Patch 2.4 Notes

[Taelas]

Ah. You know, that's a good point, one I hadn't considered. Maybe because I don't really see WotLK as close, at least not in the sense that TBC was close to Naxx. But I don't think it really affects my argument that much. Sure, if you look at it as, either you get SSC/TK or BT/Sunwell, it looks good. And of course, I'm not against letting people experience Archimonde, Illidan, or Kil'jaeden.

But it isn't like that. Because your average Kara-killing guild can start on TK/SSC, right away. And when WotLK finally hits (think Oct-Nov-ish, the F&F Alpha hasn't even begun yet), they may be, as you say, about halfway through BT/Hyjal. More likely they'll have completed Hyjal and be about 4-5 bosses into BT (5/5, 4/9 is pretty common because of how easily it is to hurl yourself at Archimonde). The guild gearing up for Sunwell through badges is going to do...Karazhan. And more Karazhan. Remember, the time limit applies equally and must by definition count the badge-farming time.

If they're inclined, and that's a big if, they'll probably be able to score 4/5, 3/9, after their farming time is complete. More likely they will hammer themselves at Sunwell and maybe pass the first guy who's a gear check and then wipe endlessly on the first overall skill tester. And then Wrath of the Lich King will loom close and kill off all desire to raid. It's not as easy as trading Kael and Vashj for Illidan, Archimonde and Kil'jaeden.

Blue has said there won't be a 2.5 patch, I believe.

The people I am talking about are the ones who, for whatever reason, do not start raiding 25-mans till 2.4.

If they could start raiding now, sure, they'd be fine -- presuming the progress schedule doesn't change, they should be able to make it to Sunwell (though probably not all the way to Kil'jaeden) by the time WotLK hits. But there will be people who, for one reason or the other, won't start till 2.4, and those people would probably not make it through to Sunwell with the current progress schedule. With this change, they can skip SSC/TK progression (which, by the way, would bump the people who start now up to Kil'jaeden), and get straight to the "interesting" stuff (i.e. the three Big Bads, Archimonde, Illidan, and later, Kil'jaeden).

These people can have accumulated quite a few badges on their own time when 2.4 hits, by the way. (I plan on going back to my Alliance toons and starting myself.)

[Quark]

The people I am talking about are the ones who, for whatever reason, do not start raiding 25-mans till 2.4.

Unless they're rerolls that join well established guilds, people who have not started raiding to this point are not going to make any significant progress.

[Mavfin]

Unless they're rerolls that join well established guilds, people who have not started raiding to this point are not going to make any significant progress.

As I said before, there's an entire group of people, probably a larger group than the 25-man raiding population, who will benefit from badge gear, that were never going to see BT/Hyjal/SSC/TKSunwell25 anyway, because of RL/playtime considerations. Therefore, the gear will help their personal character progression, which will keep them playing, and paying Blizzard every month. That's what badge gear is all about. It's not really aimed at 25-man raiders, especially not those who have made it to BT already. Yes, some of those people didn't have the skill to raid anyway, but, there's also a big segment that does have the skill to raid, and doesn't have the time to put into it.

Don't take this wrong, as I'm not trying to put anyone down, but I'm not sure you and I are even playing the same game anymore, Skan. :wub: I mean, I understand your point, but, 25-man raiding is completely irrelevant to me anymore, except to point at the shinies that someone else has the time to get. There's a lot of other people out there that are in the same situation. To me, the new 25-man Sunwell is ho-hum, another instance I'll never see. To you, it's OMG new content. To you, the badge gear would be something you have to go out of your way to farm for. For me, Kara/ZA is still about as high as I get, *if I raid at all anymore*. I end up in a guild Kara run once in 3 weeks, about, usually, and I haven't actually been in ZA myself yet. So, as I said, we're not really playing the same game anymore.

[Taelas]

Unless they're rerolls that join well established guilds, people who have not started raiding to this point are not going to make any significant progress.

That's your opinion and you're entitled to it.

[Warlock]

That's your opinion and you're entitled to it.

I can see both sides of it.
A new recruit carried through beaten content can make very fast progression starting from new-70 greens.
A member of a newly formed guild in which no one has prior experience won't find things as easy even with Season 4 and badge gear.

My personal take is that pretty much everyone that wants to raid has already gone as fair as their tastes or circumstances permit. I'm personally very glad that Bliz has finally decided to allow the absolute best 5-man items to overtake the worst raid drop; raid instances should be fun in their own right, not need to bribe players with gear to come inside. Maybe in WOTLK there will be a stream of new content for those of us that simply don't enjoy larger groups too. I can dream.

[Skandranon]

The people I am talking about are the ones who, for whatever reason, do not start raiding 25-mans till 2.4.

With this change, they can skip SSC/TK progression (which, by the way, would bump the people who start now up to Kil'jaeden), and get straight to the "interesting" stuff (i.e. the three Big Bads, Archimonde, Illidan, and later, Kil'jaeden).

And Karazhan. Confining our discussion to these hypothetical start-in-2.4 raiders, I think that if a raid group has the coordination and numbers and playtime to complete BT/Hyjal in a timely fashion even with T6 gear, they are likely already there. So by definition we're talking about people with really limited playtime, and perhaps who can't get together as many times a week as they could. Karazhan absorbs a raid night, and groups like this probably don't have more than two other nights. In those two other raid nights, they can loot some Hyjal pinatas and then meet an endless wave of face smashing from the later bosses there and possibly from as early as the first boss in BT. The only way these particular groups can learn how to avoid the face smashing is to learn basic raiding concepts in TK/SSC - the places they've skipped. But they won't go to those places to learn, because the loot in there is not relevant. Again, incentives have wound up at cross-purposes. You want to do one thing for loot, and a different thing to learn/experience content.

[Icebird]

I'm not going to bother speculating about the impact of the Sunwell badge vendor until we've actually seen what items he might sell, and for what price. It does make me think of all those PVE players who formed Arena teams for the sole purpose of getting the Arena weapons.

Blizzard have publicly said "they want people to see the content" (I believe that was their comment when they removed the attunement requirements for TK and SSC). I suspect we will see the same pattern repeated in the "Lich King" expansion - initial attunements to challenge the top guilds, and to pace out progression through the content, followed by removing attunements once their purpose has been served and they want to push people through the content.

I think its easy to underestimate how much the change in raid sizes from 40 to 25 people shortened the life span of instances. Prior to the expansion, I don't think we dropped Molten Core from the schedule until we were trying to progress simultaneously in AQ and Naxxramas, and there weren't enough days in the week to fit everything in.

Now, by the time guilds finally kill Vasjh and Kael, the previous bosses in SSC and TK are all but farmed out (occasional reluctant to drop items aside). While the two end bosses still have loot that raiders want and desire, the rest of the instances come close to being one long trash clear.

Removing the attunements now gives guilds that have been stuck at Vashj and Kael the opportunity to experience some new content they are probably mroe than eager for. By making Vashj and Kael accessible without clearing the full instance, they become faster to learn for guilds that haven't killed them (but want to), and farmable for guilds in the Tier 6 zones that still want items off them.

Kael'Thas can be such a fun fight that I'm glad more guilds will get to try him.:)

On another note, the number-crunchers at Elitist Jerks have been aiming their spreadsheets at the new Intellect-driven Spirit regen formula. The math scares me but the concise version seems to be: with more than 300 intellect, your spirit regen will increase; with less than 300 intellect it will decrease.

Chris

[Monkey]

I'm not going to bother speculating about the impact of the Sunwell badge vendor until we've actually seen what items he might sell, and for what price. It does make me think of all those PVE players who formed Arena teams for the sole purpose of getting the Arena weapons.

Agreed. I think there's a lot of range left in Drysc's comments--The vendor may just sell enough tasty goodies to give you a fighting chance in Black Temple and Hyjal without obliviating any reason to run them.

Let's keep this in perspective: Hyjal and Black Temple represent very significant chunks of the Warcraft storyline, probably the most significant in all of the Burning Crusade. Illidan is even the central boss to the expansion cinematic. Helping people get there by giving them a few pieces of T6 quality gear is going to improve the game.

Put another way: Not to get all RP on you guys, but isn't Illidan the reason we went to Outland in the first place?

[Jester]

All of the discussion about obsoleted content has been quite a revelation to me.

I recently decided that I would finally cap a character. I've messed about with several character classes up to about level 30, on various realms, and now I know what I want to play, and where; thus, my new Warlock, Stroud, on Terenas. I'll be 70 soon, mark my words.

Anyways, on to the meat of the issue. How does a new character gear up? Does he run with his guildmates in content he is clearly undergeared for, more of a drag than anything else? Does he convince his guildmates to run easier content with him? Is there a mechanism built in for just such a situation?

I guess what I'm trying to ask is, what will I see on my way to and when I get to level 70?

What GG said pretty much covers the basics.

There are a handful of ways to gear up, most of which we're happy to help you with on Terenas!

1) Karazhan. This instance is now a wafflestomp for more or less any halfway balanced lurker group. A full clear will net a new 70 a couple pieces of epic gear (maybe more!), some good rep to go towards a spiffy ring, and 22 Badges of Justice. Run it a few times, and you jump most/all of the 70 blues gearing straight to raiding epics. Be sure to start your keying at lv. 68, people are usually quite good about helping new 70s get their keys ASAP. I'm also usually the one organizing the groups, and I try to emphasize getting new and undergeared people spots in these runs.

2) Questing. There are a half-dozen quest chains that lead to very serviceable, well itemized blues. The Spectrecles chain in shadowmoon has a fantastic hat reward, the death's door chain has a good necklace, etc... Getting a group to do these things is usually not too difficult, although it may take a couple days of asking. Herding cats, and whatnot. :whistling:

3) Heroics. People are big on the heroic-of-the-day, at least if it's an instance people enjoy (NOT Heroic Old Hillsbrad, for instance.) That's worth 4-7 badges, and some pretty decent loot.

4) Craftables. If you're a tailor, you have your Frozen Shadoweave set to look forward to. Other craftables are available from people in guild. IIRC, there is a good blue jewelcrafting ring for warlocks, at the very least.

5) Tossing you in at the deep end of the pool (AKA: 25 man raiding). We're not a big guild. If we can field 25 for a raid with a few to spare, that's a good day. And a spot filled by an undergeared DPSer is a big improvement over an empty spot, so there will likely be raiding opportunities even before you're really geared for them. We do encourage people to come and learn the encounters and have fun with the guild, and we're not really paranoid about gearing. (That said, a full suit of greens will make some some 25 man stuff pretty darn tough, so hopefully there will be Kara as well.)

6) PvP. Arena teams are not super common on Terenas, but for a smallish fee, you can play 10 games a week with one or two other people (even losing them all, worst-case-scenario) and get an amazing PvP epic every 3-6 weeks. Battleground epics are also very high quality these days, so doing the daily quests for BGs can be a great way to replace sub-par gear. (Neck, rings, bracers, boots, belt are the big ones, but you can get S1 arena gear fairly cheaply too, about on par with Kara gear.)

What you probably won't find is a lot of call for non-heroic instances. If you're willing to take it as people have time, you can usually get a crew to run the low 60 instances, but if you're really hoping to see all the instances at level and in order (rather than just powering to 70 on quests, which is totally possible), you'll probably have to go find pugs for many of them. The exceptions to this are the Kara keying instances: Steamvault, Old Hillsbrad, Shadow Labyrinth, Arcatraz and Black Morass, which you can more easily find groups for.

So, I look forward to seeing you around Terenas, and if you need help with anything, just ask. B)

-Jester

[Skandranon]

Don't take this wrong, as I'm not trying to put anyone down, but I'm not sure you and I are even playing the same game anymore, Skan. :wub: I mean, I understand your point, but, 25-man raiding is completely irrelevant to me anymore, except to point at the shinies that someone else has the time to get. There's a lot of other people out there that are in the same situation. To me, the new 25-man Sunwell is ho-hum, another instance I'll never see. To you, it's OMG new content. To you, the badge gear would be something you have to go out of your way to farm for. For me, Kara/ZA is still about as high as I get, *if I raid at all anymore*. I end up in a guild Kara run once in 3 weeks, about, usually, and I haven't actually been in ZA myself yet. So, as I said, we're not really playing the same game anymore.

Well, I completely agree. We're not playing the same game, really. The problem is that these two games coexist in the same world, and impact each other.

Now, I completely agree that people like you need incentive to remain and need content for you (in my opinion, a new T6-level 10-man should have gone out in this patch, but that's neither here nor there). I'm just not sure that the gear necessarily has to be T6 level to do it. If it's going to be badges, a new set of Zul'jin quality (ilvl 133) stuff could be added without necessarily obsoleting SSC/TK gear or progression. It's still an incentive to you; Zul'jin has a pretty small loot table, and raising everything to his level is still an upgrade for even ZA guilds.

And the impact, mind you, isn't on me. I'm sure not going back to Kara. What do I need BT-quality loot for? I'm wearing BT-quality loot. The impact is on starter SSC/TK guilds, for which this decouples the loot incentive from instances they should be running, both for learning and for simply seeing good content.

[Mavfin]

Now, I completely agree that people like you need incentive to remain and need content for you (in my opinion, a new T6-level 10-man should have gone out in this patch, but that's neither here nor there). I'm just not sure that the gear necessarily has to be T6 level to do it. If it's going to be badges, a new set of Zul'jin quality (ilvl 133) stuff could be added without necessarily obsoleting SSC/TK gear or progression. It's still an incentive to you; Zul'jin has a pretty small loot table, and raising everything to his level is still an upgrade for even ZA guilds.

Agreed. It doesn't have to be T6 quality, it just needs to be above the stuff we've been given already to be a staying incentive for people. As for me, I've only gotten one piece of the new badge loot as of yet anyway:P

[Concillian]

Not in notes, discovered on PTR, confirmed by blue:

drinking starts with slow mana return and ramps to full mana return.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...0696621&sid=1#8

[Delc]

Not in notes, discovered on PTR, confirmed by blue:

drinking starts with slow mana return and ramps to full mana return.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...0696621&sid=1#8

Bah, now it will take healers longer to drink so they can heal me after I lifetap.

[NiteFox]

Not in notes, discovered on PTR, confirmed by blue:

drinking starts with slow mana return and ramps to full mana return.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...0696621&sid=1#8

Bah. That means it'll take me longer to mana up in Ogri'la since they still haven't fixed the bloody "everybody on their feet!" bug!

*Seeth*

[LavCat]

* Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin, Warsong Gulch, Blade’s Edge Arena, Lordaeron Arena, and Nagrand Arena: Players who fall below the world in these environments will now die instead of being stuck.

Great fix. One would think that in all these years they could patch the cracks in the environment, or at least detect when someone has fallen through and port them to the nearest piece of "world"? I am only thankfull that in sitting below the battleground no one has ever flagged me AFK.

[Artega]

Bah, now it will take healers longer to drink so they can heal me after I lifetap.

And will also make druid shift-drinking in arenas a little less potent. Probably the reason for the change.

[Mordekhuul]

And will also make druid shift-drinking in arenas a little less potent. Probably the reason for the change.

I think it'll hurt non-druid arena healers more, since they won't be able to spam drink every time they get a half second out of combat to get good benefits from 1-2 ticks.

More specifically, if you drink at least 6 seconds you will see no change whatsoever in the amount of mana gained over the first 6 seconds.

First tick returns zero mana.

Second tick returns a full mana tick plus 66%.

Third tick returns a full mana tick plus 33%.

Basically, you can't sneak in a full mana tick by drinking for 2 seconds. if you drink 4 seconds, you get 1.66 ticks worth. If you drink 6 seconds, you get 3 full ticks worth.

[Monkey]

Poking through the PTR notes on MMO-Champion this morning, I noticed something about the new recipes in coming from the Sunwell Plateau. Here's the Jewelcrafting designs as an example:
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images...welringneck.jpg

BoP items require nothing higher than a heroic run to complete. BoE plans require raiding the Sunwell and in some cases, also Black Temple. Although you'd have to rely on the Auction House or friendly raiders to get the BoP plans, it's nice that non-raiding crafters have an avenue to get something neat out of the patch as well.

Also, finally a JC recipe that uses Primal Nethers! I can roll on them, now!

[TheDragoon]

Haha, true. He must have completely left my mind because I knew he'd be dead. :whistling:

Ok, NOW we're 3/4, 5/6. :)

[Mordekhuul]

Fun on the PTR...

Shnukums (officer at KotD, enhancement shaman) is being laughed at all over the place because his tier 5 gear is so weak compared to the norm there =)

He also has the dubious honor of being probably the only player on Terenas to be told to "f**k off" by Kaubel, of Elitist Jerks fame (and a personal hero of Teeth and I for his work in the Banhammer forum there).

Shnuk trying to convince Kaubel, with spelling errors intact, that he raids SSC in the gear he has on the PTR might have had something to do with it....he was dual wielding 2 12lb Trout enchanted with fiery weapon =)

Not the real Kaubel I'm sure, actually, but pretty funny and indicative of the level of treatment folks not at the end game level receive, it seems =)

Heck, as an EJ poster said, its probably one of the only times you'll see an end game rogue dual wielding both warglaives spamming LFG because he can't find a 5 man...