Daily Thoughts: 4.2 – Are You Prepared!?

With 4.2 (theoretically) coming out tomorrow, I am pretty excited. Major content patches are always exciting times. They can breathe new life into the game and give us brand new reasons to hate warlocks. Ok, so we probably have enough reasons to hate warlocks without a patch.

So, I’ve spent the past week making sure my toons are prepared for patch 4.2. How have I done this? Well I’m glad you asked. The easiest form of individual character progression was to get all my max level toons nearly capped for justice points. When 4.2 comes around and all the wonderful valor point gear becomes purchasable with JP, I’ll have a stable of alts ready to start getting decked out in tier 11. Keep in mind, 359 will be the new 346 and you’ll be expected to be mostly set with 359 level gear in order to participate in the new raid content. You can also expect pug leaders to want higher average item level given the ease of acquiring 359 in 4.2, regardless of the massive 20% nerf to all of the regular raid bosses. Another great way to prepare yourself, as a raider at least, is to check up on the raid bosses in the common Firelands raid. WoW Insider columnist Matticus shared his impressions of Beth’tilac, Lord Rhyolith, and Alysrazor and could help give you an edge on some of the first bosses if you plan on jumping  right into raiding the new content. I’m sure a quick search around the interwebs would reveal more boss information as well.

I have also prepared myself to laugh at D-bags that try to ninja BOE’s they plan on selling.

• If a player wins a Need roll under the Need Before Greed system on a Bind on Equip item, the item will become Soulbound to that player. The item will remain unbound if won via a Greed roll.

I’m okay with people needing bind on equip gear they intend to use, not if they intend to sell it. This change makes me all sorts of smiley.

As opposed to listing the entirely of the patch notes after the break, as I had thought about doing, follow me after the break for a direct link to Blizzard patch note blog as well as WoW Insider’s guide to 4.2.

Daily Thoughts: Arcane in the Membrane

Man, I’ve really been slacking on keeping up my Daily Thoughts here. Someone once commented that I should consider calling it “Weekly Thoughts” and that is seeming more accurate right now, but the name doesn’t sound quite right. Let’s continue!

Not too long ago, my mage reached level 85. I leveled using mostly a mix of frost and fire specs. 5 minutes after reaching max level, I was ready for heroics. Wait? Apparently it’s pretty nice reaching 85 with nearly max justice points and honor points through a long series of dungeons and battlegrounds. I picked up my vendor gear and had 331 item level, well clearing the 329 requirement to get into heroic dungeons. I got fired up, ready to go, and prepped for my unfortunately long 30 minute wait to get into a heroic dungeon…and found my DPS startlingly lacking.

Daily Thoughts: MMO Death & Consequences

I’ve always found there to be something wrong with a lack of consequences for any given action. In the real world there are plenty of repercussions for bad decisions and failure. If you gamble and lose, you lose money and possibly go into debt or face other personal problems. You wouldn’t likely run in the middle of a gang shootout or busy intersection without good cause. In traditional video games, dying usually means reverting to the last saved location, but in multiplayer online games, there are varying and often insignificant consequences. Game developers have a tough job of balancing the feeling of risk with keeping the game fun.

There was a poker application on myspace that I played for a little while. There was “chips” that you could bet and collect but had no real dollar value attached. Most players played in a similar fashion to how a realistic game would go. You don’t bet big unless you have a good hand or really think you can bluff your way through. Ocassionally though, a player would join a table that would simply max bet every hand. Complete disregard for the normal consequences of betting all your money. Unless they were challenged and lost quickly, it would pretty much ruin any table. Other players would fold, leave, or sometimes call the bet and be taken out completely in one fell swoop. Of course, there is a chance someone feels ballsy and goes all-in, but not every hand or that commonly. The realism and fun of the game was hurt because losing the chips meant nothing, a player could log back in or re-install the app and be good to go yet again. In other types of multiplayer games, specifically WoW, the lack of penalties for dying or losing sometimes can hinder the behavior and strategy of some of the players.

Daily Thoughts: Ding! The Consequences of Leveling

Leveling is probably one of the most satisfying events while playing WoW. Not quite as satisfying as letting a jerk dps die when they pull a pack of trash without waiting for tank, but still pretty satisfying. Pretty much every new level there is a talent point or new spell enticing us to reach the next plateau.

My mage reached level 80 and started Cataclysm content just recently. Which, I must say is a nice change of pace from previous content. Wrath of the Lich King content was great when it was relevent. Now it seems slow and clunky like BC content once was – not just because I’ve done it so many times on other alts - but also because the questing system and layout for this expansion is that much better. Reaching 78 was actually the biggest jump in “power” for my mage though, because of the Cataclysm quality greens. My spell power doubled and stamina tripled going from 77-79 because of the massive item level difference. After that, the power growth jumped again upon receiving mastery at level 80. It took only slightly longer than an hour to reach 81 but here I noticed something. My DPS didn’t really go up. A couple of upgrades had only a tiny effect. Level 82 and a couple more upgrades and my DPS remained constant. How can I gain a few hundred spell power, more haste/mastery/crit rating and not gain DPS?

Daily Thoughts: Freezing Frost Mages Batman!

I have to be honest: I hate frost mages. Not quite as much as I hate the fear mechanic, but pretty fiercely nonetheless. That said, mine is level 74 and I’m having a blast being a royal pain in the butt to countless alliance that dare cross me!

Frost is Broken

My 74 mage is dual spec frost and fire. In full heirloom gear (head, chest, shoulders, weapon, trinks, back) and a mix of quest/dungeon gear otherwise I’m finding myself pulling about 2300 dps in fire. This isn’t a difficult rotation but does involve a handful of buttons and paying a little attention to DoT timers. On the other hand, frost can do 2100 single target DPS while pushing only frostbolt and ice lance during a fingers of frost proc or while moving. I hear the problem isn’t so bad at max level.

On the other hand, in PVP the issue is magnified. I can ice lance crit other players for 70% of my HP repeatedly if they’re frozen. Frost nova + ice lance is brutal. Not to mention adding deep freeze (a 5 second stun) plus a counterspell that is also a 4 second silence. I can often easily kill a healer of equal level and greater health without giving him the chance to even cast a spell. If there’s already a HoT or bubble on the target, spellsteal makes it mine. I got to witness an exaggerated version of this in arena at max level. Two weeks ago my druid/warrior 2′s team had 6 wins 3 losses with 2 of the losses against teams with frost mages. The week after that, we went 7 wins 10 losses, 9 of the losses being teams with frost mages (including a team that was dual frost mages). We did beat 2 teams with frost mages though. There is of course a possibility that our comp or skill just doesn’t have the tools to beat a frost mage, but I don’t feel like the problem should be that substantial. Finally, players tend to gravitate to what is most EZmode or over powered. So, 11 teams with frost mages out of 17 matches total? Seems a bit excessive. Wonder why the players are gravitating that way?

Frost is also freakin’ fun

There is another pretty strong reason players have decided to rock out with their frost out in PVP. It’s really fun! I’ve been spending most of my leveling time between 40-70 leveling and up until almost 70 I was playing with the fire spec. The talent points on my frost off spec slowly grew and grew, unspent, unloved. Until finally, one evening, I had my face repeatedly beat in by frost mages while pvping on a different toon. I decided that there must be something to this frost mage thing – and I’ve been slowing, freezing and murdering alliance as they try to feel in terror ever since. Leveling frost is definitely a solid choice for anyone bring their mage up. Although all specs can bring something interesting to the table, frost has a great skill set for preventing getting beat on by mobs or other players and makes it ideal for a class not running around in plate.

Daily Thoughts: Resto Druid PVP

In Wrath, Resto Druids were arguably the most over powered healing class in PVP. While that title is now often thrown at Resto Shamans or Holy Paladins, we former trees of HoT-ty goodness can still definitely hold our own. Aside from that, playing a resto druid in PVP is fun as all hell. There’s almost nothing like jumping into a large mass of players fighting, rolling HoTs on your team and turning the tide as, suddenly, the enemy can’t kill your teammates. Combine that with having a host of instant-cast spells and being able to break snares when changing form (something only resto druids can do now) and they can be really, really hard to bring down.

Daily Thoughts: Patch Day Blues

So 4.1 is in full swing and with that comes all the wonder and joy of new content and new ridiculous bugs. Fortunately, I wasn’t struck too seriously by the patch day blues. The majority of my addons worked right off the bat. The only notable exception for me was recount, but I can still raid without it. Yes, I can raid without watching my epeen grow and flourish. I got home about 20 minutes before raid time, downloaded the patch content, and went right to work tanking BWD and BoT. There were a few hiccups along the way to this otherwise very successful evening. A few of our raiders had trouble zoning in to the instances. They were getting odd error messages such as the instance cannot be found. Others disconnected when releasing from their corpse after a wipe. The most curious was on the Omnitron encounter. When the first boss mob reached 50 energy, it did not trigger a second. Eventually it ran out of energy and powered off without spawning any more bosses. I’m pretty sure someone declared we dps’d too hard that we broke it. Needless to say, we didn’t break it. If you get this bug, don’t fret too much. Just get everyone out of the instance and come back in. After that it was all smooth sailing. I tanked Chimaeron, Atramedes and the Twin Dragons for the first time and one shot them! Go me… ugh, I mean us… go us!

So you might be wondering, is there a list of known issues with patch 4.1? Why yes, yes there is. Blizzard was nice enough to post them HERE – a location which should have more current issues as time goes on. I’ve also included the entire list after the break, at least as it was at the time of this posting. Also check back on this blog in the next couple days for info on the new instances!

Daily Thoughts: It Was My First Time and…

No, I wasn’t tanking this boss, but some accidental fire mishaps ending up with us writing a letter. Besides, I don’t usually include a screen shot, be grateful.

So it was my first time and I rocked it! Just a few days ago we’re about to start forming up our raid for the night and noticed our sign-up list was lacking some key features. Namely, we were missing a second tank. I actually could have taken the easy way out and let our shaman take his alt Paladin. He is completely capable and geared almost completely in epics. If you’ve been reading, I did have a series of blogs about being scared to tank. This shaman of ours really wanted to gear his main and also really doesn’t like tanking. I decided to take up the challenge and let big ugly things beat on my face for the next 3 hours.

And beat my face they did. As I can recall, there was only 2 wipes during the night caused by my tanking. First was a death during the Omnitron encounter. You could also blame that on the healers for not keeping me up, but with relatively sub-par gear, my CD usage could have been a lot stronger. The only other wipe was a complete result of my fail. We were working on Throne of the Four Winds and I was tanking the frost boss. Never before had I been subject to such a constant slowing effect while switching to the other platform and started running for it too late. Missing the tank swap can be (and was) pretty fatal. Outside of that, things went pretty smoothly. Of course, I was the off tank so I had the pleasure of raid DPSing on my DK for 3 of the 6 bosses we fought that night. All in all, raid tanking – both bosses and trash – was dramatically easier than tanking a heroic. I’d be willing to wager this is due to having a group of competent players as opposed to a random collection of potential douches that don’t expect to
ever see you again. Whatever the reason, I won’t have any qualms with tanking some more in the future.

It can be pretty nice occasionally, though, to not tank or heal some raids. Just getting to pewpew/smashsmash a boss and move out of stuff occasionally is a lot more relaxing.

Daily Thoughts: Some Jewelcrafting Tips & QQ

I’ve been making money hand over fist selling WotLK uncommon and rare gems since the middle of WotLK. It was a massive cash-cow and once I got a little bit of gold saved up from farming ore, prospecting, and selling cut gems I switched to buying ore and speeding up the process by a metric ton. Although I also eventually had herbalism, alchemy, tailoring, blacksmithing, inscription, and enchanting, nothing ever came close to the sustained profits from selling those WolTK gems for me – and still hasn’t.

Daily Thoughts: A Brief History of Me – TBC

I started WoW midway through The Burning Crusade after a friend/roommate offered to buy me the game if I’d play. Prior to this, the idea of spending reoccurring money to keep playing a game seemed ridiculous. Although I enjoyed Warcraft 2 and 3, I thought, “why would I keep paying for one game when I could just buy a new one every few months with the money I’d be spending”? But, given that the initial cost was zero and the first month was free, it became a fairly no risk decision to give it a try. So I created my account, made a warrior, and was a terribly bad noob.

My recruiter was horde so naturally I followed suit. This is something I am eternal grateful for because who wants to be dirty alliance? (At first I wondered if bashing alliance could be bad for reader retention, insulting half of players and all… then I remembered Alliance can’t read – they only communicate through garbled letters and occasionally say “me luv u”.)  My class choice was fairly split between Paladin and Warrior. I wanted a beastly, 2-handed axe wielding monster of damage output and eventually decided on an Orc Warrior. My first choice was ThornDrumheller after a character from one of my favorite book series, but it didn’t work out. I had recently watched 300 and took my next choice and named this fresh orc “Threehundred” on account of not being able to use numbers in a name. This was a first among a great many bad decisions that I made on my noobish trek through beginning WoW.

The warrior began (and still is actually) as a fury warrior. Without too much direction after the first few levels (and a couple of RFC runs when able) I eventually learned dual wield and promptly ran around with a dagger and a shield. In my defense, the dagger had the best damage I’d found at the time, and it just seemed to make sense that I’d live longer wearing the shield. He struggled all the way to level 26, eventually dual wielding daggers, and found himself in Hillsbrad. After 26 grueling levels, having to stop and drink repeatedly, I parked him in the Tauren Mill Inn and never played him again. Ok, so I did eventually, but that’s a later story. I liked the overall feel of the melee damage dealer but wanted self heals. Naturally, I moved onto my Paladin.

Back in TBC, you didn’t have to declare a talent tree ahead of time. You could sort of pick points as you went along. I sort of picked points that seemed immediately good regardless of the tree I was going down. I ended up mostly holy and the eventually had a proper holy spec. Of course, this was awful. I just didn’t know it yet. I quested about 40 levels in holy spec. This was a long, long grind. At some point real life got a little too busy and I ended up taking a long break from Wow. I think I was level 63 at the time. I never participated in any raids during this time. I did watch a friend of mine do kara and thought it looked pretty cool, but , level 63′s can’t raid.

Before taking my break, I also did a great deal of PVP both as holy and ret. I honestly probably would have hit max level during TBC instead of not getting there til later. Instead I left Paladin floundering in Outlands for a good several months, awaiting the day I’d return and bring it to greatness!…or at least max level.