World of Warcraft XVII: Warlords Gone Wild

[Icewraith]

prefferible if they took up spread out deffensive posistions (even static ones, perhaps even special ones that require them to meet a ranged/melee/magic requirement or something) so they were just everywhere around the base, two at each entrance, two at the town hall, one or two in the center, etc. Would be great if they spread out themselves, nice if you could move and re-place them at any time or choose posistions for them pre-combat for optimal battles.

Basically just let me see Blook and Tommok playing bladed baseball with iorn horde orcs as the ball while i'm running around defending my garrison. that would be amazing.

I was annoyed to discover that Tormmok uses Taunt liberally while on patrol, and does not when he's bodyguarding. I was expecting him to follow me around and instead he taunted something off me and got himself killed in the first minute of the invasion. Priest followers tend to use Lifegrip on patrol, which is also incredibly annoying.

[Sylthia]

I was annoyed to discover that Tormmok uses Taunt liberally while on patrol, and does not when he's bodyguarding. I was expecting him to follow me around and instead he taunted something off me and got himself killed in the first minute of the invasion. Priest followers tend to use Lifegrip on patrol, which is also incredibly annoying.

I'm glad he doesn't taunt while bodyguarding. Trying to quest with an aggro-happy NPC would be a nightmare.

[Fleeing Coward]

So the years of hoarding gold has finally paid off. I'm not paying for WoW subscription until the next decade

[ryuplaneswalker]

Yes, I'm perfectly aware I don't NEED the 100,000 gold Alliance chopper, but the fact remains that I WANT it, and in order to get it, I'm stuck in this hell of cleaning out a hole in the ground four+ times a day, every day for the next year. In fact, I know the minigame is optional, because I've already opted out, for the precise reasons I've outlined in my former posts. But if you're telling me that I'm paying $15.00 a month so I can log in for 4 hours a week to raid, and all the other aspects of the game are gated behind drudgery, then I think we need to have a discussion about value premise.

Fact is, there's a LOT of stuff in the game that's gated behind gold, and no, I don't mean gear. I've earned a LOT of gold over the course of my 10 year run with WoW, and have largely done it by playing the game: doing daily quests, running dungeons and beating up monsters. I think that's how the game ought to work, and I think putting in 'money for brief but tedious drudgery' is a poor design choice.

Cata Raids give more money for your time than your holes in the ground, especially since the new way old content works means you can do a Heroic Dragonsoul on your own with incredibly little effort, heck if you put in some effort you can do Mists of Panderia raids, I do Elegon Weekly on my own for the Celestial mount, and will be doing ToT on my own when I get my brewmaster monk to 100 (I need something to take aggro when he throws or he resets)

There's no question that both crafting systems have always had a high measure of timesink, but the timesinks involved in the new system are IMMEASURABLY more boring and tedious. So yes, I WOULD rather go bonk air elementals for a drop chance than curate my garrison chore simulator.

Well I would rather spend 15 minutes in my Chore Simulator..then go do actual things like Soloing old raids for mounts, seeing what Current Raids I can solo, farming up Rep leveling alts, ect then spending 5 hours a week farming out air elementals that provide zero threat to me..and only takes 5 hours because of a low drop rate, and the fact that the spawn rate was so low that I couldn't even aggro enough of them to provide a threat to me in Heroic Blues.

Again, you CHOSE to farm wind elementals, and as I've repeatedly point out, it's not my fault you chose to inflict drudgery on yourself instead of buying the damned things. In the pre-WoD economy, all you NEEDED to craft stuff was the BOP materials. The rest was passively gathered from the world during the normal course of play, and posted on the AH for petty cash. In fact, those materials were, by and large, so cheap and abundant that savvy players could buy them off the AH and quickly convert them into cash.

No I chose to be a Heroic 25 Man Raider, to do that I had to farm Wind Elementals or lose my raid spot, and now I have to PUG into raids due to my work hours, which means when I apply to a group in that Premade group finder, if I do not look as if I am doing -everything- in my power to have as many advantages as I can have I get turned down.

And that is going to be twice as true come pugging mythic.

You're referring to Lightweight Bio-Optic Killshades and its ilk, yes?

The difference is that all those ingredients bar the Chaos Orb were BoE, so you didn't have to farm it all yourself, in fact you'd be insane to, as you rightly point out. So all you NEEDED to farm to make those helmets was a Chaos orb, which you simply had to do a Heroic and wind the roll at the end, so, assuming you're pugging it, 5 heroics. During which you'd also get a chunk of D/E fodder which you could easily flip on the AH to underwrite the cost of your volatile air. There were also other methods of getting your precious volatile air, like the alchemy transmutes, which, if my memory serves, were quite profitable, and could proc alchemy specialization. Compare that to the current paradigm where there's NO reliable method to produce sorcerous elements, only random proc from your time-gated garrision buildings.

There's no question that both crafting systems have always had a high measure of timesink, but the timesinks involved in the new system are IMMEASURABLY more boring and tedious. So yes, I WOULD rather go bonk air elementals for a drop chance than curate my garrison chore simulator.

Lets see at the time I had 1 85, who was Engineering/JC, so I had to purchase my raid flasks, my enchants, pay for my reforging, and pay for the mats for that BOE gear for the most part, so yes I DID need to farm all that, not only for my mats but to be able to at all afford the other things.

Yeah I could have done all of that, except I was new to the game, had no cash, had no alts, no Alchemist, no Enchanter to DE all that fodder.

And you produce Elements from the daily cooldowns.

And don't accuse me of being obtuse when your only argument is "I think this optional thing is required, despite not being required in any way shape or form and actively making myself poorer by forcing myself to do it" because "You have to do this for money" is a blatantly false statement when there are plenty of other easy ways to make money, and better than professions.

Now Mind you I will agree that WoD is horridly content light, but I don't blame that on the garrison. I blame that on people who cried about Daily quests early on in MOP, so they backlashed hard and gave us nothing to actually do aside from..Grind Rep, so now they will throw out T-19 in a few months...and we will have another year of Hellscream Final boss and hopefully we get more 5.1 and 5.2 style daily quest arcs.

[Leon]

So game tokens... have neither the Money or the Gold to get any.

Ive come to the realization that most people just pass on anything that drops in old world dungeons as i end up with 90% of the item drops in any given run.

My Main Hunter looks to be going to reaching 90 by solely doing Random panda dungeons (but gosh damn im getting stick of the same 2)

[The_Jackal]

Don't the apexis quest zone bars start up anyways once you zone in and start killing mobs, even if it's not the daily? All the stuff you do on the garrison questline is usually clickable, IIRC. There's also rare spawn hunting, bonus quest locations, anything you might have skipped on the way up, especially Nagrand, the entire garrison questline, treasure hidden all over Draenor, garrison invasions, reputation...

I'm not sure what the re-set mechanics are, but it doesn't matter, because they're ALL THE SAME QUEST, not to mention you might get the crystals, but you won't get the gold payout.

The current lack of dailies is because Blizzard discovered that the vocal portion of the population hated dailies. I know a couple people burnt out and quit playing because they felt that doing ALL the dailies was mandatory in MoP. Isle of the thunder king was an attempt to fix that, and Timeless Isle was the next iteration towards a minimal-daily reward system.

So we can't have variety because some unemployed nutjob with OCD can't pace himself?

If you've cleared off all the maps, done all the bonus quest areas, completed the garrison questline, have all your reputations maxed, and liked doing dailies in previous expansions, then I understand a bit more where you're coming from. However, I would contend that the adventure and fun drained out of most of the previous daily zones after the fifth or so time.

I won't dispute that all of these systems are inducements to repetition of content, and yes, I'd prefer they just make MORE content, but I find that the current paradigm feels a LOT more repetitive, because, as I said earlier, you mostly do the same stuff every day.

I think what we need is a phased event system layered on top of what we have now. A couple of the outposts in each zone get attacked by different groups on occasion, and there are clickable objects and elite mobs that when killed will de-phase you from the attack segment and give you a reward for fighting off the attack. Randomly spawning daily events, similar to Zarhym's head, only across all of Draenor.

Nobody's going to see them, because we're all busy maintaining the garrison.

However, I think your complaint that the opportunity cost of not doing content you don't like is too high to easily ignore is your problem and not Blizzard's. Playing the AH is probably still the optimal game in town in terms of time investment and gold gain. 100k is between one and four top-tier BoE raid drops, and it was 2-4 665 BoE world drops until 6.1 hit.

The nature of the economy and what kind of behaviour it encourages is ABSOLUTELY Blizzard's problem. If it wasn't, they wouldn't have an economist on staff.

We're in a theme park with twenty or so rides- stuff I mentioned earlier plus gathering, 5-mans, lfr, raiding, mythic raiding, Ashran, battlegrounds, arenas, ranked pvp, battle pets, transmog, and garrison followers. It is possible to do any of these things primarily while dabbling in others and ignoring the rest completely. But don't say there's nothing to do.

I never said there was nothing to do. I said there was nothing AS PROFITABLE to do as garrisons. Remember, the whole underpinning of this discussion is the disconnect between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards, ie: the Garrison is subsidized drudgery.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Quick Warrior Question: How on earth do lower-level (or any level, for that matter) Protection Warriors keep enough fury up to use their abilities? Shield Block alone costs 60 fury to activate, and between Thunderclap to hold aggro on groups and the occasional Heroic Strike I never seem to have enough fury to do anything useful.

Hell...sometimes I'm even losing aggro on grouped mobs, and I'm not sure why.

MIGHT be because this alt is only level 20, but it still feels...off, somehow.

[The_Jackal]

And don't accuse me of being obtuse when your only argument is "I think this optional thing is required, despite not being required in any way shape or form and actively making myself poorer by forcing myself to do it" because "You have to do this for money" is a blatantly false statement when there are plenty of other easy ways to make money, and better than professions.

Now Mind you I will agree that WoD is horridly content light, but I don't blame that on the garrison. I blame that on people who cried about Daily quests early on in MOP, so they backlashed hard and gave us nothing to actually do aside from..Grind Rep, so now they will throw out T-19 in a few months...and we will have another year of Hellscream Final boss and hopefully we get more 5.1 and 5.2 style daily quest arcs.

That's a straw man, reducio ad absurdum. My argument is, and always has been, that the most lucrative activity is also the most BORING. And proffering running content so stale and unchallenging that I can barely remain awake while doing it just reinforces my point. So my options are flipping junk with auctionator, playing garrsion janitor, or punching Cata-era kindergarteners for their lunch money. Great.

[The_Jackal]

Quick Warrior Question: How on earth do lower-level (or any level, for that matter) Protection Warriors keep enough fury up to use their abilities? Shield Block alone costs 60 fury to activate, and between Thunderclap to hold aggro on groups and the occasional Heroic Strike I never seem to have enough fury to do anything useful.

Hell...sometimes I'm even losing aggro on grouped mobs, and I'm not sure why.

MIGHT be because this alt is only level 20, but it still feels...off, somehow.

I don't think you need shield block to survive in level 20 dungeons. Also, avoid heroic strike, except for ultimatum procs. Life will get immeasurably better at 26, when you get devastate, and again at 30 with revenge. Finally, stack more crit. Crit = ultimatum & enrage procs.

[Seerow]

Quick Warrior Question: How on earth do lower-level (or any level, for that matter) Protection Warriors keep enough fury up to use their abilities? Shield Block alone costs 60 fury to activate, and between Thunderclap to hold aggro on groups and the occasional Heroic Strike I never seem to have enough fury to do anything useful.

Hell...sometimes I'm even losing aggro on grouped mobs, and I'm not sure why.

MIGHT be because this alt is only level 20, but it still feels...off, somehow.

Basically don't worry about rage costing abilities. Heroic Strike is something you won't touch on prot until you get the proc that makes it free. Prot is basically Shield Slam > Revenge > Devastate, with SS, Revenge, and Heroic Strikes all eventually getting procs (SS procs from devastate, Revenge procs when you parry an attack, Heroic Strike proccing off Shield Slam crits).

That said, at low levels (sub 80 I think) Shield Slam has a ridiculous nerf that's a hold over from before they got rid of base damage, so it hits like a wet noodle. Revenge doesn't come online until 30, and Devastate doesn't come online until level 26. So right where you are (early 20s) is prot's lowest point, since as you pointed out all you really have is Shield Slam and Thunderclap. So you just alternate those two and hope it's enough to hold enemies to you. Generally Thunderclap alone will hold aggro for low level groups unless somebody else is using a threat boosting ability for some reason.

If you push through to 26 you'll get devastate which will also get you your Sword and Board proc. Devastate has higher damage per GCD than low level shield slam, but the shield slam will generate Ultimatum (Heroic Strike) procs, and provide you with rage for more heroic strikes (or Shield Block if you're being hit by a bunch of stuff. At low level don't bother unless you've got at least 2 or 3 groups of enemies on you), so is still worth pressing. Once you get to 30 you'll have revenge, and it's pretty much smooth sailing from there, since Revenge also generates rage and will proc a lot if you have lots of stuff hitting you, letting you basically keep shield block up as often as possible while still spending some rage on heroic strikes. Just make sure for your level 45 talent not to spec into Heavy Repercussions (until level 80 at least), Sudden Death is probably your best bet, giving you a nice bit of damage while still leaving your rage alone to choose between Shield Block/Barrier/Heroic Strike.


tl;dr: You're right about what Prot has access to at 20, and it is kind of lame. But by level 26-30 you will have most of your rotational toolbox and be much better equipped to go on. On the bright side most of your skills don't cost rage, so don't worry if you are rage starved early on. By the time you need the rage to survive, you will have plenty of it.

[Astrella]

Hell...sometimes I'm even losing aggro on grouped mobs, and I'm not sure why.

Are you using Heirlooms? I had a similar problem when trying to tank without using heirlooms when everyone else does.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Are you using Heirlooms? I had a similar problem when trying to tank without using heirlooms when everyone else does.

Weapon, Shield, Full Armor, & Cloak Heirlooms. No Dread Pirate Ring yet (or ever, likely), and no trinkets.

[otakuryoga]

I never said there was nothing to do. I said there was nothing AS PROFITABLE to do as garrisons. Remember, the whole underpinning of this discussion is the disconnect between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards, ie: the Garrison is subsidized drudgery.

I don't really get why you are calling garrison tasks profitable
there is so much ore/herbs on marketplace that it sells for just over what it goes for to AI merchant

much more profitable to run dungeons/old raids/daily clusters
you know, all the stuff you say you prefer over garrison

[Astrella]

I don't really get why you are calling garrison tasks profitable
there is so much ore/herbs on marketplace that it sells for just over what it goes for to AI merchant

much more profitable to run dungeons/old raids/daily clusters
you know, all the stuff you say you prefer over garrison

Garrison Treasure hunter missions with Treasure hunters and to a lesser extent the barn. I make a fair bit of money from just spending 5-10 minutes a day putting out missions and going through salvage boxes.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Please, Dungeon Finder: Save me from Druids who queue up as healers and then proceed to attempt to preempt the tank on every pull. Save me from Priests who have their own idea about where we're going, end up dropping into areas they can't walk back from, pulling aggro, and getting everyone but me killed. And save me from Hunters who flatly refuse to turn Growl off, even when directly called out on it after me politely inquiring if they left it on my accident.

This has been today's update on Djinn learns Tank.

[Alent]

Please, Dungeon Finder: Save me from Druids who queue up as healers and then proceed to attempt to preempt the tank on every pull. Save me from Priests who have their own idea about where we're going, end up dropping into areas they can't walk back from, pulling aggro, and getting everyone but me killed. And save me from Hunters who flatly refuse to turn Growl off, even when directly called out on it after me politely inquiring if they left it on my accident.

This has been today's update on Djinn learns Tank.

If it makes you feel any better, somewhere around 85~90, Pet Growl becomes completely worthless against all the tank classes. They specifically went out of their way to sabotage the threat scaling in WoD because Hunters were able to get Proving Grounds: endless tank.

[ryuplaneswalker]

So I went to recruit my follower for the week, and..this lady showed up.

More Legendary Than Garona.

[Sylthia]

So I went to recruit my follower for the week, and..this lady showed up.

More Legendary Than Garona.

Does she have Loreslayer as a trait?

[Draconi Redfir]

that's certainly a thing...

would be nice if you could ask for spesific races from your inn. i want a garrison full of trolls dangit! and i only found two from the inn so far! :(

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

If it makes you feel any better, somewhere around 85~90, Pet Growl becomes completely worthless against all the tank classes. They specifically went out of their way to sabotage the threat scaling in WoD because Hunters were able to get Proving Grounds: endless tank.

That's good to know. It's also happening much less frequently not that I got Revenge, and thus another reliable multi-target damage source.

In other news, I wish there were some more reliable way to get follower retraining. I got unlucky (I guess), and currently have 7 guys who all counter danger zone...and not enough for pretty much everything else. Inn helps, but not fast enough.

[Sylthia]

That's good to know. It's also happening much less frequently not that I got Revenge, and thus another reliable multi-target damage source.

In other news, I wish there were some more reliable way to get follower retraining. I got unlucky (I guess), and currently have 7 guys who all counter danger zone...and not enough for pretty much everything else. Inn helps, but not fast enough.

You can buy ability and trait rerolls for 1000GR from your quartermaster.

[The_Jackal]

You can buy ability and trait rerolls for 1000GR from your quartermaster.

Or, if you prefer not to blow a ton of resources on rerolls, you can just keep recruiting new followers with the ability or trait you want, each week, from the Inn.

[Alent]

You can buy ability and trait rerolls for 1000GR from your quartermaster.

Since the "You always get level 90 missions" change, I find that I get the Path of the Titans mission every time I log in, since I only log in once a week if that.

[GungHo]

The current lack of dailies is because Blizzard discovered that the vocal portion of the population hated dailies. I know a couple people burnt out and quit playing because they felt that doing ALL the dailies was mandatory in MoP. Isle of the thunder king was an attempt to fix that, and Timeless Isle was the next iteration towards a minimal-daily reward system.

If you've cleared off all the maps, done all the bonus quest areas, completed the garrison questline, have all your reputations maxed, and liked doing dailies in previous expansions, then I understand a bit more where you're coming from. However, I would contend that the adventure and fun drained out of most of the previous daily zones after the fifth or so time.

I can see where you're both coming from. My issue is basically that they removed the reward along with removing the daily grind. Now all you get is rocks, plants, and some miscellaneous crap. The Savage Blood Nagrand elites are probably the best thing you can spend your time on if you're going to worry about grinding something, but it's not something you're going to be doing every day. It's good for a lazy Sunday afternoon, but otherwise, if you have a job/family, you're going to do the quick stuff. I liked the reputation rewards, especially when it was rep for a cool new mount. I am happy I don't need to get rep with my employees (except for the bodyguards), but it seems like there could be more payoff than "here's my castle... it looks just like your castle".

I do like the salvage gear, though. I have yet to be able to get a full suit through it, but it's a good way to back-door in some class-specific gear.

I'm glad he doesn't taunt while bodyguarding. Trying to quest with an aggro-happy NPC would be a nightmare.

Bodyguards can be an absolute pain in the ass if you're taming pets (you have to dismiss them or they'll kick the pet out of the channel) or having to do things where you have to get a mob "near death". I don't know why I can't turn the guy off temporarily without sending him back to the garrison. Is there something I'm missing?

[Draconi Redfir]

i'm still crossing my fingers that someday we might be able to assign our alts as followers to our mains in garrisons, or even take on friends/guild mates to all be part of the same garrison. i mean, the woodwork is all there, I’ve looked around a bit and with very few exceptions such as the hearthstone tournament, any task a follower is told to do during a mission is completely doable yourself. icespine ravagers? They're in the world. Lug'dol and his thugs? In the world. dungeon missions such as archendune and grimrail? of course they still exist!

So an ideal situation would be to have the "commander" player have a sepperate set of followers, or hell maybe even the same set (i.e. player followers would count to the same 25 follower max) wich they can then send on missions much like regular followers. so the commander could send you onb a mission to kill some icespine ravagers, you do that, you come back, and you get experiance, or maybe you're on a mission to slay Ner'Zul, do that, come back get experiance etc. experiance gains would likely be raised to compensate for the lack of commander quests in the world, and as for the wait time, it can be seen as more of a time limit then a "can only turn in after X amount of time has passed" thing. like "next time you log on you need to kill Ner'Zul within eight hours." or maybe it's a case of "if this player doesn't log on in eight hours then the quest is considered failed."

if all of them are online or agree to it you could send multiple player followers on the same quest (though not ideal for alts) to work together, or send one or more NPC followers with them to act as temporary bodyguards once in the appropriate zone or alternatively in the form of buffs/abilities. such as a follower who has the "magic debuff" counter granting the player follower a temporary ability that allows them to counter the same magic debuff no matter the class.

Gear could be handed out in the form of the weapon/armour enhancement tokens, giving the character it's used on some level appropriate gear, and just... yeah.

it's probably just the roleplayer in me. but i find it kind of awkward having the entirety of the playerbase being the "commander" of the exact same garrison, it kind of breaks immersion when you run into a few hundred other people who are the commanders over the same garrison as you.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

It's probably just the roleplayer in me. but i find it kind of awkward having the entirety of the playerbase being the "commander" of the exact same garrison, it kind of breaks immersion when you run into a few hundred other people who are the commanders over the same garrison as you.

Hm. Consider the following as well: we have a system already in place for this sort of thing. What would happen if you had Guild Garrisons?

Use the current Garrison instancing technology, but allow all players of specific guilds to enter the Guild Garrison. Perhaps have a few instanced "Houses" that players can customize the interior of, that becomes unique to them -- these would give normal access to things players might want, while the Guild could set up buildings to focus on what the Guild wants to accomplish.

Heck, I just want to see that tech used more often. If I'm an Engineer, I want to be able to set up an instanced Engineering laboratory inside, say, Orgrimmar and become the Horde's Master Engineer. Sure, every other Engineer will have one as well, and it'll share the same building, but when I enter it I'll be in MY lab, customized the way I want it.

This tech exists, but I can't help but feel Blizzard isn't using it as creatively as they could be.

[Icewraith]

Part of the issue with the garrisons is that time spent in garrisons and the reward for doing so scales linearly per character you intend to have viable at max level. When something is so easy to do, it's hard to not spend a bunch of time doing it on your alts so they get gear and lots of extra gold. If you exploit the garrison to the maximum it might take 15-20 minutes, but if you have 4 characters....

I now either mine or herb on each character, never both, sometimes neither, and will probably be tearing out two of my three barns since keeping all three stocked is time consuming. I check followers no more than once a day unless I have the rare mostly free weekend, and may break down and get an addon to at least make the clicking process go faster. I've stopped doing the garrison pet battle since the XP hypernerf and only do Erris. I check salvage once a week. I may cut down further, just because the Garrison sucked way too much time when I was getting maximum benefit, but if I'm going to keep anything, it's the followers. The gold haul from the inn is significant.

I finally got the one Harrison Jones daily I was missing, and have now experienced his incredible OPness. I'm doing those dailies on my alts whenever possible to cut down leveling time. 675 Harrison takes a follower from 90-100 in one level 100 XP mission, and the follower will contribute. It's amazing!

[The Glyphstone]

RE: 6.2 PTR notes....

Spoiler

Show

Wow. RIP Monks. Were they really that OP?

Also vindictively gleeful at the Demonology nerfs, since I main Destro from long habit. I just want Ember generation back on my Rain of Fire, dammit? I'm sick of having no effective AoE.

[Astrella]

Mythic dungeons! :D

[Leon]

Does seem a bit savage