malkav11
3981
I’ve seen them (some of them - Cata came out before I got anything resembling a comprehensive tour) and I don’t see it as in any way ridiculous. They’ve spruced up those levels immensely, but you’re still not spending a significant percentage of character life there, and I’d be pretty sure if the inevitable post-expansion major content patches added anything that wasn’t at or near level cap.
But again, how does that say anything about the amount of time and effort they’ve put into the 1-60 game? The whole theme of this expansion is the shattering of the world, so obviously they’re putting a great deal of emphasis on all the changes related to that. Nobody’s saying they’re not focused on the 85 game, but I have no idea where you’re getting the notion that there’s no focus on anything else.
It is strange you keep bringing up this point, because Cataclysm is THE turning point of WoW’s development. Yes, they will continue to make high-end contents to act as the carrot on the stick for the top 10% players. But the focus has shifted from that to the more casual contents. Take the new tradeskill Archaeology for example, unlike Inscription/Jewelcrafting (tradeskills introduced by the prior two exp packs), its primary audience are the casual players as its contents are irrelevant to high-end raiding/pvp. Many little changes like this make Cataclysm different from the prior two exp packs.
intruder
3984
And the hell of random normal continued.
Let’s see what this episode brought:
- HoO:
- Tank didn’t ask for cc (rogue / hunter / lock with fear glyph) and died first pull. Left
- 2nd tank didn’t pick up snakes at 1st boss from hunter running back
-> Hunter died. Tank laughed at him. Hunter left. Tank pulled with healer oom -> wipe -> group disband
- Grim Batol:
- Tank took shit ton of damage (according to healer more than others in Heroics).
Found out he didn’t have “dire bear form lol. Must have forgotten to train it lol!” Ignored my suggestion to like go to Org and train it maybe…
First boss -> Dead tank
2nd boss (Forgemaster) -> dead tank (“Oh! That was a boss?”)
-> Healer: "Yeah right a trash mob with 2 million HP in normal) -> Left
-> Group disband
After that I stopped trying my luck for the night and continued wrapping up Mount Hiyal quests.
I’m running dangerously low on stuff to do apart from dailies and Mount Hiyal on my rogue now before quitting unless the situation in randoms gets better pretty fast.
Waiting for 20 min in the queue only to be disbanding 5-10 min after start is boring.
Well Christmas break coming so let’s hope it is better afterwards (enough wipes of those noob tanks that they start listening to people suggesting cc).
I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that “emphasis on” means “spent no time on anything but”.
Seriously, guild runs. Don’t even bother with the random crap at the level cap for now. Wait until the masses out gear the instances then run it with an alt.
Sometimes easier said than done to get a guild group, since my experience is that the number of DPS who need it is more than 3* the number of healers and/or tanks who need them.
But guild groups work for randoms too sometimes - I did a random Heroic Shadowfang Keep last night and the other 4 members of my party were all from a guild on another server. It was smooth, fun, and not frustrating at all. I wish you could request those types of groups!
Do you have any other examples to support this contention? Archaeology isn’t a tradeskill, it’s a hobby, like fishing. This indicates a focus on casual, low end play about as much as the introduction of fishing to the base game did. Less, even, because while the majority of archaeology-produced items exist entirely for lore or cosmetic reasons, the ones that -do- have game functionality are bind-on-account gear for level 70+, or temporary buffs in various heroic Cataclysm dungeons. Meanwhile, even in the lowbie questing Blizzard has started providing boss fights with actual mechanics and quests that exist specifically to train you in important raid skills (like Azshara’s Flame/Frost/Shadow Dancing quests), which seem to me to indicate a goal of easing people into heroic and raid content, not de-emphasizing it.
RickH
3989
After having a group wipe 5 times on Ozruk on normal, yeah I think he’s poorly tuned for where he is. For melee dps, the two big aoe damage hits come too close together to allow them to do much more than stay alive.
If it was a raid boss (I had a similar gripe about defile and valks coming so close together in the Lich King fight) I might understand, but this is a normal dungeon that people basically have to run (remember, the first 2 dungeons get taken away at 84) if they want to gear up.
Of course, the dps to tank/healer is out of whack generally so it’ll be the same in most guilds. Still if the random dungeon takes 30 minutes to get a group and it’s nothing but an exercise in frustration when you do finally get one, is it even worth it? Quest, run an alt or spend time with friends and family.
But guild groups work for randoms too sometimes - I did a random Heroic Shadowfang Keep last night and the other 4 members of my party were all from a guild on another server. It was smooth, fun, and not frustrating at all. I wish you could request those types of groups!
And people occasionally win $10 playing the lottery, it’s still a net loss.
The annoying part is that Blizzard said they hotfixed it so that you can still pick normal Blackrock Caverns and Throne of the Tides in the dungeon finder all the way to 85 (though they get taken out of the random rotation at 83)…but they appear to have lied.
I’ve been playing a resto druid for a number of years now. I hate what Blizzard has done with healing and with the heroic dungeons.
It’s much more stressful to be a healer these days. My previous high water mark for stress during a PvE encounter was a toss-up between Yogg + 0 or Mimiron hard mode (prior to outgearing it). These current heroics beat that hands down. My current ilevel is 342 and unless I am playing with folks who are exceptional at PvE there is going to be some wipes because I can’t save the DPS. There are way too many mechanics where a player can be one-shot or close to it for a moment’s inattention on their part.
Everyone says – “let the DPS die!”, but that’s unsatisfactory for two reasons. First, I like keeping the other players alive, it’s why I play the class. Second, if all the DPS isn’t alive for the majority of the fight I’m going to run out of mana before the boss is dead, so I need them to be alive.
The only way you can really understand some of these fights is to spend time on 3rd party strategy sites. There’s just no way a typical pug is going to understand the last encounter for Heroic Throne of Tides, for example.
I’ve been doing my encounter research for a long time, but that type of preparation is now completely required if you want to finish in less than three hours. And this is just for a 5-man dungeon!
Don’t get me started on how PvP is completely borked and I can barely outheal a single DPS at the cost of all my mana. Or the huge wait times for BGs. Or the MMR bug that is allowing people to quit an arena match without losing any of their rating.
All of this and the new underwater leveling zone just makes me wonder if someone from DAOC’s Trials of Atlantis expansion made it into the design team over there in Irvine. If they did, that would also explain the repackaged Stygia which is now called Uldum.
Athryn
3993
I would only start worrying if we get items that need to be leveled. :)
As far as the DPS dying thing, it totally reminds me of the beginning of BC, when no melee DPSers were welcome in heroics due to the whole 360 cleave thing.
Shudder.
As far as the DPS dying thing, it totally reminds me of the beginning of BC, when no melee DPSers were welcome in heroics due to the whole 360 cleave thing.
Good point. For Corborus (first boss of Heroic Stonecore), I think this is impossible to do with all melee group. It’s bad enough if you have any melee in the group besides the tank. Whenever I get queued for this I start off by apologizing to the non-tank melee that I am probably not going to waste my battle rez on them. It’s not their fault. The encounter is stupid with a melee group.
sinnick
3995
Hmm. Now I’m curious to see how things go for my Healadin. With my guild group, I can heal normal instances pretty reliably now. Heroics here I come!
Now this I haven’t seen. I did five battlegrounds last night including one Tol Barad and one Wintergrasp, all in the space of about two hours. I made 500 justice points in that time, and now have enough for the Heirloom shoulders I was saving up for for my Worgen Druid that I’m gonna roll next. So on my server anyway Battlegrounds happen pretty regularly. It is a RPPVP server though.
Of course, Alliance still loses 80% of the BGs I do (sigh). What is it about Alliance not being able to organize themselves in Arathi Basin? It’s like herding cats.
Good point. For Corborus (first boss of Heroic Stonecore), I think this is impossible to do with all melee group. It’s bad enough if you have any melee in the group besides the tank. Whenever I get queued for this I start off by apologizing to the non-tank melee that I am probably not going to waste my battle rez on them. It’s not their fault. The encounter is stupid with a melee group.
I did that encounter last night with a group whose dpsers were a rogue, a ret paladin, and a shadow priest. We wiped twice because we had to learn the mechanics, but we killed the boss on the third attempt without much difficulty. What makes it so hard for a melee-heavy group?
Crystal Barrage is the main thing. It randomly targets a group member, so in a ranged group with everyone spread out, it warrants respect but it can be handled. But, in a melee group, it can mean that more than one person is going eat some big damage.
If the crystal mines explodes on a ranged player, that’s recoverable for a healer. But, if multiple melees are getting hit by the mine AOE, it’s going to be hugely taxing and probably a wipe.
So, I’m probably exaggerating a little bit by saying it’s impossible for an all melee group, but this encounter is 100x harder with an all melee group. The more melee you have the greater the chances are for a mine to explode and that’s going to hit all the melee. A PUG melee group is going to have a really hard time with this, a PUG ranged can do it much simply.
For raid encounters, Blizzard (or at least Ghostcrawler) has said they want players to “bring the person, not the class” – meaning that group composition shouldn’t be prejudicial to the raid’s success/failure. But, here we have a 5 man dungeon that punishes the group for bringing melee. It’s not much better with Ozruk (third boss in Stonecore) which also has some very melee punitive mechanics.
Cataclysm is rough on melee, which means that it is rough on the healers trying to keep them alive.
Frankly, there’s a -lot- of punishing melee in WoW dungeons/raiding. I noticed it all over the place in Wrath. But I suppose there’s also fights like Deathbringer Saurfang and Festergut, where melee can pretty much just sit there and DPS like mad while ranged actually have fight mechanics to worry about. (Though, equally, you wouldn’t be able to do those fights in a raid that’s too melee-heavy.)
I play Horde, and from what I’ve read the wait times are almost exclusively a Horde-only problem that extends across most (all?) battlegroups. I wasn’t previously aware there was such a disparity in PvP populations, but apparently there is. Either that or something is seriously goofed with their BG queueing system.
I don’t see how they can do this and still have any creativity in the encounters. The differences in classes means that in some situations certain classes will be favoured. The moment one class has an advantage in an encounter over the other there will be times where guilds will “bring the class” rather than the person. Saying otherwise is purely lip service as they can’t make every encounter equal to all classes (or even groups of classes, dps/tank/healer).
