World of Warcraft: Current Year

xzi_sl said:

well SHIT. I'm actually excited for garrisons, it seems pretty split down the middle of the community though, like either people hate them or love them.

Also, looking atthe new tier setsand I actually think they look pretty great for the most part. Something that I don't immediately want to transmog. Especially the new druid mythic set.. wtf I wanna be a beetle

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Really? Scrolled through without looking at the class names and that shit is generic as hell. Only one I knew straight away was Paladin because well... It's kind of been a trend since T3(dat T2 tho). Mage I was pretty sure of and I got War/Rog but wasn't confident. Maybe it's just too drab for my tastes. Haven't played since WotLK but T3 is still the end all be all (T6 was another high note as a Shaman with a Warlock alt). Not much point to my post I guess. I just clicked the link and all I could think after seeing those sets is how fucking sweet T3 really was AND HOW I NEVER GOT MY FUCKING SHOULDERS BECAUSE OF SEAN AND BURKEX. THEY WERE THE ONLY PIECE I REALLY WANTED.

Needless_sl said:

Right, almost every time i do that as horde, the alliance king never moves that close lol
It's such a shitty RNG fight

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Yeah, guess you're having shitty luck. I only did it like 4 weeks, also as horde, but I only lost once using that strat.

Well from a Mage point of view they did reduce the number of spells you have in any given spec by a decent number, but it really hasn't changed the bread and butter that much for me. There are a lot of abilities as an Arcane Mage that I never used or used very infrequently from Fire and Frost that are now 'gone' but only from my point of view as they are part of those two specs. In essence the three specs feel more like three different classes now with quite different ability trees.

Similarly for a Mistweaver Monk a ton of the martial / melee abilities are gone at least when in Jade Serpent stance. The main stuff I used all the time is still there though.

For priests they hardly cut anything. A few infinite buffs, 2-3 spells that were mostly situational. Comparing it to EQ2 isn't fair though. Priests certainly have a shit ton more short/medium duration CDs now than they did back in Vanilla/TBC, but they're all unique and have their specific purpose.

I think their main point with the ability purge was to get rid of exactly those EQ2-like superfluous abilities. If you had two abilities that did pretty much the same thing, one of them is probably gone.

As a Warrior Tank - Youll notice a dramatic slice in terms of abilities that were removed. The DPS Side had some abilities cut but your rotation is "Basic Bitch" now. It really all depends on the class, honestly. Like Qhue said, the Mage has changed a lot where as Elerion said the Priest barely did. I think they should have took it further, personally, but thats just because I like to fucking talk to people when Im raiding.

I like the Mage changes. No more bombs, time warp or casting evocation every 15 seconds. But man do I miss having arcane explosion in frost spec.

How do you find a proper guild nowadays without just blindly trying your luck with random ones and hoping for the best? I want to be a raider in WoD, but having not played the game with any real persistence since WotLK, I have no network. None of my friends play, I don't know anybody, and WoW's community and guild environment is an absolute mess these days. Instead of a server having a dozen guilds that most people know about, they have ten thousand guilds and not one of them are noteworthy (unless your server has a guild in the world top20 or something).

I'm completely willing to move servers as well, given the free level 90 boost you get with WoD. However, without having a target, I would have to resort to asking in general chat or looking at the realm forums, which isn't exactly something I'm optimistic about. I don't expect to leap into some kind of top raiding guild after years away from the scene, but I also don't want to waste my first month in WoD going from one hopelessly awful guild to another. How does one find a decent guild, and what are the signs to look for?

Guzrog_sl said:

Everyone will likely hate me for this post but I've had a surprisingly hard time asking people in the beta this question and getting a straight answer. Did they actually cut down the ability bloat? Or, was it a great idea that never materialized? I honestly don't have enough interest left to comb through huge "whats changed" posts and I haven't followed WoD at all. Hell I don't have enough interest to look these things up out of office hours at home where the sites aren't blocked.

I've pretty much played the same warrior off and on since vanilla and feel like there was far too many CD/redundant abilities in MOP. Will this be better in WoD? Did they manage to respectively cut the bloat? It was starting to feel like EQ2 however dramatic that statement may be. I'm always for playing through to see the lore so I'd love to hear they succeeded.

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I will 2nd this question from the Shaman's point of view. Has the Enhance Shaman changed all that much? They did not suffer too badly with ability Bloat but it was getting close.

You find one onWoW Guild Rankings :: WoWProgress - World of Warcraft Rankings. Look for a guild that wants quality players that understand their class and meet your availability. Might take a few to find one that accepts you because you dont "have the ilvl or achievements", hopefully you will find the right one though.

I've been in beta for a few months and the best way I can summarize the class changes is this way: think of abilities you put in a swifty macro, as a DK on live I have Unholy Frenzy, Garg, DPS trinket, and engineering gloves. Now I have all that minus Unholy Frenzy and they adjusted the loss of damage from that ability to be more even with all the other class abilities. This mentality was taken to the majority of classes so instead of more buttons you end up with more streamlined rotations. What long term subscribers will notice is alot more downtime in some classes where you have nothing to push vs trying to fill all your GCD's. I'm not talking extreme night and day differences, but it is noticeable and not to the degree of completely unfun.

To Mahes: Enhance had a few changes... Earth Shock is gone, Ascendance isn't as powerful of a cooldown compared to live, Talent selection is largely the same except Echo of the Elements is viable for Enhance because on the proc it causes Lava Lash and Stormstrike not to go on cooldown so you can hit the button twice, No more instant Hex, overall they are more tanky than on Live but less burst oriented, Healing Tide Totem was removed, and finally I'm not sure what to make of the lvl 100 talents.

I'll give a quick rundown of the other class changes that I can think of off the top of my head....

Warrior: Each spec has talents that change up depending on your spec, and those talents are some abilities that are baseline on Live which moved to talents in WoD. Those talent choices are what provides the flavor for the class. Arms is pretty stale, Fury is more spammy since they removed colossus smash, Glad stance is pretty much Protection Spec doing damage. I don't tank so I have no input on Warrior tanking.

Hunter: BM in WoD is the spec that resembles the MoP version of the Hunter the most. They moved some baseline abilities to talents to add flavor. Marks gets a damage bonus when standing still and for like 6 seconds after moving. Marksmanship now uses Aimed Shot as a focus dump which I find clunky because of the cast time. Survival is largely the same except they removed Kill Shot. The biggest changes are Scatter Shot is gone so traps arm instantly, and no blanket Silence for Marks.

Warlock: I haven't played this class much but I didn't see too many drastic changes to the core gameplay except DoTs don't snapshot, they instead will automatically scale with your procs.

Priest: They added some variety to Shadow's damage. Basically you can dps without using Dots or you can use DoTs and Mind Flay like you play on Live. I don't heal so no input on either healing spec.

Shaman: I covered Enhance above. Elemental plays largely the same except Echo of the Elements causes Lava Bolt not to go on cooldown thus allowing a second hard cast of the spell. Healing Tide also is gone from this spec. I don't heal so I have no input on Restoration.

DK: Removed Necrotic Strike which moves your damage in PvP towards Festering Strike. Still very Immobile and the loss of double grip is very noticeable in PvP. Self healing is really good now that Death Strike isn't completely useless. They do really good damage in PvP with both specs, but still lack any real utility. The level 100 talents are pretty interesting I personally like Necrotic Plague because it spreads itself saving runes you would have otherwise used on Blood Boil. I don't tank so no tanking input.

Mage: Was covered by another poster above, they took baseline Live abilities and moved them to talents. Added flavor talents that cater to your spec. Rune of Power is still there but the Evocation damage boost talent is gone, finally Mirror Image is a talent but I haven't tested it's damage compared to the other talents in it's row. Arcane mages can throw people in the air, YES IN THE AIR.

Druids: Balance was completely redesigned so your Eclipse bar moves on it's own now instead of you moving it via spell casting. Same design philosophy still cast Lunar spells when it's in the Lunar phase etc. Starsurge give a damage bonus to whichever spells the Eclipse bar is in which adds a little more rotational depth. Starfall and Starsurge share a CD now and Starsurge has 3 charges. Feral is what everyone is bitching about now because they can heal like a boss. You just really need to keep them in a stun when trying to burst them down or they heal and laugh at you. Tons of mobility here and lots of survival which will probably get addressed at some point. Again I don't heal so no Restoration input, though they seem like one of the better PvP healers still.

Paladin: I haven't personally played Ret, but they are everywhere in the Arena now. Really great support class atm with good off heals and Hands. Inquisition is gone I believe, they aren't really dangerous outside of Wings. Alot of people bitching about them because of the heals but I don't think they will be a problem in higher ratings. No experience with Healing or Tanking.

Monk: Haven't played one, WW is a pretty easy kill once you connect. Their damage seems alright and their off healing isn't too bad. No Healing or Tanking here Sir.

TL;DR
WoD looks to be alot of fun, but it's more of the same game so what you see is what you get. Garrisons look neat but they aren't my thing. Questing is pretty fun with a good storyline to play through. PM or post specific class questions and I'll do my best to answer.

Anyone know of a good vanilla wow server?

Oh my god. Seriously. Fuck. That. Guy.

Grats on the kill yo! I've been farming my dick off in hopes to buy myself into a heroic kill lol, I haven't had any luck with flex yet cause apparently 512 is too low even for a healer and I can't get anymore upgrades this week. So hopefully 6.0 doesn't drop tuesday. Then again, hopefully it does. I guess I don't need a mount that much really.

Also I realized today how much I miss 10man raiding. I just find it more enjoyable and you can almost immediately pick out who is a retard and who you actually like raiding with, lol

Questing through Beta and doing only two normal modes dungeons and I hit 100 before setting foot in Nagrand. I'm a completist though and made sure I had finished the main story plus all side missions and as many of the regional elites as possible before moving on.

Spires of Arak is my favorite zone so far, but it is also the zone most removed from the main plotline as you only encounter a token handfull of orcs / Iron Horde while there.

Mahes_sl said:

I will 2nd this question from the Shaman's point of view. Has the Enhance Shaman changed all that much? They did not suffer too badly with ability Bloat but it was getting close.

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Really? My main over the years was always enhance shaman and with multiple abilities for each type of totem, I had way more abilities to hotkey compared to the other classes I played.

Not sure on Moonkin now. AoE vastly improved it seems but losing one ability (Sunfire/Moonfire split) in the rotation as well as Starfall proc (part of AOE buffs made shared charges with Starfire) almost cuts too much back. That plus the auto-move bar really takes some of the cause/effect out of the rotation. It's almost like those 'use object puzzles' in Wildstar now instead of a rotation.