
- They can of course, but they feel weak.
- My first heroic dungeon, grimrail depot of course.
- One shot the second boss, but it was a guild group so can not say much about that.
- I still say that is the hardest boss of all the dungeons.
- But would you believe I actually one shot it this weekend with a pug once too.
- Amazing, right?
- The forth character I leveled to 100 was my shaman.
- Leveled as DPS of course and boy on boy are shaman squishy even if they wear mail.
- They need to be able to take a hit better, seriously.
- I was blowing things up and doing great numbers, better than my hunter did while leveling, but if a mob touched me a crumbled instantly into a ball and died.
- After a few levels of sneeze and I die I ditched my offhand and crafted myself a 630 shield, because you can equip them at 91, and it was smooth sailing from that point on.
- Amazing how much difference a strong shield can make.
- Sure I would still go down pretty fast if I did not behave myself, but now I was able to take two or three hits before I was in fear for my life instead of just one.
- As soon as I put on that shield I was an unstoppable killing machine.
- Sadly, unlike my druid that was 610 the second they hit 100 by shaman was only 606, but it is close.
- My rogue is still exactly where he was when he hit 100, 604.
- He was leveled to skin, I am in no rush to gear him, or even play him.
- But I decided to try the proving grounds on my rogue after hearing someone in guild complaining they can not get silver on their rogue.
- I suck at my rogue, we all know that.
- So I was afraid to even try thinking I would fail.
- If someone who is a main rogue and has been for many many years can not get silver, what am I going to do.
- I figured I know what their problem is.
- The AoE packs.
- Rogue has dreadful AoE.
- I blew through gold as soon as hit 100 on my hunter, never even close to in danger or missing it and never even needing to think of it.
- I was 25 item levels lower than the lowest it scale when I got gold on my hunter.
- So I figured proving grounds was a complete joke.
- Hearing multiple people say that it was impossible had me thinking about it.
- Maybe it was just so easy because a hunter is my main and I have been playing so long.
- Maybe it is actually harder than I made it out to be.
- Enter the rogue.
- Bronze was easy enough.
- Silver came and the only thing I was worried about was the AoE packs.
- I think it was round 6 when I found myself in a bit of trouble, a mistake on my own part made it a lot closer than I wanted it to be.
- I only had 5 seconds left at the end of that round.
- Now I was starting to worry, maybe those people were right, maybe it is harder than I was giving it credit for.
- Nah, it is really that easy.
- The only reason it was that close was because I made a mistake myself.
- Last round I made a mistake, two actually.
- Managed to get myself frozen in amber, not once but twice.
- Noob right?
- I am still kicking myself over that.
- I hate making stupid mistakes like that, even more so when I walked right into the damn thing.
- All this with the healer still up.
- So 12 seconds lost, all mobs still at full health, looking at that timer dwindling down.
- It starts to do the flashing thing with 3 mobs still up.
- I down all three with 3 seconds left still.
- Silver done, first try, are you kidding me.
- What exactly was hard about this?
- The only time I ever came close to missing the timer were the times I completely screwed up.
- The only difficulty in this was me overcoming my own stupidity.
- Everything was correctable error so even if I had failed I would go in the next time and not make the same mistake.
- Someone in guild said, "As much as you say you are bad on your rogue you are still a lot better than you give yourself credit for, I knew you would get silver."
- Maybe he is right.
- So when I hit 100 on my shaman I figured I would try it on my shaman.
- I've never done the DPS trail on my shaman because my shaman has not been a damage dealer since wrath really.
- And now I am not even enhancement, I am elemental for the sake of saving me having to collect another set of gear for a role I never play in raid anyway.
- I was able to quest in my healing gear as elemental and that was all that mattered to me.
- So I was in a spec of convenience, not one I actually ever really played or practiced on.
- This would be a much better test, would it not?
- Went into the proving grounds as soon as I hit 100 and laughed my way to silver.
- Seriously, not kidding.
- I was talking on voice chat and not even really paying attention to it at all.
- Sure, the caster movement stuff was annoying, I really want the ability to cast on the move back, but other than that my shaman never even came close to missing any round.
- On this character the AoE rounds were the easiest.
- A shaman can make quick work of AoE packs.
- I think I had over 20 seconds between waves more than a couple of times.
- Nope, I did not misjudge it, proving grounds is a complete and total joke.
- So why are there so many people having problems with it?
- And then it came to me.
- Damage dealer proving grounds is not about doing damage.
- People are not failing because they can not put out the damage needed.
- I asked a few guild mates that have been trying for hours each day and still failing where they were having their problem.
- Then all the pieces came together like a puzzle in my mind.
- Blizzard, you sneaky bastards.
- The damage dealer proving grounds was never about DPS, it was about situational awareness.
- I didn't get silver so easily on my rogue and shaman because I was "good" at them.
- I got silver so easily because I already knew what to do.
- That is why it was easy for them.
- I knew where to stand, who to target first, what to interrupt, how to switch targets, how to use where I stand to my advantage.
- All the little things anyone that ever raided takes for granted.
- All those people I talked to, the ones that have been trying for days, even weeks, to get silver and keep failing are the people that were never a part of my raid team.
- Part of the reason they were never a part of my raid team is they have horrible situational awareness.
- They die to stupid all the time.
- They can not handle multiple tacks like doing damage and interrupting.
- They were always standing in the wrong place, not switching targets as needed, not doing all the little things.
- See, that is why it was easy on my rogue and shaman.
- I already knew what to do and the proving ground was never about being a DPS race so the fact I do less DPS on them meant nothing.
- And as my rogue proved, there is even room for error and you can still succeed at it.
- As long as you know what to do mechanics wise, as long as you can multitask, as long as you knew where to stand.
- Now, the question is this, do I tell these people that are having problems how to beat the rounds they are having problems with or do I let them figure it out on their own so they can learn?
- It is an interesting question.
- If I tell them how to do it they can get it done and never need to worry about it.
- If I don't tell them, they might actually get better.
- And maybe some day they might be more than back up to the back ups when it comes to raiding.
- Because maybe they will actually learn something from the proving grounds.
- Sneaky blizzard, sneaky.
- Make a damage dealing proving ground not about doing damage and teaching them how to actually play better.
- I approve.
- Can't believe it took me that long to actually realize that.
- I am usually better at picking up on stuff like that.
- Still think the DPS portion of it could still be stepped up a bit however.
- But I understand why it isn't.
- Someone in guild asked when we would start raiding.
- I said, when the raid comes out next week. (meaning tomorrow)
- Someone else asked, can I come?
- How I dread people asking that.
- After so many months of SoO where we would take anyone that wanted to come along it is going to be hard to tell these people no without feeling like I am insulting them.
- The person that asked that first, and there were a few, was not even a high enough item level to get into a heroic dungeon yet and had no proving grounds silver.
- How do you even have the balls to ask to come to a raid on opening day for the raid when you can not even get into a dungeon?
- Seriously, how do you even consider to ask that?
- I said, as polite as I could, "try getting into some dungeons and gearing up first, raids are higher than dungeons, start there."
- Do people really think they can just show up and get a raid spot?
- I do not care how desperate I am for people I am not going to take someone like that.
- My theory is if you have to ask "can I come" you are probably not ready to raid.
- Someone that is ready to raid knows they are are ready to raid.
- Someone who is ready for day one raiding would say they are ready to raid and hope they get an invite, not ask if they can come.
- Speaking of ready to raid, did you get the ready to raid achievement in skyreach yet?
- When you do it gives you a buff that makes you dance for 1 hour.
- Don't know why but I found that really funny.
- Actually I wonder why there is an achievement for doing the fight the right way.
- Anyone can do it if they do it right, what type of achievement is that?
- The funniest achievement, in that do it right concept, is the one from the last boss in everbloom.
- Step on all the flowers, break out your helpers, get an achievement.
- More to it than that of course, but that is the idea.
- So it is one of those, do the fight right the way it was intended to be done and get the achievement.
- It should be the other way around.
- Something like finish the fight with all helpers dead after allowing all flowers to spawn.
- Now that would be an achievement.
- It would be hard, very hard and maybe near impossible at this current gear level, but that would be a real achievement.
- Doing the fight as it was intended to be done isn't really an achievement.
- I wish they would name one of those silly achievements [You're Doing It Right] - Follow the mechanics of the fight and do it the way it was intended to be done.
- Speaking of achievements, need one more daily for my inn to get the achievement so I can buy the level three inn.
- Have it in my quest log, but when I queue directly for it and see a 50 minute wait I give up instantly.
- Sorry, I refuse to wait 50 minutes for what could very well end up being a wipe fest.
- They need to add better rewards to the random dungeon finder if they want people to continue doing them.
- But the bags at the end with gold are helpful.
- Not just for gold, but for the achievement to get the storehouse level 3 pattern opened.
- You need to loot 10,000 on draenor.
- Was reading on the forums people crying about this saying it would be impossible.
- Someone said it would take them 4 years to get that much.
- I have to wonder, what the hell they do with their time online?
- I am already over 7,500 looted on draenor and still have 16 more 90s to level to 100.
- Seriously, you loot a lot of gold while leveling and those dungeon bags count toward it, the dungeon bosses count for it, the LFR boss bags will surely count for it, the profession bags like the one from jewelcrafting count for it, the quests bags from the inn count toward it, the loot all around the world you pick up count for it.
- I could go on and on.
- I leveled only 4 characters so far, made no efforts to farm gold for the achievement and I am 3/4 of the way there.
- If it takes someone 4 years to get this achievement they are just standing in their garrison doing nothing.
- Do something, loot that something, get achievement.
- If you really are a home body and do not plan on going out or doing anything like dungeons I'll give you the quickest way to get there being super lazy.
- Build a gem boutique, upgrade it to level 2, put a worker in there, do the daily.
- With an average of 200 gold per bag from the daily just doing that and that alone and nothing else you will get the 10,000 looted in less than 2 months.
- And you never need to leave your garrison.
- The materials needed are all there too.
- So please, people, stop complaining that this achievement will be impossible.
- I'd be willing to bet there are thousands with it already and I know in another week I will probably be there too at the rate I am going.
- I love to complain, but I would like to think I complain for a reason.
- Complaining that you need to play the game to get an achievement in game as simple as looting gold is going way to far.
- Not even I would complain about that.
- Now if it were loot 1,000,000 gold, I would join you, because that would be insane.
- I am not sure what is more amazing, people selling pets that are guaranteed drops for 10K on the auction house or people buying them.
- It is a guaranteed drop, everyone gets one, I never even considered selling it.
- Maybe I am jealous because I did not realize how a fool and their money will soon be parted so I never took advantage of the uninformed.
- I should have known better.
- But I wonder how that person that paid 10K for it will feel when they are out questing, see a rare, kill it, and it drops the pet.
- I can picture nelson from the simpsons pointing at them saying "ha ha".
- It is like the ore selling for 10K a stack those first few days. Now people are selling them 200G a stack or less on my server.
- Most people I know are already saying screw the mine and not doing it every day any more.
- Wow, how that dried up fast.
- I've seen markets crash before and I knew this market would crash because I was on beta and saw it happen there already, but from 10K to 200G nearly over night is really insane.
- I see people trying to sell the garn mount in trade all the time.
- They were asking like 50K or more at first.
- Dude, it is a 100% drop, sure only one person gets it each kill, but it is 100%.
- In a few months when we are all in heroic raid gear we can go smack down the thing for fun and get one for everyone in a small group.
- It is not even worth 5K.
- Just because you got it early does not change the idea of it.
- It is a 1K mount at most and that is only to save me the trip to frostfire.
- I ran into Nak in nagrand yesterday.
- Got me a new clefhoof mount.
- That thing is insanely huge.
- If you like big mounts or are a troll that loves standing on mailboxes and quest givers, this is the mount for you.
- It is a 100% chance to drop to, for everyone that tagged it.
- There are lots of 100% drop chance mounts.
- This one is bound however and everyone gets one, so no need to ever kill it again.
- Was killing some things for goblin reputation pieces on my hunter when someone ran up to me and whispered, why did you not call it out.
- I said, call what out?
- They said, the rare.
- I said, because it will be dead before anyone can get here, why would I waste their time like that making them run here for nothing.
- I understand their reasoning, but I am just running around and if I see a rare, I kill it.
- I do not want to call it out and then wait for 15 minutes for everyone to get there.
- I will kill it and move along with what I am doing.
- The best I will do is say, "killing direhorn now" or something like that, but I am not going to call out and wait.
- Does that make me selfish?
- Maybe it does.
- I just fail to see why I should put my game time on hold to let someone from all the way across the zone get here to put a hit in on something that will respawn in 40 minutes anyway.
- I would call out something like Nak, the rare spawn that drops a highly sought after mount, sure, but not for something like direhorn.
- I will not now, or ever, call out some random regular spawning mob on any character that can easily solo it and then wait for everyone to get there.
- Call me selfish if you must.
- But as the saying goes, time is money friend, and each second I wait for people to get there, another rare could get killed that I miss out on.
- Nope, not going to miss out on effective game play time so someone can run from the other side of the map to put in one hit and then do nothing, effectively making the fight longer for me.
- That really is getting old too.
- People coming in, throwing in a few shots, and then going away to kill other stuff.
- If you put in a shot, do your fair share.
- But my biggest pet peeve right now with them are the adds people bring with them.
- Two things, one, don't pull adds, two, if you do pull adds, they are your adds, you kill them.
- I am tempted to make a macro that says that when people come diving in with 30 things in tow.
- Your adds, you kill them.
- A guild mate did the same thing pulling one of those level 100 elite clefhooves into a rare I was killing.
- Told him to get his hit in and then clean up his mess.
- It is amazing how so many people bring a pack of adds in, all tagged of course, and expect everyone else to deal with them.
- I don't know about you, but after so many years of playing, I have a fair sense of aggro ranges and unless I am caught somewhere, I can navigate around without pulling stuff most of the time.
- I thought everyone that played this game eventually picked up on aggro ranges.
- Like it was something you just learned without even trying to learn as you played.
- But then again, some people are just... blonde.
- That is the best way to put it.
- I actually found someone pulling mobs into a group, on purpose.
- This was no accidentally not paying attention to where they are running type of pull.
- Doing the daily a few guild mates and I were chain pulling and making a huge pack we were AoEing.
- There was this one shaman that kept tagging stuff and dragging it into the pack so we could kill it.
- Smart move in a way, get someone else to do your work, but still a jerk move.
- Kicker is that it was another alliance person.
- Dude, ask and you can join our group.
- We don't bite.
- Well, except for the one worgen, can't vouch for him.
- It would be faster than doing it the way you are doing it and you would not get the reputation of being lame like you are now from doing something like that.
- Need to find a cool farming sport of council reputation.
- Done with the goblins and will be done with the birds soon.
- Considered joining one of the reputation farm groups in group finder but I take a little pride in doing stuff like that on my own.
- Occasionally I will bring along one or two people that want to tag along, but I like doing the work myself.
- Using a random farm group, while smart and effective, feels sort of like cheating to me.
- Maybe if I get bored or frustrated or want the rep on an alt I would cheat just to get it done but at the moment I am enjoying the grind.
- I dig that stuff.
- I only do the grind on one character however.
- I never was one to max reputation with grinds on multiple characters.
- If it were something simple like dailies or dungeon grinding I would, but mob grinding, that is for my main only.
- Helps that it is also, in my opinion, easiest to do that stuff on a hunter.
- Finished off all the stables quests and wondering if I want to keep it for the 20% mounted speed boost now.
- While leveling it I liked it because the mount training dailies gave garrison resources but now that they are all trained I am wondering what to do with it.
- I have all the achievements, love that armored frostwolf, really fits me, so no need to keep it otherwise.
- Still have not built a mage tower on any of my characters.
- Will need to if I want to get the achievement, and I do.
- How have garrison invasions been for you lately?
- Not seeing as many pop as I think I should.
- So many in my guild do their daily, well, daily, and still do not get it.
- I had one early this week, got a second one last night after 3 hours of grinding for bird rep.
- Now, at this stage, it is no big deal because I am there grinding for something, but once I have all the reputations I am not going to grind for three hours to trigger a weekly I should have anyway to begin with.
- Blizzard needs to fix that.
- Oh, and someone that was with me for most of those three hours, he did not get one.
- Only me.
- So it is not even sure that three hours grinding with get it.
- That is out of line for a weekly blizzard, really really out of line.
- In case you did not know, you can get gear from a silver box.
- One of my guild mates got one out of a silver box this week.
- And yes I am 100% certain of that.
- It was the first one he ever did and he only got silver, he has never done a gold, and he showed all us the 645 piece that dropped from his silver box.
- I guess it is just a rare drop in silver, but it is there.
- I got a follower mission for a piece of gear from highmaul.
- Of course I was excited about that.
- Was hoping for a sweet piece of gear with lots of stats on it.
- A chest, legs, you know, something major.
- I said, I think I would be happy with anything other than a ring or neck.
- I got a neck.
- It was a hard fought battle too.
- Needed all level 100 followers, of course, able to counter 6 different abilities and with a item level of 645+ each.
- I had exactly what was needed, not perfect but close enough with high item levels and 5 of the 6 things countered.
- Still exciting to get it finished, but a neck.
- A neck?
- How depressing can you get to finish a huge mission like that and get a neck.
- What to make it worse?
- I have to do some stat work to look into because my new 655 neck might not be an upgrade over my 636 heroic warforged one with a gem slot.
- The 636 one, outside of having a gem slot which is huge has my two best stats and the 655 only has one.
- I did not look into it too much yet but the +35 gem might be more than worth the item level upgrade a 655 would give me.
- Back to the day when item choice is more important than item level.
- Got a pair of 630 gloves with a gem slot yesterday in a random.
- I am wearing a pair of 636 gloves with the speed tertiary stat on them.
- The 630 gloves are better itemization and a gem slot.
- Basically, the 630 piece is better than the 636 piece.
- So once again item choice is more important than item level.
- This is going to be a very interesting expansion in terms of gearing.
- And the best item level is not going to mean the best geared.
- Did a run with a guild hunter and I was putting out 4K DPS more than him.
- He is currently 7 item levels higher than me.
- Asked how the hell was I putting out so much with a lesser weapon and a lesser item level.
- I explained it simply as "I have 4 gem slots, you have none, that is surely part of it".
- Yes folks, it really matters that much.
- I am hating MM however with these long cast time.
- But I do like it, it is nice to play the spec again, just those cast times are ouch.
- I am running with 3% haste and it makes me want to cry.
- When aimed shot gets to around 1.7 or 1.8 seconds, if it can ever get there normally, I think the rotation might feel more comfortable.
- My hunter is currently broken however and I hope blizzard fixes it soon.
- Every time I zone in somewhere I have to call my pet and then dismiss it before stampede will work.
- I am currently running with stampede in dungeons because bosses are usually 2 minutes or so and stampede is better for the burst on really short fights.
- Opinion only mind you, I am sure some theory crafter would be upset if I said that was a fact.
- But I like it better on short fights, that is a fact.
- I also found another bug that I am sure world first guild hunters are going to be abusing the hell out of.
- I can have a pet out and keep the +30% damage buff of lone wolf.
- So that means a fair bit of extra damage for me.
- And no way in hell am I using that in dungeons.
- The last thing I need is someone seeing that and word getting out.
- Or reporting me and my getting banned because of it.
- I am not using it for anything that would be considered abusing it.
- But I do use it while in a guild group or out soloing.
- All it does it kill what I can easily kill anyway a few seconds faster.
- Big deal right?
- It is an easy bug to stumble across, I found it by accident trying to "fix" my stampede so it would work.
- So I am sure top hunters have found it as well.
- I expect a fix on that one soon.
- It is more than a little OP to get the wolf buff and a pet.
- But also awesome for soloing.
- Get the lone wolf buff of +30% damage and the pets buff and the applied buff and the passive buff you already put on yourself.
- Yeah, pretty sweet right, I thought so too.
- I will not get too attached to that one.
- Hope you are all enjoying warlords so far, I know I have been.
- Here is to hoping your highmaul mission, should you get one, does not contain a darn neck.
- Have a great day all.
- First was ranged DPS, second melee DPS, third tank and forth healer.
- I can stop here if I wanted to.
- I won't.
- But there is no rush on anything else really.
- I can fill each role now and that is always my intention.
- I actually could have stopped at three being my druid can tank and heal.
- My druid was third to hit 100.
- I was 610 item level the second I hit 100 which is pretty nice.
- Went into proving grounds and had a little issue being druid self heals and defensive cooldowns seem quite lacking and the healer it gives you as a tank, in a word, sucks.
- Stop DPSing you moron, heal me once in a blue moon.
- After failing twice because I was not aggressively using cooldowns I changed my tactic to play as if I was with a completely worthless healer and it worked.
- I guess that is because I was with a completely worthless healer.
- I thought maybe it was just the healer in the proving grounds that made me feel like a sponge just sucking up the damage but once I did a dungeon, with a pocket healer for honest feedback, it turns out that is all druids are.
- He said he has healed many druids so far and that they are, by far, the hardest class to heal.
- Glad it is not just me.
- So maybe it was not the proving grounds healer.
- Bears just take insane damage.
- And what happened to my FR?
- I used to be able to heal myself for a respectable amount, now I could use a bandage from two expansions ago and probably gain more health than FR gives me.
- Maybe I need to level another tank because druid tanks, even more so in the first tier while healers are still gearing up, are not going to cut it.
- They can of course, but they feel weak.
- My first heroic dungeon, grimrail depot of course.
- One shot the second boss, but it was a guild group so can not say much about that.
- I still say that is the hardest boss of all the dungeons.
- But would you believe I actually one shot it this weekend with a pug once too.
- Amazing, right?
- The forth character I leveled to 100 was my shaman.
- Leveled as DPS of course and boy on boy are shaman squishy even if they wear mail.
- They need to be able to take a hit better, seriously.
- I was blowing things up and doing great numbers, better than my hunter did while leveling, but if a mob touched me a crumbled instantly into a ball and died.
- After a few levels of sneeze and I die I ditched my offhand and crafted myself a 630 shield, because you can equip them at 91, and it was smooth sailing from that point on.
- Amazing how much difference a strong shield can make.
- Sure I would still go down pretty fast if I did not behave myself, but now I was able to take two or three hits before I was in fear for my life instead of just one.
- As soon as I put on that shield I was an unstoppable killing machine.
- Sadly, unlike my druid that was 610 the second they hit 100 by shaman was only 606, but it is close.
- My rogue is still exactly where he was when he hit 100, 604.
- He was leveled to skin, I am in no rush to gear him, or even play him.
- But I decided to try the proving grounds on my rogue after hearing someone in guild complaining they can not get silver on their rogue.
- I suck at my rogue, we all know that.
- So I was afraid to even try thinking I would fail.
- If someone who is a main rogue and has been for many many years can not get silver, what am I going to do.
- I figured I know what their problem is.
- The AoE packs.
- Rogue has dreadful AoE.
- I blew through gold as soon as hit 100 on my hunter, never even close to in danger or missing it and never even needing to think of it.
- I was 25 item levels lower than the lowest it scale when I got gold on my hunter.
- So I figured proving grounds was a complete joke.
- Hearing multiple people say that it was impossible had me thinking about it.
- Maybe it was just so easy because a hunter is my main and I have been playing so long.
- Maybe it is actually harder than I made it out to be.
- Enter the rogue.
- Bronze was easy enough.
- Silver came and the only thing I was worried about was the AoE packs.
- I think it was round 6 when I found myself in a bit of trouble, a mistake on my own part made it a lot closer than I wanted it to be.
- I only had 5 seconds left at the end of that round.
- Now I was starting to worry, maybe those people were right, maybe it is harder than I was giving it credit for.
- Nah, it is really that easy.
- The only reason it was that close was because I made a mistake myself.
- Last round I made a mistake, two actually.
- Managed to get myself frozen in amber, not once but twice.
- Noob right?
- I am still kicking myself over that.
- I hate making stupid mistakes like that, even more so when I walked right into the damn thing.
- All this with the healer still up.
- So 12 seconds lost, all mobs still at full health, looking at that timer dwindling down.
- It starts to do the flashing thing with 3 mobs still up.
- I down all three with 3 seconds left still.
- Silver done, first try, are you kidding me.
- What exactly was hard about this?
- The only time I ever came close to missing the timer were the times I completely screwed up.
- The only difficulty in this was me overcoming my own stupidity.
- Everything was correctable error so even if I had failed I would go in the next time and not make the same mistake.
- Someone in guild said, "As much as you say you are bad on your rogue you are still a lot better than you give yourself credit for, I knew you would get silver."
- Maybe he is right.
- So when I hit 100 on my shaman I figured I would try it on my shaman.
- I've never done the DPS trail on my shaman because my shaman has not been a damage dealer since wrath really.
- And now I am not even enhancement, I am elemental for the sake of saving me having to collect another set of gear for a role I never play in raid anyway.
- I was able to quest in my healing gear as elemental and that was all that mattered to me.
- So I was in a spec of convenience, not one I actually ever really played or practiced on.
- This would be a much better test, would it not?
- Went into the proving grounds as soon as I hit 100 and laughed my way to silver.
- Seriously, not kidding.
- I was talking on voice chat and not even really paying attention to it at all.
- Sure, the caster movement stuff was annoying, I really want the ability to cast on the move back, but other than that my shaman never even came close to missing any round.
- On this character the AoE rounds were the easiest.
- A shaman can make quick work of AoE packs.
- I think I had over 20 seconds between waves more than a couple of times.
- Nope, I did not misjudge it, proving grounds is a complete and total joke.
- So why are there so many people having problems with it?
- And then it came to me.
- Damage dealer proving grounds is not about doing damage.
- People are not failing because they can not put out the damage needed.
- I asked a few guild mates that have been trying for hours each day and still failing where they were having their problem.
- Then all the pieces came together like a puzzle in my mind.
- Blizzard, you sneaky bastards.
- The damage dealer proving grounds was never about DPS, it was about situational awareness.
- I didn't get silver so easily on my rogue and shaman because I was "good" at them.
- I got silver so easily because I already knew what to do.
- That is why it was easy for them.
- I knew where to stand, who to target first, what to interrupt, how to switch targets, how to use where I stand to my advantage.
- All the little things anyone that ever raided takes for granted.
- All those people I talked to, the ones that have been trying for days, even weeks, to get silver and keep failing are the people that were never a part of my raid team.
- Part of the reason they were never a part of my raid team is they have horrible situational awareness.
- They die to stupid all the time.
- They can not handle multiple tacks like doing damage and interrupting.
- They were always standing in the wrong place, not switching targets as needed, not doing all the little things.
- See, that is why it was easy on my rogue and shaman.
- I already knew what to do and the proving ground was never about being a DPS race so the fact I do less DPS on them meant nothing.
- And as my rogue proved, there is even room for error and you can still succeed at it.
- As long as you know what to do mechanics wise, as long as you can multitask, as long as you knew where to stand.
- Now, the question is this, do I tell these people that are having problems how to beat the rounds they are having problems with or do I let them figure it out on their own so they can learn?
- It is an interesting question.
- If I tell them how to do it they can get it done and never need to worry about it.
- If I don't tell them, they might actually get better.
- And maybe some day they might be more than back up to the back ups when it comes to raiding.
- Because maybe they will actually learn something from the proving grounds.
- Sneaky blizzard, sneaky.
- Make a damage dealing proving ground not about doing damage and teaching them how to actually play better.
- I approve.
- Can't believe it took me that long to actually realize that.
- I am usually better at picking up on stuff like that.
- Still think the DPS portion of it could still be stepped up a bit however.
- But I understand why it isn't.
- Someone in guild asked when we would start raiding.
- I said, when the raid comes out next week. (meaning tomorrow)
- Someone else asked, can I come?
- How I dread people asking that.
- After so many months of SoO where we would take anyone that wanted to come along it is going to be hard to tell these people no without feeling like I am insulting them.
- The person that asked that first, and there were a few, was not even a high enough item level to get into a heroic dungeon yet and had no proving grounds silver.
- How do you even have the balls to ask to come to a raid on opening day for the raid when you can not even get into a dungeon?
- Seriously, how do you even consider to ask that?
- I said, as polite as I could, "try getting into some dungeons and gearing up first, raids are higher than dungeons, start there."
- Do people really think they can just show up and get a raid spot?
- I do not care how desperate I am for people I am not going to take someone like that.
- My theory is if you have to ask "can I come" you are probably not ready to raid.
- Someone that is ready to raid knows they are are ready to raid.
- Someone who is ready for day one raiding would say they are ready to raid and hope they get an invite, not ask if they can come.
- Speaking of ready to raid, did you get the ready to raid achievement in skyreach yet?
- When you do it gives you a buff that makes you dance for 1 hour.
- Don't know why but I found that really funny.
- Actually I wonder why there is an achievement for doing the fight the right way.
- Anyone can do it if they do it right, what type of achievement is that?
- The funniest achievement, in that do it right concept, is the one from the last boss in everbloom.
- Step on all the flowers, break out your helpers, get an achievement.
- More to it than that of course, but that is the idea.
- So it is one of those, do the fight right the way it was intended to be done and get the achievement.
- It should be the other way around.
- Something like finish the fight with all helpers dead after allowing all flowers to spawn.
- Now that would be an achievement.
- It would be hard, very hard and maybe near impossible at this current gear level, but that would be a real achievement.
- Doing the fight as it was intended to be done isn't really an achievement.
- I wish they would name one of those silly achievements [You're Doing It Right] - Follow the mechanics of the fight and do it the way it was intended to be done.
- Speaking of achievements, need one more daily for my inn to get the achievement so I can buy the level three inn.
- Have it in my quest log, but when I queue directly for it and see a 50 minute wait I give up instantly.
- Sorry, I refuse to wait 50 minutes for what could very well end up being a wipe fest.
- They need to add better rewards to the random dungeon finder if they want people to continue doing them.
- But the bags at the end with gold are helpful.
- Not just for gold, but for the achievement to get the storehouse level 3 pattern opened.
- You need to loot 10,000 on draenor.
- Was reading on the forums people crying about this saying it would be impossible.
- Someone said it would take them 4 years to get that much.
- I have to wonder, what the hell they do with their time online?
- I am already over 7,500 looted on draenor and still have 16 more 90s to level to 100.
- Seriously, you loot a lot of gold while leveling and those dungeon bags count toward it, the dungeon bosses count for it, the LFR boss bags will surely count for it, the profession bags like the one from jewelcrafting count for it, the quests bags from the inn count toward it, the loot all around the world you pick up count for it.
- I could go on and on.
- I leveled only 4 characters so far, made no efforts to farm gold for the achievement and I am 3/4 of the way there.
- If it takes someone 4 years to get this achievement they are just standing in their garrison doing nothing.
- Do something, loot that something, get achievement.
- If you really are a home body and do not plan on going out or doing anything like dungeons I'll give you the quickest way to get there being super lazy.
- Build a gem boutique, upgrade it to level 2, put a worker in there, do the daily.
- With an average of 200 gold per bag from the daily just doing that and that alone and nothing else you will get the 10,000 looted in less than 2 months.
- And you never need to leave your garrison.
- The materials needed are all there too.
- So please, people, stop complaining that this achievement will be impossible.
- I'd be willing to bet there are thousands with it already and I know in another week I will probably be there too at the rate I am going.
- I love to complain, but I would like to think I complain for a reason.
- Complaining that you need to play the game to get an achievement in game as simple as looting gold is going way to far.
- Not even I would complain about that.
- Now if it were loot 1,000,000 gold, I would join you, because that would be insane.
- I am not sure what is more amazing, people selling pets that are guaranteed drops for 10K on the auction house or people buying them.
- It is a guaranteed drop, everyone gets one, I never even considered selling it.
- Maybe I am jealous because I did not realize how a fool and their money will soon be parted so I never took advantage of the uninformed.
- I should have known better.
- But I wonder how that person that paid 10K for it will feel when they are out questing, see a rare, kill it, and it drops the pet.
- I can picture nelson from the simpsons pointing at them saying "ha ha".
- It is like the ore selling for 10K a stack those first few days. Now people are selling them 200G a stack or less on my server.
- Most people I know are already saying screw the mine and not doing it every day any more.
- Wow, how that dried up fast.
- I've seen markets crash before and I knew this market would crash because I was on beta and saw it happen there already, but from 10K to 200G nearly over night is really insane.
- I see people trying to sell the garn mount in trade all the time.
- They were asking like 50K or more at first.
- Dude, it is a 100% drop, sure only one person gets it each kill, but it is 100%.
- In a few months when we are all in heroic raid gear we can go smack down the thing for fun and get one for everyone in a small group.
- It is not even worth 5K.
- Just because you got it early does not change the idea of it.
- It is a 1K mount at most and that is only to save me the trip to frostfire.
- I ran into Nak in nagrand yesterday.
- Got me a new clefhoof mount.
- That thing is insanely huge.
- If you like big mounts or are a troll that loves standing on mailboxes and quest givers, this is the mount for you.
- It is a 100% chance to drop to, for everyone that tagged it.
- There are lots of 100% drop chance mounts.
- This one is bound however and everyone gets one, so no need to ever kill it again.
- Was killing some things for goblin reputation pieces on my hunter when someone ran up to me and whispered, why did you not call it out.
- I said, call what out?
- They said, the rare.
- I said, because it will be dead before anyone can get here, why would I waste their time like that making them run here for nothing.
- I understand their reasoning, but I am just running around and if I see a rare, I kill it.
- I do not want to call it out and then wait for 15 minutes for everyone to get there.
- I will kill it and move along with what I am doing.
- The best I will do is say, "killing direhorn now" or something like that, but I am not going to call out and wait.
- Does that make me selfish?
- Maybe it does.
- I just fail to see why I should put my game time on hold to let someone from all the way across the zone get here to put a hit in on something that will respawn in 40 minutes anyway.
- I would call out something like Nak, the rare spawn that drops a highly sought after mount, sure, but not for something like direhorn.
- I will not now, or ever, call out some random regular spawning mob on any character that can easily solo it and then wait for everyone to get there.
- Call me selfish if you must.
- But as the saying goes, time is money friend, and each second I wait for people to get there, another rare could get killed that I miss out on.
- Nope, not going to miss out on effective game play time so someone can run from the other side of the map to put in one hit and then do nothing, effectively making the fight longer for me.
- That really is getting old too.
- People coming in, throwing in a few shots, and then going away to kill other stuff.
- If you put in a shot, do your fair share.
- But my biggest pet peeve right now with them are the adds people bring with them.
- Two things, one, don't pull adds, two, if you do pull adds, they are your adds, you kill them.
- I am tempted to make a macro that says that when people come diving in with 30 things in tow.
- Your adds, you kill them.
- A guild mate did the same thing pulling one of those level 100 elite clefhooves into a rare I was killing.
- Told him to get his hit in and then clean up his mess.
- It is amazing how so many people bring a pack of adds in, all tagged of course, and expect everyone else to deal with them.
- I don't know about you, but after so many years of playing, I have a fair sense of aggro ranges and unless I am caught somewhere, I can navigate around without pulling stuff most of the time.
- I thought everyone that played this game eventually picked up on aggro ranges.
- Like it was something you just learned without even trying to learn as you played.
- But then again, some people are just... blonde.
- That is the best way to put it.
- I actually found someone pulling mobs into a group, on purpose.
- This was no accidentally not paying attention to where they are running type of pull.
- Doing the daily a few guild mates and I were chain pulling and making a huge pack we were AoEing.
- There was this one shaman that kept tagging stuff and dragging it into the pack so we could kill it.
- Smart move in a way, get someone else to do your work, but still a jerk move.
- Kicker is that it was another alliance person.
- Dude, ask and you can join our group.
- We don't bite.
- Well, except for the one worgen, can't vouch for him.
- It would be faster than doing it the way you are doing it and you would not get the reputation of being lame like you are now from doing something like that.
- Need to find a cool farming sport of council reputation.
- Done with the goblins and will be done with the birds soon.
- Considered joining one of the reputation farm groups in group finder but I take a little pride in doing stuff like that on my own.
- Occasionally I will bring along one or two people that want to tag along, but I like doing the work myself.
- Using a random farm group, while smart and effective, feels sort of like cheating to me.
- Maybe if I get bored or frustrated or want the rep on an alt I would cheat just to get it done but at the moment I am enjoying the grind.
- I dig that stuff.
- I only do the grind on one character however.
- I never was one to max reputation with grinds on multiple characters.
- If it were something simple like dailies or dungeon grinding I would, but mob grinding, that is for my main only.
- Helps that it is also, in my opinion, easiest to do that stuff on a hunter.
- Finished off all the stables quests and wondering if I want to keep it for the 20% mounted speed boost now.
- While leveling it I liked it because the mount training dailies gave garrison resources but now that they are all trained I am wondering what to do with it.
- I have all the achievements, love that armored frostwolf, really fits me, so no need to keep it otherwise.
- Still have not built a mage tower on any of my characters.
- Will need to if I want to get the achievement, and I do.
- How have garrison invasions been for you lately?
- Not seeing as many pop as I think I should.
- So many in my guild do their daily, well, daily, and still do not get it.
- I had one early this week, got a second one last night after 3 hours of grinding for bird rep.
- Now, at this stage, it is no big deal because I am there grinding for something, but once I have all the reputations I am not going to grind for three hours to trigger a weekly I should have anyway to begin with.
- Blizzard needs to fix that.
- Oh, and someone that was with me for most of those three hours, he did not get one.
- Only me.
- So it is not even sure that three hours grinding with get it.
- That is out of line for a weekly blizzard, really really out of line.
- In case you did not know, you can get gear from a silver box.
- One of my guild mates got one out of a silver box this week.
- And yes I am 100% certain of that.
- It was the first one he ever did and he only got silver, he has never done a gold, and he showed all us the 645 piece that dropped from his silver box.
- I guess it is just a rare drop in silver, but it is there.
- I got a follower mission for a piece of gear from highmaul.
- Of course I was excited about that.
- Was hoping for a sweet piece of gear with lots of stats on it.
- A chest, legs, you know, something major.
- I said, I think I would be happy with anything other than a ring or neck.
- I got a neck.
- It was a hard fought battle too.
- Needed all level 100 followers, of course, able to counter 6 different abilities and with a item level of 645+ each.
- I had exactly what was needed, not perfect but close enough with high item levels and 5 of the 6 things countered.
- Still exciting to get it finished, but a neck.
- A neck?
- How depressing can you get to finish a huge mission like that and get a neck.
- What to make it worse?
- I have to do some stat work to look into because my new 655 neck might not be an upgrade over my 636 heroic warforged one with a gem slot.
- The 636 one, outside of having a gem slot which is huge has my two best stats and the 655 only has one.
- I did not look into it too much yet but the +35 gem might be more than worth the item level upgrade a 655 would give me.
- Back to the day when item choice is more important than item level.
- Got a pair of 630 gloves with a gem slot yesterday in a random.
- I am wearing a pair of 636 gloves with the speed tertiary stat on them.
- The 630 gloves are better itemization and a gem slot.
- Basically, the 630 piece is better than the 636 piece.
- So once again item choice is more important than item level.
- This is going to be a very interesting expansion in terms of gearing.
- And the best item level is not going to mean the best geared.
- Did a run with a guild hunter and I was putting out 4K DPS more than him.
- He is currently 7 item levels higher than me.
- Asked how the hell was I putting out so much with a lesser weapon and a lesser item level.
- I explained it simply as "I have 4 gem slots, you have none, that is surely part of it".
- Yes folks, it really matters that much.
- I am hating MM however with these long cast time.
- But I do like it, it is nice to play the spec again, just those cast times are ouch.
- I am running with 3% haste and it makes me want to cry.
- When aimed shot gets to around 1.7 or 1.8 seconds, if it can ever get there normally, I think the rotation might feel more comfortable.
- My hunter is currently broken however and I hope blizzard fixes it soon.
- Every time I zone in somewhere I have to call my pet and then dismiss it before stampede will work.
- I am currently running with stampede in dungeons because bosses are usually 2 minutes or so and stampede is better for the burst on really short fights.
- Opinion only mind you, I am sure some theory crafter would be upset if I said that was a fact.
- But I like it better on short fights, that is a fact.
- I also found another bug that I am sure world first guild hunters are going to be abusing the hell out of.
- I can have a pet out and keep the +30% damage buff of lone wolf.
- So that means a fair bit of extra damage for me.
- And no way in hell am I using that in dungeons.
- The last thing I need is someone seeing that and word getting out.
- Or reporting me and my getting banned because of it.
- I am not using it for anything that would be considered abusing it.
- But I do use it while in a guild group or out soloing.
- All it does it kill what I can easily kill anyway a few seconds faster.
- Big deal right?
- It is an easy bug to stumble across, I found it by accident trying to "fix" my stampede so it would work.
- So I am sure top hunters have found it as well.
- I expect a fix on that one soon.
- It is more than a little OP to get the wolf buff and a pet.
- But also awesome for soloing.
- Get the lone wolf buff of +30% damage and the pets buff and the applied buff and the passive buff you already put on yourself.
- Yeah, pretty sweet right, I thought so too.
- I will not get too attached to that one.
- Hope you are all enjoying warlords so far, I know I have been.
- Here is to hoping your highmaul mission, should you get one, does not contain a darn neck.
- Have a great day all.
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