Random Cataclysm discussion

[Correction]

# Fishing skill gains were increasing too rapidly past 500 skill and have been adjusted.
# The tradeskill nodes were too dense in Deepholm and Twilight Highlands for Mining and Herbalism. Several have been removed.

Hope you guys stocked up on your fish/heartblossom/twilight jasmine

[Mortilox]

Recipe for the alchemy drake not being BoA. I'm not leveling archaeology to 525 all over again. Such a pain in the ass to level.

[Lexa]

Both areas are instanced, that's why you can't fly directly there. You may be able to fly once you're actually there, though.

Nope, they didn't render the environment in Belf land or Spacegoat land to support flying. I've heard various theories for why, mainly relating to "too much work because no high levels go there." So they made it even more unattractive for high-levels. Gotcha. XD

(Nobody understands my space goat love.)

[Norellicus]

Their milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.

[Kurp]

I guess I just tried to fly to the Exodar area because it looked like there wasn't anything in my way. It's really annoying to encounter invisible walls like that, especially when you end up getting disconnected and forced to GY spawn.

edit: At least the BE areas have a zoning portal to go through.

edit2: Fucking FFXI/IV and how you can't walk down a one foot cliff and such.

[Norellicus]

They should do what they did in beta, auto dismount once you exit legal flying area

Mind you, that used to happen over land, like Winterspring; but still, at least you can get back to your corpse.

[Kaylia]

They should do what they did in beta, auto dismount once you exit legal flying area

Mind you, that used to happen over land, like Winterspring; but still, at least you can get back to your corpse.

Shit, make it more fun. Autodismount and spawn a giant krakken in the sea under you.

[LD]

Fish-lizard Krakken or Ouzumat Krakken?

[Kaylia]

One riding the other.

[viperlasson]

I am getting filthy rich off of the new ore. 500g per stack on my server...

[Zanz L. Barre The 3rd]

So is there any incentive to level Blacksmithing in terms of stat-bonus? As far as I know, the BS socket bonuses from LK are all we have atm.

[Melena]

That's still a significan bonus. I don't think they really changed around the bonuses to any of the tradeskills outside of gathering skills (minus skinning) give exp and that the shitty herbalism one gives you haste now.

[Zanz L. Barre The 3rd]

OH sorry I should calrify, I'm at 450 BS atm, just wondering if I should bother for 525 beyond recipes.

[Plow]

Athene did the same thing at 80 and got banned for it, lets see what happens this time.

When he did it at 80, he did it in instances by tagging then dropping group, that's why he got banned. No prob this time since he did it in the overworld, which is what the "legit" first 80 after he got banned had done.

[Plow]

So, I hit 80 on my DK about a week before cata, and it's my first 85. Here's my impressions and whatnot:

Unless mobs are nerfed, it's going to be really, REALLY hard questing for people that level new toons now when they hit cata. The mobs gain about 3x as much hp as before, and you literally gain virtually nothing by just hitting 80. I'm assuming that'll be fixed, but yeah if I hadn't had a week or so to grab some half decent loot, the first few quests would have been damn near impossible, the mobs would just plain have killed me before I could kill them when I first hit 80.

However, I was able to get through that pain by having a little bit of gear, spamming death strike, and liberal use of cc + bandages lol. Once I got a few quests in and got a decent weapon, I was pretty much fine from there on out.

Also, there were a few places (most specifically smuggler's cave and the cave after that, but I heard hyjal was even worse) where questing would become temporarily impossible for allies on blackrock. This is because we had the same quest npc's as horde, and there would literally by 30-50+ horde sitting on the questgiving npc's at all times, and they'd kill any ally that even came near it. Again this wasn't so bad as it cleared up as I got ahead of the pack (would have never been an issue in the first place if I didn't have 2k+ queues, which btw are why I'm writing this up now lol.)

Now, past the bit of complaining:

At first I wasn't sure about Vashj... but having done it all, damn that was freaking awesome. It got a little tedious at the end, where it started to feel like zangarmash with the mushrooms having mobs on them and no way to discern what was at what height, but for most of it that was not an issue at all, and the zone was really just awesome in general. I can't even count the number of quests, and just things in general that had me sitting back for a moment going "wow, that's awesome."

Plus, it all culminated in an epic ending with impressive cut-scenery, was littered with worthy humor the whole way, and, the flow of the quests (lol flow, vashj, haha rite) was awesome. I have a small issue with the way the quests are all so connected, which is that I can't go pick up the bracers I want for temporary use in twilight highlands since I'd have to do half of the zone just to get access to it. That small issue aside, I'm really impressed with the way they did quests in cata, presumably as a result of their initial "path of titans" plan. There's absolutely no need for a quest guide of any sort at this point, as the game will send you exactly where you need to go, not to mention mark it on your map. I had a few wtf moments where I couldn't figure something out and just wowheaded it, but for the most part I never really felt the need to leave the game, and the ongoing story, for any meaningful amount of time.

The same held true through uldum, which had just as many if not more awesome quests as Vashj. And, while it spread out and collapsed back in more often, the flow was still very much there, and this time even encompassed multiple storylines as well as instance leadups.

Hacking the Wibson is one of the best things I've ever seen in an mmo, rofl.


As to the new dungeons:

Well, I had the impression, as did a lot of others, that the need for CC and whatnot was going to be an immediate issue. It was not. It was rarely if at all necessary early on, and by the time I was 84 and still getting occasional BRC and throne queues, I was running some full on LK style instances where I'd just pull and pull and virtually never take a break. I tanked my first "85" instance at 84, and had no issues whatsoever. (It helped that during questing I virtually never had to choose between dps and tanking rewards, they were generally separate so I could build up both)

Heroics, though, definitely call for some CC so far. I'm certain, however, that even by the time we're in full t11, we'll be chaining most of them as well. I was sitting at like 324 ilvl, took a break for pvp and got the whole craftable armor set (more on that later), which had the side effect of allowing me to queue heroics even though I wasn't using that gear. However, I had people that knew that to queue with to start out, so it was ok.

First: locks are amazing. There's elementals everywhere, glyph of fear is awesome, and seduce is still there, too, although we haven't needed it yet. Nothing wrong with rogues and stuff either, as it's np to kill the majority of a pull within 1 minute anyway.

So, my first few groups I started heroics with about 105k unbuffed hp, around ~112k with fort and whatnot. Really had no problem with any of them, and got a few pieces of nice loot. After a few runs, I started queuing with only 1 or 2 other people, getting pug healers and whatnot. I got a few comments on my hp being low and whatnot, but really had very little issue. Given halfway decent cc, the issue was never with trash, only with bosses that occasionally get brutal. (I'm looking at you, 85k between melee and special near instantly on top of adds that give nasty dot and a dot from the boss itself on first boss in Grim Batol heroic)

In short, I had to give up on one run (grim batol as my 2nd heroic ever with just plain not enough gear and people that didn't understand, as I joined with just a rogue friend), and replace a healer that bailed after a few wipes with another and 1-shot the first boss with the replacement healer in lost city heroic. Other than that, had maybe an average of 1 wipe per instance, and less than a day after hitting 85 I'm sitting at 128k unbuffed and rarely "needing" more than 1 cc per pull.

Most of the bosses have signature mechanics that make it not just tank and spank, and many of them are much more skill intensive than we've seen in dungeons before, even those that are rehashes of raid boss mechanics.

The one thing that's kind of disappointing, but at the same time kind of nice, is that the last boss is basically never the hardest boss now. I suppose it's cool since once you get through all the hard shit you're not going to get screwed with 1 boss left, but at the same time the encounters are clearly designed to be the most epic, they're simply a step down in difficulty.

As for pvp:

Tol Barad is terrible. I have no idea how we're managing occasional wins on offense, but the design is just terrible. There's no inherent advantage given to the offense, yet it's essentially a battleground where they HAVE to "5-cap" to win.

I do, however, really appreciate how the north island is a true "pvp-encouraged" dailies area, even though there's no actual quests directly involving pvp. You're shoved face-to-face with the opposing faction the whole way, and if you can't defend yourself you're not getting shit done. You can even get straight up gy camped to the point where you couldn't leave the island/gy if you wanted to, if you get owned that hard.

Twin Peaks is wsg with new aesthetics, BfG is AB with new aesthetics. Ok, well... at least they're better than Strand, let alone the hell that is IoC.

Just wish they'd come up with some new, or at least rehashed ideas that didn't involve npc's/vehicles. Like... how about a classic capture the flag, none of this "can't cap if the other team has it," just a straight up race to be the first team to get the other's flag across midfield? Or even just a straight up deathmatch, shove 2 teams of 10 onto blade's edge arena and the first side with 50 kills wins.

Also, they fucked up with damage calculation shit again. They gave us 2-3x more hp, but gave us literally 5x+ the amount of damage, plus we're all reset on resilience. I gathered the mats and got the whole crafted pvp set made, which put me at about 1400 resilience. That gave me a whopping 14% damage reduction, so those 30k ice lance spams are now 26k... hooo doggy. It's going to take 4k+ resil to be meaningful, and it looks like having the best possible gear for the first season is going to put us around 2-2.5k. It's fun and all when you build up full runes and get the right procs to force crits on 3 oblits and drop someone inside your 3 1sec globals, it's not so fun when you're the victim and the perpetrator is a mage hopping around at range spamming 1 button at will and killing just as fast.



All in all, I'm very impressed with the new zone and quest design, and the heroics are nice and fun, although the challenge will fade quickly. I just wish they gave a shit about pvp.

In theory I'll have some raid impressions to add in a while, but I logged in to an awesome 2700 person queue at 2am on a Saturday night.

[Kaylia]

^

You could probably buy a few ilvl 278 green on AH for a few gold. If not, just team up with about anyone around for 5-10 quests.

[Correction]

Also, there were a few places where questing would become temporarily impossible for allies on blackrock. This is because we had the same quest npc's as horde, and there would literally by 30-50+ horde sitting on the questgiving npc's at all times, and they'd kill any ally that even came near it.

Twilight Highlands dailies are going to be pure rage fuel for you. They just need to remove the ability to roll Alliance on Blackrock, honestly. It's seldom a good experience for anyone who does it.

[Dryr]

You could probably buy a few ilvl 278 green on AH for a few gold. If not, just team up with about anyone around for 5-10 quests.

300+ blues on ah are under 100 ea as well. I rand the same instance 4 times yesterday, the same boe blue weapon dropped 3 of those times and I got it twice^^. Also picked up a hand ful of blue armors(after losing greed rolls on many others). Also, cata greens start at lvl 77 or 78, so theres plenty of time to gear up before hitting the new zones.

[Plow]

Twilight Highlands dailies are going to be pure rage fuel for you. They just need to remove the ability to roll Alliance on Blackrock, honestly. It's seldom a good experience for anyone who does it.

I don't mind when it's dailies, and I don't have issues with people starting shit during quests anyway. It was just when it was what you *had* to do in order to continue to level in a zone, and it wasn't even a matter of ganking, just pure "you can't hand in that quest" that it got retarded.

I love the shit out of being alliance on br tho.

[Kaylia]

I love Budd and co. These guys are awesome (especially harisson jones)