2.4 Thoughts

[Tal]

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.

WTB spirit on paladin gear.:(

[Mirajj]

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'm guessing he raids with folks who don't think that it's fun, cute, necessary or their outright perogative to drag bosses over to FD'd hunters/vanished rogues?;)

If I avoid a wipe, it's because something else went wrong. Tank died, and the boss is pounding on the melee, giving me time to get away and FD (usually). Being FD'ed and then Graved while Morogrim is wiping folks is always fun. Or seeing a spate of FD resists is always 'nice', too.

The 'cheapest' raid I can ever recall cost me 15g between repairs and arrows. I think it was an MC speedrun we did towards the launch of TBC.

I realize all sorts of folks have all sorts of costs, what I'd like to see is folks stop bitching about how others have "no" costs.

If you are dead set on thinking that hunters are 'free' in raids, consider this. Most of the higher end ones I talk to (BT/Hyjal) tell me they spend 1.5-2g on a stack of arrows (Depending on how rich they are feeling) and go through a full quiver (24 stacks) and then some per raid. I hear it's quite often 'easy' to go through 30 stacks of arrows a raid. And that's JUST the ammo. So yeah, we all have to spend money to raid, and we all do 'cause we love raiding anyhow. Grass/greener, and all that.

I'm not going down the farming path, as some classes/specs clearly have it easier than others. Let's just say I'm very glad that dailies have come along to help a lot in this regard.

[Kevin]

I'm not going down the farming path, as some classes/specs clearly have it easier than others. Let's just say I'm very glad that dailies have come along to help a lot in this regard.

Yeah, any class/spec can pretty easily make around 100 gold a day on dailies and not have to kill much of anything to do so. As soon as daily quests were put in, I pretty much gave no credit to anyone griping about raid costs with one execption, enchant mats. Some classes still had issues with some of the farming you had to do if you wanted an enchant sooner than the gold grind of the dailies would get you though food wasn't too expense and even my prot warrior could sustain 400 or so DPS while farming but it came with a lot more downtime than even a holy priest. Of course I generally stopped farming with my raiders and used alts that could still get exp for doing it to get me the mats and stuff. And since I was our survival hunter for a while I even have to back pedal on the farming aspect of the hunter a bit as survival hunters generally have the worst aggro holding pets (pet did better when I was marks survival than when I was survival marks and neither comes close to a beat hunter of course). The only reason the ammo costs weren't bad farming on the hunter is because I would use the uber cheap ammo when farming and give up a decent chunk of DPS, which I could afford to do because I was still above the 350 DPS line which is what I consider the minimum to not make soloing horribly painful.

[Tuftears]

The influx of easy greens from Shattered Sun Supplies packages may help lower the price of enchanting materials.

[Concillian]

WTB spirit on paladin gear.:(

Nobody said you can't wear cloth...

I thought you liked wearing dresses:P

[Kevin]

WTB spirit on paladin gear.:(

I'm really not sure it will matter that much, how often are you outside the 5 second rule anyway? Pallies and shaman don't have any in combat spirit regen talents like priests and druids. So more spirit won't help you unless you actually stop casting for 5 seconds. I don't see that happening a ton in SSC and TK and I figure it just gets worse in BT and Hyjal. Dunno. I would still rather see plate and mail with MP/5 rather than spirit.

[ryan4nayr]

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.

WTB spirit on paladin gear.:(

Questing last night with my hunter, I did notice gaining quite a bit more mana in between mob packs. Less time to be hypnotized by the video slot machine combat log:D

My paladin would kill to have an aura akin to my hunter's Aspect of Viper but relying instead on something like stamina or block value; not like Devotion or Retribution Auras are game-breaking boosts anyway. Spiritual Attunement is nice & all, but spamming max rank spells vs. trash in 8 sec. rotations wipes out my blue rage bar if I'm careless.

addendum: I'd just like to add that the WSG change to flag-carriers... painful. Just been in 2 WSG matches... 34 mins. then 63 mins.:(

[Icebird]

Ryan: I'm curious about which WSG change actually led to the matches being longer? I did a few yesterday because I was trying to get the 2 minute pvp trinket and I had a shortage of WSG tokens compared to every other battleground. There were matches that were longer than I woudl have liked (win or lose, I just wanted the match over quickly so I could get my token(s)). The length of the match seemed to depend more on the attitude of the participants than any game mechanic. If one or both sides wanted a turtle, they could quite easily drag it out until the 100% damage debuff kicked in. If the match went on for an extended period after that, I can only assume that offence was bad and/or the flag carrier had an platoon of healers. (And yes I was in a match where the flag carrier was sitting in the graveyard with 3 healers).

My observations are that its much harder for the flag carriers to hide now (you can see where they are on the mini-map), and you need a lot of healing to keep them up against a determined assault once the full damage bonus kicks in.

I also wondered if they tweaked the matching system a bit. I wasn't doing a lot of BGs, but I didn't run into a single pre-made all weekend, and most of the matches felt pretty evenly matched.

The token turn in quest was great honor if you had a stockpile of unused tokens. Most serious PVPers have probably moved far beyond honor pvp gear by now, but its much easier to get than it was.

Magister's Terrace: Finally got in to check the place out. Haven't done Heroic mode yet, but I ran normal mode over and over and over. The length of the instance feels right - we were clearing it in 30-45 minutes. There were no upgrades for me, but I suspect other players would find a lot of nice stuff in there. First two bosses seemed pretty easy. The third boss is chaotic fun. It's been called a "5 versus 5" arena match and the description isn't too inaccurate. Normal aggro rules are right out the window, and I was much more successful when I started treating it like a pvp match (cast and run, keep moving, fear liberally etc). Gotta love a boss fight where an explosive sheep gets used against you.

I'm impressed that they managed to keep so much of the Tempest Keep Kael fight for Magister's Terrace. That being said, phase 2 is an unholy nightmare to heal, and I play one of the healing classes better suited for it.

Still I got enough runs in to hit Revered with Shattered Sun Offensive over the weekend.

[ryan4nayr]

@ icebird: Both of those long WSG matches I mentioned (my only WSG wins of that day) had a ton of flag drops by alliance; our FC just couldn't stay alive. On the 2nd win, we eventually abandoned base def 5 mins. before the win & every healer & cc became flag support. Making the FC's visible on the map is a great change, but the increased dmg was a bit much. Maybe because of my class bias, but base indoors is no place for a druid anyway. I really really hope WoLK sees a heavily revamped WSG.

I thought I read it someplace, but I swear pre-mades are only matched vs. other pre-mades in 2.4. I can't find it in the patch notes now so maybe I imagined it.

I love the new turn-in quest as well. Anything to make grinding less painful than it already is; now if only I can exchange tokens for another kind, maybe I'll start liking PVPs<_<

[Gregorius]

WOW Blue PvP gear is nice. Statistically of course, it's a huge downgrade from my T4/5 stuff, and when I work with the sockets they're going to get cheapo gems =p, but the resilience really does make up for it somehow. Those little numbers are magical. I bought a couple (the ones that were handy) before doing some lousy arena matches tonight, and this being my first time *in* the arena, I wasn't sure how much of a difference they made. On the other hand, just two pieces (plus the S1 gloves I got a while ago, Medallion of the Alliance, that trinket from Heroic Black Stalker and the Dagger from Thorngrin) made a huge difference, it seemed to me.

Of course, I still didn't win any, because Ruin Alliance are not very good on the whole. In fact I've been wondering, have horde been buffed a lot in AV or do people play even worse now? In 2.3 I had >50% wins in there...since 2.4 I have been in one victory, and that was reinforcements-based (we didn't even capture all the towers...)

I went back to Magisters' Terrace, on Heroic this time. It's pretty fun on heroic, with better difficulty balancing in my opinion. I still died on Kael though...didn't heal myself at all during the first Gravity Lapse. Excellent! Not to mention the pull right before him. Arcs and I went down twice.:)

While I was there, I got <span style="color:purple">[Vial of the Sunwell]. I'm wondering if anyone else has any experience with this trinket, since I'm really torn on whether it's good or not. Certainly, I love the mp5, as my gear and gems are tweaked much more toward +healing in general, and I tend to use Elixirs for another +50, at the cost of some potential mana regen in Flask of Mighty Restoration. The Use effect though...I haven't been able to get much out of it aside from another Healthstone for myself. It's a little awkward to use in raids on other people, from what I've seen so far, because odds are if they need it that badly somebody else is about to land one on them anyway. But hey, what do I know, I'm just a guy who tries to not stand in fire and presses the Chain Heal button a lot.

I am jealous of Druids and Priests though. Everything I've been hearing about their regen...is insane.

Void Shatter is dumb, you can learn it at 360, but it requires the 375 enchanting rod. Thanks for that one Blizzard. <_<Doesn't seem to have affected the price of mats much either, for the better anyway.

[NiteFox]

WOW Blue PvP gear is nice. Statistically of course, it's a huge downgrade from my T4/5 stuff, and when I work with the sockets they're going to get cheapo gems =p, but the resilience really does make up for it somehow.

The nice thing with the blue PvP gear is that the two-piece bonus currently stacks with the two-piece bonus on arena season 1. At the moment I'm decked out with the helmet and pants of the blue set (To replace my Divination questline reward helmet and a pair of pants I got from early on in the Netherwing line) and the shoulders and gloves of the S1 set, which is about all I could be bothered to farm before I realised that working towards the epic flying mount was a much better waste of my time.

Both sets have +35 resilience at 2/5, and both sets have a rather mediocre reduced cooldown on Concussive Shot (Blue) and Multi Shot (S1) at 4/5. +70 resilience or +35 and a second off a shot? Tough decision:PIt seems that the set was pretty much designed for folks like me, i.e. too lazy or stuck in a bad battlegroup to get the full S1 set, and need something to pad out the remaining slots. Misery is an aptly-named battlegroup if you're Horde.

Going back to the earlier discussion about the cash rewards from the upped daily limit, I've been struck by just how the change has made so many things... Well, affordable. I'm not terribly motivated, and generally have bad luck with drops anyway. If there's a farming guide out there that promises an easy 100g an hour, I'd follow it and only get 25g with my luck. I lose greed rolls, I lose need rolls, everyone else in an instance gets the better drops while I have to empty the trash out of my inventory. My main income is and always has been through certain payoffs - Namely, quests. Quests are a guaranteed source of cash, and I did pretty much the entirety of great 5200g grind for the epic flying mount (No way was I riding that ugly Sha'tari spacehopper just to save 40g) in daily quests that returned a total of about 75g per day.

A few days ago, after doing the basic Outland dailies for the Shattered Sun (Throne, Multiphase Readings, Nether Residue, and Sunfury Attack Plans - We hadn't reached phase 2 by then) I spent a pile of cash in the auction house buying enough Fel Armaments to almost get to exalted and the wrong friggin' gem to fill out the last slot in my new PvP helm (Not my fault the +8 strength shares the same icon as the +16 AP). Before doing the Shattered Sun quests on the isle, as well as my daily Netherwing fix, I had maybe 4g.

At the end of it all, as well as finishing some group quests in SMV (Varedis Must Be Stopped, Battle At Crimson Watch) I had about 300g. Wow.

The reason why everything is affordable is that inflation really hasn't hit the servers yet. In fact, a lot of stuff I'd buy isn't prone to inflation (Ammo, food, water, all of which a hunter needs plenty of stacks of) or is even actually cheaper than the prices I used to pay (Being exalted with at least three convenient Outland factions means I save a fair amount of money on repair bills). Granted, I never splurged enough at one time to prevent me from maintaining my daily upkeep, but my increased income essentially means those costs are negligible. A solid day's worth of dailies can bring in enough cash for about two or three respecs (Still doesn't stop the warriors from complaining), a single-man guild like myself can afford extra tabs on my essential guild bank.

Inflation hasn't hit though, as I said. The Fel Armaments I bought were the same price as they were before 2.4 went live, and as a result I now have enough dust I don't know what to do with. A single gem at 65g would have a fairly large chunk out of what I'd be earning that day, now I can actually afford to make a silly mistake like buying out the wrong gem. Another source of my income, selling Netherweave, is still a fairly steady price, swinging from between 2.5g to 3.5g, despite the fact that Netherweave is dreadfully common and everyone can now afford to pay a little extra.

Hell, I may be able to afford primals for the Netherstrike set I plan on building. The only real snag with that set is the Netherscales, which never seem to sell.

[Swiss Mercenary]

WOW Blue PvP gear is nice. Statistically of course, it's a huge downgrade from my T4/5 stuff, and when I work with the sockets they're going to get cheapo gems =p, but the resilience really does make up for it somehow. Those little numbers are magical. I bought a couple (the ones that were handy) before doing some lousy arena matches tonight, and this being my first time *in* the arena, I wasn't sure how much of a difference they made. On the other hand, just two pieces (plus the S1 gloves I got a while ago, Medallion of the Alliance, that trinket from Heroic Black Stalker and the Dagger from Thorngrin) made a huge difference, it seemed to me.

As a Tier 4.5 Enhancement shaman, I'm looking at the PvP blues, and the prospect of losing some odd 100 AP and 2% crit. Per piece. For some 20-30 resilience.

I'll just say that I'm not looking forward to that prospect. I'd rather get spiked down in a few of my matches before my healer can react (Although most of the time, that happens when he is silenced/interrupted, with plenty of room for killing me to spare), then be unable to kill enemy healers decked out in Season 2/3.

My paladin partner, on the other hand, bought all the pieces, which is a very good idea, seeing as how +heal is a lesser stat for PvP.

I went back to Magisters' Terrace, on Heroic this time. It's pretty fun on heroic, with better difficulty balancing in my opinion. I still died on Kael though...didn't heal myself at all during the first Gravity Lapse. Excellent! Not to mention the pull right before him. Arcs and I went down twice.:)

I've done heroic MT twice, with a Enh Shaman/Mage/Hunter/Tank/Paladin setup, and honestly, it didn't seem much harder then the regular. The trash got a bit of a buff to damage and hit points, and the second boss required some forethought, but that was it.

I'll have to say that I'm happy that I finally got an instance where Enh shamans are superior to rogues, in terms of benefit to the party. Between off-tanking, Earth Shock, and purge spam on the Sunstrider Warlocks/Mages, grounding and tremor totems, plus off-healing on the second boss... I bring quite a bit to the table.

While I was there, I got <span style="color:purple">[Vial of the Sunwell]. I'm wondering if anyone else has any experience with this trinket, since I'm really torn on whether it's good or not. Certainly, I love the mp5, as my gear and gems are tweaked much more toward +healing in general, and I tend to use Elixirs for another +50, at the cost of some potential mana regen in Flask of Mighty Restoration. The Use effect though...I haven't been able to get much out of it aside from another Healthstone for myself. It's a little awkward to use in raids on other people, from what I've seen so far, because odds are if they need it that badly somebody else is about to land one on them anyway. But hey, what do I know, I'm just a guy who tries to not stand in fire and presses the Chain Heal button a lot.

That trinket dropped both times I've ran the instance - it went to our holy paladin the first time, and to me for off-speccing the second time.

It's an amazing trinket for Paladins and Shamans. It gives you an insta-cast heal, that can be used on the move, or when silenced. Your +healing stacks with the 2000 heal, too, resulting in a +3000 insta-cast heal. It's like a Power Word: Shield on crack. While it's true that there isn't too much use for it in some of Tier 5, I could think of a few fights where it would be good - Vashj, Tidewalker, Leotheras (For when the whole raid stays in through a 10% whirlwind...), Lurker, Void Reaver, A'lar.

The reason why everything is affordable is that inflation really hasn't hit the servers yet.

That depends on what you're going for. Items like Fel Armaments are consumed at a low rate, and produced at a moderate rate. There is rarely a shortage of them.

On the other hand, on my server, gem prices sky-rocketed. Uncut metas are now at 150g, where they were 75g. Mystic Dawnstones are ~60g. Runed Living rubies went up to ~80g. Adamantite ore went from 20g/stack to 30g/stack (Although the latter could somewhat be contributed to one of my gold-selling guildmates to get sick of mining some odd 500 stacks/week.)

And I've been buying uncut gems, ores, and the rest like crazy - because once the badge vendor is unlocked, demand for them will go up dramatically. With the new dailies, people have a lot more gold to burn, and with sockets to be filled, I'm hoping for at least a 15g profit on each of my gems.

[Tal]

Making the FC's visible on the map is a great change, but the increased dmg was a bit much.

Ever tried to take the flag back from a T-6 geared prot warrior with 2 or more healers + a dps? If you had you'll see the reason for the change. If you haven't then know it was hellish.

[Monkey]

Other than a single evening's visit to Quel'Danas and MGT on my 70, most of my post-2.4 experience has been in a lowbie instancing team. We have a Paladin, a Priest, and a Druid (just pick up some DPS and go!). Here's what I've noticed:

Sweet New Blues: Many named whites in 2.3 are now relatively impressive BoP blues. Things like the
Bloody Brass Knuckles: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=7683 and the Snakeskin Bag: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=6446 (Strangely, I had the bag equipped in my bank and it unloaded itself into my character's free inventory)

Insufficient New Flightlines: I'm highly disappointed. Quel'Danas is now connected to the full complement of Alliance flightlines via IF, but traveling between Silvermoon and Undercity still requires that you use the transporter. Very, very lame. Did Metzen forget to check his notes again and imagine that Silvermoon is on a different continent or something?

[Shamago]

Insufficient New Flightlines: I'm highly disappointed. Quel'Danas is now connected to the full complement of Alliance flightlines via IF, but traveling between Silvermoon and Undercity still requires that you use the transporter. Very, very lame. Did Metzen forget to check his notes again and imagine that Silvermoon is on a different continent or something?

There IS a flightline between Undercity and Silvermoon. Unfortunately to use it you have to have Light's Hope Chapel, Zul'Aman, and obviously Silvermoon flight points discovered. I can't remember if you also need the Tranquillen flight point.

[Icebird]

The economy issue is an interesting one. On the one hand, the increase in number of daily quests (both in terms of quantity and the increased cap) will introduce a lot of extra money into the economy. On the other hand, supply of some items has also increased (primal fire, primal mana and fel lotus are three examples I can think of immediately). Obviously prices set by Blizzard are fixed, so things like talent respecs and flying mount purchases suddenly seem much more affordable.

In the auction house economy where players set the prices, the two forces I mentioned are working in opposition to each other. For some things this has meant that prices have stayed the same or had smaller changes that you might expect. For other items, the changes might be much more substantial.

As a herbalist/alchemist, its suddenly much more attractive to simply buy the herbs I need for raiding consumables that pick my own herbs, at least until I have a fast flying mount.

[Concillian]

The economy issue is an interesting one. On the one hand, the increase in number of daily quests (both in terms of quantity and the increased cap) will introduce a lot of extra money into the economy. On the other hand, supply of some items has also increased (primal fire, primal mana and fel lotus are three examples I can think of immediately). Obviously prices set by Blizzard are fixed, so things like talent respecs and flying mount purchases suddenly seem much more affordable.

There are a great many other items for which supply has increased.

I can speak for my personal behavior, but the addition of a daily quest for gatherers that gives SSO rep, I've been doing a LOT more mining and herbing than I usually do... a LOT. I'm apparently not alone, because despite how much more money some people have, and attitudes of raiders more willing to buy their mats, the prices of most of the herbs I sell on the AH has (generally) decreased. In some cases (mostly herbs available throughout outlands like dreaming glory and felweed) the decrease is very signficant.

The most interesting item I see in the AH is the Nether Vortex. At any point this can be an indicator of the value of badges, because from what I've seen this is the best "gold per badge" BoE item. In the past week the prices haven't stablized really (on Terenas anyway). I've seen from 300g -400g ish on the low end and 1500g on the high end per.

Currently raiding guilds who have a surplus of these are siphoning them off to the AH to make some cash. However, when the supply of these from guilds who no longer need them dry up, what will happen to the price of these? Will they stabilize because some people will trade badges for gold by buying these and selling them on the AH? Or will supply dry up and these will become more expensive?

[Icebird]

I found Dreaming Glory prices have been low ever since the 2.3 patch introduced the Mad Alchemist potion. I frequently have to price it below Felweed to move it on Malygos. I treat it as extra cash that my gatherer picks up while hunting for adamantite. In my experience Nightmare Vine and Netherbloom have been the "cash" crops, but keep an eye on Terocone prices.

My epic flyer equipped miner/herbalist completed the Nether Residue collection in one sweep on Nagrand. My slow-griffon riding herbalist priest (different server) is still sitting on 4/8 after about 4 days with the quest. With the current drop rates, the time-to-reward ratio just doesn't make it worth it.

[Kevin]

My epic flyer equipped miner/herbalist completed the Nether Residue collection in one sweep on Nagrand. My slow-griffon riding herbalist priest (different server) is still sitting on 4/8 after about 4 days with the quest. With the current drop rates, the time-to-reward ratio just doesn't make it worth it.

This has been my experience as well. I've yet to complete it on any toon. One of my miners got 3 stacks of adamantite and 1 of fel iron and still only got 7 residue. I'm not ever trying to complete it intentionally at those rates.

[NiteFox]

This has been my experience as well. I've yet to complete it on any toon. One of my miners got 3 stacks of adamantite and 1 of fel iron and still only got 7 residue. I'm not ever trying to complete it intentionally at those rates.

I usually couple Nether Residue with another quest or task. For instance, if I need Netherwing Flayer Hides, I take the Nether Residue quest as well, if I'm grinding Felboars for Fel Glands for A Slow Death, then skinning them will probably turn up enough residue. Otherwise, I head to Netherstorm and use the opportunity to grind a few Nether Dragonscales.

It's really a "buddy" quest more than anything. If you're doing something that has you skinning, mining, or er, herbing, then you may as well pick up the quest as well.