2.4 PTR – My first impression

We had our first run of Sunwell last night and had an interesting time with the sights, the lag (oh the lag), the Sunwell trash mobs, and our first attempts at Kalecgos. Here’s the rundown.

--- SIGHTS ---
The island where Sunwell resides… I guess I’ll just call it Sunwell Isle… is not terribly flashy, but rather basic and in tune to the normal blood elf visuals and architecture. I didn’t get a chance to explore more than the Staging Area and the instance bridge due to way too many people in one damn place, but I’m sure it will look fine. I just hope that it’s not a carbon copy of the outside visuals of Silvermoon City. I require depth. I also think that the general layout is a bit too bright. These are corrupt high elves… why is everything still so cheerful with bright colors? It makes my eyes water a bit. =/

--- INSTANCE: SUNWELL 25-MAN ---
It’s another one of those “inside looking out” instances, like those in Hellfire Peninsula. I like it so far, but again, bright colors make seeing the targeting circles on the mobs, and sometimes the mobs themselves a bit hard to see (I’ll have to adjust my gamma just for this instance I think). The layout of the instance, at least up to Kalecgos, is nice and clean. Nice big open areas, no suppression room type places, and no crowded hallways make this enjoyable (the bridges are the closest to being crowded, but they are more than wide enough). Also, putting repair and reagent vendors in the beginning of the instance was genius. Thank you Blizzard.

Now… the mobs. They are fairly straight forward in how to beat them. No tricks or LOS fighting so far, as they are similar to the packs in the area between the Mother and Council rooms in BT. The solo machines are pretty simple too, and they come with spiffy sound effects for their “chain lightning” type attacks. The interesting part was fighting the normal packs with a Scout added in. The Scouts will run to a nearby machine to activate it, and basically create a wipe as you can’t fight the pack, and the Scout, AND the machine. We found out the hard way that the Scout had been changed to make it immune to ALL CC… so we had to rush the Scout and melt it and then deal with the pack with the machine still deactivated (we later pulled the machine solo for loot). Fun stuff eh? We also ran into an interesting bug (we think) with the room at the top of the ramps right before Kalecgos. The mobs in the room, as well as the patrol that SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN UP THERE, were respawning almost immediately after killing them. Moving into the final bridge area before Kalecgos seemed to fix it. It’s not a mini suppression room as pulling the mobs out of the room and onto the bridge makes them evade and reset.

--- KALECGOS ---
This is a unique fight, requiring coordination and lots of communication between raid members. In the fight, you must battle Kalecgos as a Dragon outside, AND battle a demon who is trying to kill Kalecgos as a Human… kind of like an exorcism. Thankfully, both battles should be rather quick as the Dragon and Demon were both dropping fast. The problem was the mechanics of the fight and the rotations needed to defeat both enemies. Due to the simultaneous fight, you need 2 tanks and enough healers and DPS on both ends to win, but thanks to an arcane buffet Kalecgos does in Dragon form, a rotation must be made else the stacks will get too high and people will get 1-shot. We found that the buffet can be removed with Ice Block and CloS, so at the very least, Mages and Rogues can last longer on the Dragon fight than other classes. The portals that spawn to take you into the Demon fight explode arcane damage upon appearing… and they are buggy. You have to click the base of the portal to make it through, as I later found out sitting at a portal clicking like crazy, only to watch it vanish. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to experience the Demon side of the fight that much, but it seems pretty straight forward. You just can’t let human Kalecgos tank the Demon as he won’t survive… oh yeah, and the Demon does shadow bolt volleys. More fun stuff. We know what to do, we just need to work on our rotation and how to communicate it will the entire raid effectively.

--- NEW COMBAT WINDOW ---
It broke the important things. It broke Omen, and SCT, and any other UI addon that involves parsing or changing the combat window. It looks silly and did not need to be changed.

--- NEW INTERFACE WINDOWS ---
I understand they were going to simplify them and organize them, but why change what is working? Now we get to learn the new windows and categories to figure out where all of our custom settings are. Bleh.

--- LAG ---
The outside world lag was to be expected, I understand that much. The lag was fairly OK for most of our 3 hour run in Sunwell with only a handful of spikes (1 of which caused a wipe thank you very much). Combining the different regions and countries into a central PTR was very foolish. They would already lag like crazy, why add to it? Oh, right, almost forgot… CRITICAL ERRORS. I couldn’t remember the last time I got a critical error in WoW (been over 1 year) until I played on the PTR. I had 3 for the night, 2 while loading into the Sunwell instance itself and 1 in the middle of the Kalecgos fight. Others weren’t as lucky as I heard the same people at least 5 times last night exclaim they received a critical error. I at least hope the information we send to Blizzard about the error helps them to correct issues as simple as loading into an instance before this is released.

--- OTHER NOTABLE THINGS ---
1. At any given point outside of instances, you will see at least 2 Rogues with both Warglaives.
2. General Chat is more of a circus than the General Chat on your home server.
3. There are some very clever character names indeed.
4. Count on most of your UI to work flawlessly, except for anything with your combat window of course.
5. Oh yes… there will be lag.

When is it OK to buy/sell raid drops?

I’m writing this due to an in-game mail sent to my guild leader, requesting to purchase Illidan’s Warglaives in the event they drop. My initial response on Vent was “Did you tell him to go &$^% himself?”… was that too harsh? Let’s find out.

The reason for my response was due to the following:

1. This player wants to buy legendaries.
2. I highly doubt this player (probably a Rogue) is in a guild that is either clearing or progressing through BT. If they are, W-T-F??!!
3. MM has 3 main Rogues (The Big 3 as I call us, as we are 3 of the best PvE Rogues on Horde Sargeras) and only 2 OH Warglaives have dropped… no MHs. EVER.
4. The player was offering 2500g per Warglaive. GG undervaluing THE best swords in the game currently, and possibly through 2.4 and into the next expansion.
5. I will assume this player has zero knowledge of the Illidan fight itself, and therefore, a raid liability.

Given that, and the fact that I don’t know or want to know who this player is, I would say my response sufficed. Now… when would it be correct to buy/sell raid drops?

It would be OK (in my opinion) for a guild to SELL raid drops if and when:

1. Nobody in the raid needs or wants the item.
2. The item in question drops consistently from trash mobs and/or is not BoP (i.e. Hearts of Darkness, Gems, etc.).
3. The guild no longer really goes into the instance where it drops.
4. The player wishing to BUY is not a liability in the raid for the mob that drops the item.
5. Payment is sufficient and fair to both BUYER and SELLER.
6. The sale opportunity is initiated by the guild itself.
7. The item is a Quest drop, and the player complies with #4 above.

It would be BAD / STUPID / DISHEARTENING for a player to attempt to BUY raid drops if:

1. The player has no gear from the instance in question (no, patterns do not count).
2. The item is a legendary item.
3. You aren’t in the guild. You didn’t work together with us to beat this content. The drop rates are low as it is. NO.
4. The player does not negotiate with the guild or is 100% set on paying a certain price less than the weapon value.
5. The player’s main motive is to gear the character out then sell it.
BTW, having the Warglaives on a character (say, a Rogue) could increase the account value by at least $800-$1000. At 5000g for both, the real life cost of that 5000g comes nowhere near the real cost of the account with the items themselves.

Don’t get me wrong… this isn’t an elitist post. This is simply a guide (and a warning) on if and when it would be proper etiquette to obtain raid drops from a main raiding guild. Hell, I even followed these steps with an Alliance guild (Eminence) to craft the Leather haste bracers… which later fell out due to the announced haste rating nerf and lack of guild communication.

So if you’re polite about it, then you will be taken into consideration. However, if you honestly think you can get an item that guild members still need or without first asking them if they are up for sale, the guild will probably poke fun at you for a few days for not having the common sense to ask before making the offer… more so depending on the item.

2.4, PTR crashes, and character copy queues… oh my!

Yup, 2.4 is now officially on the PTR and not quite stable yet (which was expected). Thanks to the people at MMO-Champion and WorldofRaids, loads of confirmed loot info, class ability changes, boss encounters (well… only a couple actual fights as of yesterday) and instance screenshots were made available to our eager minds. So, out of those, what has me excited (and pissed off) exactly?

1. Already too many melee dagger loots!
--- Is Blizzard still trying to shove this piece of cake down our (Rogues) throats? We want more variation without having to be in a certain direction or position to the mob… or at least that’s what I feel. I need more stat pictures of the swords, maces, and fists.

2. New fist weapons!
--- OMG! The weapon skins picture on the above websites showed there were at least 3 fist weapon models in 2.4, with one of them having dropped already with some nice stats. I’ll be waiting for the matching MH shortly as that one was not the matching pair in the picture. But hey, it’s bulky, spiky, and it looks cool.

3. New heroic 5-man offers little to zero upgrades for BT raiding guilds!
--- I nearly saw this coming. I’m upset, but not really since our (MM) primary focus will be the 25-man instance. But still, I expected some of the items to be near upgrades.

4. Kael’thas is on crack!
--- Or was. Have you seen the picture of Kael 2.0?! HIS DAMN FACE IS MELTING! If that is what happens to Blood/High Elves after a dark arcane withdrawal, I’ll be sure to keep the lovely ladies away from that crap, else I’m going to move even more attention to the Draenai ladies. Hey, I have needs! =p

5. Confirmed 25-man loot already comparable to current T6 in power!
--- This was also a bit upsetting as I was expecting the items to be a bit more powerful than they currently seem to be. Currently, most of the Sunwell drops seem to be around the same power (sometimes slightly better) than the BT/Hyjal gear... at least for Rogues. I had already run the DPS points numbers on the new gear (2 AP = 1 AGI = 1 CRIT = 1 point) and most of the pieces are on the same level or higher slightly, depending on if you need haste rating or armor penetration. I will remain optimistic as I am sure there is more to come, giving more options to those already with T6 to swap pieces out for other stats. This brings me to my next point…

6. T6 is being expanded to 8 pieces!
--- I am both really excited and really pissed off at this, so let me explain. Yay for Blizzard in creating the last 3 pieces of the set, which allows classes to replace gear and keep their bonuses. But, why not add more bonuses to the set… like a 6 piece or even a super 8 piece bonus? Hell, the old T3 Naxx set had 9 friggin pieces with a max 8 piece bonus (of course 8 piece sets were the norm back then, but still). This would at least give us the option to either, keep a couple of the bonuses and swap pieces out, or to keep all the pieces and obtain even stronger bonuses.

7. More loot with haste rating!
--- Stop please, or at least change haste rating back somewhat to what it used to be so it’s not entirely worthless. Waste of item level points in my opinion.

8. Armor skins are re-colored older skins!
--- I personally haven’t seen them all, but this is still upsetting… yet I understand what goes into creating a new item graphic with the correct character mountings (see my earlier blog mentioning the fist weapon mounting headache). The art team really needs to start creating new graphics and armor skins. It really sucks walking around and seeing handfuls of people with the same armor skins with slightly different color schemes. Will the upcoming T7 and Arena Season 4 sets look the same?! I know it’s a lot of work to not only create the art for the skins, but to eventually make the mountings for all character types, but to the average player… it looks like laziness.

Well, back to the grind I guess. Maybe Illidan will drop a legendary tonight… if people actually FRIGGIN SHOW UP! ><

A moment to gloat

Yay votes! Boo for the 2 NO votes! WRU comments?!

2.4 Patch Notes: Real, Fake, or sort-of Fake?

Now I don’t remember the exact notes for each class that were listed in the “unofficial” 2.4 patch notes that were posted on worldofraids.com, but I feel the need to think some through right now… because some seem strange, and other seem to break the class to be honest.

First off… the ONLY Rogue update on the list: Envenom no longer consumes poison charges. That raises some questions, 1 in particular that I posted on the Blizzard Rogue boards that may or may not have sparked a small conversation (probably not… which makes me sad). My question was that if it won’t consume poison charges, would it work with Wound Poison as well as Deadly Poison since they are the stacking poisons we have access to? And if that doesn’t bake your noodle, what about with poisons without charges? Would Envenom then act like the damage modifier for Mutilate? That would be cool. That would mean Envenom would be a replacement for Eviscerate against poisoned targets that would have the same mechanic as Eviscerate... but if the damage is still poison CHARGE based, then it would only be for Deadly/Wound poison.

What does this mean for builds? Well, PvP would definitely change as you would see more Shadowstep 20/0/41 builds, as well as Hemo/Assassination builds instead of the normal Hemo/Combat 0/31/30 builds. As far as PvE, the builds wouldn’t really change that much. The Combat 19/42/0 builds would still exists with Vile Poisons, but the hybrid Hemo support builds would partially have their Combat points split into Assassination. I haven’t gotten a chance to play around with the different build possibilities, but they should be interesting if this little nugget of information on 2.4 turns out to be true.

Now, on to what little I remember about the other classes. =p

Warlocks got the damn shaft, and hard. Coefficients were changes as well as the Imp Shadowbolt debuff would now only effect the Warlock who cast the debuff. That is lame considering debuffs from other classes already have an effect on the damage from other classes (bleed Druid debuff that increases Rogue bleed damage for example). Hopefully those were fake, as this would cut down on their PvE DPS by a significant amount.

Druids had a few things nerfed. The main thing… the Lifebloom ability had its coefficient changed. But also, their primary PvP CC, Cyclone, had its range reduced. Now that probably won’t matter in the long run if true, but in the arena, every second and every yard counts.

Priests… say goodbye to mass mana burn spam in the arena if this goes through (/wave). I know it sucks for them, but even I have to admit that it was a bit too strong for PvP. During several stints in EoTS a couple weeks back, a Priest and I teamed up to defend the BE Tower the entire game. Well, any caster that decided to try their luck, was not only locked down by me, but during the course of 6-8 seconds, was completely out of mana thanks to the Priest… starting at full each time. I was amazed at how well it worked in the arena as well, partnering up with a guildmate’s alt (Drazhara). While I do believe it should have been changed, cutting its effectiveness in half was a bit too extreme. What ever happened to mini patches?

I’ll have to look over the notes again as my brain doesn’t seem to be working this morning. 2.4 should be coming soon on the PTR, and if my crappy memory serves, it should be ready today… but maybe not stable. But as far as the validity of these patch notes, one thing has been true for the past year or so…

… there is always SOME validity to “unofficial” patch notes released on the Blizzard boards.