I'm back. My last post was before Halloween...so another long silence...hey, some things never change. Truth be told, Halloween is sort of the end of sanity for most of us because it marks the beginning of the Holiday Season. I've been busy with real life stuff and I haven't had the time or focus to write up decent posts. Like most people, I'm not a fan of filler posts. I try to avoid them here.
So, what's new? Well, the long-awaited patch 4.3 is live now...There are some things I really love about it and some things I really don't care for.
The 3 new dungeons? I LOVE THEM! Obviously, they're going to get stale once everyone has the gear they need from them and we're only running them for Valor points - but for right now, I'm in love. I'm enchanted by the "fresh" feel of them.
Let's face it, "troll" heroics were stale to begin with. They just altered a raid we already had in game and turned it into a 5 man dungeon. Yes, they were challenging but they started off as just recycled...blech....Quite a few people had raided them "back in the day" and some of us that joined later farmed the mounts in them. So it wasn't anything new...it was just...recycled sameness. I'm not a fan of recycled sameness. (With the exception of Onyxia. For some reason, I can't get enough of that raid and I'd love to see Blizz dust that off with a new twist!)
The new heroics, however, are different from anything I've experienced as far as 5 man dungeons go. They are similar to the Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and Halls of Reflection in that they are related and there's an initial questline you have to complete by doing the dungeons in order - but beyond that, the fight mechanics are fresh and they don't look like so much like past dungeons that you'd feel stale there.
I will say though, that Well of Eternity is by far my favorite of the three. End Time is fun because the first two bosses you meet are random. I think there are four possible bosses to start, of which, you face two. The last fight has a cool new mechanic:
I've never encountered a battle in my few years of WoW Nerdery that let you "rewind". If someone dies in the fight, you get to rewind and they come back to life with full health! The only real way to lose the fight is if EVERYBODY dies - which - let's face it - is pretty damn impossible to do. I'm really digging these new instances. This is definitely a "YAY" part of patch 4.3 for me. I don't have to grind the same 2 troll instances over....and over....and over...and over...and over again in order to cap valor points on non-raiding toons if I don't want to. It's awesome. PLUS - the gear dropping in these dungeons is all ilvl 378, making you able to gear yourself up for the new raid: Dragon Soul.
Now, one thing I DO have to complain about...The instances (including the raid) seem...too easy. When my guild first started Firelands, it took us at least the first night to learn the Shannox fight, which was our first encounter in the raid. From there, it took us a few nights each to learn and master the rest of the fights. Ragnaros still has the potential to give us issues. I'm a little disappointed at how easy the new dungeons and raid are. I was able to go in with a PuG group - 3 of which had not run any of the dungeons yet, including me - and plow through them all fairly easily with only one wipe total out of the three full dungeons. That, to me...is sad.
And Dragon Soul? It's a joke...with no one having watched the video for the first boss in the raid, and us taking a "let's try it and see what happens - here are the basic mechanics" approach...we one-shotted the first boss. It only took a few tries to get the second boss down. I think we all feel a little disappointed that there's no major challenge involved. Our 25man raid team is plowing through the content really quickly. Hell, our 10 man alt group was 3/8 the very first night we went into the raid...ALTS...yeah...I think Blizz could have added a little more challenge to this soup of awesomeness.
The raid appearance, however, I am in love with. I couldn't stomach the thought of spending hours and hours in a dungeon that was literally red and orange and black. The monsters were "fiery", the bosses were "fiery", the environment was "fiery"...EVERYTHING...looked like fire, lava and dirt...So the fact that this raid takes place around Wyrmrest Temple is pretty awesome. Snow is much easier to look at than fire and lava.
One other thing I am sort of annoyed with: Blizzard decided to make tier armor ONLY available through raiding. Yes, you can still grind valor points for gear, but unless you win the much coveted tier tokens...you're not getting your tier gear. In a 25man raid with a metric fudge-ton of death knights, a rogue or two and a mage...plus whatever druids tag along...my shot at getting my tier set completed is slim. I'm not really a fan of that. Plus, it essentially means that you'll be using your valor points to purchase gear with an equivalent item level to the tier pieces and probably similar stats, only to potentially replace them with the tier you happen to win in a raid. I...eh...not really a fan. Having the helm and shoulders be difficult to get was bad enough. Making all five pieces drop from raid bosses feels like overkill to me. But we'll see how it goes. My shaman has two pieces of tier gear already, my main (the darling druid) has none...I don't like how that math works out...
I suppose I could run the raid finder to try to get tier tokens that way, but they're a lower item level...I'm not sure how I want to handle that yet.
Speaking of the raid finder - I haven't tried that out yet. I'm not sure if I will or not. Maybe if I get my mage geared enough to go along I will...otherwise...probably not. I'm just not that interested.
I guess that's all I have for today. I haven't really done too much with 4.3 yet but run the heroics. There's a new Darkmoon Faire I haven't bothered with...you know...lots of stuff I haven't checked into. Generally speaking, I'm almost always in some sort of raid...I'm finding that I have little time to do much else in game...it's...you know...I think it's wearing me out. That's why I haven't been posting here at all for the past month or so. The nights I would spend writing up posts for LBT are now spent running with alt raids. I don't know about you, but seeing the same fights over and over and over again...multiple times in one week...kinda wears on a bear, you know? Anyway, I should get back to RL now.
May Elune's light guide you safely until next time!
