Or more accurately a thought on what we can do on a second batch of alts.
I present…
Team Gnome!
With the advent of 4.0.3a we have the capability to have a functional 5 / 10 setup entirely made of gnomes (no druids, paladins or shamans). So, for fits, giggles and the honour of gnomekind (and to annoy the horde) we need to have a purely gnome setup to sit alongside Team Pirate, Team Tincan and the (only partly finished) Team Leather (aka all druids).
So, Pirates, what say ye?
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/859138694
I’m going to watch this with interest, what they don’t say is what will happen once the battle is rolling and people drop, will players be dropped from the opposing faction (unlikely). So what is to stop the opposing faction from bringing a pile of alts into the battle and then dropping shortly after the start?
I suspect that those dedicated to winning an imbalanced battle will find new ways to shift the balance again.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEsQzn6ihWc]
As many of us are already aware the shattering itself is live on the PTR, no major details available yet but I’m expecting some staged questlines to keep us busy between the patch and the 7th when everything kicks off properly.
So in my wisdom I’ve subscribed to the MMO champ RSS feed, stupid me.
One of the first posts is a whine from someone in the US that the EU will be going live first, how this isn’t fair, how this means all the world firsts will go to the EU and so on. I’m sure I don’t need to link to the post for you to get a firm idea of the content or the followups.
So specially for any readers in the US, I feel for you, if I could magically change the universe so we had a hoop shaped sun which turned on and off (single global timezone) I would. However in this spinning world we have the flow of light across the land and sea is a fact of live. Something which I’m very well aware of having to work with people in India, Indonesia, Germany, Austria, Canada, the US (Dallas, Seattle) and so on. Timezones are a pain.
However please don’t forget that for every single damm patch except the initial launch of a new expansion the US gets the content 24 hours ahead of the EU, so please sit back, enjoy the new content (it’s pretty, the mobs hit hard, and by the gods do the 5-man normal bosses punch) and relax a little.
For gods sake people, it’s a damm game.
So, phase 4 is rolling, tonight I’ll see if I can get that damm rift achievement sorted, but we ripped through all four of the event bosses after cleaning Stormwind.
The quakes continue to get more intense.
MMO Champ reckons that 4.0.3 is dropping in the US today (I had my money on next week), so I’m wondering whether we’re looking at the shattering next week or the week after. I’m not sure to be honest, if there is more of the event (and it’s pretty frantic now) then it’ll be two weeks from now giving a week between the shattering and Cata dropping. If however phase 4 is the final phase then I’m reckoning that the shattering will hit this time next week with a ramp down in the cities but possibly stuff happening out in the re-made world (two weeks of running around the new world before things settle into the post-cataclysm levelling frenzy).
(quick check of wowhead)
Ok this is the final phase of the event itself. So I’m reckoning that we’ll have a week of this before the world shatters, get those final screen shots now!
Ok, so how are things shaping up now that the hotfix cycle on top of 4.0.1 is almost complete (cog of doom patch arrived yesterday).
Well it’s different, my run up style has changed, post wipe my routine was
To (mis-)quote our friends in ICC, “I think they broke it”.
I miss my run in routine, in addition to the tank disappearing into the distance everyone else could tell I was serious by seeing wings go up and know that just after that landed they could open up with the glass cannons.
So, where are we now.
Still in a reasonable place, ok it’s harder. This is a mix of not having two years of muscle memory at our disposal and the current balance issues between threat generation on the tanks and the sheer amount of hate the ranged (yes, we’re looking at you again warlocks and mages). However it still works, I need to move my buttons around to break my muscle memory I know I’m using abilities which worked nicely a few weeks ago but are now gimping my threat (SoR). For boss fights I need to get the 939 approach nailed down and cleaner.
Holy shield, this is a plus and a minus, I need holy power to get this up, I need to spend holy power to keep it up (HoR or WoG), so the opening move needs to be something like shield, CS, HotR. However while giving a burst of early threat it’s not as much threat as a three-stack HotR would give.
DPS… learn to hold back
{time passes, I notice this in the drafts pile …}
I forgot to schedule this one, however it’s been a couple of weeks since I drafted the above and I’ve had more time to get used to the changes. In short they’re good news. Even with the changes to threat, the general nerfing of AoE, threat decay and the like the fight mechanics (raid mostly) still work. There are periods in most of the fights where HolyRoguePower (HRP) is being blown on threat generation, however there are others (Halion in twlight, LK in the second and third platform phases and so on) where the DPS are having to do something else (move, nuke adds etc etc) so their overall threat output is lower allowing me to weave in a mix of Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory to take some of the strain off the healers (being taken for a date by an over affectionate Valkyr, dodging slime and so on).
So, HRP and WoG, go go go Paladin tanks to our new dawn!
Ok, my first toon was a dwarf, he remains my main and I see no reason to change unless Blizz do something really really nasty to Paladins making them completely unplayable / unviable for raiding. If there’s one thing dwarves love more than gold it’s… well nothing actually. Gold, possibly washed in beer is our reason for living.
So, just how much gold can one player make without too much effort? Well, the answer as far as I’m concerned is 3,600 in a few days purely from levelling from 76 to 80 (Dragonblight, Stormpeaks & a bit of Icecrown), flogging the greens on the AH and vendoring anything which moves. I’m expecting to be able to make more from either selling heavy borean leather or the blues I can make from the leather.
Gold falls from the sky in Northrend, levelling is where the easy money between dungeons is to be made for the DPS classes. Join the queue, do some quests, join the dungeon, romp through, back to questing.
All of the above are at the minimal effort, minimum risk end of gold making. Higher profit margins are definitely possible by learning the exact nature of the AH, what’s selling, what isn’t, where the costs are and so on. There are plenty of places to learn how to make huge amounts of gold from seriously playing the AH (also known as the raid boss which never resets). If you’re just after a decent pile of gold to set yourself up for Cataclysm then simply paying attention to the junk in your bank, never leaving free gold lying around and assessing whether you need all those justice points on the alts which won’t be levelled to 85 for a year is well worth the effort.
So go forth, make gold, have no worries about wiping for hours and building a repair bill measured in hundreds of gold, chug flasks, eat the finest food Azeroth can offer.
Make gold the least of your worries in the game.
Runeforge Gossip set an interesting little thought going “And this has gotten me thinking about how we think of classes. We tend to see them mostly as what buffs they bring and their DPS. But often other things are important too, and even more so given that Blizzard wants us to pay more attention to things like CC, mana management, that sort of thing (no more simple stand and DPS fights). ”
The topic as set is to focus on what a particular class or classes can bring to the raid, which is an interesting thought but actually since 4.0.1 has a reduced scope due to the changes. Paladins and Druids share a buff (Mark of the Wild and Blessing of Kings), Blood pact overwrites Fortitude, Hunters can bring heroism to the raid and so on. So raid make up is going to be less difficult to achieve and I think less interesting. One of the fun aspects of Team Tincan and Team Pirate is we bring what we want to play, not what is necessarily needed for buffs or balance.
What we are truly bringing is the player, and more importantly the brain and awareness. For example it doesn’t matter whether a good player is running a dps DK or a Tankadin, they’ll know when to pop army of the dead, death grip in the caster or use Word of Glory as a health cooldown rather than blow it on threat generation as the situation demands. The warlock who banishes without being instructed to, knows how to drop banish early to save the team from standing around for the extra 20 seconds waiting for it to clear automatically, knows how to use soul shatter, and more importantly when to use it.
Buffs and specific raid utilities brought by the individual classes are simply the toolbox that player is bringing with them, and like any good tradesman they will make the utmost of whatever tool they have to hand and not blame their limitations on the class they’re playing.
With any new encounter half the battle is how quickly the various major components of the team can dial in their part of the puzzle, can the healers quickly get a handle on the flow of the fight, know when they can back off for that critical 20 seconds to conserve mana, will the dps pay attention to the timers and quickly dodge the flubber. Or will they stand like lemons cooing “ohh.. pretty green thing coming my way, will it be my friend”. Ok the new priest ability can yank them out of the way, but will the priest have the situational awarenessto spot the problem as it’s happening and have their UI designed to allow a quick save move.
Will the tanks work together as a team, knowing which way to dance out of the fire, talking to each other over venumblespeak, ensuring that they both take an appropriate share of the trash to spread the healing load, thus making the life of the healers so much easier.
In short when designing a raid, are you aiming to bring classes for their designed abilities or players who can make the utmost of the tools they’re presented with by the game?
Well the primary thing is the red drake, there are a few achievements left to get that nailed.
Also there is a project I’m going to start “how much of the wrath 5-man content can Korenwolf solo?”. I actually reckon that soloing is going to be easier than two or three manning it, with no threat issues holyroguepower isn’t needed for my threat moves and can be used purely for Word of Glory for self-heals (15-20k for three stacks).
I shall report back on how things go.
Beyond that, not sure, can I make another 29k gold in four weeks?