World of Warcraft XIV: Fish Felreed, and the Reed Pond fish

[Togath]

Were the gifts from doing the winter-vale daily supposed to have a chance of giving the special achievement granting gifts from previous years?
I managed to get a rocket-bot(the 2007 gift) when I opened one earlier this morning(as well as a Lumpy), which was a bit odd to encounter(it did bring my rocket-bot total to 3 though, which was neat)

[Seerow]

So new PTR is up.

I just tried out my Arms warrior on it and holy crap. There is no way this is going live as is.

Not that it's overpowered. I didn't have recount up, but I doubt it was a huge DPS gain. I don't PVP, but I'm pretty sure with the overall burst nerfed, the change isn't OP there.

But man, the rotation itself seems so weird. Like if I changed a couple of talents, I could have a GCD locked rotation without spending a single point of rage. Leaving me to put all of my rage into spamming HS every 4-5 seconds or so. I doubt those talents would be optimal in PVE, but in PVP both Stormbolt and Shockwave are pretty potent, and not needing to spend any rage makes defensive stance turtling even more potent. In PVE, using 2-3 slams per minute doesn't change that I am still using heroic strike probably about 10 times per minute. I just don't see this lasting.

[Talesin]

Oh god, it's happen again. I reinstalled the game..

Nooo.. must stop tanking instances..

It's good though, i've really enjoyed the few hours i've played over the last few days. The instances were fun, though insanely easy. Battlegrounds have been hilarious as i've only got 120k hp in my full PVP gear, which is a mix of season 9 and 10 gear, so I can get hit pretty hard by the level 89 warriors and DK's that are hanging around.

However taking and holding gold mine with just myself and a holy priest friend was excellent fun.

[Karoht]

Had a great night in LFR with my fiance.
She won 5 pieces of gear, one from every boss in MSV except for Will of the Emperors.
Also, Blizzcon 2013 will be a thing, according to a tweet from Mike Morhaim. They'll probably drop a date by the end of the month.
My hope is oct 19/20 or 26/27 so that we can go to Blizzcon as part of our honeymoon.
Yeah, my lady and I are those kind of nerds.

[The Glyphstone]

Had a great night in LFR with my fiance.
She won 5 pieces of gear, one from every boss in MSV except for Will of the Emperors.
Also, Blizzcon 2013 will be a thing, according to a tweet from Mike Morhaim. They'll probably drop a date by the end of the month.
My hope is oct 19/20 or 26/27 so that we can go to Blizzcon as part of our honeymoon.
Yeah, my lady and I are those kind of nerds.

You should go in costume, that'd be the best honeymoon ever.

[Karoht]

Actually, she's wanted an excuse to buy the digigrade leg prosthesis from Weta workshops for the last 5+ years. And she's extremely confident that she can pull off a Female Tauren Arms Warrior.
I'll keep you posted on that front.
Suffice to say, if we can go to Blizzcon, we are going. We saved the money as part of our wedding savings, the original plan was to have the wedding earlier in the year to be certain that we can go to Blizzcon. My fingers are still crossed.

[Skios]

LFR beckons... My ilevel is 457 now, and I need 460. About half my gear now consists of HC dungeon pieces and I have the boots from the quest for my first Sha kill. I still need to upgrade my 450 rings, trinkets and weapon(s). Hopefully I'll get a few more good drops tomorrow. Hopefully the Klaxxi VP necklace I can get this week will put me over the top. I'll probably do a few LFRs as DPS first, since the gear is pretty much identical and I can't screw up as much. Satchels have been coming in fast too, with the Dalaran sewer rat as a highlight. I've also pretty much completed my transmog, which looks awesome.

[Togath]

LFR beckons... My ilevel is 457 now, and I need 460. About half my gear now consists of HC dungeon pieces and I have the boots from the quest for my first Sha kill. I still need to upgrade my 450 rings, trinkets and weapon(s). Hopefully I'll get a few more good drops tomorrow. Hopefully the Klaxxi VP necklace I can get this week will put me over the top. I'll probably do a few LFRs as DPS first, since the gear is pretty much identical and I can't screw up as much. Satchels have been coming in fast too, with the Dalaran sewer rat as a highlight. I've also pretty much completed my transmog, which looks awesome.

Which class is that?, I feel silly for asking, but I've been trying to remember where the original(as oposed to the lower detail horde hunter ones) models(the ones you're wearing) came from.

[Skios]

Monk, that set is basically the Alliance rogue T9 set. I started farming it when I got some pieces from Jade Forest (helmet, chest, boots), the rest of the pieces came from Trial of the Crusader. I even had to buy the JP helmet to replace the quest one because the latter doesn't show my beard for some odd reason.

[PrinceOfThieves]

OK, I need some advice here. I work an overnight job with a fair amount of downtime. I'm looking to buy a laptop to play in the downtime. Problem is, I'm not sure what kind of specs I should be looking for. I don't need everything running at its highest setting. If I can find something that will let me do LFR and not have the framerate drop to 5/s on the lowest settings, I'll be happy. I'd like to find something that will let me run at least middle of the road settings, but I've got a limited budget and don't want to waste my money.

[Inspectre]

I'm not familiar enough with the latest standards to give you specific advice, but I can suggest one thing. Make sure that whatever laptop you get, it has an integrated graphics card. The graphics card itself doesn't have to be top of the line, but if the laptop doesn't have one (and a good number of laptops don't), then the laptop has to try to run everything from RAM and no video game is likely to run well on it.

[Karoht]

500-700 is about all the money I would spend on a laptop these days.
Something like this...
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX39899
Is about what you want. Take a look at the specs and use that to start price comparison.
-NVIDIA® GeForce® GT640M Video Memory 2GB DDR3
-i7 Processor
-8 gigs RAM
That right there is the trifecta of awesome. You will be just fine with a model such as this.

[Togath]

I just found out Orgrimmar has five auction houses, the two big ones, as well as a smaller one in the goblin, tauren, and troll sections.
I'm not sure how I never noticed them before, but they were a neat find.

[Skios]

Went from ilevel 457 to 460 in three dungeons tonight. I got the fist weapons from Siege of Niuzao and Mogu'shan Palace and the trinket and ring from Temple of the Jade Serpent. Just wrapped up the first wing of Mogu'shan Vaults as DPS. I have to say, it seemed ridiculously easy, although the second wing does seem a bit more challenging.

[The Glyphstone]

Elegon is a lot of fun.

[Vaynor]

I haven't posted here in ages, but I started playing WoW again around June. Right now I'm progressing through raid content on my death knight as a tank. My guild (25 man) is 1/6H 4/6 at the moment.

Here's my death knight, Kyras.

My battletag is vaynor#1882 if anyone wants to add me, just put in the note that you're from the forums and what your username is. It'd be fun to do some heroics with fellow playgrounders.

@Glyphstone: Elegon is indeed quite fun. It's very satisfying to glyph for Pestilence and spread diseases to all of the orbs.

[Mutant Sheep]

I see a Mod raid group forming...


*cowers from the might of the people who know what they're talking about*

I know I'm one of a million people who have said this, but how good is MoP questing? I've never been much for dungeons (I actually hate Dungeon finder because everyone's either completely silent or unabashedly rude) and haven't done a raid in my life. (Well, I did do Blackwing Lair with 5 other 85+ guys a few months ago on trial. Nefarion almost got us and Razorgore was a slow but easy thing.) I did... some of the intro quests on the MoP trial (almost to the Monestary place, but I maxed exp for the trial in the mines and went back to Org) and thought it was too cinematic and "stop to watch the people talk".
*end incoherent thoughts*

^Is the questing worth the price of admission, basically.

[Vaynor]

Well, the intro quests for MoP are all exposition, so yeah, there's a lot of cinematic and watching people talk going on. After the first few hubs, it's still fairly cinematic, but more about what you're doing or what happens based on events you've influenced.

[The Glyphstone]

I see a Mod raid group forming...

I don't even have an active account right now...I've just been playing my father's account while I'm home on winter break.

Well, the intro quests for MoP are all exposition, so yeah, there's a lot of cinematic and watching people talk going on. After the first few hubs, it's still fairly cinematic, but more about what you're doing or what happens based on events you've influenced.

There's also lots of callbacks. I keep running into NPCs in zones who reference stuff I did for/with them or they saw me do in previous areas. Much better at giving the 'you're famous' vibe than reputation bars.

[Skios]

The questing in MoP shows that they've learned a lot from what did and didn't work in the Cataclysm quests. The zones are generally very well paced, with enough variety in the quests to keep the monotony at bay. The kill X of Y or collect X of Y quests are still there, but they're mixed in with plenty of quests involving turnip bombing and marmot punting. You get a good sense of progression and accomplishment as you work your way through the zones.

[Zherog]

About the questing... I'm one of those people who almost never reads quest text; I find the objective, go do it, turn it in, and move on to the next. Prior to MoP the only time I read the quest text was when I was stuck and couldn't figure out what to do.

I started off doing MoP that way, but somewhere along the way - before hitting level 86 - I changed. Don't know why, but I started paying attention to the quest text, to the story of the game. I started reading the hidden scrolls, too. I think what got me to change my ways was the change to the Loremaster achieves. Instead of "Go do 5 billion quests in this zone" they were changed to "go do these stories."

I think Blizz did a fantastic job with the story behind the quests. Some are funny; some are sad; some are touching; some piss you off. The story builds, and (as Glyph said) they do a decent job of making you feel special as you work your way through.

I don't raid; I rarely do instances, even. I think MoP is worth the price of admission just for the story stuff. It's really that good, in my opinion.

[Lord Raziere]

man….I seem to obsessed with mounts.

I have farmed mobs to get the Talbuk and Nether Ray mounts to get them in one day (Sha'Tari Skyguard: Neutral to Exalted in one day! YEAH!). I have done every Netherwing quest daily to get four Netherdrakes.
I have bought pretty much every single racial mount, and almost all the horde flying mounts. I've worked on my engineering to get both the normal copter and the turbo one….I've even got the albino drake for my efforts….

….and I'm still going. cause now I'm shooting for that Cenarion War Hippogryph. and once I have that, goodbye Outland. unless I feel like getting that raven mount from Auchenai, but I'm saving rare drop mounts for later after I get all the ones I'm certain to get through hard work. and after Outland, I'll obviously have to work on the Argent Tournament, and I've been slowly working getting my Cloud Serpent while all this has been happening and I'm getting close…. and of course, I'll have to work on getting Mechano-Hog. I already have red drake through justice point buying my way to Exalted with Wyrmrest.

and after all that, I'll probably have to work on Cataclysm and Pandaria mounts in general. those'll probably be even harder.

[Karoht]

@MoP Questing
The exposition isn't too bad. It's usually a paragraph or two at best. Conversations are short, you don't get a wall of text, and way more of it is voice acted this go around. I found most of the interactions with NPC's lasted about a minute or so, and that feels to be about right. Not too long, not brief as to be meaningless.

Quest design is as good as it has ever been. I found it to be less monotonous than previous expansions, mostly due to the challenge factor. It's rare to be able to pull just one mob past a certain point, and the mobs have abilities you want to dodge/interrupt/counter, which forces you to be tough or be mobile, and still keep the damage output up. Sure, there are lots of kill x of y quests, but when they actually challenge you they aren't nearly so droll. Kill 10 guys? Cool. I kill all 10 of them in 3-4 pulls. No two pulls will be the same, and a lot of X Factor will tend to keep them interested.
(Warning, if you are a poor player who is unused to being challenged while leveling, this can be a bit shocking at first. Don't get discouraged, get better.)

But then there is everything else. Sure, you get a few quests which are silly mini-games (IE-Rolling exploding barrels of beer down a slope and using them to light an army on fire), there are also some mini-bosses which can actually be quite hard and very fun. Also, almost universally, if a named mob is required for a quest completion (IE-Lord Fancypants the Third), then anyone who helps kill him will get quest completion credit. It encourages cooperation without requiring a group, which is good.

The bad? Not much really. There aren't many quests that I didn't enjoy, most of them are memorable for good reasons. The only negative I found was lack of flying while leveling (which I'm still in support of). Pandaria zones are pretty darned big. Not so big that you're riding a mount for too long to reach objectives, but when you have to slog through an army over what feels like a kilometer or two just for one quest objective, the monotony does start to set in somewhat. Also, when you are looking for a specific cave entrance on a mountain slope and you don't have flying, it can be a bit of a pain. Especially when you get attacked and distracted and maybe lose track of where you are. I'm weird, I actually LIKED trying to pick my way over a mountain and being assaulted from time to time, but I'm sure others might have less patience for it.
"Oh hey, I think I see a cave entrance just at the top of that ridge, all I have to do is find a way up. Oh snap, I'm being attacked by monkeys throwing snowballs. Lets clean that up and... wait, where am I? Where is that entrance I spotted? I'll just scout around a bit and, oh drat, more monkeys."
Like I said. I kind of liked it, but I can see others being frustrated by it.

The scenery is amazing. Really and truly amazing. The quest design even plays into this somewhat. They don't outright say "stop and look around at this majestic vista" but they do tend to place you in excellent locations to do so. They also even seemed to place NPC's advantageously in order to encourage such views. The downside is, there are some pretty impressive pieces of scenery where you will say to yourself "ooh, I can't wait to see what quests are over there" only to find out that really none are up there. A great example is a massive bridge with a bell on it in Jade Forest. No quests. None. I was sad.

That in mind, I found in Cataclysm that you had a tendancy to 'map hop' in a very random pattern. Lets take Twilight Highlands for example. Now storywise, there is a progression out there, which takes you around to all the locations. But it does so rather randomly. Like someone in the quest design department was just checking off boxes and ensuring that you made it around to all the locations. This time around there appears to be more forethought linking the scenery to the questing progression paths. For example, out in Valley of the Four Winds. You are started off at the eastern end of the zone. As you progress, you are usually walking downhill, towards the western end of the zone. This has two effects. One, you can usually see other farms and towns ahead for quite a ways, which is excellent for giving you that sense of wonder about what lies beyond that next little hill or town. And the second effect comes from the Wall at the far end. Yes, a wall. Once you are within view of it, you'll immediately wonder what it is and why it is there. Which is good, and plays into that bit of story.

I could keep going but I think I've officially reached 'wall of text' status, so I'll pause for now.

[Zherog]

Also, almost universally, if a named mob is required for a quest completion (IE-Lord Fancypants the Third), then anyone who helps kill him will get quest completion credit. It encourages cooperation without requiring a group, which is good.

Yep, this is a great feature, in my opinion.

*

Regarding mounts: Go do your Lorewalker rep by finding all the scrolls throughout Pandaria. Easiest rep you'll ever get, and you get the cloud disc. Or, at least, I think the cloud disc mount comes from Lorewalkers.

*

Regarding questing in general: Over Christmas and into this weekend, I took some time away from my big freelance project -- that has sucked up more of my life over the last 6 months than I care to admit -- and started leveling my hunter. I don't know if beastmaster hunters are that faceroll easy, if I suck hard at playing my arcane mage, or some combination of the two. My hunter is now level 89. By level 87, he was doing more DPS than my level 90 arcane mage. At times I find myself pulling 3 or 4 or 5 mobs at once just to have any sort of challenge. Things I had to work to avoid with the mage* I just attack as any other mob with my hunter. In one case, the only way I realized a mob was elite was when it didn't die in 5 or seconds.

* Like the giant troll-thing in the Coastal area whose name I'm forgetting; you ride a balloon to get there and find the place being attacked by trolls.

I suspect a very, very large part of it is having a tanking pet. And when the pet fails to aggro something and it comes after me, I can just drop a freeze trap and ignore it. On the flip side of the survivability, though, it's fairly boring - send pet, give the pet the kill command, sting shot, arcane shot, arcane shot, arcane shot, kill shot. For elites, there's a lot more "arcane shots" between sting and kill, but it's still the same basic pattern.

I'm about 2/3rd of the way through 90; should hit it next time I log in and play the hunter. From there, I'll have to figure out what I want to do with the game going forward. But my workload should wrap up this week and get back to normal (at least, until I bite off more than I can chew again). So we'll see...

[Karoht]

Regarding Daily Quests:
IMO they aren't the big deal everyone is making them out to be.
1-You can be geared up to raid without dailies and rep gear.
2-All of the reps only require revered, not exalted, to get the 489 gear. And all the 489 gear is stuff that you will replace in normal mode raiding gear, it is poorly optimized.

This is why I'm going through one reputation at a time right now. And I actually plan on taking the entire expansion to do all of my reputations. Why? Because the daily quests unlock some of the best story features yet.
Golden Lotus is the poor example. It gets picked on a lot. And I'm right there with you, I think gating the other reputations behind GL rep was a bit silly. But we'll start with GL for now. You hit friendly? Have some regular quests that have to do with the Mogu and what they're up to. Honored? Some more story unlocks, and so on. It creates an episodic method of story telling, and it works rather well. It even works with the progression of the struggle.

Shieldwall/Dominance works much the same way, but with more random story tidbits. Here the story pieces they give you come on an almost daily basis. It seems about every 2 days I'm being given a new story element behind the offensive. Also, various leaders are sending you mail (sorry, no spoilers here) and trying to keep you in the loop of all the developments. There's a bit of recap-fu, but it isn't excessive. It even links into Scenario content. It's pretty cool.
It succeeds at creating that feeling that the world is changing and that you are a crucial part of that change.

August Celestials feels a bit static. I've been told the Shado-Pan dailies and storyline are amazing. Klaxxi I have been told is static, which is a bit of a shame really.

Now 5.2 is probably bringing more dailies. It looks rather a lot like a Molten Front/Isle of Quel'danas sort of thing. Dailies will advance the plot surrounding The Thunder King, and tighten the conflict between Horde and Alliance. War is breaking out on multiple fronts across the continent.
But more dailies? Huh?
The thing is, WoW and other MMO's like it survive by basically providing episodic content. Granted, it is spaced out across 6 month to 12 month intervals. But that is usually big static dumps of content, most of which can be seen in a single day. Dailies and the episodic storytelling system they seem to be doing is very healthy for the game. Something new and different to experience from time to time, without an arbitrary gating system and without having to load in new patches or any of the other backend work. If anything, the game needs more of that, though maybe not always attached to dailies. Maybe attached to daily dungeons or scenarios. It was stuff like that which made me excited to see randomized bosses start showing up in Cata and Mists. Now if it somehow added a new story element, randomly, that would be astounding. Two or three other MMO's are already doing something like that. I think their varients are still relatively static. WoW developers have the keys and clearly the talent to provide similar content, and in a multitude of sources, not just daily quests.

[Togath]

man….I seem to obsessed with mounts.

I have farmed mobs to get the Talbuk and Nether Ray mounts to get them in one day (Sha'Tari Skyguard: Neutral to Exalted in one day! YEAH!). I have done every Netherwing quest daily to get four Netherdrakes.
I have bought pretty much every single racial mount, and almost all the horde flying mounts. I've worked on my engineering to get both the normal copter and the turbo one….I've even got the albino drake for my efforts….

….and I'm still going. cause now I'm shooting for that Cenarion War Hippogryph. and once I have that, goodbye Outland. unless I feel like getting that raven mount from Auchenai, but I'm saving rare drop mounts for later after I get all the ones I'm certain to get through hard work. and after Outland, I'll obviously have to work on the Argent Tournament, and I've been slowly working getting my Cloud Serpent while all this has been happening and I'm getting close…. and of course, I'll have to work on getting Mechano-Hog. I already have red drake through justice point buying my way to Exalted with Wyrmrest.

and after all that, I'll probably have to work on Cataclysm and Pandaria mounts in general. those'll probably be even harder.

If you have a jewelcrafter, don't forget you can get him the first two gem panther recipes just by unlocking the order of the cloud serpent dailies.
It took me until yesterday to notice you start high enough to get those two.

[Vaynor]

Zherog, the dps difference might have something to do with BM being the highest dps hunter spec and arcane being the lowest dps mage spec at the moment.

[Togath]

Zherog, the dps difference might have something to do with BM being the highest dps hunter spec and arcane being the lowest dps mage spec at the moment.

BM is the highest hunter spec.
Any idea what a good rotation(and what a good choice of pet would be) for one is then?
I have one, but haven't been able to break 15k using his BM spec

[Karoht]

BM is the highest hunter spec.
Any idea what a good rotation(and what a good choice of pet would be) for one is then?
I have one, but haven't been able to break 15k using his BM spec

www.icy-veins.com

Sorry, I haven't plugged them in forever.

[Zherog]

I have an Un'Goro crater dino as my current pet (the big elite guy that stomps around the zone and kills everybody). My rotation is Hunter's Mark -> Blink Attack for my pet -> Kill Command -> Serpent Sting (I think that's the one) -> Arcane Shot until kill shot lights -> Kill Shot. If I'm fighting an elite, there's a spell whose name escapes me that essentially enrages my pet (he turns red and grows in size). I pop that right after Kill Command. Also for elites, any time Blink Attack is off cool down, I use it -- 600% damage is nothing to sneeze at. If Kill Command comes off cooldown before the mob dies, I also use that again. And finally, whenever Focus Fire pops, I also activate it.

I'm in quest greens and blues, level 89, and doing about 19K DPS right now.