Which is a shame. My brother only plays in the summer when he's not at college, and he was so excited when he went in to do a pug onyxia, since he really didn't have the time to devote to a raid group. There's Kara for when he plays this summer, but there's no "pick up and play" instance like Onyxia, ZG or AQ20 for him on the horizon. Killing big dragons is fun. Everyone should get to do it, at least a little.

What a terribly strange thing to say.

Nelth's has held up fairly well but The Lightning Capacitor, Quag's Eye and even the heroic clicky trinket are all better to much better than Nelth's and certainly much better than this abortion.

Imagine if you will a protection tank trinket with +defense, +shield rating, parry and an Equip: Increases Shield Block by xxx when you are hit by a critical strike. Tanks might well roll their eyes, as will casters at this.

If it's so easy to beat, try having your DPS not flask, or drink ANY elixirs, or use ANY food buffs.

You can't say "just some elixirs, some food buffs and a flask" and be honest with yourself here.

Elixir of Major Fire Power: 65 +fire.
Greater Arcane Elixir: 35 +dmg
Adept's Elixir: 24 +dmg, 24 +crit
Blackened Basilisk: 23 +dmg
Superior Wizard Oil: 42 +dmg

That's 189 damage to fire BEFORE you even drink the fucking flask. That's as much as the ENTIRE Tirisfal set gives you, unsocketed. Drink a flask and boom, you're wearing Tier 6!

Prae was right, consumables are out of hand. Next time ask your DPS what consumables they're "causally" using and you're gonna get a laundry list like I just gave you, because that's right...that's what I use when I go in for the kill.

Nope, tested, tested and thrice tested - the level based partial resists aren't affected by spell penetration gear at all, and the vast majority of normal mobs have 0 resist in any school.

And yes, you now see why casters moan about the stat so much - it really is utterly pointless for us. We don't understand why Blizzard keeps putting it on gear, and we've never had an answer from them on the level based partial resists.

(To be fair to them, they are utterly hemmed in by Curse of Shadows / Elements. Both these spells lower resistances by so much, that they would trivialise any fight where you needed spell penetration gear, and yet without them, the fight would be pointless for dps casters. They would need to be lowered to -20 to resists of the appropriate school or something like that in order to actually balance the game).

Just fyi, the damage of Greater Arcane Elixir and Adept's Elixir don't stack. The crit from Adept's Elixir is carried over if you drink both, though.

You are missing my point. I'm not saying that consumables aren't powerful. They obviously are, and they're probably more powerful than they ought to be, especially since the new elixers at least partially stack with the old ones. What I *am* saying is that people are quick to call any new encounter a "consumable fight", and claim that it requires a massive committment of potions/flasks/whatever in order to be beaten, and that's not the case. Do guilds often flask up and load up on pots when they're working for their first kill? Yes. Does that make the fight easier than it would be without consumables? Absolutely. Are consumables "required" to beat the fights? No, for the most part they're not.

El, you're missing it. They're saying that your dps pots up like that as a matter of course. I'm one of those guys... I take that shit in Karazhan because the easier to make pots are pretty damned cheap.

So ignore flasks and pretend it's nothing but elixirs... that's a Tier and a half's worth of gear to get a kill barely done and the gear to make it easier isn't in the game yet. And not only isn't it in the game yet it's not GOING to be in the game because there's no gap to squeeze it in a la Dire Maul.

Gear's like this: blue staff +130 damage, epic staff +145 damage. Arbitrary numbers but the point is that 5-10 extra +damage isn't going to overcome gear checks.

There was no room when Dire Maul (Patch 1.3, 2005-03-22) tried to squeeze it in. There was a huge (at the time) uproar about blue gear then being better than the epic tiered sets, then in the 1.4 (2005-05-05) patch notes:

"Future patches will include even more item rewards for these raid encounters, as well as improvements to the statistics, effects, and set bonuses for both tiers of the raid armor sets."

and in 1.5 (2005-06-07):

"The following item sets have had their statistics, effects, and set bonuses updated: Arcanist, Netherwind, Prophecy, Transcendence, Felheart, Nemesis, Cenarion, Stormrage, Nightslayer, Bloodfang, Giantstalker, Dragonstalker, Earthfury, Ten Storms, Might, Wrath, Lawbringer, and Judgement."

I really wouldn't be surprised if they'd do something similar to that now... I just hope that it would come in a much quicker time, as more people are dealing with the content.

The difference is that we had no idea what tier 2 looked like or was going to look like. Right now we know what the upper end of itemization looks like. Unless they're willing to up everything karazhan on up then the room isn't there to squeeze something in. I don't think they're willing to do that because they're terrified of the gear gap in pvp that existed in vanilla.

Isnt that why we have Arena Seasons? so they can add new rewards in as PvE progresses to keep the gear balance stable?

We knew what tier 2 looked like. Full t1/t2 stats were listed on both thottbot and allakhazam from people data mining. Tier 2 also dropped in MC, and there were people with I believe up to 5 pieces of the set before the world first Ragnaros kill.

Tier 2 was only marginally better than Tier 1, and a downgrade in some cases. Might-->Wrath was the only progression that was strictly upgrades across the board, due to the nature of tank gear (more armor, more stam, more defense, etc.).

The difference is that MC/BWL were not balanced around consumable use. Thus, for example, rerolled guilds have been able to clear BWL ~2 weeks after hitting 60, in mostly blues. That would never be possible with Naxx, because you need tier 2 + consumables to make it possible. BWL was balanced around a t1/t2 mix with no consumables. Thus, you can do it potted in mostly blues.

As I said in my consumables thread, I believe that Vek'nilash was the first boss tuned around consumable use in the history of the raiding game. They wanted his burst potential to be truly deadly, and in order to make it so, it had to be dangerous to a t2+buffs tank. Vek'nilash is the first mob we regularly flasked tanks and used stoneshields for, and I suspect that was the case for many guilds. If you try to tank Vek'nilash in 8/8 t2 with no buffs except raid-cast ones, you will die if you get at all unlucky. That, in my view anyway, marked the turning point.

An encounter isn't easy when you buff with consumables for it. Anub Rekhan was easy, we didn't Cbuff at all for him. If you think it's easy - don't cbuff next time

At launch, both sets were badly itemized, and I mean badly. The bonuses seemed to be random...one piece of Transcendence would have some MP5 but no +heal, another piece would have (get this) +shadow damage. They also had semi-random resist bonuses, one piece would have +10 arcane/shadow resist or what have you, that were basically taking up item budget. Might and Wrath were originally DPS-oriented sets, with crit/hit bonuses and such. Most pieces of Arcanist/Netherwind didn't even have +dmg on them.

Basically, the designers had no idea how to itemize for the encounters whatsoever. Tier 1 was then reitemized around the time BGs launched to include small bonuses to specific resists (mostly FR) and a little of what each class needed (though I remember Arcanist still being pathetic). Tier 2 was inferior to Tier 1 in most regards until Nefarian was downed, at which point it recieved a hefty buff. After this, Tier 1 was revamped yet again, although it wasn't nearly the buff T2 got.

I'm sure Prae or any EJ member could give you more specifics, my memory is a bit hazy.

Edit: Looks like he already did!

Then that reveals an absolutely massive design flaw that can't be fixed. I read the original thread and numbers with alot of interest. I'd never set foot in Naxx at that time and never got a boss down at any time so it was sort of a curiosity for me. Now there are even fights in karazhan where I think, "Man, I'm glad I chugged a couple +damage pots." This is a whole different world and it's not one that's too great.

How do you fix that? I don't see how you can because people who CAN pot WILL pot. But that leads us right back full circle to the original argument where you say fuck it on the early couple raids and don't tune them for consumables. If people want to flask a raid and one shot Gruul on the way to Black Temple and Hyjal, more power to them. Right now I can't and won't spend the time on a consumables required fight so I'm shut out if, indeed, the 'average' raiding guild needs them to do Mags/Gruul.

What exactly is the difference between Beta Gruul (who was taken down pretty quickly as I recall) and current Gruul?

About 2 million hp?

You have to also remember about T1/T2 was that back then, before DM, item bonuses were almost non-existant and thus anything on the Tier sets was a complete upgrade from the previous pure stats items you had before (Wildheart, Devout, etc)

Yeah, the elixir cap and such has been tossed around as an idea for a long time. My personal pet idea has been to make consumables fill an invisible slot with a budget like any item -- budgeted to represent a difference of around one full tier of gear across all slots, using the same stat values for sta, +AP, +dam, etc., that ordinary items to. Then only let people use external buffs up to that cap, but not exceeding it, and leave it to people to manage how they want to use that budget. Maybe you want to buff +sta heavily, or maybe +dam. Maybe you want to use a flask that will eat up almost the whole budget, or maybe you want a mix of other buffs that benefit you in multiple areas. And so forth. This way by definition once you have geared up with that tier's gear, consumables will no longer be needed. So you could do a fight in t4+buffs, or t5 unbuffed. (Of course that would also require a large gap between t4 and t5, but....)

Anyway, yeah, it's all kinds of messed up. The thing is, WoW is an item-based game once you hit max level. The only way your character improved from level 60 in 2005 through level 60 on the eve of TBC was via new and better items. The fact that I can now get over 200 mp5 from a Flask plus chain-chugging mana pots make me feel a bit silly running a heroic or Kara regularly in the hopes of an item that will give me an extra 3 or 4 mp5.

Especially when its highly likely that extra 3-4 MP5 probly wont stack with another item you alrdy have :>

Sadly due to the life expectancy of TBC its highly unlikely Blizz will add in any fixes soon (most likely they will add it in at the start of the next EXP like they did with the Rating System if at all), and their inexperience with MMORPGs is starting to show nowdays and they seem very slow on trying to amend it =/

Sometimes it feels like we are just beta-testing for the next wave of MMO's, and at the risk of whining I have to say that it feels kind of old lately.

No, I'm not so sure it's a matter of inexperience with MMORPGs. I would really love to see an interview with devs (hi, if anyone reading this is involved in gaming journalism or runs a major fansite or whatever, and you get to interview any of the lead designers, please read on ) where they are asked not so much about what the next hot upcoming instance or addition is going to be, but rather to explain their philosophy behind the decisions they make on an ongoing basis -- specifically those regarding itemization and content tuning. When they set the ilvls for crafted epics, Kara epics, Gruul/Mag, t4, t5, arenas, etc., what was their reason for doing so and their aim? When they design fights with "big numbers" (massive incoming tank damage, large hp with an enrage, etc.), what is their goal in pegging that precise point, and what expectations do they make about the gear/consumable use of the raiders involved?

It may well be that they intentionally want to keep the endgame gear relatively level in terms of power, with consumables providing content progression for its own sake. Who knows?

I think that is right on the money. A major change Blizzard was bringing with TBC was keeping different types of gear comparable. So, this is why PVP gear vs. Heroic gear vs. Karazhan gear vs. early 25 man raid gear look pretty similar. I imagine when we get closer to Black Temple being released we will see a new 10 man dungeon, an upgrade to Dungeon 1 sets (probably similar to how Dungeon 2 worked pre-TBC), and of course a new Arena season with buffed gear.

I'm all for keeping gear relatively comparable, because it was sort of silly destroying people in PvP at level 60 in my tier 3 raid gear. The gear gap was way way too large. However, with this gear reset I think they made the gear gap too small. So small that there is very little incentive to do some of the 25 man fights other than for keying requirements or just to say "I killed so-and-so boss".