Still alive!
Guess what, I still live! I got a couple mails asking where I was and what was going on. All’s fine, but I was hit by RL and also spent hours tuning my UI and playing WoW too much. Strangely enough, all the changes brought something about that I didn’t think would happen: blog ennui. Or maybe even WoW ennui.
I am really torn at the moment. On the one hand, the new protection warrior is amazingly fun. It’s just awesome to play. On the other hand, other classes got hit with the nerfbat so hard that I outperform them so much that it makes me feel bad. What the hell happened to warlocks?
I tested my 5/3/53 spec in three heroics. I first went to Slave Pens and Underbog with a group of fairly low DPSers from my guild, and was number one on DPS by a big margin. I then went to Heroic Shattered Halls with some of the best DPSers in my guild, and I was a close third. Zero CC on all runs, and in Heroic SH, all three DPSers AoEd away.
And then I went to Zul’Aman yesterday. Name’s Sitta in the anonymous report. Even when we were sloppy, we just bruted our way through it.
I am joining the ranks of people who are disenchanted with the current state of raiding. The Zul’jin kill wasn’t satisfying at all. I couldn’t even enjoy seeing Lynx and Dragonhawk phases because everything was over so fast. I hope Matticus is right and that things will get more challenging again, because ezmode WoW is kinda boring. I am hoping for kickass delivery in WotLK and stuff that you won’t just blaze through. I heard that the Northrend 5-mans are all really easy, and that’s already a turn-off. I feel extremely powerful now, and I want to get into epic fights again. I cannot be alone with this sentiment. Maybe I am biased. The other half’s main is a warlock and she is very very unhappy. That rubs off. I don’t blame her. I loved what I saw of the new affliction tree, but if you were a dedicated high DPS destro warlock before, the changes are very disappointing.
On the flip side, I made out like a bandit in yesterday’s two hour ZA extravaganza. We got three chests, but had only 8 minutes left for the fourth, so we stopped rushing after the third. First chest scored me Pauldrons of Stone Resolve and third chest got me Signet of the Last Defender. Given recent changes, both pieces of gear are extremely awesome. I feel a bit guilty because the other warrior passed on both which was probably brought on by my big QQ session a couple weeks ago.
Give me your opinion, warriors and all other visitors alike. How’s life been for you since the patch? Too OP, too boring, or just right for you guys? Enlighten me.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Hi there,
I usually read your posts through my RSS reader but decided to post something this time regarding how I feel about the game after the new patch… Well I find it quite awesome to tell the truth. Why? Because I was packing all this tanking gear and never got to use it in the past… Yeah, my guild got like 6~7 tanks and I was originally fury when I joined them so stayed that way all along. But the new patch gave me the opportunity to respec and actually try out tanking… Still learning, but as it’s a new way of playing my character, I don’t feel bored at all at the moment… And as a lot of tanks respec’ed Fury to try out Titan’s grip, I actually get good tanking spots for raids and stuff so I’m enjoying it!
Shukrut´s last blog post..Mycomicshop.com weekly promotions
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October 20th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
The other half’s main is now a druid.
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October 20th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I have to say I’m not bothered at by it at all. Folks seem to forget that it was just like this before TBC release. Maybe not the boss nerfs so much, but there people were running around with abilities tuned for a level 70 on a level 60 character. Same situation here.
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Balgrim Reply:
October 20th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Too true.
This is the time to lean back and enjoy the walk. I just hope WotLK instances are a bit more balanced around the new philosophy…
But right now, just PuG some 25-man and have fun.
Balgrim´s last blog post..Se acabó la espera
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mavfin Reply:
October 21st, 2008 at 12:43 am
Yep. What he said. 2.0 was like this. This is a month-long full up beta test of all the old-world changes for Blizz. Consider it playtime and don’t worry that it’s going to stay that way.
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October 20th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I can understand how The other half feels
I had been a dedicated MM Hunter for 4 years but now the changes are drastic enough to make me drop my Hunter completely and pick up my Warrior full time
and MM Hunters weren’t even hit as hard as Destro Locks
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Crowquill Reply:
October 20th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
BTW Bladestorm is amazing I had taken a break from prot this last week to tank old school instances as Arms and most of the time I’m hitting 4-5 mobs doing over 12,000 dps for those 6 seconds (it’s closer to 7,000 in level 70 instances but it’s still amazingly fun)
and with Prot I’ve been having a lot more fun tanking Shock wave is a very fun ability to use. in all there is a lot more interactivity with my tanking rotation instead of just 2344
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Crowquill Reply:
October 21st, 2008 at 8:35 pm
my guild just stumbled through a 1 wipe(on Zul’jin and with him at less than 5k hp) full clear of ZA last night, and while I did get my Battleworn Tuskguard helm I do see how easy everything has been made.
even with all our mistakes on Zul’jin each of which would have cause a full on wipe before this patch, we were able to just brute our way through
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October 20th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Too easy. Raiding is no longer really satisfying.
I’m more excited about finishing my Halloween Achievements then Sunwell.
Yakra´s last blog post..Sunwell Letdown
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Namthe Reply:
October 20th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Dull dull dull dull dull.
Did Black Temple last night, cleared all the way up to Illidan in under 3 hours, zero wipes.
I mean, it’s nice seeing Illidan and all, but it’s just sio easy as to be trivial.
I’m hoping Sunwell might be a bit more of a challenge.
Namthe´s last blog post..Patch day blues…
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October 20th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
For a couple days I just did the Isle dailys to get a handle on somekind of rotation. I then did the HH events and finally got the cool plate helm. After that we proceeded into heroic SH and within minutes I got into a pretty good rhythm and we blew away everything. It was so fun.
I think we need to keep in mind that these changes were mostly designed for the L80 content so we should probably wait until then to come up with a final opinion. But for now I’m liking the changes to my prot warrior, prot pally, moonkin, and elemental shammy.
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admin Reply:
October 20th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Oh, no one should get me wrong, I love the changes to prot warriors, and I am equally happy with my Assassination rogue and my elemental shaman. I feel bad for the classes who got nerfed, and I am really restless for the expansion now.
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October 20th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Tanking in 3.0.2 is..some kind of different.
In my first run I outdamaged two Beastmaster in MT-Hero, then get killed a dozen Times in Blood Furnace Hero.
I switched my spec from 0/8/53 to 5/5/43 in order to add some survivability but this means of course a decrease of dmg.
We will see where all of this ends..
Again greetings from germany
Escarion
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October 20th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Hey there
I have to admit tanking has become alot more fun
At the other hand it did become to easy.
I play WoW for 2 years now, and I’ve seen the big pre tbc patch and I remember how overpowered we used to find devastate. But now its just a standard thing in our rotation. I have to admit the game became to easy (2 top guilds on my server were wiping for 3 months on muru, day of the patch they one shot him and kill Kiljaeden aswell)
I’d recommend to just have a bit of fun, try arms/fury. Bladestorm is awesome and titans grip might be not that effective without loads of hit, its so fun to use two big weapons and smash around.
As for my raiding… we didnt raid yet since the patch except for ZA/kara. BT progress will continue soon. In ZA we usually just miss the 4th chest, this time we had it with 15 mins left over on the timer and got a second ring.
As for my warrior itself… tanking is enjoyable, dmg output went up massivly, but like everyone I hope naxx will be challening to start with, i’m hoping my guild pulls it off to get into the 25 man version straight away.
Nice blog, i like to come home and read here before i continue working
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October 20th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Hi Kadomi,
Like many I stopped raiding hard core some time ago to strike a balance between real life and in game activities and this means there is a lot of content that I have not seen that I might now see via pugs. Even if it has been nerfed to triviality I would hope to see more of MH and BT.
With all the reports of supper fast Kara runs with geared experienced groups I did come up with a new challenge. Bring a group of green gears into Kara (some were alts some had never been there) and see if we could clear it. With the exception of some issues on Shade we had a relatively smooth 2 hour run.
Whats in store for this week? Who knows. I will make some crazy adventure.
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October 20th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Hate to tell you, but Sunwell is just as ridiculously easy. We went from having to min/max to even have a chance to kill Mu’ru to taking anyone and zerging him in under a minute and a half. KJ. Dont even get me started. Raiding just isn’t fun at all. So we decided to go after world bosses. They are the hardest raid bosses ingame right now.
But tanking as a whole is a lot more fun. Would really be sad if WotLK raids are this simple and destroys the fun in it.
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admin Reply:
October 20th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Yeah, my co-worker had been stuck on Mu’ru for months as well, defected to Warhammer even, then came back for the patch, and they one-shot Mu’ru and KJ, with no joy in it.
Me, I am trying to figure out what to do raid-wise for my guild now.
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October 20th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Oops. Meant to say Horde faction leaders. The black bear mount you get from the achievement is pretty awesome.
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October 20th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
I love the state of the game right now, and yes it is a total joke. The raiding game ended with the new patch, so I guess we’re all in a holding zone. if you hadnt killed a boss by now… well its too late, it doesnt count. New bosses are free loot are rather meaningless kills, and there’s very little sense of achievement.
We cleared to Illidan last night and got to start the fight once, before running out of raid time (and we weren’t prepared lol !) There’s no way we would have seen him any other way before wrath; our guild is too low skilled, and too slow at learning. but I tell you, walking up to his platform and seeing him comtemplating his skull, cheesy & nerfy though it was, is still a moment in wow I wont forget.
I too am loving the druid tanking changes, large dps boost, survivability and aoe tanking is just out of this world. Yes, CC is a thing of the past in heroics, at least for now. And up on the ruins of karabor, pulling 25 odd mobs and burning them with the infinite swipe, with a newly available moongoose enchant proccing like crazy, then healing myself to full, in bear form, with a couple of cooldown abilities… That just aint right!!!
Its does seems unfair, I agree, when I know some dps classes are disappointed with the patch. They’re not having much fun. I have read some blue comments that suggest the pure DPS classes may need to improve their skill levels if they want to continue to top the charts. That they blame it on the class changes, since they assume - unrealistically - that they are already performing at the max possible for their class. (Hope I dont upset anyone by saying that)
I play a mage… and its always been easy to top the dps charts, so its actually rather boring compared to being a tank. My only thrill is seeing the large damage, which is thanks to no skill of mine. So I do wonder if our pure dps toons have had it too easy?
So much is now different it’s taking us all a while to find our feet again, which is what Blizzard intended, I think.
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admin Reply:
October 20th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
I always felt that playing DPS takes more skill than people give it credit for. A trained monkey can spam one button, but only a very skilled DPSer can adapt to situations, is smart enough to not stand in a fire, never lets debuffs/buffs fall off, and has their rotations down perfectly.
I know a few DPSers I would call very skilled. I know a lot of DPSers I would call mediocre. Just like tanking and healing, DPS takes skill.
However, when someone of excellent skill suddenly loses lots of DPS, then something is wrong.
But you’re right, we all have to learn again, and the learning is not happening in those last few weeks of TBC.
Thanks for your input, always appreciated.
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October 20th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
This is the exact same thing that happened just before BC. My Shaman, my favorite character of all time, became so bad I never went back to her again. My rogue, which made 70 just a few weeks before BC came out became my main. Now my rogue is going to die and now my Protection warrior who just made 70 will be my main. Shaman got #@#$%$ in BC and now most DPS is getting @#$%#$ in LK.
Tanking is easy right now. Of course my guild is going to die soon, same deal as BC, so I am limited to running with only my wife and brother. Hard to 3 man most things even if we are all 70. I hope that LK will give us a boost and that I can find a new guild.
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mavfin Reply:
October 21st, 2008 at 12:49 am
See, my guild is gathering again, after splintering in BC because we had to grab people that didn’t ‘fit’ to do 25-man content.
We’re all enjoying the playtime, but 90% of the guild has been here almost 4 years in WoW, so this is just another change period for us. We know it won’t stay this way, so we’re just getting stuff ready to level to 80, and continue on to 10-man raids. And, some of the people who we tolerated when we needed them for 25-man raiding are being told to be adults or get out, since we’re going to 10-mans, 2 groups if need be, for wotlk. I’d guess average age of the guild core is low-30s, so we might be a little older than the average.
We just like the raiding with 9 friends who I know are skilled and I can count on, than having to bring in people we really don’t know to do 25-man content. Our guild isn’t going to die at all. Wotlk will make us even stronger, IMO.
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October 20th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
I frequently group with one of two destruction warlocks and one is suffering with a drop in DPS and the other is back where he was before. Part of the difference is their play style. Warlock 1 uses a mix of shadow and fire damage and spent the time to sort out how to maximize damage in short fights. Warlock 2 is just complaining that shadowbolt doesn’t work as well and plays on his Alt most of the time. His complaints don’t have merit either - his DPS is only dropping by 50 to 100 depending on the battle. Another thing to understand is that warlocks do more damage in long fights. The changes to the game have shortened battles so much that some spells (like Curse of Doom) are useless.
The changes are significant enough that DPSers need to sit down and sort out their new play style just like the protection warriors. The same old stuff doesn’t work any more. It’s a new game.
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October 21st, 2008 at 12:32 am
Sure, whatever raid you were working on became too easy. But, the raid bosses that were out of reach are now possible.
I had the same experience with ZA. First kills on Malacrass and Zul’jin and the whole instance was done in less than 2 hours (still had time leftover on my flask when we ported out). But our guild can now make serious attempts in Hyjal and BT. I’m hopeful we’ll see a lot of new content in the next couple weeks.
Tankette´s last blog post..Post Patch 3.0.2 raids
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October 21st, 2008 at 1:32 am
As a high end raider on my main (DPS mage) I’ve loved all the changes to my tree and still love to raid. It was dissapointing that for a raid group that hadn’t passed ROS pre-3.0 to push through to illidan without wiping once on mother or ros. We wiped a couple times in the council, but that was my fault. First night on Illidan, 5 wipes and he was down. Kinda anti-climatic. I’ve loved the changes for my prot warrior I’ve been running instances and stuff every night and evey night I dont use any “CC” or anything. It’s lots of fun, but I am a bit dissapointed in what has happend due to the patch. We’re OP.
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October 21st, 2008 at 5:17 am
Well, ZA runs are 45 minutes for full clear for me now. And tonight was an off-night for my raiding guild, so we went and did BT half-pugged for shits and giggles since the instance servers were always down on our scheduled BT nights. We got 7/9 tonight, with 3 of those being first kills for us, and every boss 1-shotted. On one hand I’m excited because the amount of content I’ll be able to see has drastically increased, and people will be able to get geared, but on the other hand it’s just not satisfying at all. I mean, a good chunk of the raid group tonight didn’t even have SR gear with them for Mother, for example. Hyjal was even more laughable the other day. It’s a bit disappointing that T6 content is now just like a really long Kara run with improved loot, honestly, as one of the most enjoyable things with my new guild was having to struggle before I could succeed.
I’m also having a bit of a love/hate relationship with my resto shaman. I still love healing 5 and 10-mans on her. 25-mans are considerably more frustrating. Not because my healing output has gone down, but because everyone else’s healing output/style of healing has changed drastically. Resto shammies used to be the kings of aoe healing; now any other class can easily compete with us on that level, and surpass us if they use their new skills right.
I can honestly say that I’ve had more fun recently with healing pre-BC content for fun when people go to get achievements. C’Thun was probably one of the coolest fights I’ve seen in a while.
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October 21st, 2008 at 10:21 am
To some extent I am a bit disappointed with the “easiness” of raiding since the patch came out. Before the patch, my guild had just managed to do a 4-chest-timed run in ZA and gathered a total of two bear mounts (I still can’t believe my luck that I got one). The day after the patch we went to ZA, and finished the timed chest with about 15 minutes to spare. Right after killing Lynx the server went down so we only got to loot one chest, but still, it felt like a let down.
The next two days I did a couple of heroics and a Kara run, which all were so easy that I couldn’t really wait until the LK would come since it seemed so pointless. Sunday we then had our first “real raid”, which was MH. Pre-patch we had cleared it 4/5, with only Archimonde left (never attempted him pre-patch, except for giggles) and on Sunday we only had 5 healers available. Even so, we killed the first four bosses without wipes and then moved to Archimonde.
Archimonde turned out to be quite cool. As it isn’t so much a DPS race, but more a positioning and “no-one-messes-up” fight, we were actually having some trouble. We had two hours on him on Sunday, and figured that bringing 5 healers and 9 melee dps wasn’t going to work. He still hit me for 8k and sometimes pretty fast, with a lot of the healers running around dodgig fires, I got gibbed quite a few times.
Last night we went back, this time with 6 healers and a bit more ranged dps. It still was tough, very tough. I think we had a total of 12 attempts, and only the last 4 showed clear improvement with each try, and then we got him down.
Was it easier because of the patch? No doubt, even on our successful attempt we had two people die and due to the patch-boost we managed to heal through the excess damage. It still was a big challenge for us and I think it is one of the coolest encounters I’ve seen so far. Tomorrow we’ll be heading into BT, where I expect we’ll bring down quite a few more bosses than the three we’ve seen so far.
For all of you that are currently feeling deflated with the patch, I’d say: try some stuff that seems beyong your gear at the moment, see if you can do some really hard encounters. This may be difficult if your guild isn’t big enough for 25-mans, but if it is, the challenge just may be enough to make it last until LK comes out.
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October 21st, 2008 at 11:37 am
I must admit I agree ZA is boring now, I’m just glad I got the chance to get Zul’gin down before the patch…even Malacrass was easy….and when we beat him first time it was a great feeling.
As regards to the instances, I felt it was easy in TBC once you got some gear (and I was tanking as fury back then) i’m sure it will be alright at 80 though.
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October 21st, 2008 at 9:06 pm
I’d say the northrend 5 mans are very, very easy. I tanked a lot of them on Skaze.( By a lot I mean I grinded on them for exp. ) For most of them I was wearing season 2 gear to tank and gradually replaced a few pieces with actual tanking loot and not one time did I think it was hard. I got bored and started tanking instances that were +3 levels above me and still wasn’t having a problem, would’ve tried +4 levels but it seems beta died, at least on the Lich King server.
This is all without CC btw. Pretty fast and easy. Could be because the DPS I was tanking for were all in tier 6 quality loot. :X
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admin Reply:
October 21st, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Admittedly, TBC pre-70 instances weren’t that difficult either. The only difficulty I remember was Nazan in Ramparts as fresh 60s, other than that, it was all a breeze. That’s why first doing Shadow Labs in quest greens was such a cold shower, because it seemed so difficult in comparison.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 5:44 am
Keep in mind, the 5-man instances, and heroics, and Naxx weren’t really made with the experienced raider in mind. You can find lots of statistics, so no one get picky about this, but I saw someone say that 75% of the WoW population never saw even Lurker.
And I know a ton of people who never did Karazhan till ilvl 141 badge gear made it a joke. Karazhan was pretty fun/interesting/challenging in instance blues and a few heroic/badge (ilvl 110) epics. When you’re doing an instance that drops ilvl 115/120 epics with ilvl 141 badge gear, it better be a joke, or you’re not very good.
Fact is, those of us who can jump into a Kara raid and clear it easily are not who the 5-man and first raid content in WotLK are written for. So try not to be disappointed when it’s not super-hard. They’ll make stuff harder as they go.
Also, if you’re going to go to level 74 5-mans in WotLK with you and 4 friends all in T6, expect it to be easy, because people are saying you won’t replace T6 till Naxx at 80.
There will be challenges down the line. Of course, some of the above is why I’m not out pushing hard to improve my gear before leveling. I’ll have more fun getting to replace some of my gear with new stuff along the way. YMMV.
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October 23rd, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Honestly, I am having a blast. I had taken a raiding break since most of my guild was breaking before WoLK. Taking some time to grow some alts. Since the patch, many are back on. The invites are coming to do more content that I haven’t seen. We went to Hyjal for the first time last night and I got my first piece from BT last week. I am hoping that I will have time to run Sunwell before the release. (even if I tag along with people who think it is all a joke)
Remember 70 will be another bump in the road on the way to 80 in a few weeks just like 60 was before it. But we are going back to all the old school stuff for achievements. Not sure what they are going to do with the points system yet but Patmit Jenkins is enjoying the party.
They have already started bumping up the 80 stuff so I am sure we will all be banging our heads against the wall soon enough!!!
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January 2nd, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Well ive got to say, Wotlk Raids are amazing.
The choice with 10-man or 25-man raids, a Pure PvP raid, specifically the different raid options with OS (one two or three mini-bosses). It certainly offers a wide choice “Humm shall we concentrate on 10-man?, shall we raid 25-man? or do both?” there’s a lot of choice in this one. Now back to topic with the War tank/dps. DK tanks, Druid tanks and Pali tanks still out DPS war’s, now id agree that a buff is not needed but rather a nurf on there behalf? im not sure I feel though that a Nurf would make Wotlk feel ‘Epic’
How do you feel about this?
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