A quick update: It has been explained to us that the little "bribe" *we* get, for queueing up as an "in demand" role using the Dungeon Finder is a Bind on Account satchel of random beautiful treasures. So if my druid tanks and receives a bag that can potentially contain Rivendare's Stupid Horse, I can choose to send it to Truny. The mounts will have the same chance of drop as if you had killed the particular boss that would have dropped it to begin with, aka never. Well, I did find the White Bird Mount on my first try on Turby so....
Now that our perspectives have been altered a little bit, will this entice us to tank more?
See, the satchel of gifts is BOA meaning: "We know you people have healers and tanks, so use 'em goddamn it!"
I still say no. It takes little to no effort for my hunter, warlock, or feral druid to storm down all of the old content to obtain the same mounts. HOWEVER this is a really nice bonus if I ever do choose to queue up solo.
/end discussion on Call to Arms until further notice.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Patch 4.1 Dungeon Finder Call to Arms: How Entertaining
Let's start with the facts, then I shall pollute these waters with my opinions.
Information has just (to me) been released about a new change being made to our good old friend the LFD tool: You can read the full thing here. A plausible solution to shorten LFD queue times for DPS classes.
So say you queue up and your queue ticks on for several minutes. Afterwards, the queue coding changes. Rather than queueing you into a waiting line, essentially the usher will call out to any roles missing from your queue, which is most likely a tank, then a healer. This is fancy glitter speech for how the queues should have changed to shorten DPS waits. And you got it! To give priority to the stagnant queues. I wonder when this "Call to Arms" kicks in, when three DPS have assembled, or is it based on an individual's wait time, or the incomplete group's total wait time? We shall see.
Should you have been "Called to Arms", if you finish the dungeon you get thrown in under this title, you get an extra goodie bag containing gold/elixirs/flasks/gems/mini-pets/mounts.
Whoa, pets and mounts? Don't worry, these are all pets and mounts available through doable means by the player, and they will have a low low drop rate. The mounts will be "dungeon" mounts. I wonder if the Stone Drakes in Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle are included?? Or the Blue Protodrake??
Personally, IF my main character had an "in demand" role, such as tanking and healing, then I would probably like this little addition. Though the only time I see heals in demand are for high level BC dungeons. Unfortunately, both of my mains are pure DPS toons, a warlock and a hunter. They've already gone out and collected a lot of the pets and mounts anyways. Now unless we start seeing single DPS roles dropping group, I don't see the DPS role coming in "demand" anytime soon.
Will this entice me to play my tank/heals? You could say that healers get an extra shot at obtaining mounts that could be hard to solo with their squishy butts. Well, my main tanking and main healing character is one and the same err one in the same.....whatever. My druid. No. I tank when I feel like it, and I heal when I feel like it. Even if I did get some sort of pet or mount I would probably think "damn if only Truny had that!". It'd make me feel tragically lucky, but its not game breaking. If I did want the Raven Lord mount on my "healer", my "tank", the same character would run in and take a shot at Sethekk Halls (spellcheck). A lot of people are sad and mad that tanks get handed rewards which would in turn reduce their enjoyment and their hard work. Well really, it doesn't take much effort to go to the auction house and pay 5 gold for a parrot? The cross-faction pets on the other hand cost upwards of 3,000 gold on our server, but we will see how often they drop from these goodie bags. Its not like tanks will automatically have their pet and mount rosters completely filled up in one day! And heck most people don't really care for vanity items.
What's keeping me from tanking outside of a guild group are people who don't understand CC or how to manage threat. I'm a bear tank, give me MANY seconds to build aggro. Sometimes it just takes ONE person to make a run completely bumpy. I don't heal much because...well not because of game mechanics or anything, druid healing is easy peasy...its because tree of life form is gone....yeah...I'm shallow. What about my other tanks? Well my next most active tank is my Paladin, and I tank with her because its FUN! I don't even care about loot or badges or whatnot.....heck I get into such a frenzy I tend to leave my group behind, and they hates me forever for it.
So will this "entice" me to play a more needed role? No. But now I know there's a chance I'll be "Called" and be rewarded with much glory. Though I heard Bear Tanking is getting much love in 4.1 so perhaps it will become even funner and the incentive becomes moot. See, as a tank, we already have the benefit of instant queue times, if that wasn't enough to entice you to tank I'm not sure what is!
Do I appreciate the proposed shortened DPS queue times? Maybe, if I ever queued again as DPS. OH WAIT, there could be a chance all my guildies are offline when 4.1 comes out and I felt like queueing for the new ZA/ZGs I guess....though highly unlikely.
Will This Work?
Shorten queue times? Yes. If a LOT of tanks queue. I think initially a lot of people will want to try out this new feature, only to be reminded how tedious heroic dungeons are. Heck, even in a guild group when I'm playing on my DPS toon, and our group doesn't require CC or much brain power I can still only do about one before getting bored. Or maybe that's just me. This brings us to the issue of dungeon design, difficulty, etc etc etc lets not get into it.
But will this make dungeon runs better and smoother? No. Though, since the "Called to Arms" person will only receive their goodie bag after the LAST boss in any given dungeon is dead, this will PERHAPS give the incentive to people to stick with their groups and try to communicate and work out issues, such as the enhance shammy always going down to 50% hp at every pull, or MAYBE we should CC one of the mobs that have an AOE.
Will we end up seeing more terribad tanks? Or will we end up with more people trying out the tanking game and liking it and continuing to tank until the end of their days? Of course its complicated to deal with such a multi-layered issue.
Will this make tanking or healing more fun? No.
We shall see, this will be very entertaining. So, my four dear readers what do you think about this?
Truny the Called
Information has just (to me) been released about a new change being made to our good old friend the LFD tool: You can read the full thing here. A plausible solution to shorten LFD queue times for DPS classes.
So say you queue up and your queue ticks on for several minutes. Afterwards, the queue coding changes. Rather than queueing you into a waiting line, essentially the usher will call out to any roles missing from your queue, which is most likely a tank, then a healer. This is fancy glitter speech for how the queues should have changed to shorten DPS waits. And you got it! To give priority to the stagnant queues. I wonder when this "Call to Arms" kicks in, when three DPS have assembled, or is it based on an individual's wait time, or the incomplete group's total wait time? We shall see.
Should you have been "Called to Arms", if you finish the dungeon you get thrown in under this title, you get an extra goodie bag containing gold/elixirs/flasks/gems/mini-pets/mounts.
Whoa, pets and mounts? Don't worry, these are all pets and mounts available through doable means by the player, and they will have a low low drop rate. The mounts will be "dungeon" mounts. I wonder if the Stone Drakes in Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle are included?? Or the Blue Protodrake??
Personally, IF my main character had an "in demand" role, such as tanking and healing, then I would probably like this little addition. Though the only time I see heals in demand are for high level BC dungeons. Unfortunately, both of my mains are pure DPS toons, a warlock and a hunter. They've already gone out and collected a lot of the pets and mounts anyways. Now unless we start seeing single DPS roles dropping group, I don't see the DPS role coming in "demand" anytime soon.
Will this entice me to play my tank/heals? You could say that healers get an extra shot at obtaining mounts that could be hard to solo with their squishy butts. Well, my main tanking and main healing character is one and the same err one in the same.....whatever. My druid. No. I tank when I feel like it, and I heal when I feel like it. Even if I did get some sort of pet or mount I would probably think "damn if only Truny had that!". It'd make me feel tragically lucky, but its not game breaking. If I did want the Raven Lord mount on my "healer", my "tank", the same character would run in and take a shot at Sethekk Halls (spellcheck). A lot of people are sad and mad that tanks get handed rewards which would in turn reduce their enjoyment and their hard work. Well really, it doesn't take much effort to go to the auction house and pay 5 gold for a parrot? The cross-faction pets on the other hand cost upwards of 3,000 gold on our server, but we will see how often they drop from these goodie bags. Its not like tanks will automatically have their pet and mount rosters completely filled up in one day! And heck most people don't really care for vanity items.
What's keeping me from tanking outside of a guild group are people who don't understand CC or how to manage threat. I'm a bear tank, give me MANY seconds to build aggro. Sometimes it just takes ONE person to make a run completely bumpy. I don't heal much because...well not because of game mechanics or anything, druid healing is easy peasy...its because tree of life form is gone....yeah...I'm shallow. What about my other tanks? Well my next most active tank is my Paladin, and I tank with her because its FUN! I don't even care about loot or badges or whatnot.....heck I get into such a frenzy I tend to leave my group behind, and they hates me forever for it.
So will this "entice" me to play a more needed role? No. But now I know there's a chance I'll be "Called" and be rewarded with much glory. Though I heard Bear Tanking is getting much love in 4.1 so perhaps it will become even funner and the incentive becomes moot. See, as a tank, we already have the benefit of instant queue times, if that wasn't enough to entice you to tank I'm not sure what is!
Do I appreciate the proposed shortened DPS queue times? Maybe, if I ever queued again as DPS. OH WAIT, there could be a chance all my guildies are offline when 4.1 comes out and I felt like queueing for the new ZA/ZGs I guess....though highly unlikely.
Will This Work?
Shorten queue times? Yes. If a LOT of tanks queue. I think initially a lot of people will want to try out this new feature, only to be reminded how tedious heroic dungeons are. Heck, even in a guild group when I'm playing on my DPS toon, and our group doesn't require CC or much brain power I can still only do about one before getting bored. Or maybe that's just me. This brings us to the issue of dungeon design, difficulty, etc etc etc lets not get into it.
But will this make dungeon runs better and smoother? No. Though, since the "Called to Arms" person will only receive their goodie bag after the LAST boss in any given dungeon is dead, this will PERHAPS give the incentive to people to stick with their groups and try to communicate and work out issues, such as the enhance shammy always going down to 50% hp at every pull, or MAYBE we should CC one of the mobs that have an AOE.
Will we end up seeing more terribad tanks? Or will we end up with more people trying out the tanking game and liking it and continuing to tank until the end of their days? Of course its complicated to deal with such a multi-layered issue.
Will this make tanking or healing more fun? No.
We shall see, this will be very entertaining. So, my four dear readers what do you think about this?
Truny the Called
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Vash'jir is Cool...After the Fact
Now that I'm all done the Vash'jir "quest line", I've been hopping back in once in a while to herb or to gather snake eyes for cooking. I've found that without the tunnel vision brought upon me by questing, this zone is actually really nice. It's quite sad.
The zone is highly detailed, with various little critters and the sprinkling of aquatic life, it's a fantastical underwater world. It's sad that after we do the quest line there's really no reason to come back and "explore" or "romp" (yes I like to romp.......) except to hunt rare mobs or to herb.
This zone is so out of the way, the only convenient way to travel to it is via a portal, I mean how often are you out in the world...actually how often are we even "out in the world" to begin with? Anyways...how often do you fly over Vash'jir and go "oh maybe I'll dive down and enjoy this beautiful zone today?". Probably never. There are no daily quests down there, nor are there any "hidden" quests since the entire quest chain is handed to you from beginning to end (then leaves you very abruptly and rudely). There's almost no reason to stray and since all the caves we end up in look the same it becomes slightly frustrating when you are sent yet again to another cave with quests that will probably lead you to ..yup another cave! The quests weren't BAD and when I was in that Submarine running around clueless, clicking anything I could....the build up was great, I thought "this is going to end epically!". But it was more like "kthxbaifck".
The Battlemaiden quest-line was interesting.
When I was still a Cata Noob, I thought that the new "hub" city was going to be in one of the new fantastical zones. I thought the new hub was going to be in Deepholm, where we would then plan our attack on Deathwing. But now Deathwing is just flying all over the place with no focus. When I entered Vash'jir I thought that there would be a hub city underwater, where we would build our forces against the Naga. Nope, nothing. There was a more "mystical" feeling to thinking that the Cata Hub wasn't Org or Stormwind. It's hard to explain, but let's look at BC: Shattrath. A city in a different world. Shattrath = BC. Dalaran = Wrath. Then all of a sudden we're separated. See, from a "regular" realm...I didn't mind the Alliance. Shouldn't we be working with them to down Deathwing?
I guess since Deathwing is all over the place we didn't know where to build our ultimate Sanctuary. It would have been nice to be in Vash'jir for no reason at all just that it was in the middle of the world. Or by the Earth Pillar. Then provide portals to all the main cities?
So yes, Vash'jir. There's a lot of potential down there for future expansions, perhaps we'll see a new 5-man where a strange dungeon has been discovered by eager underwater archaeologists under the silt and sand where a strange demonic force has corrupted a handful of the Naga. This shall be known as what I had named years before: Watery Throne of Friesh'ja. WTF. Come ON we need a WTF dungeon!
So, what do you think? Why am I asking a question? I don't even remember what I typed up there anymore so goodbye!
Truny the Vash'jir Topic
The zone is highly detailed, with various little critters and the sprinkling of aquatic life, it's a fantastical underwater world. It's sad that after we do the quest line there's really no reason to come back and "explore" or "romp" (yes I like to romp.......) except to hunt rare mobs or to herb.
This zone is so out of the way, the only convenient way to travel to it is via a portal, I mean how often are you out in the world...actually how often are we even "out in the world" to begin with? Anyways...how often do you fly over Vash'jir and go "oh maybe I'll dive down and enjoy this beautiful zone today?". Probably never. There are no daily quests down there, nor are there any "hidden" quests since the entire quest chain is handed to you from beginning to end (then leaves you very abruptly and rudely). There's almost no reason to stray and since all the caves we end up in look the same it becomes slightly frustrating when you are sent yet again to another cave with quests that will probably lead you to ..yup another cave! The quests weren't BAD and when I was in that Submarine running around clueless, clicking anything I could....the build up was great, I thought "this is going to end epically!". But it was more like "kthxbaifck".
The Battlemaiden quest-line was interesting.
When I was still a Cata Noob, I thought that the new "hub" city was going to be in one of the new fantastical zones. I thought the new hub was going to be in Deepholm, where we would then plan our attack on Deathwing. But now Deathwing is just flying all over the place with no focus. When I entered Vash'jir I thought that there would be a hub city underwater, where we would build our forces against the Naga. Nope, nothing. There was a more "mystical" feeling to thinking that the Cata Hub wasn't Org or Stormwind. It's hard to explain, but let's look at BC: Shattrath. A city in a different world. Shattrath = BC. Dalaran = Wrath. Then all of a sudden we're separated. See, from a "regular" realm...I didn't mind the Alliance. Shouldn't we be working with them to down Deathwing?
I guess since Deathwing is all over the place we didn't know where to build our ultimate Sanctuary. It would have been nice to be in Vash'jir for no reason at all just that it was in the middle of the world. Or by the Earth Pillar. Then provide portals to all the main cities?
So yes, Vash'jir. There's a lot of potential down there for future expansions, perhaps we'll see a new 5-man where a strange dungeon has been discovered by eager underwater archaeologists under the silt and sand where a strange demonic force has corrupted a handful of the Naga. This shall be known as what I had named years before: Watery Throne of Friesh'ja. WTF. Come ON we need a WTF dungeon!
So, what do you think? Why am I asking a question? I don't even remember what I typed up there anymore so goodbye!
Truny the Vash'jir Topic
[Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Lucky]
Last week, I was blog jumping and I happened upon Gavendo's post over at Rapid Fire. The title had Thunderfury in it and up until that point I seriously thought that it was a mace. I guess I had this SWORD and Sulfuron's Hammer Thinger mixed up or merged.
So I saw the picture, and I thought "Ok so you're holding a cool looking sword, so what?" then I saw the achievement and I thought "Oh ok is that fake?", then I looked again "Blessed BLADE".....BLADE!
OHH! My moment of Noob had dissipated and I looked up the sword on Wowhead promptly! I looked up the method to obtain such a cool legendary(ily spammed) sword and the process was fairly simple. Get lucky with drops on two bosses and obtain a bunch of mats.
The materials are easy enough to get with our coffers flowing with gold, luckily we had made a raid on Blackwing Lair way back and had accumulated some Elementium Ingots.
So I jumped into Molten Core last week partly to gear up a friend and to seek the Bindings, and found the left binding off of Garr the Stone Guy Surrounded by Other Stone Guys. Barn Geddon failed to drop his binding, but I did get to start the quest.
Just yesterday, my friend tagged along again since he has been deemed "Magical Drop Rate Man" and lo and behold the Right Binding dropped!
All I need to do now is to mine up a bunch of thorium and arcane crystals /shakefist and I'm sure there will be pictures galore to come!
Turby the Blessed
So I saw the picture, and I thought "Ok so you're holding a cool looking sword, so what?" then I saw the achievement and I thought "Oh ok is that fake?", then I looked again "Blessed BLADE".....BLADE!
OHH! My moment of Noob had dissipated and I looked up the sword on Wowhead promptly! I looked up the method to obtain such a cool legendary(ily spammed) sword and the process was fairly simple. Get lucky with drops on two bosses and obtain a bunch of mats.
The materials are easy enough to get with our coffers flowing with gold, luckily we had made a raid on Blackwing Lair way back and had accumulated some Elementium Ingots.
So I jumped into Molten Core last week partly to gear up a friend and to seek the Bindings, and found the left binding off of Garr the Stone Guy Surrounded by Other Stone Guys. Barn Geddon failed to drop his binding, but I did get to start the quest.
Just yesterday, my friend tagged along again since he has been deemed "Magical Drop Rate Man" and lo and behold the Right Binding dropped!
All I need to do now is to mine up a bunch of thorium and arcane crystals /shakefist and I'm sure there will be pictures galore to come!
Turby the Blessed
Monday, April 4, 2011
Generic Boring Raiding Post
I hadn't been available for our past several raiding runs, which take place Saturday evenings. One day a week may seem paltry but this is a great schedule for most of us, and for myself anything more than one day would probably lead to burnout.
Ever since the last time I was in Bastion of Something and downed Halfus, our group had been struggling with the alternating drakes ever since. A group of us vouched for BWD (whatever that stands for, I called it the "Lava Worm Flame Pillar Kill Worms Raid") and we went in and downed Magmaw was his name, in two tries. Easy peasy and greatly satisfying considering half of the group had never even seen this encounter before.
I specced Survival this time (yes on my Hunter) for the increased AOE damage to help kill the worms ASAP. We used a different techique on worm management, where we had an actual tank kite and tease the worms while EVERYONE stacked near Magmaw regardless of if we could damage him or not. Though it doesn't really matter since the only time to DPS him is during his head-chained thingy.
Worms were downed FAST, we had two survival hunters and that did the job fine, nice and clean.
We are most likely going to attempt Omnomnomtron this weekend, but again I may not be available to report it.
My Warlock is also officially retired until Maelstrom Crystals become dirt cheap commodities and I can go out and buy the Power Torrent enchant for her Waldo's Sword Cane. I spent a good chunk of my fortune on that then the fel armor change hit and it went to waste.
Also completely off-topic but I've been considering putting "Corruption" back into my repertoire of Demonology Pew Pews, cause when you think of it, our main DOT Immolate never runs out so why not? Oh right, I'm lazy as hell. Oh well, I'll try it out come patch 4.1, which my hunter will still take priority in running the new dungeons and checking out how AWESOME they've remodelled the 2D fences in Zul'Aman!
Truny the Retired
Ever since the last time I was in Bastion of Something and downed Halfus, our group had been struggling with the alternating drakes ever since. A group of us vouched for BWD (whatever that stands for, I called it the "Lava Worm Flame Pillar Kill Worms Raid") and we went in and downed Magmaw was his name, in two tries. Easy peasy and greatly satisfying considering half of the group had never even seen this encounter before.
I specced Survival this time (yes on my Hunter) for the increased AOE damage to help kill the worms ASAP. We used a different techique on worm management, where we had an actual tank kite and tease the worms while EVERYONE stacked near Magmaw regardless of if we could damage him or not. Though it doesn't really matter since the only time to DPS him is during his head-chained thingy.
Worms were downed FAST, we had two survival hunters and that did the job fine, nice and clean.
We are most likely going to attempt Omnomnomtron this weekend, but again I may not be available to report it.
My Warlock is also officially retired until Maelstrom Crystals become dirt cheap commodities and I can go out and buy the Power Torrent enchant for her Waldo's Sword Cane. I spent a good chunk of my fortune on that then the fel armor change hit and it went to waste.
Also completely off-topic but I've been considering putting "Corruption" back into my repertoire of Demonology Pew Pews, cause when you think of it, our main DOT Immolate never runs out so why not? Oh right, I'm lazy as hell. Oh well, I'll try it out come patch 4.1, which my hunter will still take priority in running the new dungeons and checking out how AWESOME they've remodelled the 2D fences in Zul'Aman!
Truny the Retired
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