I don’t think they will take Garrosh down, at least not anytime soon. Did you read “The Shattering”? Garrosh is young and hotheaded, but he’s an excellent tactician and he’s willing to take chances that Thrall wasn’t willing to take. Once he’s tempered by age and wisdom (and concedes that other people have things to teach him–he still respects Thrall, which is a good sign), I don’t think he’ll make a half-bad leader for the Horde.
I feel the same way about Varian (who I used to hate–I still kind of dislike him, but I understand him better now). Though I think that he will go before Garrosh does, because Anduin is obviously being set up as King material.
I managed to land a fantastic Heroic PuG for my daily VP today. We got placed in BRC and the tank wanted to do the [Arrested Development] achievement. We only had two ranged anyways, myself healing, and a warlock, so we figured what the hey. The first two attempts resulted in wipes because the DK and Warrior DPS weren’t getting their interrupts off when Corla was casting her fear, which resulted in me and the warlock running back into the evolution beams, refreshing our stacks, leading to two zealots evolving at a time. The third time, the tank switched to interrupting the fears and the dps were tasked with interrupting the shadow attack thing. They missed quite a few of those, but I managed to keep the tank up and we got the achievement!
We then proceeded to Karsh. The tank already had the achievement but was in a good mood so we went for [Too Hot to Handle]. I burned barkskin at 14 stacks, lifebloom/berserk (yay troll herbalist), tree form, then tranquility and we managed to one shot him comfortably.
We took out beauty with no probs (I love Hibernate) and proceeded to Lord Obsidius. We didn’t think we had the ability to do [Ascendant Descending], but figured we’d give it a shot anyways. The Frost DK did a fantastic job kiting the adds and we managed to one shot that achievement too. I’m ecstatic!
Sadly, the leather bracers I need as my last Heroic upgrade didn’t drop from Corla, but all in all it was a great run.
My prediction: Garrosh will be a raid boss in a late 4.x raid. For both factions. Unless, maybe, Varian Wrynn goes completely off the reservation and also becomes a raid boss. At that point, I’m not making any bets as to which side fights which. Civil war seems as likely an outcome as any to me.
It seems the WoW devs are coming around to the belief of some in the Resto Druid/Shaman that druids and shamans need (better) utility cooldowns to compete with Priests/Paladin healers, according to this article on Wow-Insider. I say it’s about time, personally, but I know there are some who will probably disagree with me.
One change, with regards to Druids, would be to change Efflorescence from a weak AoE heal to something similar to Power Word: Barrier. They’d have to delink it from Swiftmend and give it an equal cooldown to PW:B, naturally, but it seems to me that this would be an easy fix which shouldn’t require any encounter retuning since it’d just be matching a Priest’s already existing ability. Of course, the downside to this is that it further homogenizes the healer classes.
Alternatively, efflorescence could function normally in caster form, but be modified by tree form to add a 20% damage reduction with a 30 second cooldown for anyone standing in the green circle, if used in Tree Form. This gives it a cooldown component (won’t get the additional benefit if you don’t use ToL which has a 3 min cooldown, so it wouldn’t be like you couldn’t use it any more often than PW:B), gives us an excuse to pop Tree Form more often on boss fights now that LB rolling no longer works, and doesn’t homogenize druids with another class. Essentially it’d be like a mass barkskin, only in a range limited area. The more I think about it, the more I like this option.
Of course, many have suggested leaving Efflorescence alone and just changing Barkskin (via glyph, or again, ToL) to give a targetable/mass 20% damage reduction on a longer cooldown. I suppose that would work, but honestly, druids already don’t have great burst heals and I’m pretty much GCD locked at times getting heals out, even in tree form (full stacking lifeblooms on 3 party members + keeping one on the tank I’ve already got it on eats up 16 GCD’s at least, which is about half of my Tree form time).
At a few points during the Kalimdor 1-60 Horde quests, Garrosh shows up and does cool stuff, as well. At the end of Stonetalon Mountains, in particular:
You help nuke a druid refuge and kill the family of a tauren chieftain who tries to stop you. Garrosh shows up, screams about how you’ve brought dishonor upon the Horde, and throws your questgiver off a cliff. The chieftain then gives Garrosh a lecture in compassion and mercy, which convinces him to spare your life.
It was pretty cool seeing him grow a little, but I still dislike him. You’d think by the time you hit level 84 and head to the Twilight Highlands he’d have developed even more, but he reverts to the brash hothead we’ve all grown to hate :rolleyes:
He’s not necessarily stupid - but that doesn’t make him a heroic champion of justice, either. Garrosh is like the Mongols: If you’re with him, in his circle of people, then honor has a meaning. If your’e not, you’re basically a target to be exterminated, and the concepts of honor and honorable conduct have no meanings. Garrosh cares about power and honor. (Granted, his concept of honor is pretty violent.)
Everyone inside his “people” can be dealt with, with honor. Those outside are dealt with, without mercy. Although he does have limits: he despises the use of certain kinds of magic and vile technology of the Forsaken.
Anyway, all of that’s what sets him apart from Varian Wrynn. Wrynn doesn’t really care about either power or honor, per se. He’s there to defend his people, and if the Horde wasn’t killing, Wrynn would leave them alone. Oddly, Garrosh seems to utterly despise humans (and anything else in the way of his glory although humans did nothing to him and merely defended themselves from his kind), while Wrynn has let go of far worse reasons to hate and even made overtures before (irritatingly, they happen before the part of the game, so you don’t get to see it) and respects certain Horde people, including Thrall and Saurfang.
Garrosh ultimately appeals to a barbaric sense of honor. He can justice murder and conquest solely because it grants him fame and face among his people. Wrynn cannot: he is premusably an adherent fo the Holy Light, and has to justify what he does or does not do according to those standards. Garrosh lives (like most of the Horde) according to a primitive Viking/Germanic code. There’s no morality in it towards any out-group.
Yeah, none of Wrynn’s depth comes through in the game at all. Having not read any of the outside-of-the-game lore, I actually view Wrynn less favorably than even Garrosh.
Tangent: I did rather enjoy pointing and laughing at Staghelm in Hyjal.
Sometimes the game won’t take you out of combat until a while after actual combat ends. It’s pretty much just a bug…you can’t really do anything except wait.
I was kinda hoping something would happen between Staghelm and Malfurion in Hyjal. “Hey dickface, you took my title as Archdruid and you’re pissing off my girl.”
I also thought that questline was going to be much bigger - I mean, come on, escort quest through a dangerous area? That just screams trouble.
I love getting stuck in other server guild groups as the healer, have them not say a word to me (presumably using Vent/Mumble to talk), and then boot me because they can’t seem to figure out, on Anraphet, to get out of the Alpha Beams asap, all the while only one of them was doing more than 6k DPS to him.
I had been wanting to put my little big toesup[/sup] back into the tanking waters. I found both paladin and DK tanking easier than warrior, but “Peace” was my first tank and I just like her best the paladin and DK look at each other and go in search of a pub and some ale, which is what dwarves do when there is nothing else to be doin’. There is little pressure from the guild this time, since we’re fine for tanks and actually overloaded on melee; that should help avoid some of the scrunchiness I always end up getting on my shoulders when I tank… you know when you move and suddenly realize your shoulders, neck and upper back have been in the same position for way-too-long? I don’t get that when I play other roles, but oh gosh when I tank, owie. Lately I’d been having to remind myself not to run ahead of the tank. OK. So. I was ready. Yeah. C’mon. You can do it. Mommy!
Someone wanted to go to her first Cata dungeon yesterday, so we made it a guildrun with a first-time-healing-ever healer, me on tanking, our GM’s mage (identical to my tankette except for hair color; the GM’s main is a tank) and one of our best healers bringing his hunter; got ToT. We managed to die a couple times, both on trash dude, I <3 you and all that, but please don’t shoot a trap when we’re still explaining things, I’m moving buttons around and the healer is changing his baby’s diaper, I got my buttons much better organized, fun was mostly had by all. At one point the healer said on TS “well, you’ve got a ton of hp, you’re easy to heal”. “No I don’t, I’m still missing like two ton hp before I have a ton! looks at the upper left corner Oh.” I’ve been obsessing over “I need more parry and more dodge and more expertise and should I enchant already or not”, hadn’t realized that yeah, that’s a ton of hp for someone who isn’t heroic-geared yet.
Does block have diminishing returns? I spent some time wading about in EJ, but I’m afraid I get dizzy by the third page there. My parry and dodge both say “before diminishing returns”, block doesn’t and it’s at something like 30%. If it does, then I’ll reforge it to parry; if it doesn’t, yay!
(1) Paix@Moonglade (Europe) is a gnome - her big toes are, indeed, little. I’d link her for anybody who wants to point and laugh but I’m at work.
I’m trying to powerlevel my paladin through herbalism/alchemy and I’m up to about 390/355; just moved into Northrend. Also splurged on the 310% riding to make my life easier. I have a question though – this is my first alchemist of any note; what are the advantages for the different specializations (potions, elixers, transmutes)? I got the xmute because it was the fastest and easiest, then paid the 150g to switch to elixer because I though hey, extra elixers=good. But now I’m having second thoughts. Can someone clairfy for me what they all do?
The masteries basically give you a chance of a proc which gives you a second free item when you make the first. Potion mastery applies to potions, elixir mastery to elixirs and flasks, and transmutation to gems, metals, and elements. The neat thing about the masteries is that the second item also has a chance to proc (other than volatile elemental transmutes, if you are a transmutation master, that is) a third item and so on—someone once reported on the old blizzard world of warcraft forum a lucky RNG moment where they generated 9 additional items from a mastery proc. I was lucky once and had a x4 Titansteel proc after they removed it’s cooldown.
Titansteel? I thought that was always a mining smelting thing.
But the idea is valid, I guess. I’ve never seen a chain proc on my alchy, but then again that toon was elixir spec through most of WotLK. (My main was raiding, so the chance of free Flasks of Endless Rage seemed like a good idea at the time.)
I’ve taken the alchemist back to transmuter because the main is an engineer, and Volatile Air has been an issue… and the extra procs of volatiles from Transmute Living Elements, plus the ability to control the initial transmute by doing it in a specific Cataclysm zone, means that the over-abundant Volatile Lifes he gets from herbing will keep all my engineer toons supplied practically forever.
Hmm, this seems like a rational strategy since my other main is a tailor who is in constant need of volatiles as well. Maybe I’ll hold on to Elixers until I max out and then switch back to transmute.
It doesn’t really look like a chain, you just get more of what you were making than expected. I.e., you’ll get “potion of shrinking mushrooms x5” from the materials for 1.
Jay, some days are just like that it seems. Recently I zoned into a group that was mid-fight on Lord Walden. The tank and dps kept screaming at me to dispel, fucking dispel, dispel dispel… poison. I’m a priest. I took great pleasure in calmly responding to their abuse with the news that, no, priests *cannot *dispel poison. Then they got nasty to the paladin next. That was one group I didn’t bother finishing with.
That said, I’m bemused that neither of the epic crafted legs from tailoring are itemized for healers. They’re both more in the line of dps caster. So I guess I get to keep on grinding rep and JP/VP. But at least my tailoring is at 525 after buying entirely too many volatiles.
