Why Have Attunements?

[lfd]

All of that, in my opinion, makes the case even more convincing for lifting all attunement requirements immediately.

I agree; and I'd be very surprised if, closer to or around the release of Sunwell Plateau, they didn't do just that. I'm not sure how much easier they've made Kael'Thas in 2.2, but they very clearly want people to get into the raiding zones even if they don't complete them.

[Zarathustra]

I don't see how it's possible to be more then 100g short of 1k from questing 60->70, and I have 3 70's. Everybody I have talked to who is in that situation has admitted to taking gold from their alt for their main's epic flyer - you can hardly blame that on blizzard.

Yeah, I really don't get how people DON'T have flying mounts at 70. My rogue is an alt and rarely played. I've taken great lengths not to send him any gold from my main. He's got every quest in Shadowmoon left to do, as well as 90% of the quests in Netherstorm untouched. He's got his flying mount and 2k gold built up towards an epic.

[Taelas]

I have three 70s as well, and one of them (Norrath) doesn't even have his epic ground mount.

The difference? I haven't quested much with him because I levelled him through instances.

[Skandranon]

I don't find this to be true at all. Personally my guild was pretty close to killing C'thun, but certainly wasn't "easily" clearing anything there. Maybe if you had a good reroll guild they could do that if they spent most of their time in Naxx - we were really trying to finish C'thun.

You'd be surprised to see how far some guilds got in Naxx. A lot of guilds, obviously, had AQ40 kills before Naxx, but the newer servers, on which Naxx was available before AQ40 even opened (new servers would have literally no one to drive the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj event, and would therefore be incapable of accessing the AQ zones for months), exhibited the pattern I talk about. Reroll guilds would race through MC and BWL and then just head right into Naxx and tear down the spider wing. It wasn't as easy as earlier content, obviously, but it sure wasn't hard.

[Bolty]

I don't find this to be true at all. Personally my guild was pretty close to killing C'thun, but certainly wasn't "easily" clearing anything there. Maybe if you had a good reroll guild they could do that if they spent most of their time in Naxx - we were really trying to finish C'thun.

C'Thun is indicative of many TBC encounters, though - every raid member must perform well or you lose. The Spider Wing of Naxx didn't require that, and that's generally what makes things easier.

Okay, Anub'Rekhan does require your DPS'ers to not die by standing in the wrong spots, but much of the fight is the Main Tank getting positioning down and a Hunter working out the kiting with the MT. And the healers as well, but that applies to every raid fight. Once they all get it down, your chance of success goes way up.

Faerlina: a ton of pressure is on the mind controlling Priest to get it right. After that, things fall into place assuming a solid strategy.

Maexxna: a bunch of "pressure" roles here, but still not requiring all 40 members of the raid to be on the ball. If backup plans and assignments are made, almost any occurence of key people getting web wrapped can be handled. Your MT will die, guaranteed, if your raid group lacks DPS, but even that can be handled by having a set offtank to pick it up.

And of course, Razuvious: if you have 2 Priests with the +spellhit gear and some ability, you win. Okay, you may wipe from time to time due to back luck on early MC breaks, but even those can be accounted for and handled if you have Rogues with good reflexes to tank for 15 seconds.

So in the case of my raiding group, we had the Spider Wing and Razuvious on clear before we finally got C'Thun - it's really a matter of what percentage of a raid group has to perform a function at near 100% to win. With C'Thun, that percentage was maybe 90% - Razuvious, on the other hand, is more like 5%.

And ultimately, that's how I judge a raid encounter's difficulty - what percentage of the raid group must perform very well in order to get a win? If you're in a raid group that's riding top-end content, you may also run into untuned encounters that add a luck factor, like Mother Shahraz currently has.

There's a reason why Aran got nerfed, and then nerfed again, and then nerfed again. He was THE blockpoint of Karazhan, because in his original incarnation, you needed all 10 people to play very well to beat him. You also needed a specific group composition. After various nerfs, you don't really need all 10 people to be great to beat him, although of course trying to beat him without any interrupts would be pretty fascinating to watch. Still doable, but it would be so much harder. But there's no coincidence that the fight that required superb play from all 10 members of the raid got nerfed multiple times. Its difficulty was out of whack to that of the rest of the instance.

-Bolty

[Artega]

As much as I agree with you, I don't think it's helpful to bring it up every time the story is mentioned.

Considering it's the biggest and most noticeable reason the story flops when they try to push it, I think it's worth it. Warcraft had a wonderful storyline and reasonably well-developed universe throughout the three RTS games. Then WoW arrives and Metzen and crew begin retconning everything so they can add in things that barely make sense so that they can make more money. I'm not complaining about them building a better cash cow, but I think it's ludicrous when anyone cites "story" as a viable reason for anything in WoW.

[oldmandennis]

Reroll guilds would race through MC and BWL and then just head right into Naxx and tear down the spider wing. It wasn't as easy as earlier content, obviously, but it sure wasn't hard.

Yeah, rerolls are different, like I said. There's a lot of learning that goes on in AQ - and a lot of those servers were open to transfers.

[Warlock]

Considering it's the biggest and most noticeable reason the story flops when they try to push it, I think it's worth it. Warcraft had a wonderful storyline and reasonably well-developed universe throughout the three RTS games. Then WoW arrives and Metzen and crew begin retconning everything so they can add in things that barely make sense so that they can make more money. I'm not complaining about them building a better cash cow, but I think it's ludicrous when anyone cites "story" as a viable reason for anything in WoW.

I'd rather have a retconned story than 'we're killing this guy because he drops purples'. Yeah, WOW's story is pretty thin in parts and has plenty of plot holes. I'd prefer to see that fixed with more and better writing not dropped as a waste of time.

The RTS games did have their own share of retcons. In each game the horde's trolls came from a different place. I had a 'stop putting tech in my fantasy' moment the first time I saw a dwarven rifleman, too.

[oldmandennis]

The RTS games did have their own share of retcons. In each game the horde's trolls came from a different place. I had a 'stop putting tech in my fantasy' moment the first time I saw a dwarven rifleman, too.

There's a pretty broad tradition of fantasy-steampunk like the dwarves use. Zepplins and cannon firing battleships were in WC2.

High tech looking computerized stuff like mana forges, "naruu technology" mixed with high fantasy.... not so much.

[Monkey]

The only truly "broken" attunement currently in the game - not counting having to get Revered on your alts to gain access to heroics - is the Hyjal one.

Slightly OT, but the Revered mechanic really needs to be re-thought before WoTLK. It's completely out of whack with the philosophy of 'wanting players to not skip content'. It rewards people who skip rep quests until they've maxed their "easy" rep from the low-60 instances and effectively punishes people who actually quest.

[oldmandennis]

I don't really agree, for the most part. You are just moving instances around, and not in your favor. For example, Thrallmar. It's 21k to revered, and lets say the quests are good for 8k of it. That means you need to get 13k from instnances - either 5 SH runs and 2-3 Ramp/BF runs or 12 BF/Ramps runs and 3 SH (numbers are probably off somewhat, but not enough to change the calculations). Then you have the awkwardness of the main Ramp/BF questline requires some outside questing prereqs. Then there's the fact that if you can't find a group, you are mindlessly grinding instead of doing quests - usually you get far more xp for questing. Then there is the fact that when you actually go back and do the quests, you get less xp for many of them, because they are green now. As far as I can tell, its a lose-lose-lose proposition to get out of a couple of SH runs.

For CE, the big difference is that you have the RRQ which is pretty cheesy. Maxing rep with that makes revered trivial, and doing so is super easy if you have a raid geared main who is an herbalist. It has the side benefit of giving you all the Sporeegar rep you can handle, if you want the earth->water recepie or the knife.

Lower city is pretty much the same as Thrallmar. There is a RRQ, but I don't find the drop rate to be worth it.

KoT and Sha'tar the regular instances go through to exaulted. There's no reason to change things around.

[Zarathustra]

Slightly OT, but the Revered mechanic really needs to be re-thought before WoTLK. It's completely out of whack with the philosophy of 'wanting players to not skip content'. It rewards people who skip rep quests until they've maxed their "easy" rep from the low-60 instances and effectively punishes people who actually quest.

Do you really think so? I've found that on my main, I easily hit Revered across the board just by running instances. I didn't see any need to plan the rep grind at all by saving the quests for later.

[Gort]

4) Naxxramas (hi Gort)

*giggle* He spelled it correctly!

Blizzard continued the mistake into TBC. The horrendous attunement requirements to get into SSC and Tempest Keep completely blocked all but the dedicated raiding guilds from entry. I was one of only two members in my raid group to get attuned to Tempest Keep before the attunement requirements were removed

*polishes Zhania's Tempest Key proudly*

[Mirajj]

Blizzard continued the mistake into TBC. The horrendous attunement requirements to get into SSC and Tempest Keep completely blocked all but the dedicated raiding guilds from entry. I was one of only two members in my raid group to get attuned to Tempest Keep before the attunement requirements were removed - most members just weren't interested in "the hassle."

Or, more accurately, most of us interested in "the hassle" often couldn't find a tank/healer willing to help out, because they'd already done it, and refused to go back...

[swirly]

Or, more accurately, most of us interested in "the hassle" often couldn't find a tank/healer willing to help out, because they'd already done it, and refused to go back...

This reminds me a bit of the netherwing attunement where once you have attuned you are no longer able to help others with it (unless you are a healer) since you can't do anything to the mob you need to kill for it. As more and more people become attuned it becomes harder and harder to find groups even able to help you.

[Kevin]

This reminds me a bit of the netherwing attunement where once you have attuned you are no longer able to help others with it (unless you are a healer) since you can't do anything to the mob you need to kill for it. As more and more people become attuned it becomes harder and harder to find groups even able to help you.

Yeah my warrior will never start the netherwing stuff just so that we can always get a tank if you are able to schedule it with me.

[Mirajj]

This reminds me a bit of the netherwing attunement where once you have attuned you are no longer able to help others with it (unless you are a healer) since you can't do anything to the mob you need to kill for it. As more and more people become attuned it becomes harder and harder to find groups even able to help you.

No, that is a direct (and flawed in conception) game mechanic preventing it. This was simply folks getting it done once for themselves, and not going back to help out others with it because they've done it and therefore are 'done' with it.

It's often amusing that these are the folks who are baying to move up the progression ladder as fast as possible, and grumbling about the fact that there aren't many folks at the same level to help them out.

Granted, this was back when doing a heroic with a less than optimal group was simply a way to give the repair guy your money, when heroic were no place for some classes and almost all off specs. Thankfully, that's changed quite a bit.

That does amuse me, though. "Can you help me with this raid?" "Sorry, I'm not attuned. Can you help me get attuned? I just need a healer and/or tank?" "Sorry, I've done that/been there and am not going back because I'm done with it."

Then both groups sit around "LF1-3M for whatever..."

[Monkey]

That does amuse me, though. "Can you help me with this raid?" "Sorry, I'm not attuned. Can you help me get attuned? I just need a healer and/or tank?" "Sorry, I've done that/been there and am not going back because I'm done with it."

Then both groups sit around "LF1-3M for whatever..."

It's funny that there are 8 million WoW players, but if you log on at the wrong time, then good luck finding a pug to run an unpopular instance (such as anything in 'old' Azeroth) or quest. It wouldn't fix outdoor quests, but I think Blizzard should start looking at allowing cross-realm PUGs to tackle instances. There are same-faction friends on other servers that I'd love to group with, but can't.

[Monkey]

Do you really think so? I've found that on my main, I easily hit Revered across the board just by running instances. I didn't see any need to plan the rep grind at all by saving the quests for later.

It probably has to do with timing: Revered with the Lower City on my way to 70 was easy--my friends were around and Auchindoin had instances at a wide range of levels. But while I focused on Arenas, my other friends transferred, quit, or accelerated into endgame raiding. The remaining level 70 instances (Steamvaults, Shattered Halls, etc.) are now unpopular on my server where they don't yield Aldor/Scryer and people would rather raid. Luckily there were enough HH quests that I scraped over the line, but I'm not sure if Cenarion Expedition is worth it.

Especially with Hellgate landing soon :shuriken:

[mandydax]

Yeah my warrior will never start the netherwing stuff just so that we can always get a tank if you are able to schedule it with me.

Ditto for Shikigami being a DPS for it. I've put it in the suggestion forums that once you get to exalted with Netherwing and your "cover is blown" so to speak, that the Dragonmaw Illusion should be an item costume (maybe a tabard) that has "Equip: Disguises you as a Dragonmaw Orc," and comes as a reward when you talk to the guy in LC. If I'd known that I'd never be able to help DPS Zuluhed to help others get that attunement, I probably would not have done it on Shimoyake and instead done it on Shikigami who would at least be able to heal. (At least I can still use my mage to kite the demon adds out.)