[Browser is a piece of shit and I have no idea what I hit, but it posted while I was still writing. Ignore this.]
I heard they seriously nerfed Oculus, though.
Line-of-sight. Only way to do it. There are two ‘corner’ areas in the room that you can sucker them into chasing you into.
Probably not by enough. The final battle basically depends on having players who either (1) already know the fight or (2) can learn it quickly, neither things I’d like to count on in a PuG.
No, it’s not the only way to do it, it just makes it easier 
But it’s still one of the hardest 5 man encounters in the game, at least as a tank.
ETA this line: Holy crap, I apologize for the GIANT WALL OF TEXT crit on your eyes. I promise to never again get so busy at work that I can’t log onto the Dope for a couple of days in a row. 
I really like the new LFG.
I really hate the new instances.
They’re not hard-hard, they’re just shitty-mob-pack-composition-hard. Groups with multiple casters who won’t stack on the tank? Check. Groups with Hunters who you can’t even silence-pull? Check. For a Prot War, unless I have one or more DPS with me who know what the fuck they’re doing enough to help with pulls (silencing casters or DKs Death Gripping Hunters), this is one giant clusterfuck of me constantly using Charge and Intervene to keep aggro up on everything or tear it off someone else.
When the trash is harder than the bosses… Ugh.
Also: ENOUGH FUCKING GAUNTLETS ALREADY. I HATE gauntlets. Hate, hate, hate.
In other news, I’ve decided to transfer a mule from BT to ET with some heirloom items for my Mage (Cold Weather Flying + shoulders), as well as some other stuff to max her profs faster (cloth, chant mats, etc.). Because I’m an awesome friend, I’m also carting items over for my friends who, like me, have their mains on BT now but alts still on ET. I’m soooooooo unbelievably excited to have Smarati flying in Northrend.
Agreed x 50 billion. I use a crap-ton of addons, and I don’t use any kind of updater tool. (Don’t trust 'em to work right.) That means manually downloading a few dozen zips, extracting them, deleting all the old folders, copying over the new ones…
Woohoo!
Grats!
Oh honey. If you think 200g is expensive to powerlevel a prof, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. 
YES IT DOES. It removes a functionality that previously existed (the ability to have an Enchanter in the group pick up the items, DE them, then distribute the dusts, essences, and shards). Just because **you **do not want to use your profession to help others doesn’t mean that **other **Chanters feel the same way. **Every Enchanter I have ever run with **(ever, seriously) has always been more than happy to provide this service free of charge.
Same as before, really–the only difference is that now, if you screw up a roll, there’s no way to re-roll and trade the item.
AFAIK, it’s pretty random, other than a “gating” system to prevent people from joining higher-level dungeons without the requisite gear. I don’t think I got anybody with insanely bad gear, but AFAIK none of them had gear as good as mine.
The new LFG interface matches people across your entire battlegroup (i.e., the people you’d be in BGs with). Note that there is no way to group with specific people from another realm; group members are randomly assigned.
Exactly. Since the advent of vellum (I love you, Inscription), my best income on my Enchanters comes from the chants themselves, not the mats.
Any enhancement that requires a profession will stay on the item but become inactive (indicated by the text on the tooltip changing to red).
Yeah, that was kind of awesome. Take that, ranged–come stare at this boss’s butt for a while.
That’s correct.
Grats!
Hahaha, funny how it sucks you in, isn’t it? I knew a lot of people who were playing from the first day it released, but I always avoided it for the same reason as you (I was in college and I knew I couldn’t spare the time). But then I got fired (from the job from hell, thank god) in the summer of 2007, and with not much else to do, my boyfriend suggested that I could kill some time by playing on his WoW account while he was at work, and… You know how it goes.
Little column A, little column B. Playing with a friend (especially a friend who knows how to find things) always makes it go faster, since while you get slightly less XP per kill, you kill things much faster, and you still get the same XP from quests you complete. There were also several changes made in 3.3 that make the first levels faster, from the mana cost reduction previously mentioned to a faster HP and Mana regen rate up to level 15 or so.
Personally, I loved the Draenei starting area, but I’m a sucker for puns. YMMV.
Welcome to our [del]altar of obsession[/del] [del]den of sin[/del] thread!
I had to go to Darkshire for some reason on Sleutel (I think it was the “get all these kinds of booze” quest) before she was really ready for the zone. On my way down the road, I saw an Herb node pop up on my minimap. I don’t remember what it was, besides something particularly useful at that point in leveling my Herb and Alch. “Oooh!” I said, and ran up the hill towards it… only to immediately get my face eaten off by a ghoul before I could even get in harvesting range. One corpse run later, I rez on the road, and think, “Okay, maybe he patted away.” I walk back up the hill and… Nope. He didn’t pat away. Face eaten again. I learned my lesson and stay on the damn road the rest of the way in like a good lowbie.
At the time, I hated it, but it’s since been overshadowed in my mind by STV. Duskwood was a long run east-west, but STV was soooo much worse north-south. I almost cried when they put the Rebel Camp FP in… *after *I was done questing there.
The dragon (or possibly the adds around it?) are part of the AQ opening chain, IIRC.
Grats!
I would think so… although maybe not, for hybrids. :\
Grats!
Every sane person does. Let us pause to share this moment of bonding.
Server transfer is $25. Faction transfer is $30. Both come with a free rename. The faction xfer lets you select any race of the opposite faction that supports your character’s class, and you can also change your gender and customize your features for your new race.
Guild banks do not currently transfer. You have to move all of the contents in your characters’ bags and personal banks and repurchase any tabs on the new server.
Have you considered that the problem here might be… you? I play on some pretty high-population servers, and I never have this kind of issue.
Personally, I was talking about the trend of Heroics going forward.
Yup. Unfortunately, the healer I was with that night had to learn the lesson the hard way.
Very well put.
Three new instances, which you have to do in order the first time in order to unlock numbers two and three. IMO, they’re harder than H-ToC5; the trash is a complete bitch, and several of the bosses have mechanics that requires your DPS to be slightly less retarded than a potato, which is apparently a challenge for some people.
Not if you ask first. I’d have waited to roll, then said, “Hey everybody, I’d really like that piece for an RP set. Can I hit Need, then we’ll all do a manual /roll and I’ll give a shard to the high roller?”
Yes, but that doesn’t necessarily make it any better.
Your drakes have more health, the enemies have much less, and the 3rd boss has been nerfed so much you can almost completely ignore the mechanics of the fight; but if your group doesn’t know what do do on their drakes for Eregos, you’ll get overwhelmed by whelps and die anyway.
There is no such thing as Alleria’s Silver Coin.
On another note, I went to to do the Daily Heroic last night…I think it was “Deconstructing the Deconstructor” and I didn’t know which dungeon to pick for that one…I knew the quest was in Udular, but it wasn’t listed on the DF, either for normal or heroic.
I is so confuzed.
I think the daily heroics are no more; the 2 guys in the VH now give raid quests, so you’d need to be in an Ulduar raid to do that one.
The bonus award you used to get for the daily heroic now comes from the 2 frosts you get for your first random heroic instance.
If I understand the cross-realm instances, though, this won’t work, because you won’t be able to trade that shard to anyone not on your server.
There is no daily Heroic or daily regular dungeon anymore. You’re looking at the weekly **raid **quest. You need to go kill XT-002 in Ulduar (the raid, not HoS or HoL).
ETA:
True. You could agree to pass on the next X pieces of loot, though.
The nice thing about the daily raid quest, is that it should make it easier to get in to the raids because more people will be doing them (he said hopefully).
But wait – how does that work with raid locks? If you’ve done Ulduar already this week and then the daily is Ulduar, are you out of luck?
They’re weekly rather than daily, so I guess if you haven’t checked before you did your raiding, you’re out of luck.
Since the raid weekly applies to either 10 or 25 man, if you’ve only done one version of the instance, you can always complete the quest through the other.
Nope. I got sucked into a HoR run last night that was already to the twin boss zergfest. No heads up, just “queue for dungeon Y/N?” and bang there I was. I agree the trash is tough. We ended up slaughtering in order: priest, mage, riflemen, melee. DG’ing the contrary riflemen or mages as needed. Let’s just say that I really don’t like fire mages now. Crispy troll is not my favorite when it’s me being crisped, dammit.
I like the new lfg though, I could actually get a dungeon run on my 46 priest at 1AM instead of falling asleep watching Trade. We wound up with two kitties going bear and co-tanking ZF which actually worked pretty well. Awesome thing though: Gahz threw us all up in the air, and I landed squarely on one of the eagle head lamp holders that stick out horizontally from the arched doorways. What are the odds? I spent the rest of the fight healing from my perch up there XD
Welcome back, Guns. I was starting to wonder if you’d died or something. 
God I hope this formats right…click
Congratz, I absolutely must read up on some strategies for the next time I find a pug. I wonder what’s the best strategy to get your group to ‘move-out-of-the-damn-fire’.
I like the change (As a casual pug raider), but I feel for the progression players. I didn’t raid/run instances at all until WolTK. Hell I wasn’t really in a guild either, I just played solo, but I was always awestruck when I say someone in ‘uber’ raid gear back in BC/Vanilla.
For guild members/friends yes, have you ever had someone you don’t know, that you found on Trade channel DE items for you? Would you tip them 0 as well? Not everyone is in a guild, or have friends that play. Those people have to rely on complete strangers to help them if they need anything.
I think Alchemists should be able to make BOE muddlers so everyone can mash their own herbs together and make potions/elixirs. And tailors can make BOE looms to give away so people can turn their own cloth into bolts of cloth.
Exactly, the profession abilities should be limited to people who spent the time to learn the profession. Miners can mine ore/smelt bars, enchanters can enchant items/disenchant items, leatherworkers can make leather equipment/combine leathers etc. I’m not sure where titanium powder comes from (sites blocked at work) but it sounds like something that should come from Prospecting titanium ore?
I think it would be good for the game if profession abilities were only available to people with those professions. Anyone who wanted something from an profession that they don’t have would have to find someone who has that profession.
I agree that it does save a lot of time (I personally don’t mind the change). I also do not supply my own mats unless it’s a guildie and they might have to help on some of the higher-cost items, but there are enchanters that do try to make profit by selling scrolls or advertising on trade. As an enchanter you’re not gonna be making money at 10-20 gold tips here and there. You make money by putting the 4 infinite dust, 1 minor essence enchants on scrolls and selling them for 80g a pop (I sold 3 yesterday)
BOP recipes for BOE items that they sell. There are a lot of great BOE tradeskill items, but endgamers may make an item for themselves until they find a better item from raiding.
Enchanting is a money-making skill. I wouldn’t recommend leveling it just for a +23 spellpower, or +30 stamina to each of your rings. That’s really not a going to be decision maker in the current content.
Again, at this phase +23 spell power is not gonna decide life and death. Maybe if they jacked that up to be more useful, it could have some better applications (+50sp, +50stam for the new patch would be sweet). At least update it to somewhat scale with the new gear that comes out.
I didn’t notice too much of a difference. It still seems straight forward - if you stand in the fire you’re gonna die. Heroic means you’ll die a tick or two faster. Like with ToC if you make a dumb mistake, it’s gonna hurt regardless if it’s regular or heroic.
If I see something that drops and need it for either main or offspec, I will ask the group. I haven’t heard a complaint yet. I think setting some basic loot rules at the beginning can’t hurt because, with the random dungeon stuff, we are getting people from different servers that could do things differently.
Someone will mention it before i finish this post, but have everyone stand in the cove and break line-of-sight. The ranged will come running in nice and close.
Yeah i found the new trash packs really don’t like the positions you try to put them in. Very annoying. I’ve noticed a real lack in tanks on our battlegroup. I’ve only queued for random dungeons so far and each time it picks me as a tank, even though I’m tank/heals. I wonder if that’s just the mechanics of it, but oh well.
So what happens if a group doesn’t have an enchanter, they would never have the previously existing function? Are they hindered so much that they’d have to boot someone to find an enchanter just so they can do the dungeon? Are people specifically looking for enchanters when making group decisions. No, they’re not. Having an enchanter is a bonus, above and beyond the normal, to any group because they can DE into the dusts. They can still vendor the items for cash. Sure, it’s too bad they didn’t have an enchanter to DE stuff, but it doesn’t affect the completion of their run.
Also, as a reminder, I never mind DEing items at the end of runs, and never charge for my services or expect tips from guildies or even strangers. I like helping others out whenever I can. I’m looking at this from an angle from someone who would have the view that “Blizzard is stealing money from me directly by making these changes”, etc.
Original quote from me:
This! I also think I read somewhere that they made another new FP or two with the new patch.
That’s how the dungeons starts…it jumps right into it. I have been invited to a dungeon already in progression. It prompted me and said it was a Pit of Saron run with 2/3 bosses complete.
What I haven’t figured out is if it is possible to continue a run if your group dissolves or you want to pick it up later. I would assume it would be possible if the entire group was on the same server, but if they puged even 1 person it would probably prompt them to fill in the remaining spots if people left. I’ll have to test this if I ever find a group who are just as curious.
One at the Bulwark in Tirisfal (might be neutral…it’s Argent Dawn) and one just before(?) the bridge in Western Plaguelands (definitely neutral, goblin flightmaster). So sayeth the WoW LJ community, anyway.
Yes, I know that, LoSing mobs is part of Tanking 101 after all, but the first time I ran HoR I went in blind and did it the hard way(without wiping!). I was just commenting on the difficulty of the new instances.