WoW - Massive 4.3 News Overload - Huge boost for casual/new/returning players.
Patch 4.3 Interview with Greg Street (Ghostcrawler)
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2463-Patch-4.3-Raid-Preview-Dragon-Soul
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2460-Patch-4.3-Dungeons-Preview-Part-One-End-Time
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2461-Patch-4.3-Dungeons-Preview-Part...
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2462-Patch-4.3-Dungeons-Preview-Part-Three-Hour-of-Twilight
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2459-Patch-4.3-Interview-with-Greg-Street
Below is a quick summary and the full thanks to Simca. Be sure to read it so that you don't miss anything! (Extra info via Joystiq, Eurogamer, TenTonHammer, and Tankspot)
Deathwing Raid
The new raid is called The Dragon Soul. It contains eight bosses, and boss 7 and 8 are both Deathwing.
There will be a mount reward for killing Deathwing.
Deathwing will only drop weapons.
Heroic Deathwing will eventually be made easier after the top guilds kill it so that more people can experience it.
Tier 13 will not be available at all from valor points.
The new legendaries are two daggers (main hand and offhand) that are only usable by all three Rogue specs. Combat Rogues will be made to use these daggers as well without a DPS loss. The questline will revolve around the pure black dragon (from the egg in the Badlands) and features several Rogue-centric elements.
Melee classes will be getting a buff that is only active in the new raid to help them compete with ranged classes.
New Five Man Heroics
You will enter the new 5-mans and raid in Caverns of Time.
The first new 5-man is called "Endtime" where Nozdormu will show players the future if Deathwing wins.
The second new 5-man, "Well of Eternity" is a journey into the past, the War of the Ancients specifically, to help Thrall recover the Dragon Soul to use against Deathwing.
The third new 5-man, called "Hour of Twilight", has players escorting Thrall in present day to Wyrmrest Temple, where the final battle against Deathwing will take place.
Looking for Raid
Looking for Raid probably won't share a lockout with Normal and Heroic raids.
Looking for Raid gear will be stronger than the new five man heroics, but weaker than normal raids.
Other
There will be raid melee buff across the board. The attack power buff will apply more to melee attack power than ranged attack power.
Tank rotation changes that are related to survivability won't be in this expansion.
Epic gems will drop in the new raid in Normal and Heroic only. Each player gets a geode when a boss is killed which has a small chance to contain an epic gem, most will have rare gems. It is rare enough to take all of 4.3 to replace all of your red rare quality gems with red epic gems.
Firelands was nerfed so that players could see the content and continue progression instead of hitting a wall in heroic modes.
"Quite a few" new profession recipes will be added.
Northrend will require 2/3rd of the experience it does now, making leveling alts faster.
Corrupted Ashbringer won't be available for transmogrification from any vendor.
Old PvP armor will come back for transmogrification.
Where does the gear fit in terms of the new 5-mans? Will they be like ZA and ZG were or will they be a bit lower… where will they fit?
Ghostcrawler: A little bit higher… we’re still debating the exact numbers but I think they’re probably slotting it maybe between Normal Firelands and Heroic Firelands. It will be slightly weaker than the Looking for Raid tier and obviously weaker than the remaining Deathwing raid tier.And what about Looking for Raid gear… how powerful will it be?
Ghostcrawler: Yeah, like I said, it should be slightly above the 5-player dungeon gear but not as powerful as the normal raid. The Deathwing raid is called The Dragon Soul; it should be weaker than The Dragon Soul tier.
Looks like unless you're working on Heroic Tier content/gear for 4.2, you're not gonna have much of a leverage in terms of gear in 4.3.
BF3, BC2, SC2, Blog
Which also means, people can easily dip back into playing the game from virtually scratch in 4.3 and be competent and enjoy just about all of 4.3 has to offer.
BF3, BC2, SC2, Blog
I admit to being baffled to the no-gear-from-valor-points change.
If there are improved drops from the new 5-man dungeons, well, OK, I'm cool with that.
If the new gear is solely from raids, well, huh. That's a show-stopper, at least in my casual view of the WoW world.
I've played WoW with undergeared toons for a long time, but it's nice getting some decent upgrades, even if it takes me longer to pile up the points.
Anyone know the thinking behind the change?
BHA: Jorrn | Lil' I
It's not no gear, it's no tier pieces (ie, pieces that offer a set bonus).
So, quite the opposite; it should actually be easier to get decently geared off valor points alone, you just won't have access to the "prestige" (and and extra DPS from set bonuses) associated with a genuine tier piece.
zeroKFE on: XBL | Steam | WoW-BHA | PSN | Origin
Only set pieces cannot be bought with valor. Other pieces on the same iLvl that are not set pieces can be bought. At least that is my understanding.
edit - Damn you Zero.
Gotcha, I think. Thanks for digging that out, Zero.
I'm still not getting why Blizzard wants to make all of this so blasted complicated.
The barriers to raiding these days are very, very low. Hell, even I've been through (and completed!) every Cata raid short of Firelands.
But, hey, change.
BHA: Jorrn | Lil' I
Now you should be able to do Firelands too. The 20 percent damage/health nerfs should be massive.
BF3, BC2, SC2, Blog
While I can't say I'm thrilled that they're making Tier 13 gear raid drop only, the fact that there's now Tier 13(LFR), T13(N) and T13(H) is something I can deal with more or less, doubly so since LFR doesn't carry a lockout or lock you out of Normal and Heroics.
Coldstream wrote:
XBL
Steam
On the contrary, I'm thrilled that it is raid only drop. Prestige! Prestige! : )
On a more serious note, well, it's sort of double edged sword.
////////steam profile.////////wow character.////////last.fm profile.
4.3 patch notes are out.
It's going to be a thick patch: Transmorg, Northrend leveling buff, buff to melee (+20 percent from Blessing of Might, Trueshot Aura, etc.), etc. etc. etc.
A couple of minor yet interesting changes: Player names and guild names can no longer have accents over the letters (existing names will be grandfathered, apparently), and reforging will be available only in SW and Org (boo).
Also, Grinds better start shoring up support. Muhahahaha ...
BHA: Jorrn | Lil' I
See, I raided back when tier gear was dropped from bosses and raid only; I can't say I miss that aspect of it. I loved the raids themselves, although getting 40 folks together could be a pain.
Coldstream wrote:
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Steam
I put a few of my toons on the PTR to try out transmogrification. It was pretty cool and easy to use. I was also suitably impressed by the creativity of players.
I wish they would patch that feature in immediately.
Anyone who posted in this thread is a racist.*
*Except me. - Certis
Is there any reason to return to Darnassus at this point? I say no.
"Antique Road Trip U.S.A. for $3 (use coupon code, 'what mistakes have I made to end up here?')" ~Lobstermobster
Not to mention Exodar.
Random thoughts wrote:
Steam - Denikker
At this point, Stormwind and Orgrimmar are the new expansion hubs, and there's really no reason to go anywhere else, citywise.
Coldstream wrote:
XBL
Steam
Just saw this melee buff...pvp on a resto druid will be even less fun. I didn't think that'd be possible
XBL: Xosa17
PSN: Xosa17
Which is a shame, because of my dwarf-crush on Ironforge. I'm still hearthed there, mostly because I can get to Dalaran easily enough (thanks to the ring).
If you ever get tired of SW, don't forget the triple-portal trick (mage area of any home city --> Blasted Lands --> Hellfire --> Stormwind).
BHA: Jorrn | Lil' I
This impeachment thing looks really appealing. Who says that I was not the one to suggest such a thing to blizzard ?
Tundra= WOW Blackhand: GWJ Alliance Guildmaster (semi retired)- Grinds (druid) Grindars (paly), Grinderz (DK). SWTOR: Grinds. League of Legends Grinds2GWJ.
"What I lack in skill, I make up for in comedic relief, and I'm really funny."
Slick!
At last we can oust the despot.
steam | Muh twitters!
Yes, the competition should be fierce for the prestigious title of "Guild Scapegoat"
It's not 4.3 yet, but Hallow's End starts today with new loot, new achievements and three pets.
Also note that the holiday has gone to a daily/token system like Noblegarden and Midsummer Fire Festival.
Bonus: Those @#$%^&!! masks are now vendor items in addition to being random drops.
BHA: Jorrn | Lil' I
4.3 broke Auctioneer. None of my other addons seem to be having problems: Altoholic, Gatherer, Quartz, DBM
Steam: badkenbad (a.k.a. _/\ Carch, Chuda, Jritsa, Lunui, Ritsar…)
Shalalm Baskur
Same. My package (nUI) seemed to have survived intact. (Which is somewhat surprising; its author disappeared off the grid a few months ago, and the whole thing is on life support. Anyhoo ...)
Don't forget to update DBM so you'll have the new instance and raid info.
Unrelated: I'm in the market for a blacksmith (Carg?) who can make the complete Vicious Pyrium (PvP plate) set. If you had the Bloodthirsty Pyrium recipes, they got upgraded overnight. I've got the mats.
BHA: Jorrn | Lil' I
DBM's been pretty borked up as well, with several updates. Most other things are functioning fine, although there's an addon somewhere that's preventing the game from loading. I haven't figured out which one is doing that though.
As for the patch itself? Sweet mercy, but the DS 5 mans are a huge boost to your iLvL. My Shaman went from 362 average to 376 in a couple days, with equipped iLvL at 372 for Resto and 374 for Enhance. Just crazy.
Raid finder is also a very workable addition. I'm not sure I like the loot restriction; I think you should be able to run em until you get something to make up for being able to need anything you can use. I ran it with a couple guildies yesterday and one of em lucked out and got *2* tier pieces from Yor'sahj. The fights however, are pretty easy provided folks pay attention to things like not standing in bad and kill order.
Coldstream wrote:
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Steam
Two I know that are causing me problems are Altaholic and Auctionator. Don't think the latter causes a failure to load, though I'm pretty sure the former does. Most of my mods are working well enough at this point aside from those. Looks like I've been able to turn pretty much everything else back on though, at least as of yesterday. Just noticed that Blizzard has changed enough stuff again that it turned off "load out of date addons" again.
I'll second that. My main was already all 378s in her tanking set and probably around 370-372 in her dps set, but even so I still picked up two slight upgrades to the tanking set (slightly better itemized) plus three outright upgrades to the dps set along with one or two slightly better itemized pieces. Can't wait to get my alts rocketing up.
The two that kept crashing my system were Lightheaded and Mounted (random mount generator).
That which does not kill you, still hurts like Hell. - Anonymous Soldier
None of us is as dumb as ALL of us. - Anonymous Staff Officer
Veni, Vici, Ridebam, Discedebam - "I came, I saw, I laughed, I left"
I've had no problems with Auctionator; in fact it was the only add-on I have that wasn't even marked out of date by 4.3. Everything else seems to be working fine too after I enabled "load out of date add-ons".
What part of "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" don't you understand?
Auctioneer was causing loads of problems for me when I installed it today, but the problems were isolated only to the auction window itself (making it completely unusable). Sounds like the Auctioneer team is working on a fix for it now; they're just waiting for some static loot data figures from Wowhead...
Steam: Merphle | XBL: Merphle | 3DS: 4296-3918-8336
re: Auctioneer: Go to the actual Auctioneer site (not Curse; this one) and grab the beta version (5.13). It has worked for me just fine this week -- scan worked, posting worked.
By the time I say this there might be a release version on Curse, but check the Auctioneer site first.
I've gotten a couple of minor errors on log-in with my UI (nUI), which is on life support anyway. Updated versions of Bagnon, Chocolate Bar, Skillet and Skada all seem to be OK. I've read where Carbonite has been an issue for some, but I don't use it and can't confirm it.
BHA: Jorrn | Lil' I
Yeah, I saw that recommendation on the Curse forum... I'm fine waiting for the final release; I haven't been using Auctioneer this long -- I can wait another few days.
Steam: Merphle | XBL: Merphle | 3DS: 4296-3918-8336