First Impressions: Patch 3.3
First I must say, what a time to get back into World of Warcraft! By some kind of twist I managed to resubscribe only a few weeks before Patch 3.3, "Fall of the Lich King." After a lot of anticipation, it's finally time to get to a long awaited patch. I decided to take a few days before writing this post, and took some time to gather my thoughts.
Forge of Souls: First thing I did was pickup a few guildmates, find a PUG, and roll into the questline for the new instances. Being ridiculous, our group decided to go strait into Heroics. I'm not going to lie: Some of these fights (Both Forge and Pit) are pretty tough. The Forge feels pretty quick and clean to me. Our group drove without much ceremony to Bronjahm. We quickly engaged and raid warnings started popping up on my screen. Move in, move away, etc. We must have had some good DPS, because as the warnings were going off, the boss was dropping. After a little more trash, it was onto the Devourer of Souls. Most people are complaining about the voice acting on this giant floating face demon, but I don't really give a crap. We rolled into the room and read up a bit on the boss and just went for it. This is about the time that I realized that these new instances aren't playing around. The Devourer sports nearly a million hit points in Heroic. Special Note: If you are DPS, you need to actually look at your screen instead of just spamming your buttons, because Mirrored Soul with kill you in the face. I've done this fight a few times now, and I can say that it's becoming annoying that DPS can't seem to stop smashing their buttons. I can heal maybe one or two people through it, thanks to Beacon. However anyone else might be in trouble.
Pit of Saron: This is going to be my favorite of the three new Heroics. This place feels epic! Pit of Saron includes four bosses with lots of trash along the way. Ick and Krick are a very interesting fight. Your party has to deal with avoiding Toxic Waste all over the ground, which makes me have horrible flashbacks to Naxxramas, and having to rely on my party members to move the hell out of the way. As if that wasn't enough, you also have to run around exploding bombs during Explosive Barrage. And even if you survive all this, there's still a very stout Poison Nova to deal with. Definitely some work for the Healer. Forgemaster Garfrost is the first fight that had me saying, "Holy crap, this is epic!" Permafrost, with its two second ticks is one of the most ridiculous (Not in a bad context) Heroic mechanics I've ever seen. It totally makes the encounter have a sense of urgency. Chilling Wave has a crazy range, and you can nearly guarantee that everyone in the party is going to get hit by it. He's also got an attack called Deep Freeze, which nearly stops you in your tracks. Why is moving slow during this fight a bad thing? Well, let's examine. If you check out some pictures, you will notice that Forgemaster Garfrost has a giant boulder on his back. And unlike Atlas, he's not holding up the world, it's a giant boulder of saronite. Throw Saronite has a really cool mechanic. Raid warnings tell you that it's coming, and your display tells you where it's going to land. It feels really cool that you can move and react to the attack. After this, it's a gauntlet run with a twist. While fighting mobs, ice and rocks are going to falling all over you. Once again there's a cool use of mechanics in the circles that appear, helping you get out of the way. This all leads to a strait up, lore filled fight with Scourgelord Tyrannus. While he's on the ground duking it out with your party, Rimefang will be above you, trying to nuke you.
Halls of Reflection: The first time I tried to run this instance, we ended up bugging and I couldn't log in for about fifteen minutes. Not cool. The next day when it came up in my first random dungeon, I was a bit scared. Let me go ahead and say it: This Heroic is hard. There's barely any time to breathe in-between mobs, with the only breathers coming after bosses. Falric and Marwyn were not terribly difficult, the hard part was surviving long enough to fight them. The lore in this instance is awesome, and I'll be delving into it a lot more in some future posts. One thing I like is that if your party hits a wipe, you don't have to start all over like Violet Hold. Thank goodness for that. I spent a lot of time doing the trash and bosses over and over because of one mistake or death. Then it's on to my absolutely favorite part of the new instances, the gauntlet with the Lich King. I had no idea how this fight went, so running from the Lich King really had me staring at my PC. Watching Sylvanas turn at the end and announce that it was time to stand and fight, I honestly found myself thinking, "Are we really about to fight the Lich King?" Much to my surprise, Orgrim's Hammer shows up to blow the hell out of everything, allowing for a very timely escape. EPIC!
Dungeon Finder: This thing is awesome. As a Healer, I have yet to have a wait time over 30 seconds to queue for a random Heroic. I've seen a spectrum while using the Dungeon Finder. I went to Trial of the Champion with a Protection Warrior with 52k hit points. While this is great, I need to note that he also pulled over 3k DPS the entire time. Pro. I've had a few bad experiences, usually in the form of people going AFK randomly or being grouped with people from the same server/guild trying to run roughshot over the loot. However I have to call this one as a great addition to the game. Not to mention, you don't have to hearth out of Culling of Stratholme anymore, because when you drop group you get teleported back to where you were. Awesome.
The Loot: Thanks to the new dungeons as well as the easy access to Emblems of Triumph, I wanted to note that I picked up a few new items. I picked up some brand spanking new Legguards of the Frosty Depths on my first run through the Pit of Saron. I then turned around and spent 45 well earned Emblems of Triumph on the Shoulderplates of the Cavalier. Luckily, I've already gotten Exalted with the Sons of Hodir (And the Sunreavers and Orgrimmar in the past few days). Somewhere along the line I also managed to pickup another 35 Emblems of Triumph, because I was able to afford a Heartmender Circle. The ease of access to this gear really helps offset the expensive gear that comes from Frost Emblems.
So far, Patch 3.3 has been everything that I could have hoped it would be. Even with a shaky first few days Blizzard has scored again with new content that the players get for no extra cost, once again proving why Blizzard has raised the bar of the MMO world.
First Impressions: Trial of the Crusader
I recently was part of a group that did a full clear of 10 man Trial of the Crusader. Having only recently returned, I was excited about the chance to raid. Previously, I had done 10 man up to the Faction Champions, however the group (PUG) I was a part of wiped within ten seconds of starting the fight each time. Interesting side note: This was the PUG that led me to my current guild.
Northrend Beasts: The group I was with was doing a great deal of DPS, so we really blew through the Beasts. As a Healer, I typically try to stay toward the back, so I don't have to do a lot of the moving during Acidmaw and Dreadscale. I would like to say, however, that the fight with Icehowl is some of the most fun that I have had in a boss fight in a good, long while. The fight itself is not too difficult, and the mechanic of his Trample attack makes for a lot of good times for my guild.
Lord Jaraxxus: Okay, so when I was in a PUG, this boss completely leveled us for a few tries before we barely managed to get through. Like the Beasts, I try to stay back a bit and try not to move around a lot. It's a fight where any person in the raid has to be able to be hit by multiple healers, due to Lord Jaraxxus casting Incinerate Flesh. Luckily, my guildmates were pretty much overgeared, so Incinerate Flesh hardly mattered. A definite shout out must go to Deadly Boss Mods during this fight, for identifying who has Incinerate Flesh as well as Legion Flames. It's really helpful to see, "LEGION FLAMES. MOVE." on my screen. Speaking of Legion Flames, I have to admit that like to take the easy way out and bubble and then step a few steps to the side. I find that it keeps the flames stuck in one spot, so there's less of a chance of other raid members running into them. The real shout out again needs to go to our DPS, who make very quick work of this fight.
Faction Champions: Absolute insanity and mass chaos is what I use to describe the fight with the Faction Champions. I know there was a Retribution Paladin, a Moonkin (Read: Moonchicken), a Warlock, a Priest, and a Shaman. Everything beyond that I have no idea about, I just know that the fight started, and about a minute later, the fight was over. I'm pretty sure one of our cloth wearers died, but I can't really be sure. It honestly was that quick. We sapped the Paladin, Hexed the Warlock (Which immediately broke), and sheeped (shapped?) the Priest. Then we hit Bloodlust and blew up the Shaman. The raid leader turned this fight over to one of our members who absoultely lives for PvP. I don't know how much the fight actually resembles PvP, but we did well enough. I spent a great deal of my time dispelling (Big ups to Decursive).
The Twins, Fjola Lightbane and Eydis Darkbane: My poor guild. I was the only person who had never done this fight. Luckily, instead of explaining to me every mechanic of the fight, my favorite Druid tank told me to just stand next to him and make sure he didn't die. "No problem sir!" I said as I got into position. Our raid leader described Fjola and Eydis as the only complicated fight in the entire raid. I've got to be honest, I don't know how this fight works and I've been there. I know that there's some switching like an old school Capactius or Thaddius encounter. All I know is that the only time I tried to switch I quickly died after clicking on the portal. I tried to switch after about the third vortex, and it didn't really work out. I'll probably watch some videos or ask around about what I'm actually supposed to do.
Anub'arak: Having never been this far into the raid before, I was having a little fanboy moment while watching the Lich King show up and blow up the Crusader's Coliseum. We had to take some time to replace someone before the final show down with Anub'arak. I took the time to load up a video from Tankspot to take a look at what to expect. It looked relatively easy, just stand on the ice and kite the boss during the borrow phase. Well, turns out you don't really have to kite and you can just stay on the ice. I nearly wiped us, because of course he has to chase the new guy first. I was kiting him like I thought I was supposed to, and a few people died as a result who were just standing on ice minding their own business. My raid leader told me to stay on the ice the second time this happened, and after the fight someone chimed in that I did pretty well for their being zero explanation of the fight.
Final Thoughts and Gear: I like how quickly this raid gets done. No trash, just you versus the bosses. I liked Naxx and Ulduar, however after 10 p.m. I don't want to be clearing trash. My group one shot every boss, thanks mostly to my guildmates having already done the raid a few times, however that's not a bad thing. I like going with experienced players who can help pickup the slack for somebody like me that tries, but sometimes has to do things a few times to get them right. At the end of the night I had a brand spanking new Pride of the Kor'kron to show for my troubles, which felt pretty awesome to take home after watching all the cloth and leather that blows my current gear away pass me by. In conclusion, I think this is a really well put together and thought out raid encounter, and look forward to what comes down the pipe in the future.
Shared Topic: The PTR and You
This is a Shared Topic from Blog Azeroth suggested by Anne of Jaded Alt.
To begin, I'm going to get a few things out of the way. I have never stepped onto the PTR. The one time that I tried I found the download of the client to be way too large (Over 10 gigs by itself? Really?) and honestly I would rather spend what time I have to play actually progressing with my character instead of doing things that won't matter in the long run.
My only real experience with the PTR came in the form of a guild I was in grinding nearly to a halt because many of the key raid members decided they would rather get a sneak peak at Ulduar. To be fair, we were pretty much done with 10 man Naxx, and really had no intention of going into 25 man. However I personally still had a few little tweaks and things that I wanted to see on my character before 3.1 hit. Another thing that really annoyed me was that my guildmates decided that nothing else was worth doing, and that we were going to stomp right through Ulduar.
Time for the reality check. At the time, we couldn't consistently complete Eye of Eternity. I knew that if we couldn't get people so coordinated that they not die while on top of a dragon spamming two buttons, that we were going to be getting reamed in Ulduar. However, this is a topic best saved for another day.
We're talking about the PTR! What do I like about the PTR? I like that there are people who have the massive amount of time it takes to go into the files and mine the crap out of them to tell me what I can expect from a new patch. It really helps create a strategy for what to do, especially for someone like me who doesn't have a lot of time to play in the first place. I also find it funny that the new races of Cataclysm were totally discovered by the community, while Blizzard made the announcements like nothing had happened. I also like that the hardcore raiding guilds and other, "PTRers," have no problem posting strategies for the new content. It saves me a lot of time and frustration.
Now let's talk about what's lame about the PTR. While it's true that the PTR really has little impact on my overall game experience, there is one glaring issue I have with the PTR. I know that it's a public test, and it's meant to work out the kinks and all of the business of supposed balance. However, it really gets annoying whenever a patch hits, and it's completely different from the changes that we expected, due either to balance or some kind of bug. I understand the reason for changes, but there have been some patches that are completely unrecognizable from the original intentions. I would just rather not know anything at all than to have to relearn what's what five different times.
At the end of the day, the PTR isn't going anywhere. It doesn't impact my game experience in any massive way. Is the PTR the realm of the hardcore guilds that want to kick the crap out of the new content immediately? Maybe. I'm sure that it helps Blizzard implement new content and fixes with a great deal of ease, and I'm glad that I get to play a complete patch instead of a long series of hotfixes and, "Patch x.x.01a." Star Wars Galaxies (Pre-Everyone Gets to be a Jedi-Days) was really bad about that. It felt like there was a patch everyday, and really looked bad on the developer's ability. It doesn't feel that way with Blizzard, despite the complaints of bugs and extended maintenance on patch day.
First Impressions: Patch 3.2
So here it is, the moment we've all been waiting for. As of yesterday's maintenance, Patch 3.2, "Call of the Crusade," is live. Today I got a chance to go around and check out some of the new content, and here are my first impressions.
The Argent Tournament: I thought there might be a reason that we were gathering so much stone and lumber. The coliseum really looks like it should. It puts you right into the mindset that you and your friends are going to step inside and duke it out with some of the greatest heroes in Azeroth. First thing I did was check out some of the updated dailies. Turns out the Tournament doesn't need anymore stone or lumber, which is a good thing in my opinion. I got so tired of having to go to the Crystalsong Forest for the lumber and then back to the Storm Peaks for the stones. Jousting the Scourge Commanders has been updated so that the two respective dailies go faster, and the quest to kill 15 Scourge has been replaced by a quest to kill 15 Converted Heroes. Honestly to me it makes no difference, since Converted Heroes were the mobs I would kill for the 15 Scourge quest to begin with. There's another Daily Quest where you fly up to a ridge and take out a bunch of cultists. Once again, I'm glad that I don't have to go very far from the quest giver to complete the objective.
Heroic Trial of the Champion: After I logged on and picked up some Dailies, I hooked up with a PUG to do some Heroics, in hopes that I would pickup a good amount of Emblems of Conquest. So we stepped into the Heroic 5 man version of the Trial of the Champion. We blazed through the first jousting portion, however somewhere between dismount and pickup the bosses we wiped. One thing I like about this instance is that the bosses and trash will, "reset," and be standing there when you re-enter the instance. I like this because I don't have to start all over, like Violet Hold. After a few more wipes, we managed to get past the first trio and onto Argent Confessor Paletress. We got to the portion where she summons up and old boss and my ears nearly bled when this kid screamed out over vent because she summoned up Prince Thunderaan. Meanwhile, we all wiped while he was freaking out like it was a Miley Cyrus concert. We re-entered again and this time she summoned Vancleef, who was quickly dispatched along with the Confessor. I personally cannot wait to smash Hogger.
The Black Knight: The Black Knight, the final boss, is going to get his own note here. I don't really remember a lot about the fight with the Black Knight, because it didn't really last very long. The fight itself felt really anti-climatic. In short, I felt that it was too easy. For two boss fights and four wipes, one shotting the last boss without much effort left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. Sure, we had to do a lot of running around because of all the adds, but at the end of it I was really left wondering if the fight was really going to be over. Now, our only clothie Mage got smacked around and died, however I still don't feel that the fight was up to stuff.
Mounts: One thing that I was super excited about was the new Paladin only mount: The Argent Charger. I don't know if I just missed it in the PTR coverage, however I was unaware that you had to be Exalted with every Horde faction in order to be able to get the mount. You have to have the Crusader title, which requires completing the achievement Exalted Argent Champion of the Horder. All I have to say is, "Really? Seriously?" Talk about one huge undertaking of an achievement. Not only do you have to complete the Valiant requirements for every faction, you also have to be Exalted with every Horde faction. I wasn't even Exalted with Silvermoon whenever my Paladin first set foot on the Argent Tournament grounds. So far he is a Valiant of Silvermoon and Orgrimmar. I've been using my Champion's Writs in order to get up my reputation with Orgrimmar while I work on the Thunder Bluff chain. At least this is something that will a byproduct of getting my Dailies done.
Mounts, 2.0: I also went over to Un'Goro Crater to see what this buzz about the new Ravasaur mount was all about. In the past, I've never really been big on mounts and pets, however with Wrath of the Lich King, these items no longer take up bag space, so I've started collecting them here and there. Of course, they couldn't just make it somewhat easy for us to get the new mount. There's a small quest chain, which if you are on a populated server could take some time, followed by the classic WoW quest of collecting lots of random items. Luckily, my guild had plenty of Runecloth stashed in the Guild Bank. Another part of the collection comes from doing a Daily Quest, and I'm really hoping that it doesn't take me twenty days to get all of the ones I need. I'm also interested to see how much I end up paying for twenty Rugged Leather. I'm also not too terribly excited about the time that it takes to actually get down to Un'Goro, especially if I have to do so for twenty days overall.
Emblems of Conquest: On a last note, I think it's awesome that Heroics are being updated. Emblems of Conquest dropping in Heroics is going to get people back into Heroics again. Not to mention, the Tier 8 tokens are not as expensive in the long run as the tokens from Heroism or Valor tokens. I for one think that this is awesome, and the rest of the items available are amazing compared to the ones that I am currently using.
All in all, I know that there's not a lot of content for the, "Hardcore," crowd, but for someone like me that doesn't want to have to devote his life to the game to get cool stuff, it's a step in the right direction.
Gold Woes? Really?
The economy of Word of Warcraft has always been something that has amazed me. It really is a study in the economies around these small communities. It's really no wonder that there are tons of sites that encourage you to fork out real money for gold that was farmed by some 12 year old Chinese child.
However, one thing that has amazed me even further is the way people treat their gold. Today I'm going to go through a couple of examples of real life moments that I've encountered in WoW that help illustrate my point.
"Repair bills are lame, I've only got 34g now." This is something classic that I have seen numerous times from a lot of people that I have raided with, and even from people in my guild. A couple of days of making it a point to do some dailies would fix this problem in under an hour, especially if you do them with a group. At an average of 13-17 gold a pop, you can get a nice little chunk for your repair bill in about an hour. That's not bad if your other option is having no gold at all.
"No I don't want to buy that item out of the AH, I'm cheap." Now, I understand if you are saving your gold to an end. Sure thing, no problem, especially from the standpoint of a casual gamer. However more often people seem to have a problem finding a difference between their pretend gold and their real life money. I went to the Auction House once and searched on some items to help me out with my healing. I came across the Armbands of the Construct, a bind on equip item from Normal Ulduar. These bracers were a major upgrade for me, however their listed cost was over 600 gold. I'd already purchased my Artisan Flying and Cold Weather Flying at price tags of 5000 and 1000 gold respectively. So really, I had to ask myself, "What are you really going to use your gold for?" So I didn't hesitate any longer in picking up these bracers, especially since I knew it was going to be a while before I would see the inside of Ulduar. There have been so many times that I've offered to make an item for a gluildmate, only to find that they describe themselves as, "Too cheap," to buy the mats. Really?
These scenarios seem to come up again and again. I believe that it is not that difficult to come across a good amount of gold in this game. Just do a couple of dailies over a few days when you have time and your gold will add up in no time. I think that with good planning we'd see less players begging in capital cities on alts.
Recent Posts
- Fishing, and why it’s lame.
- Casual Year in Review
- Kincade vs. Winter Veil
- First Impressions: Patch 3.3
- First Impressions: Trial of the Crusader
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Fishing, and why it’s lame.
Normally I make it a point not to come onto the blog and start complaining about parts of the game that I just don't like. However today I just can't keep this rant to myself.
In the past I've always admired people with the highest level of Fishing. I personally do not believe that I have the patience to really do Fishing. I think it's time consuming, tedious, and all around not fun. For that reason I've always given respect to people tossing down Fish Feasts, especially back when they were Soulbound. It meant that the guy putting it up for the raid had managed to level both his Fishing and his Cooking to 450, which is awesome.
So today I figured out that I was stuck. I have decided to finish out my Cooking on my Paladin, since I'm tired of having to buy up raid food (Not that it's expensive, but this is my main). I'm also in the mindset of getting all the achievements as well as getting all my skills maxed out. This includes Fishing. After some real pondering, I decided that Fish Feats could sell for quite a bit in the Auction House, and being able to make them is a small badge of honor.
So I grabbed a fishing pole and starting leveling in the pond in Ogrimmar. From levels 25 to 150, it was a breeze. However now it's starting to have less points for effort, and I'm slipping into that zone of just not even wanting to do it, regardless of the rewards and the respect. How do I make this not feel like a waste of time? I've already got the DVD player minimized sitting on top of the WoW window, or listening to podcasts.
What else can I do to make this seem less tedious?