2.4 Thoughts

[Mirajj]

So, 2.4's been out for a couple days now. Most of us have their servers on Phase 2 of the Offensive. We've had a chance to run Magisters' Terrace a couple times, and some folks have even dipped into the 25man, killing a boss or two in there. So...what are your thoughts?

So far, I've seen Magisters' Terrace. I liked it quite a bit, and thought that the Kael fight was quite a treat. I'm on the fence about the third boss (The PvP 5v5 team thing). Attuning to Heroic MgT was painless. I've had a look over the SSO rep rewards, and don't see much my hunter would be interested in, but I do see some very nice items for other folks. The dailies are quick and painless, even with the Island drowning from the weight of all the PC's on it. I do very much like that you can team up with the folks in front and behind you on the Bombing daily to get it done that much more easily.

I'm on the fence about the combat log changes. It's wreaked havoc with mods, but that's for the mod makers to worry over more than me. I do like the "What happened to me?" feature, but it...needs some work.

So, what do you think of 2.4, for better or worse?

[Mordekhuul]

I'm not very happy with the MH/BT attunement being lifted. We spent an evening in MH last night, and it was fun, but I'd rather have spent the night in TK working on Kael'thas, as we have been aiming to do the past few weeks (Spring Break raiding dearth for the loss).

I'd much prefer if Blizzard had simply instituted account-wide attunements (so alts could be attuned automatically) and perhaps made it easier for raids to attune folks once they have killed Kael and such a few times and don't plan on going back (scrolls of attunement that drop plentifully from the bosses, which can be banked for later use, etc).

Of Magister's Terrace, I went in to replace a tank after they had wiped 8 times on the trash just before Kael (undergeared, underskilled tank and little CC), so my only experience there is a single trash pull and killing Kael'thas.

I look forward to doing him on Heroic mode. I hope it'll be more challenging. I was a little disappointed it was only a two phase fight, consisting of very little that was difficult (tank and spank one phase, avoid orbs on the next, he dies).

[NiteFox]

I like it.

...

What, you want more? Sheesh, you jackals.

Okay, as usual, the patch broke a few things. For one thing, weapon sizes when sheathed are smaller than wielded for taurens, which doesn't actually irk me as much it does the frothing rabble in the official forums. It's disconcerting, yes, and it's odd, but hey - at least my Savagery enchant shows up better on my CWA.

What does annoy me is the bug regarding the selection circles around monsters - They're all tiny, about the same size as the average humanoid's, regarardless of how huge the monster is. This irks me as a hunter because that ring was actually a pretty good indicator as to when said mob would trip a trap. Sigh.

That said, I have pretty good feelings about the patch so far. Ravenholdt is (last checked less than an hour ago) only 46% through phase 1, but that's mainly because the Staging Grounds is scene to a perpetual bloodbath:DA bloodbath that was started, probably, by someone accidentally right-clicking an opposing player. Yesterday.

(Okay, I know we had rolling restarts this morning.)

The increase on daily quests has really helped, it gives me plenty to do a day, even after I've finished my Shattered Sun duties (7 quests at phase 1). I'll ding Revered for the Netherwing today, and even if I can get all the dailies done (10), with the cooking and fishing (2) done that leaves me with an extra 6 quests to do.

On the word of the thread giving the locations of blue PvP set, I ran across the worlds gathering up every piece, and using some of my leather and dust to slap some armor kits and inscriptions on the gear. Even ungemmed (Except for the meta on the helmet) I get more crit than my current gear, and only a little less damage, which I can probably boost a lot more with the right gems. Hell, I might actually keep the helmet and pants as regular items to cover inferior quest reward items. The only problem? I feel ridiculous.

Anyway, got a gold begger in Orgrimmar staring at the 1g I've left on the table. Let's see how long it takes him to give up.

[Swiss Mercenary]

Regarding the Hyjal/BT attunements:

My guild has been working on Vashj for... Two weeks.

In February.

In March, every week, we were consistently screwed over by either server instability, no-shows :rolleyes:, or Easter. To the point that our GM was going to surprise-cancel the T5 farm nights in favour of progress on her. Only to face no-shows.

I really wanted to see her and Kael down before we step foot into BT/Hyjal.

Last night, we stepped into Hyjal, to "get it out of our systems", one-shot Joke Winterchill five minutes before his enrage timer (After absolute gems, like the MT getting a BoP, people not trinketing out of frost bolt, and people just standing around aimlessly for the first minute of the fight), picked up the badges, cleared SSC. Tomorrow, I assume we'll be going for Vashj again, and Sunday, we'll farm out TK/Mag (Whom we finally might get to kill - our GM did not believe he was helpful to progression).

Rage seems to be getting added to our farming rotation, which I guess isn't all that bad, considering that it takes us less then 2 hours to clear 3/4 TK, on 4-hour raid nights. I guess I shouldn't complain, considering I'll be getting all the epic JC patterns - even if the only one that's dropped so far was 13 spell penetration.

I didn't like the wasted time with going from instance to instance, but I see why it had to be done. I'm not sure how people are going to feel when we're still wiping on Vashj two weeks from now. I'd rather not be stepping into BT until we at least get her down.

[Mirajj]

I look forward to doing him on Heroic mode. I hope it'll be more challenging. I was a little disappointed it was only a two phase fight, consisting of very little that was difficult (tank and spank one phase, avoid orbs on the next, he dies).

I've yet to face him on Heroic, but I understand the main difference is that he has his shield and 48k pyroblast. You need to chew through the shield to interrupt him...and better hope you have someone along who CAN interrupt him. Would make it a bit more of a challenge.

[Delc]

Overall I'm pretty happy with the patch. All things considered its been pretty smooth. The biggest issue I am having (aside from broken mods) is that they changed they way the chat windows work. When you go into settings there is now a check box called 'channel'. This wonderful category is everything from people joining channels, to the information returned on /chatinfo commands. Since I want to see when people join channels, I now get to see chatinfo responses in 4 chat windows. Its not a huge thing, but man is it annoying.

New combat log is almost worse than the old one. It now notifies you of things that are just worthless. Standing in shatt you can see EVERYTHING that people do. The range is also pretty huge. When we were doing Gurtogg last night people were seeing combat log entries from Illidari council (one of the 4 casts some buff on themself periodically I guess.) Which is fun since DBM picks up on that and enables the mods for them.

[Bun-Bun]

So, what do you think of 2.4, for better or worse?

So far, it's a snorefest for me. Perhaps if I try Magister's Terrace it will gain a bit of value.

The extra Ravagers in the Mines are an improvement, though.

[Taelas]

PvP gear: I snagged up a piece to use in my paladin's tanking gear already (though I mistakenly got the Ret piece instead of the Holy piece, sigh), as it was vastly better than the crappy green that was in the slot.

Combat log... urgh. I hate it. It bogs down my game every time I load an area, it looks ridiculous, and I can't have any other it in any other windows. Plus, they royally #$%&ed up the General Chat window as well -- I usually run with three chat windows; the General chat window with loot/s/yl/general/trade/LFG/etc., a Party/Guild chat window with my most important stuff (/p, /g, /r, /bg, /w), and the combat log. I cannot turn off *ANYTHING* in the General chat window for more than the duration of that session; as soon as I relog, it's reactivated. It bugs me all to hell.

Sunwell is neat and stuff. I'm just not that interested, for some reason...

MgT is hell for tanks -- and I'm mostly a tank. There's very little actual tanking going on in there. Only been once, but I don't really like it, at least as tank.

[Lissa]

I've yet to face him on Heroic, but I understand the main difference is that he has his shield and 48k pyroblast. You need to chew through the shield to interrupt him...and better hope you have someone along who CAN interrupt him. Would make it a bit more of a challenge.

Heroic is Phase 4 and 5 of Kael in Tempest Keep, or very close to it. It's very brutal, if you do not have the DPS or if you're distracted by an egg at the time, someone will die. Your best hope is it is not the healer and you can push Kael into phase 2 (if the tank is dead and you're close to phase 2, you can still win). So use Heroic MgT as training for the actual Kael fight in The Eye so once your raid force gets past phase 3, you should be ready for phase 4 and 5.

[Icebird]

I haven't been to Magister's Terrace yet, but expect to become very familiar with it this weekend (I'm trying to grind out the rep for the Alchemist's Stone upgrade).

The new daily quests are great, and I love the variety. Most of them are very quick and easy - I think I knocked off 7 in an hour before work today. "Multiphase Survey" is basically 10 free gold. "Intercepting the Mana Cells" is very cool - when you're out of phase the world looks a bit like the "wearing the ring" sequences from the Lord of the Rings movies. For "Blast the Gateway" you don't even need to tag the Fel Sparks yourself - you can be near somone else's when it dies, and your Flare will still get buffed.

For once I'm starting to feel that the money will my priest earns from daily quests will be enough to keep ahead of raiding costs *and* eventually pay for an epic flyer.

Two nights in Sunwell Plateau so far. There's a lot of trash to clear to Kalecgos, and its reasonably demanding, but we improved quite a bit from our first night to our second. We got Kalecgos to around 60% or so on our best attempt. The tuning feels about right - the main issue for us seems to be getting people to jump through portals at the right time.

[Gregorius]

So far:

I haven't bought any of the PvP gear but probably will. It'll be nice to come into BG's with more than 75 resilience (I'm using S1 gloves + instance drops with resilience right now). It's good news.

Shattrath lags less at the moment. It's excellent. (Last week, it was so bad one night, that I bubbled on my paladin after running off the Aldor Rise, and things slowed down my fall so the shield wore off before I hit the ground. Ugh.)

Terrace is fun but the difficulty doesn't scale well, in my opinion. It's way too easy at the beginning, and somewhat frustrating at the end. Healing Kael is a nightmare for Shamans and, I assume, Paladins, although it'll probably be better once people actually figure out how to not get themselves killed better. People not moving away from orbs, and not noticing the beam damage = BAD.

[Swiss Mercenary]

For once I'm starting to feel that the money will my priest earns from daily quests will be enough to keep ahead of raiding costs *and* eventually pay for an epic flyer.

Raiding costs are a joke now - even our MT isn't complaining about them anymore, now that bosses drop 10g per player.

I actually make money from raids - and I'm not playing a Rogue or a Hunter.

Although, I guess, not being a mana pot-chugging class helps.

[Mirajj]

Raiding costs are a joke now - even our MT isn't complaining about them anymore, now that bosses drop 10g per player.

I actually make money from raids - and I'm not playing a Rogue or a Hunter.

Although, I guess, not being a mana pot-chugging class helps.

Rogues and hunters have some pretty high costs associated with raiding too, you know. On any given raid night, I will spend about 40g on repairs and ammo. Yes, I have FD, but I can't always use it. I imagine the same is true of rogues. By the time an encounter gets to a wipe...they are dead already.

It'd be nice if folks would stop assuming hunters and rogues have no repairs bills. Mine can be just as high as 'yours'...

[Kevin]

Rogues and hunters have some pretty high costs associated with raiding too, you know. On any given raid night, I will spend about 40g on repairs and ammo. Yes, I have FD, but I can't always use it. I imagine the same is true of rogues. By the time an encounter gets to a wipe...they are dead already.

It'd be nice if folks would stop assuming hunters and rogues have no repairs bills. Mine can be just as high as 'yours'...

I've Main tanked in SSC and I've played my hunter in there (and lower raids). The hunter almost always ended up spending more for a run. Like Mirajj said a full quiver (24 slots) of ammo is over 19 gold. And the repair bills aren't that different. Fully broken tanking set costs about 5g more to repair than a fully broken gear set on my hunter.

Like Mirajj I get really annoyed at people assuming I'm not paying as much as them and on some fights hunters end up sucking mana pots as well. I now for a long time I was paying MORE than anyone else in the raid for an average raid even if I did manage to skip a few repair bills with FD. I got used to 40-50 gold repair bills +10-20 gold in ammo on learning nights. Of course I didn't gripe too much as I had a pretty easy time farming and it was way lower on repair costs than farming on the warrior.

Bosses dropping more money is a very nice thing though.

[Swiss Mercenary]

By the time an encounter gets to a wipe...they are dead already.

Not as dead as a melee class with no aggro dump and a marginal threat reducing ability.

I can buy the ammo expenditures, but rogue costs?

Those 25 copper flash powders must really add up. :whistling:

[Lissa]

MgT is hell for tanks -- and I'm mostly a tank. There's very little actual tanking going on in there. Only been once, but I don't really like it, at least as tank.

It's really built for a pally tank, moreso than any other. Warriors are going to have the hardest time tanking in MgT with Pallies being the easiest (place is one big AoE tankfest for the most part).

[Tal]

Of course I didn't gripe too much as I had a pretty easy time farming and it was way lower on repair costs than farming on the warrior.

This right here.

[RTM]

I'm really liking some of the new dailies. Easy gold, a green to DE, a new rep to grind for a marginal upgrade- what's not to like?:)

It seems to me that brand new 70's benefit most from the changes in this patch. A full set of blue armor and well-itemized weapons for (relatively) easily obtainable SSO rep makes gearing up for heroics or Kara much easier than in the past. My 1 run through MrT was very enjoyable despite multiple wipes and I'm looking forward to trying it on heroic.


What I'm REALLY looking forward to is finding out some more WotLK info now that they're (more or less) done patching TBC.

[Mordekhuul]

Our most frequent hunter, Teeth, survives most wipes. His costs mostly just come from arrows and mana pots, not that those aren't costly enough by themselves.

I'd say switching from Warlock to Prot Paladin was about the worst economic decision I've ever made in-game.

A tank class wearing plate that has to chug mana pots on some boss fights because I don't take enough damage. Add in respec costs for the times I ever manage time to PVP as well.

My warlock almost never lost money on raids, even before 2.4. Cloth armor, not being in melee range of mobs, no mana pot use (usually), and no respec costs for PVP.

[Concillian]

Although, I guess, not being a mana pot-chugging class helps.

The patch also helped these costs for some classes. It was only Kara, but the other night I felt like I had an obscene amount of mana due to the regen changes. I think I had to drink (water, not pots) about 4 times going Attumen --> Nightbane and Curator.