In response to Getting up to speed, part I, 5000! wrote:
Every time I read one of these kinds of things it makes me want to stop playing. I’m never going to have the time to play at that level!
I can certainly see where this is coming from. What follows is an exploration of the first couple of weeks of being 60.
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This came up over the weekend and I thought I’d rant a moment about it here. There are few dumber PvP things you can do than try and farm honor in WSG. It’s so stupid it’s not even amusing. I’m still shocked anytime I have a toon in 10-19 or 20-29 range and have to argue with people about how the game works. If you’ve been in WSG enough you’ve been around when some jerk off says “don’t cap yet, let’s get more honor first.” This is usually someone who has been in the game all day, playing against people who have been in the game all day, and definitely has no idea what they are talking about. Let’s look at the mechanics of this for a second - you can kill someone 4 times in 24 hours and get any honor for it. you get 100% of their honor value the first kill, 75% the second, 50% the 3rd, 25% the fourth, and nothing from there on out for the next 24 hours. So on a 10v10 WSG round, assuming you kill every opposing player 4 times, you can only get any credit for 40 HKs, and 10 of those, depending on your level, are almost worthless. I’ve been in WSG rounds that have run over an hour, racking up over 150 HKs, and had some idiot suggest this. The obvious choice if you want more honor is to win, requeue, and win again. You get way more honor for winning the round than you do for racking up a few more HKs, especially if you’ve been playing against the same folks for a few round, and even more so on bonus honor weekend.
Speaking of bonus honor weekend and stupidity, this weekend was bonus for AB, I was in queue all weekend and never had a game come up one, meanwhile WSG and AV were up non-stop. Huh?
I have a long discussion of the nature of raids and reptition in WoW that I’m not ready to post. However, I would just like to quote one post from WoW Detox that kinda stuck with me and gives some insight into the article I’m currently composing:
Realized I could better _myself_ rather than a character if I invested the same amount of time.
Is it April again? Feels like just yesterday, Blizzard graced us with a handful of bad jokes. Must be, because the announcement that Blood Elves will have the option to be Paladins and Draenei Shamans just hit the website.
So this is me standing beside my server. It’s interesting that although this character appears here in game he’s actually a character from the book series. Which I’m sure we all have read. ;) Alot of the server names are pretty obvious but the odd one is rare gem like this. Is yours?
Since my last update I’ve
For all of these activities I’ve been a healer and I’ve observed one key thing that you just don’t notice in earlier instances; Boss battles are long and if you’re not very careful, to the point of needing to prep beforehand, you will run out of mana.
More details follow.
Blizzard has published their intial plans for the 1.12 patch. So you’re not confused when you read the page, PTR means Public Test Realm.
The highlights are cross-server PvP battlegrounds, world PvP (meaning PvP not in an instance), the Rogue talent respec, and a few UI improvements like scrolling combat text. To see what affects your favorite class, go read the notes.
There are a number simple bug fixes but also a revamp to the way threat (hate/aggro) reduction is handled. In Blizzard’s own words, “Please note that in almost all cases, when stacking multiple threat reduction effects you will experience less threat reduction than previously.” I think there will be a wee bit of controversy over that particular change.
Expect changes and modifications to these notes as we get closer to Patch Day.
Looking forward, conventional wisdom says the Burning Crusade expansion will arrive in the October/November time frame. Supposedly Blizzard intends to have completed both the 1.12 patch and the distant 1.13 patch before the launch. Hazarding a wild ass guess, maybe Patch 1.12 in Mid-August and 1.13 in Mid-September? Only our Benevolent Dictator, Blizzard, knows for sure. What rumors have you heard?
Like a lot of guilds, my guild decided to wait on Naxxramas in favor of continuing to work on the optional bosses and C’Thun in AQ40. Finally, this past week we decided to venture forth and see what all the fuss was about. First of all, the two boss fights we’ve done so far are awesome. The move towards more involved encounters that require movement and attention from every member of your raid — not just the healers and tanks — is a nice one. This is a trend continued and improved upon from AQ40; fights like the Twin Emps and C’Thun were like nothing else I’d done in WoW and required a level of coordination and awareness I hadn’t seen before.
Anub’Rekhan went down first, unfortunately due to work aggro I wasn’t in the raid that night. Instructor Razuvious was next, and I’d like to share a little timeline, if you will, of learning the encounter…
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I enjoy my triple-head system, as you might have noticed from the screen shots, but not everyone has US$299 to drop on a black box, plus the cost of the extra screens. However, many people have a video card that can do dual-head. Mostly, for games, this sucks pretty badly. In FPSs dual-head puts the crosshairs on the join. In 3rd person perspective stuff like WoW it splits your character in half.
I have previously posted about a compromise between one/three screen(s) and two screens. This was done before I started raiding and discovered the amount of data on-screen that’s part of the UI rather than the 3D world. So, I’ve put together a little guide on how you can use a dual-head system to, basically, move your CT_RaidAssist and chat windows out of the way.
A cry of joy and delight could be heard across the forums, when Blizzard announced its Battlegroups. There’s beauty in them thar combinations, and the best one is … Eitrigg and Kul Tiras are in one group. I might get to fight alongside my old friend and partner in crime Deadicus again, teach the noob Boltthrower/Paineater a trick or two, and get to kill the living bejeezuz out of that damn gnome mage Jonkichi. A good choice indeed. See ya in WSG.
