ildon

ZA is for Kara-farming guilds. The bear run, however, was clearly made for T6 guilds. They wanted more people to have an incentive to go there, because they were adding a zone that was a tier behind the then-current max progression level.

Edit: Blah, double beaten.

 

Macblade

You could probably do the timed run fine without either a Spreist or a Prot Pally, it would just be a harder. I would be very interested in knowing how you did the dragonhawk adds without a single AOE class though (mage/lock).

I was in a guild that had just killed Illidan a few weeks before (thus pretty well geared out) and a group of us wiped on the dragonhawk boss for at least an hour before calling it, because it just didn't work without an AOE class.

On the whole I think the people complaining about there being too much homogenization are going way over board. Here's a comparison, ignoring all other abilities Pally, Shaman, and Preists all have two versions of direct heals. The play style of them is still very different. Priests and Shaman's long heal is more efficient. Shaman should try to stack and keep healing way up on a target. Preists might want to take advantage of the 5SR for extra regen. Pally's more efficient spell is the fast one, but when they need to output a lot of HPS they have to go to holy light.

Now obviously each of these classes have other different abilities. My point though, is that even if those three healing classes each had just those two spells, they would still have different play considerations.

 

Sydane

My first few dhawk kills we only allowed 10 eggs to pop on one side each cycle. We had aoe, but with that few at a time you could easily single target all of them. While waiting for the eggs to pop I frequently single dps three of the adds down by myself before aoeing, if you took all your dps over and had them single target you could kill 10 or even 15 per cycle. Certainly not ideal, but possible.

 

◊ Birdemani

There are a few video related bugs right now, one of them is related to alpha and another to shadows. Running with dynamic shadows set to 4 in an underground cave with objects above the cave causes either a fatal error or a crash. You still generate a shadow underground in some spots. Also, those objects outside the cave that are above you are putting their shadows on the cave ceiling. If you just sit in a major city (Ebon Hold, IF, SW, Shat) the brightness of the zone changes randomly, often without any player input. This is also leading to odd glitches as you move your camera around as you run through the zone: the alpha changes and upon swapping back you will lose parts of the city around you. As an example, I was coming back into Stormwind from the docs and looking into the city when I spun my camera around...as I did so all of stormwind except for the floating top room of the Keep and the front gate were gone. There were shades of darkness in various spots and I could continue running in this area. I would have to fraps the bug to explain how it looked while running in this area. I just sat there for a while and the zone came back into view but continued to jump from a very dark stormwind to a very bright one.

 

Macblade

As a rogue, that's what I tried to do. What you describe sounds easy on paper, but until you show me a SS of a raid with no AOE and bear mount being looted, I'm going to remain doubtful as to its efficacy.

Anyway, I don't think this debate is germane to the thread anymore.

 

gia

ZA Bear run has been done with kara/badge/s3 gear by a ton of people, even without perfect groups, there's pages and pages of people claiming it in the ZA thread, including a post of my own I think, enough to show that it's not even a huge deal.

Back on topic: The direction all of the new skills/talents are taking the game is very clear, it won't matter anymore what classes you bring in a raid, the only requirement is 10 people willing to respec and be flexible. I challenge anyone to come up with a wotlk raid composition that "just won't work" with the only rules being no more than 3 players of the same class and at least 2 tanking/healing capable classes.

What this is going to accomplish is lower the barrier to entry for raiding a huge amount, as long as you have 9 buddies playing WoW you're going to be somewhere on the progression curve, even if your buddies are "stand in the fire while keyboard turning" kind of guys and you can't get to the top tier dungeons you are still going to be out there experiencing the raid game at a level that is challenging for you instead of just wiping at Moroes for a whole expansion.

This is the top thing I am excited about for Wrath.

edit: I'm also secretly hoping that 10 man raiding will be huge in WotLK, bigger than Karazhan popularity in TBC has ever been, and that this will push the development efforts more towards the raiding game that I enjoy the most, with 25/40 man raiding limited to 1-shot truely epic encounters like Onyxia/Magtheridon/Malygos. I realize this may not be a popular opinion around here so please don't feel the need to flame me for this.

 

mushar

I'm actually very excited about 10-man content as well. Both of the guilds I raided T6 content with had about 10 quality players, 10 or so mediocre players and 10 scrubs who couldn't stay out of the fire. We were constantly in the recruitment process, and no matter how good applicants looked on paper, it was always a crapshoot which group they'd end up in. It's hard finding 30 players of very high quality to play with, much less so trying to find 10-15 of those people I think. I'm looking forward to cutting out the second and third categories.

I'm also hoping very small guild sizes will help reduce drama, recruiting and organizational woes. Guild hierarchies will probably be different at the 10 man level, but imagine taking all your current class leads and officers, and there's your guild. No more healing leads or class leads, you'd need at most 2 or 3 officers. Think how much easier it will be to evaluate new recruits in a 10 man raid versus 25.

The epic feel of the 25 man raids is a small price to pay for the reduced hassle of a smaller raid size in my opinion. And lower gear level doesn't dissuade me either, as long as your gear is good enough to progress to the next raiding instance, the rest is just bragging rights.

 

Shakes

I think a lot of people are hoping for that. However there's probably a good chance you'll be back here saying "my 10 man guild has 4 good players, 4 mediocre players and 4 mouth breathers". I mean how many 40 man guilds thought with the expansion "25 man raiding, great stuff, we can finally get rid of the 15 idiots dragging us down"? It never seems to work out like that though.

Also, with a 10 man guild you'll always risk losing your best players to a 25 man guild as they want to take the next step up in content. While there are certainly benefits to 10 mans (reduced need for a class balanced raid, reduced guild drama, faster wipe recovery) I don't think it's the end of all problems. Perhaps just the problems are on a smaller scale.

 

mushar

Agreed, problems are going to be magnified with smaller guilds. One idiot in a 25 man raid is not as dangerous as one in a 10 man raid. Although I didn't raid 40 man content pre-BC, from what I heard it was a similar situation when switching to 25 man raiding... having bad players in your raid was more detrimental with 25 than with 40. I think part of that is balanced out by the fact that it's a lot easier to notice the idiot in the 10 man raid when he wipes you, and get rid of him. It also hurts more, since your guild is smaller.

Part of my point is that quality control is easier the smaller you get. I can think of 4 other people I would take to any 5 man dungeon in the game and have complete confidence that I would never have major problems with any of them as players. It depends on how you're transitioning. If you have a 25 man guild and are cutting the fat down to 10 man it'll be easier than recruiting an entire guild.

The class balancing is exciting, and that'll make recruiting easier as well. I don't have to juggle people around as much class-wise, I can bring in my Pally friend and not worry about having enough healers/tanks already. I'm sure class imbalances will crop up again, but hopefully the effect won't be as bad as with BC and, for example, Ret pallies or Ele shamans (which both have their places, but suffer when held up to their alternatives like Locks or Warriors).

 

Pyros

About weapon skill leveling, they definitely should just remove it altogether. I remember back in beta when spells were also on the same system, and it was retarded. They removed spells, but kept melee skills for whatever reason. It's really annoying when you're leveling since you tend to change weapon types quite often, and serves no purpose since in the end you're not capped, so you can max all of them. Oh well have to find something else than invulnerable mobs. I know at 60 I used to use white low level weapons and the healers outside SM. Lower level elite mobs are usually quite nice for weapon skillups, there's some in tyr's hand that could probably do the job I think at 80.

 

Talgog

This.

People said the exact same thing about the cut from 40 to 25 - everyone knew who the 15 people would be, etc, etc. Then it turns out that you can't raid anything because you can't get 100% attendence out of your "good" roster after canning all the "bads," or the remaining sorta bench players can't do their job adequately in tightly tuned, generally time limited 25-man encounters, whereas all they had to do in most 40 mans was not die, or if they died, not kill the raid in the process.

Turnover in the game is way too high to count on being able to pick out a good core that you won't need to recruit other people of similar quality to, and smaller rosters makes it harder to develop people. It's harder to feed gear when you need everyone in good gear anyway, and mistakes and poor play will fail encounters, as opposed to only needing the raid working at ~ 80% of effective strength to win most 40-man encounters.

Pretty much every guild I can think of that actively tried to "cut down" its size with Burning Crusade imploded.

 

Anedris

Our guild downsized from 40 to 25 at BC and is now a much more competent group than it was, both in terms of its average and in terms of its weakest link. (And it has never imploded.)

It's true that smaller raids don't eliminate the problem of incompetents/passengers, but they do make them easier to deal with. Firstly because as mentioned it's obvious when someone isn't pulling their weight and secondly because finding 9 good people is rather obviously easier than finding 24.

 

Prinsesa

Isn't the removal of spell skill more related towards functionality though? There isn't a single offensive spell in the Druid Resto tree, and if you leveled a skill by simply casting spells of that school, that would simply encourage drinky-birds constantly tapping '1' on your keyboard bound to Lifebloom and whatnot.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Vagabond

And going afk for 2-5 minutes at a time in Blasted lands while fighitng Servant of <blahblah>'s , coming back to recast totems is different how?

 

Rasputin

How is this any different from me afking all night on a servant in the blasted lands with light judged?

 

• Intermission

Or telling my g15 to cast mend pet every 15 seconds and wingclip every 0.1 seconds while I have a jer-- meal.

 

Clandestine

We almost never have mages or warlocks on our sell bear runs (I generally tank them on my alt, a feral druid, rather than bring my warlock), and Dragonhawk is not particularly difficult. Just single target the birds down as they spawn, if you're undergeared only hatch 10 or so at a time. Hunter snare traps, earthbind totems, piercing howl help.

 

Prinsesa

@Vagabond, Rasputin and Intermission:

The apparent removal of Servant of Allistarj weapon skill leveling in WOTLK implies that that was never supposed to be how you'd level weapon skills in the first place. Rather, you'd simply keep on questing as before, with a penalty to your damage depending on how far behind your new weapon skill is lagging.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Rasputin

Yes Prinsesa, but that doesn't mean the mechanic is at all interesting or worthwhile or adds anything to the game at all. People will find a different way to level their weapon skill without questing through it, because it is a stupid mechanic that unfairly penalizes melee classes during their leveling period. I wish I could understand their reasoning behind weapon skill and weapon skill leveling. At the least they could emphasize the accelerated leveling when you are high above the "expected" weapon skill(level*5) by making you gain 5 points a swing until you get within 5 levels, or something. As it stands, people will skip over weapons if their weapon skill isn't up to snuff because it's just too much of a pain in the ass. I guarantee that unless blizzard specifically codes something into weapon skill that prevents you from leveling it unless you are in combat with a mob within 3 levels of you that people will find a way to cheese it.

 

Calixtus

It's also worth nothing that the various skills tends to fall behind the new leveling rates, which is another added nuisance for leveling. Arriving in outland, ready to take on the foes of a new world, only to find your defense is sufficiently far behind to make what should be "equal level" mobs into killing machines is not particularly amusing.

Having said that; Tried leveling the weapon skill on that banished demon chap on the blood-elf-terrace outside BT? You need to clear a few respawning mobs to get to him, but that's way better than having to run around chasing something to skill on.

 

• Tecton

I'll need to check if it's just the servants who've been nerfed for weapon skill levelling or all banished mobs. Will take a run out to SMV tonight on beta to check.

 

Grayson Carlyle

Or if it's the inability to level from "Immune" attacks. I leveled up weapons by using rend on elementals.

 

Rivkah

I like to level my weapons outside of Shadow Lab with the neverending respawn mobs. That being said, I agree that weapon leveling is an uninteresting mechanic that really doesn't add anything to the game (except for giving casters something to do on those stupid wurms in Kara).

 

Prinsesa

Rasputin, wouldn't the inconvenience of leveling weapon skills (assuming no more Allistarj-esque shortcuts) give definite weight to a "level all weapon skills" achievement, then?

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

• Chicken

It definitely would, but would it be a fun achievement requirement to fulfill? I don't think so myself. You can't even really combine it with getting other achievements outside of perhaps the low level instance ones because if you're a class that depends on using weapons you can't do any kind of real damage until you have proper weapon skill, and if you're not a weapon using class you really can't combine using a weapon with anything that requires killing.

I'd actually feel more inclined to spend my time killing one million Tuskarr then I'd want to spend time maxing out weapon skills for an achievement, as it'd at least provide me with some kind of benefit while I'm doing so.

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–verb (used with object)
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