Saturday Morning X-Zibit

LOL

Crushing blows for tanks back in 3.1?

I was taking a look over at MMO champion this morning before coming to work and noticed a little blurb on crushing blows. It spoke of a "new" kind of crushing blow. Obviously they can't make it completly random like they did before if they do decide to bring crushing blows back. The shield wall ability has been changed since then, and Warrior tanks would be at a severe disadvantage considering all of the cooldowns other tanking classes have to combat these (as well as higher health pools for Druid and DK tanks).

The way it sounds is that it would be more of announced type event (possibly thru raid warning) that would have you use one of your defensive cooldowns. I really do not understand this line of thinking at all. The reason crushing blows were deadly in BC is that they were not announced. If you are going to announce the crushing blow, what is the point of it? It becomes just another boss ability that you have to plan for.

The last paragraph may have sounded like I want crushing blows back. I don't. It was annoying having to spam shield block every single time it was up. It was also irritating that Paladins were able to do the same thing but with a lot more charges on it and basically 100 percent uptime.

I really do not see any reason to bring crushing blows back. If they do in fact come back, we may very well see the hard encounter that everyone was whining about. Only instead of tanking skill, they will take gear. Gear because a higer health pool means less likely to get insta-gibbed by a boss with back to back crushing blows after an unlucky parry. Remeber Prince in Karazhan when you got there in blues and a few epics? Those phase two crushing blows were lethal. Once you geared past it, it was not nearly so bad.

If they really want people to bring the player, they should not bring back crushing blows. It is a mechanic of days past and needs to stay in the days in the days of no thunderclap in defensive stance. Leave crushing blows in the graveyard where they belong.

No new topics, so here is a new MEME!! *sigh*

Anyways, I thought it would be cool to have a meme that has a funny story behind it. Go into your screenshots, find a screenshot that reminded you of something funny and post it along with the story about what happened. This first picture was a completly random shot I took while flying to netherstorm (likely trying to get the suneater). Obviously it is some caster getting pwned by the fel reaver in Hellfire. Oh how I hated that guy my first time through Hellfire.

The second screenshot is of me at 80. I was in Hellfire helping my sister level her mage when i decided to get a little solo revenge on the fel reaver. Piece of cake.

For this Meme I am tagging:

Megan, the pwned by Verification Lockadin.

The Old Gaming Dude with the 7 year old daughter who owns Warsong

Kadomi, who actually tanks like a man (dont let her fool you)

Have fun!

Gold making by Jewelcrafting

To be honest, so far it has been pretty slow. What sold the best were the things that I disenchanted while I was leveling 0_0.

So far it appears that green quality gems sell very slowly. I have sold a few of the spell power gems and that is about it as far as green quality goes.

Obviously, I do not have a ton of cuts yet as I barely got to where I can do the JC dailies a few days back. The one gem cut I picked up was the plus 16 hit gem pattern. The gems sell for a decent amount and I figured that everyone could use the hit gems at some point. I figure it will make a lot more money when dual spec comes out.

The problem with gems seems to be that people are flooding the market and viciously undercutting everyone else. I am seeing several blue quality gems that are well under 20 gold each now due to people just trying to dump them and not really make a profit. I find this to be extremly annoying.

As it looks right now, in order to actually make profit off of prospecting a stack of saronite, I would have to hope for a red, yellow, or orange gem. The blue, green, and purple ones appear to go for next to nothing.

One that is good for making a bit of cash is creating the stoneguard bands and DEing them. Doing this I got about 4-6 stacks of dust and 9 greater essences. I put the dust up for more money than it is really going for now, but since enchanting mats do not cost an AH deposit, there is really no harm in it. If I dont end up selling them I still have lots of mats to enchant my Druid's gear when I get him to 80.

Just a quick question on the dailies. I got the one today that I have to kill Revenants for a piece. Does anybody know if the little ice guys in Howling Fjorde count towards that?

On to other WoW news. Last night I played a bit with my fiance and we got my Paladin and her Druid to level 72. I think she is absolutely adorable when we play, but also completely bossy :) She want to loot every single mob that we kill (which I actually dont really have a problem with). She also insists that I ride my Alterac Ram instead of my Paladin mount because it looks funnier when I do the mouse spin (which is another thing she demands I do). She will even sit there not moving and doing the ole' throat clear to let me know she wants me to ride the ram 0_0. She is off today, so in a ploy to get her to level some of her professions, I told her if she was bored to go farm some low level herbs and I will buy them from her (I just started inscription).

PUGifornia Dreamin'

Not, not the cute dogs. Sorry to get your hopes up. This is of course about the universally dreaded pick up group. Last night while I was leveling my Druid (I am now 2 bubbles from 77), I ran several PUGs. These PUGs went extremely well for the most part. Only one of them did we have any wipes, and much of it had to do with people just having their heads up their asses (AKA not killing the add in the Jedoga fight in Old Kingdom). For the most part, everyone I ran with seemed to be as least moderately skilled and know what they are doing. I think I ran 5 instances and my tanks included 1 warrior and 4 DK tanks.

While running these PUGs, I came to a realization. Not all PUGs are created equal. It seems to me that the PUGs you get into while leveling are much better than the ones you get into at the level cap. I think this is for a number of reasons. Many people leveling right now are just leveling an alt. Most likely this is a character that they played quite a bit during BC or before and they are just clearing the cobwebs off as they get bored with the end game. A lot of the PUG players at 80 seem to be guildless players wearing ridiculously bad gear trying to get into a heroic doing less than 1k dps. Every PUG I was in last night, almost all of the DPS was over 1k. I even had an elemental Shaman that was doing over 1500 at 75. I have seem people do much less in Archavon.

A lot of the bads skip all leveling dungeon content and end up trying to get into Heroics wearing green items from Zul'Drak. The people who are not bads will either pick up a bit of crafted gear or do some dungeons from time to time for gear upgrades. My druid is wearing all Northrend blues right now with the exception of a green trinket and an Outlands Idol (no, that is not a show). Basically, bad PUGS are made up people who have no idea about group mechanics. People that do not know what a DPS meter is. People that do not know to not AOE before the tank has a group clustered.

If you are looking for a decent pug, get into LFG and play with some players that are leveling. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Weekend Update

This weekend was not the most exciting weekend I have had in WoW, but I did get some things done and had some nice raid drama as well.

Leveling: I did a nice bit of questing with my fiance over the weekend. We both went and finished up Borean Tundra and got the achivement. In the process I hit 76 on my Druid. Right after we finished Borean, a friend invited us to do Heroic Magisters Terrace for the bird mount and the Phoenix Hatchling. I went pretty well although a few of the encounters can be stressful with just 3 toons going at it. My fiance did a very good job in the instance, and even managed to not die on Kael'Thas when he does the gravity lapse. After we downed him, he dropped the Phoenix Hatching which my fiance won.

After that we decided to head to Zul'Gurub for a shot at the Tiger and Raptor mounts. The Raptor boss went easy enough except for the part where he automatically kills you. That part kinda sucks. I did manage to die no a trash pull when I healing aggroed a bunch of trolls who trained me. The Tiger Boss was extremly easy and we had zero problems. Of course neither of the mounts dropped.

I am now leveling my Ret Paladin with my fiance as they are the same level and almost exactly the same amount of XP. We ended up only 1.5 bubbles from 72 after heading to Howling Fjorde and getting those quests started. I have noticed that stuff dies EXTREMLY fast with this combo.

Raiding: No Emblems for me this weekend, but there was some drama and me getting locked to Naxx 25 without killing a single boss. It went something like this. I put myself in LFG for Naxx 25 and get a whisper that a group is going to finish a partially cleared Naxx. They already have Plague and Abomination wings down. I get in the group and get summoned to Naxx. We get there and not everyone can get into the Raid. This is due to the fact that this was apparently a mostly guild raid that had been called previously and the 8 or so pugs that wanted to continue reformed.

The raid leader had been invited to the raid and saved just before they decided to call it, so he wanted to finish what he never really got to start. The reason that not everybody could get into the instance was that people from the previous run zoned in to sabotage the run as they wanted to clear it the following day. We tried 21 manning Anub and were doing just fine until a DK who was not in our raid wiped us when he taunted Anub during locust swarm and killed everyone. After much whinging and crying, the group ended up breaking up as the GMs "couldn't" kick the people that we causing problems and not even a part of the raid group.

So that is how I got saved to 25 man Naxx with nothing to show for it. Yay me.

Professions: This weekend was mostly about leveling my Jewelcrafting. It took quite a long time and costed me around 1500 gold, but I got to 428. I even got my first three JC daily tokens which I have not spent yet. It was a very long process, but overall I made a bit of the money back for various reasons. The biggest reason was that I was DEing pretty much everything that I made. The biggest surprise source of income was Strange Dust. I noticed that there was no Strange Dust on the AH and decided to throw some up for a grossly inflated sum. A stack was usually going for less that 4 gold. I sold several stacks between 20 and 25 gold each 0_0. Now comes the painful process of obtaining the JC patterns. Does anyone know what I should gem my Druid for at 80 with my prismatic gems? Is it spirit, intellect, mp5, or Spellpower? Next up will be inscription. Yay me.

I have some more play time tonight and will be working mosty on getting my Druid another level. I am really itching to get him into some Heroics. Overall, I had a pretty decent WoW weekend. Hope everyone else had a fun and loot filled weekend.

Ghetto Hearth NERF?!!!@@!1!

stone cooldown changed to 30 minutes

Alright, all -- we're going to make the cooldown on hearthstones 30 minutes when 3.1.0 releases. Enjoy your sweet victory. (Source)

Well, they finally fized it after all of these years. NERF SHAMAN!
hetto Hearthing nerfed in 3.1 (Note: Going in an instance and leaving the group to get teleported back to the Inn won't work anymore, it will only teleport you to the nearest graveyard)
We had a discussion with the developers about it this afternoon. Ghetto hearthing really has become a mechanic of sorts for so many players after being unchanged for so long. We don't like that mechanic though because it obviously feels like a bug exploit. They all agreed the best way to move forward on it is just to reduce the cooldown on the hearthstone.

HOW DARE YOU TAKE MY GHETTO HEARTH! I think Stormwind's normal player base will be nerfed as a result of less needing to ghetto hearth to SW

I promise you this change did not come as a result of us continually pestering them about the community's reaction. It was something we all discussed and agreed was probably a good decision.

Samuel ADAMS is probably a good decision. This sucks.

cialization price (1000 Gold)
We are okay with not everybody purchasing dual specs. If your respecs are few and far between, there isn't much of a reason for you to be switching back and forth and even picking up extra gear to fulfill other roles. There are a lot of players who do switch roles regularly, whether it is going from PvE to PvP or simply from one location to another in either area of the game, they may look to change their spec and this should help make this process easier.

You may end up losing money, but you are also gaining a large convenience if you are looking to switch between specs at any kind of regular rate. With 3.1 just hitting the PTR, there is a lot of time to do a handful of daily quests and to save up to purchase this. (Source)

Dual spec is a winner in my opinion. I will gladly pay the 1000 gold.ual Specialization at level 40 and high price
Dual specialization isn't something everyone needs. It's a perk we're adding into the game, and it's initially going to require an investment. If you can't afford dual specializations for 10 different characters, you might not actually need all 10 of your characters to be able to swap between two specializations on a whim.

With a single 5-second, out of combat cast, players level 40 or higher will instantly be able to swap between two different talent specializations, glyph sets, and action bar set-ups from virtually anywhere in the world.

That kind of convenience and versatility shouldn't be obtained with absolute triviality. (Source)

Switching specs
You literally just click a button, and after a 5 second cast, your specializations, glyphs, and action bars swap. You must be out of combat, and it still cannot be used in battlegrounds or arenas. There is currently no cooldown on the ability to swap specializations though. (Source)

Easy is just what the Doctor ordered. It better be for 1k.

1000 Gold at level 40???
Not many level 40 characters would have 1000g, to be sure. Keep in mind our original design intent was to make this available only to level 80 players. After taking in a lot of feedback from the community and further discussing the design of this feature, we decided to make it level 40.

The cost is a recognizable deterrent to players who are just starting out in World of Warcraft and reaching 40 for the first time. Those people probably shouldn't worry about swapping between two talent specializations though.

We still feel strongly that this feature isn't meant for players leveling up. It's simply not that necessary. We did consider the feedback from the community though concerning leveling alts and running dungeons, and ultimately decided to lower the level requirement so those who can afford it can still take advantage of it earlier on. It doesn't mean we're going to overcompensate for our original level requirement by making it much more easily attainable, and therefore necessary, at level 40. (Source)

I disagree. I would love this for leveling in dungeons. Then I can heal or DPS instead of just heal or just dps. More options keeps the game more fun.