WoW: Cataclysm - SPOILERS WITHIN

Not that anyone's doing arenas, but the latest from Blizzard is that the current Arena season won't end until 6/28 at the earliest.

Unrelated: the Fire Festival starts Tuesday. It's my last holiday achievement until I get that crazy drake. Finally.

P.S. The Fire Festival dailies and bonfires are a great source of calcium, protein and guild rep, fyi.

P.P.S.: If anyone wants a shot at Ahune over the next couple of weeks, holler at me and I'll get my undergeared tank @ss in the insta-queue. The first go around, you get blossoms, gold, JP and a shot at a pretty good cloak. (By "pretty good," I mean "pretty good for me." If you're raiding regularly, it's probably not much of an upgrade.)

I did Ahune last night -- he's been tuned up for 85s. If everyone in your group can pull a reasonable (5K+ or so) amount of DPS, it probably isn't too bad. But I ended up in a group where two of the three DPSers (me in ret and a cat drood) were pulling only about 3K. When the drood dropped group, we ended up with a hunter who did a more-than-adequate 7.5K. We survived three waves but got 'er done.

Enix wrote:

P.S. The Fire Festival dailies and bonfires are a great source of calcium, protein and guild rep, fyi.

QFT. I did all of the Eastern Kingdom plus Northrend fires yesterday as well as stealing the flames of Undercity and New Elf City. I made about 2/3 of a level in experience and about 1000 guild rep (with the 50% bonus tabard). Knocking off Kalimdor and Outlands should yield about the same amount again. WoWHead has a pretty solid guide to the quests and bonfires.

Enix wrote:

P.P.S.: If anyone wants a shot at Ahune over the next couple of weeks, holler at me and I'll get my undergeared tank @ss in the insta-queue. The first go around, you get blossoms, gold, JP and a shot at a pretty good cloak. (By "pretty good," I mean "pretty good for me." If you're raiding regularly, it's probably not much of an upgrade.)

I did Ahune last night -- he's been tuned up for 85s. If everyone in your group can pull a reasonable (5K+ or so) amount of DPS, it probably isn't too bad. But I ended up in a group where two of the three DPSers (me in ret and a cat drood) were pulling only about 3K. When the drood dropped group, we ended up with a hunter who did a more-than-adequate 7.5K. We survived three waves but got 'er done.

Hope I can get to 85 during the duration of the event. The scythe looks like a nice endgame starter weapon and it would be nice to finally have a title on my Durid.

Edit: almost forgot - $%#*! the torch juggling daily. I don't remember the quest being this bad two years ago, but it's bugged as crazy. I know all the bells and whistles like watch the shadow, run a little ahead of the shadow, switch to a top-down view, turn with your mouse, don't do it in Darnassues etc. And yet it took me 10 tries to get the 4 repeat initial quest and I just abandoned the daily after about 40 tries. Having a run speed increase (Hunter, Feral, Retribution, boot enchant etc) helps a little, but even then the torch may be tossed into a new direction while still halfway in the air or just explode a few yards away from its actual shadow. Don't waste your time with it.

After the news of 600k decrease in subscribers a few months back, does anyone want to bet what the big number will be after Cata is released in China next month?

I think it's safe to assume they'll go back up to 12 million. Maybe even 12.5.

Luggage wrote:

Edit: almost forgot - $%#*! the torch juggling daily. ... Don't waste your time with it.

QFT. I've done it in IF on off times, and I've actually done it a couple of times, but it's still a hassle. Not worth the 5 blossoms.

I need 400 blossoms for the gear to do the achievement and another 300 for the pet. That's 750.

Rough back-of-the-envelope calculation (I saw it on another Fire Festival thread at Wowhead) says the bonfire honoring/bonfire dousing quotes will give you about 680 blossoms. The two easy dailies (the torch-tossing and the one in Hellfire) will give you 15 blossoms. A successful Ahune run yields another 12 or so, I think.

TL,DR: If you're shooting for 750 blossoms, you can skip the torch juggling daily as long as you're doing the other two.

P.S. If you want some free honor, camp the bonfire in IF and wait for the Horde to come to you. There's even an achievement for knocking off 50 of 'em in a home city. I picked off 4 last night.

Enix wrote:
Luggage wrote:

Edit: almost forgot - $%#*! the torch juggling daily. ... Don't waste your time with it.

QFT. I've done it in IF on off times, and I've actually done it a couple of times, but it's still a hassle. Not worth the 5 blossoms.

Rotate your camera to point directly at the ground, and just chase the torch's shadow. It's actually not too hard if you do it that way, especially if you have any sort of run speed increase. It's still good to do it on off times though, last night in SW some asshat on a dragon was running around in circles in the SW torch juggling area.

Scratched wrote:

After the news of 600k decrease in subscribers a few months back, does anyone want to bet what the big number will be after Cata is released in China next month?

Kind of ironic that the game has been toned down to be more accessible, but they're losing subscribers.

Luggage wrote:

Hope I can get to 85 during the duration of the event. The scythe looks like a nice endgame starter weapon and it would be nice to finally have a title on my Durid.

Edit: almost forgot - $%#*! the torch juggling daily.

You can actually queue for Ahune at 84. The staff will be okay for a fresh 84-85, but overall it's pretty meh, since for some reason it doesn't have any Int on it at all, and that's the most desirable stat for any caster. The cloaks, on the other hand, are pretty solid for their levels.

As for the torches, I do it in Exodar. The shadows they cast while they're flying around are pretty easy to see on whatever weird naaru surface the ship is made of, but even more importantly, there's never anyone else there.

Hope I can get to 85 during the duration of the event. The scythe looks like a nice endgame starter weapon and it would be nice to finally have a title on my Durid.

Don't bother with the scythe. It's pretty much worthless because it doesn't have any intellect on it. A 346 blue-quality main hand/offhand combo is better.

Hehe.

Seriously, it's crap.

The Very Manly Staff(http://www.wowhead.com/item=63789) is much better because of the intellect, and it's fairly easy to get from questing.

cube wrote:

I got the staff last night. It's pretty much worthless because I'm a protection paladin who can't use it. An offhand fish would be better.

FTFY.

On the plus side, I got the tanking cloak (I had to need roll against a holy paladin, who must have needed it for his offspec), and the staff sells for 42 gold. Not an unprofitable outing.

4.2 patch notes wrote:

You can reorganize your characters on the character select screen

I don't know how I missed that. The OCD part of me gives this a +10.

Enix wrote:
4.2 patch notes wrote:

You can reorganize your characters on the character select screen

I don't know how I missed that. The OCD part of me gives this a +10.

I missed this as well, but upon seeing you point it out, I logged to do just that.

AnimeJ wrote:
Enix wrote:
4.2 patch notes wrote:

You can reorganize your characters on the character select screen

I don't know how I missed that. The OCD part of me gives this a +10.

I missed this as well, but upon seeing you point it out, I logged to do just that.

It works well. Just click on a character name and use the arrows. Whee!!

*ahem*

So ... how is 4.2 working for everyone? Thing patched up just fine and seemed playable. Auctioneer was a little wonky this morning. Might actually have to break down and convert completely to Auctionator.

Enix wrote:

So ... how is 4.2 working for everyone? Thing patched up just fine and seemed playable. Auctioneer was a little wonky this morning. Might actually have to break down and convert completely to Auctionator.

Auctioneer's always a little wonky just after a patch, but so are half my other add-ons. I think it was GatherMate that was spamming my chat window while I was on the Thrall quest and got to the Fire part in the Molten Front, because there was "no data" for that zone in the system. So it literally spammed a system message two or three times every second. It was pretty annoying. Usually in a week or two everything'll be fixed.

Other than that, though, things actually seemed pretty smooth. The servers were stable, and I even know people who raided last night without any issues (well, besides constant death and inability to actually down any bosses, but you'll always have those).

For anyone who's interested in PvP, the Bloodthirsty sets are now craftable. It's i358 gear, and two piece give a not insignificant +400 resilience bonus.

I can't tell if you'll be able to get the items cheap if you're gearing up or if you'll be able to make a fortune off of them if you're a smith/leatherworker/tailor.

I bought the plate (ret) boots this morning on the AH for 25G, which is *way* below materials cost of two Hardened Elementium to get the recipe and 12 elementium and 10 volatile fire just to make the boots.

I'm hoping some other morons folks dump the rest of the set on the AH soon.

Enix wrote:

I'm hoping some other morons folks dump the rest of the set on the AH soon.

Or if you have mats or can buy them cheaper, you could ask some of the morons folks in the guild who already have all the patterns - like myself - to make you some.

Are those items also decent as a starter gear for running level 85 instances and heroics?

Enix wrote:

For anyone who's interested in PvP, the Bloodthirsty sets are now craftable. It's i358 gear, and two piece give a not insignificant +400 resilience bonus.

I can't tell if you'll be able to get the items cheap if you're gearing up or if you'll be able to make a fortune off of them if you're a smith/leatherworker/tailor.

I bought the plate (ret) boots this morning on the AH for 25G, which is *way* below materials cost of two Hardened Elementium to get the recipe and 12 elementium and 10 volatile fire just to make the boots.

I'm hoping some other morons folks dump the rest of the set on the AH soon.

Last seasons pvp gear is now craftable? Or does my reading comprehension suck?

Keldar, your snark is up there with your efficiency. Yes, I'd like me some hot fresh PvP gear. I'll look for you online this week or weekend.

@ Luggage: I might get some leet hate for this, but yes, it's great starter gear. Beyond great, imho. In my current PvP set, which is short on Bloodthirsty gear but long on the crafted Pvp gear before that one, I was able to hit between 4K and 5K as a paladin tank on Ahune, the holiday boss. That's not outstanding by any means, but I was happy with it because (a) that was good for me, considering, and (b) it got the job done. I can only imagine that five pieces of this set will be even better.

That said, serious raiders will laugh at all the resilience on your gear (I'm pretty sure you can't reforge it), and you can probably get better PvE gear pretty quickly if you just run some instances.

mindset.threat wrote:

Last seasons pvp gear is now craftable? Or does my reading comprehension suck?

Yes, last season's PvP gear (the stuff you bought with honor) is now craftable. Here's the Bloodthirsty Pyrium plate for paladins. Beautiful, ain't it?

Also, too: Weapons will be available for honor points for the first time in a long time. The one catch is that you have to earn a certain amount of HPs (like 18K or so) before you're eligible to buy 'em. It's probably faster to grind arenas and rated BGs if you want PvP weapons, but there you go.

Enix wrote:
mindset.threat wrote:

Last seasons pvp gear is now craftable? Or does my reading comprehension suck?

Yes, last season's PvP gear (the stuff you bought with honor) is now craftable. Here's the Bloodthirsty Pyrium plate for paladins. Beautiful, ain't it?

Also, too: Weapons will be available for honor points for the first time in a long time. The one catch is that you have to earn a certain amount of HPs (like 18K or so) before you're eligible to buy 'em. It's probably faster to grind arenas and rated BGs if you want PvP weapons, but there you go.

Interesting. I resubbed over the weekend and dusted off a holy pally thats been sitting at 75 for well over a year, plus I already have the mats for the bloodthirsty set. About the weapons...what are HPs? Honor points? I'm a little slow today

HPs = honor points, yes.

I might be speaking out of my butt on weapons, though. Everything on wowhead still shows weapons as being sold for conquest points. But the change (weapons for HP) might not take effect until the end of Season 9 (which is next Tuesday) or the start of Season 10 (which is the Tuesday after that).

Well, not exactly. It's the free trial with the time limit removed, so there are still a lot of restrictions in place.

Blizzard wrote:

The following restrictions are placed on all Trial Accounts:

  • A level cap of 20.
  • A maximum of 10 gold.
  • Trade skills are capped at 100 ranks.
  • Inability to trade via the auction house, mailbox, or player-to-player.
  • In-Game public chat channels will be unavailable. (Players will still be able to communicate using say, party, or whispers).
  • Characters will be unable to create or join existing guilds.
  • Accounts will no longer be able to whisper other players unless they have been added to those players' friends lists or have received a whisper from them first.
  • Characters will not be able to invite, or join parties with other players above level 20.
  • Voice Chat is disabled on trial accounts.
  • Realms with login queues will give priority to customers with retail accounts.
  • Will not be eligible for any Character Transfer service.
Enix wrote:

@ Luggage: I might get some leet hate for this, but yes, it's great starter gear. Beyond great, imho. In my current PvP set, which is short on Bloodthirsty gear but long on the crafted Pvp gear before that one, I was able to hit between 4K and 5K as a paladin tank on Ahune, the holiday boss. That's not outstanding by any means, but I was happy with it because (a) that was good for me, considering, and (b) it got the job done. I can only imagine that five pieces of this set will be even better.

That said, serious raiders will laugh at all the resilience on your gear (I'm pretty sure you can't reforge it), and you can probably get better PvE gear pretty quickly if you just run some instances.

I don't know about reforging, but using Ahune as a baseline isn't the best example. I too can hit 5k DPS on Ahune wearing much, much lower level gear; Gaudin is currently sitting on an average ilvl of 330 or so. So, if you're aiming to do non-heroics, then it might not be too bad. But if you're after heroics, gear for heroics. If you're after PvP, gear for PvP.

Enix wrote:

Keldar, your snark is up there with your efficiency. Yes, I'd like me some hot fresh PvP gear. I'll look for you online this week or weekend.

...

That said, serious raiders will laugh at all the resilience on your gear (I'm pretty sure you can't reforge it), and you can probably get better PvE gear pretty quickly if you just run some instances.

My snark, efficiency, and status as a serious raider will all laugh at the resilience on your gear if you're trying to do heroics.

Anime's got the right of it. It's okay for normal mode dungeons. They're not horridly difficult and Bliz didn't build them intending everyone to have the best possible gear. For Heroics, you might get away with it if you're DPS, but I would strongly dissuade someone from it if they're tanking or healing. Your first few heroics tend to be hit or miss, at least until you get an upgrade or two. They're probably easier now than they were at launch, since everyone else will likely have better gear, but you're still going to be the only one doing your job, and it's important to have gear with stats that support your role. Resilience has basically zero use outside of PvP, since all it does now is reduce damage taken from players and player-controlled NPCs, and a lot of the itemization on that gear is thrown into resilience instead of something that might be more useful.

That having been said, there are at least a couple craftable PvE pieces, too. They're lower item level, but the points put into a more useful stat generally makes up for it. There are also a bunch of decent random BoE items that folks have stashed away that can be just as useful. Running a few normal mode dungeons should get you some upgrades, and if you run randoms you'll get some Justice Points which you can use to fill up other needs in your gearset. Then once you can start running heroics, with the flow of Justice Points and gear from that gearing becomes a lot easier, especially now that you can use JPs to buy some epics in 4.2.

Got Shannox and Beth'tilac down tonight. 2-shot Shannox, 3 shot the spider lady. I definitely recommend doing these two first. Lord-Can't-Turn-Good is a pretty difficult fight... we only had 3 attempts on him, so it's entirely possible we're missing something, though.

It took us over an hour of trash to get Shannox to spawn. As far as we could tell, all you need to do is kill trash over and over until he spawns.

Also, there is a lot of trash-after 3 hours, we all had 378 cloaks from rep. Turtles suck, all the corehounds are fearhounds from MC, and basically everything has a move to break CC and eat your raid's face. The patch notes said that Blizzard nerfed a trash pull or three before Beth'tilac. They were painful nerfed, I can't imagine how much CC we would have needed before that.

Keldar wrote:

My snark, efficiency, and status as a serious raider will all laugh at the resilience on your gear if you're trying to do heroics.

My raggedly collection of gear is mocked often and in most situations. Even the guards in Thelsamar giggle when I walk by.