WoW: Battle for Azeroth (8.3)

I think it's an issue with the antechanber w the reward quests and the city instance being the same location as far as the game is concerned. That tripped me up as well.

It's also worth nothing that you do NOT have to defeat Thrall or alleria to get the upgrade items you need for you cloak from the side areas, so you if ythink you can push to do the second one but won;t have enough to beat the last boss, it;'s better to get the cloak upgrade and lose out on the 420 gear piece than the reverse.

On the bright side, once I reached the first two-page quest, I did (just barely) manage to pick up both pages in one run on my first try.

thrawn82 wrote:

It's also worth nothing that you do NOT have to defeat Thrall or alleria to get the upgrade items you need for you cloak from the side areas, so you if ythink you can push to do the second one but won;t have enough to beat the last boss, it;'s better to get the cloak upgrade and lose out on the 420 gear piece than the reverse.

That's very good to know. My wife and I just did the Valley of Spirits, The Drag, and Thrall pretty handily, but any serious mistakes would have stopped us finishing.

CaptainCrowbar wrote:

On the bright side, once I reached the first two-page quest, I did (just barely) manage to pick up both pages in one run on my first try.

well done! it took me a couple tries (and some serious talent rework) before I could reliably get two tainted regions in one run.

I love beastmaster hunter too much to switch specs, but it's not really optimal this patch.

From what Ive heard, beast master hunter is one of the strongest builds in the visions due to the mobility + tank pet.
I’m really struggling with my arcane mage though, my substantially worse geared bm hunter gets through much faster. Still only clearing one area + thrall on both though.

One class tier list for anyone interested.

Trying to get my Demon hunter geared up

I will say, as a kind of proof of concept for what Torghast will be next expansion, Visions intrigue me.

That said, the negative affixes for the zones so far are almost entirely misses for me... at least the ones we've DONE so far. Bugs? Fine, whatever. Would be irritating as a caster, but as a melee (Havoc), it's fine. The imaginary to real fire patches? HECKING IRRITATING AS HELL. The circles for hard zones? Would be better if they didn't proc out of combat, being on a mount and having 0 reaction time sucks. The constant slowing? Irritating as hell for SW because the mage quarter boss is basically "how much running can we make you do?".

But, overall, I like the idea of them, will have to see how the random layout/enemies/objectives part plays out now... and hopefully Torghast isn't as gated as the Visions are. If I could, I'd likely have already capped out my research tree to do this as much as I could because it intrigues me. Instead, I'm locked behind this many attempts where at least for some of them (and sadly, a growing number of them until after I guess next week) are specifically "cloak focused" meaning I can't really experiment without risking wasting some of my vessels.

Demosthenes wrote:

The imaginary to real fire patches? HECKING IRRITATING AS HELL.

Once I figured out I could delay the trigger by standing still that got a lot easier to deal with. At least in the Dwarven District. The Trade District can eat a bag of Hell. Also it turns out that Whirling Dragon Punch counts as moving.

I feel like going someplace the WoW community managers will see and asking if we could please get a corrupted version of Thunder Bluff where we have the imaginary fires on the little rope bridges. But A) I can't be arsed and B) I'm afraid they wouldn't know I was being sarcastic and actually do it...

It's annoying as a DH when moving is required for me to pick up soul fragments to fuel my abilities. Try to minorly sidestep to keep my Demonic Meta going strong with spenders, suddenly end up like 20 yards past the mob stuck in a space because there's so many fiddly spots like that in both zones.

yea i deeply hate the fire jump corruption. the other ones are fine, bugs are my fav

I did, with my usual partner, get our first 5 chest Vision done last night... then with the first masked unlocked, got the other two faceless masks out of Orgrimmar last night. Was good fun, though I think the rewards system for the challenge is largely unbalanced there. A mask like the first one giving you 50% of your max corruption, an doing the ENTIRE PLACE with that mask, which is a tall order (we didn't even come close, we got 3 objectives done with the mask on), is a 5 ilevel boost to the end reward. Kind of feels like every bonus and every mask should increase by 5 ilevels rather than just a flat +5 for all five bonuses, then +5 per mask... but with the added health and damage on top of the mask modifiers (which that alone feels unnecessary, we're already racing against a smaller clock and now everything lasts longer too? Sigh)… that 5 ilevel boost for a massive difficulty boost just feels underwhelming. Me and my friend are still going to be pushing them for toys, pets, and more mementos and such.... but it does seem weird that the rewards just feel... stingy by comparison.

Fire Jump isn't so bad in the Dwarven District where you can pretty much see the enemy packs and the streets are wide enough to maneuver. In the trade district with its narrow streets and enemy placement it's just too easy to get punted around a blind corner into a fresh set of enemies. And you can't drop the orb in-combat to regain sanity.

Well, 5 chested Stormwind 3 times tonight and got both of SW's masks after. Productive night for sure. Next week we're onto the "hard zone" upgrades... which just means that the next couple of weeks we can be more lax with our keys to get more mementos rather than hoarding to make sure we get our cloak upgrades.

Nice work! I've only been soloing mine, and the best that I can do so far is 4 chests. And this week the mage district is painful with the movement debuff.

I find ogrimir is objectively easier to complete than stormwind, regardless of the debuffs involved.

thrawn82 wrote:

I find ogrimir is objectively easier to complete than stormwind, regardless of the debuffs involved.

I disagree due to one component, the distances involved. With there being a constant drain, every extra yard you have to travel is less time you have. Especially for the Lost area near Zekhan's area where the bonus objective is a kill monster's fill the bar where the boss spawns back where you enter, meaning you have to traverse that zone effectively twice.

It also has probably the most annoying boss ability that's added to Thrall with that shield that bursts if you don't burst it down. Me and my friend can usually burst that down on the zone boss, we have never once beat the timer on Thrall on that stupid cast... which usually makes any run that includes it that much tighter with that big sanity burst.

Demosthenes wrote:

I disagree due to one component, the distances involved.

I was about to respond with total confusion, then I remembered that I play a Monk and my wife is a Druid.

There’s also the fact that I’m a lot more familiar with Org than Stormwind.

Ugh. my power flickered during one of my runs last night. The slightest disconnect triggers the ned of a run, with no rewards and i'm pretty sure blizzards standing policy on on losing out on runs from disconnects is still "no potion refund because f*ck you thats why" so on the week that requires 8 deals i'm probably not getting my cloak upgrade. *grumble*

I'm still only reliably getting 2 bonus objectives done per run, i think i'm just not laying out the dps like i should, and places like the trade distict in stromwind i find a lot more punishing than the orgrimir objectives, because you have to run around the district twice, once for the kills and again to tag the cages.

Yeah, a gameplay feature so vulnerable to disconnects is kinda bad.

Last wednesday I first had a "DC" (well, seemed like one of the "oh no, your character was thrown into the air, and the server cant handle it, so we will kick you from the game"-bugs) on my hunter. Losing my only chance for a new item reward this week.
Then shortly after I DC'ed (even from the Battle.net launcher too - but my internet was just fine everywhere else) on my mage, on its best run yet.
Kinda made me feel silly for playing this patch at all.

Sounds like very similar gameplay is the main thing in the Shadowlands expansion (the "Tower" thing). Seems like there really should be some kind of DC protection, where you can keep playing from where you left off. I can understand not wanting to give back your key on DC, since that could easily be exploited.

Shadout wrote:

Yeah, a gameplay feature so vulnerable to disconnects is kinda bad.

Last wednesday I first had a "DC" (well, seemed like one of the "oh no, your character was thrown into the air, and the server cant handle it, so we will kick you from the game"-bugs) on my hunter. Losing my only chance for a new item reward this week.
Then shortly after I DC'ed (even from the Battle.net launcher too - but my internet was just fine everywhere else) on my mage, on its best run yet.
Kinda made me feel silly for playing this patch at all.

Sounds like very similar gameplay is the main thing in the Shadowlands expansion (the "Tower" thing). Seems like there really should be some kind of DC protection, where you can keep playing from where you left off. I can understand not wanting to give back your key on DC, since that could easily be exploited.

It's not like giving your key back would put you ahead of anything: it zeros out your rewards when you DC as well.

Sure, but if you are failing your clear for some reason, you could fake a DC to get a second chance.

Vargen wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

I disagree due to one component, the distances involved.

I was about to respond with total confusion, then I remembered that I play a Monk and my wife is a Druid.

There’s also the fact that I’m a lot more familiar with Org than Stormwind.

I actually think it's less that and more that everything is just more spread out in Org than SW, with the exception of the Mage zone. In SW's zones, I can basically Fel Rush from one pack to the next, minus a few gaps. In Org, I'm frequently getting on my mount due to the long paths even INSIDE a zone. SW, the only place I really do that is when it's time to go thru the canals... and even then, only when going to the mediums as the hard zones have the eyeball tentacles to kill along the way.

Other thing I "discovered" this week that annoys me... the affixes stay with you until you enter a new zone with its affix... or it's "main area"... so it's possible to get new fire feet, stun clones, whatever on the paths around the canals even when you're not "in the zone" and they wouldn't start until you passed the gates, normally.

Well, we got a 1 mask full clear done yesterday, and by done, I mean, we had two orbs left when we hit Thrall. We used one to top off, waited, then popped the other one right before starting the fight (which actually made it MESSIER as a result, but was still funny).

Burned Bridge is pretty easy with only one or two people, hard to screw that up, only "hard" part is the extra health and damage... especially in Orgrimmar that has a lot more open space to work with.

Fun thing I didn't remember, clearing a mask gives you a mask xmog that's universal cosmetic. Basically it's a recolor without the hat the Alliance side cloth heads from leveling/questing/emissaries for zones. Think next week, since again, we have a pretty limited "need to complete" list of just two hard zones, we're gonna push up to like 2 or 3 masks.

i guess i need to try to find a group folks to run with. i am still hitting a wall at two bonus goals going solo

Hooray!! i finally got my amulet up to 75 for my third minor essence, and then got my first full full clear on a vision!!

Nice. I have burned out on the patch. I really like the visions. I really dont like farming the currency for getting into visions.

I just did a 2 mask solo clear in the weekend. Pretty happy with that, and got a good upgrade.
It was a clutch win at the end - I ran out of sanity on Thrall, but I still had my free re-rez available.

I still haven't figured out a good way to kill Rexxar without loosing a ton of sanity. He's my biggest roadblock for the Orgrimmar visions.

I play bear tank so it's nice having the reduced enemy health for playing in tank role. I pretty much only play WoW as a single player game now - I haven't raided for a couple of expansions.

Buzzrick wrote:

I just did a 2 mask solo clear in the weekend. Pretty happy with that, and got a good upgrade.
It was a clutch win at the end - I ran out of sanity on Thrall, but I still had my free re-rez available.

I still haven't figured out a good way to kill Rexxar without loosing a ton of sanity. He's my biggest roadblock for the Orgrimmar visions.

I play bear tank so it's nice having the reduced enemy health for playing in tank role. I pretty much only play WoW as a single player game now - I haven't raided for a couple of expansions.

i;m a hunter, so i have a bit of range capability, for rexxar the times i;ve beat him it just so happened to was running up on the bottom of my sanity tank as i got to him, so i popped the sanity orb thing and then immediately pulled him while staying in the buff. focus down the boars while their charges couldn't effect my sanity then safety dance w the slimes until he went down

on a side note: i just got the bottom tier talent in the research tree thing, how often does it proc during a run? does it have a big effect on sanity surviveability or is it just a nice occasional perk?

thrawn82 wrote:
Buzzrick wrote:

I just did a 2 mask solo clear in the weekend. Pretty happy with that, and got a good upgrade.
It was a clutch win at the end - I ran out of sanity on Thrall, but I still had my free re-rez available.

I still haven't figured out a good way to kill Rexxar without loosing a ton of sanity. He's my biggest roadblock for the Orgrimmar visions.

I play bear tank so it's nice having the reduced enemy health for playing in tank role. I pretty much only play WoW as a single player game now - I haven't raided for a couple of expansions.

i;m a hunter, so i have a bit of range capability, for rexxar the times i;ve beat him it just so happened to was running up on the bottom of my sanity tank as i got to him, so i popped the sanity orb thing and then immediately pulled him while staying in the buff. focus down the boars while their charges couldn't effect my sanity then safety dance w the slimes until he went down

on a side note: i just got the bottom tier talent in the research tree thing, how often does it proc during a run? does it have a big effect on sanity surviveability or is it just a nice occasional perk?

Pretty decent effect if you use it/can survive bigger pulls. Getting a proc before the "tossing" guy in the NOT Rexxar Hard Zone of Org is handy as that fight is a lot of "unavoidable" sanity damage throughout... but having Gift up for it means that all that unavoidable sanity damage is suddenly no sanity damage. Also handy on, say, Rexxar, if you know it's off CD as you can focus down boars to get a "free time" period of time to just burn him instead... or at least use it to stem the tide a bit.

EDIT: Can't link it now, but I'll try to remember post-raid tonight, there's some decent Weak Auras up for it on WAGO, which show not only it proccing but sound off to let you know when it expires and then shows its internal CD, so you know not to expect one during certain times.

Big thing from an experimental run I did for 5 masks (having seen heroic/mythic-ish folks doing it and basically being Heroic geared now)…. and a big part of it is learning the potions too... not just avoiding the "bad" potion, but also picking up any goods you can and getting the other stat/damage buff potions you can along the way.

Been pretty good about the rare NPC buffs in Org, and my normal path for SW gets me past one of the better ones early, but the potions I'm still failing on, especially for Org where the NPC that highlights the bad potion is inside one of the huts on the left and I'm used to going down the right because I do rightside first.

All-in-One Vision WeakAura

Includes your actual sanity number, the time remaining before you time out with ticking sanity damage alone, a tracker for how much sanity was lost due to ticks/hits of drain from mobs/masks/etc... a tracker for Gift of the Titans to show active procs and how long it'll be on CD once it's ended, and a potion vial tracker. I haven't had a chance to "test" that part yet, but the rest is solid.