World of Warcraft: Legion

[TheFeniX]

Ok so, a few things from last night:
1. I had more than a few drinks.
2. I played WC3 AGES ago.
3. There's a load of revisionist shit on the WoW wikis for numerous reasons.
4. I was posting tons of stuff because "my bro" was all "post those stuffs, I want MONIES!" In his defense, I just split 55k gold between the both of us this morning for about 5 minutes of work prospecting and milling mats. But I was trying to do both. At the least I didn't screw up any auctions.

Also, the NE's had no clue the orcs were tied with the legion. Fenix is outright lying about that. They didn't know a damn thing what was going on in the east, and Tyrande is clearly shocked to see Archimonde back.

I seem to recall that in WC3, one of the first NE cutscenes involved Cenarius and I think Tyrande spying on the Orcs as they cut down the trees, and Cenarius immediately detecting that all of the Orcs there were Fel tainted.

That's what I specifically recalled about the situation: Cenarius, the Legion wanting him dead, and the Orcs having no answer for a Demigod trashing them. I also recall the WC2 Horde banner being similar to the current one. At the least, the aestetics of the Horde haven't changed much at all even if their standard did. And the Nelfs had other scouts over the years keeping an eye out on all the bullshit. Not saying they had all GOOD information, but The Horde wasn't exactly hard to track and information about their exploits was easily enough available.

There was no good reason to show their hand early and rely on negotiation. For a "peaceful" Horde, they were driving back the Nelves until Cenarius got involved.* Once that happened, well: Demon Blood.

Though, on the other hand, it's unfair to blame one nation for refusing to trade with the allies of an enemy nation. And you could easily argue that the Night Elves are perfectly justified in not wanting to trade with the Orcs, considering that the Orcs' first instinct once the Night Elves cut off trade was to invade Night Elf territory and start deforesting it. At that point, the Orcs would not be trading with the Night Elves. They'd be committing extortion. Give us lumber, or we invade your lands and take it from you.

People bash Humans as a faction for allowing bullshit to happen, then expect Humans to understand a rogue Forsaken gassing everyone was somehow not a Forsaken proper plan when said Forsaken have shown they'll stomp anyone, Horde or Alliance, if they see fit. The Forsaken intro alone supported this and Wrathgate was before Blizzard ever attempted to turn the faction around.

Even still, it's not like that Blight was made without the Dark Lady's knowledge. She was stockpiling it anyways.

The mass starvation that happened after the Shattering reveals some deep-seated cultural issues with the Orcs. Namely, they don't seem to build much in the way of infrastructure beyond what's required to feed a war economy, they refuse to change how they do things even when it's not sustainable, and when they lose access to the most convenient source of resources, they immediately try to take it by force instead of looking for alternatives.

This is what I was trying to get across and failed. The Orcs are content for as long as they choose to be content. When they want something, they take it. So laying a portion of the blame on the Nelves because they were Xenophobes doesn't mean anything to me. Yea, ignoring the plight of others while you hide in the woods doesn't make you a paragon of virtue, but it's not actively evil.

If anything, Nelf actions tens of thousands of years ago are a much better example of them being jerks, such as bringing the Legion here in the first place and kicking in Troll teeth.

*This takes me back to Legion as to how fucking lucky or awesome the Horde must be. The Alliance ambushed the Forsaken fleet in Stormheim, wrecks them hard, and said Forsaken are able to fight back and inflict massive casualties after being caught with their pants down, downing the Alliance Flagship in the process. So, with these types of writers at the helm, it's no wonder the Alliance can only burn down a few MooCow huts.

[TheFeniX]

Double post time because I actually want to talk about Legion.

First off, if and when you do Vault of Wardens at 110: at one point, you pick up this "Light" that makes it possible to target the trash. You get a second one and the "light" fades after a bit of time. You can Throw It and pick it up again to bring the light back. Don't throw both since they can bug and fall through the map and you can't open the door if mobs are still alive. Deal with the darkness because the light's targetting effect is still active.

The first time I ran it for my Class Hall quest, it bugged right before the last boss and we had to leave. GG Blizz.

SPOILERS: Farondis' escort missions in Aszuna are (in two words) "Fucking hilarious." "Hero, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT ME" and he then processes to drop meteors on the mobs, hitting them for millions of damage. Why is this guy not soloing Gul'Dan? The whole quest chain is rather fun and hilarious.

Valshara really seems to be a "we give up" zone. We're progressing fast, but there's not a lot to do so far and the zone really isn't that big. It's a pretty big let down considering how good Stormheim and Aszuna were.

All in all, while I'm sure endgame is a pretty rough grind from what I've seen (getting into Heroics without buying worlddrops is going to be rough): this expansion has so far delivered quite well in the story-telling and quest content. The problem is a lot of gating for many things, such as Warriors needing almost double the time required to finish the Class Hall. And Profession quests are poorly implemented and stupid.

Still farming Nether bosses to try and get my hidden skin for my DH Tank. I really like DH and they aren't that overtuned. I tend to get hit harder in dungeons that my other tanks. Fury is still fun, don't care if it's behind on DPS. I'm leveling my Frost Artifact because "Sindragosa's Breath" is awesome flavor, even though Forst is....... YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWN.

[Darth Yan]

I actually proposed an alternate version of Mists on another site

Mists of Pandaria My Version

5.0: Mists of Pandaria:

Conquest of Theramoore: big ass world event; Garrosh and the horde conquer the city, using summoned molten giants to smash the gates into oblivion. Rhonin dies like in canon; Jaina is taken prisoner. The later part of the alliance is saving Jaina from Horde Captivity within a now occupied Theramore. The first three raids pop up, we get the standard storylines

5.1: Landfall

We get the Dagger in the Dark scenario, but Vol'jin and Garrosh are both Targets; we trick Malkorok by cutting Vol'jin's tongue out (it will regrow) and Garrosh and Vol'jin sneak away into the night. In A Little Patience, Varian and Tyrande switch places; Varian is still somewhat hot headed and reckless, Tyrande is more level headed. We get a modified version of the divine bell; Malkorok is stopped from harnessing it, but Anduin is beaten to within an inch of his life. The buildup to Lei Shen's return occurs. Both the focusing Iris and Divine bell are stolen.

5.2: The Thunder King: Lei Shen returns; the heroes of the Alliance and Horde work with the Shado Pan to stop Lei Shen from conquering Pandaria again. One thing I might add is that Neltharion was one of the guys who helped bring Lei Shen down or even helped inspire Pandaria; it's hard to remember but the guy WAS a hero before he fell to the dark side, and having a heroic act on his resume reminds us of that; the Horde and Alliance begin discussions to dethrone Malkorok. We also meet Master Ra, and after we free him he removes Aman'thul's power from Lei Shen. Without the power animating the corpse, Lei Shen's corpse quickly decays into nothingness. We also get more of Garrosh's spiritual journey; he speaks with the August Celestials, learning more philosophy; he's still somewhat hard headed but he's learning.

Raid: Throne of Thunder

5.3: Escalation:

Part of this is Battlefield Barrens, only a lot more detailed; we see more orcs getting fed up with Malkorok's rule; many orcs don't like the Alliance but they think Malkorok is going too far in his brutality (that and he's treating non orcs like second class citizens). Where before people were open to war, they're beginning to question it. A lot of them are starting to discretely defect to the Darkspear rebellion. Garrosh goes through a spiritual journey, that reaches it's climax. He's sent to meet with Hao Pham Roo; he goes through the journey. Garrosh finally realizes the lesson of pride, in turn causing him to finally understand what Saurfang told him back in Wrath; that you can be proud of your heritage while still acknowledging the darker sides. He's told that while his desire to increase orcish pride and self esteem was commendable, the way he did it allowed it to be twisted into something ugly. Garrosh thanks Shaohao for the lesson and leaves; Things climax in ANOTHER raid; Liberation of Theramore; The climax is that in an act of sore loserdom Malkorok has decided that if he can't have Theramore, no one can. So he decides to unleash a devastating weapon Thelan Songweaver and his faction of the sunreavers created when they stole both the divine bell and focusing iris; the mana bomb. The final section of the raid is riding on the back of Kalecgos (or Malygos if he's still alive) and trying to stop the bomb from reaching Theramore. Ultimately some NPC will sacrifice their life to ensure that the bomb detonates BEFORE it reaches Theramore. They give a heroic speech, and after ending the heroes away they detonate the bomb (maybe it's thrall; Blizzard keeps the guy around but if you have to kill him he should die heroically.) it's a bittersweet victory; not only is Theramore saved, the act of barbarity, combined with Garrosh resurfacing to denounce Malkorok as a traitor, pretty much destroys most of his powerbase; large sections of the orcish military defect. Unfortunately Thrall sacrifices his life to set off the bomb BEFORE it reaches Theramoore

5.4: Siege of Orgrimmar:

Malkorok realizes that he's in a dangerous position; most of the world (with the exception of some die hards in the Blackrock clan, as well as segments of the city guard) have turned on him, and a siege will probably end with him defeated. So in an act of pure desperation he utilizes the Heart of Y'shaarj. Through this he gets the mantid to flock to his banner, and generates an army of Sha. Either a.) Malkorok breaks the Heart to his will or b.) he's loosing control and could reawaken Y'Shaarj. We get the final raid in order to stop Malkorok (or Y'Shaarj in his body) before his Sha army sweeps over the world and destroys everything.

Final Raid: Siege of Orgrimmar: This is largely canon, except less orcs, more sha monsters, Magatha and Thelan become bosses, and Malkorok replaces Garrosh.

End: Malkorok's body and Y'Shaarj's heart are destroyed. Y'Shaarj is destroyed forever, ending the curse of the Sha.

Basically Malkorok would have replaced Garrosh as the big bad, Garrosh undergoes character development and becomes a much nicer orc as things progress. I figured that if Thrall WAS to be written out of the story at least give him some dignity

[Lord Revan]

I've been enjoying Legion so far my biggest complaint is that some parts are rather poorly tuned, especially in Surumar you get mobs that technically aren't elite so you should be able to kill them reasonbly easily so but you have to use all your cooldowns to do so or it's outright impossible to kill them (the moths in western Surumar City that have insane amounts of health and hit harder then some elites I've encountered)

[TheFeniX]

I've been enjoying Legion so far my biggest complaint is that some parts are rather poorly tuned, especially in Surumar you get mobs that technically aren't elite so you should be able to kill them reasonbly easily so but you have to use all your cooldowns to do so or it's outright impossible to kill them (the moths in western Surumar City that have insane amounts of health and hit harder then some elites I've encountered)

Did I bring this up? I swear I brought this up: I think the reason behind this is Blizz balancing around Tank and healer DPS, since for more than a few years Healers did jack-shit and so did tanks unless they could find a way to stack and keep Vengeance rolling. But now that both can easily keep up 70% of a DPSs damage and even more (for tanks) when pulling entire areas (Tank AOE DPS is insane, as it's always been since Vengeance was added), this makes Blizzard have to balance around not making it too easy for these specs.

Seriously, I have no idea why I even bother going into Fury. As Prot Warrior I just never die, pull everything, and burn it in a bit more time than it would take my Fury, Frost, or Ret (many time, it burns much faster, especially since many DPS specs seem to have had their on-demand AOE nerfed, unless they are willing to talent a certain way which is only really good for questing). Out of those, only Ret has any kind of on demand heal. I risk death during every large pull as "not-ret." As a tank, pfft.

Just now, I ran a dungeon as Fury, but took the queue while fighting a rare in Azsuna. Before I left, I switched back to Prot, but got stuck at the loading screen. After Alt-F4ing, I loaded back in to find a group of Horde had killed me while I was "AFK." 101 Retadin, Hunter, and a 102 Prot Tank. I am 105. They were finishing up the rare by the time I respawned. So, I figured "whatever" and ate some food and got ready to move on.

Then the Warrior charges me. The fight was pretty fun because Prot is immortal, but I was definitely winning. Then the Pally and Hunter jumped in. The Pally bubbled my onslaught, so I charged the Hunter, killed him in a Shield Slam, Revenge combo, then turned on the Pally, got back most my health with Impending Victory, then drilled him like the Gulf of Mexico. Then just /danced for the Warrior while he bled to death.

Had I been Fury. Pfft. They'd have two kills on me in Spy. Anyway, not too long after that was when the 110 Unholy DK jumped me, but I shockwaved his ass (and all his ghouls) and Heroic Path Not Found the fuck out of there. Enjoy your zero mobility you Wraith Walking dipshit.

Warriors are fun.

Anyways, healers and tanks are in a REALLY good spot right now out in the open world. And DPS is kind of eating it big, unless they have stupid amounts of burst and defensive CDs (and other jazz) like Subt and Outlaw Rogues. Even then, I'd rather quest as a Tank Role because you have nothing to worry about. It's not even the time investment it used to be. Like, without Vengeance stacked back in Cata, I did maybe 20-40% the DPS of an equivalent geared DPS role. Now, in most Dungeons, single target: I do about 80% of their DPS, which matches with what Blizzard was shooting for.

Imagine how insane that makes tanks against most classes. Especially melee. Rogues are still a a rough fight, but they're way over-tuned right now anyway. As for PvE, it makes most content trivial, so I think Blizz upped the ante in the dumbest and laziest way possible.

[Gerald Tarrant]

All in all, while I'm sure endgame is a pretty rough grind from what I've seen (getting into Heroics without buying worlddrops is going to be rough):

What I've heard is that if you get friendly with every faction it opens up world quests. And those will often include 810+ gear for pretty much every slot, then the Suramar faction (which is very grindy) at honored opens up some class hall gear.

...[T]his expansion has so far delivered quite well in the story-telling and quest content. The problem is a lot of gating for many things, such as Warriors needing almost double the time required to finish the Class Hall. And Profession quests are poorly implemented and stupid..

I've seen apparently a 24-hour mission, and 5 12-hour missions to finish up the class hall for Shaman, my room-mate was a little vague, saying "I don't want to relive that part."

[Lord Revan]

I've been enjoying Legion so far my biggest complaint is that some parts are rather poorly tuned, especially in Surumar you get mobs that technically aren't elite so you should be able to kill them reasonbly easily so but you have to use all your cooldowns to do so or it's outright impossible to kill them (the moths in western Surumar City that have insane amounts of health and hit harder then some elites I've encountered)

Did I bring this up? I swear I brought this up: I think the reason behind this is Blizz balancing around Tank and healer DPS, since for more than a few years Healers did jack-shit and so did tanks unless they could find a way to stack and keep Vengeance rolling. But now that both can easily keep up 70% of a DPSs damage and even more (for tanks) when pulling entire areas (Tank AOE DPS is insane, as it's always been since Vengeance was added), this makes Blizzard have to balance around not making it too easy for these specs.

Seriously, I have no idea why I even bother going into Fury. As Prot Warrior I just never die, pull everything, and burn it in a bit more time than it would take my Fury, Frost, or Ret (many time, it burns much faster, especially since many DPS specs seem to have had their on-demand AOE nerfed, unless they are willing to talent a certain way which is only really good for questing). Out of those, only Ret has any kind of on demand heal. I risk death during every large pull as "not-ret." As a tank, pfft.

Just now, I ran a dungeon as Fury, but took the queue while fighting a rare in Azsuna. Before I left, I switched back to Prot, but got stuck at the loading screen. After Alt-F4ing, I loaded back in to find a group of Horde had killed me while I was "AFK." 101 Retadin, Hunter, and a 102 Prot Tank. I am 105. They were finishing up the rare by the time I respawned. So, I figured "whatever" and ate some food and got ready to move on.

Then the Warrior charges me. The fight was pretty fun because Prot is immortal, but I was definitely winning. Then the Pally and Hunter jumped in. The Pally bubbled my onslaught, so I charged the Hunter, killed him in a Shield Slam, Revenge combo, then turned on the Pally, got back most my health with Impending Victory, then drilled him like the Gulf of Mexico. Then just /danced for the Warrior while he bled to death.

Had I been Fury. Pfft. They'd have two kills on me in Spy. Anyway, not too long after that was when the 110 Unholy DK jumped me, but I shockwaved his ass (and all his ghouls) and Heroic Path Not Found the fuck out of there. Enjoy your zero mobility you Wraith Walking dipshit.

Warriors are fun.

Anyways, healers and tanks are in a REALLY good spot right now out in the open world. And DPS is kind of eating it big, unless they have stupid amounts of burst and defensive CDs (and other jazz) like Subt and Outlaw Rogues. Even then, I'd rather quest as a Tank Role because you have nothing to worry about. It's not even the time investment it used to be. Like, without Vengeance stacked back in Cata, I did maybe 20-40% the DPS of an equivalent geared DPS role. Now, in most Dungeons, single target: I do about 80% of their DPS, which matches with what Blizzard was shooting for.

Imagine how insane that makes tanks against most classes. Especially melee. Rogues are still a a rough fight, but they're way over-tuned right now anyway. As for PvE, it makes most content trivial, so I think Blizz upped the ante in the dumbest and laziest way possible.

I wouldn't be too bad if it was consistent but it's not some mobs I can easily kill with my mage and others seemingly identical mobs demand that I use all my DPS/survivibility CD, counter spell and arcane torrent (if they got things I interrupt/silence) and still leaves me with only shiver of health at the end or are outright impossible to kill like those moths (I got maybe 5% of their health at most off before they 2-3 shot me, yes their melee took about 50% of my health with 1 hit only reason I lasted 3 hits was because of ice barrier and ice block with "cold snap" talent).

[TheFeniX]

What I've heard is that if you get friendly with every faction it opens up world quests. And those will often include 810+ gear for pretty much every slot, then the Suramar faction (which is very grindy) at honored opens up some class hall gear.

Yea, we just finished out Val'Shara last night, at least the Malfy/Tyrandy stuff. We just have to do the dungeon. That should get my buddy to 110, then we'll hit Highmountain to either get to friendly, or just push through to get the last Pillar. Either way, I don't care.

Then it's off to Surumar where ganking might happen. Except, we're running a Vengeance DH and Holy Paladin. Should be fun on the bun. Wrecking Horde face last night on my Warrior gave me a second-wind when it comes to WPvP.

I've seen apparently a 24-hour mission, and 5 12-hour missions to finish up the class hall for Shaman, my room-mate was a little vague, saying "I don't want to relive that part."

I think Shamans are the quickest. For the record, my Warrior is going through her round of 5 1-day missions. I can't complete them because I'm out of resources. Not to mention artifact research on my DH taking 3 days and the class Hall upgrades taking a week.

I get Blizz wants to slow down progression, but maybe they could have done it in a way that doesn't harken back to Mobile F2P garbage.

I wouldn't be too bad if it was consistent but it's not some mobs I can easily kill with my mage and others seemingly identical mobs demand that I use all my DPS/survivibility CD, counter spell and arcane torrent (if they got things I interrupt/silence) and still leaves me with only shiver of health at the end or are outright impossible to kill like those moths (I got maybe 5% of their health at most off before they 2-3 shot me, yes their melee took about 50% of my health with 1 hit only reason I lasted 3 hits was because of ice barrier and ice block with "cold snap" talent).

Aw man, I was totally going to ask if you played a Mage too. Yea, they've nerfed Mage self-heals so much, I have no idea how you even bothered questing to 110. I know I'm dreading it if I ever bother leveling my mage. Leveling as Frost originally was sort of fun kiting like a madman, rooting, deep freeze, and Ice Lance spamming. But it gets tiring after a while and since the prune, it's not even as fun as it used to be.

But even pre-110, my Fury War and Frost DK run into "normal" mobs that just hit way too hard and have too much HP for what they are. And I'm not even running over old Rares or anything. It's quite annoying. In their Tank specs, I then have to worry about AOEing down Horde just trying to get their own shit done, thus risking a brawl I don't care to dive into.

[Darth Yan]

I think they made it clear that there were a few beatings in Lord of the Clans. They were also deliberately kept in the shittiest conditions imaginable (that may have been Blackmoore as the overseer of all the camps, but because of the expenses it's safe to say he was let off the hook for running them cheaply.)

As I mentioned before, one big difference here is that while Blackmoore is a horrible person who did horrible things, no one in the Alliance defends him. It doesn't speak well to the Alliance that they put him in charge of the camps, but they at least aren't memorializing him in the same way that the Horde does with someone like Doomhammer, who was Warchief of the Horde when it was committing some of its worst atrocities (and he can't even use demon blood as an excuse, since he didn't drink it).

Also, the NE's had no clue the orcs were tied with the legion. Fenix is outright lying about that. They didn't know a damn thing what was going on in the east, and Tyrande is clearly shocked to see Archimonde back.

I seem to recall that in WC3, one of the first NE cutscenes involved Cenarius and I think Tyrande spying on the Orcs as they cut down the trees, and Cenarius immediately detecting that all of the Orcs there were Fel tainted.

The Shattering makes a mention about how after the foresaken pulled their little stunt at the wrath gate the alliance cut off trade with the orcs, which resulted in mass starvation and people dying. Basically the orcs were punished for what their jackass friends did. I can easily see how a demagogue could exploit that.

Though, on the other hand, it's unfair to blame one nation for refusing to trade with the allies of an enemy nation. And you could easily argue that the Night Elves are perfectly justified in not wanting to trade with the Orcs, considering that the Orcs' first instinct once the Night Elves cut off trade was to invade Night Elf territory and start deforesting it. At that point, the Orcs would not be trading with the Night Elves. They'd be committing extortion. Give us lumber, or we invade your lands and take it from you.

The starvation cannot wholly be blamed on the Night Elves, either, considering that it wasn't the Night Elves that polluted the Durotar water table. Nor does deforesting Ashenvale fix the starvation problem, unless the Orcs eat lumber.

The mass starvation that happened after the Shattering reveals some deep-seated cultural issues with the Orcs. Namely, they don't seem to build much in the way of infrastructure beyond what's required to feed a war economy, they refuse to change how they do things even when it's not sustainable, and when they lose access to the most convenient source of resources, they immediately try to take it by force instead of looking for alternatives. Very little attempt to grow food beyond a few pig farms. Being forced to import fresh water from Mulgore because they polluted Durotar's water table. Demanding lumber from the Night Elves to feed their war machine, and invading their territory when they refuse, instead of looking for alternatives to wood for construction and filling in the gaps by trading with allies (just saying, the Forsaken have a lot of untapped forests themselves).

Hilariously they DID try to find alternatives. Stone talon was number 1, but the venture co destroyed it first; in the comic they try to work out a deal with varian to trade wood with the humans....which fails because a brainwashed garona attacked the meeting. And while the orc response was terrible the reasons weren't unfounded. When you're children are dying you look for quick easy answers. They should have changed the way they operated before (and maybe they actually will now) but for the time being cutting off food and trade seemed rather petty. Also, I'm not sure the foresaken forests are high quality. The plague really blew the shit out of the place.

The cataclysm also destroyed resources and with Orgrim one COULD argue that he didn't have other options. Draenor was destroyed and too much damage had been done to create a peaceful solution. He was stuck with two equally horrible options and chose the one that would benefit his people. Dickish but understandable

[Lord Revan]

I wouldn't be too bad if it was consistent but it's not some mobs I can easily kill with my mage and others seemingly identical mobs demand that I use all my DPS/survivibility CD, counter spell and arcane torrent (if they got things I interrupt/silence) and still leaves me with only shiver of health at the end or are outright impossible to kill like those moths (I got maybe 5% of their health at most off before they 2-3 shot me, yes their melee took about 50% of my health with 1 hit only reason I lasted 3 hits was because of ice barrier and ice block with "cold snap" talent).

Aw man, I was totally going to ask if you played a Mage too. Yea, they've nerfed Mage self-heals so much, I have no idea how you even bothered questing to 110. I know I'm dreading it if I ever bother leveling my mage. Leveling as Frost originally was sort of fun kiting like a madman, rooting, deep freeze, and Ice Lance spamming. But it gets tiring after a while and since the prune, it's not even as fun as it used to be.

But even pre-110, my Fury War and Frost DK run into "normal" mobs that just hit way too hard and have too much HP for what they are. And I'm not even running over old Rares or anything. It's quite annoying. In their Tank specs, I then have to worry about AOEing down Horde just trying to get their own shit done, thus risking a brawl I don't care to dive into.

Fire has good burst and decent utility so most of the leveling was rather painless in fact I had problem of having too much burst for the vrykul ghosts in Stormheim, I didn't have much of a problem apart from the random overtuned mobs.

As for PvP I play in PvE server because I want to choose when I do PvP not have people who outlevel me by a signifigant margin choose it for me that's not fun for me, it's annoying and boring.

[Broomstick]

I want to bitchslap the fucking idiot who decided it would be a good idea to locate a profession quest for jewelcrafting in the Underbelly's PVP free-for-fall area. WTF? Even on a PvE server good luck getting that one done without some asshole deciding to first kill you then camp you.

[Lord Revan]

I want to bitchslap the fucking idiot who decided it would be a good idea to locate a profession quest for jewelcrafting in the Underbelly's PVP free-for-fall area. WTF? Even on a PvE server good luck getting that one done without some asshole deciding to first kill you then camp you.

you can buy a bodyguard to make yourself PvP inactive for quests and what not, that's the only reason I was able to my quest there. That said it's still a stupid idea.

in other news I had kill those moths I mentioned earlier for a quest today and they went from nearly impossible to kill to really easy kill and the only real change was that I was on a quest where I needed to kill the, odd.

[Broomstick]

How do a I buy bodyguard?

[Lord Revan]

How do a I buy bodyguard?

the high elf guy at entrence sells them the guy that sends the guards away or makes them come back, IIRC it costs only gold too and not very much. There's a dialoge option "I want to hire a bodyguard".

the bodyguard was timed IIRC so don't dally but it should be enough that if you got an idea where the NPC/mob is you shouldn't need to rush.

[TheFeniX]

Sewer entrance near Krassus landing, on the right. 5G. He's buggy. I've had him dissapear when just moving to the center of the sewer after just renting him and the mobs down there seem to be able to AOE and kill him. It's random, so it may be a bug. He's died twice on me and I've hauled ass out of there shortly after.

The whole system is such an unbelievably bad idea, I have to wonder if it's intentional to make PvP proponents look like dickheads. Seriously, the people defending it on the forum are some of the worst kind of PvPers and people in general.

"It's not your game, they can do what they want."
"Just because you play on a PvE server doesn't make PvP optional."
"Carebears can't into PvP."
"Me and my group of gankers have no problems with it."
"You don't HAVE to level your professions."

It's why I hate PvPers in general and Blizzard has found a way to rudely inform normal people just trying to get their shit down how fucking terrible the WoW PvP community is. Even the ranked shit was nothing but botters on a level that would make Diablo 1 players blush. Seriously, out of any game I've played a lot of PvP on, aside from Halo and maybe certain Counter-Strike servers: WoW is the only game where teabagging seems to be par for the course. It doesn't matter if it was a close fight or 5 max levels beating on a level 30: teabagging commences when you (or others) don't Release Spirit immediately. I call out guys in my own faction for "Way to ruin it with your childish shit you manbaby" after they do it then I always /spit on them.

It's one of my few sticking points: if you teabag someone just because you won a fight, with no other mitigating factors involved, I don't want to game with or associate with you in any way. Please, do the world a favor and jam a screwdriver into your NIC.

For the record, I love a good PvP fight, but these types of people (Red = Dead) make up some of the weakest or most insulting arguments to support their bullshit. It would be funny if it weren't so sad. Some of it may be buthurt about how shit on PvP got in this expansion. PvP rewards are a joke and PvPers are pissed off. However, they are kicking up such a large fuss in the General Forums and making such huge asses out of themselves, I have to wonder if it's a plan to get non-instanced PvP completely removed from the game.

If I was on the fence about it at all (I'm not), a quick read through any of the threads it's discussed would have me instantly against it just due to the attitude and arguments of people who like it.

[Broomstick]

World PvP in WoW is and always has been fully of bullies.

[Lord Revan]

It's one of the reasons I choose a PvE realm and never looked back, I don't mind PvP in princible (and I've done BGs in the past and liked it too) but I want PvP to be my choice not the choice of the bullies that are over 10 levels above me (meaning I got strickly theoretical chance of beating them).

[TheFeniX]

I rolled on a PvP server because that's where my buddy who got me into the game had characters. I don't regret that decision. But what I think is shitty is for Blizzard to make rather large sweeping changes, almost all for the worse, to the dynamic of the WPvP system and give people who don't like it no option other than to pay money for character transfers. It's become the equivalent of the dedicated system vs matchmaking systems. Actually worse, because at least XBLive has an avoid system. And with Blizzard seemingly enabling/disabling CRZ randomly, at will, during lunch, during a shitbreak, during whenever, it gets exhausting.

I will give that WPvP makes me a better player. My situational awareness is tied a lot to always needing to be careful when questing. Making sure I know where I'm at, how many mobs I can pull, and keeping my position to where there's an exit if possible. Your situational awareness has to be good because enemy players targeted don't show up in the mini-map. So, you need a general idea on where they are, then be able to quickly scan for the nameplate when they open up on you. This is also why I make sure to clear my target constantly as you will auto-target anything that attacks you. In fact, I've noticed it auto-targets players if they even start casting a spell at you.

WPvP has actually recovered a bit in the past week because the CRZ has been cut either way down or out of Broken Isles. Before that, it was a constantly barrage of fighting CRZ ghosts. And 110s have enough bullshit to try and grind out right now, they aren't too prone to form gank squads. Also of note, the PvP world-quests.

There have always been dedicated griefers in WoW, however your weekend griefing warriors had to be careful because if you got too much of a reputation, Spy exists and you can end up on multiple KOS lists making your own questing difficult. Also of note, getting booted out of your guild for having it added to way too many KoS lists. But this has become much more rare, at least for Alliance Gankers on my server, since Blizzard started with year+ long content droughts. Guilds also don't have near the importance they used to.

And if anything is "the worst" it's Blizzard super-fucking-long content droughts which adds to a lot of the ganking and zone disruption. Give the griefers something to do and they are usually to busy to grief. Yes, they'll always take an easy kill, but a lot of this is still on Blizzard for making TTKs low in general. They become almost instant once you have a few levels on your opponent, especially with all the gear/stat bloat.

Anyways, still having fun. Destroyed a Hunter who decided to open up on me while doing a World Quest. I don't know what he was thinking. No traps, no exlosive shot, just pwe pew, dead dead. Maybe he though I was a tanky mob? Mythic Relic out of a dungeon world quest. Nice. 812 now, but my buddy is still lagging behind. No big deal, I still need 9 more world quests for my Class Hall Campaign. I've got an 805 relic ready to cram into the slot once it's unlocked.

I still want to finish out Highmountain and Surumar. I want to "beat" an expansion and all it's zones for once. And this seems doable. Highmountain so far isn't great. They really blew their wad on Azsuna and Stormheim. I mean the zone looks cool and all, but it's like Skyrim: pretty landscape, not much to do in it.

[TheFeniX]

Blue post about Metzen retiring. Likely explains why Thrall has been kicked to the curb. I'm sure most of his time left was working in the movie, so without his interference, Thrall was dumped into the same group as every other named NPC: outlived usefulness, kill/push to sidelines. Khadgar is at least fairly entertaining with his antics.

832 iLvL without ever stepping into a Heroic. That said, Heroics are a joke since Mythic and some kind of Mythic+ (Keystone) is supposed to be the actual 5-man endgame. To be fair, one talent has really evened out my damage intake curve as I knew it would. My artifact talent that converts 15% of Fire Damage dealt into heals. This gives me a fairly consistent damage/healing intake, much like block oriented tanks. That's what healers like, a steady damage intake and DHs (like Death Knight and Bears) are otherwise pretty bursty in damage intake.

There's no CC, I do way more AOE damage in trash pulls against equally geared DPS. On boss fights, with the DPS who know what they're doing: I do about 75% to 80% of their DPS, just as Blizzard intended.

So, to fix how well tanks can burn trash mobs, they want to nerf Tank DPS across the board.......... This is the first time since the Vengeance mechanic was added that leveling at Tank was actually fun. And now they want to ruin it because DPS AOE has been cut down for a lot of classes so they can't pad their meters. Now, other tanks don't deal with this, but with one talent: my survivability to directly tied to my damage output. I get DHs (both specs) are fairly overtuned right now, but catering to crybabies looking at recount is not a solution.

Further, who gives a shit about trash pulls? Oh, and it's also nice, one again, to not be a free HK against many ranged specs this time around. I don't take a lot of damage in WPvP. When I do, healing it back is fairly easy. Yet, that doesn't translate to OP in a dungeon/raid where mobs hit 10 times as hard as DPS. This is why I really miss the Vengeance mechanic. If people didn't try to kill a Tank spec, the tank spec damn sure couldn't kill them. But at one point in Cata, I could stack Vengenace for 4 times my "walking around" attack power and blast DPS in the face. If they ignored me, I could beat on them all day and do nothing.

I bet these guys would RIOT if they saw the damage my Prot Paladin did on the Garrosh fight. But I bet the kids doing most the complaining have never set foot inside a non-LFR raid.

This also does nothing to fix (lack of) survivability of certain DPS classes. I can't quest as Frost DK because I'm tired of fucking dieing all the time. I can't quest as Fury because I'm tired of dieing all the fucking time. It's sad but, Retribution (which is garbage tier for anything important right now) is the most fun I can have leveling as DPS because they still have a functioning solo toolkit. Two extra mobs getting pulled into my group doesn't mean my death. I still quest as Prot though.

[Grumman]

I've got three main complaints about what they're doing with level progression in 7.1.

One, my favourite thing about playing Elemental Shaman, the instant cast, zero cooldown Flame Shock, now has a 6 second cooldown. It was fun playing the character like she was an Avatar character, running around punching fire and rocks at people. Now the DPS spec's DPS tools are no better than the healing spec.

Two, they're nerfing low level Discipline Priest's healing again, taking away Plea, Shadow Mend and Smite's damage absorption and giving us Atonement - which we can only activate with Power Word: Shield because we've just lost Plea and Shadow Mend. I'm not even going to bother queuing as a healer any more; I'm now treating Discipline Priest as a DPS spec.

Three, Ice Barrier is now a level 54 ability. As a Priest, I can heal and shield myself. As a Warlock, I can heal and shield myself with Drain Life and Soul Leech. As a Mage, I'm now a sucker in a dress.

[TheFeniX]

Taking away... aw shit, whatever it was. Back when mana mattered, Mages had Invocation. You could talent it to have no CD and also heal you up in combat. It was channeled, so it was effectively useless in PvP outside of a stun combo (like pallies stunning/bubbling, then spamming Flash of Light). Now, I can't even imagine how much it hurts to play a Mage. In PvE, it made you make a choice: your roots/freeze/deep freeze could either be used for MASSIVE DAMAGE or use the down time from getting your teeth kicked in to heal up. Taking that away was dumb.

I boosted my mage to 80 and leveled to 90 in MoP and it was doable and even fun at times. Now, I couldn't last a few quests.

This is my same beef with changes to Death Knight. Building Runic Power is hard enough, and now Death Strike (rather than using two runes) uses Runic Power. Sacrificing DPS for the sake of living was always a part of the DPS meta-game, but at double the cost of a Frost Strike, it's next to useless. This is fucking dumb. With how much damage even a plate DPS is taking, I need that on-demand sustain (max 3 at that start of combat) just to keep going any to inevitable adds that will join in the fight due to fast respawns (which are a good thing) and mob density. These two for a tank mean quests are done quickly and efficiently. For any DPS spec besides Ret, it means "ghost walk more noob."

And to "fix this" Blizzard wants to try and make leveling as Tank as miserable as DPS because kids are crying about trash burning and WPvP. I might be a Wrath baby, but I can't recall a whole lot of times in instanced content I wasn't topping meters as tank against 3+ mobs. It's just a mechanic of the spec when they switched away from shit like "stacking sunders" and specific high threat abilities. And I think we're STILL dealing with fallout from Blizzard not knowing how to fix tanking in early Cata.

Tanks were getting wrecked so hard, the idea of Hit/Exp capping was out the window because you had to stack so much mitigation just to survive. At this point in time, taunts could miss. And you were missing bosses and even trash packs CONSTANTLY at 0% hit/exp. So, Blizzard made taunts unable to miss (and gave all tank specs a kick as baseline, but that's not all that related to PvE) and just increase the threat generation by like 400%. They did this because they have no idea what fun is. But with vengeance, being able to hit/exp cap meant you did nuclear levels of damage.

I used to run Tankadin in PvP, forgoing Mastery wherever I could and stacking crit once I was PvP hit/exp capped. A lot of other players did the same with their tank classes and you should have seen the Mage forums at the time. Frost Mages in particular were blubbering: Burst all you want, I'm going to mitigate it but get 100% of it back as Attack Power and blast you for 75% of your HP with one GCD once combat has been going on for 15 seconds.

I swear, Frost Mages and Huntards would see a Prot Pally and jump entire zones to get that HK. But a few weeks into Cata, they were the ones running. Man I miss that shit.

Hit/Exp are now gone and Blizz balanced around 75% of DPS damage for tanks on ST fights, while also gutting a lot of DPS (ignoring certain classes) on demand AOE. What did they think was going to happen? And if they have to balance around PvP, which they still do for some dumbfuck reason, then removing Vengeance was a stupid move. Because now I have zero ramp up when you try to gank me: I have all my mitigation that I need for PvE, Blizzard has been pruning yours constantly, and now I'm expected to keep up 75% of your DPS. It's an instant "I win" button.

And a lot of this on the PvP side is DPS being stupid. They're used to be able to open up with Offensives against a Tank and hang on to defensives because the fight will drag on. My Fiery Brand crits for 400k or more and reduces the damage you do to me by 40%. My leap hits for 150k, Immolation aura, another 100k plus the burn. Those are what you're eating in the first couple of GCDs, plan accordingly.

Or, more likely, take your Huntard to the forums and QQ because you think a Tank spec should be a free-HK for you. The best is how much hatred DPS posters on General seem to have for Tanks (and healers), then cry cry cry cry because their queues times are so long. And judging from a lot of the posts, what they really want is big numbers while a tank gets one-button to press (AOE taunt) while they stand in bad and demand the healer keep them alive.

[Grumman]

Well, the good news is that Frost Mage, is at least capable of killing same-level mobs without difficulty despite the 7.1 changes. I haven't had the opportunity to test it in PvP or in a same-level dungeon, but if you can nuke things down before they reach you, the lack of survivability doesn't hurt.

The bad news is that Blizzard continues to be amazingly good at giving me reasons not to give them money. Today's annoyance is the discovery after paying an NPC literally all my money to disable XP gain so that Blizzard would not put the character behind a paywall if I subscribed and it hit level 21 by accident, that doing so disables instanced PvP. So now I probably have to pay all my money again to "reenable" XP gain even though I still won't be able to gain XP, just because Blizzard saw it as another opportunity to crap on free players.

[TheFeniX]

Well, the good news is that Frost Mage, is at least capable of killing same-level mobs without difficulty despite the 7.1 changes. I haven't had the opportunity to test it in PvP or in a same-level dungeon, but if you can nuke things down before they reach you, the lack of survivability doesn't hurt.

Ok, I think I was being a bit unfair to DPS survivability. Either that, or Blizzard made some adjustments sometime while I was questing as Blood. Maybe it's the gear/levels, but Frost feels ok in PvE now. I can take on 2-3 mobs, and rely on my Free Death Strikes after killing one to keep me going. I swear it heals for more now. Mobs go down MUCH faster than they did at the start. Sometimes even in 3 GCSs if I start combat with a KM proc up. While the mobs scale, I have more than a few relics and talents into my Artifact, so that may be a huge factor.

I still do a lot of questing in Blood due to "pull all" and also fighting off ganks. But I could quest as Frost and not want to punch myself. Fury still has major issues. The +30% damage taken "class fantasy" bullshit really hurts and Prot Warrior has some of the lowest DPS (ST and AOE) out of any Tnk spec. I think only Monks have it worse (and from what I've read/seen in the world, Monks have been nearly completely forgotten by Blizzard and the playerbase this expansion). I also don't like Arms. My DK will be my next 110 due to that, but also that he has Enchanting and Jewelcrafting, two actually useful professions.

The bad news is that Blizzard continues to be amazingly good at giving me reasons not to give them money. Today's annoyance is the discovery after paying an NPC literally all my money to disable XP gain so that Blizzard would not put the character behind a paywall if I subscribed and it hit level 21 by accident, that doing so disables instanced PvP. So now I probably have to pay all my money again to "reenable" XP gain even though I still won't be able to gain XP, just because Blizzard saw it as another opportunity to crap on free players.

I thought disabling XP put you into the "twink" bracket.

Anyway, another day, another reason to hate CRZ. So, I'm waiting in Valis'dal (sp) for Rob to sell some junk. I'm on my 106 warrior. A 110 Warrior charges me, fear, I enrage it, stun, I EMFH it, I'm down to 40% HP. Not winning this fight obviously. I shockwave, and Heroic Leap out and Bounding Strides does the rest. He can't even hope to catch me. Just to toot my own horn, my reaction times are still fucking SOLID.

He then ganks Rob. I tell Rob just to keep him in sight. I log my Demon Hunter. Have to fly. So, he ganks Rob again and I make Rob follow him. He runs a bit North. It was a pack of 3 or so Horde, same server. Rob says they just kind of disappeared at some point and I can't find them when I get out there. So... Rob just got back into the game. To avenge his ganking, I'm just going to KoS anyone from Zul'Jin, even though that's the first time I recall being CRZed with that server, because "Blizzard."

EDIT: I now park my DH anywhere Rob wants to quest.

[Lord Revan]

CRZ?

[Gerald Tarrant]

CRZ?

Cross realm zones.

It's one of the thing blizzard did to try and make the world feel less empty. (Given that there are more servers than during cata, with slightly less people on than Cata peak -probably, given they quit releasing sub number-). The short version is that everyone in a particular zone on one server gets lumped together with all the people in that zone on several other servers. Without it, at any given time, an alt you're leveling might be completely alone in half the zones he/she visits. When I was working on some alts before the legion prepatch i'd usually see about 20 people whenever I bothered to do a "Who" for the zone I was in. It has multiple issues (like if you are on a PvE server and accidentally get lumped with PvP people, there are some odd results.) One of the things that sucks about it, is you can't really escape the World PvP nonsense anymore without being on PvE server. It also used to have issues about all your low level mats you were hunting getting stolen (farmed before you get there) by other people in your same CRZ, but apparently Legion has obviated the need for farming low level mats, so that's not an issue anymore.