The timeless island has been a gold making machine for many people in the game already. Those that are on the island killing things and collecting things even while there are still easily hundreds of thousands of people there doing the same are making money selling anything that is not nailed down.
The thing is if it is so profitable now you need to think how much more profitable it will be once the next expansion comes out. Does anyone out there remember the argent tournament pets? I know I do. In wrath they sold okay and were a good source of gold and you could get a new pet every few days which was kind of nice. When cataclysm came out and the argent tournament was now old content those pets went up in value and on most servers they were around 3K gold each and if you managed to get one across faction lines you could easily find yourself selling them for upwards of 10K on most server. All this before pet battles where introduced to the game and made pet collecting an even more popular thing.
In basic terms, stuff from old content sells well. In more advanced terms, stuff from old content that requires some sort of luck and grind sells even better. If the argent pets were selling for 3K - 10K depending on which one you had and they were easy to get because there was no RNG involved what do you think the timeless pets will be like when they require luck, lots of time, and now benefit from many more people collecting them due to the addition of pet battles to the game.
But it is not just all about pets here, it is about a lot of stuff on the island that can be a nice way to make some gold come the next expansion. Sure you can make some gold now, but you can make more gold later when there are not hundreds of thousands of people running around collecting these things to keep the auction house filled with them.
I've decided to make a little list of things to look out for on the island that might be worth holding on to, if you are no in need of the gold now, because next expansion they will, or could be, worth so much more.
Pets: (Note: Pets that can not be caged are not listed)
Ashleaf Spriteling : This pet drops off the rare mob named Leafmender.
Azure Crane Chick : This pet can be picked up from egg nests around the island.
Dandelion Frolicker : This pet drops off angry sprites during the solo nice sprite triggered event.
Death Adder Hatchling : This pet drops off the rare mob named imperial python which is a rare spawn that only spawns after many death adders have been killed.
Gulp Froglet : This pet drops off the rare mob named bufo.
Ominous Flame : This pet drops off the standard elite mob named foreboding flame.
Jadefire Spirit : This pet drops off the rare mob named spirit of jadefire.
Jademist Dancer : This pet drops off the standard elite mob surprisingly named jademist dancer.
Ruby Droplet : This pet drops off the rare mob named garnia.
Skunky Alemental : This pet drops off the rare mob named zhu-gin the sour that appears during an event in old piju village.
Spineclaw Crab : This pet drops off the rare mob named monstrous spineclaw which is a rare spawn that only spawns after many ancient spineclaws have been killed.
Swarmling of Gu'chi : This pet drops off the rare mob named gu'chi.
All the above listed pets have a (usually) less than 5% chance to drop off the mentioned mob. Most are less than 2% and if you are like me, whom it took 94 kills to get the garnia pet, it could even be less than 1%. So luck is a huge factor and you can use that to your advantage.
If someone really wants these pets next expansion and are not exactly what we would call thrilled to be hanging out camping old spawns for hours and days and maybe even weeks on end hoping to get a rare drop they will spend a fair deal of gold for it on the auction house. Even the ones like the spineclaw and python which you can get to spawn by killing spineclaws and pythons will not be attractive to grind because if there is anyone else on the island, being they can spawn anywhere, even if you get it to spawn there is no guarantee you will even get to kill the rare spawn when it does spawn. So you are not only competing with a 1% drop rate, but other people and lots of work grinding.
Once this is older content that no one, or very few, is visiting the availability of these pets on the market will dry up. Do not think because you always see from 3 to 12 on the market now that a year from now there will ever be a large supply of them around. If anything, these will become rare as time goes on and fewer people are getting more to add to the market.
Should any of these pets become a pet that is extremely powerful against a new grand master pet fight daily come the next expansion and these pets are few and far between, the sky is the limit on how much gold pet battlers will be willing to pay for it. These pets are without a doubt a future treasure trove.
But it is not all about pets, there are other items on the island that will be worth collecting and selling next expansion. Some more than others, but all worth mentioning as part of our timeless treasure trove.
Transformation Items :
Savory Deviate Delight : While you can this yourself and it has been a great seller for a long time, it is worth stopping to kill the rare mob named stinkbraid whenever you see him for some free delights. I've been stockpiling them myself, they might be flooding the market now that the island is full and everyone is getting it with each kill but next expansion it will be like it used to be, few and far between for 400 gold per stack compared to the 40 gold per stack they are going for on my server now.
Spectral Grog : This is a transformation item, one time use, that turns someone into a ghost pirate. They drop off normal mobs so they can be farmed. The rattling mariners only appear during the rattleskew event but the spectral pirates are there to kill whenever you want, spawn timer permitting however. Do not loot the treasure chest around the spectral pirates if you want to farm them however, for some odd reason they become friendly until the next weeks reset if you steal their treasure, if that makes any sense.
Inscription Techniques : (Note: Not listing BoP ones.)
Technique: Glyph of Condensation : Teaches a minor mage glyph. Dropped by the rare mobs named zesqua only.
Technique: Glyph of Evaporation : Teaches a minor mage glyph. Dropped by jademist dancers only.
Technique: Glyph of Headhunting : Teaches a minor rogue glyph. Dropped by burning berserkers only.
Technique of Impaling Throws : Teaches a major warrior glyph. Dropped by eternal kilnmasters only.
Technique: Glyph of Inspired Hymns : Teaches a minor priest glyph. Dropped by windfeather nestkeepers only.
Technique: Glyph of Lean Pack : Teaches a major hunter glyph. Dropped by crag stalkers or primal stalkers.
Technique: Glyph of Lingering Ancestors : Teaches a minor shaman glyph. Dropped from the spectral pandas near old piju.
Technique: Glyph of Loud Horn : Teaches a major death knight glyph. Dropped from ordon candlekeeper only.
Technique: Glyph of One with Nature : Teaches a minor druid glyph. Dropped from ashleaf sprites or the rare mob named leafmender.
Technique: Glyph of Pillar of Light : Teaches a minor paladin glyph. Dropped by foreboding flames or the rare mob named spirit of jadefire.
Technique: Glyph of Rain of Frogs : Teaches a minor shaman glyph. Dropped by gulp frogs or the rare mob named bufo.
Technique: Glyph of Regenerative Magic : Teaches a major death knight glyph. Dropped by damp shamblers or the rare mob named rock moss.
Technique: Glyph of Shifted Appearance : Teaches a minor priest glyph. This can only be purchased for 4000 timeless coins from the rare spawn vendor named whizzig. Stock up, I already have.
Technique: Glyph of Skeleton : Teaches a minor death knight glyph. Dropped from the rare mob named rattleskew only.
Technique: Glyph of the Watchful Eye : Teaches a minor warrior glyph. Dropped by ordon oathguards only.
Technique: Glyph of the Weaponmaster : Teaches a minor warrior glyph. Dropped from the rare mob named jakur of ordon only.
There are also 24 BoP techniques that can be dropped on the island meaning you must be a scribe in order to loot them and learn them. So there are effectively two ways you can work this part of the treasure trove.
You can hunt the patterns listed that are not bound and sell them. They are currently anywhere between 20 gold and 500 gold on most servers but once we move to the next expansion and the area is not being as heavily farmed as it is now the supply will eventually dry up and never put the desire to know every pattern past people. There will always be a market for them and at a higher, possibly much higher, rate than 20 gold to 500 gold.
If you are a scribe you can hunt the inscription only ones and learn them and make the glyphs. Just like I said do not put it past people to want to know every pattern, do not put it past people to want to know every glyph. Once the next expansion comes out people will either need to go back to hope for a lucky drop for these patterns to make it themselves or they will need to buy them off the market from someone that already knows them. While the market might be on the upper end of flooded with these new glyphs now, come next expansion many scribes will forget about them. Out of sight, out of mind. If you remember to make them, they will sell, and they can sell very handsomely as not as many people will have them or want to go back to farm them just so they can make them.
With all that said, we never know if blizzard might just delete the glyphs as they have done before or if these glyphs will ever be capable of being learned through research. But hoping they are not learned through research and not removed, this is a very solid market for a very select group of scribes that farmed all of the 24 BoP patterns as well as the ones that are not bound.
There is a lot of gold to be made from the timeless treasure trove and most of it comes next expansion when there are no longer hundreds of thousands of people on the island daily if you are willing to wait it out. Will you hold on to them to increase your profit? Will you stock up for later sales? I'd say it is worth it. Come WoD everything mentioned here will just go up in price. A lot.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Monday, January 20, 2014
Monday Random Thoughts
- Another monday and another day I could complain about the LFR groups I had this week.
- Yet oddly I have none to complain about.
- Not really anyway.
- Had a decent week for once with the exception of one SoO wing 2 run.
- And even that rough run was not bad for the most part because people were decent to each other.
- It occurs to me sometimes that the wiping is not really what makes the LFR bad.
- It is the people in the group and how they handle the wiping that makes the LFR bad.
- Which brings me to an old thought again.
- There is no reason that you should ever need to depend on 9 or 24 other people for anything in game.
- Everything you can do in game as a group you should be capable of doing solo.
- Yes, that means current tier raiding as well.
- Perhaps make it a lot more work, more of a grind, make it harder to do solo.
- But you should still be able to do it solo.
- You should never be put in the position where you need to depend on others.
- Yes, I know it is an MMO.
- All that means is that in the world there are other there.
- As in there are multiple players in the same world.
- It doesn't mean you need to play with them.
- I do not see the letter C for the word cooperative anywhere in MMO.
- You should be able to do everything solo.
- Other people are what can make this game great but they are also what can ruin the game.
- I was leveling a hunter in nagrand and basically just skinning my little heart out.
- I had no choice, to catch up on my leather working I had to do the entire last level just killing and skinning.
- Because with fast leveling you fall so darn far behind.
- I did manage to get my leather working to the level where I can start doing wrath stuff now however.
- So off the northrend the next time I play that character.
- I had exactly 3 pieces of leather left over.
- And that is after spending all of 67 - 68 skinning and skinning only.
- Yeah, professions need an upgrade to fit the faster leveling, no doubt.
- But what I want to complain about is other people while being a skinner.
- I killed a few mobs, was skinning them, someone flew up, watched me skin two mobs and then get attacked by one of those roaming elementals.
- So what did they do when I got attacked?
- They landed and started to skin off my pile seeing I was now in a fight.
- Scum sucking low life piece of shit mother fucker.
- Sorry for the language, but this is the exact example I mean when I say it is other people that make the game bad.
- I was skinning, they saw me skinning, I killed the mobs, they are my skins.
- Good news is they got nothing, I am a hunter, my pet taunted, I finished skinning and they stole none of my skins.
- I got lucky tapping them all for the skin before they did.
- But they tried, and that is the problem.
- If I see someone kill something that can be skinned I see if they skin it or if they walk away before I even consider walking up to skin it.
- It is called being a decent person.
- It is called common courtesy.
- It is how people should act in an MMO.
- Skinning is not like mining or herbalism.
- The ore or herb is just sitting there for anyone to take, first person to it gets it.
- If there are some dead mobs on a trail then they go by the ore and herb rule.
- First person to get to them can skin them.
- But unlike herbs and ore, if you kill something it is your skin.
- Or at least it should be.
- It is not a first come first serve thing.
- You did the work, you get the spoils.
- Letting someone else skin your kills would be like letting someone else loot your mobs.
- How would you feel if you were running around killing things and anyone could loot them?
- That is the exact same thing as you killing a mob and someone else skinning it.
- It is letting someone else loot your mob.
- I am sure no one in the entire game would be happy if someone else could loot their kills.
- So why accept people skinning you kills.
- It makes me wonder if there is a way to turn off AoE looting sometimes.
- I never looked, maybe there is.
- Don't get me wrong, I love AoE looting, but there are some times it gets in the way.
- Like when you kill a massive mountain of beasts with the intention of skinning them and loot and now they are there for everyone to skin.
- I want to loot one at a time so I can skin one at a time and not have my skins stolen.
- I got into the habit of killing things one at a time when I see some other skinners in the zone.
- I might be a decent person and have common courtesy but I would say, from my experience, that places me firmly in the 1%.
- It seems the majority of players are scum bags by nature.
- Now to pet peeve number two about skinning.
- People that do not loot.
- Seriously people, just loot everything and vendor it.
- It might not seem like much seeing 60 silver, but if you loot it all and vendor it all, it does add up.
- And while I understand bags being full, I only partly understand it.
- There is no reason anyone should not have the vendor mammoth the way money is easy to make now.
- So unless you do not already have a maxed character that can buy it for your alts while leveling or you are under 20 and can not mount yet there is absolutely no excuse for not looting everything.
- None what so ever.
- They should add something that if someone does not loot a mob after 1 minute you can skin it and a little loot bag will appear on the ground that contains what was there as loot, should the person decide to come back and get it.
- That and changing it to if a skinner kills a mobs only they can skin it.
- Only mobs that are killed by non skinners can be skinned by anyone.
- That would put them more in line with ore and herbs.
- On to other things.
- One of my hunters and my monk are now collecting runestones.
- My druid finally is collecting valor, but as I have not been needed to tank much and I do not do random content and do not feel like doing quests, I might be stuck there for a long long time.
- I think I will just run ToT 3 only on my druid.
- Even if I hate random content.
- It will help me get there and will allow me to keep trying to get the damn pet off the saurok.
- I still do it on at least 4 characters a week with a coin on all of them each week.
- It is getting to the point it is hard to believe I have not gotten the pet yet.
- Between doing it when it was current and doing it now when you can get pets on coins I would guess I have had over 100 kills and still no pet.
- See, I've told you RNG hates me.
- There are some people that have gotten it multiple times already.
- Like the guy that has 6 on the auction house.
- I might just end up buying it for 30K gold if I keep up at this rate.
- No, no pet is worth 30K gold, but being you can only get it in the LFR and once we level we can never do that LFR again I might have no choice.
- Funny part is, even if I got it, I would still use ToT 3 as a valor generator for all my characters because having extras is not a bad idea.
- If people can get 30K for it now can you imagine what people will get for it when no one is capable of getting it any longer once no one can queue for the LFR for it?
- Don't say people can still queue for it at 90 because no one will.
- Try to queue for DS at 85 and check your average wait time.
- Who is really going to wait 18 hours to get into a group?
- It would be nice if you could just walk into old LFR difficulty raids.
- So if you wanted some thing for transmog or wanted to solo it you could.
- Speaking of needing a way to walk into them, scenarios need a way to just walk into them.
- I still need a couple of scenario achievements and I sure as hell do not need a group to do them.
- So I want to just walk into them and do them.
- Why can we not walk into a scenario?
- I can understand old LFRs even if I don't like it but I can not understand why we can not go into scenarios solo.
- The mobs do not drop loot.
- You would not get a baggie with goodies if you walk in.
- There is nothing to be gained from walking it so they can not use the same excuse they use for limiting dungeons to 5 per hour.
- If there is nothing to be gained from doing them why don't they let us walk into them?
- Would love to hear a real answer to that, a reasonable answer.
- None of that "because we do not want people walking in" bull crap.
- We pay your salary, if we want to walk in and it is not game breaking if we do, there is no reason to keep up from doing so.
- Blizzard has a different way of thinking and most of the time it is about as off base as possible.
- Like the gearing cycle now.
- With each tier of raiding have 4 levels of gear that effectively means we need to gear up 4 times, or at least have the option to do so.
- If there is anything in this game I am sick of it is gearing up.
- I am tired of the treadmill of gearing, enchanting, gemming, reforging, and doing it over and over again with each new piece of gear at four levels of gear in one single tier.
- My mage currently had 5 pieces of gear in his bags that are upgrades.
- One is even a 559 that upgrades a 502 I am currently wearing.
- I am in no rush to put any of it on.
- I am waiting until I get more gear to do it.
- It is an alt, it is capable of doing the DPS required for the content it is currently doing which is the occasional flex, so I do not really "need" the gear for anything other than extending my epeen so I can put out bigger numbers.
- Sorry, I do not function that way.
- I do not give a heck if I put out bigger numbers when bigger numbers are not required.
- At least not on an alt.
- If anything I like bigger numbers so I can solo things better, not for raiding.
- Sure they are good for that, but if I am well over the minimum requirements to begin with, it is not really needed.
- It is needed more for solo stuff than for raiding.
- And I do not do anything out in the world on my mage any longer, so that is why I am not rushing to put the gear on.
- If I went out and killed rares on it then I would have upgraded them ASAP.
- But not if all I do is flex and LFR.
- If I had equip those 5 pieces as I got them the situation would have went something like this.
- Get an upgrade. Equip it. Gem it. Enchant it. Change a few other gems because of that pieces gems. Maybe change an enchant too. Reforge everything.
- Next day get another upgrade. Equip it. Gem it. Change the gem I put in the piece I got the day before. Enchant or change a few enchants. Reforge everything.
- Same day, next flex wing, get another upgrade. Equip it. Thank god no gem slot on this one. Enchant it, change another enchant, reforge everything again.
- Craft myself the belt. Equip it. Get a belt buckle for it. Gem it all up causing me to change one other gem in the process. At least no enchants need to change this time. Reforge everything again.
- Ordos loves me and gives me a piece I need. Equip it. Enchant it. Oops, need to change another gem and enchant because of stat weights. Reforge everything.
- Okay, so over the course of 3 days I've wasted gems, enchants, time, effort, and had to work on getting my character back in order 5 times.
- No thank you, I will wait until I have about 8 or more upgrades in my bags and put them all on at the same time and do all that once. Just once.
- And then with their LFR version and flex version and normal version and normal warforged version and heroic version and heroic warforged version.
- Within theory you could effectively get and have to manage the same piece of gear with the same exact name 6 times.
- They really need to simplify gear, big time.
- And I am not talking simplify it like they are in WoD by removing reforging, some stats, some gem slots and some enchants from the game.
- I mean simplify it by making you not have 4 tiers of gearing in the same tier.
- One type of gear is fine.
- LFR, Flex, Normal, Heroic, they should all drop the same item level gear.
- Add a little tag on it for where it comes from for peoples epeen.
- LFR should be a watered down version 20% difficulty.
- Flex should be a half difficulty version 50% difficulty.
- Normal should be, well, normal and 100% difficulty.
- Heroic should be the challenge for people that want challenge and be 150% difficulty.
- It would mean no more time spent balancing 4 different raid tiers.
- Much less item inflation thanks to there no longer being 4 sets of gear for one tier.
- And because of that it would mean more content could be developed instead of spending all that time balancing 4 different versions and creating 4 different sets of gear and deciding on 4 different stat levels.
- Just design it once, nerf or buff it from normal level to fit the others, and let them all drop the same gear.
- But that would never work because most people in the game do not raid for the same reasons I do.
- I raid because I like to raid.
- I raid because I like beating a challenge.
- They raid for gear, and why raid heroic if you can get the same gear in LFR.
- Many people will say that.
- And the heroic raiders would cry a river because their gear was not better than anyone elses.
- They would never want the real challenge of doing it in lesser gear, they want the better gear.
- I would make you a bet that there would probably be less than 10 guilds in the world that would be capable of doing heroic raids if they needed to do them with all normal mode gear.
- Those 10 guilds are real heroic raiders.
- Those 10 guilds want the challenge.
- The others just want the gear and use the gear to get it down.
- Not like there is anything wrong with that.
- But that is why something like a single gear level will never happen.
- Because the hard core 1% would cry a river and blizzard would listen to them and cater to them like they always do instead of doing something that might upset them.
- Remember how well cataclysm started out when they decided to make the random dungeons for the 1%.
- I must say I loved it, they were fun, they were a challenge, and in a guild group they were never really half bad once you figured out what to do.
- In a random setting however, they took the one thing the casual players, the part time players, the bad players, had for their own use, dungeons, and handed it over to the 1% that most likely would never do them anyway.
- What the hell was blizzard thinking?
- They let the people that do not even do dungeons decide how dungeons should be made.
- Blizzard needs to stop listening to bad ideas.
- And that includes some of mine.
- More specifically this idea.
- While I like the idea of one set of gear for all 4 levels of raiding, it is a bad idea.
- But watch blizzard do it.
- Because they really are that brain dead sometimes.
- Maybe I should start working on my mage for his legendary now.
- Might give me a reason to upgrade those pieces.
- I am not sure I would be capable of doing the caster boss at the end of the quest line at 514 item level.
- Then again, I would have never guessed I could do the melee one on a 520 rogue with 502 weapons and I managed that.
- Never under estimate the power of dedication, practice, problem solving and perseverance.
- If you put your mind to it, you can do anything.
- Have a great day.
- Yet oddly I have none to complain about.
- Not really anyway.
- Had a decent week for once with the exception of one SoO wing 2 run.
- And even that rough run was not bad for the most part because people were decent to each other.
- It occurs to me sometimes that the wiping is not really what makes the LFR bad.
- It is the people in the group and how they handle the wiping that makes the LFR bad.
- Which brings me to an old thought again.
- There is no reason that you should ever need to depend on 9 or 24 other people for anything in game.
- Everything you can do in game as a group you should be capable of doing solo.
- Yes, that means current tier raiding as well.
- Perhaps make it a lot more work, more of a grind, make it harder to do solo.
- But you should still be able to do it solo.
- You should never be put in the position where you need to depend on others.
- Yes, I know it is an MMO.
- All that means is that in the world there are other there.
- As in there are multiple players in the same world.
- It doesn't mean you need to play with them.
- I do not see the letter C for the word cooperative anywhere in MMO.
- You should be able to do everything solo.
- Other people are what can make this game great but they are also what can ruin the game.
- I was leveling a hunter in nagrand and basically just skinning my little heart out.
- I had no choice, to catch up on my leather working I had to do the entire last level just killing and skinning.
- Because with fast leveling you fall so darn far behind.
- I did manage to get my leather working to the level where I can start doing wrath stuff now however.
- So off the northrend the next time I play that character.
- I had exactly 3 pieces of leather left over.
- And that is after spending all of 67 - 68 skinning and skinning only.
- Yeah, professions need an upgrade to fit the faster leveling, no doubt.
- But what I want to complain about is other people while being a skinner.
- I killed a few mobs, was skinning them, someone flew up, watched me skin two mobs and then get attacked by one of those roaming elementals.
- So what did they do when I got attacked?
- They landed and started to skin off my pile seeing I was now in a fight.
- Scum sucking low life piece of shit mother fucker.
- Sorry for the language, but this is the exact example I mean when I say it is other people that make the game bad.
- I was skinning, they saw me skinning, I killed the mobs, they are my skins.
- Good news is they got nothing, I am a hunter, my pet taunted, I finished skinning and they stole none of my skins.
- I got lucky tapping them all for the skin before they did.
- But they tried, and that is the problem.
- If I see someone kill something that can be skinned I see if they skin it or if they walk away before I even consider walking up to skin it.
- It is called being a decent person.
- It is called common courtesy.
- It is how people should act in an MMO.
- Skinning is not like mining or herbalism.
- The ore or herb is just sitting there for anyone to take, first person to it gets it.
- If there are some dead mobs on a trail then they go by the ore and herb rule.
- First person to get to them can skin them.
- But unlike herbs and ore, if you kill something it is your skin.
- Or at least it should be.
- It is not a first come first serve thing.
- You did the work, you get the spoils.
- Letting someone else skin your kills would be like letting someone else loot your mobs.
- How would you feel if you were running around killing things and anyone could loot them?
- That is the exact same thing as you killing a mob and someone else skinning it.
- It is letting someone else loot your mob.
- I am sure no one in the entire game would be happy if someone else could loot their kills.
- So why accept people skinning you kills.
- It makes me wonder if there is a way to turn off AoE looting sometimes.
- I never looked, maybe there is.
- Don't get me wrong, I love AoE looting, but there are some times it gets in the way.
- Like when you kill a massive mountain of beasts with the intention of skinning them and loot and now they are there for everyone to skin.
- I want to loot one at a time so I can skin one at a time and not have my skins stolen.
- I got into the habit of killing things one at a time when I see some other skinners in the zone.
- I might be a decent person and have common courtesy but I would say, from my experience, that places me firmly in the 1%.
- It seems the majority of players are scum bags by nature.
- Now to pet peeve number two about skinning.
- People that do not loot.
- Seriously people, just loot everything and vendor it.
- It might not seem like much seeing 60 silver, but if you loot it all and vendor it all, it does add up.
- And while I understand bags being full, I only partly understand it.
- There is no reason anyone should not have the vendor mammoth the way money is easy to make now.
- So unless you do not already have a maxed character that can buy it for your alts while leveling or you are under 20 and can not mount yet there is absolutely no excuse for not looting everything.
- None what so ever.
- They should add something that if someone does not loot a mob after 1 minute you can skin it and a little loot bag will appear on the ground that contains what was there as loot, should the person decide to come back and get it.
- That and changing it to if a skinner kills a mobs only they can skin it.
- Only mobs that are killed by non skinners can be skinned by anyone.
- That would put them more in line with ore and herbs.
- On to other things.
- One of my hunters and my monk are now collecting runestones.
- My druid finally is collecting valor, but as I have not been needed to tank much and I do not do random content and do not feel like doing quests, I might be stuck there for a long long time.
- I think I will just run ToT 3 only on my druid.
- Even if I hate random content.
- It will help me get there and will allow me to keep trying to get the damn pet off the saurok.
- I still do it on at least 4 characters a week with a coin on all of them each week.
- It is getting to the point it is hard to believe I have not gotten the pet yet.
- Between doing it when it was current and doing it now when you can get pets on coins I would guess I have had over 100 kills and still no pet.
- See, I've told you RNG hates me.
- There are some people that have gotten it multiple times already.
- Like the guy that has 6 on the auction house.
- I might just end up buying it for 30K gold if I keep up at this rate.
- No, no pet is worth 30K gold, but being you can only get it in the LFR and once we level we can never do that LFR again I might have no choice.
- Funny part is, even if I got it, I would still use ToT 3 as a valor generator for all my characters because having extras is not a bad idea.
- If people can get 30K for it now can you imagine what people will get for it when no one is capable of getting it any longer once no one can queue for the LFR for it?
- Don't say people can still queue for it at 90 because no one will.
- Try to queue for DS at 85 and check your average wait time.
- Who is really going to wait 18 hours to get into a group?
- It would be nice if you could just walk into old LFR difficulty raids.
- So if you wanted some thing for transmog or wanted to solo it you could.
- Speaking of needing a way to walk into them, scenarios need a way to just walk into them.
- I still need a couple of scenario achievements and I sure as hell do not need a group to do them.
- So I want to just walk into them and do them.
- Why can we not walk into a scenario?
- I can understand old LFRs even if I don't like it but I can not understand why we can not go into scenarios solo.
- The mobs do not drop loot.
- You would not get a baggie with goodies if you walk in.
- There is nothing to be gained from walking it so they can not use the same excuse they use for limiting dungeons to 5 per hour.
- If there is nothing to be gained from doing them why don't they let us walk into them?
- Would love to hear a real answer to that, a reasonable answer.
- None of that "because we do not want people walking in" bull crap.
- We pay your salary, if we want to walk in and it is not game breaking if we do, there is no reason to keep up from doing so.
- Blizzard has a different way of thinking and most of the time it is about as off base as possible.
- Like the gearing cycle now.
- With each tier of raiding have 4 levels of gear that effectively means we need to gear up 4 times, or at least have the option to do so.
- If there is anything in this game I am sick of it is gearing up.
- I am tired of the treadmill of gearing, enchanting, gemming, reforging, and doing it over and over again with each new piece of gear at four levels of gear in one single tier.
- My mage currently had 5 pieces of gear in his bags that are upgrades.
- One is even a 559 that upgrades a 502 I am currently wearing.
- I am in no rush to put any of it on.
- I am waiting until I get more gear to do it.
- It is an alt, it is capable of doing the DPS required for the content it is currently doing which is the occasional flex, so I do not really "need" the gear for anything other than extending my epeen so I can put out bigger numbers.
- Sorry, I do not function that way.
- I do not give a heck if I put out bigger numbers when bigger numbers are not required.
- At least not on an alt.
- If anything I like bigger numbers so I can solo things better, not for raiding.
- Sure they are good for that, but if I am well over the minimum requirements to begin with, it is not really needed.
- It is needed more for solo stuff than for raiding.
- And I do not do anything out in the world on my mage any longer, so that is why I am not rushing to put the gear on.
- If I went out and killed rares on it then I would have upgraded them ASAP.
- But not if all I do is flex and LFR.
- If I had equip those 5 pieces as I got them the situation would have went something like this.
- Get an upgrade. Equip it. Gem it. Enchant it. Change a few other gems because of that pieces gems. Maybe change an enchant too. Reforge everything.
- Next day get another upgrade. Equip it. Gem it. Change the gem I put in the piece I got the day before. Enchant or change a few enchants. Reforge everything.
- Same day, next flex wing, get another upgrade. Equip it. Thank god no gem slot on this one. Enchant it, change another enchant, reforge everything again.
- Craft myself the belt. Equip it. Get a belt buckle for it. Gem it all up causing me to change one other gem in the process. At least no enchants need to change this time. Reforge everything again.
- Ordos loves me and gives me a piece I need. Equip it. Enchant it. Oops, need to change another gem and enchant because of stat weights. Reforge everything.
- Okay, so over the course of 3 days I've wasted gems, enchants, time, effort, and had to work on getting my character back in order 5 times.
- No thank you, I will wait until I have about 8 or more upgrades in my bags and put them all on at the same time and do all that once. Just once.
- And then with their LFR version and flex version and normal version and normal warforged version and heroic version and heroic warforged version.
- Within theory you could effectively get and have to manage the same piece of gear with the same exact name 6 times.
- They really need to simplify gear, big time.
- And I am not talking simplify it like they are in WoD by removing reforging, some stats, some gem slots and some enchants from the game.
- I mean simplify it by making you not have 4 tiers of gearing in the same tier.
- One type of gear is fine.
- LFR, Flex, Normal, Heroic, they should all drop the same item level gear.
- Add a little tag on it for where it comes from for peoples epeen.
- LFR should be a watered down version 20% difficulty.
- Flex should be a half difficulty version 50% difficulty.
- Normal should be, well, normal and 100% difficulty.
- Heroic should be the challenge for people that want challenge and be 150% difficulty.
- It would mean no more time spent balancing 4 different raid tiers.
- Much less item inflation thanks to there no longer being 4 sets of gear for one tier.
- And because of that it would mean more content could be developed instead of spending all that time balancing 4 different versions and creating 4 different sets of gear and deciding on 4 different stat levels.
- Just design it once, nerf or buff it from normal level to fit the others, and let them all drop the same gear.
- But that would never work because most people in the game do not raid for the same reasons I do.
- I raid because I like to raid.
- I raid because I like beating a challenge.
- They raid for gear, and why raid heroic if you can get the same gear in LFR.
- Many people will say that.
- And the heroic raiders would cry a river because their gear was not better than anyone elses.
- They would never want the real challenge of doing it in lesser gear, they want the better gear.
- I would make you a bet that there would probably be less than 10 guilds in the world that would be capable of doing heroic raids if they needed to do them with all normal mode gear.
- Those 10 guilds are real heroic raiders.
- Those 10 guilds want the challenge.
- The others just want the gear and use the gear to get it down.
- Not like there is anything wrong with that.
- But that is why something like a single gear level will never happen.
- Because the hard core 1% would cry a river and blizzard would listen to them and cater to them like they always do instead of doing something that might upset them.
- Remember how well cataclysm started out when they decided to make the random dungeons for the 1%.
- I must say I loved it, they were fun, they were a challenge, and in a guild group they were never really half bad once you figured out what to do.
- In a random setting however, they took the one thing the casual players, the part time players, the bad players, had for their own use, dungeons, and handed it over to the 1% that most likely would never do them anyway.
- What the hell was blizzard thinking?
- They let the people that do not even do dungeons decide how dungeons should be made.
- Blizzard needs to stop listening to bad ideas.
- And that includes some of mine.
- More specifically this idea.
- While I like the idea of one set of gear for all 4 levels of raiding, it is a bad idea.
- But watch blizzard do it.
- Because they really are that brain dead sometimes.
- Maybe I should start working on my mage for his legendary now.
- Might give me a reason to upgrade those pieces.
- I am not sure I would be capable of doing the caster boss at the end of the quest line at 514 item level.
- Then again, I would have never guessed I could do the melee one on a 520 rogue with 502 weapons and I managed that.
- Never under estimate the power of dedication, practice, problem solving and perseverance.
- If you put your mind to it, you can do anything.
- Have a great day.
Friday, January 17, 2014
What WoD Needs: Customization
This is the forth in a series about things I would like to see in warlords when it comes out. You can see the previous parts here. Part 1 - Non raiding gearing options. Part 2 - Intelligent zone design. Part 3 - Profession updates.
What WoD Needs. Part 4 - Customization
Some people might put this high on their list of things they would like to see done while others might consider it a waste of development time and resources just like I consider the redesign of the old world for cataclysm a complete and total waste. This will, without a doubt, be something that could be a hot topic depending on how you feel about controlling what goes around in game.
First off you will notice that blizzard has a long track record of taking some great add on tools and adding them to the game. If something works, might as well add it. At least for many things that has been the approach of blizzard. While there are some mods they are adamant against adding such as something like deadly boss mods most things they would at least entertain the idea of adding to the game.
So with that in mind what type of in game customization would I like to see added as a part of the game and no longer require an add on, kind of like how quest finder used to be and is now in game. And, not to be forgotten, what customization would I like to see that is not offered by an add on or in game as it stands. Lets start there, fresh changes to customization I would really love to see.
I would love to see a way to adjust spell effects and their visuals. Perhaps a slide bar for how "visual" they are from ultra to standard to reduced to off and options for friendly offensive spell effects, friendly healing spell effects, friendly defensive spell effects, enemy offensive spell effects, enemy healing spell effects, enemy defensive spell effects, neutral offensive spell effects, neutral healing spell effects, neutral defensive spell effects. Things like that. The list could be broken down even better if need be, and need would be.
One of the main reasons I hate playing as a melee DPS is because all I see are flashes of light and graphics all over the place and sometimes the only way I can tell that the mob has moved is because I can no longer hit my abilities and need to chase after it and sometimes even at that I can not see it. Many times I had my back turned to it and didn't even notice for a second because I could not see what the hell was going on.
There are just to many visual effects going on there that I just see a giant mess of lights and graphics. All that and I keep my camera out a fair deal even as melee so it all melds together into one massive spell effect which can be anywhere from mildly distracting to amazingly annoying to completely unplayable.
Even when trying to do it with my camera closer, as I have tried, it does not help that there are just too many graphics there. I've tried playing with graphics at low setting trying to see if that made much of a difference only to say it doesn't. No wonder when healing I always find that melee need more healing than ranged. It is because they can not see the "bad" because there are a million and one flashing lights going on they might not even notice they are taking damage unless they are looking at their own health bar.
Some sort of customization for spell effects is needed. They keep adding more exciting visuals for spells to try to make them unique and interesting that is has become one giant mess. While there are some, maybe even many, players that have no issues what so ever with this collection of flashing lights and graphics, I for one would like to see a way to tone them down, or even remove the ones that mean nothing to me.
Now to name plates. I use an add on for my plates called tidy plates. I've been using it so long I forgot what the game looks like without them but as I recall, unless something changed that I do not know about, there is one set of name plates and it is boring and not very informative.
I would like to see options added in game for name plates and how they display and what is displayed on them. But that is not all. I want to see a few things I have not even seen in an add on when it comes to name plates. I want it so when you click on a plate it targets that target. Maybe I am doing something wrong but if I click on a plate I get something standing behind the plate, not what the plate is representing. One more thing about plates. I want to be able to position the plates where I want them. I would put them at the feet of the mobs, not at the head of the mobs. Putting them at the feet of the mobs just seems so much more user friendly, for me at least.
Now lets get to UI customization and something many of us do at some level or another. I use bartender personally. But the game needs something similar as default, we should not need an add on for it. We should have the ability to move anything anywhere we want and adjust how it displays and its size.
I have different templates for my hunters, my death knights, my priests, etc. Each class has its own set up with bartender. Some with centered bars. Some with right and left bars but nothing in the middle, like my healers where I keep the healing add on in the middle. Some, like my hunter, have a million bars, some like my rogue, have very few. But each and every one of them is designed to be comfortable for me to play with.
Why hasn't some UI customization been added do the game already? It seems as if it would be a simple conclusion that something like that is required of games of this type now. We should be able to move anything anywhere we want and choose how we interact with it.
Now to something already in game that would just need some updating. The in game raid frames are a nice little set up for healing. What? You never used it to heal? Well I have and it is not so bad, or should I say it would not be so bad if they added some customization to it.
I use all mouse over macros for everything when healing. Sure, I have a healing add on but having everything as a mouse over is just good game play and there is no reason you should not employ good game play tactics at any given point. One time I DCed on the pull, came right back in and found my healing add on was gone. I grabbed the in game raid frames and dragged it over to be in a more comfortable place and healed the entire fight with my mouse overs and the in game raid frames.
So why not just make those in game raid frames have more options such as a click on option where you can choose what spell is cast when you right click on it, left click on it, middle click on it, shift right click on it, oh, you get the idea. And please give it more sizing options because between me, you and the blog here, those in game raid frames are freaking huge and it would be nice to be able to make them smaller.
It would not be too much of a stretch to give those raid frames a little more use, and I would like to see them do that. Even if it was only a simple one click thing only. As in if you left click on someone it will cast a revive on them. When DPSing or tanking on my monk I do not have my healing add on up so I do not have a one click revive. So instead of clicking on the person than hitting my revive I could just click on the frame and revive. Or how about hunters, they can just click on the frame and misdirect or masters call. Or maybe a mage so they can one click take care of curses. Or so many others doing so many other little things, even if it is just something you can only assign one spell to.
They can do a lot more with the raid frames already in game so I would like to see them do something, anything, with them in warlords. Just to move further into a step in the right direction. Oh, and again, a sizing option would be really really really nice.
Now, last but not least, for now, another big dream of something I would love to see added. And if anyone knows of an add on that does that please tell me because I don't know of one.
A UI save option to save the set up for your character and where their abilities are. So say on my hunter I choose to "save" my set up and I call it Hunter-Survival and then go create a new hunter I can choose the hunter survival set up that will change my UI to the exact same set up I have and put all the abilities in the same exact place I have them with all the binds for the same things I have them for. If it is a new hunter then it would add the new abilities, as I get them of course, to their appropriate places with their appropriate binds.
More so, I want this for the fact I have different set ups and key binds for PvP and PvE. So say I have a set up for Hunter-Beast Mastery-PvE and Hunter-Beast Mastery-PvP and I want to pop into a battle ground I can just switch my UI set up and it will switch to my PvP set up with all my skills and abilities in the place where I have them for PvP with all the key binds I have set up for PvP. Lets face it, there are a fair deal of abilities a hunter has that I do not even consider binding in PvE that I have bound for PvP. I just hate switching back and forth.
And then there is the good old third spec, the one you are current not using. Say I want to play around with MM for PvP for a while and see what it is like now. I need to make a whole new set up with new key binds for it. With something like that I would just go to the choice of Hunter-Marksman-PvP and tada I am all ready to move into the battle ground 3 seconds later instead of an hour later after I dropped a spec, picked up a new one, and then set up the bars and binds the way I like them.
I would love if WoD would give us the ability to save set ups, and not just by spec and purpose. So if I wanted to have a second set up on my bear for kiting only I could switch to the UI set up I labeled Druid-Guardian-Kiting and then when we move to the next fight I could go back to my basic Druid-Guardian set up.
Oh yeah, I would really love this. It just seems like it would be a huge quality of life update for people like myself that have many characters and do many things that I change my bars and binds for. It would save me lots of time and as I often say, I am not a huge fan of wasting time.
I think warlords could use with a few quality of life updates to the customization of our game play and I would like to see that.
What WoD Needs. Part 4 - Customization
Some people might put this high on their list of things they would like to see done while others might consider it a waste of development time and resources just like I consider the redesign of the old world for cataclysm a complete and total waste. This will, without a doubt, be something that could be a hot topic depending on how you feel about controlling what goes around in game.
First off you will notice that blizzard has a long track record of taking some great add on tools and adding them to the game. If something works, might as well add it. At least for many things that has been the approach of blizzard. While there are some mods they are adamant against adding such as something like deadly boss mods most things they would at least entertain the idea of adding to the game.
So with that in mind what type of in game customization would I like to see added as a part of the game and no longer require an add on, kind of like how quest finder used to be and is now in game. And, not to be forgotten, what customization would I like to see that is not offered by an add on or in game as it stands. Lets start there, fresh changes to customization I would really love to see.
I would love to see a way to adjust spell effects and their visuals. Perhaps a slide bar for how "visual" they are from ultra to standard to reduced to off and options for friendly offensive spell effects, friendly healing spell effects, friendly defensive spell effects, enemy offensive spell effects, enemy healing spell effects, enemy defensive spell effects, neutral offensive spell effects, neutral healing spell effects, neutral defensive spell effects. Things like that. The list could be broken down even better if need be, and need would be.
One of the main reasons I hate playing as a melee DPS is because all I see are flashes of light and graphics all over the place and sometimes the only way I can tell that the mob has moved is because I can no longer hit my abilities and need to chase after it and sometimes even at that I can not see it. Many times I had my back turned to it and didn't even notice for a second because I could not see what the hell was going on.
There are just to many visual effects going on there that I just see a giant mess of lights and graphics. All that and I keep my camera out a fair deal even as melee so it all melds together into one massive spell effect which can be anywhere from mildly distracting to amazingly annoying to completely unplayable.
Even when trying to do it with my camera closer, as I have tried, it does not help that there are just too many graphics there. I've tried playing with graphics at low setting trying to see if that made much of a difference only to say it doesn't. No wonder when healing I always find that melee need more healing than ranged. It is because they can not see the "bad" because there are a million and one flashing lights going on they might not even notice they are taking damage unless they are looking at their own health bar.
Some sort of customization for spell effects is needed. They keep adding more exciting visuals for spells to try to make them unique and interesting that is has become one giant mess. While there are some, maybe even many, players that have no issues what so ever with this collection of flashing lights and graphics, I for one would like to see a way to tone them down, or even remove the ones that mean nothing to me.
Now to name plates. I use an add on for my plates called tidy plates. I've been using it so long I forgot what the game looks like without them but as I recall, unless something changed that I do not know about, there is one set of name plates and it is boring and not very informative.
I would like to see options added in game for name plates and how they display and what is displayed on them. But that is not all. I want to see a few things I have not even seen in an add on when it comes to name plates. I want it so when you click on a plate it targets that target. Maybe I am doing something wrong but if I click on a plate I get something standing behind the plate, not what the plate is representing. One more thing about plates. I want to be able to position the plates where I want them. I would put them at the feet of the mobs, not at the head of the mobs. Putting them at the feet of the mobs just seems so much more user friendly, for me at least.
Now lets get to UI customization and something many of us do at some level or another. I use bartender personally. But the game needs something similar as default, we should not need an add on for it. We should have the ability to move anything anywhere we want and adjust how it displays and its size.
I have different templates for my hunters, my death knights, my priests, etc. Each class has its own set up with bartender. Some with centered bars. Some with right and left bars but nothing in the middle, like my healers where I keep the healing add on in the middle. Some, like my hunter, have a million bars, some like my rogue, have very few. But each and every one of them is designed to be comfortable for me to play with.
Why hasn't some UI customization been added do the game already? It seems as if it would be a simple conclusion that something like that is required of games of this type now. We should be able to move anything anywhere we want and choose how we interact with it.
Now to something already in game that would just need some updating. The in game raid frames are a nice little set up for healing. What? You never used it to heal? Well I have and it is not so bad, or should I say it would not be so bad if they added some customization to it.
I use all mouse over macros for everything when healing. Sure, I have a healing add on but having everything as a mouse over is just good game play and there is no reason you should not employ good game play tactics at any given point. One time I DCed on the pull, came right back in and found my healing add on was gone. I grabbed the in game raid frames and dragged it over to be in a more comfortable place and healed the entire fight with my mouse overs and the in game raid frames.
So why not just make those in game raid frames have more options such as a click on option where you can choose what spell is cast when you right click on it, left click on it, middle click on it, shift right click on it, oh, you get the idea. And please give it more sizing options because between me, you and the blog here, those in game raid frames are freaking huge and it would be nice to be able to make them smaller.
It would not be too much of a stretch to give those raid frames a little more use, and I would like to see them do that. Even if it was only a simple one click thing only. As in if you left click on someone it will cast a revive on them. When DPSing or tanking on my monk I do not have my healing add on up so I do not have a one click revive. So instead of clicking on the person than hitting my revive I could just click on the frame and revive. Or how about hunters, they can just click on the frame and misdirect or masters call. Or maybe a mage so they can one click take care of curses. Or so many others doing so many other little things, even if it is just something you can only assign one spell to.
They can do a lot more with the raid frames already in game so I would like to see them do something, anything, with them in warlords. Just to move further into a step in the right direction. Oh, and again, a sizing option would be really really really nice.
Now, last but not least, for now, another big dream of something I would love to see added. And if anyone knows of an add on that does that please tell me because I don't know of one.
A UI save option to save the set up for your character and where their abilities are. So say on my hunter I choose to "save" my set up and I call it Hunter-Survival and then go create a new hunter I can choose the hunter survival set up that will change my UI to the exact same set up I have and put all the abilities in the same exact place I have them with all the binds for the same things I have them for. If it is a new hunter then it would add the new abilities, as I get them of course, to their appropriate places with their appropriate binds.
More so, I want this for the fact I have different set ups and key binds for PvP and PvE. So say I have a set up for Hunter-Beast Mastery-PvE and Hunter-Beast Mastery-PvP and I want to pop into a battle ground I can just switch my UI set up and it will switch to my PvP set up with all my skills and abilities in the place where I have them for PvP with all the key binds I have set up for PvP. Lets face it, there are a fair deal of abilities a hunter has that I do not even consider binding in PvE that I have bound for PvP. I just hate switching back and forth.
And then there is the good old third spec, the one you are current not using. Say I want to play around with MM for PvP for a while and see what it is like now. I need to make a whole new set up with new key binds for it. With something like that I would just go to the choice of Hunter-Marksman-PvP and tada I am all ready to move into the battle ground 3 seconds later instead of an hour later after I dropped a spec, picked up a new one, and then set up the bars and binds the way I like them.
I would love if WoD would give us the ability to save set ups, and not just by spec and purpose. So if I wanted to have a second set up on my bear for kiting only I could switch to the UI set up I labeled Druid-Guardian-Kiting and then when we move to the next fight I could go back to my basic Druid-Guardian set up.
Oh yeah, I would really love this. It just seems like it would be a huge quality of life update for people like myself that have many characters and do many things that I change my bars and binds for. It would save me lots of time and as I often say, I am not a huge fan of wasting time.
I think warlords could use with a few quality of life updates to the customization of our game play and I would like to see that.
Thursday, January 16, 2014
What WoD Needs: A Profession Update
This is the third in a series of posts about what I believe warlords could use. Part 1 - Non raiding gearing options. Part 2 - Intelligent zone design.
What WoD Needs. Part 3: A Profession Update
When cataclysm came out blizzard effectively destroyed the leveling experience completely. Not only by redesigning the old world and ruining the classic feel of it and destroying the leveling time line by effectively bouncing you thru time while leveling instead of continually moving forward but they speed up the leveling process to light speed.
When they decided that destroying the leveling experience in the old world was a better choice of the design team than making new content they also decided to do a half ass job of it. If you can't do an unnecessary job poorly, why do it?
They changed the world but they did not change the professions to match with the new changed world. Meaning that you are leveling at light speed but your professions still level at a snails pace. What is worse is if you happen to be a double gatherer because when they redesigned zones they forgot to redesign where things like mining nodes and herbalism nodes were.
Sure, they made some minor adjustments, but as anyone that has leveled a miner and an herbalist together since cataclysm will tell you there are various zones you will run into where if you were sitting at 120 skill level in both mining and herbalism you would be too high in herbalism to gain skill points because all the herbs were lower and you would be too low in mining so you could not mine anything.
McFly. Hello McFly. Think McFly think. If a character is of the appropriate level to do quests in that area then you can figure what would be the appropriate level their skills should be at that time and the herbs and ore in that area should be around that skill level. Don't you think? The herbs should not be grey so you get no skill points off them and the mining nodes should not require you to need another 60 skill levels before you can mine them.
That is just the tip of the iceberg with the problems of leveling since cataclysm destroyed the entire leveling process. Later on came the cross realm zones. Oh joy, more assholes, more griefers and more competition for quest mobs that sometimes take forever to respawn. Oh, and more competition for my gaterables too, gee thanks blizzard, you are too kind.
So not only was it hard enough to find a node you could pick that would give you a skill up but now you had massively more people than everyone was used to fighting you for those nodes. Worse was, and remains, all those fliers that run around grabbing everything so there is nothing for you leaving you even further behind than you already were thanks to bad zone redesign.
Don't think skinning was fine either just because I did not mention it. It too suffered from the same thing mining and herbing did. You would go from one zone where the animal skins were grey and no longer offering any skill ups to the very next zone where you could not even skin the animals because they were too high even if that zone was the next logical zone of the new, and horrible, leveling design.
Now to the crafting professions and they are even worse. We will start with leather working because in my opinion that one is the biggest culprit out there when it comes to professions that are horrible to level.
Being you level so fast now and keeping up with your skills is hard enough you might often times find yourself spending hours upon hours of skinning mobs that are grey to you, where you are not even getting experience or skill ups, just to get enough leather so you can keep up with your professions as you level. You just need too much leather to level leather working and the speed of leveling means you will never really get a decent amount of stock to work with any longer. The days of spending a week of playing in a zone and killing enough animals to keep up with your leather working are gone, they have been gone for a long time.
In late wrath you could start to tell it was getting a little rough, but doable, to level a crafting profession with your character. But it was not exactly what we would call horrible. Mildly annoying maybe, a little frustrating sometimes, but not horrible. When the changes to the old world came with cataclysm and the speed of leveling got turned up to 11 it was all bets are off. You can no longer level your crafting professions with your character unless you wanted to waste a butt load of time or a butt load of gold buying materials.
And it is not just the leather and not having enough of it, or the herbs and not having enough of them, or the ore and not having enough of it, or the cloth and not having enough of it, it is the other stuff. You are not in a zone very long any more so there is usually no way in hell you will collect materials to get 100s of motes of water so you can make primals to make 1 or 2 pieces for 1 or 2 skill levels.
Many professions have stages where you are stuck with needing what are now very rare materials in large amounts and unless you plan to farm for a long time or spend a lot of gold you can not reasonably get these things meaning you are doing what I do on a lot of my alts now. I wait for the darkmoon fair when I hit those rough points to get a free five skill points and hopefully skip over it. It is either that or try to farm 40 primal waters or buy them for 30 gold a piece off the auction house. Being I am wasting all my time in 3 and 4 hour LFRs with horrible players I do not have the time to go farm all that and being I am cheap I will never pay for some thing on the auction house that I could farm if I wanted to.
Crafting professions might be the easiest to fix with the sped up leveling speed. Just reduce the cost needed to make items. If something needed 8 primal waters, make it 1 now. Lets face it, that is an old item you are making and you will either just vendor it or disenchant it. It is not something you are going to wear, or if you do it is not something you are going to wear long. It is not top of the line gear any longer and it should not require top of the line materials or large quantities of items. It is something you are just making for a skill point. Nothing more, nothing less.
Beside lowering the ridiculous amount of rare materials needed for some items, they need to boost all items that need things like that to 2, or 3, or 4, or 5 point craftings. While they have done so with many they have not done so with all. Try engineering now. There are many times you will be in a range where you need lots and lots of materials, some rarer than others, and everything just gives you 1 skill point. Ouch.
It is not just the rare stuff that needs to be adjusted, it is all stuff. We get less leather, less ore, less cloth, because we are leveling so damn fast. Do we really need 18 pieces of leather to make something for 1 point? Some times we can pass entire zones where that leather can be skinned and only get 18 pieces of leather, total. So we can only make one thing? Really?
Lower things to need 5 or less pieces of leather, bars of metal or bolts of cloth. We might still out pace it with the stupidly fast leveling speed of the game but at least if we are 4 skill points off we only need to go back to get 20 pieces of leather and not go back to get 72 pieces of leather, or 144 ore, or 288 pieces of cloth.
Get real blizzard, lower the requirements to make low level craftable items. There is no reason for them to be expensive like that in this new world or fast level and quickly replaced items. It is not like anyone is making those crafted items while leveling to use because the second they make it to use it the next quest reward they get will be 10 times better than what was just crafted.
Leveling crafting professions by making gear is a means to an end and there is no reason for it to be so intensive any longer being the leveling of your character isn't. This worked when leveling took time. When you would end up killing 500 boars before moving to the next zone and end up with 500 leather in your bag before you move to the next level it worked, you could keep up. But now you can do some quests and never even get one quest that has you kill something that you can skin before you are moving to the next zone.
Now your skinning and your leather working is behind and you are left with the choice of doing old stuff that offers you nothing just to catch up or to continue leveling. Please tell me this is not one of those things you were talking about when you said you like to offer people choices blizzard because that is not a choice, that is cruel.
Mists has done a fair job with adding a few catch up mechanics for a few professions but once again like always blizzard half assed it. Lets take cooking for our first example of how blizzard did a good job and then half assed it because they never think about the future. They design everything as if it is going to be the last thing they ever add to the game.
They made it so you could never even train cooking and once you get to the farm you can power level all the way up to 530. I actually did that with one of my most recently leveled 90s. It was quite nice to be able to ignore cooking and think I can just get to it later. The problem is I now sit at 530 and most likely will never move from 530 unless I do the darkmoon fair to get 5 points. And that is their design flaw.
You need to choose at least one of the "ways" to get your cooking any further. Sure I have done it on many of my characters and could do it on all of them if I want to. But lets be honest, they take a butt load of materials to level and I would rather just sell all those materials and make myself a few grand than level cooking. Even more so if that character is one of those 90s I have that fly solo on a server. The gold means more than leveling up one of the "ways" to 600 to increase my cooking. I'll visit the fair and I will eventually get my cooking to 600. That is "if" I remember to do the fair, which I rarely do lately.
They need to add some more everyday cooking options to level cooking. Ones that are not part of the "ways" that need a million things to level up. Like I said, we can all level cooking fine now if we wanted to because we are playing this expansion for weeks, months and as it looks even years but what happens when someone comes along next expansion that is new, or with an alt, and they get to this part and they level through mists in a matter of 8 hours or less and never get enough materials to level up all the way though one of the "ways"? Are they meant to come back and farm materials on their farm and kill mobs in the world and fish up dozens of polls and get lots of ironpaw tokens just so they can catch up on their cooking? Really blizzard, you are going to make people go through all that crap in old content to level a profession or wait months for the darkmoon fair to catch them up?
Maybe you plan to add something in warlords that gets you from 530 on to keep the catch up going but there is no real reason for that. You could have just added some everyday food options so people could have finished leveling cooking without the need of learning one of the ways if they did not want to. Did you not think what it would be like leveling up cooking once the content was old and people were not spending months on end in it? Stop freaking designing everything as if it is the last thing you will ever add to the game. Think about how it will work for the next expansion too.
This is the biggest problem with professions. Each one seems to always be designed as if this will be the last time you will ever level it and they try to make it last longer to level but once it is old that lasting longer just becomes a roadblock to a character that is speed leveling through that zone or expansion because of their desire to push everyone to the end game.
Designing like that would be fine if they adjusted it once the content was no longer current. Like if they added the everyday cooking options to the catch up trainer on the farm once warlords comes out so people are not caught in the farm forever if they want to play catch up doing one of the ways. But blizzard won't do that.
It would be fine if cloth patterns took 10 bolts each now but once the next expansion comes that will be a road block. It would be okay if they fixed it and made it 2 bolts once the content is old, but they don't. So adjusting the professions once they are old, I would like to see that in warlords for sure.
But wait, there is more on the topic of professions which I would like to see change.
I would like to see the crafting professions become more a part of the gearing process, if people so wished. Each new tier there should be new weapons that can be made, or clothing that can be made, and not just a new set of legs and waist like this tier.
The ideal design would be to do 2 pieces like the legs and the waist at the current raid level, like they are now but also to have other slots that can be made for a few more pieces of gear. Maybe 2 pieces at flex level and 2 pieces at LFR level. All different ones of course. So you could effectively have 6 pieces of gear.
Then trinkets and rings and necks, why not keep them up to date? The starter rings and neck that a jewel crafter could make were useless in every single sense of the world. 450? Are you kidding me? The trinkets were nice as always but once the expansion moved on where are the new trinkets. Where are any useful rings or necks.
Something like the engineer helm is awesome when you hit max level, but why are there not upgrade for it throughout the entire expansion? Make it that each new tier an engineer can upgrade their helm to keep it current. Make it so a scribe can upgrade their darkmoon trinket, even if they can not upgrade the others. Make it so professions that can make items, even more so soulbound ones, are not only useful at the beginning of the expansion but throughout the entire expansion.
Making some weapons, even if they are lower leveled then the current raid would be a bang up catch up mechanic and great for crafters. What is the best ranged weapon a hunter can get? Got me and I have a bunch at 90. Want to know why I do not know what the best weapon that can be made for a hunter is, because it sucked and was not even as good as the one you could get from the scenario that gave you a guaranteed 450 from doing the quest.
What is the best off hand? 476 I believe. But some classes got 502 weapons stuff. Not all, but a few. That is what all classes needed, a 502 crafted weapon. Do you know how much different the LFR would look if only these timeless geared people had a weapon better than the 429 they had from questing or the 450 they had if they were smart enough to do the scenario? Sure they would still be bad, but a player being bad with a 502 weapon will do double what a person doing bad with a 429 weapon would.
I would like to see crafted items be more prevalent, more useful, and more accessible. Accessible is a key. No more needing raid materials to make them. Sure guilds like mine have 100s of spirits in the bank and if someone needs a 553 piece we just crank them out one ASAP. But for someone that does not raid, does not have an enchanter that raids, does not have a huge depth of friends to ask for assistance or a guild that will make it for them like mine, they are screwed because they need to pay an arm and a leg at the auction house for it. If they insist on keeping the materials as raid materials, at least make them also purchasable with valor or justice too. It only seems reasonable.
Speaking of crafting materials lets talk about spirits of harmony. They really need to make things like this tradable or at the very least BoA. My shaman is a healer and as such she did not exactly go out grinding things to get spirits which means as my blacksmith she could not make any gear for my plate wearers and she could not make the 502 weapons which would have been nice for them.
Or how about my hunter, my main and my beloved, the one I spend a lot of time on and do a lot of things with. I've spend, no exaggeration what so ever, over 1000 spirits of harmony on things like golden lotus because I had no other use for them on my hunter. It would have been nice to send some over to my leather worker so he could have crafted me some gear or stuff to sell. Or to my blacksmith so she could have made my plate wearers some gear. Or to my engineer so he could have made me some scopes.
Materials like the spirits of harmony need to be made tradable and I would love to see that happen in warlords or at the absolute least making them bind on account. No more of this soulbound bull shit for things that would have or could have been put to much better use on characters other than the ones that have them.
Mists also added a very nice catch up system for mining and herbalism but once again, as always, they half assed it. You can skip leveling them all the way to pandaria and just pick herbs on the island and mine nodes on the island and get fragments instead of full ore or full herbs. This is a fantastic idea and a great way to smooth out the leveling process but why is it only in one area.
What I would like to see in warlords is that concept extended to skinning as well and throughout the entirety of the game. Everything should be like that. If you are high enough you get the item, if you are not high enough you get a fragment of the item. That way you can play catch up as you level instead of waiting until end game to try and do it.
Don't you think it would be better to catch up as you go then to get to the max and grind it out? I am sure some will see where I am coming from. The catch up mechanic for herbs and ore need to be from the old world on, every herb, every ore and every skin throughout the entire leveling process. That would be great, that would be doing it smart and not half assing it like they did.
So, to summarize, what WoD needs in terms of professions.
1) A more fluid gathering process from zone to zone.
2) A quicker leveling process for crafting professions.
3) Removal or great reductions of old items to need lesser found materials.
4) More multiple skill up craftings for high cost items.
5) Extended catch up mechanics for gathering.
6) More craftable gear.
7) Purchasable raid materials, with valor for example.
8) No bound random drop crafting items.
There is a lot of work that needs to be done with professions and I see no reason why they can not do most if not all of the things I suggested quite easily. Professions can be a much more useful and a much more enjoyable part of the game even more so if we are going to be losing profession bonuses and the only benefit of a profession will be what it can do. It would be nice if it could do more and could be less stressful or annoying to level. I would like to see that addressed in warlords.
What WoD Needs. Part 3: A Profession Update
When cataclysm came out blizzard effectively destroyed the leveling experience completely. Not only by redesigning the old world and ruining the classic feel of it and destroying the leveling time line by effectively bouncing you thru time while leveling instead of continually moving forward but they speed up the leveling process to light speed.
When they decided that destroying the leveling experience in the old world was a better choice of the design team than making new content they also decided to do a half ass job of it. If you can't do an unnecessary job poorly, why do it?
They changed the world but they did not change the professions to match with the new changed world. Meaning that you are leveling at light speed but your professions still level at a snails pace. What is worse is if you happen to be a double gatherer because when they redesigned zones they forgot to redesign where things like mining nodes and herbalism nodes were.
Sure, they made some minor adjustments, but as anyone that has leveled a miner and an herbalist together since cataclysm will tell you there are various zones you will run into where if you were sitting at 120 skill level in both mining and herbalism you would be too high in herbalism to gain skill points because all the herbs were lower and you would be too low in mining so you could not mine anything.
McFly. Hello McFly. Think McFly think. If a character is of the appropriate level to do quests in that area then you can figure what would be the appropriate level their skills should be at that time and the herbs and ore in that area should be around that skill level. Don't you think? The herbs should not be grey so you get no skill points off them and the mining nodes should not require you to need another 60 skill levels before you can mine them.
That is just the tip of the iceberg with the problems of leveling since cataclysm destroyed the entire leveling process. Later on came the cross realm zones. Oh joy, more assholes, more griefers and more competition for quest mobs that sometimes take forever to respawn. Oh, and more competition for my gaterables too, gee thanks blizzard, you are too kind.
So not only was it hard enough to find a node you could pick that would give you a skill up but now you had massively more people than everyone was used to fighting you for those nodes. Worse was, and remains, all those fliers that run around grabbing everything so there is nothing for you leaving you even further behind than you already were thanks to bad zone redesign.
Don't think skinning was fine either just because I did not mention it. It too suffered from the same thing mining and herbing did. You would go from one zone where the animal skins were grey and no longer offering any skill ups to the very next zone where you could not even skin the animals because they were too high even if that zone was the next logical zone of the new, and horrible, leveling design.
Now to the crafting professions and they are even worse. We will start with leather working because in my opinion that one is the biggest culprit out there when it comes to professions that are horrible to level.
Being you level so fast now and keeping up with your skills is hard enough you might often times find yourself spending hours upon hours of skinning mobs that are grey to you, where you are not even getting experience or skill ups, just to get enough leather so you can keep up with your professions as you level. You just need too much leather to level leather working and the speed of leveling means you will never really get a decent amount of stock to work with any longer. The days of spending a week of playing in a zone and killing enough animals to keep up with your leather working are gone, they have been gone for a long time.
In late wrath you could start to tell it was getting a little rough, but doable, to level a crafting profession with your character. But it was not exactly what we would call horrible. Mildly annoying maybe, a little frustrating sometimes, but not horrible. When the changes to the old world came with cataclysm and the speed of leveling got turned up to 11 it was all bets are off. You can no longer level your crafting professions with your character unless you wanted to waste a butt load of time or a butt load of gold buying materials.
And it is not just the leather and not having enough of it, or the herbs and not having enough of them, or the ore and not having enough of it, or the cloth and not having enough of it, it is the other stuff. You are not in a zone very long any more so there is usually no way in hell you will collect materials to get 100s of motes of water so you can make primals to make 1 or 2 pieces for 1 or 2 skill levels.
Many professions have stages where you are stuck with needing what are now very rare materials in large amounts and unless you plan to farm for a long time or spend a lot of gold you can not reasonably get these things meaning you are doing what I do on a lot of my alts now. I wait for the darkmoon fair when I hit those rough points to get a free five skill points and hopefully skip over it. It is either that or try to farm 40 primal waters or buy them for 30 gold a piece off the auction house. Being I am wasting all my time in 3 and 4 hour LFRs with horrible players I do not have the time to go farm all that and being I am cheap I will never pay for some thing on the auction house that I could farm if I wanted to.
Crafting professions might be the easiest to fix with the sped up leveling speed. Just reduce the cost needed to make items. If something needed 8 primal waters, make it 1 now. Lets face it, that is an old item you are making and you will either just vendor it or disenchant it. It is not something you are going to wear, or if you do it is not something you are going to wear long. It is not top of the line gear any longer and it should not require top of the line materials or large quantities of items. It is something you are just making for a skill point. Nothing more, nothing less.
Beside lowering the ridiculous amount of rare materials needed for some items, they need to boost all items that need things like that to 2, or 3, or 4, or 5 point craftings. While they have done so with many they have not done so with all. Try engineering now. There are many times you will be in a range where you need lots and lots of materials, some rarer than others, and everything just gives you 1 skill point. Ouch.
It is not just the rare stuff that needs to be adjusted, it is all stuff. We get less leather, less ore, less cloth, because we are leveling so damn fast. Do we really need 18 pieces of leather to make something for 1 point? Some times we can pass entire zones where that leather can be skinned and only get 18 pieces of leather, total. So we can only make one thing? Really?
Lower things to need 5 or less pieces of leather, bars of metal or bolts of cloth. We might still out pace it with the stupidly fast leveling speed of the game but at least if we are 4 skill points off we only need to go back to get 20 pieces of leather and not go back to get 72 pieces of leather, or 144 ore, or 288 pieces of cloth.
Get real blizzard, lower the requirements to make low level craftable items. There is no reason for them to be expensive like that in this new world or fast level and quickly replaced items. It is not like anyone is making those crafted items while leveling to use because the second they make it to use it the next quest reward they get will be 10 times better than what was just crafted.
Leveling crafting professions by making gear is a means to an end and there is no reason for it to be so intensive any longer being the leveling of your character isn't. This worked when leveling took time. When you would end up killing 500 boars before moving to the next zone and end up with 500 leather in your bag before you move to the next level it worked, you could keep up. But now you can do some quests and never even get one quest that has you kill something that you can skin before you are moving to the next zone.
Now your skinning and your leather working is behind and you are left with the choice of doing old stuff that offers you nothing just to catch up or to continue leveling. Please tell me this is not one of those things you were talking about when you said you like to offer people choices blizzard because that is not a choice, that is cruel.
Mists has done a fair job with adding a few catch up mechanics for a few professions but once again like always blizzard half assed it. Lets take cooking for our first example of how blizzard did a good job and then half assed it because they never think about the future. They design everything as if it is going to be the last thing they ever add to the game.
They made it so you could never even train cooking and once you get to the farm you can power level all the way up to 530. I actually did that with one of my most recently leveled 90s. It was quite nice to be able to ignore cooking and think I can just get to it later. The problem is I now sit at 530 and most likely will never move from 530 unless I do the darkmoon fair to get 5 points. And that is their design flaw.
You need to choose at least one of the "ways" to get your cooking any further. Sure I have done it on many of my characters and could do it on all of them if I want to. But lets be honest, they take a butt load of materials to level and I would rather just sell all those materials and make myself a few grand than level cooking. Even more so if that character is one of those 90s I have that fly solo on a server. The gold means more than leveling up one of the "ways" to 600 to increase my cooking. I'll visit the fair and I will eventually get my cooking to 600. That is "if" I remember to do the fair, which I rarely do lately.
They need to add some more everyday cooking options to level cooking. Ones that are not part of the "ways" that need a million things to level up. Like I said, we can all level cooking fine now if we wanted to because we are playing this expansion for weeks, months and as it looks even years but what happens when someone comes along next expansion that is new, or with an alt, and they get to this part and they level through mists in a matter of 8 hours or less and never get enough materials to level up all the way though one of the "ways"? Are they meant to come back and farm materials on their farm and kill mobs in the world and fish up dozens of polls and get lots of ironpaw tokens just so they can catch up on their cooking? Really blizzard, you are going to make people go through all that crap in old content to level a profession or wait months for the darkmoon fair to catch them up?
Maybe you plan to add something in warlords that gets you from 530 on to keep the catch up going but there is no real reason for that. You could have just added some everyday food options so people could have finished leveling cooking without the need of learning one of the ways if they did not want to. Did you not think what it would be like leveling up cooking once the content was old and people were not spending months on end in it? Stop freaking designing everything as if it is the last thing you will ever add to the game. Think about how it will work for the next expansion too.
This is the biggest problem with professions. Each one seems to always be designed as if this will be the last time you will ever level it and they try to make it last longer to level but once it is old that lasting longer just becomes a roadblock to a character that is speed leveling through that zone or expansion because of their desire to push everyone to the end game.
Designing like that would be fine if they adjusted it once the content was no longer current. Like if they added the everyday cooking options to the catch up trainer on the farm once warlords comes out so people are not caught in the farm forever if they want to play catch up doing one of the ways. But blizzard won't do that.
It would be fine if cloth patterns took 10 bolts each now but once the next expansion comes that will be a road block. It would be okay if they fixed it and made it 2 bolts once the content is old, but they don't. So adjusting the professions once they are old, I would like to see that in warlords for sure.
But wait, there is more on the topic of professions which I would like to see change.
I would like to see the crafting professions become more a part of the gearing process, if people so wished. Each new tier there should be new weapons that can be made, or clothing that can be made, and not just a new set of legs and waist like this tier.
The ideal design would be to do 2 pieces like the legs and the waist at the current raid level, like they are now but also to have other slots that can be made for a few more pieces of gear. Maybe 2 pieces at flex level and 2 pieces at LFR level. All different ones of course. So you could effectively have 6 pieces of gear.
Then trinkets and rings and necks, why not keep them up to date? The starter rings and neck that a jewel crafter could make were useless in every single sense of the world. 450? Are you kidding me? The trinkets were nice as always but once the expansion moved on where are the new trinkets. Where are any useful rings or necks.
Something like the engineer helm is awesome when you hit max level, but why are there not upgrade for it throughout the entire expansion? Make it that each new tier an engineer can upgrade their helm to keep it current. Make it so a scribe can upgrade their darkmoon trinket, even if they can not upgrade the others. Make it so professions that can make items, even more so soulbound ones, are not only useful at the beginning of the expansion but throughout the entire expansion.
Making some weapons, even if they are lower leveled then the current raid would be a bang up catch up mechanic and great for crafters. What is the best ranged weapon a hunter can get? Got me and I have a bunch at 90. Want to know why I do not know what the best weapon that can be made for a hunter is, because it sucked and was not even as good as the one you could get from the scenario that gave you a guaranteed 450 from doing the quest.
What is the best off hand? 476 I believe. But some classes got 502 weapons stuff. Not all, but a few. That is what all classes needed, a 502 crafted weapon. Do you know how much different the LFR would look if only these timeless geared people had a weapon better than the 429 they had from questing or the 450 they had if they were smart enough to do the scenario? Sure they would still be bad, but a player being bad with a 502 weapon will do double what a person doing bad with a 429 weapon would.
I would like to see crafted items be more prevalent, more useful, and more accessible. Accessible is a key. No more needing raid materials to make them. Sure guilds like mine have 100s of spirits in the bank and if someone needs a 553 piece we just crank them out one ASAP. But for someone that does not raid, does not have an enchanter that raids, does not have a huge depth of friends to ask for assistance or a guild that will make it for them like mine, they are screwed because they need to pay an arm and a leg at the auction house for it. If they insist on keeping the materials as raid materials, at least make them also purchasable with valor or justice too. It only seems reasonable.
Speaking of crafting materials lets talk about spirits of harmony. They really need to make things like this tradable or at the very least BoA. My shaman is a healer and as such she did not exactly go out grinding things to get spirits which means as my blacksmith she could not make any gear for my plate wearers and she could not make the 502 weapons which would have been nice for them.
Or how about my hunter, my main and my beloved, the one I spend a lot of time on and do a lot of things with. I've spend, no exaggeration what so ever, over 1000 spirits of harmony on things like golden lotus because I had no other use for them on my hunter. It would have been nice to send some over to my leather worker so he could have crafted me some gear or stuff to sell. Or to my blacksmith so she could have made my plate wearers some gear. Or to my engineer so he could have made me some scopes.
Materials like the spirits of harmony need to be made tradable and I would love to see that happen in warlords or at the absolute least making them bind on account. No more of this soulbound bull shit for things that would have or could have been put to much better use on characters other than the ones that have them.
Mists also added a very nice catch up system for mining and herbalism but once again, as always, they half assed it. You can skip leveling them all the way to pandaria and just pick herbs on the island and mine nodes on the island and get fragments instead of full ore or full herbs. This is a fantastic idea and a great way to smooth out the leveling process but why is it only in one area.
What I would like to see in warlords is that concept extended to skinning as well and throughout the entirety of the game. Everything should be like that. If you are high enough you get the item, if you are not high enough you get a fragment of the item. That way you can play catch up as you level instead of waiting until end game to try and do it.
Don't you think it would be better to catch up as you go then to get to the max and grind it out? I am sure some will see where I am coming from. The catch up mechanic for herbs and ore need to be from the old world on, every herb, every ore and every skin throughout the entire leveling process. That would be great, that would be doing it smart and not half assing it like they did.
So, to summarize, what WoD needs in terms of professions.
1) A more fluid gathering process from zone to zone.
2) A quicker leveling process for crafting professions.
3) Removal or great reductions of old items to need lesser found materials.
4) More multiple skill up craftings for high cost items.
5) Extended catch up mechanics for gathering.
6) More craftable gear.
7) Purchasable raid materials, with valor for example.
8) No bound random drop crafting items.
There is a lot of work that needs to be done with professions and I see no reason why they can not do most if not all of the things I suggested quite easily. Professions can be a much more useful and a much more enjoyable part of the game even more so if we are going to be losing profession bonuses and the only benefit of a profession will be what it can do. It would be nice if it could do more and could be less stressful or annoying to level. I would like to see that addressed in warlords.
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
What WoD Needs: Intelligent Zone Design
This is the second in a series of posts about things I would like to see in warlords. Part one was about non raiding gearing options, you can view it here.
What WoD Needs. Part 2: Intelligent Zone Design
I am not saying that zones are designed poorly in the game, that would be about as far from the truth as you can get. Blizzard does a great job of tying zones together and making them move from one place to the next as smooth as possible. Maybe with the exception of the clusterfuck that cataclysm was, but that was just one huge design mistake that should have never been made so lets pretend it never was, please. They have gotten better at this connected questing with every expansion they have added to the game and I would be wrong to not make a note of that here as I just have. Mists took questing connection and zone connection to a whole new level, a very well designed one. I mean something different however. Something different that just making a zone "tight".
The timeless island is the perfect example of what could be and since it was released I have been thinking about it. There is a design to it that was very intelligent and I have mentioned it here before in other posts about other things and people responded "wow, I never noticed that". Well, I am weird that way and have a slew of alts with varying gear levels all over the place so perhaps that is why I noticed it while others did not. What am I talking about? The scaling difficultly in the zone as you progress through it. It was designed fantastically.
You might be saying to yourself, what are you on about this time grumpy, and perhaps rightfully so. Many people, most even, did not notice the intelligent design of the timeless island as noted by previous comments when I mentioned it. I'll explain.
When you land on the timeless island you land in an area where there are absolutely no hostile mobs. There are of course turtles all over the place. Small turtles, medium turtles and huge turtles, all of which will leave you be and never attack you unless you attack them first. The absolute perfect design for "ease". Just like the starting zone when you create your first character. You fight when you want to fight only, except this time unlike a starting zone you can pick your difficultly level. You can attack the easy to kill non elites, the elites or the huge elites.
From there when moving to the center you could find yourself running into a snake which will gladly kick your ass if you are melee and not well geared, but those snakes are easily avoidable. You might find yourself bumping into a yak or a crane as well and while not as deadly as the snake can be to most they too could provide a minor challenge unless you are appropriately geared and/or skilled. But they are few and far between so like the snakes they are easily avoidable. There are also, like with the turtles, varied degrees of conflict you can get into if you choose to with non aggressive small yaks and small cranes and medium yaks and medium cranes. Basically it is a slight step up in difficulty bump over where you landed.
Once you move on from that center part it steps up the challenge a little bit with slightly more dangerous mobs over at the panda village, no elites, but all aggressive and all quite painful if you are not yet prepared. If you head north a tiny bit there are tigers, small non elite ones and the usually sleeping elite ones so while they are aggressive they will usually not attack you unless you walk almost directly over them. Wouldn't anyone attack someone that walked over them while they were sleeping? Don't blame them for trying to claw you to death, you stepped on their tail while they were sleeping.
The further you explore the larger the challenge gets, the tougher the opponent you will face. From the alementals to the frogs to packs of tigers in 3 and 4 instead of 1 and 2. Then there are the very imposing rock creatures walking around slowly but they will not aggro you even if they are labeled as aggressive unless you walk almost through them, sort of like the sleeping tigers, once again allowing you to pick when you are ready to challenge them.
The further you spread out, the harder the challenge gets. And then there is the time you start to head up the hill and run into the yungols which begin to pose a much more difficult task when compared to everything else you have thus far experienced on the island.
You can pick some small packs of non elite mobs, some packs with 1 elite and 2 non elite, some with 2 elites and some with 2 elites and 2 non elites. Each pack is progressively harder in that bottom part of the hill, each with their own unique abilities that teach you to use abilities that interrupt or stun and avoid stuff on the ground. It stepped up the difficulty level considerably from those mobs you fought below.
After you cross the first bridge they give you a taste of whats to come with much harder enemies than anything you have faced before on the island but they are spread out and easily picked off one at a time. They are a test of ability, to see if you are ready to move on, to see if you are ready to avoid the avoidable, to see if you are ready to use those interrupts and stuns, or if you are already well geared, to see if you can just rip through them for a quick and easy kill. Either way the difficulty has been stepped up.
At the top of that zone there are some harder mobs mixed with these, I'll call them medium mobs. They are a little tighter and less likely to be able to pull one at a time unless you are an expert puller, which is a skill in its own and something you will learn to do if you actually take the time to try it.
Then you can pass over the next part of the bridge and face the hardest mobs you have faced so far. These guys will brutalize you if you are not prepared and even if you are a "good" player if you are not appropriately geared even one seemingly minor error and you will be walking back from the graveyard, once again upping the difficulty as you moved further on to the island.
Then if you have the legendary cloak or use the kite you can buy on the island you can jump over the next bridge, the broken bridge, and face even harder mobs in tighter clusters. You might often see people looking to assemble groups to kill them because they can be brutal. I've seen them rip 5 mans apart like they were tearing up a parking ticket and throwing it back in the police officers face. They will put you down faster than the cop will cuff you for being a jackass.
For the higher geared player these become a test of ability to see if you can do them. Killing one solo is always fun and often an adventure and not to be taken lightly just because you or me can do it. It is an accomplishment for sure and if you take the path all the way around the outer sanctuary you will find yourself face to face with the priest, the most deadly of deadly mobs here and truly test your ability as a player or as a group if you can not solo it. I might have soloed it that first week, but I am a hunter, I still see people that now out gear where I was on that first day die to it. I've seen 5 people in a group that all greatly out gear what I was originally when I killed it die a violent death to it. This is a challenge like no other.
As you see, the further you go in, the harder the mobs get. And then there is entering the sanctuary but that is for those that have the cloak only and once in there you can understand way. How about tackling two of those priests at the same time? If 5 people with cloaks can repeatedly die to one what do you think will happen when they happen to run into two of them with a chanter at the same time? Yeah, it just got real. The difficulty level has reached max level here.
See, that is the beautiful design I love about the timeless island and something I call intelligent zone design. The further you get into the zone the harder things get. It builds the zone not in story alone like a leveling zone would but in difficulty.
Now I understand if this will be the new patch zone approach and I hope it is. Lets face it, the island of thunder was nothing like this. The lightning mine at the end of the opening, the furthest part in, was no more difficult than the troll zone which was one of the first zones you even stepped into. Actually some might argue, myself included, that the saurok, troll and mogu zones we first experience were harder than the later areas we opened. This is the exact opposite of intelligent zone design. As we opened areas each new area should have been harder, not easier or near equal.
Adding this to new zones that are added end game is easy, sure, see how well it was added to the timeless island. It was added so well that most people did not even noticed that the further you went into the zone the harder the mobs where, because it was all scaled and set up so damn well. Most just thought, that area is too hard and never realized that area that was too hard was in a direct line further into the island, that is what makes it intelligent zone design. Bravo blizzard.
I would like to see a little of this approach added to the leveling areas. Perhaps something of a throwback to the pre-cataclysm days when there actually used to be some danger in the world while leveling. Like those ?? dragonkin outside of forest song that told me, "you do not belong here hunter". There were mobs like this all over the world, level 60 zones that just happens to be in a level 20 zone or a level 30 zone or a level 40 zone. We just saw the ?? and did not go there, or walked into them and died a violent and extremely quick death and knew not to go back there.
There is no reason that a leveling zone needs to be just for leveling. It can have multi purposes. Lets take jade forest for example. We have the serpent riders there, a quest hub and area you really can not do until 90, so why not make that entire area for 90s and make the mobs around it appropriate to 90? When leveling through there at 85 you will see them and go, "oh shit" and run like hell or die like a man, either way, you will have faced some real danger in the world.
I think there is a place for multi level zones when leveling just as if that area would have been for 90s or the area near forest song would have been for 60s. Zones can fill more than the purpose of just one level and making them scale up in difficulty, sort of like the island did, so there are harder areas you can accidentally walk into that you are not ready for, like on the island, would be intelligent zone design.
Perhaps have an untied quest hub there with red quests that people that want the challenge can choose to do it and those that don't can choose to follow the regular story line. Like the people that want the easy route on the timeless island stay below and kill cranes and yaks and tigers and the people that want the challenge go across the broken bridge and start killing chanters. Both level 90s, both doing what they are capable of doing. The "red" quest zone would be for the people that want the challenges like going across the bridge and the regular quest line that tells the main story would be like staying below and killing cranes and yaks and tigers, oh my.
It would also leave people options but there would need to be an opening for those options. Again, using jade forest as an example. Perhaps I want to try and beat those level 90 mobs as a level 85, I can go in there and test my ability as a hunter. Hey, you know the saying, "If I can kite it I can kill it." So now there would be some epic experience while leveling, killing mobs in the "elite area" just like there were the elite areas in the old world before cataclysm destroyed all the fantastic design of the old world for the more forgiving, horribly boring, new design of the old world.
It is not only about making zones more alive with the leveling in difficulty it is about making them more interesting, that is another part of intelligent zone design. It also includes something else that many people might have never noticed that I found really early in the expansion almost by accident. A right place at the right time sort of thing, a conditional rare elite spawn.
I only did the wilds on one character, my main, for the loremaster achievement. If it were not for the treasures to be found, rares to be killed, warbringers, anglers and landfall patch none of my other characters would have ever stepped foot into the zone. It served no purpose what so ever and the only quests I have ever done there are either landfall ones or anglers ones. The zone is useless, completely.
That is until I found the single best spawn in the game there, the one I mentioned most might not even know about. It is a large elite spider who's name escapes me at the moment, I am sorry, that drops a fun little toy that lets you summon a large mob of spiders that will follow you around and fight with you for 10 minutes.
You have never seen anything like this you say? Not surprising, even more so if you are not on a populated server that usually had a lot of people there questing. See, the spider only spawns after enough critter spiders are killed in the area. How many? No one knows for sure, I've went there and killed thousands before not to see it spawn because I wanted to get me a new toy as my old one ran out of charges.
Triggered events. Not events like on the timeless island that come at a set time but triggered events are what I would call intelligent zone design. Enough spiders are killed, the rare elite spider is spawned. In this case it is not a shared tag mob so if you want to toy you need to be the first one to tag it but they can fix that and make it shared. That would encourage people to work as a team to kill spiders to spawn it.
So for a useless zone it will always be a zone I remember for that triggered event spider with the toy. Now that is awesome and I would like to see stuff like that around a lot more often. Every zone no matter what could have various conditional things like this added for single person spawns or multi person spawns with a shared tag. It makes zones more alive. Imagine if that spider dropped something more fun and was a shared tag? There would be people in the zone all the time killing spider critters to try and get it to spawn and that would get people out in the world and it will give a zone, a bad one like the wilds, an identity.
There is a lot they can do with the leveling zones than just be zones for leveling. They can add some intelligent zone design to them so they are more than that. They could be something that is worth visiting all the time, they could have areas that are meant to spend time in when at max level, they could have events that are triggered and would inspire people, lots of people, to work together to trigger them often, they could give people that want a challenge a red quest area with harder mobs. Leveling zones do not need to be just for leveling or just for a daily quest hub later, they can have life, long life, too. I would like to see more intelligent zone design. Or at the absolute least, more design like the timeless island when added land masses come where the further you go in the harder it gets, that is good design.
What WoD Needs. Part 2: Intelligent Zone Design
I am not saying that zones are designed poorly in the game, that would be about as far from the truth as you can get. Blizzard does a great job of tying zones together and making them move from one place to the next as smooth as possible. Maybe with the exception of the clusterfuck that cataclysm was, but that was just one huge design mistake that should have never been made so lets pretend it never was, please. They have gotten better at this connected questing with every expansion they have added to the game and I would be wrong to not make a note of that here as I just have. Mists took questing connection and zone connection to a whole new level, a very well designed one. I mean something different however. Something different that just making a zone "tight".
The timeless island is the perfect example of what could be and since it was released I have been thinking about it. There is a design to it that was very intelligent and I have mentioned it here before in other posts about other things and people responded "wow, I never noticed that". Well, I am weird that way and have a slew of alts with varying gear levels all over the place so perhaps that is why I noticed it while others did not. What am I talking about? The scaling difficultly in the zone as you progress through it. It was designed fantastically.
You might be saying to yourself, what are you on about this time grumpy, and perhaps rightfully so. Many people, most even, did not notice the intelligent design of the timeless island as noted by previous comments when I mentioned it. I'll explain.
When you land on the timeless island you land in an area where there are absolutely no hostile mobs. There are of course turtles all over the place. Small turtles, medium turtles and huge turtles, all of which will leave you be and never attack you unless you attack them first. The absolute perfect design for "ease". Just like the starting zone when you create your first character. You fight when you want to fight only, except this time unlike a starting zone you can pick your difficultly level. You can attack the easy to kill non elites, the elites or the huge elites.
From there when moving to the center you could find yourself running into a snake which will gladly kick your ass if you are melee and not well geared, but those snakes are easily avoidable. You might find yourself bumping into a yak or a crane as well and while not as deadly as the snake can be to most they too could provide a minor challenge unless you are appropriately geared and/or skilled. But they are few and far between so like the snakes they are easily avoidable. There are also, like with the turtles, varied degrees of conflict you can get into if you choose to with non aggressive small yaks and small cranes and medium yaks and medium cranes. Basically it is a slight step up in difficulty bump over where you landed.
Once you move on from that center part it steps up the challenge a little bit with slightly more dangerous mobs over at the panda village, no elites, but all aggressive and all quite painful if you are not yet prepared. If you head north a tiny bit there are tigers, small non elite ones and the usually sleeping elite ones so while they are aggressive they will usually not attack you unless you walk almost directly over them. Wouldn't anyone attack someone that walked over them while they were sleeping? Don't blame them for trying to claw you to death, you stepped on their tail while they were sleeping.
The further you explore the larger the challenge gets, the tougher the opponent you will face. From the alementals to the frogs to packs of tigers in 3 and 4 instead of 1 and 2. Then there are the very imposing rock creatures walking around slowly but they will not aggro you even if they are labeled as aggressive unless you walk almost through them, sort of like the sleeping tigers, once again allowing you to pick when you are ready to challenge them.
The further you spread out, the harder the challenge gets. And then there is the time you start to head up the hill and run into the yungols which begin to pose a much more difficult task when compared to everything else you have thus far experienced on the island.
You can pick some small packs of non elite mobs, some packs with 1 elite and 2 non elite, some with 2 elites and some with 2 elites and 2 non elites. Each pack is progressively harder in that bottom part of the hill, each with their own unique abilities that teach you to use abilities that interrupt or stun and avoid stuff on the ground. It stepped up the difficulty level considerably from those mobs you fought below.
After you cross the first bridge they give you a taste of whats to come with much harder enemies than anything you have faced before on the island but they are spread out and easily picked off one at a time. They are a test of ability, to see if you are ready to move on, to see if you are ready to avoid the avoidable, to see if you are ready to use those interrupts and stuns, or if you are already well geared, to see if you can just rip through them for a quick and easy kill. Either way the difficulty has been stepped up.
At the top of that zone there are some harder mobs mixed with these, I'll call them medium mobs. They are a little tighter and less likely to be able to pull one at a time unless you are an expert puller, which is a skill in its own and something you will learn to do if you actually take the time to try it.
Then you can pass over the next part of the bridge and face the hardest mobs you have faced so far. These guys will brutalize you if you are not prepared and even if you are a "good" player if you are not appropriately geared even one seemingly minor error and you will be walking back from the graveyard, once again upping the difficulty as you moved further on to the island.
Then if you have the legendary cloak or use the kite you can buy on the island you can jump over the next bridge, the broken bridge, and face even harder mobs in tighter clusters. You might often see people looking to assemble groups to kill them because they can be brutal. I've seen them rip 5 mans apart like they were tearing up a parking ticket and throwing it back in the police officers face. They will put you down faster than the cop will cuff you for being a jackass.
For the higher geared player these become a test of ability to see if you can do them. Killing one solo is always fun and often an adventure and not to be taken lightly just because you or me can do it. It is an accomplishment for sure and if you take the path all the way around the outer sanctuary you will find yourself face to face with the priest, the most deadly of deadly mobs here and truly test your ability as a player or as a group if you can not solo it. I might have soloed it that first week, but I am a hunter, I still see people that now out gear where I was on that first day die to it. I've seen 5 people in a group that all greatly out gear what I was originally when I killed it die a violent death to it. This is a challenge like no other.
As you see, the further you go in, the harder the mobs get. And then there is entering the sanctuary but that is for those that have the cloak only and once in there you can understand way. How about tackling two of those priests at the same time? If 5 people with cloaks can repeatedly die to one what do you think will happen when they happen to run into two of them with a chanter at the same time? Yeah, it just got real. The difficulty level has reached max level here.
See, that is the beautiful design I love about the timeless island and something I call intelligent zone design. The further you get into the zone the harder things get. It builds the zone not in story alone like a leveling zone would but in difficulty.
Now I understand if this will be the new patch zone approach and I hope it is. Lets face it, the island of thunder was nothing like this. The lightning mine at the end of the opening, the furthest part in, was no more difficult than the troll zone which was one of the first zones you even stepped into. Actually some might argue, myself included, that the saurok, troll and mogu zones we first experience were harder than the later areas we opened. This is the exact opposite of intelligent zone design. As we opened areas each new area should have been harder, not easier or near equal.
Adding this to new zones that are added end game is easy, sure, see how well it was added to the timeless island. It was added so well that most people did not even noticed that the further you went into the zone the harder the mobs where, because it was all scaled and set up so damn well. Most just thought, that area is too hard and never realized that area that was too hard was in a direct line further into the island, that is what makes it intelligent zone design. Bravo blizzard.
I would like to see a little of this approach added to the leveling areas. Perhaps something of a throwback to the pre-cataclysm days when there actually used to be some danger in the world while leveling. Like those ?? dragonkin outside of forest song that told me, "you do not belong here hunter". There were mobs like this all over the world, level 60 zones that just happens to be in a level 20 zone or a level 30 zone or a level 40 zone. We just saw the ?? and did not go there, or walked into them and died a violent and extremely quick death and knew not to go back there.
There is no reason that a leveling zone needs to be just for leveling. It can have multi purposes. Lets take jade forest for example. We have the serpent riders there, a quest hub and area you really can not do until 90, so why not make that entire area for 90s and make the mobs around it appropriate to 90? When leveling through there at 85 you will see them and go, "oh shit" and run like hell or die like a man, either way, you will have faced some real danger in the world.
I think there is a place for multi level zones when leveling just as if that area would have been for 90s or the area near forest song would have been for 60s. Zones can fill more than the purpose of just one level and making them scale up in difficulty, sort of like the island did, so there are harder areas you can accidentally walk into that you are not ready for, like on the island, would be intelligent zone design.
Perhaps have an untied quest hub there with red quests that people that want the challenge can choose to do it and those that don't can choose to follow the regular story line. Like the people that want the easy route on the timeless island stay below and kill cranes and yaks and tigers and the people that want the challenge go across the broken bridge and start killing chanters. Both level 90s, both doing what they are capable of doing. The "red" quest zone would be for the people that want the challenges like going across the bridge and the regular quest line that tells the main story would be like staying below and killing cranes and yaks and tigers, oh my.
It would also leave people options but there would need to be an opening for those options. Again, using jade forest as an example. Perhaps I want to try and beat those level 90 mobs as a level 85, I can go in there and test my ability as a hunter. Hey, you know the saying, "If I can kite it I can kill it." So now there would be some epic experience while leveling, killing mobs in the "elite area" just like there were the elite areas in the old world before cataclysm destroyed all the fantastic design of the old world for the more forgiving, horribly boring, new design of the old world.
It is not only about making zones more alive with the leveling in difficulty it is about making them more interesting, that is another part of intelligent zone design. It also includes something else that many people might have never noticed that I found really early in the expansion almost by accident. A right place at the right time sort of thing, a conditional rare elite spawn.
I only did the wilds on one character, my main, for the loremaster achievement. If it were not for the treasures to be found, rares to be killed, warbringers, anglers and landfall patch none of my other characters would have ever stepped foot into the zone. It served no purpose what so ever and the only quests I have ever done there are either landfall ones or anglers ones. The zone is useless, completely.
That is until I found the single best spawn in the game there, the one I mentioned most might not even know about. It is a large elite spider who's name escapes me at the moment, I am sorry, that drops a fun little toy that lets you summon a large mob of spiders that will follow you around and fight with you for 10 minutes.
You have never seen anything like this you say? Not surprising, even more so if you are not on a populated server that usually had a lot of people there questing. See, the spider only spawns after enough critter spiders are killed in the area. How many? No one knows for sure, I've went there and killed thousands before not to see it spawn because I wanted to get me a new toy as my old one ran out of charges.
Triggered events. Not events like on the timeless island that come at a set time but triggered events are what I would call intelligent zone design. Enough spiders are killed, the rare elite spider is spawned. In this case it is not a shared tag mob so if you want to toy you need to be the first one to tag it but they can fix that and make it shared. That would encourage people to work as a team to kill spiders to spawn it.
So for a useless zone it will always be a zone I remember for that triggered event spider with the toy. Now that is awesome and I would like to see stuff like that around a lot more often. Every zone no matter what could have various conditional things like this added for single person spawns or multi person spawns with a shared tag. It makes zones more alive. Imagine if that spider dropped something more fun and was a shared tag? There would be people in the zone all the time killing spider critters to try and get it to spawn and that would get people out in the world and it will give a zone, a bad one like the wilds, an identity.
There is a lot they can do with the leveling zones than just be zones for leveling. They can add some intelligent zone design to them so they are more than that. They could be something that is worth visiting all the time, they could have areas that are meant to spend time in when at max level, they could have events that are triggered and would inspire people, lots of people, to work together to trigger them often, they could give people that want a challenge a red quest area with harder mobs. Leveling zones do not need to be just for leveling or just for a daily quest hub later, they can have life, long life, too. I would like to see more intelligent zone design. Or at the absolute least, more design like the timeless island when added land masses come where the further you go in the harder it gets, that is good design.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
What WoD Needs: Gearing Options Outside of Raiding
This is the first in a series of posts I plan to make about what I believe we need to see in Warlords.
What WoD needs. Part 1: Gearing Options
Some raiders believe if you do not raid you do not need raid level gear. They are entitled to their opinions but I have to wholeheartedly disagree with the idea that good gear should only be for raiders. I believe everyone needs to feel as if they are progressing while playing the game and gear is the easiest way to make people feel that. So with that said, even if you are not a raider and don't want to use the LFR there needs to be a way for people to advance at a reasonable rate gear wise.
Mists began with a great idea that didn't quite turn out as well as it could have. The idea that you could get valor in additional ways was huge. I know a few players that are decent players but they have what could only be referred to as "fear of random people". If you ever did random content in warcraft it is quite reasonable why some people would feel that way. Random content is not exactly friendly most of the time.
So being people could do quests to get valor and thus get their valor gear was a great addition to the game. Gating said gear behind a double gate of reputation and valor however was a failure of epic proportions on blizzards part and whomever came up with that idea should be unemployed now.
So the idea that there would be a gearing option for people that were non raiders was in place. You could do the "simpler" random content such as dungeons and scenarios for valor as well as questing. With this valor you could buy yourself some decent gear.
That gear was 489 item level, raid gear was 496 item level, it was a perfect balance. Almost. For a non raiding gearing option there needs to be valor items available for all slots, not just most. Two different trinkets, weapons, off hands and shield, two rings you can use. There needs to be the whole nine yards.
They have since discontinued valor gear which I believe to be an oversight in design that can not be compared to anything else. It is a horrible decision on a level of horrible that I can not put words to it or at least not put the words to it that would do it justice.
Mists has done a lot to try and give people other gearing options but some where misses, some were close and some where just way off base.
The second tier of raiding is a case of way off base. Having people need raid reputation to buy valor gear makes sense and I agree with it actually. However, if you want to give non raiders a gearing option having them need to get a raid reputation to gear the valor gear kind of defeats the purpose of a non raiders option. So even if I like the idea of needing raid reputation for it I can understand why it should not be that way from a design perspective.
At least there was one weekly quest you could do that would give you the required reputation and in a matter of 10 weeks, if you did it every week, you could buy a few pieces of shado-pan assault gear. Another 18 weeks and you could buy a few more pieces and then another 36 weeks and you could buy more. The 10 weeks of doing the weekly works, the additional 18 and then further additional 36 weeks was out of line. If they left it at friendly reputation needed only and all it took was 10 weeks to open all the valor gear without raiding if you did the weekly every week it would have been great. Anything past that is not really a bright idea in my opinion.
Let us not forget that the weekly needed a group to do it, so it was not exactly solo player friendly. Sure, I understand it is an MMO but some people just like to play alone and those people like to feel as if they are advancing too and as I mentioned gear is a great advancement tool.
If the second tier had that weekly be something you can do solo and it only took 10 weeks to open everything, not just some things, then you might be able to call it a good design. As it turns out it wasn't.
When landfall came we had a new faction to gain reputation with and we needed that reputation to buy the valor gear. Same issue as the first tier, a double gate, but the reputation was gained faster and it told a story on a daily basis and if you went through the entire story by the time you were done you opened all the gear because you had all the reputation.
This is one of the "hits" in my opinion. A reputation and valor based lockout that actually worked, that actually made sense. The reputation gains were quick, the journey to doing them was a single story line with many side quests, and it almost kept you distracted from the fact you needed to gain reputation to get the gear because you were finishing a story line in the process and when you finished that story the gear was all there open and ready for you to use because the reputation gains were good.
The barrens quest line was sort of nice as well and in my opinion a fantastic idea. One weekly quest that could get you an item that you could use to get yourself a piece of 489 gear. Sure, it was outdated gear but it was a nice little catch up mechanic for people that needed the gear and a nice little transmog set for people that just wanted to get all the pieces for their look.
In my opinion that gear would have been better as 496 gear, but from 489 to 496 is minimal so I can live with that small of a misstep in design even if it was a telling one that showed they did not know what an upgrade would be for the non raider and for the non raider 496 might be an upgrade, 489 might not.
There was one other issue with the barrens weekly quest. It was too hard for the people that needed the 489 gear. The mobs were designed for people in 522 gear to give rewards of 489 gear. If you went there with a mostly fresh 90 with a few pieces of dungeon gear and a crafted piece or two you might be as much as a 468-470 item level and you are going to get destroyed. The difference between my main hunter who could pull 5 engines in the oil area at the same time and mow them down and my alt hunter who might, just might, be able to handle one with its goblin adds and it took forever to do that, was telling. The character that did not need they gear could have fun grinding for it at a reasonable speed. The character that needed the gear took all week to get it done one mob at a time.
Can't really blame blizzard too much here in one aspect but you can in another. In one way it is extremely hard to design new content like the barrens as something that both a currently geared player and a fresh player can both get something enjoyable out of it. On the other hand, the gap between player power is blizzard fault because they let stats get out of hand.
Over all the barrens worked out well. Then came the new tier and the removal of valor gear. Oops, bad design move there folks. But to replace the lack of valor gear they added tons and tons of free gear all over the place, or free to the extent that if someone was willing to do the work they can get the gear on the timeless island.
The timeless island design in and off itself is a thing a beauty, but I will touch on that in another post about what WoD needs, this is about gearing options for the non raider and not zone design.
As I said with the 489 barrens gear being a little low for the content, as I believe it should have been 496, the timeless island gear of 496 was off base too, way the hell off base. The timeless island gear should have been 510, at least. Burden gear could have stayed at 535.
So instead of valor gear their idea for catch up gear was go around the island and find some things to make the gear for yourself. A decent enough idea, but not so decently implemented because of the low item level and the fact the gear was horribly itemized. How many of us used a burden on a piece only to end up with one stat instead of two and it be our worst stat or something we did not need like hit when we were already over the hit cap by 3%?
I am not so turned off by the bad luck of getting stats that are not great for you, but getting only one secondary stat was a joke and should have never happened. Again, who at blizzard decides these things? Do they think before they do stuff or do they just get drunk, think of a stupid idea and implement it?
Over all there were ways for the non raider to gear up this expansion, but they were always a day late and a dollar short. Every step of the way had a good idea, every step of the way had it implemented in a bad way.
Blizzard needs to make sure that their entire player base is catered to, not just people that use the LFR or raid in organized groups. There needs to be a reasonable way for everyone to gear up, even non raiders.
If only a few changes were made along the way this expansion would have worked perfect as an example of how it should have been but they always made mistakes. The mistake of having gear gated behind valor and reputation, the mistake of having barrens gear need higher gear to be able to attain, the mistake of having 1 stat on item, the mistake of needing raid reputation to buy valor gear, etc. Fix any of those things, and adjust the item levels, and for the non raiders there was a clear progression in the game through gear, the easiest mode see your progression in.
That is what warlords needs, a better way for the non raider to gear up and continue to gear up. Mists tried but did not succeed. It did however make some fantastic steps forward in what can be done to gear non raiders. Now for warlords to stop treating non raiders as second class citizens and give them reasonable gear instead of one stat 496 gear with no gem slots in the last tier when appropriately itemized 496 gear with gem slots wasn't even great gear in the first tier. That is an insult to everyone that plays the game, even to the people that have no need for that gear anyway. Warlords can not afford to be insulting its dwindling player base like that.
I'd like to see valor gear for every slot available during every tier, even if only at the current LFR level. I'd like to see dungeon gear get "promoted" with each new tier, so as a new tier comes out the dungeon gear goes up to keep dungeons relevant. I'd like to see more barrens type stuff, more timeless island type stuff and more landfall type stuff as a means to get item progression as well. The pieces are there to make the game more non raider friendly. Now it is in blizzards hands to use those pieces effectively. They need to stop trying to push everyone into raiding and let people play the game the way they enjoy playing it.
What WoD needs. Part 1: Gearing Options
Some raiders believe if you do not raid you do not need raid level gear. They are entitled to their opinions but I have to wholeheartedly disagree with the idea that good gear should only be for raiders. I believe everyone needs to feel as if they are progressing while playing the game and gear is the easiest way to make people feel that. So with that said, even if you are not a raider and don't want to use the LFR there needs to be a way for people to advance at a reasonable rate gear wise.
Mists began with a great idea that didn't quite turn out as well as it could have. The idea that you could get valor in additional ways was huge. I know a few players that are decent players but they have what could only be referred to as "fear of random people". If you ever did random content in warcraft it is quite reasonable why some people would feel that way. Random content is not exactly friendly most of the time.
So being people could do quests to get valor and thus get their valor gear was a great addition to the game. Gating said gear behind a double gate of reputation and valor however was a failure of epic proportions on blizzards part and whomever came up with that idea should be unemployed now.
So the idea that there would be a gearing option for people that were non raiders was in place. You could do the "simpler" random content such as dungeons and scenarios for valor as well as questing. With this valor you could buy yourself some decent gear.
That gear was 489 item level, raid gear was 496 item level, it was a perfect balance. Almost. For a non raiding gearing option there needs to be valor items available for all slots, not just most. Two different trinkets, weapons, off hands and shield, two rings you can use. There needs to be the whole nine yards.
They have since discontinued valor gear which I believe to be an oversight in design that can not be compared to anything else. It is a horrible decision on a level of horrible that I can not put words to it or at least not put the words to it that would do it justice.
Mists has done a lot to try and give people other gearing options but some where misses, some were close and some where just way off base.
The second tier of raiding is a case of way off base. Having people need raid reputation to buy valor gear makes sense and I agree with it actually. However, if you want to give non raiders a gearing option having them need to get a raid reputation to gear the valor gear kind of defeats the purpose of a non raiders option. So even if I like the idea of needing raid reputation for it I can understand why it should not be that way from a design perspective.
At least there was one weekly quest you could do that would give you the required reputation and in a matter of 10 weeks, if you did it every week, you could buy a few pieces of shado-pan assault gear. Another 18 weeks and you could buy a few more pieces and then another 36 weeks and you could buy more. The 10 weeks of doing the weekly works, the additional 18 and then further additional 36 weeks was out of line. If they left it at friendly reputation needed only and all it took was 10 weeks to open all the valor gear without raiding if you did the weekly every week it would have been great. Anything past that is not really a bright idea in my opinion.
Let us not forget that the weekly needed a group to do it, so it was not exactly solo player friendly. Sure, I understand it is an MMO but some people just like to play alone and those people like to feel as if they are advancing too and as I mentioned gear is a great advancement tool.
If the second tier had that weekly be something you can do solo and it only took 10 weeks to open everything, not just some things, then you might be able to call it a good design. As it turns out it wasn't.
When landfall came we had a new faction to gain reputation with and we needed that reputation to buy the valor gear. Same issue as the first tier, a double gate, but the reputation was gained faster and it told a story on a daily basis and if you went through the entire story by the time you were done you opened all the gear because you had all the reputation.
This is one of the "hits" in my opinion. A reputation and valor based lockout that actually worked, that actually made sense. The reputation gains were quick, the journey to doing them was a single story line with many side quests, and it almost kept you distracted from the fact you needed to gain reputation to get the gear because you were finishing a story line in the process and when you finished that story the gear was all there open and ready for you to use because the reputation gains were good.
The barrens quest line was sort of nice as well and in my opinion a fantastic idea. One weekly quest that could get you an item that you could use to get yourself a piece of 489 gear. Sure, it was outdated gear but it was a nice little catch up mechanic for people that needed the gear and a nice little transmog set for people that just wanted to get all the pieces for their look.
In my opinion that gear would have been better as 496 gear, but from 489 to 496 is minimal so I can live with that small of a misstep in design even if it was a telling one that showed they did not know what an upgrade would be for the non raider and for the non raider 496 might be an upgrade, 489 might not.
There was one other issue with the barrens weekly quest. It was too hard for the people that needed the 489 gear. The mobs were designed for people in 522 gear to give rewards of 489 gear. If you went there with a mostly fresh 90 with a few pieces of dungeon gear and a crafted piece or two you might be as much as a 468-470 item level and you are going to get destroyed. The difference between my main hunter who could pull 5 engines in the oil area at the same time and mow them down and my alt hunter who might, just might, be able to handle one with its goblin adds and it took forever to do that, was telling. The character that did not need they gear could have fun grinding for it at a reasonable speed. The character that needed the gear took all week to get it done one mob at a time.
Can't really blame blizzard too much here in one aspect but you can in another. In one way it is extremely hard to design new content like the barrens as something that both a currently geared player and a fresh player can both get something enjoyable out of it. On the other hand, the gap between player power is blizzard fault because they let stats get out of hand.
Over all the barrens worked out well. Then came the new tier and the removal of valor gear. Oops, bad design move there folks. But to replace the lack of valor gear they added tons and tons of free gear all over the place, or free to the extent that if someone was willing to do the work they can get the gear on the timeless island.
The timeless island design in and off itself is a thing a beauty, but I will touch on that in another post about what WoD needs, this is about gearing options for the non raider and not zone design.
As I said with the 489 barrens gear being a little low for the content, as I believe it should have been 496, the timeless island gear of 496 was off base too, way the hell off base. The timeless island gear should have been 510, at least. Burden gear could have stayed at 535.
So instead of valor gear their idea for catch up gear was go around the island and find some things to make the gear for yourself. A decent enough idea, but not so decently implemented because of the low item level and the fact the gear was horribly itemized. How many of us used a burden on a piece only to end up with one stat instead of two and it be our worst stat or something we did not need like hit when we were already over the hit cap by 3%?
I am not so turned off by the bad luck of getting stats that are not great for you, but getting only one secondary stat was a joke and should have never happened. Again, who at blizzard decides these things? Do they think before they do stuff or do they just get drunk, think of a stupid idea and implement it?
Over all there were ways for the non raider to gear up this expansion, but they were always a day late and a dollar short. Every step of the way had a good idea, every step of the way had it implemented in a bad way.
Blizzard needs to make sure that their entire player base is catered to, not just people that use the LFR or raid in organized groups. There needs to be a reasonable way for everyone to gear up, even non raiders.
If only a few changes were made along the way this expansion would have worked perfect as an example of how it should have been but they always made mistakes. The mistake of having gear gated behind valor and reputation, the mistake of having barrens gear need higher gear to be able to attain, the mistake of having 1 stat on item, the mistake of needing raid reputation to buy valor gear, etc. Fix any of those things, and adjust the item levels, and for the non raiders there was a clear progression in the game through gear, the easiest mode see your progression in.
That is what warlords needs, a better way for the non raider to gear up and continue to gear up. Mists tried but did not succeed. It did however make some fantastic steps forward in what can be done to gear non raiders. Now for warlords to stop treating non raiders as second class citizens and give them reasonable gear instead of one stat 496 gear with no gem slots in the last tier when appropriately itemized 496 gear with gem slots wasn't even great gear in the first tier. That is an insult to everyone that plays the game, even to the people that have no need for that gear anyway. Warlords can not afford to be insulting its dwindling player base like that.
I'd like to see valor gear for every slot available during every tier, even if only at the current LFR level. I'd like to see dungeon gear get "promoted" with each new tier, so as a new tier comes out the dungeon gear goes up to keep dungeons relevant. I'd like to see more barrens type stuff, more timeless island type stuff and more landfall type stuff as a means to get item progression as well. The pieces are there to make the game more non raider friendly. Now it is in blizzards hands to use those pieces effectively. They need to stop trying to push everyone into raiding and let people play the game the way they enjoy playing it.
Monday, January 13, 2014
Monday Random Thoughts
- Happy New Years.
- I'm back from a little break, I really needed it.
- Came back and really had no idea what to do so I farted around with many characters.
- Played my rogue for the first time since getting the legendary a while back.
- I love the melee proc visual, it is awesome.
- Looks like a wild animal with claws going all over the place.
- First time it proced I was like, WTF was that.
- Then I ran around killing things just to get it to proc again.
- Each time thinking, this looks freaking cool.
- It looks like something you would expect from a kitty druid more than a rogue however.
- Wonder if the plate melee have the same visual.
- None of my plate wearers are even past the sigil part, so I will not find out first hand any time soon.
- Just don't think claws flying all over the place would look right for a warrior, or a paladin, or a death knight.
- Finally finished collecting valor on my lock.
- Feels like it has been months to get that 3K.
- Might be for all I know, I rarely play it, but that is why it took so long.
- I killed the one elite mob solo no problem, now to do the PvP.
- I really dread the PvP part.
- I have not PvPed on my lock since wrath.
- As affliction back then.
- But at least I did PvP on my lock at some point, more than I can say for some of the other characters I needed to run through there.
- So only 5 classes have not even reached that part yet.
- My druid, which needs to get the chimera off the last boss of ToES, and has been on that part forever.
- My death knight that has some sigials but still need 8.
- My warrior and my paladin that have zero sigils as they have never stepped into a raid this expansion at all.
- Do you notice something that they all have in common?
- Tanks.
- And I do not tank the LFR.
- I did some on my DK as frost and I was main tanking on my druid for a while in the normal mode raids, that is the only reason they got somewhere on the quest.
- My druid would have been finished with the quest already if ToT had dropped sigils originally.
- When we finished that tier I only needed 5 more.
- We never went back, so my druid never got any more sigils until SoO came out and dropped them.
- And now I have never went back to loot the quest item in ToES.
- With as often as I tanked ToT if they dropped there originally I would have had my cloak on my druid as well already.
- The 5th is not a tank, it is a healer oddly enough.
- My shaman.
- Not exactly sure why I have not been healing on my shaman this expansion but I haven't.
- I'll get in to mood one day and bang it out I am sure.
- As a healer it is easy.
- Faster queue times, less stress over all normally because healing is usually easy unless you run across an insanely horrible group which does happen from time to time, and I tend to be less likely to notice all the damage dealers in 520 or better item level doing less than 40K DPS when I am healing and that really infuriates me.
- Nothing annoys me more than someone in 520 gear, or more, doing numbers like that.
- One run this weekend I had 6, repeat 6, people on sha of pride with 6 stacks when we downed him, still doing under 40K.
- How is that even possible?
- If there is any fight in there any class can pump their numbers up on it is that one.
- It is seeing things like that which lead me to need a break.
- I understand we all pay the same amount to play but quite honestly, some people should not be allowed to use the LFR system.
- It is not elitist to say that, just realist.
- If you can not do it, you should not be there.
- If you can not fly an airplane you should not be flying an airplane right?
- If you can not fix a computer, you should not take it apart right?
- We can all get behind the controls of an airplane or take apart a computer, but just because we can doesn't mean we should.
- Same goes for LFR, just because you can queue up for it, doesn't mean you should.
- If you can't do it, stay out, I do not give a flying shit if you spend the same each month as I do, you have no business being in there.
- Realism, not elitism.
- It is why my warrior and my paladin have zero sigils.
- Not because I do not know how to play them, but because I refuse to tank the LFR and I do not believe I can DPS effectively enough to meet the minimum needed for them.
- It is called being a decent person and feeling responsible for pulling my own weight.
- I feel bad doing DPS on my DK like I did this weekend because it is sub par.
- However, it is still 90K, which is fairly decent, even if not good, for first part of SoO LFR at least.
- So that is all I did.
- And I am in all tanking gear, no reforging, no gems, no enchants, tank trinkets, and I am still pulling 90K.
- Hey, it is my bank alt, that is why I do not go out of my way getting him raid ready, he is not a raider.
- I am only a 517 item level with the 2 celestial tier pieces and assorted timeless pieces and the crafted belt.
- I finished between 6th and 11th in damage done on the four fights in SoO part 1, even as shitty as I did.
- And that is the problem.
- If I can perform about as poorly as I would ever even consider going in there performing and still be 6th, there is an issue with everyone else in there, not me.
- I will not even think of going into part two with that DPS.
- I need to get a few DPS pieces, going to start doing the celestials to try and get the DPS tier pieces and try to get two DPS trinkets.
- Basically make a secondary set for DPS, partly, and when I can do 120K I will go into part 2 of SoO LFR.
- It is called being a responsible player.
- I will not waste your time, do me a favor and don't waste mine.
- Wiping because half the raid could not pull 40K is wasting my time.
- Your 15 bucks does not give you the right to waste the time of my 15 bucks like that.
- If you want to be carried, make some friends, ask them to carry you through flex, it drops better gear anyway.
- My newest hunter is just 3 secrets away from the next part of the legendary line.
- Means I should be moving on next week, in theory anyway.
- It will mean it took me 4 weeks to get the 20 secrets, a lot faster than it used to be.
- Did an LFR on my monk, as DPS of course, even if I am a tank.
- Just to repeat, I do not tank LFR.
- But it seems I ended up tanking the LFR.
- Again, another character in all tank gear with tank trinkets set up for tanking, but at least reforged and gemmed and enchanted, but for tanking.
- I was #1 DPS and damage done and ended up tanking multiple times anyway.
- Huge props to the healers in the group for keeping me up.
- First boss in the last ToT, we wiped because the tanks decided to tank the boss in the middle of the tornadoes.
- We got frozen, we got thrown around, we got set on fire, we got killed basically, all because the tanks were morons that refused to move the boss.
- Try two, someone says, "you need to break people out of the ice and avoid the tornadoes".
- I say, "How about the tanks just pull them out of the tornados like they are supposed to and no one will be frozen."
- Complete silence.
- We get to that point, they do not move the boss again.
- I taunt, the tank taunts back.
- I taunt, the tank taunts back.
- You are not going to win this battle asshole, I am moving this guy from the tornado.
- I did not say that, but I thought it.
- Prop #1 for a paladin healer.
- I taunted, healer BoPed him (at least I think that is what he did) and he could not taunt him back.
- The healers kept me up until he was able to taunt back and he did run after him all the way to me, and the boss died.
- Wow, how amazingly easy the fight is when people tank him in the right place.
- Boss two, time for healers to show their power again, I love my healers.
- The tanks are getting owned, someone suggests they bring the fire one to the blue crystals, not like it is really needed in the LFR if the tanks are half way decent but these aren't, so it is needed.
- Even more so when the healers started asking for it, so guess what time it is.
- Its taunting time baby.
- I taunt to crystal, tank runs after it and takes it back.
- I taunt to crystal, tank runs after it and takes it back.
- I taunt to crystal, tank runs after it and takes it back.
- Forth time it seems the tank finally got the pattern and starts doing it on his own.
- Woohoo?
- Last boss, tanks pull him and tank him near the center of the room.
- They do not even make an attempt to get him to the pillar.
- I taunt, but being everyone is in the middle of the room, I am out of range of the healers, he WTF owns me when he gets to me.
- At least he is at the pillar now, so they should be okay right.
- Nope, they tank him there for a long time, over charging the pillar to the next level when someone yells to move him.
- So they move him between that pillar and the next one and keep him there and its a wipe.
- Next attempt, same thing on pull, healers notice what I did last time and run with me when I taunt him to the pillar and they keep me up this time until the tanks decide to join us.
- I continue to taunt from pillar to pillar because the tanks refuse to move him, even if it was explained to them and someone is being kind enough to say in raid when to move him.
- After the first transition I die taunting him to the second pillar we are going to, nice try healers, but I am not in tank spec, there is only so much you can do.
- With me dead, it is a wipe again because without me moving him the tanks leave him in the middle of nowhere and the healers just can not keep up.
- Attempt three, goes basically the same.
- Attempt four, I offer to switch to tank because I am fed up and the tanks are not getting a clue.
- I have no problem with people making mistakes, we all need to learn, but not learning from your mistakes after a few attempts means you are not going to get it.
- This is LFR, I am not here to work progression with you.
- When I offer to tank both tanks drop, so we are stuck waiting.
- I guess they got the clue.
- You know, no one was rude to them, even with the wipes and their obvious mistakes, this is the type of group I did not mind wiping with, they were decent people.
- Would have been nice if they learned as well, tanks mostly.
- I can't believe we went all three fights with me having to part tank them and taunt move bosses because the tanks wouldn't.
- We got 2 new tanks and downed it the next time, so it was done, but it makes me wonder, why don't I tank anyway, because I end up tanking every time I am there to begin with.
- In ToT 3, last boss, more props to healers, both tanks died 2 times, both times I was tanking while they were being revived.
- That was pretty awesome.
- Those healers did an amazing job.
- Did I say I love my healers?
- I love doing that fight because I do no AoE at the beginning.
- I like to see how far I can climb up the damage done ladder having not cheesed it with massive AoE like everyone else.
- I finished #1 in damage done, tanked the boss for a fair bit of time, and did zero damage on the little golems.
- Made me feel good about myself.
- Love watching myself climb up the damage done list over those people that were doing 600K+ on the pull.
- I wonder if they see themselves at #2 damage done at the end of the fight and think they did well or if they realize that the AoE was all they did and in the end they actually did rather poorly.
- BTW, I am not very good at my monk, so me being tops it not me bragging about it because I am not good, it is me saying how bad everyone else was because I was #1.
- My monk is in a world of hell when it comes to secrets, it is one of those characters that never get any.
- It even got screwed on sha this week, first time that has happened to me in a while.
- I'll put in a ticket.
- Remember if you do not get one off sha, put in a ticket and a GM will send it to you.
- If I remember that is.
- I always forget.
- My monk has been on the secrets part of 3 months now, at least.
- I just do not play it enough.
- Like I said, I bounced around a lot this weekend.
- I created a new troll mage.
- Logged in, set up my addons, my UI, where I like things, set up macros, even for things I do not have yet so I am ready for them when I get them, did all the little things, and then logged out.
- I did not feel like playing, I just was in the mood to set up a new character.
- I like organizing things.
- Does that make me weird?
- I did mail some BoAs to other servers this weekend for the first time.
- It worked like a charm, wish they had done this ages ago.
- Now I can lose my heirlooms on many servers instead of just one.
- Woohoo?
- Played one mage from 51 to 55 when I ran out of rested.
- Played one hunter from 62 to 66 when I ran out of rested.
- Played one death knight from 60-64 when I ran out of rested.
- Why does it seem my rested is going so quickly lately?
- Did you notice that revive pet cast time has been decreased?
- I didn't notice that, it is nice, I like it.
- Must have missed that in the notes.
- Noticed a bug, or is it a fix, on the shaman fight.
- I'll say a bug because it causes the bosses to despawn.
- But I don't think what I was doing was intended to begin with.
- So I think it was a stealth fix they did not mention that resulted in a bug.
- I had this little trick I would do on my hunter that made sure the ashen wall never spawned.
- I do not share my tricks like this for fear they will get fixed.
- Maybe someone else did.
- What I would do is when the wall was about to be cast I would time it perfectly and hit distracting shot and feign death.
- This would cancel the cast and the wall would never spawn if you timed it right.
- Time it wrong and it would choose a new target, its previous target.
- Was it needed? No, we downed it many times before I figured that out one attempt while playing around.
- But it was nice, even more so when you had new people, one less mechanic to deal with.
- I did it this week on my baby hunter when he was in there and when I feigned death instead of them stopping the cast or choosing a different target they despawned.
- Oh well, was a fun little thing to do for a while, I am sure they will fix the despawn bug.
- But if you have any issues with the dark shaman despawning I can tell you why that is happening.
- If they target someone with any effect and that someone dies at just the right time, the time I used to use to cancel the cast, they will despawn.
- Now you know why you have been having those despawn issues.
- I was so hoping to use this when we got there on heroic, I am sure it would have helped, guess we will have to do it the old fashion way when we get there.
- My baby hunter got into a normal run this weekend, we downed 12 bosses, but as it works I got no loot when I could have gotten three pieces.
- How so?
- I was on my hunter for the first 7 bosses and the tank needed to leave, so I had to switch to my tank for the 8th boss.
- 8th boss dropped the gloves I could have used and no one else there needed them, but I was tanking.
- 9th boss dropped the weapon I could have used and no one else there needed it, but I was tanking.
- 10th boss dropped nothing, so no biggie.
- I switched back to my hunter for the 11th boss because that is a one tank fight, no one would need the helm token so if it dropped it was mine, it did not drop.
- 12th boss I went back to tanking, shoulder token dropped and no one needed it so it went to waste again.
- Seems my new hunter has the same luck as my old hunter.
- Could you imagine what getting the gloves, the shoulders and the weapon would have done for me?
- It would have been huge.
- Being I have not raided on my main hunter in 2 weeks I helped a friend this weekend on my hunter for a couple of bosses.
- It is amazing what a difference the group you are with does for your numbers.
- On fights I am normally between 290-320 I was doing 240-270.
- Remember, hunters got a 10% buff since the last time I played it, so that gap is a lot bigger.
- The difference is in my main group everyone is over 280, in the group I helped with everyone was around 220.
- Kind of wild how much the rest of a group can effect your own numbers.
- So a little hint for anyone trying to "fake" better numbers for world of logs when making an application for a guild.
- Get into a run with all people with huge numbers, your numbers will be higher also.
- Or cheese it if you can find a group that will let you.
- But the "big numbers" approach is actually better because it is more fitting to what you might actually do.
- Any raid leader will be able to tell you cheesed your numbers looking at logs.
- Like letting you be the only one to kill reflections on sha will really boost your numbers.
- It is how my 520 item level lock managed 300K.
- Cheese, pure cheese.
- WTB Valor gear.
- I added up all my valor over all my characters and I am closing in on 49,000 valor.
- Sure I can spend it, but do I really want to upgrade a 483 weapon?
- Like my rogue, one that is capped, I have a ton of 502 pieces, I would rather be able to buy 553 valor gear than to upgrade 502s I will be replacing.
- Heck, I would rather buy 540 valor gear than upgrade 502s.
- Heck, I would rather buy 528 valor gear than upgrade 502s.
- We need valor gear of some sort, at least at the current LFR level.
- And all slots, weapons included.
- I hope they fix this mistake next expansion.
- Sooner or later it looks like I will end up spending over 40K valor upgrading items that I don't want to upgrade just to put the valor to some use.
- Hey, I guess making a 483 a 491 is better than sitting capped and not collecting any more valor.
- But it is still not as good as buying a 528, 540 or better yet a 553 with valor would be.
- Oh well, I babbled enough for now.
- Have a great day.
- I'm back from a little break, I really needed it.
- Came back and really had no idea what to do so I farted around with many characters.
- Played my rogue for the first time since getting the legendary a while back.
- I love the melee proc visual, it is awesome.
- Looks like a wild animal with claws going all over the place.
- First time it proced I was like, WTF was that.
- Then I ran around killing things just to get it to proc again.
- Each time thinking, this looks freaking cool.
- It looks like something you would expect from a kitty druid more than a rogue however.
- Wonder if the plate melee have the same visual.
- None of my plate wearers are even past the sigil part, so I will not find out first hand any time soon.
- Just don't think claws flying all over the place would look right for a warrior, or a paladin, or a death knight.
- Finally finished collecting valor on my lock.
- Feels like it has been months to get that 3K.
- Might be for all I know, I rarely play it, but that is why it took so long.
- I killed the one elite mob solo no problem, now to do the PvP.
- I really dread the PvP part.
- I have not PvPed on my lock since wrath.
- As affliction back then.
- But at least I did PvP on my lock at some point, more than I can say for some of the other characters I needed to run through there.
- So only 5 classes have not even reached that part yet.
- My druid, which needs to get the chimera off the last boss of ToES, and has been on that part forever.
- My death knight that has some sigials but still need 8.
- My warrior and my paladin that have zero sigils as they have never stepped into a raid this expansion at all.
- Do you notice something that they all have in common?
- Tanks.
- And I do not tank the LFR.
- I did some on my DK as frost and I was main tanking on my druid for a while in the normal mode raids, that is the only reason they got somewhere on the quest.
- My druid would have been finished with the quest already if ToT had dropped sigils originally.
- When we finished that tier I only needed 5 more.
- We never went back, so my druid never got any more sigils until SoO came out and dropped them.
- And now I have never went back to loot the quest item in ToES.
- With as often as I tanked ToT if they dropped there originally I would have had my cloak on my druid as well already.
- The 5th is not a tank, it is a healer oddly enough.
- My shaman.
- Not exactly sure why I have not been healing on my shaman this expansion but I haven't.
- I'll get in to mood one day and bang it out I am sure.
- As a healer it is easy.
- Faster queue times, less stress over all normally because healing is usually easy unless you run across an insanely horrible group which does happen from time to time, and I tend to be less likely to notice all the damage dealers in 520 or better item level doing less than 40K DPS when I am healing and that really infuriates me.
- Nothing annoys me more than someone in 520 gear, or more, doing numbers like that.
- One run this weekend I had 6, repeat 6, people on sha of pride with 6 stacks when we downed him, still doing under 40K.
- How is that even possible?
- If there is any fight in there any class can pump their numbers up on it is that one.
- It is seeing things like that which lead me to need a break.
- I understand we all pay the same amount to play but quite honestly, some people should not be allowed to use the LFR system.
- It is not elitist to say that, just realist.
- If you can not do it, you should not be there.
- If you can not fly an airplane you should not be flying an airplane right?
- If you can not fix a computer, you should not take it apart right?
- We can all get behind the controls of an airplane or take apart a computer, but just because we can doesn't mean we should.
- Same goes for LFR, just because you can queue up for it, doesn't mean you should.
- If you can't do it, stay out, I do not give a flying shit if you spend the same each month as I do, you have no business being in there.
- Realism, not elitism.
- It is why my warrior and my paladin have zero sigils.
- Not because I do not know how to play them, but because I refuse to tank the LFR and I do not believe I can DPS effectively enough to meet the minimum needed for them.
- It is called being a decent person and feeling responsible for pulling my own weight.
- I feel bad doing DPS on my DK like I did this weekend because it is sub par.
- However, it is still 90K, which is fairly decent, even if not good, for first part of SoO LFR at least.
- So that is all I did.
- And I am in all tanking gear, no reforging, no gems, no enchants, tank trinkets, and I am still pulling 90K.
- Hey, it is my bank alt, that is why I do not go out of my way getting him raid ready, he is not a raider.
- I am only a 517 item level with the 2 celestial tier pieces and assorted timeless pieces and the crafted belt.
- I finished between 6th and 11th in damage done on the four fights in SoO part 1, even as shitty as I did.
- And that is the problem.
- If I can perform about as poorly as I would ever even consider going in there performing and still be 6th, there is an issue with everyone else in there, not me.
- I will not even think of going into part two with that DPS.
- I need to get a few DPS pieces, going to start doing the celestials to try and get the DPS tier pieces and try to get two DPS trinkets.
- Basically make a secondary set for DPS, partly, and when I can do 120K I will go into part 2 of SoO LFR.
- It is called being a responsible player.
- I will not waste your time, do me a favor and don't waste mine.
- Wiping because half the raid could not pull 40K is wasting my time.
- Your 15 bucks does not give you the right to waste the time of my 15 bucks like that.
- If you want to be carried, make some friends, ask them to carry you through flex, it drops better gear anyway.
- My newest hunter is just 3 secrets away from the next part of the legendary line.
- Means I should be moving on next week, in theory anyway.
- It will mean it took me 4 weeks to get the 20 secrets, a lot faster than it used to be.
- Did an LFR on my monk, as DPS of course, even if I am a tank.
- Just to repeat, I do not tank LFR.
- But it seems I ended up tanking the LFR.
- Again, another character in all tank gear with tank trinkets set up for tanking, but at least reforged and gemmed and enchanted, but for tanking.
- I was #1 DPS and damage done and ended up tanking multiple times anyway.
- Huge props to the healers in the group for keeping me up.
- First boss in the last ToT, we wiped because the tanks decided to tank the boss in the middle of the tornadoes.
- We got frozen, we got thrown around, we got set on fire, we got killed basically, all because the tanks were morons that refused to move the boss.
- Try two, someone says, "you need to break people out of the ice and avoid the tornadoes".
- I say, "How about the tanks just pull them out of the tornados like they are supposed to and no one will be frozen."
- Complete silence.
- We get to that point, they do not move the boss again.
- I taunt, the tank taunts back.
- I taunt, the tank taunts back.
- You are not going to win this battle asshole, I am moving this guy from the tornado.
- I did not say that, but I thought it.
- Prop #1 for a paladin healer.
- I taunted, healer BoPed him (at least I think that is what he did) and he could not taunt him back.
- The healers kept me up until he was able to taunt back and he did run after him all the way to me, and the boss died.
- Wow, how amazingly easy the fight is when people tank him in the right place.
- Boss two, time for healers to show their power again, I love my healers.
- The tanks are getting owned, someone suggests they bring the fire one to the blue crystals, not like it is really needed in the LFR if the tanks are half way decent but these aren't, so it is needed.
- Even more so when the healers started asking for it, so guess what time it is.
- Its taunting time baby.
- I taunt to crystal, tank runs after it and takes it back.
- I taunt to crystal, tank runs after it and takes it back.
- I taunt to crystal, tank runs after it and takes it back.
- Forth time it seems the tank finally got the pattern and starts doing it on his own.
- Woohoo?
- Last boss, tanks pull him and tank him near the center of the room.
- They do not even make an attempt to get him to the pillar.
- I taunt, but being everyone is in the middle of the room, I am out of range of the healers, he WTF owns me when he gets to me.
- At least he is at the pillar now, so they should be okay right.
- Nope, they tank him there for a long time, over charging the pillar to the next level when someone yells to move him.
- So they move him between that pillar and the next one and keep him there and its a wipe.
- Next attempt, same thing on pull, healers notice what I did last time and run with me when I taunt him to the pillar and they keep me up this time until the tanks decide to join us.
- I continue to taunt from pillar to pillar because the tanks refuse to move him, even if it was explained to them and someone is being kind enough to say in raid when to move him.
- After the first transition I die taunting him to the second pillar we are going to, nice try healers, but I am not in tank spec, there is only so much you can do.
- With me dead, it is a wipe again because without me moving him the tanks leave him in the middle of nowhere and the healers just can not keep up.
- Attempt three, goes basically the same.
- Attempt four, I offer to switch to tank because I am fed up and the tanks are not getting a clue.
- I have no problem with people making mistakes, we all need to learn, but not learning from your mistakes after a few attempts means you are not going to get it.
- This is LFR, I am not here to work progression with you.
- When I offer to tank both tanks drop, so we are stuck waiting.
- I guess they got the clue.
- You know, no one was rude to them, even with the wipes and their obvious mistakes, this is the type of group I did not mind wiping with, they were decent people.
- Would have been nice if they learned as well, tanks mostly.
- I can't believe we went all three fights with me having to part tank them and taunt move bosses because the tanks wouldn't.
- We got 2 new tanks and downed it the next time, so it was done, but it makes me wonder, why don't I tank anyway, because I end up tanking every time I am there to begin with.
- In ToT 3, last boss, more props to healers, both tanks died 2 times, both times I was tanking while they were being revived.
- That was pretty awesome.
- Those healers did an amazing job.
- Did I say I love my healers?
- I love doing that fight because I do no AoE at the beginning.
- I like to see how far I can climb up the damage done ladder having not cheesed it with massive AoE like everyone else.
- I finished #1 in damage done, tanked the boss for a fair bit of time, and did zero damage on the little golems.
- Made me feel good about myself.
- Love watching myself climb up the damage done list over those people that were doing 600K+ on the pull.
- I wonder if they see themselves at #2 damage done at the end of the fight and think they did well or if they realize that the AoE was all they did and in the end they actually did rather poorly.
- BTW, I am not very good at my monk, so me being tops it not me bragging about it because I am not good, it is me saying how bad everyone else was because I was #1.
- My monk is in a world of hell when it comes to secrets, it is one of those characters that never get any.
- It even got screwed on sha this week, first time that has happened to me in a while.
- I'll put in a ticket.
- Remember if you do not get one off sha, put in a ticket and a GM will send it to you.
- If I remember that is.
- I always forget.
- My monk has been on the secrets part of 3 months now, at least.
- I just do not play it enough.
- Like I said, I bounced around a lot this weekend.
- I created a new troll mage.
- Logged in, set up my addons, my UI, where I like things, set up macros, even for things I do not have yet so I am ready for them when I get them, did all the little things, and then logged out.
- I did not feel like playing, I just was in the mood to set up a new character.
- I like organizing things.
- Does that make me weird?
- I did mail some BoAs to other servers this weekend for the first time.
- It worked like a charm, wish they had done this ages ago.
- Now I can lose my heirlooms on many servers instead of just one.
- Woohoo?
- Played one mage from 51 to 55 when I ran out of rested.
- Played one hunter from 62 to 66 when I ran out of rested.
- Played one death knight from 60-64 when I ran out of rested.
- Why does it seem my rested is going so quickly lately?
- Did you notice that revive pet cast time has been decreased?
- I didn't notice that, it is nice, I like it.
- Must have missed that in the notes.
- Noticed a bug, or is it a fix, on the shaman fight.
- I'll say a bug because it causes the bosses to despawn.
- But I don't think what I was doing was intended to begin with.
- So I think it was a stealth fix they did not mention that resulted in a bug.
- I had this little trick I would do on my hunter that made sure the ashen wall never spawned.
- I do not share my tricks like this for fear they will get fixed.
- Maybe someone else did.
- What I would do is when the wall was about to be cast I would time it perfectly and hit distracting shot and feign death.
- This would cancel the cast and the wall would never spawn if you timed it right.
- Time it wrong and it would choose a new target, its previous target.
- Was it needed? No, we downed it many times before I figured that out one attempt while playing around.
- But it was nice, even more so when you had new people, one less mechanic to deal with.
- I did it this week on my baby hunter when he was in there and when I feigned death instead of them stopping the cast or choosing a different target they despawned.
- Oh well, was a fun little thing to do for a while, I am sure they will fix the despawn bug.
- But if you have any issues with the dark shaman despawning I can tell you why that is happening.
- If they target someone with any effect and that someone dies at just the right time, the time I used to use to cancel the cast, they will despawn.
- Now you know why you have been having those despawn issues.
- I was so hoping to use this when we got there on heroic, I am sure it would have helped, guess we will have to do it the old fashion way when we get there.
- My baby hunter got into a normal run this weekend, we downed 12 bosses, but as it works I got no loot when I could have gotten three pieces.
- How so?
- I was on my hunter for the first 7 bosses and the tank needed to leave, so I had to switch to my tank for the 8th boss.
- 8th boss dropped the gloves I could have used and no one else there needed them, but I was tanking.
- 9th boss dropped the weapon I could have used and no one else there needed it, but I was tanking.
- 10th boss dropped nothing, so no biggie.
- I switched back to my hunter for the 11th boss because that is a one tank fight, no one would need the helm token so if it dropped it was mine, it did not drop.
- 12th boss I went back to tanking, shoulder token dropped and no one needed it so it went to waste again.
- Seems my new hunter has the same luck as my old hunter.
- Could you imagine what getting the gloves, the shoulders and the weapon would have done for me?
- It would have been huge.
- Being I have not raided on my main hunter in 2 weeks I helped a friend this weekend on my hunter for a couple of bosses.
- It is amazing what a difference the group you are with does for your numbers.
- On fights I am normally between 290-320 I was doing 240-270.
- Remember, hunters got a 10% buff since the last time I played it, so that gap is a lot bigger.
- The difference is in my main group everyone is over 280, in the group I helped with everyone was around 220.
- Kind of wild how much the rest of a group can effect your own numbers.
- So a little hint for anyone trying to "fake" better numbers for world of logs when making an application for a guild.
- Get into a run with all people with huge numbers, your numbers will be higher also.
- Or cheese it if you can find a group that will let you.
- But the "big numbers" approach is actually better because it is more fitting to what you might actually do.
- Any raid leader will be able to tell you cheesed your numbers looking at logs.
- Like letting you be the only one to kill reflections on sha will really boost your numbers.
- It is how my 520 item level lock managed 300K.
- Cheese, pure cheese.
- WTB Valor gear.
- I added up all my valor over all my characters and I am closing in on 49,000 valor.
- Sure I can spend it, but do I really want to upgrade a 483 weapon?
- Like my rogue, one that is capped, I have a ton of 502 pieces, I would rather be able to buy 553 valor gear than to upgrade 502s I will be replacing.
- Heck, I would rather buy 540 valor gear than upgrade 502s.
- Heck, I would rather buy 528 valor gear than upgrade 502s.
- We need valor gear of some sort, at least at the current LFR level.
- And all slots, weapons included.
- I hope they fix this mistake next expansion.
- Sooner or later it looks like I will end up spending over 40K valor upgrading items that I don't want to upgrade just to put the valor to some use.
- Hey, I guess making a 483 a 491 is better than sitting capped and not collecting any more valor.
- But it is still not as good as buying a 528, 540 or better yet a 553 with valor would be.
- Oh well, I babbled enough for now.
- Have a great day.
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