◊ Maniq

Public Service Announcement.

If, from now on, people use either, Casual, Hardcore and Attunements in what I consider to even have the hint of a whine, you will instantly get 4 infraction points.

Didn't read the thread, jumped to the end and whined?

Tough.

 

Emeraude

The Character Copy is ahem, up, but it doesn't appear to have any of my toons listed when I click on my realm(s). This could of course be related to the fact that the PTR aren't up at all. However in the past copying toons over was possible even with the PT Realms down.

 

ariesz

Thanks to all of the people that are data mining the current patch. I know I appreciate the effort, and am looking forward to the next data mined post.

 

◊ Cadfael

The EU char copy works at the moment, though there's a 7 day queue for copying. There are currently no realms available for the PTR, so no PTR seems to be up right now.

Copying should work without any PTR available to play on

 

Sando

With Maniq's threat looming over me, something to consider about the removal of attunements is the ability to sell items once again. Just read WoM and Ming makes a good point that T6 gear can now be bought by pure PVPers who previously couldn't get attuned. I guess it works both ways, you can make some money selling loot you don't want (theres numerous threads here mentioning the waste of gear in MH/BT), but it means that the PVE gear you've worked so hard for is less special and unique, something i personally would like to see more of.

It might also lessen some of the complaining that goes on by pure PVPers about PVE loot hurting PVP. Now if they're on a server with a few illidan killing guilds it should be simply a matter of laying some gold out to get some of that gear.

 

Enova

Indeed, the EU PTR is not up, but I have to ask... is there a possibility to play on the US PTR, now that Blizzard claim they'll allow everybody unrestricted access?

As for attunements, well, by now it's water under the bridge, but somehow I appreciate the irony in giving us a token of appreciation along the lines of 'A'dal wanted to kill me, and all I got was this lousy title' every time they remove a big and definitory part of raiding. But, seeing as you can skip most bosses and go for Kael and Vashj instead, I'm guesing that it will be a rather common feat around Shattrath.

Legendary bow, you say? Hell yeah... I'm not easily impressed, but they made it legendary indeed. Saving a quiver spot AND another 12 slots in my bag by not using arrows is impressive; furthermore, not having to pay 60 gold per raid night just to be able to attack is going to add up real fast. And I appreciate them adding at least some agility on it
And 3.0 speed is nice, even if all the BM hunters will hate me for saying that. I was expecting some proc, however, and instead I see ArPen, whatever that means in the context of SW25 gear...

Though, somehow, if we've seen paladins with Eye of Nerub, we'll be seeing rogues and warriors with this pretty soon, as payback for hunters being eligible for Thunderfury back in the days

Guilty as charged ^

 

◊ Kyth

You're still completely missing the point; it most definitely does not follow the Gruul's design. Let me lay it out one last time, because it's really not worth wasting thread space belaboring what was meant to be a brief design commentary and not a protracted complaint:

Gruul's flask for casters: provides +dmg => more dps
Gruul's flask for melee: provides +AP => more dps

New oil for casters: provides mana regen => more longevity, not more dps directly
New oil for melee: provides +AP => more dps

I don't know how to be clearer with my point. This isn't about how powerful they are. This isn't about wanting to or not wanting to farm consumables. It's about the disconnect that Blizzard used to have in their design where they gave longevity boosts to casters (think: int, spi) to casters while melee got dps increases.

They stopped using that design, and most of the world buffs were designed better (e.g. zone buffs providing "+5% damage"), and they went back to it in these oils.

Officer of <Fusion>
http://www.stratfu.com/ - StratFu: Strategies, Guides, Movies, and Tips for Wrath Raiding

 

◊ Cadfael

Yes. The PTRs were always in the USA, we always had higher latency due to that. But now the artificial barrier between the regions seem to be removed.

Contrary to the removal of the SSC/TK attunement, if you don't do it you can get into the instance then, yes. But the attunements are required if you want the Hyjal rings and the BT necklace which turns into one handy teleport mechanism once you kill Illidan. I'm quite certain that people will want this ability come WotLK. So you can enter in 2.4, yes. But the perks are a bit more than just a title this time.

 

songster

Exactly this, I think. Blizzard has a real problem, due to two conflicting principles.

1) Weapon drops from raid bosses should be rare, amazingly cool status symbols

2) Everybody needs a weapon


The only solution to this is to give out "welfare weapons" that are almost, but not quite as good as the boss drops, and that look substantially less showy. At the start of TBC, Arena weapons filled the gap. But that has two related problems: it forces people to PvP whether they want to or not, and it clutters up the arena rankings with teams that are only in it for the weapons.

They fixed it by requiring personal rankings, so top end Arena weapons are once again a proper badge of skill. But to compensate for that, they need a PvE equivalent of the welfare weapon. That could be a token system like they had in AQ40, or a badge system. Either works, and I don't think either's the wrong answer.

 

f1reburn

I would postpone the bashing until we actually see how good the badge loot is:

It kinda sounds like the the vendor will have some decent epics to fill the offspec itemization holes again, with these presumably Enhancement Shaman fist weapons being the tier-6 quality exception.

 

Vaccine

We had a lot of discussion on the subject of RNG a few months back and one of things that consistently came up was the idea of having Weapons slightly worse than their raiding counterparts on Badge vendors to help offset bad RNG streaks. (Thread: RNG Raiding System: Time for a change?).

At first my initial reaction was one of shock and maybe a little nerd rage that anyone could get T6 equivalent weapons for Badges. But then I realised that it is pretty much that way at the moment, via the S3 weapons. More so, this will hopefully eliminate my need to participate in Arena, an area of the game I don't particularly like and am simply doing to attain the Feral Staff.

As for the info being datamined, Kalecgos seems to be Vael mark two which is great in my opinion. Just to pick up on the Fel Frost Wyrm, I thought that was a completely seperate boss. Are people thinking that its maybe we kill Kalecgos and he gets ressurected as a Frost Wyrm?

Either way I'm a bit confused how/why there is a Frost Wyrm there at all. Surely thats more of an Arthas/Scourge/WotLK thing than a Burning Legion, their tendancy is to use Demonic servants who are unarguably tougher foes than mindless undead.

The new models though look excellent. I'm especially impressed with the various Elven models, they look very cool and just what I'd imagine demonically tainted Blood Elves to look like. Kil'Jaeden himself looks excellent, I'm very impressed that they've managed to make him look more sinister and evil than Archimonde who was a much more upfront and less manipulative being than Kil'Jaeden.

The Eredar Twins look excellent too, the dark eyes on the red skinned one are actually quite scary. The Frost Lord looks pretty hot too and its nice to see an almost brand new model (sort of uses Ragnaros/Thunderaan base) but a question on this; there was no mention of a Frost Lord boss in Sunwell and it looks rather too fancy for trash. Do you think this will be a boss in the 5 man? Not really sure what the Frost theme has to do with the Sunwell Isle though.

The Void God would seem to fit as a 5 man boss too, again as the name seems to suggest something more than trash whilst there being no mention of this boss in the Sunwell previously. The other trash looks pretty good too, the robot and the fire dancers. I guess theres also the possibility that some of those models could be involved with the Sunwell Daily hub, ala Dukes in Silithus or Shartuul event.

 

Vodrin

They did say the sunwell story would bring us into wanting to take the fight to arthas and perhaps this is what these models are for. Some quest line/lore to give us a reason to check out northrend.

 

cusface

Wow, that legendary bow has to be the most disappointing item ever. If I ever get a legendary weapon, I want people to say "wow, I bet he does some sick dps with that thing", not "wow, I bet he's got 20 extra bagslots with that thing".

 

Vanadi

I think this bow has the potential to be a legendary like Thunderfury. If blizzard makes a cool animation out of the arrows it fires you can get this whole WOW THUNDERFURY effect again on people.

 

• Playered

The Bow actually provides a decent bonus to Steady Shot damage which normally does not factor ammo damage in - PvE buff.

Im not impressed with Kil'Jaeden, fair enough its a step up from Archimonde but he seems more like a Kazzak-boss now..

 

Pyros

Matter of taste, as a former hunter, I would have liked having a max dps weapon that consumed no ammo and gave 20slots when BC was released. Well arguably, I had one of the most efficient weapon at the time(R14 bow, insane speed > gftt procs with lighting serpents and crafted mana regen gloves, made leveling easy as hell). I don't know how it fares against other weapons in terms of dps with the rotations due to speed and such, but to me it seems they just added the most powerful bow, and slapped a bonus on it that does "interesting" stuff, which is how legendaries end up anyway. Atiesh for leveling wasn't that great, and sulfuras was a pretty bad legendary.

Also, it might not be its final form, if too many people bitch, they could just remove the haste part(so you'd lose 20slots) and add a random proc effect on it that'd increase dps. Then when wotlk hits and you run out of space due to all the grey loots you're getting on random mobs while questing and that you don't want to throw because they vendor for 5.6g each, you might remember you could have gotten 20slots instead of 20dps.

 

Vaccine

Looks awesome to me but our guild hunters are saying its bad. Compared to Illidan's bow with Timeless Arrows they say the small upgrade in stats with the crit/agi/armour pen isn't worth what they call an overpowered mana draining proc on the bow.

 

Moozhe

People pay hundreds of gold for just two extra bag slots (myself included). 20 extra slots is pretty awesome if you ask me.

 

Griswolde

The legendary bow seems to be more in line with Thunderfury than the other legendaries. I guess it depends which way Blizzard wants to go. You can have:

1.) Just higher ilvl items. I'd put Sulfuras, Atiesh, and the warglaives in this category.
2.) Something unique that's not easily replaced. Obviously, the bug mount falls into this category, but I'd argue that Thunderfury does as well (although it's clear that it was never intended). This bow would would be here too.

To me at least, the second category has much more appeal. The expansion killed Atiesh (although it wasn't even that great to begin with) and WotLK will certainly kill the warglaives. On the other hand, the bug mount will never lose its appeal. Thunderfury lasted through 4 raid zones and in certain cases well into the expansion. This bow will likely last well into the next expansion as well.

All of that said, the way the bow works may just be a preview of ranged weapon mechanic changes in WotLK (not requiring ammunition). If it's just getting this change 6 months early, that will be pretty weak for a legendary.

 

Himmel

That's very dissapointing but expected, I belong to 5/6 3/4 guild and hope I will be able to convince guild about not starting t6 content before Vashj/Kael are down. And I expect alot of drama (Gief t6 plz plz) from players who still die on spout after months of farming. But ask yourself, do you want to go to Illidan/Sunwell with people who didn't passed that quality check? I don't.

The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.

Oscar Wilde, "The Remarkable Rocket"

 

Twid

Preliminary napkin math on the legendary bow appears to be over a 100 dps increase over Bristleblitz (150 extra average base weapon damage every 1.5 seconds, not including the 4 piece t6 bonus). The white dps looks to be almost identical, however the Steady Shot damage is going to demolish anything for a long while.

Please pass this information on to any disillusioned hunters.

 

Zephro

The Grand Magister's Staff looks a little silly. What use is 50 spellhit? By that stage of the game you're trying to get rid of spellhit since you're already hitcapped. THis thing gets you 1/4 of the way to the hitcap by itself. I expect most of those points will end up wasted :/

Also, how come Reign of Misery (caster mace) is so much worse than Sunflare (caster dagger)?

 

Disarbadia

Considering that bow would be the only bow/gun to not require ammo, the ammo slot on your character sheet will still exist, so I could see Blizzard fucking up the effect of putting timeless arrows in your paper doll ammo slot and the arrow dps still being applied to the weapon as all bows/guns are currently, resulting in a massively OP bow.

Also resulting in an incredibly quick hotfix after the flood of tears drowns the forums.

 

◊ Kalman

If I had to guess? Because it's probably from the first boss or two, while Sunflare is almost certainly from Kil'jaeden. Between the ilevel (and thus, damage) difference, and the slightly higher stats on the mace, of course the dagger is better.

 

Carnivean

Actually I think I really like the Grand Masters Staff, because with trying to boast my Spellhaste and getting rid of almost all of my crit, it CAN (not must) be hard to stay at the hit cap. Especially with the new Spellhaste gems...

Putting 3 x (5 Spelldmg, 4 Spellhaste) into the staff it clearly looks superior to Zhar'dom. With Epic Spellhaste gems it gets even better...