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[Alex]

They just gotta put some axes in the damn game now! =/ With DW DK back, Shamans and Rogues they have every reason to.

Stop with the damned ugly fist weapons.

 

[Angry Grimace]

They just gotta put some axes in the damn game now! =/ With DW DK back, Shamans and Rogues they have every reason to.

Stop with the damned ugly fist weapons.

They definetely need to balance DW back in the game because there's not enough classes that really use all those damn one handers.

DK DW won't be competitive without a fix to either Howling Blast or Obliterate though, as it has no FU dump that's competitive since HB is on a pretty long CD.

I have to guess the intent is to glyph Icy Touch and Spam it with the Death Runes from Blood Strike.

 

[firex]

holy shit omg orc shamans will have an enhance advantage again. thank god. Before they were clearly meant to be enhance as it suited every racial except axe spec, but now that it's axe/fist spec and they will be able to add in rogue/hunter/shaman axes, this means they can actually use gear for free expertise.

also god I am loving the paladin changes overall. nice prot changes (sanctuary is now THE de facto tank buff) plus they got rid of the seal of blood self-damage quandary and didn't have to change the shitty emblem of heroism libram.

 

[firex]

They definetely need to balance DW back in the game because there's not enough classes that really use all those damn one handers.

DK DW won't be competitive without a fix to either Howling Blast or Obliterate though, as it has no FU dump that's competitive since HB is on a pretty long CD.

I have to guess the intent is to glyph Icy Touch and Spam it with the Death Runes from Blood Strike.

Did you not see the talent for frost that makes all the 2h strikes hit with both weapons? I think that will give them good FU rune abilities for dual wield.

I am so glad they're completely bending frost over a barrel, though. It had to happen because it is TBC faceroll resto druid levels of retarded overpowered in pvp right now.

 

[Grampasso]

Grats on Yogg kill, we're still struggling with him

BTW our guild is going to join another one just for raiding 25. Our problem is the loot system, since DKP addons let tracking external people regardless their guild, but we don't like the system, while EP/GP is much fairer but doesn't let you handle non guildmates... does exist an addon capable of handling a loot system similar to EP/GP but including non guildmates? Any suggestion would be nice...

 

[Masta_Killah]

The twink change made me happy. I can finally do BGs again while I level.

 

[IcedTea]

Mage class Q&A is up too, though if you don't want to read the thirty or so paragraphs it can pretty much be summed up as: Mages are fine.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Did you not see the talent for frost that makes all the 2h strikes hit with both weapons? I think that will give them good FU rune abilities for dual wield.

I am so glad they're completely bending frost over a barrel, though. It had to happen because it is TBC faceroll resto druid levels of retarded overpowered in pvp right now.

Edit: I guess I didn't see that the talent worked with BS, OB and FS.

I thought it was just Frost Strike!


Also, that update on Blood Strike (Blood Strike: The bonus damage this ability receives from diseases on the target has been increased to 50% per disease.) has to be a typo. If it was that much it would hit harder than Heart Strike. Perhaps they meant the current bonus is increased by 50% per disease, to 18.75% bonus per disease; because Blood Strike would be hitting for more than Heart Strike that way.

 

[Alex]

Mage class Q&A is up too, though if you don't want to read the thirty or so paragraphs it can pretty much be summed up as: Mages are fine.

Yeah, I saw that, it was a horrible Q&A. I hope my my class has a better one.

They didn't cover a single damn thing I see Mages lament over. And I can't believe anyone would think Mage mana regeneration is fine. It's so busted for a DPS caster.

 

[firex]

I only find my mana regen on my mage ok because I'm still leveling and don't have molten armor yet. It's like they still have the "who needs mana regen in battle, you can create water!!!!!" mentality going. Honestly I kind of don't get why ice block doesn't let you cast evocation or evocation isn't essentially innervate, or they don't have some method of mana regen tied in to ice block or something else. That upcoming change to make ignite ticks restore mana isn't a bad idea, but... that's it?

I'm also kind of surprised they didn't say anything about imp. scorch/winter's chill vs imp. shadowbolt. You basically have to glyph to make imp. scorch worthwhile, and while you can say winter's chill is ok because frost does nothing but repeat the frostbolt hotkey over and over, it still sucks. Imp. shadowbolt works because it's just an extra proc on crit shadowbolts, like always, which is basically a repeating cycle by one crit enabling you to be 5% more likely to crit again and reapply it.

Oh yeah, one humorous note I saw last night leveling my mage in BRD: Molten War Giants or something like that past the fire naga boss have a super bugged frost vulnerability, unless they hotfixed it last night. One frostbolt at level 57 did 40k damage, 39.4k of that being vulnerability damage.

 

[Stuggernaut]

Mana was fine on my mage till the last patch, then something seemed to change (undocumented??) that makes me lose mana a lot faster. I just watch it more closely so it's all good, still wierd though.

I kind of think Mages are fine though....but only for my playstyle. I am a casual WoW'er and I gear up slow, solo a lot, and just have fun in general. My FFB/Full Frost specced Mage is perfect for that.

I know MANY hardcore mages that beg to differ with me though as there are a lot of bugs and little annoyances that hold mages back.

I don't need to be #1 DPS (I am usually top 5 in 25m stuff, and usually top 2 in 5/10man) but I see how frustrating it would be if I did care.

Love the invis change btw.

 

[IcedTea]

I know MANY hardcore mages that beg to differ with me though as there are a lot of bugs and little annoyances that hold mages back.

I'd say that is pretty accurate. I've raided in Sunwell as a mage where I struggled to break top 10 on the damage meters and was basically brought in as a support class to buff the fire locks and sheep trash. I've also managed to top the meters on OS/Maly/Naxx a good chunk of the time. You'd think that going from pulling 10th on Brutallus meters to pulling first on 3dSarth or whatever would be nice but I've still found my mage extremely frustrating to play. So much so that I quit and rerolled when I saw 3.1 was doing fuck all to remove some of the annoyances of my class. I actually laughed quite a bit today after seeing three lines under the 'Mage' section of the patch notes, and then later seeing the Mage Q&A, where the most significant statement seemed to be that Mages were fine and Blizzard wanted to buff Hunters and Warlocks instead.

It is actually quite refreshing to see this stuff and be able to just laugh at it now. I was a lot more invested in this game before and stuff like this was a constant frustration.

 

[Chris R]

Mage class Q&A is up too, though if you don't want to read the thirty or so paragraphs it can pretty much be summed up as: Mages are fine.

:lol Thank God my shaman is almost 80 :lol

 

[cubicle47b]

So Improved Water Shield is roughly 40% better than Illumination with the proposed changes. Thumbs up on that one, Blizzard. Holy Paladins needed a regen nerf but crippling Illumination over (drastically) reducing the returns from Divine Plea is crap.

 

[IcedTea]

:lol Thank God my shaman is almost 80 :lol

Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting my resto druid to 80. Northrend is so slow the third time through though, especially since I'm on a new server with no heirlooms or main to buy stuff for me :/

 

[Sciz]

Speaking as an arcane mage in a closely knit 10-man guild in Ulduar, I can't complain. Reworking evocation to be less fragile wouldn't hurt since a lost tick or two is devastating, but I've been enjoying myself and pulling my weight overall.

 

[Chris R]

Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting my resto druid to 80. Northrend is so slow the third time through though, especially since I'm on a new server with no heirlooms or main to buy stuff for me :/

It shouldn't be that bad. Without heirlooms I had to do BT/HF/Dragonsblight and Grizzly Hills before I was 77. With heirlooms I just did the first 3 to ding 77.

Speaking of 77, when is 3.2 expected? 60% flyer sucks ass, and paying to fly everwhere not in IC/SP... can add up, so it might just be worth the money now.

 

[IcedTea]

It shouldn't be that bad. Without heirlooms I had to do BT/HF/Dragonsblight and Grizzly Hills before I was 77. With heirlooms I just did the first 3 to ding 77.

Yeah, I'm a bit behind that mark myself. I just hit 74, and I'm a bit over half done Dragonblight. I might be able to hit 77 by the end of GH but I might have to do some of ZD without being able to fly too. I didn't mean it was actually slow though, just that it felt like it was taking forever. I rushed from 70-80 in about 5 days on my mage, and I took my time and went a lot more casually though on my rogue, and I enjoyed it both times. This time through I just feel like it is a complete chore.

Speaking of 77, when is 3.2 expected? 60% flyer sucks ass, and paying to fly everwhere not in IC/SP... can add up, so it might just be worth the money now.

I'd guess August. Don't hold your breath anyways.


It is a bit disappointing to hear that they won't have a loot system worked out for Battlegrounds in time for 3.2. I love the idea of just being able to level to 80 in BGs but if you can't gear up at all or get any gold in order to train your abilities and stuff then you're either going to have to do a lot of questing anyways or you'll need to sink a few thousand gold into your alt (and that is on top of the already huge costs of bags, mount training, and so on).

 

[FieryBalrog]

It is a bit disappointing to hear that they won't have a loot system worked out for Battlegrounds in time for 3.2. I love the idea of just being able to level to 80 in BGs but if you can't gear up at all or get any gold in order to train your abilities and stuff then you're either going to have to do a lot of questing anyways or you'll need to sink a few thousand gold into your alt (and that is on top of the already huge costs of bags, mount training, and so on).

I think you're exaggerating it a bit. Few thousand gold? First off, they nerfed the mount cost hugely. Its 4 gold now! Secondly, you don't need to buy all your skills to level, there's always useless skills you can skip. And finally, I think they still expect you to go out and quest every so often. I really don't think its that big a deterrent.

If they add it later, its fine with me.

 

[Chris R]

I think you're exaggerating it a bit. Few thousand gold? First off, they nerfed the mount cost hugely. Its 4 gold now! Secondly, you don't need to buy all your skills to level, there's always useless skills you can skip. And finally, I think they still expect you to go out and quest every so often. I really don't think its that big a deterrent.

If they add it later, its fine with me.

Think he is talking mounts at 80 :lol

Speaking of mounts at 80 800 + 5000 + 1000 + 190 gold for my mount :|

 

[IcedTea]

I think you're exaggerating it a bit. Few thousand gold? First off, they nerfed the mount cost hugely. Its 4 gold now! Secondly, you don't need to buy all your skills to level, there's always useless skills you can skip. And finally, I think they still expect you to go out and quest every so often. I really don't think its that big a deterrent.

If they add it later, its fine with me.

I mean, if you're okay with questing a little bit then it is really cool for sure. I've gone through Azeroth quite a lot though so if I never had to do a quest again I'd be happy. I'm talking from the standpoint of someone who wants to level 100% through battlegrounds. The costs associated with that would be significant. Take 70-80 alone, for example. You don't really notice the cost of ability training because you get like 4000g for clearing through Northrend. Most classes probably have about 50 skills to train from 71-80, costing anywhere from 15-30g per skill. Can be 1000g right there, before you think about buying your mount even. Then you have to buy your gear off of the auction house. Items generally run from 1-15g each on both servers I've played on, and you're going to want to upgrade every 5-10 levels.

Anyways, it is a step in the right direction for sure, I would just like to see levelling through BGs become a viable option, and not just have it end up where you spend a couple hours in wsg every few levels because you don't have any especially good quests to finish that last 20% before you head to a new zone.


Edit: Either way, I don't mean to be whining about this as much as I probably am. To me this is just 90% 'awesome', 10% 'well this would be fucking perfect if they'd just add x and tweak y'.

 

[Proc]

just pugged molten core with 5 others. Fun times. It was good seeing that place again. Hadn't raided their since pre-bc.

 

[Oni Link 666]

The resilience and hit scaling for pets sounds good. If you being hit capped will make your pet expertise capped though, the BM talent animal handler will only give you a longer Master's call. No mention of crit scaling for pets here though. I hope they add that. They were just talking about that the other week and have said they think BM Hunters stacking AP over Agility because it helps your pet more is a problem.

The buff to Catlike Reflexes sounds like usual Blizzard buffing talents no one uses like they buffed Lightning Reflexes for Rogues. The buff does sound pretty good though. I would rather see them put in a talent that scales up agility in there like the ones in the MM and SV tree though.

Overall it doesn't really sound like the big buff BM needs but then again the buff to Rogue's LR didn't sound that great either. BM really needs more burst and more pet survivability or a better way to control where your pet attacks from.


Here's what I really want to see for BM

- One more pet talent point to Beast Mastery so I could get Heart of the Phoenix AND 2 points Shark Attack would go a long way. It's not like there's a way to use that point for more DPS.

- An agility scaling talent. They could easily take one of those stupid talents in the BM tree out and put that in. Hell, take Sperpent Strikes out and put that in. Damn, that talent is so annoying with the SSSS sounds and the going off right when you kill something.

 

[Son of Godzilla]

I dunno, I think BM scaling with AP, Marks with ArP, and Surv with Agi feels good.

 

[aechris]

BTW our guild is going to join another one just for raiding 25. Our problem is the loot system, since DKP addons let tracking external people regardless their guild, but we don't like the system, while EP/GP is much fairer but doesn't let you handle non guildmates... does exist an addon capable of handling a loot system similar to EP/GP but including non guildmates? Any suggestion would be nice...

We do the same and the people from the other guild just have level 1 alts in our guild. They log them on to join group 6/7 in raid, pop back onto their main, then we award their alts with the points.

 

[Quake1028]

We cleared half of our weekly Naxx 10 last night with no wipes. That's progress. No loot though, not that I really need anything from any of the quarters at this point.

Joined a PUG Naxx 25 that some guildies had run the night before. Plague and Military were up. What a freaking nightmare. First, even though well geared, no one was pulling over 3k DPS.

Noth - No wipes
Heigan - No wipes (also, I survived this fight for the first time ever. 3 10 man tries and I can't dance, then I succeed in my first 25 man when I'm lagging all over the place :lol )
Loatheb - No wipes

That was fine, then shit hit the fan....

Gothik - Wiped.
Trash - Wiped
Razuvious - Wiped FOUR times. Our Priests were awful at mind controlling. So frustrating.
Trash - Wiped THREE times. Yes, you read that right....
Four Horseman - One shotted.

Sapphiron - Wiped FOUR times. My computer took a crap on me after the fourth try and I couldn't get back on so it ended there, for me.

All in all not a good first 25 man experience. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be, although with everyone saying how easy Naxx is, I doubt it. I should mention it took us over 2 hours to get from Raz to Saph.

 

[Quake1028]

On the bright side, I did get 2 new pieces of gear, although I lost on all 3 of my tier gear rolls.

 

[Macattk15]

I did not know it was possible to wipe on Gothik. I would of liked to see a video of that raid!

Raz I can understand ... ESPECIALLY in a pug. I'd kill myself I think.

 

[Foster]

A question to the Rogues amongst you. I'm new to WoW and currently have a level 80 rogue with a mutilate spec. Now I'm 80 I have been looking into all kinds of different specs, so many I'm starting to get confused. Now I'm going to be doing a mix of PVE and PVP so I was wondering what you Rogues do if you do a bit of both?

Do you have duel spec?

What specs do you use for PVP/PVE?

I was thinking of duel spec with 41 / 5 / 25 PVP and 15 / 51 / 5 PVE but unsure what weapons to use for the PVE spec as i relaise i can change it to mace or daggers if I want.

Help is much appreciated

 

[TomServo]

Got Lifebinder from Freya last night.

Silly, but I hated taking something with that name and model as a warlock. Sad fact about our guild is that we just don't get many caster drops, so you take what you can get. We got one, yes one, Turning Tide from months of KT kills, so I'm not holding my breath for a Runescribed Blade.

 

[gottalovetheglove]

A question to the Rogues amongst you. I'm new to WoW and currently have a level 80 rogue with a mutilate spec. Now I'm 80 I have been looking into all kinds of different specs, so many I'm starting to get confused. Now I'm going to be doing a mix of PVE and PVP so I was wondering what you Rogues do if you do a bit of both?

Do you have duel spec?

What specs do you use for PVP/PVE?

I was thinking of duel spec with 41 / 5 / 25 PVP and 15 / 51 / 5 PVE but unsure what weapons to use for the PVE spec as i relaise i can change it to mace or daggers if I want.

Help is much appreciated

It really doesn't matter now which to use, just use whatever spec you have the weapons for. Fist/dagger is/was considered the best when 3.1 first came out since a lot of people had a really good slow fist (Calamity's Grasp) and a really good fast dagger (Webbed Death).

If you're just starting to do heroics and stuff, I'd say save up for Greed with the Emblems of Heroism, and try as hard as possible to get into a Naxx25 for a Webbed Death which drops off Anub'rekhan (first boss of spider wing).

 

[TheExodu5]

Foster, I'll post this so you have an idea how I'm handling 80 so far with my Rogue.

Well, it's been a week and a half since I hit 80 with my Gnome Rogue. Started heroics on Sunday. So far so good.

I've got 11 Epics: eng head, emblem neck, craft shoulders, craft cape, rep quest chest, heroic bracers, T7 gloves, heroic leggings, emblem trinket (amazing), heroic crossbow. I'm also using Greed, which is a 2.6 speed epic fist weapon from heroic CoS. Best weapon you can get for combat rogue in heroics.

So run lots of heroics, get in raids if you can, and also do your Argent dailies. If you don't get greed, you can get a decent mace from Argent dailies, which will at least give you something decent for Combat. Greed is preferable simply since it allows you to use an offhand dagger. Pick up the Librarian Paper Cutter asap. It's the best non-epic dagger you can get for combat. It costs around 80-90g on the AH.

With heroic emblems, you'll be able to get an epic neck, trinket, belt (much better than the craftable belt), and even start saving up for T7 gloves in case you don't get them from OS.

You should pick up the Ebon Blade tabard asap. You get a helm enchant at Revered, and an epic chest at Exalted that is almost equivalent to T7 chest (minus the set bonus). Also, start doing the chain that leads to Sons of Hodir so you can rep grind Sons of Hodir and get your shoulder enchant.

edit: I'm pulling about 2.8k DPS in instances so far. I changed from instant poison to wound poison, and wow, what a difference. Also, fan of knives is your friend!

 

[Quake1028]

I did not know it was possible to wipe on Gothik. I would of liked to see a video of that raid!

Raz I can understand ... ESPECIALLY in a pug. I'd kill myself I think.

The wipe on Gothik was the live sides fault. People were too busy arguing over if the Hunter could roll on Betrayer of Humanity to listen to those of us on the dead side telling them to slow the fuck down.

 

[PhoenixDark]

Did Sapphiron for the first time last night with my guild and beat him, on 10 man. We blazed through the wings to get there for once, which I was happy about - and more importantly our dps got some nice upgrades. We wiped 3 times on Sapphiron, but mainly because people weren't listening to the strategy lol. The plan was to split up groups on two sides of Sapp, with me tanking him in circle - and when the air phase starts just everyone run towards the room entrance. That way the ice blocks are never too far from people.

Once we got that down it was cake. My fps was suffering some slowdown during his massive ice bomb, bu nothing serious

KT on monday, since most of us will be gone this weekend

 

[Arozay]

Only need the shitty Razorscale achievement now for Heroic Glory, whoever put that in the meta should hang themselves.

 

[Macattk15]

Only need the shitty Razorscale achievement now for Heroic Glory, whoever put that in the meta should hang themselves.

What is Razorscale's achievement? I thought he only had the 2 and down one? I thought XT's heartbreaker was the first meta achievement after FL + 4 but I guess I missed something!

 

[Weenerz]

What is Razorscale's achievement? I thought he only had the 2 and down one? I thought XT's heartbreaker was the first meta achievement after FL + 4 but I guess I missed something!

You have to get her to kill 50 adds with her flame breath. Basically you just have to not kill her for like 10 minutes.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Did Sapphiron for the first time last night with my guild and beat him, on 10 man. We blazed through the wings to get there for once, which I was happy about - and more importantly our dps got some nice upgrades. We wiped 3 times on Sapphiron, but mainly because people weren't listening to the strategy lol. The plan was to split up groups on two sides of Sapp, with me tanking him in circle - and when the air phase starts just everyone run towards the room entrance. That way the ice blocks are never too far from people.

Once we got that down it was cake. My fps was suffering some slowdown during his massive ice bomb, bu nothing serious

KT on monday, since most of us will be gone this weekend

In 10 man you should not split into 2 groups imho. 10 people is managable on one side.

The easiest thing to do is have the tank just turn him to the left so people can be immediately facing Sapph's sides and just unload from there. Then nobody has to even really move other than to spread out when she flies up and nobody gets in Cleave range.

KT isn't hard, but one time I killed a raid at 8% becuase I "coulda swore I was 10 yds away from the tank, dude!"

 

[cubicle47b]

You have to kill something like 20-30 of the adds using one of Razor's AoE abilities within 10 seconds of each other or something like that. Really stupid achievement.

 

[Angry Grimace]

The wipe on Gothik was the live sides fault. People were too busy arguing over if the Hunter could roll on Betrayer of Humanity to listen to those of us on the dead side telling them to slow the fuck down.

I personally believe a hunter could roll on it by now, because it's only stat that really benefits Plate DPS is that it's weapon damage was BiS, but now that it's not even remotely BiS for plate DPS they could get better gear in Ulduar 10.

 

[idlewild_]

The wipe on Gothik was the live sides fault. People were too busy arguing over if the Hunter could roll on Betrayer of Humanity to listen to those of us on the dead side telling them to slow the fuck down.

we used to do gothik with everyone on live side in 25 (as long as immortal wasn't in play,) like 30s-1min before gothik ports down, the gates all open and a hundred ghoulies come storming in. its like russian roulette, someone's gonna die

Did Sapphiron for the first time last night with my guild and beat him, on 10 man. We blazed through the wings to get there for once, which I was happy about - and more importantly our dps got some nice upgrades. We wiped 3 times on Sapphiron, but mainly because people weren't listening to the strategy lol. The plan was to split up groups on two sides of Sapp, with me tanking him in circle - and when the air phase starts just everyone run towards the room entrance. That way the ice blocks are never too far from people.

Once we got that down it was cake. My fps was suffering some slowdown during his massive ice bomb, bu nothing serious

KT on monday, since most of us will be gone this weekend

no reason to split into groups, we just have everyone spread on left side of room (even on 25). tank him in circle and the melee runs out a little after she starts flying (they can dps for a little before running out). just make sure people aren't trying to hide behind tombs inside the circle, they'll die

 

[Angry Grimace]

The other thread is full of whining about the emblem system :lol

If you're playing the game for loot rather than to beat bosses; then I'm not sure you're playing for the right reasons. It doesn't make any sense to say "I beat Ulduar for no reason," given that it means your priorities are probably out of whack. If you were in a group that beat Ulduar before, you're still in the minority; and it's not like there's EVERY type of weapon available from those vendors.

 

[firex]

man, I feel lucky sometimes to be on my server, until I'm leveling alts. almost never do I find people running instances until 80, but a lot of times my pugs, even pug raids, run really well. I had a pug naxx25 where we cleared the whole place in like 3.5 hours.

 

[Macattk15]

You have to kill something like 20-30 of the adds using one of Razor's AoE abilities within 10 seconds of each other or something like that. Really stupid achievement.

Ah ok ... I saw that one ... didn't know it was part of the meta though. That sucks.

 

[TomServo]

The other thread is full of whining about the emblem system :lol

If you're playing the game for loot rather than to beat bosses; then I'm not sure you're playing for the right reasons.

Honestly, I just wish they'd take the tier gear off of the badge vendors. Same with the VoA bosses.

I'm a sucker for tier gear. To me it should be an outward sign that you've completed that tier of raiding. Not farmed heroics or beat the lottery boss(es). It's not a e-peen thing, it's just something I've held onto since vanilla when I wasn't even raiding (I was rocking my full Elements set instead). Tier gear should be something that's held in a bit of higher regard.

Otherwise I wasn't really a fan of having a different badge for every tier of content, and I especially wasn't a fan of having different badges drop from 10 man vs. 25 man (and I raid 25 man exclusively).

 

[Macattk15]

Honestly, I just wish they'd take the tier gear off of the badge vendors. Same with the VoA bosses.

I'm a sucker for tier gear. To me it should be an outward sign that you've completed that tier of raiding. Not farmed heroics or beat the lottery boss(es). It's not a e-peen thing, it's just something I've held onto since vanilla when I wasn't even raiding (I was rocking my full Elements set instead). Tier gear should be something that's held in a bit of higher regard.

Otherwise I wasn't really a fan of having a different badge for every tier of content, and I especially wasn't a fan of having different badges drop from 10 man vs. 25 man (and I raid 25 man exclusively).

What's wrong with having 2 pieces out of a 5 piece set available to the "general public"? You can still show off your awesomeness by having T8.5 shoulders from Yogg while the "peons" of WoW run around with their shiny helms after weeks and weeks and weeks of collecting enough Conquest badges off FL and wiping on other bosses god knows how many times.

I'm pretty elitist myself ... but I personally am fine with this .... allows me to gear up alts a whole hell of a lot easier as well.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Honestly, I just wish they'd take the tier gear off of the badge vendors. Same with the VoA bosses.

I'm a sucker for tier gear. To me it should be an outward sign that you've completed that tier of raiding. Not farmed heroics or beat the lottery boss(es). It's not a e-peen thing, it's just something I've held onto since vanilla when I wasn't even raiding (I was rocking my full Elements set instead). Tier gear should be something that's held in a bit of higher regard.

Otherwise I wasn't really a fan of having a different badge for every tier of content, and I especially wasn't a fan of having different badges drop from 10 man vs. 25 man (and I raid 25 man exclusively).

I understand your point; but let me offer a counterpoints to that, as well as others that hate the new badge system:

1. I understand what you mean by wanting a symbol of what you've done. While the tier gear is somewhat "Visible" so to speak, I think the true symbol of that is almost always main hand weapons, the best of which almost assuredly drop off of the lead boss, not to mention they are by far the strongest source of damage.

2. The emblems system is designed to let people access the raid content; not to replace raiding for gear itself. The fact is, the most pieces of 226 gear you could pull out on Emblems alone (and I would put money down that the number of badges required will probably double or even triple to match the kind of numbers you saw with heroism badges) is 6 out of the 14 slots.

If you check out your realm forum, you'll notice that there's a shortage of slots for ranged DPS and heals pretty much clogging up the main page. The reason for this is because those slots aren't getting filled because nobody can reasonably get to Ulduar-25 level because all those guilds are asking for Naxx 25 geared toons; which takes a lot of time. The only people that are around that AREN'T already in the content are new, or alts.

 

[TomServo]

If you check out your realm forum, you'll notice that there's a shortage of slots for ranged DPS and heals pretty much clogging up the main page. The reason for this is because those slots aren't getting filled because nobody can reasonably get to Ulduar-25 level because all those guilds are asking for Naxx 25 geared toons; which takes a lot of time. The only people that are around that AREN'T already in the content are new, or alts.

If you're talking about my realm in particular (Azshara) any recruitment problems stem from the fact that we've got too many chiefs and not enough indians. We've got enough quality players to support maybe four Horde raiding guilds and two Alliance, but instead we've got three if not four times that because too many people simply have to be guild / raid leaders.

It's not a gear problem. I've seen people in OS pugs (still want that damn Dragon Soul) in nice gear doing stupid stuff - more than one warlock in t7 spamming Searing Pain. Gear alone isn't going to make new content accessible to idiots. Hell, the gear in Ulduar isn't that much of a jump over Naxx. I topped the meters on plenty of fights with two Ulduar drops compared to guildies who had nearly full iLevel 226 stuff.

My opinion is unchanged - yank the tier gear off of the badge vendors. Macattk15 asked me what's wrong with non-raiders wearing tier gear, and I'll turn it around - if they're offering stuff of similar quality that's not tier gear, what's wrong with that?

 

[firex]

You get one token or two at most per raid for that slot, so it's good to have them on the vendor in case you get fucked by the RNG week after week. It's a good fallback compared to a guild having to do a raid for one item because you need that 4 piece set bonus, but have nothing else to get from that raid.

The only reason to remove tier tokens from the emblem vendors is, as you already have said, a sense of pride over beating the content. But you can't even buy two of the t7.5 tokens without beating the content, since it requires the emblems you get from that raid. So either way, someone in t7.5 has that gear because they beat the content right now. And next patch I really don't think it should matter, because you can see what pieces of t8 are emblem bought and which ones are drops.

The badge of honor/pride thing is achievements anyway.

 

[Evlar]

The badge of honor/pride thing is achievements anyway.

Yes, exactly. Blizzard wants to disassociate e-peen with viability in new dungeon content (at least on Normal difficulty). Achievements and their benefits, such as titles, are Blizzard's bid to soothe the egos of the leet.