6481

Not sure if everyone else knew this, but for those of us who’ve been away for over 30 days, they’re giving a free 7 day pass:

http://us.media.blizzard.com/wow/landing/p43/en-us/index.html

6482

I solo’d Kara last night for Gorehowl! Woo!

I forgot I had my Grunt uniform on when I logged off, but I’m sporting a mix of the Ymirjar set with BC Might-recolored shoulders, gloves, and helm with Gorehowl and The Unstoppable Force.

This is one of the things I’m utterly bemoaning with regard to transmogrification. I was hoping, more than anything, that I could use this outfit for normal use. My next step will be to collect a set that looks like the Kor’Kron Elite. I’m not even sure I’ll be able to put it together, but I want to see. I’m not an RPer, but I like the idea of being able to wear the same uniform as the faction leaders’ guards.

6483

I love the fact that I was able to jump into a group and kill Deathwing all within an hour as a pug. Contrast this to Wrath where I had also stopped raiding and was never able to get into a Lich King kill.

I’ll still play, but I like the fact that I’ve beaten* the end game and don’t feel like there is a part of the game locked out for me because I won’t commit to a raid schedule.

*LFR is not really beating the game, but it is experiencing the fight in a very forgivable manner. I’ve raided enough to know the difference between a real raid and the LFR version.

6484

IMO, the important thing is that they’ve made it so that people without the time to deal with raiding guild politics can actually play through the story elements of the game to their conclusion.

I’ve still never played through the majority of the raid content (and, thus, the final story bits) from vanilla and BC, because during those times I was not in a guild capable of completing them.

I was fortunate in Wrath to be a part of a guild that had just enough capable raiders that, while we had to have the “casual buff” to do it, I was able to play through to the completion of Wrath’s content.

I resubbed after reading about the LFR feature, and now I’ve been able to play through to the completion of the Cataclysm story content (the new 5-man dungeons and then the raids). From a challenge (personal achievement) standpoint, that’s meaningless, but from the standpoint of someone who loves the Warcraft universe & storyline, being able to play through this content on “easy” mode so I can at least be a part of it in some way – that’s pretty bitchin’.

6485

@Farscry indeed.

I wish we had a system like that back in Everquest so I could have experienced all the raid bosses. Back then I felt like I was subscribing and paying for content I never got to experience.

6486

Cataclysm thoughts after last weekend:

4.3 is a walk-back of the Cat philosophy that everyone wanted harder, longer heroics. The new 5-mans are quick, mechanically simple, and much easier to play in a LFD group. I took a rogue and a mage from the 350’s to 372 in a weekend of play. This brought a sense of accomplishment that the previous year’s worth of sporadic heroic attempts failed to deliver. The old heroics are now way too much effort for the rewards. Who’s gonna bust their ass for 45 min in Deadmines for a chance at a non-epic 346 piece? The curve is now way off: 346 to 353 to 378. Blizz should consider retroactively upgrading the older heroic loot. They got it right in LK, not so good in Cat.

I took a poorly-geared ret paladin and brought him up to Hour of Twilight eligibility as well, but had to buy the PVP helm and shoulders to get the needed ilvl. Ret paladin DPS sucks. I have no idea how to improve it.

Horde players in the LFD were just all around better to play with than alliance. For some reason, alliance pugs were far more willing to leet it up and dish out epeen crap in party chat. I’m about to transfer or delete my last two alli characters on my server.

The 1000 weekly valor cap is too low. It should be at least 1500 or ideally 2000. This would let players get 397 gear instead of the 378/384 gear available in LFD/LFR, which isn’t different enough to justify the 2k gold needed right now to gem & enchant a new 384 piece. My rogue has t13 pants in the bank waiting on a second tier piece to make it worth the effort to upgrade from 378 pants. Nice problem to have, I suppose.

The new Darkmoon Faire was a nice diversion, and will feel less grindy than Molten Front due to the 1 week per month frequency. Very nice to have a way to level professions a bit outside of grinding. Really, embersilk cloth is way too valuable to turn into bandages, so it’s the only way I will be advancing first aid.

If you have the mats, gear enhancement items are really profitable right now. I brought in about 40k with gems & enchants the first week before I had to stop because supplies became too expensive. Red core-stat gems that cost 175g before 4.3 hit are going for 300-400g.

Holy crap, this new gear is powerful. I was able to solo Karazhan on my rogue, stopping only because I couldn’t figure out the chess game. The 2-piece t12 bonus sets targets on fire! Awesome.

LFR works surprisingly well, considering. Did the first 4 bosses of DS on my rogue, ended up in the top 5 DPS depite having only the minimum ilvl for the raid finder. Of course, that’s what rogues are supposed to do, so I’m not gonna pat myself on the back too hard, I know I wasn’t kiting adds or taking care of other raid mechanics from my melee spot right behind the boss’s ass.

6487

That’s ultimately what killed my EQ subscription too; I wasn’t interested in dealing with raiding guild politics at the time, and there just wasn’t much being put in place for non-raiders after a while.

6488

Yeah, I was bringing all my alts up from their crappy gear this past week. My rogue is my funniest story. Basically shelved after hitting 85, sitting in 318 greens and blues but now with a pair of free epic (almost legendary) 397 Daggers. I started to gear the rogue up in LFG and she’s now 373 and topping 5man damage meters in just a few days.

6489

A lot of the T12 and T13 set bonuses have been really cool. Prot warrior T13 4 piece gives everyone in the party/raid 20% reduced damage when you use shield wall. Pretty psyched about that. You get to be like if Oprah was a tank.

“You get a Shield Wall! You get a Shield Wall! Everyone gets a Shield Wall!”

6490

I gotta go pick that pocket.

6491

My raid guild scheduled a mass pocket pick for all the alts in the guild. The hard part was the follow up quest. You need to stealth into Gilneas (a phased area) and kill a very tough boss. I ended up cheesing the stealth part and logged out in Gilneas and waited for other rogues to show up. 3 out of 4 of us died to a boss you are supposed to solo!

6492

Yeah, even though I don’t want to run LFR, I feel pressure to get my tank 4 piece bonus because it is so nice. I play a Death Knight which passes out Vampiric Embrace to the entire raid – 20% additional healing for 10 seconds on a one minute cooldown. That’s pretty huge as well.

I’m personally liking 4.3, and since I have three alts stalled right around 65-75 I’m feeling the urge to level them up and start gearing them out with both the reduced 70-80 XP curve and the ease of gearing. But it’s terrible timing as I’m in love with Skyrim, have Batman on my plate after that, etc. etc. I’m having to push myself to grind out 1k valor points on my main week to week.

6493

Bear one is better. :) Frenzied rejuvination for all!

Sadly I too have an LFR i384 tier13 pants sitting in the bank waiting for 2pc or even 4pc because no way am I paying to gem/chant a minor upgrade over 378. Though I wish I could get helms/shoulders to drop. I’ve had horrid luck in getting resto or feral gear in those slots for firelands. I can clear Firelands but my ilevel was just barely enough to get into LFR…

The new changes are a motivation to level up or rather gear up my alts that are at or near t11 gear. If not for swtor and the holidays I’d be gearing them up.

6494

The LFR Deathwing weapons are just insane. I got the DPS caster dagger on my shadowpriest and the proc from it is doing 7 - 10% of my total DPS.

The ease of loot from the dungeons feels like they want to make sure that as many people as possible get some Deathwing kills under their belt before MoP comes out. I’m cool with that approach and think the LFR/Normal/Heroic setup in general is a great idea.

The loot system is kind of annoying in LFR. You can technically kill a boss as many times as you want, but can only roll on the loot once a week. It’s frustrating to kill 8 bosses, see 2 total things you could use drop, not win either one, and know you’re locked out of all those boss loot tables until next week. Minor annoyance, but still gets frustrating.

What I’m seeing as more of a problem from 4.3, honestly, is the reducing of exp needed to level by 33%. It’s great for leveling alts, but I’ve been running into people who are honestly new (or recently returned) to the game that are hitting max-level who have no gear and really have no idea what they are doing because of how fast they were able to level.

6495

The exp reduction was just for levels 71-80. The Cataclysm stuff hasn’t been reduced yet so that really shouldn’t have much of an effect on what gear people end up with after leveling. New players always have that problem if they don’t group up much on their way to the cap. Besides, there really can’t be that many truly new players who started in the past two weeks and are already in your LFR groups.

Warriors already have Rallying Cry. Plus, bears are gross.

6496

Prot pally don’t have any awesome 4 piece bonus but since we have divine guardian already, other than reduce cd on divine guardian by another minute, which turns into a 2 minutes cd raid wide damage reduction skill.

6497

Huh, I hadn’t looked at the set bonuses for this tier. Warriors get it damn nice! It looks like their 2piece is strictly better than, say, Paladin’s, and their 4piece gives them two raid CDs while Paladins just get one of theirs improved.

Were Paladins considered better than other tanks for Firelands tier or something?

6498

Were Paladins considered better than other tanks for Firelands tier or something?

I think Pally still consider the better tank even in 4.3… been able to block every single hit, and then reduce all block to only taking 50% 10 seconds out 30 is pretty crazy.

Even after the nerf on ardent defender it’s still great, since it’s the I don’t die no matter how hard you hit me for the next hit skill.

supposely DK tank is lagging behind every other tank.

6499

The only thing that bugged me about LFR was there were 1 other hunter in our raid and he won SIX drops and I won zero. Little skewed, but its free loot, so I don’t really care. They should reduce your need roll by 25% every time you win something.

6500

Haha, this right here is bringing me sooo close to resubscribing.

Too bad I have this arrow in my knee…