World of Warcraft: Current Year

Daidraco_sl said:

As long as I have a good healer, Brewmaster tanking the last boss is easy. The only problem Ive ever had out of that instance multiple times is the Trio group. People just cant grasp how to help me interrupt Healing Wave. DBM Even says to interrupt. Ill skip most trash in that instance, but fuck waiting on people to learn how to jump on the root at the base of the hill next to the tree boss just so we can skip 3 packs of trash to get to the Trio.

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You don't interupt Healing Wave, DBM fucks up on that one. You interrupt High Tides. He only ever targets the other 2 council members with his heal, which doesn't matter since you burn him down first. If you waste all your interrupts on healing wave he'll probably get a High Tides out.

Needless_sl said:

I didn't even think it would go that far, i'll have to finally do that quest on my monk in that case

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To get the best use out of the feather go out the garrison exit by the pet building, then climb up the rocks right outside to the highest point overlooking your garrison. Now face south west and aim just to the right of the little mountain (highest peak you can see to the SW) and hit your feather.

It will launch you straight up in the air and once it hits the top it extends wings and shoots you forward. You can use the Draenor map to correct your course but if you go to the right of the mountain from that point above your garrison the feather can get you the entire way to the summoning stone outside Highmaul.

SorrowsEnd_sl said:

To get the best use out of the feather go out the garrison exit by the pet building, then climb up the rocks right outside to the highest point overlooking your garrison. Now face south west and aim just to the right of the little mountain (highest peak you can see to the SW) and hit your feather.

It will launch you straight up in the air and once it hits the top it extends wings and shoots you forward. You can use the Draenor map to correct your course but if you go to the right of the mountain from that point above your garrison the feather can get you the entire way to the summoning stone outside Highmaul.

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Sweet, i'll have to try that out

Dandai_sl said:

I'm trying to think of how I would spend time "progressing my character" prior to WoD and alts, and I'm struggling to come up with something other than a few heroic scenarios per week to make sure I capped valor. All the other stuff I did are things that are still available (and expanded upon in WoD) - crafting, mount collecting, quest cleanup, etc.

What did we do before WoD? Or maybe my perspective is unique since I've always been a heroic (mythic) raider?

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First of all, dungeons lasted a hell of a lot longer prior to WoD. For one thing, it plain took longer to get the gear you needed from them, and then once you had that, there was still an incentive to keep running them for a long time in order to get JP/VP rewards. There were also just more dungeons, although that's not strictly relevant to the amount of gameplay material in them. In WoD, it took me six days to get to the point where I had literally no reason whatsoever to do any dungeons anymore; this took weeks in previous expansions, and the need would return as soon as they added new JP/VP rewards.

Secondly, reputations were a source of considerable gameplay at the start of each expansion. They still exist, and being an old EQ player I don't even really mind the mob grind format it has taken, but the rewards are now pointless. It's no longer a progression element, it's just an optional vanity grind for pets, mounts and toys. Reputations generally didn't last too long as they would cap out fairly quickly, but it was a big part of early-expansion progression that WoD has completely thrown to the wayside.

The third thing they got rid of was professions. Crafting is still there, but they've so thoroughly butchered the system that it now has essentially no gameplay value. It's so heavily time-gated and involves so little actual activity that it's practically non-existent as content. I'd say there's less than an hour's worth of gameplay per week in professions, at least the ones that craft gear, and anyway it was almost immediately rendered pointless as the best crafted gear is no better than stuff you can find in the very PUGgable Heroic Highmaul.

As a consequence of the prohibitive time-gating of professions, and of the garrison crafting material welfare program, most forms of farming are also rendered pointless as there's just no demand because you can only craft every so often due to being artificially hindered by the stingy allowance of BoP materials. Farming was another way of progression, but the market is all fucked up now because everyone receives piles of free materials and literally aren't able to use them on anything.

They've also removed a bunch of minor things like scenarios, dailies, the need for gems (hard pressed to have more than one or two sockets in one's gear), and 75% of item enchants. World bosses are reduced to crap loot with loot tables containing like three items which was useless to me by the time the bosses were enabled. Compared to the world bosses of previous expansions, which had huge loot tables with tier pieces and PvP gear, that's rather weak.

I could easily wear 3/3 crafted items that are much better than anything in heroic or even mythic highmaul (and at least 2 are still BIS in H-BRF), but everything else you said is on point.

Maybe that's why I actually have an alt while still in the middle of progression raiding, something I've never bothered with before. But it's also because I just enjoy both classes for different reasons.

But on the other hand, do I actually MISS running dungeons until they are ungodly trivial and stale, or running around picking herbs? Sure, they added +hours of +gooder, but that was about it.

Plus, they did listen and are buffing challenge mode rewards and are adding world boss type encounters to garrisons.

I may or may not have created a monster by switching from prot paladin to prot warrior in WoD. It's like my healers randomly forget they need to heal me sometimes...that shit is infuriating.

The only thing I have a love/hate relationship with is that Heroic mode is cross realm. I love it because we can fill in gaps on our guild raid with friends from other servers or pugs if necessary and not have to cancel raid night. I hate it though because I feel that it will slowly destroy sub-mythic guild raiding. There's not much incentive to join a guild who only targets Heroic mode.

Zastlyn_sl said:

You don't interupt Healing Wave, DBM fucks up on that one. You interrupt High Tides. He only ever targets the other 2 council members with his heal, which doesn't matter since you burn him down first. If you waste all your interrupts on healing wave he'll probably get a High Tides out.

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Im a Blood Elf Monk, I have 4 interrupts for extra OP'ness. Healing wave is just one thing I interrupt. Having just one other person help me with interrupts is all I need. Thats the hard part, unfortunately.

Kreugen_sl said:

I could easily wear 3/3 crafted items that are much better than anything in heroic or even mythic highmaul (and at least 2 are still BIS in H-BRF), but everything else you said is on point.

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Like Kreugen said, crafted is easily best in slot right now. Your best bet is to go into Askmrrobot and look for upgrades via that way. You'll notice that each slot has its own little BIS pre-BRF, depending on its acquisition. There are 3 pieces of crafted, that when rerolled, will be your best in slot. The same can be said for PVP gear. Like the trinket from Imperator for Agility wearers has Haste and Mastery on it.. if you're not a Tank Monk - that shit is HORRIBLE. So your BiS outside of Scales of Doom (Butcher, Trinket1) is that Crafted Crit Trinket (Trinket2).

The main issue with WoD is that aside from raiding there is no PvE progression and raiding has a lockout, the rest of the week people don't want to stand around with randoms, they like to play with friends, a few of them: scenarios, challenge modes, etc. should be an alterante way to gear up for those that find raiding boring. I raid and I find it boring. It baffles me why classes that in a dungeon get to use all their skills, go into a raid and use 4 or 5 of them, plus a cd here and there.
Most of my current opinion is biased also because HM is shit, possibly the worst raid ever made, maybe excluding LK coliseum (that was really aggravating).

I like 5 men, I love them in fact, my secret wish is that they go back to vanilla design for them, couple hours long runs, but I know most folks prefer the 15 minutes speed runs (why?). I just wish they'd be a different path to follow for players, instead of a stepping stone for raiding. Currently CMs are harder than any raid outside of mythic and maybe HC emperor, yet they offer shit loot and even post patch, loot will still be shit.
Maybe playing WoW for hardcore raiding has gotten stale, I don't know, I'm not even that hardcore, I raid once a week.
I'm usually entertained by playing alts, or doing old raids, but with this shit buff to damage, all old raids have lost their appeal: you just push 3 buttons and mobs fall dead.

I didn't like the pruning of skills, it's gotten ridicolous for some classes, I can't even fill the hotkey bars, while others still have no space available.
They add stupid shit like Selfie toys and... goddammit, I wrote shit so many times, it can basically sum up the status of current wow: good for 2 months, then shit.

I too prefer the dungeons of vanilla model because fuck, why does everything have to be easy, streamlined and simple. I liked BRD the most out of all the dungeons because doing it required multiple runs or that you went back to orgrimmar inbetween etc - the design had you actively doing shit all over the place and the actual dungeon was so big and openended, it was great.

The queue up aoe for 10 minutes with 2-3 bosses of no interest just doesn't do anything for me. Every dungeon since TBC has been one big disappointment after another, with a small exception in form of the ICC ones which were pretty cool the first time you ran through them

I feel Vanilla dungeons were better because they didn't follow a "form", they were very free-design and each were unique. There is a reason stuff like BRD is memorable, for better or worse - let's not just look through rose-tinted glasses. BRD was great in size, scope, uniqueness, but it was a pain in the ass because it was extremely long (2 hours?) and if you went into BRD at the lower level of the scale you physically could not complete the entire dungeon. Even places like UBRS were great, especially in the beginning when you needed a raid group to complete it.

Now it's like they focus on making a dungeon 20 minutes in length, with a set number of bosses, and they nerf the unique encounters (train boss). The heroics don't really feel heroic, so I don't even know why they have them any more.

Cad_sl said:

Cracks me up when people talk about how great BRD was in vanilla. Ever try to get a group to do BRD? Not fucking happening. Had to be guild groups or friends or it was a no go. Nobody wanted to go. Odd for such a great dungeon.

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Not really that odd it was a raid like time commitment back in the day and as some mentioned it was very possible if you were not at the high end of the spectrum to not even be able to complete it as it had a pretty large level range of NPC's. It was a great guild dungeon crawler but the initial release version was not friendly to pugs.

Cad_sl said:

Cracks me up when people talk about how great BRD was in vanilla. Ever try to get a group to do BRD? Not fucking happening. Had to be guild groups or friends or it was a no go. Nobody wanted to go. Odd for such a great dungeon.

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I loved brd and still like it, even though it's but a shadow of itself. I used to play it with friends and I did enjoy that it was really hard. We did kill Thassarian once at level 53 or so, he was basically red and it was really, really hard but somehow we managed it. I would much rather have fewer dungeons that are bigger in size than more of these 15 minute slug fests

People have spoken with their wallets. Multiplayer games tend to deliver content in 15-20 minute chunks. Even someone who sits playing Call of Duty for 4 straight hours does so by a series of short matches rather than a marathon slugfest. MOBAs similarly deliver their content in isolated chunks which makes them easy to get into and get out of without much hassle.

The challenge is how to make something inherently episodic feel more epic in scope. This is one thing Destiny has been very good at and partly why I think it remains viable despite the borderline terrible content.

They could get away with making one large dungeon per expansion/every few patches and break it up like they break up raids in LFR. Highmaul in LFR has 3 tiers, while every other difficulty features the full raid. Simply making the LFD versions be wings of the dungeon, or you can go in with some friends and spend a few hours trudging through the whole thing - perhaps even up the difficulty and provide better loot. Maybe I should apply to work for blizzard.

Dungeon difficulty was a miss this time around. I was fully expecting to need to use CC / be careful for the first Tier worth of Heroic dungeons and instead people were just charging in crazy and ignoring mechanics from day 1. I think a couple groups had some deaths right there in that first week because of lack of DPS or completely ignoring a boss mechanic but overall the difficulty was very low and certainly the dungeons are 100% trivial before the first tier of content is finished.

I think they decided to tune too much of WoD towards pre-made group content "Normal" raids and Challenge mode dungeons and made anything you use the group finder tool for be 100% tourist. Problem is that people who do have pre-made groups want more challenge than has been provided and there are people who don't have pre-made groups who want something other than faceroll content.

The fact that my ilvl638 monk can heal the entire heroic doing almost nothing but dropping a healing statue and just keeping my channeled heal going speaks volumes about heroics. They're just plain boring. I'd like to echo what Noodle is saying. I'd like to see a 5man dungeon with some scope to it like BRD.

It was not just that dungeons were large, but they were part of the world, they seemed to have a reason to be there and felt a lot less artificial, but at the same time, they delivered an adventuring and story progression feeling. Today doing a dungeon is just like watching an episode of a tv serie: predictable, short and dumb-proof.
Maybe large dungeons were not pug friendly, but I never had issues organizing a BRD run (it could have used a less widespread level range, that's true) or a LBRS run, UBRS was initially more complicated, but still doable.
Even Scholomance which was probably the more "compact" of the level 60 ones, at least visually, had a feeling of being "real" and not artificial, with all those schools of magic, necromancers, secret passages, cellars, terraces, etc.
Stratholme was a blast, if you had a group good enough to do both sides it was even better. Dire Maul, while split in 3 wings, was still a single dungeon, you could go from wing to wing without zoning out and changing portal.
Places like Maraudon were amazingly beatiful, all my characters made the scepter to enter at the waterfall, in the same way as they all did the hammer to use in Zul'Farrak and call the beast from the pool.

I also remember those rare drops that made my day: Dragon's Call in Sunken Temple (nowadays it's a shithole in comparison to how convoluted was initially), or the various BRM trinkets: Hand of Justice above all.
Druid tanking with Green Whelp Armor anyone?

Then came raiding, the 40 players one. We all know how it went from there.

With all its defects, failures, forced roles for some classes, bugs, imbalances and so on and so forth, I still consider vanilla WoW the pinnacle of online gaming from an adventuring point of view. Gameplay was changed so many times over 10 years, but that feeling of exploration and that... "standing in awe" at the magnificience created by the designers was enough to brand my brain for life. I'm not joking when I say that I explored every single square yard of Azeroth and since I mostly played a druid I considered the seas just as interesting as the lands (most of them are empty! figure that...).
I figured out my aquatic form quest by myself after all, I found out about the Tidal Charm in... let's see who remembers that and countless sunken ships and ruins around the world.

I never got crazy for loot in my MMO life, with the sole exception of collecting FT items in EQ for my bard (I paid for them with my DKP, bitches), all I cared was exploring and adventuring and loot+levels were just the necessary evils, things to collect in order to progress the exploration. In fact even those FT items were useful to have a faster recharge on my mana and abuse Fading Memories a lot more often

Today WoW is different and I love it, but instanced content is frankly a pile of shit. Exceptions? Yes, there are always some. I like Shadowmoon Burial Ground, because it completes nicely the outer zone of Shadowmoon Valley and the Ner'Zhul storyline, it has a good atmosphere. In a way it was nice to see inner Auchindon after we saw the exploded TBC version (the instance itself is a tad boring), and Grimrail cannon boss had an interesting mechanic, but for what concerns WoD, outdoor content has been a fuckton more interesting than indoor one.

Highmaul is pathetic, most dungeons (I exclude UBRS because it's not new) are boring, too short and lack appeal from any possible point of view. Pandaria dungeons, while not amazing had a lot more soul, Cataclysm ones were even better (a couple of them are among my favourites, I don't know, I just like following Bronzebeard I guess), Lich King ones ranged from good, theme-wise to amazing (my favourites were Halls of Lightning and Halls of Stone and the ones released later, Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflections, the last one was especially good, being chased by the Lich King has no price). TBC were too linear, but they had some soul behind as well. Vanilla... ah vanilla, how I miss thee, old dungeon design.

Rehashed content: I don't dislike it as a rule of thumb, but it requires a bit of effort to be taken seriously: let's say that the remake of Deadmines was amazing compared to the remake of UBRS and end it here.