World of Warcraft: Current Year

LadyVex_sl said:

Explain to me how an ilvl 489 wrist is equivalent to 496? It's in an entirely different teir, not to mention that ilvl 489 also has cloth bracers. (Admittedly they are rep.)

Your example is stupid. Do you know how teirs work? Or since we don't like the "teir" word, do we know how ilvls work? 5 bracers in HOF/Terrace for clothies; 2 with spirit, 3 without. 3 drop from bosses, 2 are BOEs. Leather gets one drop at a 496 ilvl - BOE. That's it. They can't even say "We don't want to clutter our boss loot tables."

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Yes, I know how tiers work, thanks for being so condescending it really emphasises your point and doesn't make you look like a foam-mouthed rager at all.

The three raid instances from the start of this expansion are all considered one single tier, because they were all released at the same time - barring the gating, they were all ready to go at release. Tiers are distinguished by the release schedule and the tier of set piece loot contained therein. Take for example Karazhan, released as Tier 4 and included Gruuls Lair & Magtheridons Lair. The loot at the start of that instance is 115, the loot at the end was 125. It's the exact same principle. They followed this scheme throughout Tier 5 too, the loot at the start was 128, the loot by the end was 138/141 - yet all the same tier.

I should not have said equivalent, however to complain that there is no spirit wrist this tier is false. I'd go further and argue that the BOE with no spirit would be fine should you decide to use it, wrists have the least stat budget of all items so I'd be surprised if you needed the spirit. From your post history though I think you just have a bug to bear against the game at this point in time.

LadyVex_sl said:

They just do not pay attention.

Also, no offhand at ilvl 496 is silly too.

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There was no heroic offhand at all in DS, they seem to forget this one all the time. At least this time you can pick up the one from Vaults.

LadyVex_sl said:

And stamina trinket bitching is a bad example. Not every teir has made stamina trinkets available to tanks, but there are still tank trinkets. That would be like me bemoaning no spirit trinkets in ilvl 496.

Granted, they probably would have made a stamina trinket if they had not spent so much time on cloth bracers.

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No, it's not, because there is no heroic version of a stamina trinket at all, it's the same situation as caster offhand in DS. My two best in slot trinkets as a 10HC paladin tank are the haste trinket from Vaults and the Stam trinket from trash/Shadopan rep. I don't understand why you wouldn't bemoan no spirit trinkets at 496 if you bemoan no spirit bracers at the same level, the trinkets have a higher stat budget and would affect you more.

The point wasn't that there was no spirit wrist; that's an ANNOYANCE.

The point was that there's only one wrist period for leather wearers of the intelligence variety, yet there are 5 cloth bracers.

Hell, there are the same amount of plate wearing specs (9) as there are cloth specs, and it even includes one additional role, yet there are only 4 plate bracers in 496 content.

Their refusal to put "best of" stats on items has been followed by a dev stating that they want "variety" in loot, and they don't want to put "best of" stats on items because then you are pigeonholed into just that one item.

Except...since they only gave us one item, how is that not pigeonholing? If/when it manages to drop for my raid group (It's a zone drop.) I know that it will have to be reforged into haste, since it's far from "best of" stats.

The point is, they're completely inconsistent, they're wrong, they're not even paying attention at this stage of the game anymore. They use stupid excuses like "variety" and "You can just reforge!" and their stupid upgrade systems to get around the fact that they don't even try.

And I don't care how you want to mince words; an ilvl 489 is NOT equivalent to an ilvl 496. Just because they're released at the same time doesn't make them the same teir. Serpentshrine/TK/Hyjal were all available at TBC's released but they were obviously different teirs from Kara/Mag/Gruul. Your point that they tended to increase the ilvl on the last few bosses in raids prior might almost hold weight if they did this AT ALL in MOP. Will, Empress and Sha of Fear do not increase their ilvl in normal modes for their items. (And in fact, most of the time when this happened it was on weapons, and trinkets, as you pointed out that they have the highest stat budget.)

And sure, I was condescending...about as condescending as you were saying that a gripe wasn't a gripe unless it was yours.

If there are actually no versions of your trinket period, then that sucks, and that's a legitimate issue, as legitimate as mine. You're simply picking and choosing because one affects you and the other does not. For shame.

And, as an addendum: I don't bemoan spirit trinkets because I'm well used to the fact that most teirs are going to have only two healing trinkets - and they are generally passive int with a spirit proc, or passive spirit with an int proc. Sure enough, both ilvl 496 trinkets are passive ints with spirit procs, which I prefer. I assumed when you were angry about no stamina trinket that there were simply two tank trinkets and neither were stamina, and your preference for stamina was angering you.

To put it simply, if we really want to say they're the same teir, then there are 7 cloth bracers, and only 3 leather bracers. I am sure this type of things exists for other armor types and other specs; this is merely one I have noticed as I've been trying to perfect my gear. And for the life of me, I cannot think of a good enough reason for this type of thing to exist.

That these things happen is an issue in and of itself, mainly because they've messed with systems that were hardcoded into their players as to how things should be when it comes to VP gear/raid gear/BiS etc. And not for the better.

Vaults and Fear are different tiers with different iLevel loot and different LFR requirements. Call it half a tier if you like.

WoW has boring loot. It's mostly all for me stam/int then two of spirit/the different ratings and the numbers are usually similar across an item level. What about having variety and having like high int/crit glass cannon gloves or medium int/stam/spirit defensive gloves?

Even though the raid really only offers me Valor, I love tanking the 2nd part of MSV. Esp the Will of the Emperor...doing the dodge dance is fun ;P

i suck balls on the will dance, I don't know why I just can't tell where the arc is going to be. Yeah I know its in the direction the sword is moving but I still get it wrong so much, fortunately its my DK alt so I just q as dps and go kill adds instead of killing boss

and yeah wow is boring at the moment, I only do TOES lfr spread throughout the week, but still having fun doing old shit for mounts - fuck you, kaelthas! Leveling pets is kinda dumb but for some reason I like it, you can 2 pet battle every pandaria daily and basically level a new pet from 1 to 25 every day, while sitting in LFR queue. Totally repetitive OCD behavior though. There really isn't anything to do to prep for 5.2, once you hit ilevel 480 you are ready for the new LFR and there isn't much point in getting anything higher.

Not sure whether to try out Secret World, TERA, or GW2 while waiting for 5.2. I kind of want to go back and finish the SWTOR storylines but all the f2p stories make it sound pretty shitty.

spronk_sl said:

i suck balls on the will dance, I don't know why I just can't tell where the arc is going to be. Yeah I know its in the direction the sword is moving but I still get it wrong so much, fortunately its my DK alt so I just q as dps and go kill adds instead of killing boss

and yeah wow is boring at the moment, I only do TOES lfr spread throughout the week, but still having fun doing old shit for mounts - fuck you, kaelthas! Leveling pets is kinda dumb but for some reason I like it, you can 2 pet battle every pandaria daily and basically level a new pet from 1 to 25 every day, while sitting in LFR queue. Totally repetitive OCD behavior though. There really isn't anything to do to prep for 5.2, once you hit ilevel 480 you are ready for the new LFR and there isn't much point in getting anything higher.

Not sure whether to try out Secret World, TERA, or GW2 while waiting for 5.2. I kind of want to go back and finish the SWTOR storylines but all the f2p stories make it sound pretty shitty.

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It's terrible; I hit tatooine on my jedi at level 22, and all of my quests are orange and red because of the exp reduction/no rested. I haven't logged in since then, just a total killer.

revvy_sl said:

There was no heroic offhand at all in DS, they seem to forget this one all the time. At least this time you can pick up the one from Vaults.

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Ultraxion dropped an offhand.

Few interesting bits from PTR: LFR raids will get a "fail" buff that stacks each time your raid wipes on a boss that boosts dmg/hp/healing/etc by 5% a stack. You will be able to experience faction specific scenarioes regardless as to your faction. They are also going to let people buy the old school vanilla PVP gear if they had the required title to own it.

Rated BGs give the titles now. It's yet another carrot to get people to play them because Blizzard doesn't want to acknowledge that normal BGs are run by two types of people - people running around in a zerg, and people ganking those who got left behind by the zerg - who have no interest whatsoever in competitive BGs.

Maybe, I don't PVP much anymore and just have my old feat of strength for my highest PVP title.

So I decided to start playing casually again. I havent touched WoW since right after WotLK came out. My questions: I just rolled a Panda Monk and I'm lvling with my friend that is also a monk. What is the quickest / most fun lvling path? What about specs, are monks decent healers or tanks for dungeons? I'm on alliance if that matters.

At the top end monks seem to be pretty mediocore - not really great at anything, not terrible though. Feels like kinda spammy gameplay with a monk, a lot of button mashing. You can level with a mix or quests, dungeons, and battlegrounds - really just depends on what you find the most fun. Faction doesn't really matter too much anymore since all lowbie zones are CRZ so there are usually enough people running around, and dungeon and PVP queues are usually short no matter what spec (tank/healer fastest).

I don't know if the PTR has a level booster or not, if it does you may want to install that and try out some classes at 90. It really is a personal choice, I have a 90 of every class and much prefer playing my mage, DK, and druid to everything else. Other people love their warriors, paladins, hunters, etc.

If you want to hit 90 as fast as possible just both of you go dps (or tank/dps) and just do questing, if you have any alts with justice or honor you can buy a few pieces of BOA heirloom gear to make things go faster, but not if your friend cant buy them too. You can be 90 within 3-5 days /played, and there is a fuckton of things to do at 90, but your interest will start dropping off within a few weeks as its all pretty repetitive. There are some tricks (monkey runs) to go 85-90 really fast, but imo enjoy the quest zones in Cata & Pandaria - they are quite fun, at least once.

Dr Ent_sl said:

So I decided to start playing casually again. I havent touched WoW since right after WotLK came out. My questions: I just rolled a Panda Monk and I'm lvling with my friend that is also a monk. What is the quickest / most fun lvling path? What about specs, are monks decent healers or tanks for dungeons? I'm on alliance if that matters.

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Monks make fine healers/tanks for dungeons as you level, although brewmaster spec is missing many of it's tools early on. Personally I leveled to around 30ish or so as a DPS (since DPS still get instant queues at those levels), then I switched over to tank spec and leveled primarily through LFD and some questing. Depending on how many justice points you main has, you might be able to buy heirloom gear. Heirloom gear makes leveling a breeze and helps reduce your dependence on item upgrades until you hit the cap on the gear (80 for WOTLK era, 85 for Cata era).

That being said, monks get a daily quest (and a quest every 10 levels) that allows them to get a 50% XP buff (which stacks), so even with no XP boosting gear, you're still going to level faster than almost any other class.

There's more than 3 classes. It's fine for a class to not be a fire-breathing god of their role. I am 100% pleased with the current state of Tank Balancing. Heck, Monk even has fight mechanics it trivializes with ranged barrel tossing (See Elegon and Lei Shi adds). Hell, I'm GLAD Monks aren't OP. They've had somewhat less of an idiot rush than DKs did because of it (The initial Healer output was ridiculous, but luckily no drooling idiots switch classes TA TOP DEM HEALIN METAHS). God save the servers if Windwalker had actually been ERMAHGERD TOP DEEPSES.

As a Brewmaster tank, I haven't found any content that has made me regret switching to monk this expansion.

Yeah, the cleave buff should be nice, and is awesome conceptually. Helps swallow how underwhelming the Windwalker Tier Bonuses are. Hooray energy spheres when you're already bursting at the seams with energy due to raid gear's energy-regen scaling and old-mastery being changed into a fixed value passive. But at least you get bonus stack of Tigereye Brew every 10 stacks. Or something.

I guess it's better than this tier's "-Cooldown on an ability that you already delay the usage of in most fights due to fight mechanics not allowing you to produce a full channel on a single target without making your Healers want to murder you."

Blizzard confirmed that the 5.2 raid rep is only earned once per week per boss kill, regardless of difficulty. So no doing regular, then doing LFR for bonus rep.