Thursday, October 3, 2013

I Think I'm in Love With 5.4

I suppose there are worse things to say than "Sorry for not posting much, but my free time is limited and I decided to play WoW instead of writing about WoW lately."  I've really been enjoying 5.4 so far.

Timeless Isle
I've been having fun here for several reasons (and I am glad I do not play on a PvP server right now).

One, with the exception of Golganarr/Rattleskew, I can go there whenever I want.  Rares spawn every 30-60 minutes so it's reasonable to make sure I kill a particular rare at least once in a smaller amount of time.  In addition, I don't "fall behind" by missing a given rare spawn and I can choose to invest a ton of time in a single day if I want to do so  -- as opposed to dailies where missing a day meant you fell behind and you were limited in what you could do in a given day.

Two, I didn't need many upgrades and the ones I did need were either so rare as to not be worth pursuing (a specific 535 ring with haste/something) or were guaranteed (535 trinket).  I could get them at my own pace and they were reasonable.  The "crazy" grinds are simply for vanity stuff.

Three, my gear pays off.  Unlike dailies, where the "reward" for better gear was being able to do them a few minutes faster, I can plow through elites with my gear that most people can't.  I actually get a payoff from my heroic gear that is substantial (especially for the Shaohao grind).

Four, the mobs are more interesting -- they usually actually have abilities to avoid or interact with in some way and having other players around is (usually) a good thing rather than competition for your quest targets.  It's a much better set-up.

That said, while I lucked out on Rattleskew (about a 12 hour respawn I hear), getting Golganarr for my Timeless Champion achievement was awful because he spawns every 12-48 hours or something.  I'm not saying that mobs with rare vanity items with long respawn timers is a bad thing.  I'm saying that putting it on the same achievement where 95% of the creatures are a 30-60 minute respawn is a bad thing.  Give them a separate achievement if needed.

Lesser Charms
I had like 15 Lesser Charms for the patch.  I now have like 2500+.  Playing on the Timeless Isle and killing rares/elites simply throws charms at you like crazy -- WHICH IS A GOOD THING.  Especially when you can farm charms faster with better gear and/or in a group.  This is SO MUCH NICER than 5.0-5.3 where I needed to do the same dailies each day to be reasonably efficient (Golden Lotus or Thunder Isle) and which also had a limit for how much I could get each day.  Sure, I had like 1100 when I finished the initial rep grinds in 5.0, but that was only like 12 weeks of raiding back when it cost 90 charms each instead of 50.

Hell, they could go back to 90 charms each week now and it would be fine.

If anything, I wish we could turn them in for Lesser Charms and/or Mogu Runes now, since otherwise I can't spend them at all.

Flex Raiding
Flex raiding is fun.  It's actual raiding.  What do I mean by that?

1, you have to work together
2, there are social consequences for failure/poor behavior
3, the boss doesn't simply give up if you get determined enough

If you ignore what the raid leader says in Flex (like "DON'T ATTACK NAZGRIM IN DEFENSIVE STANCE") you're gone.  If you pull 30k DPS, you're gone.  If you stand in bad stuff on Dark Shaman, you're gone.

Sure, it's easier than normal.  But LFR being easy isn't why it's a complete cesspool -- it's the lack of accountability and no incentive to help others.  I still don't like that I am obliged to run Flex on my main (nearly 2000 DPS upgrade going from Heroic Lei Shen trinket to Flex Immerseus trinket) but at least it's *fun* rather than me wanting to punch people through my computer screen.  I don't care if you take a tick of avoidable AoE or do 80k DPS instead of the 100k you should be doing.  I do care if you stand in the AoE and yell for the healers to keep you up while dealing 30k DPS.

Done Flex with several alts at this point with good success on all of them, even with some wipes.  And people are actually constructive after a wipe BECAUSE IT'S A SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT WITH CONSEQUENCES AND ACCOUNTABILITY.  Can we just add in an cross-realm lobby for group finding and remove LFR already?

Hell, I've even done some Flex bosses multiple times in a single week simply because it was actually enjoyable being in there.  Also managed to drag some fellow bloggers into some groups with me, which was fun (even though I may have come up with some...unusual...guilt tripping methods to do so).

Siege of Orgrimmar
Generally a fun raid so far.  Rather long and concerned that we're going to need to do a lot of lockout extensions as we get further into heroics (killed the first three last week, hopefully another three this week), but the fights have been enjoyable (even though Thok's screech can go die in a fire -- LET'S SPAM SHADOW WORD: PAIN!).

Definitely something that feels more "accessible" than Throne of Thunder with eight "gimme" bosses, then two slightly harder bosses, and then four relatively difficult bosses.  Probably will work out better for PUGs as well.

P.S. I *would* like to request at least a normal weapon in the near future.  Thanks!

8 comments:

  1. This sounds very enticing, stop it!

    I've been looking for more casual-friendly while still challenging scenarios in my gaming, and it might actually be flex raiding what I was looking for, who knows... I thought I would be back by the next expansion, but your report of flex raiding has made me consider picking up WoW before that :)

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  2. Blizzard also sends you free cookies in real life each time you step into Flex. I am totally serious.

    But yes, it is exactly more casual friendly while still somewhat challenging. I hate to be melodramatic and claim Flex is the savior of WoW or something, but the following has happened in the last few years:

    1, people leveling for the first time or people who like leveling alts are happy (something like, say, 40% of the playerbase).

    2, people doing normal or heroic raids are happy (say, 10% of the playerbase)

    That leaves 50% of the playerbase who have kind of had a terrible experience for a while. They're not good enough for normal raids (or in some rare cases can't even commit a single night per week to them due to schedule) and LFR is simply an awful "playstyle" -- but Blizzard pushed them into LFR because that's where they needed to go to "see the content."

    Which sets the horrifying precedent that many people new to WoW think normal or heroic raiding is simply LFR but with bigger numbers -- when in fact actual raiding is completely different from LFR and immensely more enjoyable. But at the same time, it's not like you could bring these new people to normal because they weren't good enough yet and you don't have a raid spot anyway. Flex solves this problem.

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    Replies
    1. Oh, yeah, PvP. So subtract the people who mostly PvP from that 50% I mentioned (though you might argue they're still obliged to do LFR if they want to see the story and new content).

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  3. I found your blog from your comment on Stubborn's.

    I have been liking some aspects of the patch, but others not so much.

    I wish that the progress towards timeless champion and bigger bag were account wide. I have killed every rare multiple times, just not all on the same toon.

    I really hate being melee on Ordos Isle. It is almost impossible not to die a lot.

    I hate the charges that can kill you on mobs that you just want to get to a rare past them.

    I liked going from ding 90 on multiple alts to 485ish iLvl in short order. I had hated getting from 430ish to 460 on all my other other alts to be able to start lfr's.

    I like chasing all the rares, but I wish some of them had more health as a default as geared people can solo them in about 5 seconds much less when multiple people hit them. On Isle of Thunder most of the rares had more health than most on the timeless isle. I've been standing at a spawn and not had enough time to realize the spawn and get in melee range to get a hit in before it was dead.

    I liked the treasure chests, but disliked that only 3 respawn and they are always in the same spot. That was fun to me the first day not knowing where any of them were and just riding around looking for them.

    I've really liked the lesser charms, as getting them across so many characters every week was about impossible. Still is about impossible to do across all 11, but definitely easier and more enjoying.

    I've only run one flex, but I really enjoyed it and the fact it was still a real raid. Need to find a group to consistently do more of them with.

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  4. "I wish that the progress towards timeless champion and bigger bag were account wide. I have killed every rare multiple times, just not all on the same toon."

    Agreed.

    "I really hate being melee on Ordos Isle. It is almost impossible not to die a lot."

    Really? Seems like it might be easier in many cases since you can DPS on the move better. Cinderfall and the Molten Guardians would seem to be the main issue.

    "I hate the charges that can kill you on mobs that you just want to get to a rare past them."

    Those charges are horrendously bugged and crazy powerful. They're pretty stupid, yeah.

    "I like chasing all the rares, but I wish some of them had more health as a default as geared people can solo them in about 5 seconds much less when multiple people hit them."

    Definitely. Maybe instead of something like 10m health and 5m per extra person it should have been something like 20m health and 3m per extra person. Sometimes mobs die within 10 seconds of spawning.

    "I liked the treasure chests, but disliked that only 3 respawn and they are always in the same spot."

    Yeah, I do wish you could get a guaranteed Burden each week at a minimum.

    "Still is about impossible to do across all 11, but definitely easier and more enjoying."

    I'd suggest joining rep groups -- you'll get at least 3-4 per minute in a decent group. Grind for an hour or two on a character and they'll be set for over a month.

    "I've only run one flex, but I really enjoyed it and the fact it was still a real raid. Need to find a group to consistently do more of them with."

    OpenRaid can often be very useful for that -- often groups forming in the chat section and can also join scheduled runs.

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  5. The guys that summon golems that you can't get hit by is another of the big things that makes melee more difficult on Ordos Isle. They summon a golem next to them and then cast a heal.

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  6. Eh. One melee hit from the golem isn't really a bit deal -- and the heal getting off isn't the end of the world (since it heals them for 25% and then damages them for 30% over 30 seconds, I believe -- or might be 20% and then damage for 25%).

    If you're farming in a group a ranged can interrupt. If you're solo then you need really good gear to be able to solo those effectively anyway.

    Not saying it isn't worse for melee, just doesn't seem like it's as bad as some of the other stuff mentioned.

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  7. I do it solo while waiting on queues. Can't group or you lose the queue. I wasn't paying attention the other night and lost a queue I'd been in for an hour because a friend needed a couple enchants done.

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