WoD: The Loot is dropping differently.

One raid-dungeon should not drop different I-llv stuff all over the place.
-Mardah

That's what I said late august in my post about loot-forged stuff. And now this tweet-stuff came up:
Ghostcrawler on some loot-stuff

Basically what he says is that a piece of loot can drop, lets call it the Sword of Uberness. Now what normally happened before all the forged stuff, that you had 3 versions of it. Every raid-difficulty dropped a slightly different one. But now, Throne of Thunder comes along, and suddenly forged stuff, so the Sword of Uberness now has 5 different forms.

But wait, it gets better, we besiege a flex, and one more form is added, so now we have 6, hurray. Wait, you want more then 6? No problem, just wait till Warlords of Draenor, and, to quote Amelia Pond, now it gets interesting.

About to send a shadow that blots out the sun.

In WoD every piece of gear has chance to get either a special, or a gem-slot, or be forged. Now, I suppose this will not be for LFR, but it will probably be for Normal Raids? So, our Sword of Uberness now has 4 different forms in one difficulty? No wait, it can actually double-proc?  Or Triple??  WHAAAAT.... that means, per difficulty-level, mmm, our nice Sword of Uberness has EIGHT different configurations?

Didn't I wrote that two different Ilvl was already a blast to handle in normal raids? Now you have 2 different Ilvl's in a total of 8 different forms....  and everybody wants the Sword of Headaches  (Sword of Uberness with Gem and a special, and forged).

So, if Normal raids will drop all this, we have an amazing 25 different forms of one and the same weapon? And if Normals will not, it's still 18 different forms...  yeesh...  I am pretty sure no one is going to bid on loot without something extra anymore....

But, good news for Mr Robot, with all these new options, people want to know what is better, more Ilvls, or a gemslot...  or is that Lifestealing actually better?  Can I please have defense back...that seemed simpler.

Musings

Verulani's image after receiving her gift.

So, I got my third legendary last week. My Shaman Alt also got her legendary cloak, and I was not even going for it. It just, sort of happened. And that is probably THE reason I don't really like this Legendary. You just get it, while playing, you don't have to do really strange things.

The only thing that could be hard is the part where you have to fight Wrathion, that was a real problem on Mardah (I eventually did the healing version), but on Verulani, it was a cake-walk. I failed once, remembered that I had a Plethora of spells (totems) that Moonkins do not have, and went to town.

Verulani now has an Ilvl of 540..which actually makes her ready for normals I guess, considering that is the Ilvl for flex. But there's only so many times I can see the same raid in a week, and my baby-warlock is growing up fast, reaching 501 last weekend, after I remembered that I can buy a cheap 522-necklace somewhere. And I started completing the road on my Orc Hunter.

The problem here is for me, that this patch will probably last for another 6 months....  and that will probably mean, I will end with all spots on 90... oh my. What to do...and then the next thing happened, although I was forewarned, it really put me in a mood to think back to the 'old' TBC-raiding days, oh well.

Jorky goes offline, for the last time?
(Jorky is my Real Life brother)

WoD: The Headache Edition

So... yeah, time to travel in time.....

Just in time before saturday :)

Time travel is always interesting, and the idea of different timelines, which WoD seem to be, has been around. For every action you take, another timeline is created where you took another action. So, the number of timelines is infinite.

The big question is always, if you go back in time, and have the chance to kill Hitler, would you? And people use that as an argument that time travel does not exists... well, with time-lines, you can only say, not in this timeline, but in the other. And because there are infinite time-lines, Hitler has been killed an infinite times... aaargh...maths.

Now luckily we have some nice stories about timelines. The whole of the Marvel Comics happens on Earth615.  or 515..it has a number at least, especially pointing towards timelines. We also have Back to the Future and Doctor Who of course. But both those shows are more linear, where an action in the past, has an effect on the future.

And then we have Star Trek, with the original Kirk at least having 47 time-incursions. But their Mirror Universe and their Reboot-Trek actually are different Timelines. Somewhere in the past, someone made a different decision, and another timeline happened. Heck, in the Trek-reboot, someone from the know timeline, actually goes back in time, and is responsible for the new timeline, Garrosh=Nemo (not the fish).

So, in Warlords of Draenor, Garrosh escapes to the past. In my mind wandering yesterday I was speculating if Malchezaar had something to do with that, because he does drop that axe. (After that the little phasing-news of Kara came thru (I have witnesses  :p)). So, tinfoil hat; Malchezaar throws Garrosh in the past, and a few days later the Portal goes red. Garrosh of course, has several years on Draenor then.

We jump in the portal, and go fight this new 'Iron Horde'. This all has no effect on our 'Prime' timeline's past. But now the real headache starts....  what of the other timelines Azeroth? Because Illidan couldn't run to Outlands he may still be alive? Heck, the Alliance may not even exist, because there are no orcs on that Azeroth? So many possibilities, let's steal The Exodar and find out? Does it even exist, or is it completely overrun by undead and Deathwing, because there was no Horde to battle them?

And also interesting is the end.... yes that may be very early.... but we will of course take down the bad guys, but then. Go back to our own Timeline? And what about the other timeline? It's never a good idea to have a constant link between to timelines... bad stuff multiplies with that, literally..

You know, I'll just stick to the line below..and think: Time will tell.

"I always get a headache from time travel." -  Captain Janeway, U.S.S. Voyager

WoD: 20 people it is.

The biggest news for the raiding community is the new raid-size of course. Blizzard just killed of 10's and 25's, and made one size: TWENTY

Yes, yes, they actually renamed some difficulties, and made the flex-system the standard with 3 difficulties, but for every guild who knows they are going to do hero..rrr...mythical, their default size should be 20.

First up, I should mention that, Yes, I see a problem for 10-man guilds. They are really screwed over after most of them gone down from 25 the last 3-4 years. The fact that Innovation during Firelands had a real problem getting 3-4 people,  makes recruiting 10 people at least, a horrific thing. BUT, I do not raid 10s, I actually like 25s. So my reaction to the 10-guild problem is basically; I don't care, maybe a little harsh, but that's the way it is.

For 25s the drop is not that big of a problem.Everyone who has raided in the past, knows that at the end of expansions, people disappear, so going down a notch is not that bad. And with the flex system, you can actually go 25 if more people sign up. But here comes the first problem. Apparantly every difficulty will have their own lock-out...

Innovation doing Firelands with 22 people.

That means you can go out and kill the same boss 4 times a week, and get loot 4 times. That really worked well during Wrath....if you want burn-out. The problem here is the tier-pieces and the trinkets. Getting that trinket, even if lower Ilvl, maybe an upgrade, and everyone knows how much an upgrade 4pTier can be, even if one or two are considerable lower Ilvl.

For a guild like Innovation, that would mean, normal on wednesday/saturday  (current flex-runs for fun), and one of the three raid-evenings should be reserved to try Mythical....  My mind has to do some more work on that, but I don't like the separate heroic/mythical lockout.

An other thing I read somewhere, and heard (fatboss), is that the new fixed 20-man will actually allow Blizzard to bring back some gimmick fights with, for example, mind control. The reasoning behind this is, that with 10s, you cannot expect every class to be present (even impossible), but with 20 you can.....wait...wut?  Innovation is 25, and there are some days we don't have a hunter or a mage, because they are doing something else.

In my experience, the number here is three. If you have three of every class, then you can actually expect to have a certain class present....  anyone for 40man raids? So, unless mind control also becomes a mage-ability or something, I don't think you can actually expect every class to be present. Although being Mythical, you can say that would be the guild's problem,  which I am actually content with...

Innovation taking down Sha with 25

So, basically, the current raiding-guilds should focus their size on 20, instead of 25. This does not seem that big of a problem. Even the social aspect with 5 raiders less is probably barely noticeable. You still want to have a decent raid group. Actually, with 3 raids/week, that makes 60 raidslots. And if you have a 66% attendance rule, that means 30 raiders, instead of the current...37-40...oh.

Ok... I didn't see the 7-10 difference number coming up for the current 25-man guilds....

Back to the hard calculations. I expect a standard-raid seize of 2 tanks, 5 healers and 13 DPS (6 melee/7ranged). So doing the same maths I did in August and September, that leads to a standard guild-size of:

3 tanks, 8 healers, 9 melee, 10 ranged.

So, some changes will be coming....but not yet.

Post 300 : A short evening with Garrosh

So, apparently this is my 300th post. And keeping with tradition I have some nice pictures from this weeks Sunday raid.

Achievement-spam

The key in the end was to focus killing our teammates in the last 20%, and forget about adds...oh, and look, I got myself a heirloom.

One of the many after-kill-pictures.

Mardah hangin' with Vol'Jin, mon.

....  come on, everybody made on like this..didn't they?  :)

Innovation showing off their new mounts.

Good words in a Blizzcon-weekend... but that's next.

I do feel this tier was easier then the previous two. We didn't had any major problems, well, maybe with the Dinosaur, but most fights seemed to be over very fast. Heck, we even managed some genuine one-shots along the way.

The problem I see is the next expansion, Warlords of Draenor. The Beta hasn't started for it, and an expansion-Beta takes about 6 months normally?  So, even if the manage to start it up this month, we will not see Outlands part 0.5 before June...  that's a long time do take down Garrosh on Mythi...rrr...  Heroic I guess.  Oh well, at least there are some speculation-posts coming up, and I have a nice title:

  Mardah, Conquerer of Ogrimmar

Bad planning

So, the weekend that Blizzcon is happening, when we finally will know what the future brings, and even at reasonable times to watch in Europe...  I am offline till sunday...well..mostly, I may sneak some peeks in...

What is also a mystery, is how 'easy' this tier seems to earlier. I am now airing for raid start in some minutes, and as far as I know, we are extending the lockout, to kill Garrosh this week.  We had 2 pulls orso last week, and about ten tuesday evening. I do expect him to fall around pul 35, so probably sunday.

Although knowing Innovation, the next guess would be: First pull of today......

Alt Appreciation: Warrior

And wrapping up the Alt Appreciation started by World of Lae.  This week:  Warriors

Warriors, the bane of levelling for a long while. And the only acceptable tanks during Vanilla WoW. For a long while I actually didn't had a warrior above lvl 20, why? Because they died to easily. At low level, they could tear down one enemy without problem, shredding them to pieces, but if you managed to accidentally pull two, to *gasp* even more, you'd better run.

It wasn't until me and 2 friends levelled a little together. I created Whiteheart, a dwarves Warrior-Tank. Somewhere during the ICC-summer, I made him a Troll called Whiteyyama, and just before Cata hit, he reached 80.

When I joined Innovation, a lot of my alts followed, so the troll became a dwarf again, this time called Stoneheart. He has been my main-alchemist for the last tree years now, although he has been joined by two others now to have all 3 masteries.

Stoneheart between golden flowers...

I do like playing him, but there is a little problem, he is melee. I really don't like all the hugging up, you almost can't see you character anymore. That, and the fact that you can hardly see what is bad stuff, and what is spell-stuff from your teammates, well, don't expect me to do 25man with a melee often.

This concludes the Alt Appreciation-posts. Not only did I wrote 11 posts, I also started blogging...  again... lets see how long I can keep the two posts per week up .

Thanks Lae for the idea, and no, this is by far not the last post on alts  :p

Warlords of the dark and stormy below heroic Draenor?

So, yeah, now it is Warlords of Draenor, a few weeks ago it was Heroes of the Storm (although very briefly) and before that the Dark Below, I think we are being trolled...

Blizzcon is next week, and everyone is expecting an announcement for the new expansion, actually we need it by now, considering Garrosh is being killed all over the World. But there is no news.

Nothing.

The only thing we have is that the new level cap may be 100, because of the heirlooms that drop of Garrosh, but that's not even sure.

So, now all these trademarks are popping up. And we just want to speculate... well ok.

Warlords of Draenor.

The first thing I though of: 'What a nice name for an expansion of that card game, Hearthstone.' That's all, and I'll keep it with that. The name just doesn't sound expansion-y-like enough for World of Warcraft.

On the other hand, The dark Below does, although most sites see that as a fake name... oh well, let's see in a week.