In one of the comments under my 3.2 killed Crafted Epics post, I mention how my reasonably fresh 80s a Priest healed a H-UK.  There were a few problems and we ended up having one of our DPS switch to tank speck and the tank switch to DPS.  As the new tank was slightly better geared.  The rest of the instance went reasonably well, we still had another wipe but if anything it was only a death here or there the rest of the time.

Well after doing a few battle grounds and seeing my numbers suck and trying to figure out what I needed to do about it, we ran a normal CoT:Stratt.  We ran into the new instances can not be launched issue again for 15-20 minutes.  Long enough for me to log in here and create another fuming post about the instance servers.  After writing I decided to cancel it’s publish as it was just too negative.

So now beating around the bush what was my noob moment last night.  Halfway through the run I realized that my spells were not up to date.  I was 1-3 ranks behind on almost all of my healing spells! My hots would tick for between 3-400 more per tick and my heals were 2k more potent each cast.  That is a hell of a lot.  My first reaction was wow do I feel stupid now.

Then I remembered hey you healed a H-UK with lower rank spells and it still succeeded despite your stupidity.  This goes to further my point that new 80s can get good gear and Epics if they know people already established in higher end content.  Also that means that even though my numbers sucked I could still heal well while handicapping myself like I did.

The lesson to be learned from this however is that if you level Dual-Spec like I did with the Priest check your alt-spec after training and manually update your spells.

Ok I have been reading all of the Blue Posts about how they have been working on some sort of solution to this issue.  As a programmer I understand that changes can not just be made on the fly often.  Especially when it deals with the underlying architecture.

However on Elune we have been dealing with this BS on and off, since January.  If you want to run an instance after 8PM EST you will most likely be dancing in and out of the instance portal for 10-20 minutes each time you want to run an instance.

7 Bloody months.

I really hope blizzard is not planning on getting new players often anymore.  I will tell you that if I was a new player and wanted to run an instance, maybe my first instance and ran into this problem I would be canceling the next day.

I bring this up because I have run into this the past 2 nights while I was trying to run a new player through Dead Mines.  I recruited them to the game and was planning on helping them out.  We ended up running the instance but this has got to end.

The server upgrades had damn well better be in place when the patch hits or else there is going to be hell to pay on the forums.  Given that the new patch will again add incentives for running normal and heroic 5 man dungeons.  The massive amounts of people complaining would be like nothing we have seen before IMO.  But then I did miss things join right around the time of the original Naxx patch.   The instance servers as we know it will most likely melt under the load, hopefully only figuratively speaking.

Don’t get me wrong I know Blizzard is working on the problem and they want to get these issues resolved I guess a little more transparency as to how the servers are set up in general would at least help some of us understand the issues.  Then we can explain it to the rest of the community that have no clue about hardware and or software deployment.

Because the majority of my guild is lazy, and wanted 2 know, I thought I’d post here too. For those interested, I just prospected 20 stacks of Titanium Ore; Results

43 Powder=4 Daily tokens & 8g.

Epic:
6 Eye of Zul (green)
3 Majestic Zircon (idk)
4 Kings Amber (idk)
6 Dreadstone (purple)
4 ametrime (orange?)
3 Cardnal Ruby (red).

Blue:
10 Monarch Topaz, Orange
3 Scarlet Rubys, Red
4 Autumn Glow, Yellow
1 Twilight Opal, Purple

Green:
Who cares

Ive opened 3 prizims and have only gotten blues, so my guess is the epics are like Dragon’s Eyes. The vendor sells epic gems for 15 EoH or 10k honor.

Just did 6.25 stacks myself: (edit: 25 prospects)

19 titanium powders

3 Cardinal Ruby (red)
2 Dreadstone (purple)
2 Eye of Zul (green)
1 Ametrine (orange)

2 Monarch Topaz
2 Forest Emerald
1 Scarlet Ruby

37 green gems

Turning in 10 Titanium Powder also gets you 1g32s in addition to the token, lol

I have to agree with ThinkTank that this system as described and is understood by the community at the moment sucks.

I would be classified as one of those casuals that supposedly want stuff handed to them.  Now I really don’t want things handed to casuals.  What I would like to see is a path of progression for all types of play that have the same end point.  The points that connect them do not need to be the same and the path for the small group and or solo play styles can and to some extent should be longer or have more hoops.  The major argument then comes with how much time should be invested in each step.

Now just off the cuff as nothing is set in stone yet I would think the following reward progression would be better.

Let X = the amount of some resource that a player that only plays in small groups can get in 1 week.

Let Y = the amount of some resource that a player can get that only plays in 10 man groups.

Let Z = the amount of some resource that a player can get that only plays in 25 man groups.

So 5X < 10Y < 25Z

Now that we know that 25Z is the amount of some resource that a 25 man raid group can optain in 1 week with a full clear we now must decide how many pieces of gear should be obtainable for that group.

Lets say 10 for example.  That means on average every 2.5 weaks everyone in a 25 man group should receive 1 peice of gear.

So for equivents that means 4 should be available at the 10 man level and 2 for the 5 man group.

This assumes an even distribution of rewards across all players in the dungeon.

WoW I think I almost justified the system we are fighting against.

Well now that I almost justified the system since the bosses also drop other epic gear and not only set piece stuff it really brings up the question of what do we want from a rewards system.  One that is fair to all no matter what they do or one that favors one particular play style.  This is of course excluding the uber group that does them all…  You can’t design around them if you do you end up screwing everyone else.

Even though it sounds like I want the system I don’t.  I just am not sure what would be better and I think that is what is the most distressing to those of us that pay attention to the development process.

Battleground experience has arrived!

Players will now be awarded experience for completing objectives and actions that yield honor in Battlegrounds (honorable kills not included). Players who do not wish to gain experience through PvP can visit Behsten in Stormwind or Slahtz in Orgrimmar – both located near the Battlemasters in either city – and turn off all experience accumulation for the cost of 10 gold. Disabling experience gains will prevent a player from gaining experience through any means available in the game. Players with experience gains turned off who compete in Battlegrounds will face off only against other players with experience gains turned off. Behsten and Slahtz can reinstate experience gains for players, for a 10 gold fee of course. Any experience that would’ve been accumulated if experience gains were enabled cannot be recovered.

A long time ago before Arena season 2 I use to like the battlegrounds.  It was a place to go and battle to get away from the grind that was leveling at the time.  I never raided pre-BC, nor was my highest level character 60 pre-BC so I did not interact with the MC, BWL, Onyx ect. ect. one shot Raiding whore in PVP which was one of the major reasons PVP gear was introduced with Resilience.  Now I hate Resilience and Tenacity they are quick fixes to balancing problems.  The problem with PVP is that our characters are scaled as to be able to fight and deal damage to a boss with now Millions and Millions of health such that the fight in total takes between 5 and 15 minutes per attempt.  Now when you do the math you realize that for the average DPS to be high enough to take out such a boss the 20-50k health of a player is nothing.  Seriously we would be better off just having a 100-500% multiplier applied to everyone in pvp to help to start balancing it out but no, we get Resilience instead.

Now that I can have my leveling character queue up for PVP, get XP for it and of course then avoid the PVP Twink ALTs because they have XP turned off is a beautiful thing indeed.

Battlemasters in major cities affiliated with specific Battlegrounds have been replaced with a Battlemaster for each faction that will allow players to queue for any Battleground. Battlemasters for specific Battlegrounds will still be seen around the cities during corresponding Battleground holiday weekends. When standing at a capture point that you control, you will gain a buff called Honorable Defender. This buff grants +50% honor gained from kills. This currently affects Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm and Isle of Conquest. Arathi Basin

This will now help encourage players to fight at the Bloody Flag or capture point rather than try to Honor Farm in the middle.  Now if only there was something for WSG.  However the Time Limit mentioned below should help that.

The time it requires to capture a base has been reduced to 8 seconds, down from 10 seconds. The game now ends when one team reaches 1600 victory points, down from 2000.

Eye of the Storm

The time it requires to capture the center flag has been reduced to 8 seconds, down from 10 seconds The game now ends when one team reaches 1600 victory points, down from 2000.

Strand of the Ancients

The faction starting on attack/defense will now be randomized at the start of each match.

Warsong Gulch
There is a now a 20-minute timer on this Battleground. After that time, the team with the most flag captures wins. If this would result in a tie, the team that captured the first flag wins. If neither side has captured a flag, then the game ends in a tie.

These other modifications are just nice speed ups.  Essentially what this helps to do is bring the duration of all of the Battle Grounds closer to one another.

My only lament is that Arena gear will be all over these new Battlegrounds at 80 which makes it annoying as hell.  The only other improvement that would have me cheering would be if all Battlegrounds now had a standard set of gear sort of like the Heirloom gear that is always level appropriate.    You are forced into that gear and then everyone is on an equal playing field.  After all then everything would be a matter of skill and tactics.  Not who got lucky with the RNG.  But we all know that most PVP twinks, PVP to feel superior and want to lord their gear aka “skill”  over everyone else in the BG.

Oh well maybe someday PVP will actually be about tactics.  All of these improvments are a step in the right direction.