T13

All posts tagged T13

Bye, Cataclysm

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 24, 2012
Posted in: Game Mechanics, Mists of Pandaria, PVP, Raiding, World of Warcraft. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Today is the last day of Cataclysm. I thought it’d be a good time to look back over the expansion a bit. I hit my first level cap during Wrath of the Lich King, giving Dalaran and Northrend a sort of homie and familiar feel. Cataclysm was the first expansion to be released while I was actively part of the endgame, so it was a new experience for me.

As Cataclysm was released, I left Carpe Flux Capacitor to make a guild with friends, Playground Brigade. It was fun to play with them, and I’ll happily remember working with my friend Elizabeth on the Conclave of Wind. And by working, I mean joking around in whispers when we screwed up. I really like that memory!

We didn’t complete any of the three T12 raids, and the guild began to fall apart. I rejoined Carpe Flux Capacitor in, I think, 4.1. Unfortunately, my computer went down, and I didn’t get it back up until the end of 4.2. I managed to catch up on the troll heroics and jump into Firelands, killing Ragnaros before killing any other boss. I don’t regret my time with Playground Brigade, but I really regret leaving Carpe Flux Capacitor. That seems contradictory, but I still feel bad for leaving.

Love you, Carpe!

I enjoyed the zones for the most part, and the linearity didn’t bother me. Of course, I don’t have alts either. Vashj’ir was really fun in my opinion. I loved the story and the feeling of loneliness in the zone. I wish the story had continued! Hyjal was pretty cool, but I know I forgot a lot of the plot points as they were happening. Deepholm was fun, but I wish Therazane the Stone Mother would have showed up against Deathwing. Uldum was interesting, but the cutscenes screwed up on my computer all the time and would just show me the ground. I might have liked it more if it worked! Twilight Highlands was fun, and I enjoyed it while I did it. Most of it wasn’t memorable, but I enjoyed surfing on the drakes, exploring, and noticing the fun names of areas and NPCs.

The Zandalari patch was very fun. I’d like to see Blizzard use the option of a content patch without raids in the future. It’s not that I don’t enjoy raids, but Blizzard shouldn’t feel obligated. The raid finder sort of killed Carpe’s drive to raid, but I still think it’s a great tool. I’m thankful that in the future, I’ll always get to see all the content even if I can’t devote all the time.

Cataclysm also brought about void storage, reforging, and transmogrification. I filled my void storage on the first night, and would love to see more. Reforging is actually a bit annoying to me. It just adds an extra puzzle that I don’t enjoy. (Well, I just use Ask Mr. Robot.) Transmogrification, on the other hand, is one of the best features Blizzard has added in a long time. I already collected cool gear that I could only wear in town. Now I can be seen in it!

I love PVP, but I didn’t enjoy the two new Battlegrounds very much. Twin Peaks is just Warsong Gulch 2, and Warsong Gulch is much better. The Battle for Gilneas is decent, but I enjoy Arathi Basin a bit better. I’ll still play and enjoy Battle for Glineas as well, but I don’t know what it is about Twin Peaks that I dislike so much.

It’s been too long since Tier 12 for me to do an analysis really without revisiting. I enjoyed them for the most part though. As a healer, Chimaeron was an interesting fight. Atramedes the blind dragon was also very cool, although his sonar pulse didn’t show up right on my screen! I’m not really qualified to talk about most of the Firelands bosses either since I came late. The zone design was great though, and the Molten Front ties were fantastic. I’d love to see more of that. Ragnaros felt pretty epic. Honestly, it felt more epic than the Madness of Deathwing!

Dragon Soul was enjoyable but flawed. Morchok was a nice introduction to the raid. War’sahj the Unsleeping and Warlord Zon’ozz had interesting mechanics, but I feel like only one of them should have been in the raid. Hagara seemed a little odd, but it really did fit with the story, and I like visiting old locations (and using old artifacts). Ultraxion was cool and fit well, and Deathwing running for it after he saw us defeat his creation was great. Warmaster Blackhorn felt like a step backwards. The fight was odd and anti-climatic, and it seemed to go against the rising tension. Fought a bunch of minions, fought a powerful dragon, went after Deathwing, fought a tauren, and then jumped on Deathwing himself! Which one of those seems out of place? The Spine of Deathwing was very cool. It was so different than other fights, and we’ve never fought a boss while standing on him previously! The Madness of Deathwing sounded good in theory, but it was flawed as well. First, it didn’t look like we were fighting Deathwing. The camera doesn’t go back far enough (without some tinkering) to get a good look. It was also, as far as I know, never really explained why he was full of tentacles. And then there are the Aspects. They’re mortal now? What powers did they lose? Ah, whatever.

Soon it will be time for Mists of Pandaria. I’m already loving account-wide achievements, pets, and mounts. The new continent looks fun, pandaren seem interesting, and monks look pretty cool. I’m actually very excited about pet battles and farming! The character development should be excellent as well. It looks like Blizzard is developing Varian to be more heroic. This is very cool even as a Horde player. This will be a nice juxtaposition to Garrosh’s corruption. I’m looking forward to taking him down at the end of Mists of Pandaria!

 

Grinding in LFR

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 13, 2012
Posted in: Game Mechanics, Raiding. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

This weekend I did LFR as I always do. It was terrible. I enjoyed having the opportunity to see Dragon Soul at first, but I stopped having fun in LFR a while ago.

Why?

The trash is incredibly boring. The bosses are not challenging. We only wipe if a large portion of the group has no idea what they’re doing. There’s very little I need (two rings). The upgrades I do need aren’t even that helpful. (And of course, my computer can’t handle 25s very well.)

It seems to me that there’s two reasons to do anything in World of Warcraft. The biggest reason to do anything is that you enjoy it. The secondary reason is the reason on which Blizzard depends to keep us all paying; we do things we don’t enjoy because it will help us do the things we do enjoy. This is called “grinding.”

I like raiding. I like the increasing challenge of pushing ahead, and I like experiencing new content for the design, story, and lore. Doing LFR was great because it was a way to see Dragon Soul. However, there’s no challenge in it. Yes, there are still wipes, but they’re never because of me. The only reason to do LFR is for equipment upgrades and Valor Points. But upgrades are only important because they help you to do better. Grinding for upgrades falls into the second category of why we play World of Warcraft. However, I’m not raiding normal Dragon Soul at all. I’m not in a raid group currently, and PuGs all seem to want the full achievement. I suppose I could try talking a PuG into taking me, but it just doesn’t seem worth the trouble. The most Dragon Soul I’m seeing is LFR, and I’m obviously able to complete that easily every week. If that’s the case, why try for upgrades? Upgrades aren’t going to help me in normal mode because I’m not doing normal mode, and they’re not going to help me in LFR because it’s already not a problem.

Why even do LFR then? Well, that’s exactly what I’m wondering. I’m going to try to stop doing things that I don’t enjoy. Some small grinds might be worth it. For example, I’ll continue doing the Love is in the Air holiday boss for the chance at the mount. However, I’m not going to make a big deal about working LFR and other heroics into my week. I don’t even need Valor Points anymore, so is it really worth stressing over LFR for two rings that I don’t even really need?

There’s a part of me that wants to be as best equipped as possible, but is being “BiS LFR” really worth saying?

Loot Rules for Tier Pieces

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 13, 2011
Posted in: Raiding. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

This patch introduced the Looking for Raid tool, which is great. It allows people who weren’t able to raid previously to raid. It allows people who already raid to minor upgrades faster. Because tier pieces from LFR will satisfy set bonus requirements along with normal mode pieces, it allows raiders to reach their four-piece bonus faster. However, this creates an interesting problem.

When a tier token drops in normal, should a raider who already has the LFR version pass on the token to allow someone who doesn’t have tier 13 for that slot at all a chance? This would help people reach their set bonuses faster as well as give pieces to people who need them the most. However, there’s another side to this. What if person A runs LFR every week, and person B never runs LFR. Person B might have an initial advantage because they’ll get the LFR T13, but in the long run, person B will be better off because they’ll be able to collect 4-piece normal T13 while person A is stuck in LFR T13.

I was thinking about this yesterday so I brought it up with my raid leader / guild leader. As it turns out, she’s been thinking about the same problem. It’s a difficult one, and she plans on asking how the raid team feels. Many of us already pass on loot to let less-geared members have gear. I think we’re all a nice bunch. However, I don’t like the idea of having to always pass on all my tier gear. Last week we ran the LFR all together during our raid time. If we keep doing this, perhaps it won’t be a problem.

I’m still not sure how Carpe Flux Capacitor will handle this. We’ll see how the raid team as a whole feels. I’m sure various raid teams out there will handle this differently. I’m curious what others are planning to do.

Week and a Half into 4.3

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 9, 2011
Posted in: Game Mechanics, World of Warcraft. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

We’re now into the second week of 4.3, and I’m extremely happy with it so far. It packed a bunch of features – void storage, transmogrification, three new 5-mans, Dragon Soul, the LFR, the Darkmoon Faire, epic gems, and more!

The first thing I did was look at the simple additions of void storage and transmogrification. I immediately filled my entire void storage. It has 80 slots, and in my opinion is pretty cheap. It’s 100 gold to unlock and 25 gold per item deposit. That’s 2100 gold for 80 slots. What a deal! Next, it was time to transmogrify my gear. I have to be honest; I’ve never been as good as I was in Icecrown Citadel. And I know why! It’s because of my gear of course. To solve this, I transmogrified my gear to look T10. (And actually I’ve been doing well this patch, so it must be working!)

The three 5-mans are very fun although very easy. Nozdormu informs us that we need the Dragon Soul to defeat Deathwing, but we’d need to go back in time to get it. Unfortunately, access to that time period is blocked to him, and the disturbance is in the future. In the first heroic, Nozdormu travels with us into the future in End Time. There we defeat shadows of past heroes in a dark future in which Deathwing succeeded in killing everyone. In the end, we fight Murozond, leader of the Infinite Dragonflight and formerly Nozdormu. This fight is most likely what drives Nozdormu insane and pushes him to become Murozond. Of course, this is also the first time Nozdormu decides to change the timeline, which most likely contributes as well. The fight itself is amazingly cool. Nozdormu gives us the ability to set back time. Our mana and CDs are reset, but Murozond’s health does not reset. It’s pretty cool.

Next up we’re sent back in time to the War of the Ancients where a young kaldorei named Illidan helps to fight the Burning Legion. We even get to fight Azshara (by the way, she’s hot). In the end we’re able to snatch the Dragon Soul. In the final 5-man, Thrall now has the Dragon Soul, and we escort him through Dragonblight to Wyrmrest Temple where the raid begins.

In the raid, we first fight an elemental giant who’s turning the earth against us. Next we fight two faceless ones in the spawn of the Old Gods. I won’t go into the rest of the details because I don’t want to spoil anything. However, we do revisit the Eye of Eternity, board an airship, fight on Deathwing’s back, and then fight Deathwing a second time. The Spine of Deathwing is an especially awesome fight. You cause adds to explode, knocking pieces of armor partially off Deathwing’s back. Then you break tendons holding them in place, sending them flying. Wow, how awesome.

Some people in my guild are annoyed at the difficulty already of 10-man normal, but I’m quite content. It’s the second week, and we’re 2/8. A boss per week is good progress in my opinion. One boss per two weeks would be fine with me even. However, when we add this to the fact that LFR is incredibly easy, I’m not annoyed at all. LFR is broken into two raids of four bosses each. The first is a complete faceroll. The second is a bit harder, and tanks especially will want to read about the fights before entering. Still, I’ve already completed the entire raid in LFR. While it’s easier, it’s very cool to be able to see the entire story. I imagine there are a ton of players out there who never raided previously but can now at least see all the assets. This is fantastic. And if they want to learn to truly raid, they can enter normal (which is easier than it was previously in my opinion). Then, if they want to be challenged as a raider, they start heroic progression. This is a cool way to segment things.

Enough about raiding. Isn’t there an even more casual form of PVE than LFR? There is – the Darkmoon Faire! Again, this is a big success. The coolest thing about it is the ambiance. I love being there. It really feels like a faire. It offers five dailies that are all carnival games. These gives tickets that can be spent on mounts (dancing bear!), pets, heirlooms, and transmogrification gear. There are also quests that can be done once per month for each profession (primary and secondary). There’s also a quest that tasks you with collecting 250 grisly trophies. These appear in your inventory randomly when killing players or PVE enemies that are in your level range. However, they don’t appear every time, and I wish they appeared more. The only annoying aspect is that there are also items that start quests that can drop in battlegrounds and heroics once you get the Darkmoon Adventurer’s Guide. There are nine of these, and they can be turned in once per month each. You can trade them, which is nice, and more importantly, you can find them even when the faire isn’t around. That’ll be great next month, but I really want to maximize my tickets, and I haven’t found them all for this month yet!

tl;dr, right? Well, I’m loving the patch!

Priest Set Bonuses in Cataclysm

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 29, 2011
Posted in: Priest, Raiding. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Set bonuses were just updated a couple minutes ago! I’ve been sitting on this draft, but I’ll go ahead and post it before it gets more dated!

As with all tier gear, the priest tiers this expansion have both good and not-so-good set bonuses. With the T13 bonuses revealed recently, I thought I’d take a chance to offer my opinions. However, keep in mind I haven’t actually acquired 4-piece  of either T11 or T12.

Tier 11

(2 Set): Increases the critical strike chance of your Heal spell by 5%.

Considering where they intended priest healing to be when Cataclysm was being planned, the two-piece made sense. However, Heal just doesn’t work as a spell. It heals a sliver of health on tanks. It’s true that I do use it if the person needing healing isn’t taking much damage, but quite often other heals work better. If someone’s in immediate danger and likely to receive more damage, he’ll get a Power Word: Shield and Flash Heal. If the tank is taking prolonged heavy damage, he’ll get Greater Heals. If a DPS takes damage but isn’t standing in fire or doing something else stupid, a Renew and possibly Power Word: Shield will take care of him. Heal’s just not a good spell right now.

(4 Set): When your Penance spell heals a target you gain 540 Spirit for 10 sec, and being in a Chakra state grants you 540 Spirit for the duration of the Chakra.

The four-piece is nice, but it’s always up for Holy priests and usually up for Discipline priests. Seems unfair.

Tier 12

(2 Set): Casting your Flash Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, and Prayer of Mending spells cause you to regenerate 2% of your base mana every 5 sec for 15 sec.

Pretty much every spell I cast causes me to regenerate mana? Yes please!

(4 Set): You have a chance when you cast a helpful spell to summon a Cauterizing Flame at the target’s location. Each sec the Cauterizing Flame will heal an injured party member within 20 yards for 9250 to 10750. Lasts 5 sec.

As I don’t have four pieces of T12 yet, I don’t know just how smart this smart heal is. It sounds good though!

Tier 13

(2 Set): After using Power Infusion or Lightwell, the mana cost of your healing spells is reduced by 25% for [10|15] sec. (10 sec for Discipline, 15 for non-Discipline.)

This seems disappointing to me even though I know other bloggers have praised it. As Discipline, I use Power Infusion in two situations – whenever it’s up for the mana or during “oh shit” situations. This new two-piece set bonus works for both of those I believe. However, as Holy, I put down Lightwell whenever it’s off cooldown. Okay, that works. Except for the initial cast. Lightwell lasts for the same amount of time that it’s on CD. Because of this, I always cast it before the pull. This way we can use as many of its charges as we need (all of them if the need be) in a shorter amount of time, and then I can recast it. I don’t really need cheap heals before we pull, but the earlier I put it down the better in my opinion. Ten seconds before the pull doesn’t help that much, but a minute and a half before the pull means a minute and a half into the fight I can put down a new one.

(2 Set): After using Power Infusion or Divine Hymn, the mana cost of your healing spells is reduced by 25% for [10|23] sec. (10 sec for Discipline, 23 for non-Discipline.)

You did it! Thanks, Blizzard! Now it’ll do what you intended it to do. I like it.

(4 Set): Your Power Word: Shield has a 10% chance to absorb 100% additional damage, and the cooldown of your Holy Word abilities is reduced by 20%.

(4 Set): Your Power Word: Shield has a 10% chance to absorb 100% additional damage and increase the mana granted by Rapture by 100%, and the duration of your Holy Word abilities is increased by 20%.

This seems really awesome for both healing specs. Power Word: Shield is a fantastic spells for Discipline priests, and I’m sure they’ll get a ton of use out of it. As for Holy, both Holy Word heals are great. I’ve heard the single-target heal referred to as the tank heal and the ground-based AOE one a raid heal, but I don’t think it’s neccessarily like that. I’ve learned to switch Chakras depending on the mobility of the fight at that time (some fights lend themselves to one or the other, and some require me to switch). In any case, a shortned cooldown on these abilities is a welcome addition!

In all, I’m excited about the T13 set bonuses. The two-piece is underwhelming to be sure, but it is a two-piece after all. And after that terrible set “bonus” that was two-piece T11, this is quite welcome! Now we’ll have to wait and see if they get changed before 4.3 goes live.

Priest Tier 13 Art!

Posted by Peter (Devee) on September 27, 2011
Posted in: Priest. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Strange Titan construct Tier 13

Hunter and Priest tier 13 art revealed from MMO-Champion via Wow Insider.

Well, my T13 was finally revealed. Ihonestly don’t know what to think about it. It’s exciting, and I’m happy about that. I’m glad it’s not something boring. I just don’t know if I like it.

Its base reminds me of Wrath. The belt looks similar to a belt I had at the end of Wrath except recolored, and the robes remind of the Argent Crusade’s tabard. The headpiece and shoulders… wow. It looks like priests are going to be walking constructs of the titans. I suppose that’s cool!

I was hoping for a set that I want to continue using in the future – something looks appropriate for a priest for me to use in the future for RP purposes. Still, it could have been worse, and I’m looking forward to seeing it in higher quality!

Oh, and hunter T13 was revealed. *shrug*

Update: Okay, it’s really grown on me already! It has this proud, ancient, powerful vibe that might be hurt when displayed on a hunched over troll, though.