I had a few things on my mind so I figured I would make a post with a few things in it. I'll try to keep each mini topic short but you know me so don't hold your breath on that one.
Patch 5.4.8
I was, read that as past tense because it is, very excited for patch 5.4.8. There is not a great deal of meat to this patch, it is just really there as filler to try and ease the pain of us still having to play the same content. There were two main points, at least as I see it, that we were expecting in this patch.
One was allowing us to upgrade our gear another 8 item levels which I have touched on. It is a great thing for the people that don't need it but not really such a great thing for those just playing catch up or not valor capped or having nothing worth spending it on or those that do not even know about upgrading, which those things combined are basically most of the people that play the game.
The other part of the patch, as we were expecting it, was that they were adding a speed up option for the legendary quest line. I gave up on getting cloaks because I was fed up with the LFR experience but I was thinking of dabbling back into it if they were going to speed up the process substantially because it would in effect greatly limit the time I needed to spend in that hell hole we affectionately refer to as the LFR.
Then I read over at wow insider that our fine feathered friend Rygarius was the bearer of bad news. The legendary quest catch up would not be part of this patch. This upset me of course because I was looking forward to finishing off the quest on my monk and mage who are both close to done and starting up another hunter on the line. Now, blah, who cares.
But there is a second reason to be upset with this not being in the patch. It means it will be even longer before we get 6.0 and warlords. What makes me say that? Well, all just guess work of course, but blizzard would not create a catch up mechanic unless we had more than ample time to finish it with that mechanic in place.
If they did release the catch up then, in theory, the possibility of the next expansion coming was sooner than later. If they release the catch up mechanic later, that means they are doing it to keep us active. So the later they release it the more we need to realize that we will be able to finish it and that means we need to wait longer for 6.0 and warlords to follow. You can read this not being in the patch as 6.0 being even further away now and warlords being even further away now which is a sad turn of events. This catch up system was supposed to be the last catch up system to hold us over until the expansion.
BTW, my insider, the one that often tips me off to things which I speculate on here before it comes out, so I know his information is solid, told me to expect warlords 16 weeks after the catch up mechanic comes out. So thinking it was coming out today made me think that in 16 weeks we will get warlords. So to me, based on the information I know, it not being part of this patch is basically a delay in warlords.
So this patch means nothing for me. If anything it means warlords is being pushed even further back. Sure item upgrades are nice, but not needed. A catch up mechanic is also nice and it is needed. At least needed for me, if they want to keep me interesting in playing for those 16 weeks after it comes out while we wait an unprecedented time for new content.
The Pet That Keeps Getting Away
In preparation of maybe starting to run LFR again I decided to give ToT part 3 a run again for the first time in months. I had run this one a lot. A hell of a lot. My mage, my monk, my priest and my rogue basically did the majority of their legendary quest line in this one. It drops secrets and runes and more importantly it drops a pet I want off of primordius. The quivering blob which teaches you Living Fuild, a pet I want and need for my collection.
I just took at look at my main characters that have ran the LFR the most, and of course ran that wing the most, and combined they have 63 kills of primordius in LFR. It is also safe to believe that they used a coin most of the time in attempts to get the pet. As my most played characters I often would use that one as something I always did when capping valor and there have been no real use for those coins for a long time. So lets say that means 100 attempts on those characters alone. I have 18 level 90s that can get into, and have done, ToT wing 3. Even if all of them only did it a few times that adds up. I know some, like my mage, monk, priest and rogue are at least in the 10 range because they often did that wing while collecting drops, and all the others have to be at least 3 a piece, maybe more. We are talking I have to be well past 200 attempts when including coin rolls at getting that pet and still no pet.
I was looking forward to the legendary catch up thing, as I just previously mentioned, because I was going to start doing this one wing again on every single character each week, effectively increasing my chances to get the pet and moving along slowly in the legendary quest line. Now that is not going to happen, and I am still waiting on what can only be considered amazingly horrible luck.
Helping Out For Fun
My alt hunter needed a tiny bit to cap valor at 3K so I figured I would do the epoch stone thing on the island but changed my mind. Might as well run a couple of dungeons. It can help some people get through them faster and they can be downright fun. There is something to be said about going in and mindlessly blowing things up in a complete and total mindless slaughter. The game needs more group content like that. For new characters it might be a way to gear up, but for geared characters it is a way to just have some fun. The game needs a hell of a lot more fun group content.
The first run I get in apparently is headed by a DK tank that has never tanked before, or at least never tanked the one we got into. It was shado pan monastery. He pulls that first guy and looks surprised when adds spawn but that is not want gives his newness away, it was the fact that after he kills that one he goes forward to those guys up on the steps that do not need to be killed instead of making a left like everyone does.
No big deal, I slaughter them, we move on. On each boss we kill someone rolls need on the item that drops. Freaking awesome, I love it. Not only am I having some fun killing stuff but I am doing so in a group of people that actually need some things from here. Not exactly sure why they are not getting whatever they can from the timeless island, but who am I to judge. Maybe they did and they did not get the right drops and are still missing a few slots. Either way, it was fun helping them and even more fun knowing they got some gear they needed.
I do another one and get the same instance. This one has a mildly decent geared lock as well. Between the lock and I nothing lives for more than a few seconds. We both seem to come from the same school of thought. Even with a tank that was barely scratching the surface of 450K life, something we both greatly surpassed as damage dealers, we still let him pull the mobs, we still let him wrap them up, and then we killed them super fast.
It is nice to see there was another damage dealer in a group that thinks like I do. I am able to solo all these things, have been for a very long time, but when I am in a group the tank pulls. I am just a tool of destruction and I kill what the tank points at but I always let the tank point because that is his job and this is mine. It was a fun run and guess what? Every boss dropped something either the other damage dealer, the tank or the healer needed. Freaking awesome. I got to help people out and have fun at the same time.
I like that there is content like that in the game. Something I could do solo but I can help others out with and they actually get something they need out of it. I get a feeling of satisfaction for helping and get to have a little fun just killing stuff for a while, what is there not to like about that?
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Monday, May 19, 2014
Monday Random Thoughts
- Moving around stuff on characters it made me think of an idea for an app and/or addition to the game I would love to see.
- Like those commercials "there's an app for that?"
- I wish there was one for this.
- What am I babbling about?
- Inventory control for us pack rats.
- A way to access the bags of every character we have and move stuff back and forth between them.
- Sure I understand there would need to be restrictions like stuff that is character bound or server bound, but it would be an awesome utility.
- Just killed a rare and got a big bag of herb.
- Woot, go me.
- Damn, accidentally opened it and now I only have three bag slots left.
- Open my app, move it all to my mages bag, because he is my herb catch all character, and tada, I have my bag space back and did not need to find a mail box to do it.
- Or while you are at work, do some cleaning up.
- Priest is holding on to all the cloth timeless pieces and I have a few in my bags around all my other characters.
- Move them over, no need to log into each, mail each, and then go fetch each mail.
- Who would not love something like that, in game and as an app?
- Okay, you got me, many people would not have a need for it.
- But that doesn't means I can't dream about how awesome having something like that as an ability in game would be.
- I am sure some people would use it, maybe even quite a few.
- Either way, I will willing to play the role of selfish elf and ask for it anyway.
- Just for me.
- Please. :)
- I asked nicely.
- My arena team is over 1300 now.
- Moving slowly doing 10 matches here and there, but getting there.
- And I got my weapon.
- Only 2 more non PvP peices and 5 low PvP pieces to replace.
- And I can calling anything under 522 low.
- All will get to 550, sooner or later.
- I had a dreadful outing last time we played.
- Funny as it might sound, the more I PvP the worse I seem to be getting at it.
- We are talking someone that could kite world bosses to main cities without even thinking about it and now I keep making mistakes kiting warriors.
- Maybe it is just as I do it more I am meeting harder opponents and I am making "nervous" rookie mistakes.
- They say sometimes to move forward you need to take a step back.
- Maybe this is a small step back for me.
- I just miss the days of being able to kite two melee at the same time all day long while I laugh at them never being able to catch me.
- Either I was better back then, or they were not as good back then.
- Or maybe a little of both.
- Seems everyone has so many catch up abilities now.
- Except retribution paladins.
- I could still kite them with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back.
- Now that is how all melee should be.
- Yes, evil, I know.
- I went cruising around the timeless island on three low geared 90s this weekend.
- My fresh 90 DK I mentioned last week, a 490 hunter I had not done anything with, and a 494 mage I had gotten to 90 and timeless geared up and never touched.
- For as much as I love hunters and will always remain a hunter, nothing can compare to a DK.
- Even a freshly dinged DK in timeless gear only with no gems and no enchants and no effort to fix them up could pull endless amounts of mobs, to some extent.
- Not frogs, oh hell no not frogs.
- My hunter could handle anything, as long as my pet could live.
- Some took more pet management than others, like stuff over the bridge.
- At that item level I could do chanters but the charge from the other guys one shot my pet.
- Unless I hit the shield shell before I pulled of course.
- But it took forever.
- My DK took forever too, but at least my DK was never really in danger of dying.
- My mage, I could not even try most stuff.
- Heading up the road I could get the elites but that was more about skill of positioning than skill of playing.
- Wait for them to do their herbing, then walk up on them to attack.
- No charge that way, because it would kill me.
- And then just stay far enough away not to get meleed and close enough not to get charged.
- Trust me, that is a skill all in its own.
- But that was too much work.
- It was interesting running the same route on three different characters with similar gear on the same day and seeing how they all fair.
- I had no trouble on anything with them at that item level but needed to play it differently on all of them as well.
- I decided to try and start gearing up my hunter, like I really need another one.
- Yes, I do, I do.
- But I find the gearing part fun.
- Did a few LFRs for the first time in months and now I remember why I stopped doing them.
- I did manage to get a fair deal of sigils in the ones I did do however.
- I was on voice chat with a few people when doing them when I made the innocent comment that had two very different responses.
- I said that all raids should be like they were in vanilla.
- One person said, if raids were that simplified they would quit.
- The other said, that it was a great idea.
- I think one thought I mean all raids as in "all" raids.
- I meant all raids in terms of what I was doing at that moment, LFR.
- Once I pointed that out, they agreed 100% as well.
- And the three of us also came to another idea that would be an awesome addition to LFR.
- Or at least we thought so.
- Addition by subtraction.
- LFR should be like ToC, just boss fights, no trash.
- Zone in at a boss, kill the boss and a portal opens, click it to move to the next boss, and so on.
- That would be great.
- And then after wiping not once, not twice, not three times or even four, but five times on the way to magara in ToT I proved exactly why that would be a great idea.
- Trash serves no purpose in random raids like LFR.
- Even more so any type of trash that could wipe you.
- It has just helped to create the hostile environment that leads to the toxic community when one person running in can wipe the entire group that is no where near them by pulling a mob that teleports people to it one at a time to mercilessly execute them.
- We never got magara down, the group gave up without even trying to run back for time #6.
- Sadly, I did not start on the first boss, I started on that one, so never even got a chance at the weapon either.
- It was a waste of time all around for me.
- Speaking of a waste of time, I got a learning lesson this weekend that there is no reason to ever be a nice guy in this game.
- Again.
- Yet I keep forgetting and try to be a nice guy and get screwed.
- I saw a boomkin fighting a rare so I landed and figured I would help him.
- I was not fishing for an invite, just figured I would help.
- Not like he invited me anyway, just pointing that out.
- He died, so I dismissed my pet and feigned death when the mob turned to my tag.
- Could I have killed it?
- Sure, even on a 490 hunter no rare is going to much of a problem for me.
- It was his tag, I was waiting for him to come back and I was going to let him tag it again then I would help him.
- He came back and started at it again and I went to help again.
- Somehow he managed to die even if my pet was tanking and there is no reason a range should die on one of the bug rares, but he managed it.
- I waited again for him.
- He came back and tagged it again and I started in to help him.
- He must have done something that caused him to lose the tag because it switched to my tag half way through the fight.
- I said screw it and invited him to a group.
- First mistake.
- I was in queue for the LFRs, 3 of them, and had been so for 1 hour and 17 minutes.
- As soon as I invited him I lost my space in the LFRs.
- My own fault, I made that mistake, but things get worse of course.
- No good deed goes unpunished they say.
- They are right.
- While waiting in queue I was running around killing rares, had already killed dozens, those baggies that have the goodies were just not dropping.
- But they dropped off this guy.
- I hit greed, because those loot bags are, in my opinion, the prime example of wanting something for greedy purposes.
- It gives you materials, which ones you do not know, but you want to get your greedy little hands on them.
- I hit greed, he hit need, not only on that but he hit need on the 440 cloak too, which he did not need when I hit disenchant.
- So he won both, of course, dropped group and never even said thank you.
- No thank you for dropping my LFR queue to help him, but I would not expect that because he did not know, but being I knew, having no thank you from him made it 100 times worse.
- No thank you for trying to help him kill the rare.
- No thank you for not stealing the tag when he died not once but twice.
- No thank you for waiting for him to come back so I could help him again.
- No thank you for when I did decide to kill it inviting him to the group so he could get a chance at stuff.
- And then the bastard needs on both things, never says thank you, and drops group.
- Not like I needed the stuff, but it is just not a very courteous thing to do.
- Someone goes out of their way for you the least you do is say thank you.
- And this my friends, is why you should NEVER help anyone in wow.
- I keep telling myself that, and I keep helping people.
- Yes, I am a flipping idiot.
- But they are not all bad, sometimes you run across a decent person.
- I saw a level 89 hordie getting his butt handed to him earlier that day and helped him.
- He was by that rare that is just where you enter the dread wastes.
- He was probably leveling, jumped down the rope and he was right there.
- I dismounted and blew it up for him and then mounted right up again.
- It was really quick, but he emoted thank you to me before he even bent over to loot the body.
- Now that is class.
- Reminds me of the tauren death knight I was having some fun with one day much earlier in the expansion.
- We must have both been doing the rare rounds and I stopped to help him and from that point on whenever we see each other fighting we always stop to help each other.
- I have not seen him around in a long time, hope he is doing well.
- See, there are some good people.
- Guess that is why I am an idiot that keeps going to help people.
- Sometimes, rarely, you get rewarded with a simple sign of respect such as a thank you.
- Is that really a lot to ask?
- Apparently it is if it is a boomkin you are hoping to hear it from.
- Next time I see him I am going to stand there and watch him die over and over again and maybe even do the laugh emote each time he dies.
- Then when he asks for help I will kindly tell them to shove it where the sun doesn't shine and steal the kill from him.
- Nah, I am not a jerk like that, but I really should be sometimes.
- Next time I will just not stop and help him.
- And because of him, next time I might not stop and help someone else that would be decent enough to say thank you afterwards.
- Yes people, one jerk can ruin the game for everyone, but one decent person can do nothing to repair the damage one jerk can do.
- My friends group tried gary again with no luck.
- He did not need me so I was not there this time, but he said they were not even getting to that phase they had problems with.
- Reminded him that they can push that phase early to practice it.
- But also mentioned, if they are not even getting to that phase, no reason to practice it now.
- I told him the only thing I could say is that it is a DPS issue for him.
- Without higher numbers his group will not get past it.
- Sad to say, because his team is pretty solid over all otherwise.
- Just not getting the most out of his damage dealers.
- Gear wise they should be able to do it.
- I think gear is a huge issue this expansion.
- More than in any other one.
- Not saying more gear will help them, they just need to get more out of the gear they have, but for the expansion as a whole gear is a problem.
- Too many raid tiers mean too many item level increases means too large of a gap thanks to that massive increase in item level.
- I think I have the solution.
- It is a two prong solution, one I should write a whole post on, but I will sum up an extremely oversimplified version here.
- First, add a new level of gear between green and blue.
- Lets use light blue.
- Was going to say yellow but the greens already look yellow to me and I am confused enough as it is, I do not need more confusion.
- So now we have 4 types of gear.
- Uncommon, Quality, Rare and Epic.
- Now, all the raids should drop the same item level loot.
- Yeap, LFR, normal (flex), heroic (normal) and mythic (heroic) will all drop the same exact item level.
- Lets call it item level 700.
- LFR would drop green 700 gear. As green gear it would have no gem slots, ever.
- Normal (flex) would drop light blue 700 gear. A higher stat allotment per item level but still no gem slots.
- Heroic (normal) would drop blue 700 gear. A higher stat allotment per item level and items can contain gem slots.
- Mythic (heroic) would drop purple 700 gear. The highest stat allotment per item level and can contain gem slots as well.
- Now that is how you really slow down item inflation.
- Each difficulty would have better gear than the one before, but not by huge margins like now.
- Each difficulty would have a different color to leave people the feeling as if they are getting stronger through gear.
- And it would help balance things over all.
- In theory anyway.
- Much better than the huge gap and huge stat boosts you get from raid to raid within the same tier.
- Sure someone in heroic gear should be stronger than someone in LFR gear but they should not have double the stats.
- 10% more with gem slots between the lowest to the highest is how you slow item inflation.
- Unless they plan to stat squish everything every single expansion, they are just going to back themselves into a corner faster if they keep up with this massive stat increase on gear every raid tier.
- Oh, speaking of stat squish, remember when I said there would be problems with it in reference to doing old content?
- Seems as if I was right.
- They are now going to give high levels a stat boost when going into old raids.
- It was a great idea, but I knew they could not make it work perfectly.
- At least they are addressing it before releasing it.
- Funny that we are being stat squished but being stat boosted when he go in old raids now.
- They had the best intentions.
- But I knew it would not work as they advertised it.
- Basic math could have told you that.
- I think I went on a little longer than usual today so I think I will end it here.
- Have a great day.
- Like those commercials "there's an app for that?"
- I wish there was one for this.
- What am I babbling about?
- Inventory control for us pack rats.
- A way to access the bags of every character we have and move stuff back and forth between them.
- Sure I understand there would need to be restrictions like stuff that is character bound or server bound, but it would be an awesome utility.
- Just killed a rare and got a big bag of herb.
- Woot, go me.
- Damn, accidentally opened it and now I only have three bag slots left.
- Open my app, move it all to my mages bag, because he is my herb catch all character, and tada, I have my bag space back and did not need to find a mail box to do it.
- Or while you are at work, do some cleaning up.
- Priest is holding on to all the cloth timeless pieces and I have a few in my bags around all my other characters.
- Move them over, no need to log into each, mail each, and then go fetch each mail.
- Who would not love something like that, in game and as an app?
- Okay, you got me, many people would not have a need for it.
- But that doesn't means I can't dream about how awesome having something like that as an ability in game would be.
- I am sure some people would use it, maybe even quite a few.
- Either way, I will willing to play the role of selfish elf and ask for it anyway.
- Just for me.
- Please. :)
- I asked nicely.
- My arena team is over 1300 now.
- Moving slowly doing 10 matches here and there, but getting there.
- And I got my weapon.
- Only 2 more non PvP peices and 5 low PvP pieces to replace.
- And I can calling anything under 522 low.
- All will get to 550, sooner or later.
- I had a dreadful outing last time we played.
- Funny as it might sound, the more I PvP the worse I seem to be getting at it.
- We are talking someone that could kite world bosses to main cities without even thinking about it and now I keep making mistakes kiting warriors.
- Maybe it is just as I do it more I am meeting harder opponents and I am making "nervous" rookie mistakes.
- They say sometimes to move forward you need to take a step back.
- Maybe this is a small step back for me.
- I just miss the days of being able to kite two melee at the same time all day long while I laugh at them never being able to catch me.
- Either I was better back then, or they were not as good back then.
- Or maybe a little of both.
- Seems everyone has so many catch up abilities now.
- Except retribution paladins.
- I could still kite them with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back.
- Now that is how all melee should be.
- Yes, evil, I know.
- I went cruising around the timeless island on three low geared 90s this weekend.
- My fresh 90 DK I mentioned last week, a 490 hunter I had not done anything with, and a 494 mage I had gotten to 90 and timeless geared up and never touched.
- For as much as I love hunters and will always remain a hunter, nothing can compare to a DK.
- Even a freshly dinged DK in timeless gear only with no gems and no enchants and no effort to fix them up could pull endless amounts of mobs, to some extent.
- Not frogs, oh hell no not frogs.
- My hunter could handle anything, as long as my pet could live.
- Some took more pet management than others, like stuff over the bridge.
- At that item level I could do chanters but the charge from the other guys one shot my pet.
- Unless I hit the shield shell before I pulled of course.
- But it took forever.
- My DK took forever too, but at least my DK was never really in danger of dying.
- My mage, I could not even try most stuff.
- Heading up the road I could get the elites but that was more about skill of positioning than skill of playing.
- Wait for them to do their herbing, then walk up on them to attack.
- No charge that way, because it would kill me.
- And then just stay far enough away not to get meleed and close enough not to get charged.
- Trust me, that is a skill all in its own.
- But that was too much work.
- It was interesting running the same route on three different characters with similar gear on the same day and seeing how they all fair.
- I had no trouble on anything with them at that item level but needed to play it differently on all of them as well.
- I decided to try and start gearing up my hunter, like I really need another one.
- Yes, I do, I do.
- But I find the gearing part fun.
- Did a few LFRs for the first time in months and now I remember why I stopped doing them.
- I did manage to get a fair deal of sigils in the ones I did do however.
- I was on voice chat with a few people when doing them when I made the innocent comment that had two very different responses.
- I said that all raids should be like they were in vanilla.
- One person said, if raids were that simplified they would quit.
- The other said, that it was a great idea.
- I think one thought I mean all raids as in "all" raids.
- I meant all raids in terms of what I was doing at that moment, LFR.
- Once I pointed that out, they agreed 100% as well.
- And the three of us also came to another idea that would be an awesome addition to LFR.
- Or at least we thought so.
- Addition by subtraction.
- LFR should be like ToC, just boss fights, no trash.
- Zone in at a boss, kill the boss and a portal opens, click it to move to the next boss, and so on.
- That would be great.
- And then after wiping not once, not twice, not three times or even four, but five times on the way to magara in ToT I proved exactly why that would be a great idea.
- Trash serves no purpose in random raids like LFR.
- Even more so any type of trash that could wipe you.
- It has just helped to create the hostile environment that leads to the toxic community when one person running in can wipe the entire group that is no where near them by pulling a mob that teleports people to it one at a time to mercilessly execute them.
- We never got magara down, the group gave up without even trying to run back for time #6.
- Sadly, I did not start on the first boss, I started on that one, so never even got a chance at the weapon either.
- It was a waste of time all around for me.
- Speaking of a waste of time, I got a learning lesson this weekend that there is no reason to ever be a nice guy in this game.
- Again.
- Yet I keep forgetting and try to be a nice guy and get screwed.
- I saw a boomkin fighting a rare so I landed and figured I would help him.
- I was not fishing for an invite, just figured I would help.
- Not like he invited me anyway, just pointing that out.
- He died, so I dismissed my pet and feigned death when the mob turned to my tag.
- Could I have killed it?
- Sure, even on a 490 hunter no rare is going to much of a problem for me.
- It was his tag, I was waiting for him to come back and I was going to let him tag it again then I would help him.
- He came back and started at it again and I went to help again.
- Somehow he managed to die even if my pet was tanking and there is no reason a range should die on one of the bug rares, but he managed it.
- I waited again for him.
- He came back and tagged it again and I started in to help him.
- He must have done something that caused him to lose the tag because it switched to my tag half way through the fight.
- I said screw it and invited him to a group.
- First mistake.
- I was in queue for the LFRs, 3 of them, and had been so for 1 hour and 17 minutes.
- As soon as I invited him I lost my space in the LFRs.
- My own fault, I made that mistake, but things get worse of course.
- No good deed goes unpunished they say.
- They are right.
- While waiting in queue I was running around killing rares, had already killed dozens, those baggies that have the goodies were just not dropping.
- But they dropped off this guy.
- I hit greed, because those loot bags are, in my opinion, the prime example of wanting something for greedy purposes.
- It gives you materials, which ones you do not know, but you want to get your greedy little hands on them.
- I hit greed, he hit need, not only on that but he hit need on the 440 cloak too, which he did not need when I hit disenchant.
- So he won both, of course, dropped group and never even said thank you.
- No thank you for dropping my LFR queue to help him, but I would not expect that because he did not know, but being I knew, having no thank you from him made it 100 times worse.
- No thank you for trying to help him kill the rare.
- No thank you for not stealing the tag when he died not once but twice.
- No thank you for waiting for him to come back so I could help him again.
- No thank you for when I did decide to kill it inviting him to the group so he could get a chance at stuff.
- And then the bastard needs on both things, never says thank you, and drops group.
- Not like I needed the stuff, but it is just not a very courteous thing to do.
- Someone goes out of their way for you the least you do is say thank you.
- And this my friends, is why you should NEVER help anyone in wow.
- I keep telling myself that, and I keep helping people.
- Yes, I am a flipping idiot.
- But they are not all bad, sometimes you run across a decent person.
- I saw a level 89 hordie getting his butt handed to him earlier that day and helped him.
- He was by that rare that is just where you enter the dread wastes.
- He was probably leveling, jumped down the rope and he was right there.
- I dismounted and blew it up for him and then mounted right up again.
- It was really quick, but he emoted thank you to me before he even bent over to loot the body.
- Now that is class.
- Reminds me of the tauren death knight I was having some fun with one day much earlier in the expansion.
- We must have both been doing the rare rounds and I stopped to help him and from that point on whenever we see each other fighting we always stop to help each other.
- I have not seen him around in a long time, hope he is doing well.
- See, there are some good people.
- Guess that is why I am an idiot that keeps going to help people.
- Sometimes, rarely, you get rewarded with a simple sign of respect such as a thank you.
- Is that really a lot to ask?
- Apparently it is if it is a boomkin you are hoping to hear it from.
- Next time I see him I am going to stand there and watch him die over and over again and maybe even do the laugh emote each time he dies.
- Then when he asks for help I will kindly tell them to shove it where the sun doesn't shine and steal the kill from him.
- Nah, I am not a jerk like that, but I really should be sometimes.
- Next time I will just not stop and help him.
- And because of him, next time I might not stop and help someone else that would be decent enough to say thank you afterwards.
- Yes people, one jerk can ruin the game for everyone, but one decent person can do nothing to repair the damage one jerk can do.
- My friends group tried gary again with no luck.
- He did not need me so I was not there this time, but he said they were not even getting to that phase they had problems with.
- Reminded him that they can push that phase early to practice it.
- But also mentioned, if they are not even getting to that phase, no reason to practice it now.
- I told him the only thing I could say is that it is a DPS issue for him.
- Without higher numbers his group will not get past it.
- Sad to say, because his team is pretty solid over all otherwise.
- Just not getting the most out of his damage dealers.
- Gear wise they should be able to do it.
- I think gear is a huge issue this expansion.
- More than in any other one.
- Not saying more gear will help them, they just need to get more out of the gear they have, but for the expansion as a whole gear is a problem.
- Too many raid tiers mean too many item level increases means too large of a gap thanks to that massive increase in item level.
- I think I have the solution.
- It is a two prong solution, one I should write a whole post on, but I will sum up an extremely oversimplified version here.
- First, add a new level of gear between green and blue.
- Lets use light blue.
- Was going to say yellow but the greens already look yellow to me and I am confused enough as it is, I do not need more confusion.
- So now we have 4 types of gear.
- Uncommon, Quality, Rare and Epic.
- Now, all the raids should drop the same item level loot.
- Yeap, LFR, normal (flex), heroic (normal) and mythic (heroic) will all drop the same exact item level.
- Lets call it item level 700.
- LFR would drop green 700 gear. As green gear it would have no gem slots, ever.
- Normal (flex) would drop light blue 700 gear. A higher stat allotment per item level but still no gem slots.
- Heroic (normal) would drop blue 700 gear. A higher stat allotment per item level and items can contain gem slots.
- Mythic (heroic) would drop purple 700 gear. The highest stat allotment per item level and can contain gem slots as well.
- Now that is how you really slow down item inflation.
- Each difficulty would have better gear than the one before, but not by huge margins like now.
- Each difficulty would have a different color to leave people the feeling as if they are getting stronger through gear.
- And it would help balance things over all.
- In theory anyway.
- Much better than the huge gap and huge stat boosts you get from raid to raid within the same tier.
- Sure someone in heroic gear should be stronger than someone in LFR gear but they should not have double the stats.
- 10% more with gem slots between the lowest to the highest is how you slow item inflation.
- Unless they plan to stat squish everything every single expansion, they are just going to back themselves into a corner faster if they keep up with this massive stat increase on gear every raid tier.
- Oh, speaking of stat squish, remember when I said there would be problems with it in reference to doing old content?
- Seems as if I was right.
- They are now going to give high levels a stat boost when going into old raids.
- It was a great idea, but I knew they could not make it work perfectly.
- At least they are addressing it before releasing it.
- Funny that we are being stat squished but being stat boosted when he go in old raids now.
- They had the best intentions.
- But I knew it would not work as they advertised it.
- Basic math could have told you that.
- I think I went on a little longer than usual today so I think I will end it here.
- Have a great day.
Friday, May 16, 2014
Avoiding Mechanics: Why Are They Even There?
Not so long ago I was in a run that happened to be on garrosh. Some of the people in the group had been there before but they were having nightmares with it like we all did. So one of the guys asked me, how did you manage it the first time and I responded, we just avoided getting empowered whirlwinds.
Basically I told him that we avoided mechanics. Not having to deal with the empowered whirlwinds actually makes the fight much easier. Same goes for shaman with three tanks. You get to avoid so many things that "could" bring difficulty but doing whatever you can to avoid the mechanics.
I did a few attempts, 12 I believe, with them before they called it a night, gave some pointers and helped as best one person could but they did not down it. They managed to get to the third phase once but they where dying, mostly, to empowered whirlwinds. I felt so bad not being able to help them more. I've never had to deal with the empowered whirling corruptions. They have always been completely avoidable in flex and on normal we did not down it until we were capable of avoiding the mechanic. So while I was able to tell them what needed to be done and how to do it, it came down to the fact that they needed to learn to do it or they would not be getting the fight down.
I've seen many pugs require a certain amount of DPS to push past the empowered whirlwinds or a third tank on shamans, stuff like that. I don't blame them, I would be the same way too even if my guild never used the three tank method for shaman except for in 25s where we had the people for it.
The thing is, why does the mechanic even exist if it is avoidable? Why two tank shaman if you can three tank it and make it easier. Why deal with empowered whirling corruptions when you can push through it and make it easier.
I understand why these things are in game, to give fights some difficulty, but if you are capable of avoiding them, why are they even there to begin with? All they do is work as a penalty against those that are incapable of avoiding them. Sure you can do the fight without avoiding them, like I said we never did shaman with three tanks in 10, but it sure as hell would make it easier.
Why are mechanics that can be avoided, and by avoiding them they change the fight in a massive way, in the game at all?
At the end of the run he asked me if I thought the group could do it. I said I was quite impressed that even with 5 people in there that never even had one attempt on garrosh, for them to get to the third phase once in only a dozen attempts was quite impressive. So I told him, yes, I think you can do it. All you need to do is learn how to better handle those empowered whirling corruptions. As soon as you get that down the fight will be done. They had the movement down perfect, they were snap fast with mind controls, it was just that one little thing that was keeping them from downing it.
He asked me for advice on how they could get better at it because it was going to get really frustrating having to do the whole fight and wiping late in it just to get a couple of seconds of practice on something that kills them so quick. I told him, start the fight, go up, do not DPS garrsoh up there. Let him get some power. When you come down, he will have the empowered whirling corruption earlier now. At least this fight had a way to practice it. They will still wipe, but at least they can draw the mechanic out sooner so they can practice it.
He then asked, do you think my group can avoid the mechanic like you did? I did not even hesitate, I saw where we were pushing transitions, first phase after 5 axes, second time up at 60 percent, I said no. Sorry, there is no way your group would be able to avoid it. You will either need to do the mechanic or wait until people get some more gear and get better. I suggested he have the DPS practice their rotations on the dummy, because the numbers are not high enough to avoid the mechanic.
Now that is what this post is about. Why is that mechanic even in the game? It should be hardwired somehow, something you can not skip, or it should not be in there at all to begin with.
My guild was not any better than his guild when we first downed it. Heck, his guild getting to the third phase in so few attempts was a lot faster than mine. Sure, he had some people with experience there like myself, but for a group with half the people there being completely new to the fight without even one attempt under their belt, they did fantastic. If anything with their performance I would say they are better than my guild. But we did it because we avoided mechanics and they didn't because they couldn't. And that is not fair to them. Not fair to them at all.
So if the mechanics can be avoided, why is it even there to begin with? His group is getting penalized because they are not over powering it? All avoidable mechanics do it make things unnecessarily hard on the groups that are not capable of avoiding them. Can they do it? Sure. Should they have to? No. If my team did not have to deal with that mechanic his should not have to.
I wish him luck and I know his group will end up getting it down in fewer attempts than mine did if they stick to it, they were doing quite well, but I genuinely feel bad for him. His guild should have been celebrating downing him that night but a mechanic stopped him from that because he could not avoid it.
It makes me wonder if my guild wasn't as strong in the DPS department as we were, would we have ever downed it? But if we weren't, we would have kept working until we could avoid it because that was the easiest way to do it. And that is what I am getting at. If the easiest way to handle a mechanic is not to deal with it, and it is capable of being avoided, why even add it? It is a waste of coding time and a waste of player time.
I think that is bad encounter design, that avoiding mechanics becomes the best and easiest strategy to beat the fight. It is not just skipping the whirlwind on garrosh or three tanking shaman, those are just some examples. There have been many fights where if you were able to avoid a certain mechanic or bring a certain class it made the fight trivial. I can name a dozen this expansion alone where if you could push past something with big DPS numbers, or heal through something with some great healing, or have a tank that can do that little extra it completely changes the complexion of the fight.
I am all for being rewarded for doing what you do well and I can see being able to avoid a mechanics because of good DPS might just be considered by some as reward for being better than those incapable of avoiding it. I just do not see it like that. I think of it as that group I was in that deserved a win, and knowing if they had the fight I had without the empowered whirling corruption they would have had a kill.
Mechanics like these, ones that can be avoided, have no place in raiding. Either hard code them that they are not avoidable and everyone needs to do them or remove them. They add no difficulty what so ever, nothing does really once you figure out how to do it, but they do offer is frustration like the frustration that guy must have felt when I told him my team just avoided the mechanic that is keeping his team form the kill. As he said, and I now ask, why is it even in there? Good question Rob, very good question. So I asked for him.
What do you think? Should annoying mechanics that can be avoided by some groups or with certain classes just be removed in favor of more mechanics that everyone needs to deal with?
Basically I told him that we avoided mechanics. Not having to deal with the empowered whirlwinds actually makes the fight much easier. Same goes for shaman with three tanks. You get to avoid so many things that "could" bring difficulty but doing whatever you can to avoid the mechanics.
I did a few attempts, 12 I believe, with them before they called it a night, gave some pointers and helped as best one person could but they did not down it. They managed to get to the third phase once but they where dying, mostly, to empowered whirlwinds. I felt so bad not being able to help them more. I've never had to deal with the empowered whirling corruptions. They have always been completely avoidable in flex and on normal we did not down it until we were capable of avoiding the mechanic. So while I was able to tell them what needed to be done and how to do it, it came down to the fact that they needed to learn to do it or they would not be getting the fight down.
I've seen many pugs require a certain amount of DPS to push past the empowered whirlwinds or a third tank on shamans, stuff like that. I don't blame them, I would be the same way too even if my guild never used the three tank method for shaman except for in 25s where we had the people for it.
The thing is, why does the mechanic even exist if it is avoidable? Why two tank shaman if you can three tank it and make it easier. Why deal with empowered whirling corruptions when you can push through it and make it easier.
I understand why these things are in game, to give fights some difficulty, but if you are capable of avoiding them, why are they even there to begin with? All they do is work as a penalty against those that are incapable of avoiding them. Sure you can do the fight without avoiding them, like I said we never did shaman with three tanks in 10, but it sure as hell would make it easier.
Why are mechanics that can be avoided, and by avoiding them they change the fight in a massive way, in the game at all?
At the end of the run he asked me if I thought the group could do it. I said I was quite impressed that even with 5 people in there that never even had one attempt on garrosh, for them to get to the third phase once in only a dozen attempts was quite impressive. So I told him, yes, I think you can do it. All you need to do is learn how to better handle those empowered whirling corruptions. As soon as you get that down the fight will be done. They had the movement down perfect, they were snap fast with mind controls, it was just that one little thing that was keeping them from downing it.
He asked me for advice on how they could get better at it because it was going to get really frustrating having to do the whole fight and wiping late in it just to get a couple of seconds of practice on something that kills them so quick. I told him, start the fight, go up, do not DPS garrsoh up there. Let him get some power. When you come down, he will have the empowered whirling corruption earlier now. At least this fight had a way to practice it. They will still wipe, but at least they can draw the mechanic out sooner so they can practice it.
He then asked, do you think my group can avoid the mechanic like you did? I did not even hesitate, I saw where we were pushing transitions, first phase after 5 axes, second time up at 60 percent, I said no. Sorry, there is no way your group would be able to avoid it. You will either need to do the mechanic or wait until people get some more gear and get better. I suggested he have the DPS practice their rotations on the dummy, because the numbers are not high enough to avoid the mechanic.
Now that is what this post is about. Why is that mechanic even in the game? It should be hardwired somehow, something you can not skip, or it should not be in there at all to begin with.
My guild was not any better than his guild when we first downed it. Heck, his guild getting to the third phase in so few attempts was a lot faster than mine. Sure, he had some people with experience there like myself, but for a group with half the people there being completely new to the fight without even one attempt under their belt, they did fantastic. If anything with their performance I would say they are better than my guild. But we did it because we avoided mechanics and they didn't because they couldn't. And that is not fair to them. Not fair to them at all.
So if the mechanics can be avoided, why is it even there to begin with? His group is getting penalized because they are not over powering it? All avoidable mechanics do it make things unnecessarily hard on the groups that are not capable of avoiding them. Can they do it? Sure. Should they have to? No. If my team did not have to deal with that mechanic his should not have to.
I wish him luck and I know his group will end up getting it down in fewer attempts than mine did if they stick to it, they were doing quite well, but I genuinely feel bad for him. His guild should have been celebrating downing him that night but a mechanic stopped him from that because he could not avoid it.
It makes me wonder if my guild wasn't as strong in the DPS department as we were, would we have ever downed it? But if we weren't, we would have kept working until we could avoid it because that was the easiest way to do it. And that is what I am getting at. If the easiest way to handle a mechanic is not to deal with it, and it is capable of being avoided, why even add it? It is a waste of coding time and a waste of player time.
I think that is bad encounter design, that avoiding mechanics becomes the best and easiest strategy to beat the fight. It is not just skipping the whirlwind on garrosh or three tanking shaman, those are just some examples. There have been many fights where if you were able to avoid a certain mechanic or bring a certain class it made the fight trivial. I can name a dozen this expansion alone where if you could push past something with big DPS numbers, or heal through something with some great healing, or have a tank that can do that little extra it completely changes the complexion of the fight.
I am all for being rewarded for doing what you do well and I can see being able to avoid a mechanics because of good DPS might just be considered by some as reward for being better than those incapable of avoiding it. I just do not see it like that. I think of it as that group I was in that deserved a win, and knowing if they had the fight I had without the empowered whirling corruption they would have had a kill.
Mechanics like these, ones that can be avoided, have no place in raiding. Either hard code them that they are not avoidable and everyone needs to do them or remove them. They add no difficulty what so ever, nothing does really once you figure out how to do it, but they do offer is frustration like the frustration that guy must have felt when I told him my team just avoided the mechanic that is keeping his team form the kill. As he said, and I now ask, why is it even in there? Good question Rob, very good question. So I asked for him.
What do you think? Should annoying mechanics that can be avoided by some groups or with certain classes just be removed in favor of more mechanics that everyone needs to deal with?
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Why Are People So Mean?
I have an absolutely no evidence to back it up but I have an answer to that question. To make themselves feel better.
However I would really like to know why people have to be so mean and resort to insults immediately, even when not threatened to begin with. Perhaps there is more to it that I do not know. More than just people trying to make themselves feel better.
Why do I ask this you might ask and the answer is simple, and quite obvious as you will see as soon as I mention it. I was reading the forums.
The thing is that I have been trying to get into PvP more and as per normal for me I make every effort I can to get better. Not like I will ever really be a good PvPer because my reaction speed is not up to par with top notch reactionary abilties that high level PvP requires but I can be good enough to have some fun with it and enjoy it. Perhaps that is part of the reason I prefer PvE. It is scripted so I know what to expect once I see it and I can get ready to respond because I know exactly what is going to happen.
That is the thing however. Being I might not be the best at reaction or spell selection on the fly in PvP I can learn to be better and handle things better by learning everything I can. Knowledge is power, to steal a saying. So not only have I been reading every post I could find and watching every video I find for hunter PvP I have been doing the same for every single class in the game.
The reason I am doing that is because the more in touch I am with the other classes the better I will understand their abilties, how they use them, and more importantly, how they like to handle a hunter. If I know exactly what they are going to do to take me out I will be in a better position to counter it. So what I lack in experience and skill I am attempting to make up with in knowledge and hope that the more I play the better I will get at it. I do believe, in time and with enough practice, my reaction time and skill selection will become faster and as such I will become a better player.
This requires a hell of a lot of reading of course. If I ever want to get better there is a great deal for me to learn. I can't just go into PvP saying open with an aimed shot, follow with a chimera and then double kill shot them. I just do not have the gear to support that being enough to kill anyone and even if I did, there is no half way decent PvPer that would ever let me get that off without screwing me up somewhere along the line.
All this reading however has really turned me off of PvP. Not only turned me off of it, but has made me want to quit it before I even get any further. Not that I have thin skin or anything, but do I really want to play with "these" people?
I see people posting asking questions, questions I too would like to see the answers too, and the immediate response is usually something along the lines of "you can not even get 1800 in 2s, you suck", "you are not doing rated battlegrounds, it shouldn't matter to you", "just stick to randoms you noob", "you suck." Then all those rude remarks are usually followed by rebuttals which are just as rude if not more so like "you have no right to comment you do not even have 10,000 honor kills", "you don't know what you are talking about with your 1500 in threes", and things like that.
Why has no one answered the question? Really.
For the record, and as anyone that might read here often knows, I am not a PvPer. I have not really even attempted it seriously since wrath and I wasn't very good back then either but I was bored and looking for something new so I decided to give it a try and learn. I am not fully PvP geared yet, sill missing a weapon and 2 other pieces and 2 of my PvP pieces are from season 13. Yes, I am totally a beginner.
Not to mention I am only just rebinding for PvP. Going back to my wrath PvP roots with over 100 keybinds but I am glad there do not seem to be as many any longer. To anyone that says that there is more to do now they are wrong, at least in PvP. I have fewer binds now but more active abilties.
Either way, I am clearly in the learning stage. Moving binds around as I notice where I would rather it and getting comfortable with them and of course remembering where those rarely used things are bound, like scare beast, come now, who the hell remembers where they bound that or better yet, who the hell remembers that they even have that. Well, I now remember where it is. It is just not really in a great place right now because I have not found a better place yet but if I hit - it will cast scare beast now. Yes, I remember that even when not on the game, and that is what the learning process is all about. Key binding is only half the battle, remembering where the hell everything is bound is the other.
I am currently 28-23 in 3s with a 1200 rating and I am sure it will get better as me and my team mates start to get some gear. The other two got their weapons this week, I will next week most likely. So I am not really what you would call a "good" player but I am most defiantly someone interested in learning and getting better.
And that is where this mean streak seems to start to bother me. I do not post on forums, never have and never will, because I do not like the people on them, and as you can see there is good reason for that. But being I read a lot I see how others are answered.
I've seen people in the same boat as me. Not geared, just having questions and wanting to learn and get better. And they get blasted because they do not have a PvP history, they do not have a good rating, they do not have all top gear, they do not have the things they should not have yet because they are just beginning.
Why is everyone in the PvP community such an asshole? Someone comes to them asking for help on how to learn to play better and their first response is to blast the person because they are not good. Not shit sherlock, that is why he is here asking for help, because he knows he is not good. Telling him he is not good is like telling someone, hey look, it is day time, while the sun is in the sky. Thanks for pointing out the obvious. Now how about trying to help your fellow player?
It is not just the PvP forums mind you, they are just what I was reading lately so they are on the top of my mind and what made me think about it. The PvE forums are just as bad with the vast number of people that judge someone on their gear and their raid progression.
Let me point out a small fact, you can not judge people on their gear or raid progression because it means nothing. I could go this weekend and get myself a full 14/14 heroic clear on my rogue this if I wanted to. I know someone that has been bugging me to trade him a rare S/S pet he has not been able to find but I have and I leveled up to 25.
He has already offered to bring any character I want through a full clear if I would give it to him. So if I bought my rogue through there and was 14/14 heroic with heroic gear on my rogue that would mean I am good on my rogue? Hell no, I suck on my rogue. Would that mean I am better at my rogue than I am on my hunter? Hell no, the hunter is the only thing I am even decent at. You can not judge someone on their raid progressions. You can only go as far as the 9 or 24 other people you are with and in this case the 24 others I would be with are heroic ready, my rogue is not.
Just like I said of the PvP people I say about the PvE ones. They are just being mean to make themselves feel better. Nothing more, at least in my opinion.
I guess the reason it gets more frustrating when reading it on the PvP forums is because I am just starting to learn how to get better at that. It makes me think that the community as a whole is chasing people away. I will still do what I am going to do, I will still try to get a little better. If 1200 is the best I ever do and playing .500 is the best I will ever be, I am content with that, as long as I have fun doing it, but I will try to get better. If I stop at 1500 or 1800 or even make it higher, so be it. I will keep going as long as I am enjoying myself.
But what about those poor souls that go to the forums to ask for help? What if I would go there and say I've been having a horrible time with ferals lately? Would they just say, well you are only 1200 and do not even have all PvP gear, you suck, just give up now.
How does this help the game, the community, the players? It doesn't. Why do people need to be so mean. Wouldn't it be better for the game over all if people would just give me tips and tricks on how a hunter can get better at dealing with a feral. Maybe point out I have scare beast, maybe I did not know I had that or even knew what it did. But no, the community just wants to be mean to those asking questions.
I do not get it, I do not see where this comes from. I would rather help someone so that means there is now someone else better than to shoot someone down so they might quit and there will be fewer people to play with. Perhaps it has to do with the fact I am not an ego maniac and I do need to cut others down to make myself feel better. Actually, I have a different psychological problem all together. Helping others makes me feel better. It is one of the reasons I stay in normals trying to help others get their garrosh kill instead of doing heroics, where I should be.
Not saying my actions are any better than theirs but at least I feel I can justify my desire to help others as something that is better for the community and something that makes me feel good about myself in a positive way. Maybe there is more to them being mean that just having low self esteem and wanting to make themselves feel better and being I do not see it from their angle I don't understand it. So why are people so mean?
However I would really like to know why people have to be so mean and resort to insults immediately, even when not threatened to begin with. Perhaps there is more to it that I do not know. More than just people trying to make themselves feel better.
Why do I ask this you might ask and the answer is simple, and quite obvious as you will see as soon as I mention it. I was reading the forums.
The thing is that I have been trying to get into PvP more and as per normal for me I make every effort I can to get better. Not like I will ever really be a good PvPer because my reaction speed is not up to par with top notch reactionary abilties that high level PvP requires but I can be good enough to have some fun with it and enjoy it. Perhaps that is part of the reason I prefer PvE. It is scripted so I know what to expect once I see it and I can get ready to respond because I know exactly what is going to happen.
That is the thing however. Being I might not be the best at reaction or spell selection on the fly in PvP I can learn to be better and handle things better by learning everything I can. Knowledge is power, to steal a saying. So not only have I been reading every post I could find and watching every video I find for hunter PvP I have been doing the same for every single class in the game.
The reason I am doing that is because the more in touch I am with the other classes the better I will understand their abilties, how they use them, and more importantly, how they like to handle a hunter. If I know exactly what they are going to do to take me out I will be in a better position to counter it. So what I lack in experience and skill I am attempting to make up with in knowledge and hope that the more I play the better I will get at it. I do believe, in time and with enough practice, my reaction time and skill selection will become faster and as such I will become a better player.
This requires a hell of a lot of reading of course. If I ever want to get better there is a great deal for me to learn. I can't just go into PvP saying open with an aimed shot, follow with a chimera and then double kill shot them. I just do not have the gear to support that being enough to kill anyone and even if I did, there is no half way decent PvPer that would ever let me get that off without screwing me up somewhere along the line.
All this reading however has really turned me off of PvP. Not only turned me off of it, but has made me want to quit it before I even get any further. Not that I have thin skin or anything, but do I really want to play with "these" people?
I see people posting asking questions, questions I too would like to see the answers too, and the immediate response is usually something along the lines of "you can not even get 1800 in 2s, you suck", "you are not doing rated battlegrounds, it shouldn't matter to you", "just stick to randoms you noob", "you suck." Then all those rude remarks are usually followed by rebuttals which are just as rude if not more so like "you have no right to comment you do not even have 10,000 honor kills", "you don't know what you are talking about with your 1500 in threes", and things like that.
Why has no one answered the question? Really.
For the record, and as anyone that might read here often knows, I am not a PvPer. I have not really even attempted it seriously since wrath and I wasn't very good back then either but I was bored and looking for something new so I decided to give it a try and learn. I am not fully PvP geared yet, sill missing a weapon and 2 other pieces and 2 of my PvP pieces are from season 13. Yes, I am totally a beginner.
Not to mention I am only just rebinding for PvP. Going back to my wrath PvP roots with over 100 keybinds but I am glad there do not seem to be as many any longer. To anyone that says that there is more to do now they are wrong, at least in PvP. I have fewer binds now but more active abilties.
Either way, I am clearly in the learning stage. Moving binds around as I notice where I would rather it and getting comfortable with them and of course remembering where those rarely used things are bound, like scare beast, come now, who the hell remembers where they bound that or better yet, who the hell remembers that they even have that. Well, I now remember where it is. It is just not really in a great place right now because I have not found a better place yet but if I hit - it will cast scare beast now. Yes, I remember that even when not on the game, and that is what the learning process is all about. Key binding is only half the battle, remembering where the hell everything is bound is the other.
I am currently 28-23 in 3s with a 1200 rating and I am sure it will get better as me and my team mates start to get some gear. The other two got their weapons this week, I will next week most likely. So I am not really what you would call a "good" player but I am most defiantly someone interested in learning and getting better.
And that is where this mean streak seems to start to bother me. I do not post on forums, never have and never will, because I do not like the people on them, and as you can see there is good reason for that. But being I read a lot I see how others are answered.
I've seen people in the same boat as me. Not geared, just having questions and wanting to learn and get better. And they get blasted because they do not have a PvP history, they do not have a good rating, they do not have all top gear, they do not have the things they should not have yet because they are just beginning.
Why is everyone in the PvP community such an asshole? Someone comes to them asking for help on how to learn to play better and their first response is to blast the person because they are not good. Not shit sherlock, that is why he is here asking for help, because he knows he is not good. Telling him he is not good is like telling someone, hey look, it is day time, while the sun is in the sky. Thanks for pointing out the obvious. Now how about trying to help your fellow player?
It is not just the PvP forums mind you, they are just what I was reading lately so they are on the top of my mind and what made me think about it. The PvE forums are just as bad with the vast number of people that judge someone on their gear and their raid progression.
Let me point out a small fact, you can not judge people on their gear or raid progression because it means nothing. I could go this weekend and get myself a full 14/14 heroic clear on my rogue this if I wanted to. I know someone that has been bugging me to trade him a rare S/S pet he has not been able to find but I have and I leveled up to 25.
He has already offered to bring any character I want through a full clear if I would give it to him. So if I bought my rogue through there and was 14/14 heroic with heroic gear on my rogue that would mean I am good on my rogue? Hell no, I suck on my rogue. Would that mean I am better at my rogue than I am on my hunter? Hell no, the hunter is the only thing I am even decent at. You can not judge someone on their raid progressions. You can only go as far as the 9 or 24 other people you are with and in this case the 24 others I would be with are heroic ready, my rogue is not.
Just like I said of the PvP people I say about the PvE ones. They are just being mean to make themselves feel better. Nothing more, at least in my opinion.
I guess the reason it gets more frustrating when reading it on the PvP forums is because I am just starting to learn how to get better at that. It makes me think that the community as a whole is chasing people away. I will still do what I am going to do, I will still try to get a little better. If 1200 is the best I ever do and playing .500 is the best I will ever be, I am content with that, as long as I have fun doing it, but I will try to get better. If I stop at 1500 or 1800 or even make it higher, so be it. I will keep going as long as I am enjoying myself.
But what about those poor souls that go to the forums to ask for help? What if I would go there and say I've been having a horrible time with ferals lately? Would they just say, well you are only 1200 and do not even have all PvP gear, you suck, just give up now.
How does this help the game, the community, the players? It doesn't. Why do people need to be so mean. Wouldn't it be better for the game over all if people would just give me tips and tricks on how a hunter can get better at dealing with a feral. Maybe point out I have scare beast, maybe I did not know I had that or even knew what it did. But no, the community just wants to be mean to those asking questions.
I do not get it, I do not see where this comes from. I would rather help someone so that means there is now someone else better than to shoot someone down so they might quit and there will be fewer people to play with. Perhaps it has to do with the fact I am not an ego maniac and I do need to cut others down to make myself feel better. Actually, I have a different psychological problem all together. Helping others makes me feel better. It is one of the reasons I stay in normals trying to help others get their garrosh kill instead of doing heroics, where I should be.
Not saying my actions are any better than theirs but at least I feel I can justify my desire to help others as something that is better for the community and something that makes me feel good about myself in a positive way. Maybe there is more to them being mean that just having low self esteem and wanting to make themselves feel better and being I do not see it from their angle I don't understand it. So why are people so mean?
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Clueless Blizzard Increases Item Level Upgrades
When 5.4.8 comes out there are some interesting changes coming and the one in the title is the newest one, the older one we heard about concerned the legendary quest line. They will be adding buffs, not sure how we get them yet, that will increase valor gain, increase black price reputation gain, and increase the drop rate of quest items needed for the legendary quest line.
I will talk about those changes first before I get to the valor upgrade that made me want to write this. First, it has me thinking I might bring another character through the legendary line or finish off the 3 or 4 I have close but never finished it because I quit doing LFR completely as the reward you get from doing LFR does not equal the hell that LFR is to do.
However, blizzard once again shows they are incredibly clueless even with those changes to speed up the legendary quest line. Drop rates are not so much the problem any longer. Sure they could be more generous of course, but the biggest hang ups on the legendary quest line, and where I have 8 characters sitting, are the valor collection and the PvP wins. Three thousand valor is huge for a rarely played alt. If they really wanted to help speed things up they could increase drop rates, sure, but what really needs to be done is to change the valor collection to 1K or even better, just straight out remove it.
It is a waste of time to wait 3 weeks for no real reason. When you hit that part you "might" still need stuff from LFR, so it is not so bad running it. By the time you are done with those three weeks of collecting valor for no reason other than to waste time, you most likely will not need anything else from LFR and even if you do you are most likely about as sick of running that cesspool of content that you just want to never go back there.
Which now means you have to endure that hell for no reason other than drops. So even with 100% drop rates, it would still be a waste of time. You could have been collecting those things during those three weeks instead of just collecting valor. When the quest was new and it was current that wait was a good thing, it filled up some time where you would not be doing anything else anyway. Now, it is a complete and total waste of time. If they really wanted to fix the quest line you would have to do the collect three thousand valor and the next parts of the quest at the exact same time.
As in, you will still need to collect three thousand valor, but the quest line continues, even if you have not done so yet. When all is said and done, you will surely have the three thousand valor when done collecting all the pieces and it will just be part of the quest line that is done as you go and not a three week bump in the road that slows you down and makes you lose interest. The fact they are doing things to speed up the legendary quest line and the valor collection part is even still in there at all shows that blizzard is not only clueless, but that they do not give a crap about playability because waiting three weeks doing nothing isn't exactly fun game play.
The second part is that PvP part. Sure, I had two characters that went in and one shot both. I also have 2 characters with many attempts and still no wins. Druid over 10, warlock over 30. If blizzard really wanted to speed up the legendary quest line and make it leaps and bounds more enjoyable for the people that do not want to PvP, and the PvPers that hate seeing the PvEers poisoning their content, they should change that part of the quest line to "participate" in each battleground, not "win" each one. Small change but a huge one for the player base. It would be a good change too, but blizzard, the clueless ones, will never see that because it is too obvious. I am so amazed, as in holy crap how did they not even think of that amazed, that the battleground part was not changed to "participate" a long time ago. Are the people in charge of the brain trust at blizzard really that clueless? Don't answer that, we already know the answer is yes.
Now that we got the older news of their clueless nature out of the way lets get to the newer news that is the topic title. I do not even know where to start on this one. So many rants are going through my mind at the moment. But I think I know where I will start. I will start exactly where my mind went the moment I read a response from a blue.
For the record, I do not need the zone wide debuff, I finished normal a long time ago and that is all I do. I do not do heroic, maybe a few here and there, but I do not work it as progression. So me supporting a zone wide debuff has absolutely nothing to do with my personal preference. I don't need it, I don't want it, and I could care less if it were even there. What it is about is what is good for the game. And if they are adding things with the intention of making SoO easier for some a zone wide buff can do that and valor upgrades can not, that would be what is best for the game as a whole. Unlike Bashiok that only cares about what he wants, I, as a player, care about the players.
Lets put it this way. When we stopped raiding, after finishing it off and many people took breaks or went on to a guild that was still going to push, we had new people that wanted to jump in. They were lesser skilled and lesser geared and quite honestly, I did not feel like doing the entire raid again over again as progression with a group of new players. A zone wide buff would mean I could bring them along and not feel like it was progression all over again. So maybe that is part of the reason I support it. But it would not be for me, it would be for them, those people that want to raid but are just not really ready to raid normal. I got my title, I got my mount, the only thing I need from normal is that trinket off shaman. Quite honestly I would be happy to not raid again until warlords, but warlords is way the hell too far away to just quit. So if I want to raid, I need to find new people to raid with. And no, I am not going to do group LFRs or group flex any longer, not this late in the expansion, to gear up and train new people. No thank you.
A zone wide debuff is a good idea for many reasons. Many reasons that valor upgrades could never even touch on. Lets start by looking at valor upgrades and what allowing us to upgrade out gear 4 times instead of the current 2 times means when compared to a what a zone buff would give us.
It makes the powerful more powerful.
As I said, I already cleared it and I could again with a normal group no problem. So giving me 4 upgrades instead of 2 means nothing. Sure, I can down stuff a little faster which is nice and all but it is not exactly needed. I still can not bring that new lock that never raided before without it feeling like progression. Or the druid that raided with us two tiers ago that just came back to the game. Or the paladin that returned for the first time since cataclysm and wants to try his hand at tanking again. Why? Because they do not have the gear to upgrade and even if they did have the gear they do not have the valor to upgrade it. Sure it will come, in time, but that does not help the here and now. I would still need to raid progression with them and wait for them to catch up. So as you see, valor upgrades do nothing for people starting or coming back. It only helps the powerful get more powerful. So now I can do 400K instead of 350K on bosses that only require 150K to down? Woo - fucking - hoo.
It does not help with bad luck.
You could make gear upgradable 10,000 times, it doesn't make a difference. If you can not get the drops you will not have anything to upgrade. I am still rocking a ToT heroic trinket I got last tier because the shaman hate me. Maybe I kicked their ghost wolves in another life or something. Sure, I do not need it, but that does not change the fact, you can't upgrade what you do not have. Those players I mentioned, lesser skilled, lesser experienced, returning people, do not have the gear worth wasting valor on upgrading. So how exactly does changing it to 4 upgrades from 2 help people that do not have any gear that is even worth upgrading two times? Upgrades work for the people that have gear, they mean nothing for the people that don't be it from lack of winning gear or the fact they are just starting. Upgrading nothing really does not help you beat a boss, but a zone buff might be able to.
You can't feel the power.
Okay, I will be the first to admit that upgrading your gear can be huge. But then again I am the type of guy that got a new pair of boots that were a 300 DPS increase and changed into them even if 300 DPS is not worth a pile of beans when you are doing over 300K normally. What is that, 0.1%? Who the hell is going to notice that. So while I see the valor upgrades, which are more than 0.1%, most people do not feel it. Feelings matter. If people do not feel they are getting more powerful, they are not getting more powerful. Yes, I know that is a falsehood, but perception is everything. If there is a zone wide buff, or debuff, people, all people well geared and not, get to experience the power it gives you. It would be a flat 5%, 10% or more. Everyone gets 5% better, everyone gets 5% more effective, everyone as a team get stronger which makes the you yourself feel even stronger. Appearances mean a lot and even if valor upgrades give you more power, to the average player, they can not see that power so to them, it is not there.
It is not inclusive.
A zone wide buff lets everyone take advantage of it. It lets everyone feel as if they are moving forward. Valor upgrades are fine for people like me. The type that capped every week, that raided all the time, that used their coins to get gear, etc. We were always doing everything we could to get gear so the valor upgrades work for us. For someone that is not that dedicated, valor upgrades don't really include them. Doesn't blizzard understand that the people that get the most out of the valor upgrades are the people that need them the least? Like myself. I will upgrade my stuff the second the patch comes out, but I do not need to. However, the new lock in our raid will not be able to, because he is still gearing up and he has no valor, so what does this patch do for him? He is not an every day player, he is not a grinder, he is not someone that will go out of his way to get the best he can at all point. He might be an okay player, he might have potential, but this will do nothing for him. Valor upgrades do not include him. Hey Bashiok, I'll let you in on a not so secret secret. He is the average raider. Valor upgrades do not include him unless he works his ass off and the average player does not work their ass off.
It does not immediately impact the raid.
Lets use my guild as an example. We are rolling with at most two people that were part of the raid team on the characters that killed normal. A couple of us are on alts, which means we know the fights and that makes them easier, but everyone else is new, lesser skilled, or just filling in to help out. Valor upgrades are not going to impact this raid team, which is the type of raid team you see a lot this late in the expansion. The mains will upgrade their stuff, but they are already caring the group, so a tiny boost to those two is not really going to make bosses fall over. Us on alts are still gearing and have most likely not upgraded 2 times yet unless we are approaching valor cap because we are still looking to collect drops that never seem to drop. So when we have not upgraded two times what does allowing us to upgrade four times matter? And then there are the others, the average players, the ones we are just bringing in. Even if they did upgrade their gear 4 times, will it teach them the fight? If they are new, they are slow and learning. If they are new they have lesser gear and even upgraded 4 times lesser gear is, well, lesser. If they do not have the health to move from say a puddle on the first boss before dying upgrading a piece of crappy gear 4 times is not going to give them the split second they need to move, but maybe a 5% or 10% or more reduction to the damage it does might.
Now to sum things up I want to go into a make believe story. But it is not as fantasy make believe as you might think. It is exactly what my guild and hundreds if not thousands of guilds are going through at this very moment. It is something a zone wide buff would help with but valor upgrades do nothing.
Lets say you are a normal mode team with no designs on heroic. People are getting the gary kills and then taking some time off. So you are now looking to fill spaces and recruit. You are getting a fair deal of interest but that interest is coming from people with little or no experience and sometimes no real gear either. You now need to step back to flex to gear these people but you have been through that already and had people either quit, gear up and leave, or just not show up. The last thing you want to do is step back to flex again, not this late in the expansion. You have been clearing normal and you want to continue to clear it. You do not mind a few wipes here and there as you bring new people in, but you do not want to step all the way back to progression all over again.
Then you talk to your friends in other guilds and they say they are going through the same thing. The heroic guilds looking to poach the few remaining regulars from normal teams because their raiders are taking breaks too, and the normal raiders not being able to get others to continue on normals.
Recruiting is at a dead stand still because anyone that was a real raider, someone that killing gary mattered to, has already done so and either wants to take a break, continue to clear normals with little fuss, move on to heroics, or just do something different for a while. The picking are slim and keeping a raid going each week gets harder and harder. To the point you invite a priest that has not healed since ulduar but she has been in the guild forever and is willing to give it a try again just to help out. You will take anyone you can get your hands on. Raid experience becomes so much more important that gear because you keep recruiting these 550+ item level people that could not pull 150K DPS if you set their ass on fire. I am sure it would not surprise you to hear that I have seen more people at 550 item level doing 80K than doing 150K. Or at least it would not surprise you if you experienced this scenario I am describing.
So you want raiders, even old raiders, even under geared raiders. You just want some people to fill the open spots left by a raid that has already run on way to long and might very well run on for another 6 months or more. It is harder and harder to get people and it is really better to get someone with some raid experience and just a need for gear than someone that you have to start from scratch with. At least the people with raid experience will do the mechanics right and you can hope that the now over geared other players can compensate a little for their lack of gear.
The valor changes do nothing for filling those empty slot. That 553 lock that can not pull 120K will not suddenly be pulling 200K because he can upgrade his gear 2 more times. The 560 tank that you tried one week that had no clue what a cooldown was will not suddenly realize he has them if he upgrades everything and is not a 568 tank. Sure, we can teach them, but it would be so much easier to teach them with a zone wide buff, or debuff.
See, that is where the game is now. With a raid that has already ran way to long and worn out its welcome and a raid that has no end in sight, the only people that want to do it are the people that can't, even with another 8 points of upgrade, even if they could afford them, which they most likely can't because the people that can are usually the people that were better players to begin with. But that zone buff can help.
A zone wide buff can help a lot. It can keep those normal groups raiding if they wish to. It can keep them recruiting. It can allow them to let more people with little or no raid experience in so they can carry them, so they can teach them, so they can gear them, so they can make these people into raiders. Something that can not and will not be done with just valor upgrades.
All valor upgrades do is increase your item level (and potential of course). Sure, it might help with those groups for flex that ask for a 560 item level to do flex one which is a joke, but does blizzard understand that the jerks that ask for a 560 item level for flex one will just say they want 568 for flex one now?
In the end this is basically what it boils down to.
Valor Upgrades: They help those that help themselves. The people that are fully upgraded and always remain so are most likely to be the people that do not need the valor upgrades to beat the content. It will do nothing to extend the life of an already stale raid. It might help some, very few, raids get past some bumps in the road, but that percentage is extremely small, and a zone wide buff would do the exact same thing for them.
Zone Wide Buff: Helps those that do not or can not help themselves by allowing them access to something they might have not been able to do otherwise. It increases the life span of a raid that should have been old content 2 months ago but we will be stuck with for another 6.
In the end, remember that the people at blizzard are clueless and like Bashiok they would rather think about themselves than the life span of the content.
Zone buffs can give life to a raid that should have been replaced by a new expansion or a new raid months ago. Valor upgrades are like trying to stop the bleeding of having your arm cut off with a bandaid.
The ICC and DS buff and debuff are what kept people raiding and what kept them going for such a long time even if people were bored stiff of them. Letting people, who don't need to, upgrade their gear 8 more levels is not going to keep them going. Them getting more powerful, alone, is not going to help the team as a zone buff would. They'll eventually give up trying to recruit more to keep going because it just is not worth it.
Remove the achievement with the title and the mount if you have to, but adding a buff or debuff will help us deal with 6 more months of this crap. Just like it did with ICC and DS.
But Bashiok would never understand that because he works for blizzard and they are not allowed to be open minded, they are only allowed to be clueless. Valor upgrades are nice, I will like them and I thank them for them. At least for a short time I will have something to spend some valor on. But over all, it is not going to help my raid team or the hundreds and thousands of other raids teams. Not in the slightest. Blizzard is clueless.
I will talk about those changes first before I get to the valor upgrade that made me want to write this. First, it has me thinking I might bring another character through the legendary line or finish off the 3 or 4 I have close but never finished it because I quit doing LFR completely as the reward you get from doing LFR does not equal the hell that LFR is to do.
However, blizzard once again shows they are incredibly clueless even with those changes to speed up the legendary quest line. Drop rates are not so much the problem any longer. Sure they could be more generous of course, but the biggest hang ups on the legendary quest line, and where I have 8 characters sitting, are the valor collection and the PvP wins. Three thousand valor is huge for a rarely played alt. If they really wanted to help speed things up they could increase drop rates, sure, but what really needs to be done is to change the valor collection to 1K or even better, just straight out remove it.
It is a waste of time to wait 3 weeks for no real reason. When you hit that part you "might" still need stuff from LFR, so it is not so bad running it. By the time you are done with those three weeks of collecting valor for no reason other than to waste time, you most likely will not need anything else from LFR and even if you do you are most likely about as sick of running that cesspool of content that you just want to never go back there.
Which now means you have to endure that hell for no reason other than drops. So even with 100% drop rates, it would still be a waste of time. You could have been collecting those things during those three weeks instead of just collecting valor. When the quest was new and it was current that wait was a good thing, it filled up some time where you would not be doing anything else anyway. Now, it is a complete and total waste of time. If they really wanted to fix the quest line you would have to do the collect three thousand valor and the next parts of the quest at the exact same time.
As in, you will still need to collect three thousand valor, but the quest line continues, even if you have not done so yet. When all is said and done, you will surely have the three thousand valor when done collecting all the pieces and it will just be part of the quest line that is done as you go and not a three week bump in the road that slows you down and makes you lose interest. The fact they are doing things to speed up the legendary quest line and the valor collection part is even still in there at all shows that blizzard is not only clueless, but that they do not give a crap about playability because waiting three weeks doing nothing isn't exactly fun game play.
The second part is that PvP part. Sure, I had two characters that went in and one shot both. I also have 2 characters with many attempts and still no wins. Druid over 10, warlock over 30. If blizzard really wanted to speed up the legendary quest line and make it leaps and bounds more enjoyable for the people that do not want to PvP, and the PvPers that hate seeing the PvEers poisoning their content, they should change that part of the quest line to "participate" in each battleground, not "win" each one. Small change but a huge one for the player base. It would be a good change too, but blizzard, the clueless ones, will never see that because it is too obvious. I am so amazed, as in holy crap how did they not even think of that amazed, that the battleground part was not changed to "participate" a long time ago. Are the people in charge of the brain trust at blizzard really that clueless? Don't answer that, we already know the answer is yes.
Now that we got the older news of their clueless nature out of the way lets get to the newer news that is the topic title. I do not even know where to start on this one. So many rants are going through my mind at the moment. But I think I know where I will start. I will start exactly where my mind went the moment I read a response from a blue.
Whats the point? honestly? just put in a SoO zone buff...pretty sure most of us are bored to death of dungeons and scenarios. this is also why it's a good idea to have new dungeons (hint, hint) as well.What immediately came to my mind when I read this is, who the fuck cares what you prefer. How about thinking about what is better for the game for one and taking your head out of your ass for just a moment. For the record, Bashiok was the dimwit that basically said his desires matter more than what would be good for the game. He is just that important, remember that, he matters, the players don't.
Different strokes, I'm sure, but I prefer earning my power, and playing to get stronger. Zonewide buffs/debuffs always feel kind of... like pity. I don't want to be pitied, I just want more paths to success.
For the record, I do not need the zone wide debuff, I finished normal a long time ago and that is all I do. I do not do heroic, maybe a few here and there, but I do not work it as progression. So me supporting a zone wide debuff has absolutely nothing to do with my personal preference. I don't need it, I don't want it, and I could care less if it were even there. What it is about is what is good for the game. And if they are adding things with the intention of making SoO easier for some a zone wide buff can do that and valor upgrades can not, that would be what is best for the game as a whole. Unlike Bashiok that only cares about what he wants, I, as a player, care about the players.
Lets put it this way. When we stopped raiding, after finishing it off and many people took breaks or went on to a guild that was still going to push, we had new people that wanted to jump in. They were lesser skilled and lesser geared and quite honestly, I did not feel like doing the entire raid again over again as progression with a group of new players. A zone wide buff would mean I could bring them along and not feel like it was progression all over again. So maybe that is part of the reason I support it. But it would not be for me, it would be for them, those people that want to raid but are just not really ready to raid normal. I got my title, I got my mount, the only thing I need from normal is that trinket off shaman. Quite honestly I would be happy to not raid again until warlords, but warlords is way the hell too far away to just quit. So if I want to raid, I need to find new people to raid with. And no, I am not going to do group LFRs or group flex any longer, not this late in the expansion, to gear up and train new people. No thank you.
A zone wide debuff is a good idea for many reasons. Many reasons that valor upgrades could never even touch on. Lets start by looking at valor upgrades and what allowing us to upgrade out gear 4 times instead of the current 2 times means when compared to a what a zone buff would give us.
It makes the powerful more powerful.
As I said, I already cleared it and I could again with a normal group no problem. So giving me 4 upgrades instead of 2 means nothing. Sure, I can down stuff a little faster which is nice and all but it is not exactly needed. I still can not bring that new lock that never raided before without it feeling like progression. Or the druid that raided with us two tiers ago that just came back to the game. Or the paladin that returned for the first time since cataclysm and wants to try his hand at tanking again. Why? Because they do not have the gear to upgrade and even if they did have the gear they do not have the valor to upgrade it. Sure it will come, in time, but that does not help the here and now. I would still need to raid progression with them and wait for them to catch up. So as you see, valor upgrades do nothing for people starting or coming back. It only helps the powerful get more powerful. So now I can do 400K instead of 350K on bosses that only require 150K to down? Woo - fucking - hoo.
It does not help with bad luck.
You could make gear upgradable 10,000 times, it doesn't make a difference. If you can not get the drops you will not have anything to upgrade. I am still rocking a ToT heroic trinket I got last tier because the shaman hate me. Maybe I kicked their ghost wolves in another life or something. Sure, I do not need it, but that does not change the fact, you can't upgrade what you do not have. Those players I mentioned, lesser skilled, lesser experienced, returning people, do not have the gear worth wasting valor on upgrading. So how exactly does changing it to 4 upgrades from 2 help people that do not have any gear that is even worth upgrading two times? Upgrades work for the people that have gear, they mean nothing for the people that don't be it from lack of winning gear or the fact they are just starting. Upgrading nothing really does not help you beat a boss, but a zone buff might be able to.
You can't feel the power.
Okay, I will be the first to admit that upgrading your gear can be huge. But then again I am the type of guy that got a new pair of boots that were a 300 DPS increase and changed into them even if 300 DPS is not worth a pile of beans when you are doing over 300K normally. What is that, 0.1%? Who the hell is going to notice that. So while I see the valor upgrades, which are more than 0.1%, most people do not feel it. Feelings matter. If people do not feel they are getting more powerful, they are not getting more powerful. Yes, I know that is a falsehood, but perception is everything. If there is a zone wide buff, or debuff, people, all people well geared and not, get to experience the power it gives you. It would be a flat 5%, 10% or more. Everyone gets 5% better, everyone gets 5% more effective, everyone as a team get stronger which makes the you yourself feel even stronger. Appearances mean a lot and even if valor upgrades give you more power, to the average player, they can not see that power so to them, it is not there.
It is not inclusive.
A zone wide buff lets everyone take advantage of it. It lets everyone feel as if they are moving forward. Valor upgrades are fine for people like me. The type that capped every week, that raided all the time, that used their coins to get gear, etc. We were always doing everything we could to get gear so the valor upgrades work for us. For someone that is not that dedicated, valor upgrades don't really include them. Doesn't blizzard understand that the people that get the most out of the valor upgrades are the people that need them the least? Like myself. I will upgrade my stuff the second the patch comes out, but I do not need to. However, the new lock in our raid will not be able to, because he is still gearing up and he has no valor, so what does this patch do for him? He is not an every day player, he is not a grinder, he is not someone that will go out of his way to get the best he can at all point. He might be an okay player, he might have potential, but this will do nothing for him. Valor upgrades do not include him. Hey Bashiok, I'll let you in on a not so secret secret. He is the average raider. Valor upgrades do not include him unless he works his ass off and the average player does not work their ass off.
It does not immediately impact the raid.
Lets use my guild as an example. We are rolling with at most two people that were part of the raid team on the characters that killed normal. A couple of us are on alts, which means we know the fights and that makes them easier, but everyone else is new, lesser skilled, or just filling in to help out. Valor upgrades are not going to impact this raid team, which is the type of raid team you see a lot this late in the expansion. The mains will upgrade their stuff, but they are already caring the group, so a tiny boost to those two is not really going to make bosses fall over. Us on alts are still gearing and have most likely not upgraded 2 times yet unless we are approaching valor cap because we are still looking to collect drops that never seem to drop. So when we have not upgraded two times what does allowing us to upgrade four times matter? And then there are the others, the average players, the ones we are just bringing in. Even if they did upgrade their gear 4 times, will it teach them the fight? If they are new, they are slow and learning. If they are new they have lesser gear and even upgraded 4 times lesser gear is, well, lesser. If they do not have the health to move from say a puddle on the first boss before dying upgrading a piece of crappy gear 4 times is not going to give them the split second they need to move, but maybe a 5% or 10% or more reduction to the damage it does might.
Now to sum things up I want to go into a make believe story. But it is not as fantasy make believe as you might think. It is exactly what my guild and hundreds if not thousands of guilds are going through at this very moment. It is something a zone wide buff would help with but valor upgrades do nothing.
Lets say you are a normal mode team with no designs on heroic. People are getting the gary kills and then taking some time off. So you are now looking to fill spaces and recruit. You are getting a fair deal of interest but that interest is coming from people with little or no experience and sometimes no real gear either. You now need to step back to flex to gear these people but you have been through that already and had people either quit, gear up and leave, or just not show up. The last thing you want to do is step back to flex again, not this late in the expansion. You have been clearing normal and you want to continue to clear it. You do not mind a few wipes here and there as you bring new people in, but you do not want to step all the way back to progression all over again.
Then you talk to your friends in other guilds and they say they are going through the same thing. The heroic guilds looking to poach the few remaining regulars from normal teams because their raiders are taking breaks too, and the normal raiders not being able to get others to continue on normals.
Recruiting is at a dead stand still because anyone that was a real raider, someone that killing gary mattered to, has already done so and either wants to take a break, continue to clear normals with little fuss, move on to heroics, or just do something different for a while. The picking are slim and keeping a raid going each week gets harder and harder. To the point you invite a priest that has not healed since ulduar but she has been in the guild forever and is willing to give it a try again just to help out. You will take anyone you can get your hands on. Raid experience becomes so much more important that gear because you keep recruiting these 550+ item level people that could not pull 150K DPS if you set their ass on fire. I am sure it would not surprise you to hear that I have seen more people at 550 item level doing 80K than doing 150K. Or at least it would not surprise you if you experienced this scenario I am describing.
So you want raiders, even old raiders, even under geared raiders. You just want some people to fill the open spots left by a raid that has already run on way to long and might very well run on for another 6 months or more. It is harder and harder to get people and it is really better to get someone with some raid experience and just a need for gear than someone that you have to start from scratch with. At least the people with raid experience will do the mechanics right and you can hope that the now over geared other players can compensate a little for their lack of gear.
The valor changes do nothing for filling those empty slot. That 553 lock that can not pull 120K will not suddenly be pulling 200K because he can upgrade his gear 2 more times. The 560 tank that you tried one week that had no clue what a cooldown was will not suddenly realize he has them if he upgrades everything and is not a 568 tank. Sure, we can teach them, but it would be so much easier to teach them with a zone wide buff, or debuff.
See, that is where the game is now. With a raid that has already ran way to long and worn out its welcome and a raid that has no end in sight, the only people that want to do it are the people that can't, even with another 8 points of upgrade, even if they could afford them, which they most likely can't because the people that can are usually the people that were better players to begin with. But that zone buff can help.
A zone wide buff can help a lot. It can keep those normal groups raiding if they wish to. It can keep them recruiting. It can allow them to let more people with little or no raid experience in so they can carry them, so they can teach them, so they can gear them, so they can make these people into raiders. Something that can not and will not be done with just valor upgrades.
All valor upgrades do is increase your item level (and potential of course). Sure, it might help with those groups for flex that ask for a 560 item level to do flex one which is a joke, but does blizzard understand that the jerks that ask for a 560 item level for flex one will just say they want 568 for flex one now?
In the end this is basically what it boils down to.
Valor Upgrades: They help those that help themselves. The people that are fully upgraded and always remain so are most likely to be the people that do not need the valor upgrades to beat the content. It will do nothing to extend the life of an already stale raid. It might help some, very few, raids get past some bumps in the road, but that percentage is extremely small, and a zone wide buff would do the exact same thing for them.
Zone Wide Buff: Helps those that do not or can not help themselves by allowing them access to something they might have not been able to do otherwise. It increases the life span of a raid that should have been old content 2 months ago but we will be stuck with for another 6.
In the end, remember that the people at blizzard are clueless and like Bashiok they would rather think about themselves than the life span of the content.
Zone buffs can give life to a raid that should have been replaced by a new expansion or a new raid months ago. Valor upgrades are like trying to stop the bleeding of having your arm cut off with a bandaid.
The ICC and DS buff and debuff are what kept people raiding and what kept them going for such a long time even if people were bored stiff of them. Letting people, who don't need to, upgrade their gear 8 more levels is not going to keep them going. Them getting more powerful, alone, is not going to help the team as a zone buff would. They'll eventually give up trying to recruit more to keep going because it just is not worth it.
Remove the achievement with the title and the mount if you have to, but adding a buff or debuff will help us deal with 6 more months of this crap. Just like it did with ICC and DS.
But Bashiok would never understand that because he works for blizzard and they are not allowed to be open minded, they are only allowed to be clueless. Valor upgrades are nice, I will like them and I thank them for them. At least for a short time I will have something to spend some valor on. But over all, it is not going to help my raid team or the hundreds and thousands of other raids teams. Not in the slightest. Blizzard is clueless.
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Lets Talk About Cloud Serpents
With the recent announcement that you will no longer need cloud serpent riding to mount cloud serpents and the previously mentioned fact that there would be no flying in warlords, at least at the beginning and possibly longer, I've decided it was time again to talk a little about mounts., cloud serpents in particular this time.
I am not going to delve into the no flying thing as that will easily be a post all on its own but I would like to offer my opinion about the change to cloud serpent riding. I don't like it. Not at all.
I see no reason to remove the need for cloud serpent riding and I believe it is a huge mistake and completely unneeded for blizzard to remove it. I even have three, what I believe, very good reasons why it should not be removed.
Why Cloud Serpent Riding Should Not Be Removed:
1) Earned
It was a very easy grind. Even on your first character without the reputation gain boost it only took a week to get cloud serpent riding. Less if you wanted to hunt eggs, which this late in the expansion should be easier to find, even if I have never seen one of them personally.
A guild mate hit 90 a few months ago and had cloud serpents at exalted within 3 hours of going ding. It is not like it is a hard grind worthy of change because it was so brutal.
Even if getting cloud serpent riding was easy, quick, and actually not all that bad in terms of dailies added to the fact it came with a nice little story of watching your serpent grow, it was earned. Easy yes, but earned.
What is this obsession with removing things from the game that actually require you to "do something" to get them? In a way I could see, maybe even understand, if they moved the heroic only mount to normal, to let more people get it, because that is something that needed an upper level of skill from yourself and of course 9 or 24 other people as well. But that is something that is completely limited. Limited by your own skill, limited by your luck to get into a group that can do it, limited by the ability of those 9 or 24 other people. So maybe, just maybe, being you need to depend on others to get it, I can see loosening the requirements to get it. But something that is easily attained, and done so solo, they should never ever in a million years loosen the requirements to get it.
Cloud serpent riding, for as quick and easy as it was to get, was earned. Why remove something that is easy to get? Are people really that lazy? If so, excuse my language, fuck 'em. If you can not be bothered to do dailies, quick and easy ones a that, to get the riding skill for something you really want then guess what, you do not really want it and you sure as hell do not deserve it.
2) Lore
The story the quests tell was fun and interesting, it was a different type of riding, a different type of mount, something no one had ever seen before. Don't you think at least some training should be needed to ride this wild looking noble beasts? Just look at them fly, they are not exactly what I would call a sooth ride.
Lets not forget that giving it to people gives people one less reason to return later. I know blizzard really likes to make things and completely forget they exist, but for the players having something to go back for does feel kind of special. It gives you reasons to visit an old area and gives the area some life.
I am sure anyone that ever did the netherwing grind will remember going there every day to do it. Or if they did it later, in wrath, cata or mists, they will tell you about going back there every day to do their dailies. Old stuff is content, old stuff can remain content, old stuff that people want to get keeps them playing and lets admit it, not much old content lives on to be something people want to go back and do so why remove something that people might actually want to go back and do.
Even if it is only one week of dailies that is one week that someone is going back to do something, that is one week they are playing, that is one week of more content for them to do, that is one week of story that they can experience, that is one more week they are getting connected to the lore that is the reason we are allowed to ride these beasts.
Removing the need for the cloud serpent riding is removing the lore, the history, and content that people will always come back to do if they wanted to get that type of riding. And like I said before, it is not like it is something that is hard or something that needs a group. You can do it and experience it on your own, whenever you want to. 10 days in a row, or 1 day a month for 10 months. Removing the need for cloud serpent riding is removing content effectively, and removing all the lore as to why we can ride them.
3) Ugly
Okay, let the flaming begin because I said it. Cloud serpents are ugly. Anything, even something as simple as a week long grind that can limit the number of people riding around on these abominations is actually a good thing.
They are too big, they are too ugly, and they move in a way that can, and has, gotten more than a few people sea sick. With the change come warlords where they said that all flying mounts would be allowed to used on ground, that is reason enough to make sure no one can get these things. I would not be adverse if they limited cloud serpent riding to pandaria only, or if they changed the grind to be three months of dailies if you wanted to use them. Anything that can limit these things would be a nice plus to the game.
Big mounts, and the people that ride them and love to sit on quest givers, mail boxes, and other points of interest we might need to interact with are obnoxious, and these things just turn the volume up to eleven on the scale of being obnoxious.
Why would blizzard want to change something that would give people more ability to grief others? Once again it shows that the people at blizzard do not play this game. Every day we see them do something that shows a complete and total ignorance of their own game.
These mounts should be limited to the air, not be allowed to be used as ground mounts, and they should keep their gate, even if it is a super easy gate. Just think logically for a moment. The lazy person that can not do dailies for a week to get the right to ride it is more likely to be the type of person that will use the mount to grief others with it. Don't you think keeping it out of their hands would be a good thing for the game? If they really want to be jerks and grief people with a mount, at least make them earn it. Like I said, it is not a hard grind, not at all.
How Cloud Serpent Riding Should Have Been Changed:
1) Flying Only
As mentioned, these are one of the types of mounts that should remain flying only because of their huge size. They are the worst offender of all offenders when it comes to blocking things you might need to interact with. It is bad enough that they are huge, but they are long, so even if you are not being like the guy that parks his mammoth on the mailbox, you can still effectively block people because your long ass mount is blocking something without your knowledge.
Without a shadow of a doubt this type of mount should never be allowed to used on the ground. There are dozens of flying mounts that are reasonably sized, relatively attractive, and they can not be used as ground mounts, why allow these things to be used as such. If I can not "walk" around on ashes, there is no reason anyone should be allowed to walk around on one of these monstrosities.
2) Account Bound:
Even with a quick and easy grind I can see the desire to not do it again. I did it on 7 characters I believe. Two jewelcrafters, to get the patterns, my main because my main gets everything to exalted, and four other characters. None of them did I actually do it for the ability to ride the mount but because they are super quick and easy dailies so they are quick and easy valor and lesser coins which is how most of my characters got their reputation with them.
But beside the fact I got a bunch of characters to exalted, and it was easy, and most where done even before the reputation boost I could get for alts, I can understand the desire not to have to do it again. Quick and easy or not, many people would love to get something like that on one character and have it shared with all and I agree.
Once you opened cloud serpent riding on one character all your characters should have it. There is no need to remove it, just make it shared. Anyone that can not spend one week doing some dailies to ride a mount is super lazy and does not deserve to ride one. It is really that simple. It is a game, play it. If you do not want to play it, don't. But, I can see it getting annoying having to do it over and over again on all your alts, so sharing it once done on one character does make sense. How did blizzard not even think of this option and just go straight to the give it to everyone option? They really do not make a great deal of sense most of the time.
What do you think about the changes to the cloud serpent riding?
I am not going to delve into the no flying thing as that will easily be a post all on its own but I would like to offer my opinion about the change to cloud serpent riding. I don't like it. Not at all.
I see no reason to remove the need for cloud serpent riding and I believe it is a huge mistake and completely unneeded for blizzard to remove it. I even have three, what I believe, very good reasons why it should not be removed.
Why Cloud Serpent Riding Should Not Be Removed:
1) Earned
It was a very easy grind. Even on your first character without the reputation gain boost it only took a week to get cloud serpent riding. Less if you wanted to hunt eggs, which this late in the expansion should be easier to find, even if I have never seen one of them personally.
A guild mate hit 90 a few months ago and had cloud serpents at exalted within 3 hours of going ding. It is not like it is a hard grind worthy of change because it was so brutal.
Even if getting cloud serpent riding was easy, quick, and actually not all that bad in terms of dailies added to the fact it came with a nice little story of watching your serpent grow, it was earned. Easy yes, but earned.
What is this obsession with removing things from the game that actually require you to "do something" to get them? In a way I could see, maybe even understand, if they moved the heroic only mount to normal, to let more people get it, because that is something that needed an upper level of skill from yourself and of course 9 or 24 other people as well. But that is something that is completely limited. Limited by your own skill, limited by your luck to get into a group that can do it, limited by the ability of those 9 or 24 other people. So maybe, just maybe, being you need to depend on others to get it, I can see loosening the requirements to get it. But something that is easily attained, and done so solo, they should never ever in a million years loosen the requirements to get it.
Cloud serpent riding, for as quick and easy as it was to get, was earned. Why remove something that is easy to get? Are people really that lazy? If so, excuse my language, fuck 'em. If you can not be bothered to do dailies, quick and easy ones a that, to get the riding skill for something you really want then guess what, you do not really want it and you sure as hell do not deserve it.
2) Lore
The story the quests tell was fun and interesting, it was a different type of riding, a different type of mount, something no one had ever seen before. Don't you think at least some training should be needed to ride this wild looking noble beasts? Just look at them fly, they are not exactly what I would call a sooth ride.
Lets not forget that giving it to people gives people one less reason to return later. I know blizzard really likes to make things and completely forget they exist, but for the players having something to go back for does feel kind of special. It gives you reasons to visit an old area and gives the area some life.
I am sure anyone that ever did the netherwing grind will remember going there every day to do it. Or if they did it later, in wrath, cata or mists, they will tell you about going back there every day to do their dailies. Old stuff is content, old stuff can remain content, old stuff that people want to get keeps them playing and lets admit it, not much old content lives on to be something people want to go back and do so why remove something that people might actually want to go back and do.
Even if it is only one week of dailies that is one week that someone is going back to do something, that is one week they are playing, that is one week of more content for them to do, that is one week of story that they can experience, that is one more week they are getting connected to the lore that is the reason we are allowed to ride these beasts.
Removing the need for the cloud serpent riding is removing the lore, the history, and content that people will always come back to do if they wanted to get that type of riding. And like I said before, it is not like it is something that is hard or something that needs a group. You can do it and experience it on your own, whenever you want to. 10 days in a row, or 1 day a month for 10 months. Removing the need for cloud serpent riding is removing content effectively, and removing all the lore as to why we can ride them.
3) Ugly
Okay, let the flaming begin because I said it. Cloud serpents are ugly. Anything, even something as simple as a week long grind that can limit the number of people riding around on these abominations is actually a good thing.
They are too big, they are too ugly, and they move in a way that can, and has, gotten more than a few people sea sick. With the change come warlords where they said that all flying mounts would be allowed to used on ground, that is reason enough to make sure no one can get these things. I would not be adverse if they limited cloud serpent riding to pandaria only, or if they changed the grind to be three months of dailies if you wanted to use them. Anything that can limit these things would be a nice plus to the game.
Big mounts, and the people that ride them and love to sit on quest givers, mail boxes, and other points of interest we might need to interact with are obnoxious, and these things just turn the volume up to eleven on the scale of being obnoxious.
Why would blizzard want to change something that would give people more ability to grief others? Once again it shows that the people at blizzard do not play this game. Every day we see them do something that shows a complete and total ignorance of their own game.
These mounts should be limited to the air, not be allowed to be used as ground mounts, and they should keep their gate, even if it is a super easy gate. Just think logically for a moment. The lazy person that can not do dailies for a week to get the right to ride it is more likely to be the type of person that will use the mount to grief others with it. Don't you think keeping it out of their hands would be a good thing for the game? If they really want to be jerks and grief people with a mount, at least make them earn it. Like I said, it is not a hard grind, not at all.
How Cloud Serpent Riding Should Have Been Changed:
1) Flying Only
As mentioned, these are one of the types of mounts that should remain flying only because of their huge size. They are the worst offender of all offenders when it comes to blocking things you might need to interact with. It is bad enough that they are huge, but they are long, so even if you are not being like the guy that parks his mammoth on the mailbox, you can still effectively block people because your long ass mount is blocking something without your knowledge.
Without a shadow of a doubt this type of mount should never be allowed to used on the ground. There are dozens of flying mounts that are reasonably sized, relatively attractive, and they can not be used as ground mounts, why allow these things to be used as such. If I can not "walk" around on ashes, there is no reason anyone should be allowed to walk around on one of these monstrosities.
2) Account Bound:
Even with a quick and easy grind I can see the desire to not do it again. I did it on 7 characters I believe. Two jewelcrafters, to get the patterns, my main because my main gets everything to exalted, and four other characters. None of them did I actually do it for the ability to ride the mount but because they are super quick and easy dailies so they are quick and easy valor and lesser coins which is how most of my characters got their reputation with them.
But beside the fact I got a bunch of characters to exalted, and it was easy, and most where done even before the reputation boost I could get for alts, I can understand the desire not to have to do it again. Quick and easy or not, many people would love to get something like that on one character and have it shared with all and I agree.
Once you opened cloud serpent riding on one character all your characters should have it. There is no need to remove it, just make it shared. Anyone that can not spend one week doing some dailies to ride a mount is super lazy and does not deserve to ride one. It is really that simple. It is a game, play it. If you do not want to play it, don't. But, I can see it getting annoying having to do it over and over again on all your alts, so sharing it once done on one character does make sense. How did blizzard not even think of this option and just go straight to the give it to everyone option? They really do not make a great deal of sense most of the time.
What do you think about the changes to the cloud serpent riding?
Monday, May 12, 2014
Monday Random Thoughts
- I've been thinking of finding a server to move my horde characters too.
- Have a few scattered around and would like to get them collected on one server.
- PvE server, so I can PvP when I choose to.
- US side.
- If you have any suggestions please feel free to speak up.
- I am looking for a server with a decent pug community where things are always going.
- Horde dominated of course.
- Lets get real, if there are 100,000 people on a server which server is better?
- The one with 50,000 alliance and 50,000 horde or the one with 10,000 alliance and 90,000 horde.
- The one with 90,000 horde of course, because there is a more active community that way and more people to do things with and presumably more things going on.
- That is why servers get imbalanced, people just want to play, and it is easy to play when there are more people around, so people want to be on imbalanced servers.
- I do not play horde side often, but all the guilds I am in horde side are effectively dead.
- So when I do want to play I can never really get much done.
- My DK I got to 82 last week I got to 90 this weekend.
- 58 to 90 time, 1 day 2 hours 12 minutes.
- I like when you first hit 90, it seems like there is so much to do.
- All that timeless gear to get ready.
- Doing the scenarios for the 502 boots.
- The one guaranteed 516 heroic deeds scenario.
- Opening up the land fall, because I will need to if I decide to do the cloak quest.
- Opening up the isle of thunder.
- Doing all those solo scenarios and getting a key to stock up on elder charms, not like I need them any longer with timeless gear, but still like to get them.
- Got black price to over 4000 into friendly just from doing those.
- Did they raise reputation gains? That just seems like a lot so quickly.
- I managed to get myself to a nice even 500 item level on that first day.
- No Celestial love and no Ordos love either.
- I do have 18400 timeless coins already however, so I will be getting a 489 weapon soon.
- The damn 502 blacksmith weapons range from 18K-24K on my server, so screw that.
- I'd pay maybe 3K for a 502 weapon I know I will replace soon, hopefully, but not 18K+.
- Being it takes forever to making them I can not blame the people for selling them for that much, but I can blame the idiots that pay that allowing them to sell for that price.
- Nothing wrong with the person selling it wanting that.
- I want 1K each for my sha crystals again, doesn't mean it will happen.
- I've played every class at various gear levels through the island and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that a DK is the easiest to get by playing around on the timeless island.
- I was doing rolos questline and landed at garnia with three dead people there.
- I said, in say, invite me to your group and I will mass revive you and help you kill it.
- The did, I did, and then I said, just keep it interrupted and it is easy.
- They said, just take off blood so you do not get aggro.
- I said, I am a tank, that is what I do.
- I spanked the ever living hell out of it.
- Interrupted it with my interrupt, with asphyxiate, step back and grip, step back and grasp and then using cooldowns for the few that got through, because none of the others interrupted it.
- No wonder they died, she hits like a train if you do not interrupt that and do not have the DPS to burn it fast.
- Either way, quick and easy kill and my brand new DK when I was the only one that interrupted and even beat 2 of the 3 there in DPS.
- No wonder they died.
- Even at this super low item level I could pull massive amounts.
- Two expansions later and DKs are still a hero class.
- I've got another DK getting close to 90, this made me want to finish that one off as well.
- I had forgot why they are fun to play when you just want to mindlessly slaughter things.
- Even at a lower item level I can get away with a lot.
- A 500 item level hunter, something, the only thing, I am actually good at, could not get away with the stuff my DK can do on timeless island.
- Speaking of hunters, got a few more 3 v 3 arena wins.
- Seem to be playing at roughly a 50% winning percentage.
- This time we had a 494 healer with us, so winning half was actually quite good.
- But the healer was a paladin and holy paladins are to PvP what DKs are to PvE, a hero class.
- One match we faced three fully conquest geared DPS and all three focused the 494 under geared healer.
- The healer kept himself up, we picked them off one at a time, and we won.
- Name one other healing class that could manage that.
- Even with healing in general being OP in PvP and items scaling down to 532 having three, presumably, decent players pounding on you should be able to take anyone out.
- I am going to guess they were not that good.
- Not even guess, I know they must have not been that good.
- Three people should easily have been capable of making sure he never cast a spell.
- Guess it helped that me and the other damage dealer were kind of quick about it in taking them out too.
- I now have 2 conquest pieces and am saving for my weapon.
- When I have enough to buy the weapon I should also have enough earned for the season to allow me to buy it.
- Have to love the PvP gearing system and the catch up system.
- I love being able to move at my own pace and gear as quickly as I wish while catching up.
- Having a 10K+ conquest cap is going to spoil me.
- What happens if I get into PvP and then when new stuff comes I am once again limited to 1000 a week?
- I really hate caps sometimes.
- If I wish to gear up in one day by busting my ass, let me.
- But playing catch up, having that huge conquest cap is great.
- Think I ran into a problem with PvP that might stop me from playing much later on.
- Once you no longer need honor gear there is no reason to run battlegrounds.
- It is not like alliance win, so why do it?
- If you do not need anything from it, do not get the satisfaction of winning, and get to the point where there is nothing to learn from them, what use are battlegrounds?
- Which goes back to the fact you need a group to do anything.
- This game really needs something, anything, that can support the player that does not play with a set group.
- Not everyone can be on the same time as their friends, or wants to look to make new friends every time they want to do something.
- Maybe they just want to play a game for fun at their own pace when they want to.
- God forbid.
- And no, group finder is not an option.
- Group finder gives you alliance groups that somehow manage to lose 10 games in a row.
- Even when half the horde team is comprised of bots.
- Group finder gives you LFR groups where half the players think they are too good to be doing this, so they do nothing and the other half are not good enough to do anything to help, and all of them love to spew their toxic hate at each other making it a nightmare.
- The game needs some sort of substantial way to gear up and keep progressing in a meaningful and enjoyable way either solo or with a group.
- They need to stop forcing people to group for personal progression.
- I mean why should personal progression require a group.
- I am building up "me" so let "me" do it.
- Without groups, no raid gear which means no gear, for the PvEer.
- Without groups, no or slow conquest gear because you never win, for the PvPer.
- No matter what anyone says, more solo ways to progress are needed.
- While some players might play as a group all players play solo.
- Like the expression, all poodles might be dogs but not all dogs are poodles.
- Even if you wanted to say 90% of the player base participated in group content, which you know is outrageously over estimating, it still does not equal the 100% of the player base that plays solo.
- So if everyone plays solo, and you do, don't say you don't, shouldn't they design more for the solo player?
- You should never need to depend on others being able to do their job well to determine if you get gear or not.
- You gearing is about you, not about finding a battleground that can win, or a raid group that can down bosses.
- The PvPer needs a way to get conquest without a group and without subjecting themselves to random battlegrounds.
- The PvEer needs a way to get top level gear without subjecting themselves to LFR or other group finding methods but since they removed valor gear a way like that no longer exists.
- And at that, valor gear was never really all that great.
- No weapon, one ring, one trinket, sometimes missing other pieces.
- PvE needs more solo gearing options and timeless island gear is not a gearing option.
- Unless you want to gear 2 tiers lower than current.
- It is a stepping stone into group content.
- And I want to avoid group content.
- We all should be allowed to skip group content and gear another way.
- Speaking of avoiding group content, I had this wild idea that is quite the opposite.
- I was thinking of bringing my new DK into the LFR and tanking.
- Yes, tanking only.
- Yes, me.
- Surprised? Well so am I.
- I figured it would be a good way to find material to write about.
- Not like I need any.
- I will back down from that idea.
- But I did think of it all day yesterday, almost even queued up for it.
- I would have started in MV, not SoO like most people seem to do now.
- Need to get my "moves" down.
- Yes, I already have a blood DK at max, two even, but each character is different even when they are the same class.
- Just because I know what to do, I need to find the feel for this char.
- Is it just me or do you feel as if each characters has its own personality?
- And while I might be geared for SoO, item level wise, I am not gemmed, enchanted, reforged, you know, the things you should be.
- That is the problem with LFR they allow people to step right into the newest one and thanks to the instant 90s what you get is even worse than what you had been getting.
- Someone boosts a 90, gets timeless gear and is ready to walk in, heck, I went from 90 to 500 item level so an instant 90 can too.
- The thing is, they are not ready.
- Yet, as dreadful as it all sounds, I really am tempted to try it.
- More so try the lower LFRs.
- Why you ask?
- Because people like me, people that care about how they do and are trying to do it the best they can will more likely be in MV.
- People who do not know how to play and people with instant 90s will jump right into SoO for gear and gear only.
- And maybe now you see why I say we need other gearing options?
- Gear helps, of course, buy skill should always come first and it matters more.
- I tanked an SoO on my warrior, my first time tanking a raid on my warrior since last expansion.
- It has not even stepped into any LFRs and only had a 514 item level.
- It was ungemmed and unenchanted.
- I threw some quick stuff together for it and managed to tank up to jug based on skill and healer skill and ability.
- At jug I ran into the wall where I needed more gear.
- I "could" have managed it, but why make people wipe for me trying to prove something.
- I switched to another tank and we continued.
- But back to my DK and my odd yearning for doing some LFRs.
- I can do the lower ones, work a little toward the cloak, get better groups in easier content, and get a feel for my new 90.
- Or I can go into SoO with a whole slew of ungemmed, unenchanted, unreforged people that will just AFK, or not AFK and do worse than the person that did AFK with auto attacking.
- And I will wipe, and hear people calling each other names, and being blamed for everything because I am the tank and everything is always the tanks fault.
- Even when you run ahead of the group and pull the boss before any tanks are in the room, it is the tanks fault.
- Because your pet dies because it has taunt on, it is the tanks fault.
- Because the healer did not heal you, it is the tanks fault.
- Because you did not win the item you wanted, it is the tank fault.
- So lets spit our venom now and let the tanks know it is all the tanks fault.
- Maybe I am talking myself out of it.
- Actually, I am talking myself into it.
- Because if all "those" people will be in SoO, maybe MV can use some tanks and those people will be more likely to be grateful to be doing it because they care about getting somewhere, be it seeing the content, collecting quick valor, getting quest items, or just hanging out for fun instead of just in it for the gear.
- Yeap, I think I might give MV a try, and work my way up.
- Maybe start getting some gear worth gemming and enchanting.
- Because timeless gear isn't worth it.
- Even if you gave me the gems and enchants for free on general principle I would not use them.
- Timeless gear is throw away gear.
- Unless it is just one or two pieces then it is not worth the materials.
- Did I mention why I need a new horde server?
- My horde server merged with my alliance server.
- What are the odds?
- I'd prefer to have them on their own server.
- One problem, they are all really old characters and they all, well most, have three letter names.
- Where the hell will I ever find where I can transfer them that I will be able to keep three letter names.
- Well, that is the least of my worries.
- Until then I have some hordies that need a new home.
- Rarely played hordies.
- But still, would like them to find a home.
- My hunter still has arrows.
- Have to love I still have hunters around that have arrows.
- Wonder why when they changed stuff from not having a melee weapon when you first log into a hunter you have your melee weapon equip and not your ranged weapon.
- I had that happen on one of the hunters and did not notice it.
- When I logged in, some months back, and cleaned out my bags I sold the weapon in there thinking it was junk.
- When I logged back in to level from 85 to 90 I noticed I had a polearm and no ranged weapon.
- Damn it, sold my weapon and no way to get it back now.
- Blizzard does some stupid stuff sometimes.
- But no worse than me selling my weapon.
- Except my mistake was an honest mistake, their mistake was bad coding.
- Seriously, who did not catch it in the code that it was keeping hunters melee weapon and throwing the ranged one in their bags.
- I still have my, now gray, totem and relics in my bank on a few characters.
- Nothing beats a grey item with a gem in it.
- Ah, memories.
- Oh, I bought a green weapon for a few gold, did the first quest into pandaira and got myself a new weapon.
- So no harm, no foul.
- Glad they made the first quest give a weapon.
- Seems they do something right sometimes.
- Well, now to think about tanking MV, maybe tonight.
- I am a glutton for punishment, don't you think?
- Could be fun, who knows.
- Maybe all the dregs of humanity will be in SoO making their lives and the lives of everyone around them hell and I might have fun.
- For once.
- Doing the solo scenarios on the thunder island I noticed they changed a lot of them.
- How come they spend time updating those, but not other things that need it.
- No, seriously, if you have not done them in a while do them again, you will notice some subtle changes to things. Range, visuals, functionality.
- Yet things like hunters kill shot error last for entire expansion, but changing the the size and functionality of the bombs you throw at the totems in old content that no one ever complained about anyway is high on their list?
- I sometimes wonder about the people that make the decisions on this game.
- "I think we should make the bombs a little smaller"
- "I think we should make it a set number of bombs instead of a timed thing".
- "Hey guys, how about you stop talking about something that has been old content for a long time now that no one has ever complained about even when it was new and fix something like the hunters kill shot error."
- "Nah, screw hunters, this will be awesome when we are done fixing it."
- "But..."
- "It isn't broken to begin with."
- Have a great day.
- Have a few scattered around and would like to get them collected on one server.
- PvE server, so I can PvP when I choose to.
- US side.
- If you have any suggestions please feel free to speak up.
- I am looking for a server with a decent pug community where things are always going.
- Horde dominated of course.
- Lets get real, if there are 100,000 people on a server which server is better?
- The one with 50,000 alliance and 50,000 horde or the one with 10,000 alliance and 90,000 horde.
- The one with 90,000 horde of course, because there is a more active community that way and more people to do things with and presumably more things going on.
- That is why servers get imbalanced, people just want to play, and it is easy to play when there are more people around, so people want to be on imbalanced servers.
- I do not play horde side often, but all the guilds I am in horde side are effectively dead.
- So when I do want to play I can never really get much done.
- My DK I got to 82 last week I got to 90 this weekend.
- 58 to 90 time, 1 day 2 hours 12 minutes.
- I like when you first hit 90, it seems like there is so much to do.
- All that timeless gear to get ready.
- Doing the scenarios for the 502 boots.
- The one guaranteed 516 heroic deeds scenario.
- Opening up the land fall, because I will need to if I decide to do the cloak quest.
- Opening up the isle of thunder.
- Doing all those solo scenarios and getting a key to stock up on elder charms, not like I need them any longer with timeless gear, but still like to get them.
- Got black price to over 4000 into friendly just from doing those.
- Did they raise reputation gains? That just seems like a lot so quickly.
- I managed to get myself to a nice even 500 item level on that first day.
- No Celestial love and no Ordos love either.
- I do have 18400 timeless coins already however, so I will be getting a 489 weapon soon.
- The damn 502 blacksmith weapons range from 18K-24K on my server, so screw that.
- I'd pay maybe 3K for a 502 weapon I know I will replace soon, hopefully, but not 18K+.
- Being it takes forever to making them I can not blame the people for selling them for that much, but I can blame the idiots that pay that allowing them to sell for that price.
- Nothing wrong with the person selling it wanting that.
- I want 1K each for my sha crystals again, doesn't mean it will happen.
- I've played every class at various gear levels through the island and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that a DK is the easiest to get by playing around on the timeless island.
- I was doing rolos questline and landed at garnia with three dead people there.
- I said, in say, invite me to your group and I will mass revive you and help you kill it.
- The did, I did, and then I said, just keep it interrupted and it is easy.
- They said, just take off blood so you do not get aggro.
- I said, I am a tank, that is what I do.
- I spanked the ever living hell out of it.
- Interrupted it with my interrupt, with asphyxiate, step back and grip, step back and grasp and then using cooldowns for the few that got through, because none of the others interrupted it.
- No wonder they died, she hits like a train if you do not interrupt that and do not have the DPS to burn it fast.
- Either way, quick and easy kill and my brand new DK when I was the only one that interrupted and even beat 2 of the 3 there in DPS.
- No wonder they died.
- Even at this super low item level I could pull massive amounts.
- Two expansions later and DKs are still a hero class.
- I've got another DK getting close to 90, this made me want to finish that one off as well.
- I had forgot why they are fun to play when you just want to mindlessly slaughter things.
- Even at a lower item level I can get away with a lot.
- A 500 item level hunter, something, the only thing, I am actually good at, could not get away with the stuff my DK can do on timeless island.
- Speaking of hunters, got a few more 3 v 3 arena wins.
- Seem to be playing at roughly a 50% winning percentage.
- This time we had a 494 healer with us, so winning half was actually quite good.
- But the healer was a paladin and holy paladins are to PvP what DKs are to PvE, a hero class.
- One match we faced three fully conquest geared DPS and all three focused the 494 under geared healer.
- The healer kept himself up, we picked them off one at a time, and we won.
- Name one other healing class that could manage that.
- Even with healing in general being OP in PvP and items scaling down to 532 having three, presumably, decent players pounding on you should be able to take anyone out.
- I am going to guess they were not that good.
- Not even guess, I know they must have not been that good.
- Three people should easily have been capable of making sure he never cast a spell.
- Guess it helped that me and the other damage dealer were kind of quick about it in taking them out too.
- I now have 2 conquest pieces and am saving for my weapon.
- When I have enough to buy the weapon I should also have enough earned for the season to allow me to buy it.
- Have to love the PvP gearing system and the catch up system.
- I love being able to move at my own pace and gear as quickly as I wish while catching up.
- Having a 10K+ conquest cap is going to spoil me.
- What happens if I get into PvP and then when new stuff comes I am once again limited to 1000 a week?
- I really hate caps sometimes.
- If I wish to gear up in one day by busting my ass, let me.
- But playing catch up, having that huge conquest cap is great.
- Think I ran into a problem with PvP that might stop me from playing much later on.
- Once you no longer need honor gear there is no reason to run battlegrounds.
- It is not like alliance win, so why do it?
- If you do not need anything from it, do not get the satisfaction of winning, and get to the point where there is nothing to learn from them, what use are battlegrounds?
- Which goes back to the fact you need a group to do anything.
- This game really needs something, anything, that can support the player that does not play with a set group.
- Not everyone can be on the same time as their friends, or wants to look to make new friends every time they want to do something.
- Maybe they just want to play a game for fun at their own pace when they want to.
- God forbid.
- And no, group finder is not an option.
- Group finder gives you alliance groups that somehow manage to lose 10 games in a row.
- Even when half the horde team is comprised of bots.
- Group finder gives you LFR groups where half the players think they are too good to be doing this, so they do nothing and the other half are not good enough to do anything to help, and all of them love to spew their toxic hate at each other making it a nightmare.
- The game needs some sort of substantial way to gear up and keep progressing in a meaningful and enjoyable way either solo or with a group.
- They need to stop forcing people to group for personal progression.
- I mean why should personal progression require a group.
- I am building up "me" so let "me" do it.
- Without groups, no raid gear which means no gear, for the PvEer.
- Without groups, no or slow conquest gear because you never win, for the PvPer.
- No matter what anyone says, more solo ways to progress are needed.
- While some players might play as a group all players play solo.
- Like the expression, all poodles might be dogs but not all dogs are poodles.
- Even if you wanted to say 90% of the player base participated in group content, which you know is outrageously over estimating, it still does not equal the 100% of the player base that plays solo.
- So if everyone plays solo, and you do, don't say you don't, shouldn't they design more for the solo player?
- You should never need to depend on others being able to do their job well to determine if you get gear or not.
- You gearing is about you, not about finding a battleground that can win, or a raid group that can down bosses.
- The PvPer needs a way to get conquest without a group and without subjecting themselves to random battlegrounds.
- The PvEer needs a way to get top level gear without subjecting themselves to LFR or other group finding methods but since they removed valor gear a way like that no longer exists.
- And at that, valor gear was never really all that great.
- No weapon, one ring, one trinket, sometimes missing other pieces.
- PvE needs more solo gearing options and timeless island gear is not a gearing option.
- Unless you want to gear 2 tiers lower than current.
- It is a stepping stone into group content.
- And I want to avoid group content.
- We all should be allowed to skip group content and gear another way.
- Speaking of avoiding group content, I had this wild idea that is quite the opposite.
- I was thinking of bringing my new DK into the LFR and tanking.
- Yes, tanking only.
- Yes, me.
- Surprised? Well so am I.
- I figured it would be a good way to find material to write about.
- Not like I need any.
- I will back down from that idea.
- But I did think of it all day yesterday, almost even queued up for it.
- I would have started in MV, not SoO like most people seem to do now.
- Need to get my "moves" down.
- Yes, I already have a blood DK at max, two even, but each character is different even when they are the same class.
- Just because I know what to do, I need to find the feel for this char.
- Is it just me or do you feel as if each characters has its own personality?
- And while I might be geared for SoO, item level wise, I am not gemmed, enchanted, reforged, you know, the things you should be.
- That is the problem with LFR they allow people to step right into the newest one and thanks to the instant 90s what you get is even worse than what you had been getting.
- Someone boosts a 90, gets timeless gear and is ready to walk in, heck, I went from 90 to 500 item level so an instant 90 can too.
- The thing is, they are not ready.
- Yet, as dreadful as it all sounds, I really am tempted to try it.
- More so try the lower LFRs.
- Why you ask?
- Because people like me, people that care about how they do and are trying to do it the best they can will more likely be in MV.
- People who do not know how to play and people with instant 90s will jump right into SoO for gear and gear only.
- And maybe now you see why I say we need other gearing options?
- Gear helps, of course, buy skill should always come first and it matters more.
- I tanked an SoO on my warrior, my first time tanking a raid on my warrior since last expansion.
- It has not even stepped into any LFRs and only had a 514 item level.
- It was ungemmed and unenchanted.
- I threw some quick stuff together for it and managed to tank up to jug based on skill and healer skill and ability.
- At jug I ran into the wall where I needed more gear.
- I "could" have managed it, but why make people wipe for me trying to prove something.
- I switched to another tank and we continued.
- But back to my DK and my odd yearning for doing some LFRs.
- I can do the lower ones, work a little toward the cloak, get better groups in easier content, and get a feel for my new 90.
- Or I can go into SoO with a whole slew of ungemmed, unenchanted, unreforged people that will just AFK, or not AFK and do worse than the person that did AFK with auto attacking.
- And I will wipe, and hear people calling each other names, and being blamed for everything because I am the tank and everything is always the tanks fault.
- Even when you run ahead of the group and pull the boss before any tanks are in the room, it is the tanks fault.
- Because your pet dies because it has taunt on, it is the tanks fault.
- Because the healer did not heal you, it is the tanks fault.
- Because you did not win the item you wanted, it is the tank fault.
- So lets spit our venom now and let the tanks know it is all the tanks fault.
- Maybe I am talking myself out of it.
- Actually, I am talking myself into it.
- Because if all "those" people will be in SoO, maybe MV can use some tanks and those people will be more likely to be grateful to be doing it because they care about getting somewhere, be it seeing the content, collecting quick valor, getting quest items, or just hanging out for fun instead of just in it for the gear.
- Yeap, I think I might give MV a try, and work my way up.
- Maybe start getting some gear worth gemming and enchanting.
- Because timeless gear isn't worth it.
- Even if you gave me the gems and enchants for free on general principle I would not use them.
- Timeless gear is throw away gear.
- Unless it is just one or two pieces then it is not worth the materials.
- Did I mention why I need a new horde server?
- My horde server merged with my alliance server.
- What are the odds?
- I'd prefer to have them on their own server.
- One problem, they are all really old characters and they all, well most, have three letter names.
- Where the hell will I ever find where I can transfer them that I will be able to keep three letter names.
- Well, that is the least of my worries.
- Until then I have some hordies that need a new home.
- Rarely played hordies.
- But still, would like them to find a home.
- My hunter still has arrows.
- Have to love I still have hunters around that have arrows.
- Wonder why when they changed stuff from not having a melee weapon when you first log into a hunter you have your melee weapon equip and not your ranged weapon.
- I had that happen on one of the hunters and did not notice it.
- When I logged in, some months back, and cleaned out my bags I sold the weapon in there thinking it was junk.
- When I logged back in to level from 85 to 90 I noticed I had a polearm and no ranged weapon.
- Damn it, sold my weapon and no way to get it back now.
- Blizzard does some stupid stuff sometimes.
- But no worse than me selling my weapon.
- Except my mistake was an honest mistake, their mistake was bad coding.
- Seriously, who did not catch it in the code that it was keeping hunters melee weapon and throwing the ranged one in their bags.
- I still have my, now gray, totem and relics in my bank on a few characters.
- Nothing beats a grey item with a gem in it.
- Ah, memories.
- Oh, I bought a green weapon for a few gold, did the first quest into pandaira and got myself a new weapon.
- So no harm, no foul.
- Glad they made the first quest give a weapon.
- Seems they do something right sometimes.
- Well, now to think about tanking MV, maybe tonight.
- I am a glutton for punishment, don't you think?
- Could be fun, who knows.
- Maybe all the dregs of humanity will be in SoO making their lives and the lives of everyone around them hell and I might have fun.
- For once.
- Doing the solo scenarios on the thunder island I noticed they changed a lot of them.
- How come they spend time updating those, but not other things that need it.
- No, seriously, if you have not done them in a while do them again, you will notice some subtle changes to things. Range, visuals, functionality.
- Yet things like hunters kill shot error last for entire expansion, but changing the the size and functionality of the bombs you throw at the totems in old content that no one ever complained about anyway is high on their list?
- I sometimes wonder about the people that make the decisions on this game.
- "I think we should make the bombs a little smaller"
- "I think we should make it a set number of bombs instead of a timed thing".
- "Hey guys, how about you stop talking about something that has been old content for a long time now that no one has ever complained about even when it was new and fix something like the hunters kill shot error."
- "Nah, screw hunters, this will be awesome when we are done fixing it."
- "But..."
- "It isn't broken to begin with."
- Have a great day.
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