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Scourge Commanders has been updated so that the two respective dailies go faster, and the quest to kill 15 Scourge has been replaced by a quest to kill 15 Converted Heroes.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.
Recent Posts
- Fishing, and why it’s lame.
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- First Impressions: Patch 3.3
- First Impressions: Trial of the Crusader
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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.