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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm |OT| of Who the hell is Deathwing, anyway?

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Twig

Banned
SatelliteOfLove said:
Someone said this a year or so ago about leveling while defending Classic and BC; without others, a major part of the experience is missing, you either plow thru the levels till its in the rearview mirror or be of the type that likes to explore every nook and cranny just cuz.
And this is why phasing blows.

Every new zone so far, until I've reached the final phase, I've only seen a maximum of two people per hour.

Ridiculous.
 

No45

Member
AceBandage said:
Late, I know, but seeing non-undead in the farms in WPL is freaking me out...
Weirder hitting the Argent Crusade/Cenarion Circle camp as Undead and helping them to restore WPL...

Hit 40 tonight, plate + epic mount FTW! Also did a few more dungeons (RFK, first and second parts of Mara) as tank - I'm really quite enjoying it so far. It's so refreshing being able to chose EXACTLY when you want to run an instance, rather than having the LFD tool up and it popping up just when you don't want it to!
 
D

Deleted member 22576

Unconfirmed Member
SatelliteOfLove said:
I was actually surprised they initiated yet more +XP% stuff with Cata, they did just get done with a slick redo of so much; it just exacerbates the problem when they have a more elegant solution.
Yeah.. I've been playing the game since launch. Er.. I guess even before launch in the stress test beta. But due to time constraints and an inability to sit still I've only been able to subscribe to WoW maybe 2 months out of every year. So I've working on this character for like 5 years. :lol And am only just now getting to level 50. Anyway, I've noticed since I resubbed this month that its just not as... spellbinding. I don't have the same sence of accomplishment. I'm getting 6000 XP for the most mundane of quests, each level flys by in like two hours. I genuinely appreciate the fact that I'm going to get to see the endgame stuff sooner.. but the journey has DEFINITELY been ruined. It's still fun, don't get me wrong.. but it's not as amazing.
 

Bisnic

Really Really Exciting Member!
Twig said:
And this is why phasing blows.

Every new zone so far, until I've reached the final phase, I've only seen a maximum of two people per hour.

Ridiculous.

Low lvl zones or high lvl Cataclysm ones? There is so many people in the high lvl zones.

Maybe you should get to a higher pop server if you only see 2 people every hour.
 

bill0527

Member
No45 said:
Weirder hitting the Argent Crusade/Cenarion Circle camp as Undead and helping them to restore WPL...

Hit 40 tonight, plate + epic mount FTW! Also did a few more dungeons (RFK, first and second parts of Mara) as tank - I'm really quite enjoying it so far. It's so refreshing being able to chose EXACTLY when you want to run an instance, rather than having the LFD tool up and it popping up just when you don't want it to!

Piece of advice if you enjoy LFD. Stay a tank if you want to choose EXACTLY when you run an instance. Get a heals as your off spec if you're a pally or druid.

Right now at level 85 if you're DPS, its about a 30 minute queue for regular dungeons and 45 minutes to an hour wait on heroics. Tanks and heals have no waiting.
 

B-Dex

Member
bill0527 said:
Piece of advice if you enjoy LFD. Stay a tank if you want to choose EXACTLY when you run an instance. Get a heals as your off spec if you're a pally or druid.

Right now at level 85 if you're DPS, its about a 30 minute queue for regular dungeons and 45 minutes to an hour wait on heroics. Tanks and heals have no waiting.


Not true! I have a 3 min wait as healer :(
 

Twig

Banned
Bisnic said:
Low lvl zones or high lvl Cataclysm ones? There is so many people in the high lvl zones.

Maybe you should get to a higher pop server if you only see 2 people every hour.
High level.

And it IS a high pop server. Stormreaver.

Regardless of if I see a lot of people, phasing blows for a lot of other reasons, too. I'd list them, but that's the kind of thing that tends to get people to hate me really fast. ):

I just had to rage a little bit because I HATE IT SO MUCH. I'm better now.
 

Draft

Member
bill0527 said:
Piece of advice if you enjoy LFD. Stay a tank if you want to choose EXACTLY when you run an instance. Get a heals as your off spec if you're a pally or druid.

Right now at level 85 if you're DPS, its about a 30 minute queue for regular dungeons and 45 minutes to an hour wait on heroics. Tanks and heals have no waiting.
QQ DPS classes. That's what you get for playing classes that are actually fun.

Healz 4 life.
 

Shrennin

Didn't get the memo regarding the 14th Amendment
Well, I dived in yet again. This time with my first WoW Expansion Collector's Edition...

WoW is the one annoying game that, no matter how much you try to get away from it, it keeps calling until you jump in yet again. Ug. Hopefully Cat. will be big enough a change to the WoW I grew accustomed to that I won't be disappointed.
 

iammeiam

Member
Man, Cataclysm appears to have straight-up ruined a quest chain in Dragonsblight. I just completed Return To Angrathar, there's a big epic cutscene wherein
the Forsaken show up and fuck everybody over
, and then... nothing. I get a whisper from a character asking me to go to them, but I do and no quest prompt.

Trip to Google later, it turns out this whole thing's supposed to lead into another subset of quests that can't happen anymore because Varian's gone, so instead Blizz just cut out the last few quests. Given how much care went into updating a lot of the old world stuff, it's disappointing that this bit is so sloppy. At the very least, don't have somebody constantly whisper at me when they have nothing to say!
 

ultron87

Member
I really really hope they actually didn't just cut off the rest of the Wrathgate quests. That is pretty much the best quest chain.
 

SpudBud

Member
iammeiam said:
Man, Cataclysm appears to have straight-up ruined a quest chain in Dragonsblight. I just completed Return To Angrathar, there's a big epic cutscene wherein
the Forsaken show up and fuck everybody over
, and then... nothing. I get a whisper from a character asking me to go to them, but I do and no quest prompt.

Trip to Google later, it turns out this whole thing's supposed to lead into another subset of quests that can't happen anymore because Varian's gone, so instead Blizz just cut out the last few quests. Given how much care went into updating a lot of the old world stuff, it's disappointing that this bit is so sloppy. At the very least, don't have somebody constantly whisper at me when they have nothing to say!
Wow, this is some bullshit. That was one of the best quest chains in the game.
 

ultron87

Member
I would hope that they just had to take some time to rework the quest with the new Old World or something and that it will be back.

The Undercity section of that quest is too great for anyone to miss. And it already uses heavy phasing so it shouldn't have any problems bringing the Northrend time period into the "future" in the Old World.
 

Chris R

Member
Sucks you can't get Azeroth Flying without Cata active on your account :( My $20 account with WoW/TBC/WotLK WANTS TO FLY damnit.
 

Twig

Banned
Maxrpg said:
they did. IT SUCKS.
BUT BUT NO ONE WANTS TO DO IT AGAIN ONCE THEY'VE DONE IT ONCE

^ actual argument someone once made for removing the quest

It's a shame, because it's one of the few GOOD uses of phasing in the game. Takes you to your own little specific Undercity instead of making an entire zone a billion different phases.
 

bill0527

Member
Another protip. If you think DPS queues are bad, don't even fucking think about queueing with 2 of your DPS buddies :lol :lol

WoWScrnShot_122010_225040.jpg
 

imtehman

Banned
bill0527 said:
Another protip. If you think DPS queues are bad, don't even fucking think about queueing with 2 of your DPS buddies :lol :lol

WoWScrnShot_122010_225040.jpg

lmao. can't imagine what queues would be like if there were no dual speccs
 

Zeliard

Member
Just ventured to an area too tough for my char right now, died, and now I can't load the game world up at all. Yay. It just locks up at the loading screen at 90% and none of the recommended "fixes" work. Now I have to wait for whenever a GM decides to teleport me out of there, and they apparently have a "high number of petitions" going right now.
 

Sober

Member
bill0527 said:
Another protip. If you think DPS queues are bad, don't even fucking think about queueing with 2 of your DPS buddies :lol :lol
After leveling both a tank and a healer, I absolutely cannot stand queuing for DPS in the RDF. I thought they merged all those battlegroups together so it wouldnt take so long. Guess not.

Also, a guildie kept complaining about tanks not accepting their queues, so I started the RDF, joined the queue then kept declining my invitations.

I made many enemies that day.
 

water_wendi

Water is not wet!
Sober said:
After leveling both a tank and a healer, I absolutely cannot stand queuing for DPS in the RDF. I thought they merged all those battlegroups together so it wouldnt take so long. Guess not.

Also, a guildie kept complaining about tanks not accepting their queues, so I started the RDF, joined the queue then kept declining my invitations.

I made many enemies that day.
:lol Sounds like something for me to do while im farming herbs.
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
Sober said:
After leveling both a tank and a healer, I absolutely cannot stand queuing for DPS in the RDF. I thought they merged all those battlegroups together so it wouldnt take so long. Guess not.
the problem has nothing to do with battlegroups. at all..

the problems are two fold. First, DPS queues have always been insane. Even at the height of popularity of the DF and wotlk heroics, DPS on busy servers had to often wait at least 20+ minutes for a queue, whereas tanks and healers would often see stuff like "average wait time 8 sec..... JOIN DUNGEON". It's no different now.. arguably even worse now that they added even more viable DPS to the game through the redesigned talent trees.

Second problem is Cata heroics. They are hard. Not impossibly hard. I've cleared out almost all of them so far and IMHO they are really extremely fun. But they are harder than wrath, require people to work together, require groups to either know the heroic or someone who does know it, explain it to the PUG, and hopefully the pug follows... anyway, long story short it's scared people off. there are very few people queuing for heroics, and most that are are usually "LFG: LF Tank/Healer for heroics"

the heroic situation will right itself though. As people continue to gear up, get rep, etc the heroics will become easier. For instance my character is at 342 ilevel on the armory, and I am pretty safe in heroics as long as I don't pull aggro and stay away from the intentionally one shot stuff. once Im finally in 346 and higher I am guessing that heroics will begin to approach where they were in wrath. 7 more pieces and I'll be set.
 

Mzo

Member
The real problem is that the order of difficulty and responsibility goes something like this:

healer > tank > everything else

It also doesn't help that the only good players can satisfactorily fill the first two spots.

My paladin is a tank and a healer, but that's mainly because I'm a guild leader and actually care about the people I play with.
 

forgrim

Member
Mzo said:
The real problem is that the order of difficulty and responsibility goes something like this:

healer > tank > everything else

It also doesn't help that the only good players can satisfactorily fill the first two spots.

My paladin is a tank and a healer, but that's mainly because I'm a guild leader and actually care about the people I play with.

my order goes:

tank > healer > everything else

(i'm also a pally holy/prot spec)

The reason behind this is, i have a damned harder time finishing a heroic dungeon as a tank then a healer. Its just far easier, in my opinion, to finish as a healer, mainly cuz pally healing rocks right now (not in aoe situations) and even i can keep up a mediocre tank for a long period of time. However, if i go in as a tank, a mediocre healer will wipe us far more often.
 

ultron87

Member
forgrim said:
my order goes:

tank > healer > everything else

(i'm also a pally holy/prot spec)

The reason behind this is, i have a damned harder time finishing a heroic dungeon as a tank then a healer. Its just far easier, in my opinion, to finish as a healer, mainly cuz pally healing rocks right now (not in aoe situations) and even i can keep up a mediocre tank for a long period of time. However, if i go in as a tank, a mediocre healer will wipe us far more often.

So doesn't that mean a healer is more important since a good healer plus mediocre tank = finish dungeon while a mediocre healer plus good tank = lots of wipes?
 

Bisnic

Really Really Exciting Member!
I do not even dare to queue for heroics, even as a mage.

1) The 45 mins queues
2) The huge risk of the group falling apart before we get to the end.
3) Heard stories of pug heroics taking 2-3 hours. Personally, i would rather lvl an alt or do dailies/archaeology than this.
4) Dealing with nerd rages from complete strangers is not something i wanna deal with.

The sad part is im not gaining any Justice or Valor points by skipping them right now. My guild is pretty casual, so not everyone is 85 and with 333 blues now and most 85 are still doing regs, so i gotta wait until during or after the holidays for doing heroic guild runs.

I guess it gives me more chances to lvl archaeology and my alts professions until then.
 

forgrim

Member
my order is based on difficulty of play, not based on importance of class (this is obviously all in pov of a paladin)

I have to play perfectly as a tank to give a chance for a mediocre healer to keep me up (LOH, DP, DS stack drops, taunts, and all the 20% damage reduction modifiers), but as a healer, all i do is holy shock, heal, holy shock procs, eternal glory/aoe heal, 20% raid damage reduction, LOH, and repeat.)

I consider healer the most important class to raid dungeon success, but tank the hardest to play basically.
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
in a bad group yes, healers have the hardest job. and unfortunately thanks to wrath there are lots of "bad groups" out there at least as far as cata is concerned. As a DPS though, my job is not easy IF my goal is to assist in making the healers/tanks job easier.

CC. I'm typically having to go through at least two sheep in a single trash pull. In cases like Beauty in BRC I am having to sheep probably 6-7 times. Beauty is a great example because typically Beauty has to be tanked around to get out of lava pools so I have to be able to run back to my sheep and reapply as needed.

ice block. I can't rely on the healer to heal me, especially in one shot scenarios. Even if the healer is good, as a cauterize mage I am typically fucked (see below). It is in my best interest, and the groups best interest, to apply IB liberally.

cauterize. as a fire mage I have cauterize. great talent, basically gives me free hit points. Problem is that if I am one- or two-shotted, I go from full to dead instantly (like normal), but what the healer sees is me going from near dead to 40% health instantly and thinks I've popped a pot or something. Usually this results in them thinking they have more time on me and give another quick heal to the tank or someone lower health. However cauterize means if I don't heal at least 8% of my health in 6 seconds, I'm dead. So again, this is pretty much up to me.

obviously there are things involving just groups going faster, maximizing your spec and doing the most damage to burn things down as quickly as possible. but just those three things there are areas where it's my job to make a healers job easier.. things I really didn't have to worry too much about in wrath.

not saying healers don't have a tough job. and in a bad group they unquestionably have the toughest. But in a decent group, there are plenty of things the DPS can be doing to mitigate and reduce damage usually lightening up the healers responsibility. as everyone has been saying for a bit, it's just going to be a learning curve, that's all. and while not everyone will be a great player, as the great players are getting higher level hear and running heroics for JPs, more and more (and I hate to say this, but it's true), bad or casual players will be able to be carried through heroics. It sucks, but at the end of the day it's all about the chance for loot drops combined with the 70JPs on each boss.
 

drhankmccoyphd

Neo Member
I'm pretty sure I'm going to put aside WoW once I see all the new dungeons. The heroics horror stories are not helping. Might keep the account to level my Worgen but I absolutely feel like I got my ~$55 worth from 80-85.
 
ultron87 said:
So doesn't that mean a healer is more important since a good healer plus mediocre tank = finish dungeon while a mediocre healer plus good tank = lots of wipes?
That depends on the tank and gear levels.
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
Bisnic said:
I do not even dare to queue for heroics, even as a mage.

1) The 45 mins queues
this is regardless, as there is no other way to get JPs. And if you are not getting JPs, frankly you are going to haev a tough time gearing (or getting prepared) for raiding.

2) The huge risk of the group falling apart before we get to the end.
this has always been true regardless of difficulty.

3) Heard stories of pug heroics taking 2-3 hours. Personally, i would rather lvl an alt or do dailies/archaeology than this.
these heroics are without question harder than wrath. I would gues as gear gets insanely high you'll see 30 minute heroics, but even in guild runs where we are one shotting bosses these are still taking usually an hour or more. a lot of gauntlets and 5+ minute boss fights.

The sad part is im not gaining any Justice or Valor points by skipping them right now. My guild is pretty casual, so not everyone is 85 and with 333 blues now and most 85 are still doing regs, so i gotta wait until during or after the holidays for doing heroic guild runs.
This is kind of the problem. Everyone is holding off on them, and thus everyone is bottlenecking themselves on gear. It's a chicken and egg. No one wants to do them because of their difficulty, but by not doing them they're not getting any easier.
 

Mareg

Member
ultron87 said:
So doesn't that mean a healer is more important since a good healer plus mediocre tank = finish dungeon while a mediocre healer plus good tank = lots of wipes?

I would say yes. The healer right now has to be the single most important unit of the group.
Mediocre tank or dps can still get thru if the healer is up to par. CCCCCCCCombo brakers couplet with a tank that can't keep up aggro on all but his target put healers in burnout mode.
I tank myself and every pug run that is successful, I alway always congratulate the healer. They be needing the love this expension.
 

Wizman23

Banned
Can someone give me a simple explanation of how Vanilla WoW works with all of the expansions? I downloaded the 10 day trial over the weekend and like it, just have no clue where to go from here and what to buy. Sorry again for the noob ?'s I'm 6 years late to the party
 

Dunlop

Member
ultron87 said:
So doesn't that mean a healer is more important since a good healer plus mediocre tank = finish dungeon while a mediocre healer plus good tank = lots of wipes?

I like to think so because I am biased to healers but the reality is a really good tank that actually leads the group and assign CC targets is just as invaluable as a good healer. If the mobs are properly CC'ed you can get away with a mediocre tank gear and a mediocre healer.

the reality unfortunatey is a lot of tanks still pull the mobs like they did in WOTLK and you really need a good healer to avoid the wipes
 

joelseph

Member
Everyone has outrageous health pools, everyone takes outrageous damage and having heals (specially AOE) that can't keep up and take a massive amount of mana means that healing is currently the hardest role in heroics. Wipes are happening right now because the healer is running OOM not because the tanks are having a hard time with CD rotations.
 

webrunner

Member
Wizman23 said:
Can someone give me a simple explanation of how Vanilla WoW works with all of the expansions? I downloaded the 10 day trial over the weekend and like it, just have no clue where to go from here and what to buy. Sorry again for the noob ?'s I'm 6 years late to the party

Vanilla:
All 1-60 zones in Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor except for starter zones for expansion races.
Note: All 1-60 zones are updated for Cataclysm, this does not require the expansion.
Troll, Orc, Undead, Tauren, Human, Nelf, Dwarf, Gnome
All classes but Death Knight
All professions except Jewelcrafting and Archeology (Inscription launched before Wrath with the 3.0.0 patch)

Burning Crusade:
Raised level cap to 70
60-70 zones in Outland
Blood Elf and Draenai characters.
1-20 zones for Blood Elf and Drenai (azuremist isle, bloodmyst isle, exodar, silvermoon, Eversong Woods, Ghostlands)
Jewelcrafting profession
Requires Vanilla

Wrath of the Lich King:
Raised level cap to 80
70-80 zones in Northrend
Ability to play as a Death Knight (must have a level 55 character, death knights start at level 55, one DK per server)
Requires Burning Crusade

Cataclysm:
Raised level cap to 85
80-85 zones in Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor (uldum, hyjal, Vashj'ir, twilight highlands)
80-85 zones in Malestrom (Deepholm)
Goblin and Worgen races
Goblin and Worgen starter zones (Kezan, Lost Isles, Gilneas)
Archeology secondary Profession
Requires Wrath of the Lich King.

So, playing a Worgen at level 1 requires all expansions. Playing a Death Knight requires up to Wrath. Playing a Belf at level 1 requires Burning Crusade only. Playing any character to level 85 requires all expansions. Playing, eg, a Tauren Warrior to level 60 requires no expansions.
 

Yaweee

Member
fizzelopeguss said:
is there a fel iron shortage or something?

It depends on your server/faction.

If (# of people leveling professions) >> (# of people leveling through the areas that have the corresponding resources), there will be some significant price increase. Usually.

The opposite is true, too.
 

Dunlop

Member
joelseph said:
Everyone has outrageous health pools, everyone takes outrageous damage and having heals (specially AOE) that can't keep up and take a massive amount of mana means that healing is currently the hardest role in heroics. Wipes are happening right now because the healer is running OOM not because the tanks are having a hard time with CD rotations.

We are going OOM because the tank/party is taking more damage than they should due to the lack of CC.
 

forgrim

Member
Dunlop said:
We are going OOM because the tank/party is taking more damage than they should due to the lack of CC.

Even with the best of CC (and some pulls aren't even CC related), i run out of mana pretty goddamn quickly. See Evolved Twilight Dragonkin in BRC for more details. It goes something like this, holy shock, holy light, holy light, holy shock o shit flash flash flash flash flash oom.
 

Dunlop

Member
forgrim said:
Even with the best of CC (and some pulls aren't even CC related), i run out of mana pretty goddamn quickly. See Evolved Twilight Dragonkin in BRC for more details. It goes something like this, holy shock, holy light, holy light, holy shock o shit flash flash flash flash flash oom.

haven't braved healing on my paladin (or leveled him...), Priest healing is a lot more managable now that I am better geared and they fixed our mana regen issues.

The first week was pretty much unplayable, it was at the point where I would not dispel or remove disease and let ppl die in order to keep the tank up

i just sold 2 stacks of fel iron bars for 360 gold each...

After the market died down for truegold, I make at least 750 gold a day just transmuting volatile air :D
 

joelseph

Member
Dunlop said:
We are going OOM because the tank/party is taking more damage than they should due to the lack of CC.

Forgrim already said it but it is worth repeating. Even with the maximum amount of CC applied perfectly healing is not scaling correctly and fights are coming down to how well the healer can manage the madness.

As a priest, my mana costs are so freaking jacked right now I had to remove flash heal from my spell bar.
 
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