Patch Notes for "The Burning Crusade"?

[Kevin]

I figure that when Blood Elves come out I will make one on some realm.  The question is which...
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Well it's easy. If people want PvP Horde - Tichondrius. If you want PvE horde - Terenas. If you want RPPvP Horde - Twisting Nether. If you want RP Pve horde - Cenarion Cirle has a lurker presence but no organization. :)

The largest horde lurker presence still seems to be on Terenas.


On the good and evil of the factions
Now onto other things. I'm a hordie (but you have 3 level 60 alliance toons and only a L56 horde!). Yeah and I couldn't play horde for nearly 4 months due to my condition and the only large lurker population that is able to do end game raiding right now is on Stormrage. So I'm still playing more alliance than horde simply for the social interaction with other human beings that I want to interact with.

I get more drawn into the horde storylines, especially the orc and tauren. The forsaken are full of ambiance but when if you get a chance to see the collectors edition DvD and the devs pretty much say they are only horde because they wanted just two factions it detracts a lot from it. Trolls look pretty cool, but they don't draw me in that much.

The orcs' struggle to establish themselves in this world and still fight off the shackles of their demonic enslavers is a great story and fun to play along in. I get into that. There are some pretty dangerous and nasty factions in the horde still but Thrall is working on them. The horde needs to get rid of the forsaken though. They do that and the trust level goes way up in my book. I still haven't gotten an undead up past the 20's but they just don't feel all that noble to me. It doesn't seem to be just a minority of them either. They still seem too close to the scourge. They might not be mindless but they sure don't seem to be noble or good. :) Heck there are even some quests that undead can't get because the horde quest givers won't talk to them. :) OK there is at least one maybe more.

The tauren seem to be the only race the is trying to really as a group repair damages to the world. The Night Elves just want to get their home fixed and go off on their own so they can destroy the world again (Where did the Naga come from? Crap the night elves did and entire continents were sunk after that, and didn't a group of them try and plant a new world tree against the advice of pretty much everyone and that's caused issues as well my warcraft lore is getting mixed up and the lore itself is pretty fragmented). But there are certain questlines that I won't take with my Tauren because I just can't see a Tauren doing that. I do agree that Tauren are only loyal to undead and trolls because they are part of the horde and the Tauren are loyal to the orcs and Thrall (the story you got if you took an orc orphan around was pretty cool with some of that too). But I just can't see a Tauren after you get some of the story doing some of the things that some of the horde ask. They are just a loyal and noble race and being loyal to the orcs isn't bad. :)

I've always seen more nobility in the orcs and tauren than in the warlike humans (talk a race that will never give up it's warriors. Heck they like them so much that they have holy warriors), the haughty and selfish night elves. The dwarves are isolationists but they aren't a bad peoples. The gnomes just have no regard for much of anything around them, they want to pursue their technology and that's good enough. They blew up their own home! But if you look at what I play, very few humans and night elves. Actually only one night elf that is because of the class restricitons for druids. Only one human and he is a warlock. I do play a lot of gnomes because while they have little regard for much other than the pursuit of knowledge I like that pursuit and I find a fun factor in the little dude kicking ass and gnomes is little. :) I play a lot of dwarves too because they are a pretty stout and noble race though it's clear their primary loyalty is to themselves.

On Variants
Well personally my feeling is that a skilled player with a variant build in this game is still going to be able to do more with that class than the average pubby can with the power build and power gear. The game isn't that hard, it's very forgiving of non optimal groups, even in the 40 man raids. Unless you do something really radical like build a warrior with no rage dump skills maybe like this where you do have some interesting damage skills but you'll have to dump rage in HS or slam (if you aren't getting hit) since this is a build that is geared to pump up your "white" damage and multi target damage (a variant of a mini combat rogue) you can't really hurt your party that much from a build. Even this would still work fine as any other arms/fury warrior for tanking as long as you know what skills do good aggro/rage. But talents don't make that big a difference in this game. Not that you need a lot of player skill either (Blizzard again went for fun factor and items).

Now if you neglect items a lot because of variant play you can gimp yourselve and a group a lot. A paladin in cloth not a bad thing if they are playing healer so you can do that variant, you just lose the extra tanking abilities people expect out of a paladin but well that paladin in cloth should be able to easily main heal you for anything 5 man (yes, anything, strat, scholo, DM though some stuff in West maybe not and I say this knowing that some all cloth sets could give me more stam, int, and spirit than what I have in my plate/mail/leahter/cloth healing set and I have healed 5 mans with him) so if you have a priest or a druid along they can now nuke if they like to make up for the loss of off tanking/low DPS that the "traditional" paladin would have provided.

Since the game is about gear at all levels gear based variants are really the only ones that can severly hurt group play.

Of course I'm saying that from the persepective of knowing that I can pretty much always get one other player to group with that I know is a good player. If you are playing in pubby groups where you are the best or one of the best players then yeah variants being a problem and making the group less optimal could be more of a problem. However if you are playing with other lurkers (and even other avarice members on stormrage) being a variant doesn't seem to be an issue.

I had a beastmaster (no points in marksman until I had 34 in beast) before the OMGHUNTERZRUBARNOW! patch 1.7. I don't think any group that I was with thought I was gimped. Admittedly I didn't have too many pubbies with me and I had to convince them that I knew what to do with my pet. Sure my DPS isn't on par with a marks hunter but my DPS + my pet DPS was as good. With the patch my DPS + pet DPS is generally higher than a marks + pet from what I've seen as well so I've become cookie cutter, oh well. Of course pre patch when I convinced people how good spirit bond and my fast attacking pet was I was able to off tank with the pet tanking and everyone else just being DPS and it worked well. Heck even now in some 5 man's with a warrior a beast master pet tanking is better than a warrior tanking because the pets crazy out of combat regen and that arms warrior in DPS mode means you can move faster than if the warrior was tanking and holding holding aggro. Of course that hunter still needs to know how to hold multiple targets with the pet while still doing their damage.

I've also had a melee hunter before 1.7 and did a few instance runs with her. Since my DPS was better in melee than it was ranged people didn't seem to mind. My melee DPS was also not that much worse than ranged DPS of a young marks hunter (I'm talking Van Cleef and BFD for instances here). I also had deterrance and with monkey aspect up that amount of damage avoidance meant I could work as a tank if need be as well. I still haven't come to grips with the new talents and the melee hunter variant as well.

Regardless the lurker groups are generally very open to variant builds. Of course the true "variant" fun in this game for me is variant groups. My recent move has put a 5 paladin group on hold but I'm still going to do it. The Terenas folks know that we'll 4 man a level appropriate instance with a hunter tank, a shaman primary healer and a mage and warlock for the DPS and what not. Not an ideal group by any means but we get the job done. :) I love that. I still remember the warior, priest, mage, mage 4 mans of Sunken Temple. Good group for all but the dragons really, but you want to learn how to tank multiple mobs you run sunken temple with that combo and hold the two elites while the mages are CC'ing the little dragons. At first we peeled the little ones off so the AoE wasn't hitting the elites. After we got comfortable we starting having full force AoE from 2 mages hitting both elites as well. That instance that we were 4 manning because we didn't want a 60 to cheapen it and there wasn't anyone else in our range when we started going in there who could make our schedule really honed my skills with Gnolack. If I lost aggro on anything, I had a pack of squishies behind me that were not going to last long. So yeah I save sunder for when something is chasing down Sabramage or Littledude or Aleri. :) If that peel was because of AoE or a heal getting aggro on a secondary target I had to get that thing back and not lose the other one that is still getting hammered by two mages and mage single target DPS isn't that week at those levels. :) It's also why I love the charge, thunderclap, now the mages sheep while I'm changing stances, dem shout and piercing howl "pull" approach. Doing that helps make sure that if that sheep breaks early it stays on me and doesn't go back to one of my 3 squishies who have no one else to help them and who's DPS we need because there are only 4 of us. :) But I had a blast with those variant groups.

Personally I think if you want to be a better player you should 4 man an instance or 5 man it with a "sub par" group. If you want to succeed you have let other class skills come to the front. Uldaman with 2 shaman, a warrior and 2 hunters, good practice for the double freeze trap and hunter pulls and pet off tanks. Be a druid healer without any other class that can rez around and you'll get good or you'll get so frustrated that you never play the class again or no one else will play with you. Actaully I think all priests should play a druid in a 5 man without anyone else who can rez or heal around. I think it will make them a lot better priest. :) Oh and people who like to break CC when they shouldn't also need to play a druid as the only healer and rezzer maybe then the value of CC will sink in. :) Of course then you take that druid on a 40 man raid and you get utterly frustrated because all those healing tricks you learned become useless because you waste mana or someone else heals your target. :)

I'm rambling a lot. I'll shut up now. :)

My point, there is plenty of room for variants that your group might love but there is more effort in making sure your variant is accepted. Lurkers seem very accepting of that. People connect to different things and get different things from each faction. I get more from the horde and if we get a big horde presence you know I'll be there (I started the guild on Terenas though I had to leave that post for reasons explained in other older posts afterall). Of course we would have to convice many of our Basin, Carpe Aurum, House Harpell, and Keepers of the Cheese allies to go there with us, otherwise Stormrage will always be one of my major homes because this game is about the people you play it with as well and those people are more heavily on Stormrage.