That could be, but I doubt it’ll change until 12/7. It might change with 4.0.3a, I suppose.
Also BAM 5000 replies.
#5000 would have been a lot more epic if I’d been paying attention properly. 
Yes, it makes a lot of sense for game balance. The high-level drops from the elemental bosses are also going to help balance the start of Cata.
Well, I actually think the high-level drops from the elemental bosses are irrelevant. Unless (and I haven’t looked at the quest loot - don’t want to be that spoiled) they are filling holes where you can’t get slots filled by early Cata quests.
Quite frankly, I haven’t done any of the elemental bosses, and if there isn’t an achieve linked to them I probably won’t. I already got the Tripping the Rifts feat on my hunter (the achievement toon). The only toon that could even use the gear is my druid, and I can’t imagine one or two 251 piece is gonna make that much difference while leveling.
I think the bosses are just something fun for folks to do for a week or two - the gear is just because you can’t have a boss that doesn’t drop anything…
Tailors can also make spellthread for enhancing legs, which have caster-friendly stats as opposed to the melee-friendly stats that the LW leg armor has.
No, yeah, the event was still going on. If you target the rift, you can see how many more elementals you need to kill to close it. At the particular rift I was at, there were still 6 more elementals to kill… but they weren’t spawning. There were several other rifts around TB that were still active but not spawning mobs, and people were talking in Trade about how it was bugged again.
Also, the post-event gates look different than the during-event rifts. (And I don’t think the gates spawn until the event is over and done with).
Pretty much.
Remember, Cataclysm has to be designed so that an 80 in quest greens can go straight to Hyjal or Vashj’ir without needing to get level 80 purples. Level 251 items aren’t going to make much of a dent, since they’ll be replaced by Cataclysm greens just as quickly as Northrend greens.
I’ve been wondering what my fire mage’s 3rd Prime should be. She’s got Pyroblast and Living Bomb, but after that… I considered Mage Armor, but since I always have Molten Armor up, I didn’t see the point.
I did the SW elemental invasion on my paladin yesterday evening. Good grief that was frustrating! With so many spell effects going off, I simply could never tell which mob I had targeted, which makes things very difficult when you’re melee and need to run right up to whatever you’re attacking. So with the mobs continually moving around, all I could do was look at my hotkeys to make sure the numbers were white and not red, to indicate my target (whichever mob that might be in the scrum) was actually in range of my axe, and then hope I was actually facing the right direction. I ended up much of the time just hitting Exorcism when it procced and hoping I was facing the right direction, or else running out of the scrum and waiting for my targeted mob to drop below 20% HP and then hitting Hammer of Wrath. And once again, I didn’t seem to have any sandbags. I did manage to pick up a totem, but didn’t get any use out of it.
Afterward, I queued for Princess Wossname in Maraudon. She was a lot easier than either Flamelash or Gahz’rilla. Except something bugged (I think) - when the queue popped and we all clicked “Enter Dungeon”, everybody got dropped in the water, including King Magni. The solution was to use our hearthstones, then teleport back, which dropped everybody up on dry ground in front of the boss. She dropped the tank shield, which I just passed on. Anyway, the Wind boss is the only one I haven’t done yet. Out of the three bosses my pally has done, I’ve seen the tank chest, the tank shield, and a caster ring drop, so I’ve just passed on everything (passing rather than Greeding or DEing to give people who can actually use the stuff a better chance at it, cuz that’s how I roll). After looking at the loot lists, the only thing I saw that would be an upgrade for my paladin was one of the melee rings, and I think a necklace, anyway.
Queued up for a random heroic on my female draenei warrior, and ended up randomly grouped into a party made up entirely of female draenei. I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a completely homogenous group before. DK tank, priest healer, paladin, shaman, and warrior DPS. While the run was success (Halls of Stone) with no deaths, it was kind of annoying. Tank kept dragging the mobs all over the place, forcing me to have to keep running to catch them so that I could hit them. And I think the paladin was a PvPer, because I’ve never seen a PvE ret pally jump around so much (remember my main is also a ret pally). Almost every time I tried to click-target a mob, whether by clicking directly on the mob or clicking nameplates, I ended up targeting this paladin instead because she was constantly running or jumping in front of my mouse.
And of course, I just had to make a big noob mistake while playing my obviously-brand-new level 80 toon. I talked to Brann to start the Tribunal event, and as we were running after him somebody said, “Um, when the tank says BRB, that doesn’t mean start the event” :smack: I apologized, of course, and said I didn’t see it (which I hadn’t; I blame the Vicodin). Anyhoo, during the Tribunal event I had the same problem I had with my pally during the elemental invasion: I couldn’t see a damned thing. In this case, it was the various glow effects from the shaman’s totems, plus her gigantic summoned elementals completely obscuring everything.
What’s been really annoying for my warrior (Arms spec) is that every single frakkin’ piece of plate that has dropped in her random heroics so far has been tank gear. Thankfully, she’s only a couple heroics away from some T10 shoulders.
And speaking of random heroics, I just noticed last night that random heroics after the first now award the same 23 Justice Points that the first one does. Only the money is different (23g for the first, 13g for subsequent randoms). Unless it’s a display bug.
My warrior has opened up some of the Icecrown dailies, the ones you get on the airship and the ones at the Shadow Vault, and I’m a bit puzzled. She’s getting paid 7g 40s for the same dailies that net my paladin 13g 23s. Are the cash rewards for dailies scaled based on faction rep or something? I mean, both toons are level 80.
Are you still getting 13 gold for your pally? I think they simply dropped the gold rewards for max level quests - my warlock is getting 7.4 for all of the ones he had gotten 13+ for before.
I’m pretty sure the rifts are up the whole time. I’ve selected them accidentally during the fights. It’s just a question if they’re spawning elementals or leading to a boss.
Both of these problems should be easily solved by running with enemy nameplates up, especially with an addon like Tidy Plates. I use it with the Threat Plates skin, personally, but that works well even for DPS and healers. (It changes the colors based on your role, so that while “green” for a tank means “I have aggro on this,” “green” for a DPS means “this is hitting someone else.” Or however you decide to customize it.)
I’m wondering if they’ve just nerfed the rewards in preparation for Cata. I noticed that my Mage yesterday only got 7gwhateverish for the same quests that my Warrior got 13gwhateverish for. Something similar happened around the time Wrath came out–the first day after WotLK dropped, I went to do my QD dailies and discovered that they were worth a lot less than they used to be.
Depends, really. If you’re having mana issues, Mage Armor. If not, Molten Armor. Frost is incredibly mana efficient, but I don’t know about Fire or Arcane.
Same as it was before, sort of, you always got two extra badgers from doing a random heroic with the first of the day awarding two Frosts, but since we only got one type of points right now, that is what you always get.
According to a blue post on the Blizzard forums this is not WAI and is being investigated. I fully expected them to drop the gold rewards for the Wrath dailies once Cataclysm has been released but it would seem someone made a mistake in the last patch, and knowing Blizzard it probably won’t be fixed until December 6th. :mad:
Welllll, that’s not really fair to say, I think. Most dev teams who are working like mad to get things prepped for a major expansion would prefer to just fold any changes into an already-planned patch rather than create a new one.
There was a great quote on the City of Heroes forums recently (paraphrasing from memory): “Players measure time by a stopwatch while devs measure time by the changing color of leaves on the trees.”
Oh, I have nameplates on, and I use TidyPlates as well. Sure, I can click on the nameplate to target, but when there are a bunch of mobs crammed into a small space and there are so many spells going off that I can’t see the red targeting circle on the ground, it’s still next to impossible to tell which one I’m supposed to be hitting. The floating nameplate doesn’t change appearance when I click on it, and in any case if there’s a tank in there he/she probably has the aggro so they’ll all look green to me. I had a similar problem with those flying val’kyr in that saronite mine in Ymirheim - their targeting circles were appearing “underground”, rendering them invisible, and with them being airborne and the ground being so uneven (i.e. much of the time they were uphill or downhill from me) I had a hell of a time trying to position myself because I’d think I was running up to them, but was actually running just past them and ending up with them behind me. Looks like Blizz fixed that, though - the targeting circles on flying mobs now appear right under their feet.
My paladin, who is Exalted with everybody, grabbed the same quests on the same day, and her quest log says 13g 23s.
Whatever it is, it ain’t rep. My warlock is also exalted with just about everybody (except Wyrmrest), but he was getting 7 40 yesterday.
Badgers? I don’t need no stinking badgers.
That should be something you can change. Although since the patch I’ve noticed something weird going on where it’s not adjusting the alpha like it should be–I actually need to go in and fuck around with the settings and/or see if this is a known issue. But, in theory, I personally have it set so that anything I don’t have selected has its alpha around 80% (i.e., it’s more transparent).
Why? As long as they’re not in front of your car or stealing your food, what could you possibly have against badgers?
Or is it because you don’t want any competition on the tanking scene ? Hm? 
And now I’ll correct this. My pally grabbed the Icecrown airship dailies yesterday, but didn’t get around to actually doing them yesterday. They were still in her quest log, and in her quest log (as well as in the quest dialog when accepting the quests), it said 13g 23s. But when she actually did the quests today and turned them in, she only got the 7g 40s. Weirdness. Something’s definitely not working correctly.
I’ll have to look into that, then.
Say, maybe some of you in the “younger” set can explain something to this “old” guy. Is there something in today’s education/youth culture that prompts the kids to think everything is a fucking race/contest? I do dailies in areas where there are a shit-ton of quest mobs spread out over a wide area; specifically, the “Taking Battle to the Enemy” daily to kill Cult of the Damned members, and the airship daily to kill 20 Jotunheim vrykul. Not only are there plenty of mobs to go around, they respawn very quickly and in a large enough area that it’s very simple to start killing in an area where somebody else isn’t already going at it. That’s what I do - if I see somebody attacking the mobs at the west end of the area, I’ll take the 2 extra seconds to land at the east end and start my killing there. But I constantly have these other players who think they need to land somewhere near me and then race around trying to “beat” me to the mobs, or else it’s a caster with an arsenal of instant-cast spells they can use to tag everything in sight, often pulling mobs right out from under me. It almost reminds me of liberal economics where everything is a zero-sum game, i.e. if you get it then there won’t be any for me.
Is there some race/contest motivation going on here, or is it plain and simple selfishness?
Either way, the invasion’s a great way for my baby paladin to grab some gear. He just dinged 80 a couple nights ago and has been farming the rifts and heroics like mad for JP to get the full Lightbringer set.
I like the way the paladin T10 looks, even the helm. I’m not too thrilled tho about looking like something chipped off a rock in Cat. To me, paladins are supposed to be like the … dammit, what’s the French? The epitome of civilization. Not an avatar of rock. Plus. I’m one of those people who like the kilt look, not the pants look. Paladins are above mere physics and can run and fight successfully in a plate dress. >.>
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That said, the default blizz raid UI is WAY subpar to Grid IMO. I got people killed because I couldn’t see which flyspeck icon was Necrotic Plague. 
I finally went back to Grid, even though it has been having a weird problem where the groups will wind up stair stepping across the screen and not laying out correctly. A temporary fix so far is to bounce your client while in raid, but Phanx and co are trying to narrow it down.
That’s an adequate and sufficient explanation, isn’t it?
To put it less succinctly and more contextually, here could easily be what goes through the mind of a d-bag like that:
“OOh, another dude grinding here. What to do, what to do… waste two more seconds of my precious time going further down the way, or ninja all his targets and make him waste the time. Oooh, that’s a toughy…”
Add to that the malicious lulz of pissing you ineffectually off. “Griefing” doesn’t have a specific meaning because it’s rare.
Internet anonymity is awesome for bringing out the worst in everyone.