WoW XIX: This is my Artifact. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

[Psyren]

The lore is indeed cool, just... not the 5th time through. And if WoD is this slow with looms I can't imagine the poor souls who have to do without, or who didn't shell out thousands of gold like I did to keep all their looms relevant to 100.

This is why I liked Wrath/Cata (and why I like Legion) - multiple choices of "starting area" help you mix things up on secondary playthroughs considerably. I'd even be happy with Pandaria's approach, where you have to start in Jade Forest, but leveling is so fast with looms that you're all done a handful of quests in.

Thanks for the tip though, I think I will try just hiking to a new area and doing bonus objectives next time.

[Delusion]

I absolutely love playing Demon Hunter but I realy wish Vengeful retreat + felblade combo was more reliable. If you press the felblade too early after VR the felblade will deal damage and I will get the fury from it but I will still get proprelled far away from the mob which causes me to waste the Momentum buff, but if I press it too late the VR might have taken me out of the felblade range and I will lose second or two. Its pretty annoying.

Also just spent and hour and twenty minutes setting up weak auras. Mostly because I hadn't used that addon as extensively before and its not the most intuitive addon to set up.

[Icewraith]

Raid firsts for the expansion last night:

First raid group.
First non-tank boss pull (surprisingly, not a hunter).
First healer DC mid-fight.
First sub-5% wipe.
First tunneling dps blows up most of the raid by not moving.
First Boss Kill (woohoo!).
First personal no loot from a raid boss (many more to come).
First gold from a bonus roll (also many more to come).
First wipe on trash.

It was all glorious.
Numbers were a bit concerning though. I know a couple cases people have given up on their previously preferred specs and are now trying to catch up their offspec artifacts (like my wife finally gave up on arcane and is now fire). I also know it's hard to put out good numbers when you die halfway through the fight because you haven't gotten used to watching for bugs yet. IIRC I was a lot lower on the damage and healing totem poles on our boss kill fight, where most people were alive until almost the very end. A lot of the early attempts I was third on heals, fourth on damage.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Man...we had an interesting Il'gynoth last night.

Close enough to a wipe that we just said "Screw it" on the last phase and all dived in, knowing we'd either burn it down with a second to spare, or inevitably wipe during the next outside phase.

Got it with about 2 seconds left on the clock.

[The Glyphstone]

How does anyone manage to afford current-gen flasks right now? On my server, a Legion-grade flask goes from 2,500 to 4,000 apiece.

[Icewraith]

How does anyone manage to afford current-gen flasks right now? On my server, a Legion-grade flask goes from 2,500 to 4,000 apiece.

I don't think we do. Most of us just used last gen flasks/pots and our Alchemists got the dragon kill they needed to make Cauldrons for next week/possibly tomorrow.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

How does anyone manage to afford current-gen flasks right now? On my server, a Legion-grade flask goes from 2,500 to 4,000 apiece.

You don't. That's the strategy. I popped ONE, only because I needed extra health against Ursoc, since if his one-two goes off at the same time (as it sometimes does) that burst my whole health pool.

[The_Jackal]

You don't. That's the strategy. I popped ONE, only because I needed extra health against Ursoc, since if his one-two goes off at the same time (as it sometimes does) that burst my whole health pool.

If your guild hasn't gotten one or two crafters ready to supply guildies with flasks at something approaching cost, then you're not ready to raid. The guys selling flasks on the AH aren't guilded, they're goblins milking the market for what it will bear.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

If your guild hasn't gotten one or two crafters ready to supply guildies with flasks at something approaching cost, then you're not ready to raid. The guys selling flasks on the AH aren't guilded, they're goblins milking the market for what it will bear.

I mean, we're basically a brand new guild, so...we haven't really: we have a FEW, but not enough to always have one going. It also hasn't been a huge problem yet.

[The_Jackal]

I mean, we're basically a brand new guild, so...we haven't really: we have a FEW, but not enough to always have one going. It also hasn't been a huge problem yet.

You also may not want to burn really expensive mats on flasks until you're sure you've got mechanics right. Flasking everyone is still only going to add something in the region of ~2% to total DPS, so if you're wiping before you've got the boss down to 5% health, keep your gold in your pockets.

[Antonok]

How does anyone manage to afford current-gen flasks right now? On my server, a Legion-grade flask goes from 2,500 to 4,000 apiece.

You don't basically. Good* news is the prices should drop when the Blood trader releases in 7.1 and we can start buying starlight rose instead of spending 20 hours to pick half a stack of them.

*Bad for me however as its making me bank at 1500g a flask

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

You also may not want to burn really expensive mats on flasks until you're sure you've got mechanics right. Flasking everyone is still only going to add something in the region of ~2% to total DPS, so if you're wiping before you've got the boss down to 5% health, keep your gold in your pockets.

I mean...yeah. That's fairly obvious.

[Icewraith]

You also may not want to burn really expensive mats on flasks until you're sure you've got mechanics right. Flasking everyone is still only going to add something in the region of ~2% to total DPS, so if you're wiping before you've got the boss down to 5% health, keep your gold in your pockets.

Flasking everyone makes more sense than using good food or expensive feasts or pre-potting (which don't persist through wipes), though. Also note that last expansion's augment runes - not the infinite use one, but the consumables - still work at 110 if you still have them or find a stack in your bank or on an alt.

Something that might help is the engineering feast from Reaves' Snack Distribution Module. That gives 225 versatility and costs all of five felslate to drop to feed the whole raid... unfortunately that's the more expensive ore, but still only five ore. If you're looking for a little bit more durability and throughput for your raid as people learn content, you can do worse than an extra versatility buff (such as no buff).

[Corvus]

On'y recently just hit 110. I was still 101 when some of my guild were already 110. I was also only in my third zone when I did it and am now still working through the early part of Suramar.

Been levelling as a bear druid. I have been bearing it up since very, very early vanilla, back when feral was non-viable for anything. Back then the only druid spec you were allowed to play in raids was resto - and then only if you have inervate which you had to use on one oft he true healers. Things have changed a lot since then.

Have been enjoying being able to pull packs of enemies when questing and (slowly) burning them down while not dying. Sure DPS may be able to kill them faster but being able to walk out at near full health is fun.

Unfortunately that may no longer be viable. The PTR is nerfing all tanks hard. There are some balance...problems... with DPS at the moment and tanks are being caught up in the crossfire of it. The DPS spread between top line (such as MM hunters, Ass/Outlaw Rouges) and bottom (Frost DKs) is way out of whack, to the point of doing double the DPS. The problem is that tanks seem to be out damaging the low end DPS (especially in AOE trash) but still falling well short of the top DPS. But instead of improving the bottom DPS they are nerfing all tanks - and not just their AOE DPs but their survivalbility too.

So now DPS are going to find it harder to PUG - tanks kind of had to carry poor DPS in dungeons but now who would want to tank after this kind of hit?

In other news I hit 800 fishing and was hoping t start the fishing artifact questing, only to find I have to have caught all the rare fish first. Think I have only caught four to date so it looks like a ling grind ahead.

[Psyren]

Have been enjoying being able to pull packs of enemies when questing and (slowly) burning them down while not dying. Sure DPS may be able to kill them faster but being able to walk out at near full health is fun.

Unfortunately that may no longer be viable. The PTR is nerfing all tanks hard. There are some balance...problems... with DPS at the moment and tanks are being caught up in the crossfire of it. The DPS spread between top line (such as MM hunters, Ass/Outlaw Rouges) and bottom (Frost DKs) is way out of whack, to the point of doing double the DPS. The problem is that tanks seem to be out damaging the low end DPS (especially in AOE trash) but still falling well short of the top DPS. But instead of improving the bottom DPS they are nerfing all tanks - and not just their AOE DPs but their survivalbility too.

So now DPS are going to find it harder to PUG - tanks kind of had to carry poor DPS in dungeons but now who would want to tank after this kind of hit?

As much as I love being in tank spec all the time though, you're talking about two vastly different things here (quest mobs vs. mythic/raid elites). I doubt the tanks battling the former while questing will really notice the difference to their clear time even if there does end up being a nerf. But conversely, I know that if I was a dps spec in a Mythic or raid and the tank was outdpsing me through no fault of my own I'd feel pretty upset/discouraged.

[Corvus]

As much as I love being in tank spec all the time though, you're talking about two vastly different things here (quest mobs vs. mythic/raid elites). I doubt the tanks battling the former while questing will really notice the difference to their clear time even if there does end up being a nerf. But conversely, I know that if I was a dps spec in a Mythic or raid and the tank was outdpsing me through no fault of my own I'd feel pretty upset/discouraged.

Tanks ST DPS wasn't great - it was on the aoe trash pulls that they were doing well and DPS complaining about that seems stupid. Tanks are meant to be hitting everything so that they keep aggro. Reduce the tanks DPS on trash packs and you'll see a lot more DPS pulling aggro. Bear tanks were struggling to keep aggro as it was and reducing their DPS without boosting threat generation (which is what is proposed) is only going to lead to more dead DPS.

The problem isn't with the tanks though - it is with the terrible balance for DPS specs at the moment. Currently some specs are doing near double the DPS of other specs despite being the same ilvl. If they raised all specs to the same level then all would be out-dpsing tanks.

[Seerow]

So, this Suramar quest

Spoiler: Spreading Rumors

Show

Oh my god this is the worst quest I have ever done. I don't know who designed it, but they need to be banned from quest design for the rest of forever. It's labeled as a group quest in the middle of a single person quest line with nothing in the quest text itself to indicate that (so you don't know unless you notice the group icon in your log).

But even with a group, there is no fighting your way through this. The quest sends you deep into Suramar city, into an area jam packed with NPC Nightborne and Demons, mostly elites with 5-7mil HP and really high damage. There are enemies frikken everywhere that will undisguise you, and several of them have faster than normal warnings (to the point of basically being instant), so there's no dodging around them.

After dying my first 10 times trying to do it the sneaky way, I decided to wait until later in the evening when I'd have some friends on. So then last night I try again, this time with me in tank spec, and with a disc priest and frost mage backing me up. You'd think this would make it easy, just plow through the trash around the person you need to talk to, disguise up, walk up to them and talk to them.

Not so much. The area is so densely packed we weren't able to pull a reasonable number of mobs. I think the smallest pull I saw was 10. Which was still enough to overwhelm and kill us. After a half dozen failed attempts, I wound up going with the method of corpse running and rezzing as close as I could to the guy I needed to talk to... only to find out that guy will also aggro if you are not disguised, so you need to be far enough away to not aggro, but also close enough you're not getting hit by the detectors who will break your disguise who are usually sitting just a dozen yards away from the person you need to talk to.

I finally completed it after some more experimenting and corpse running. All told, the single quest took me about 1.5-2 hours of time investment, around 30 deaths, and my reward? 30 gold. Didn't even get a meaningful amount of reputation from it. And this is after paying the mercenary NPC ******* 1200 mana for the privilege of unlocking this ****ty quest.

rant over

[ryuplaneswalker]

How does anyone manage to afford current-gen flasks right now? On my server, a Legion-grade flask goes from 2,500 to 4,000 apiece.

Hey remember when I said that Legion professions were going to be horrible? Who knew that requiring max level to make anything of use would end up making things stupidly expensive. Go look at the Potion Prices.

Or the freaking Neck Enchants, 20K for 2% extra damage. TOTALLY GREAT GUYS so much better than WOD.

[Seerow]

Hey remember when I said that Legion professions were going to be horrible? Who knew that requiring max level to make anything of use would end up making things stupidly expensive. Go look at the Potion Prices.

Or the freaking Neck Enchants, 20K for 2% extra damage. TOTALLY GREAT GUYS so much better than WOD.

Honestly I blame ridiculous prices on the gold inflation from WoD as much as anything. When most of the hardcore crowd is sitting on well over a million from milking Garrisons for a year or two, they're willing to pay whatever to get their raid supplies. Crafters charging whatever people are willing to pay is just the nature of the beast.


Plus the profession overhauls are great... for the people actually working their professions. The intent was to make professions more engaging and profitable, I'd argue they seem to have succeeded there.

[Abemad]

So, this Suramar quest

Spoiler: Spreading Rumors

Show

Oh my god this is the worst quest I have ever done. I don't know who designed it, but they need to be banned from quest design for the rest of forever. It's labeled as a group quest in the middle of a single person quest line with nothing in the quest text itself to indicate that (so you don't know unless you notice the group icon in your log).

But even with a group, there is no fighting your way through this. The quest sends you deep into Suramar city, into an area jam packed with NPC Nightborne and Demons, mostly elites with 5-7mil HP and really high damage. There are enemies frikken everywhere that will undisguise you, and several of them have faster than normal warnings (to the point of basically being instant), so there's no dodging around them.

After dying my first 10 times trying to do it the sneaky way, I decided to wait until later in the evening when I'd have some friends on. So then last night I try again, this time with me in tank spec, and with a disc priest and frost mage backing me up. You'd think this would make it easy, just plow through the trash around the person you need to talk to, disguise up, walk up to them and talk to them.

Not so much. The area is so densely packed we weren't able to pull a reasonable number of mobs. I think the smallest pull I saw was 10. Which was still enough to overwhelm and kill us. After a half dozen failed attempts, I wound up going with the method of corpse running and rezzing as close as I could to the guy I needed to talk to... only to find out that guy will also aggro if you are not disguised, so you need to be far enough away to not aggro, but also close enough you're not getting hit by the detectors who will break your disguise who are usually sitting just a dozen yards away from the person you need to talk to.

I finally completed it after some more experimenting and corpse running. All told, the single quest took me about 1.5-2 hours of time investment, around 30 deaths, and my reward? 30 gold. Didn't even get a meaningful amount of reputation from it. And this is after paying the mercenary NPC ******* 1200 mana for the privilege of unlocking this ****ty quest.

rant over

You should really try the leatherworking quest i Stormheim, where they have you following a reindeer across mountains, down waterfalls and through mobs - while staying mounted... dumbest quest ever. Unless you're a panda/rogue you'll die trying to get down the waterfall...

[Requizen]

I honestly am waiting to level Inscription til after 7.1 because it's much more lucrative to just sell the Herbs instead of milling them. And the proc rate for Sallow Pigment is just so ****ing low it's not even funny, and then you need like 10 of them per recipe until you level up those recipes. Just stupid.

[Psyren]

Reduce the tanks DPS on trash packs and you'll see a lot more DPS pulling aggro.

These are two different levers though; it's not difficult to keep tank threat static while reducing their damage output, simply increase the threat they generate per each point of damage in equal proportion to the loss of said damage.

Whether Blizzard will actually catch on and DO that is of course another story.

The problem isn't with the tanks though - it is with the terrible balance for DPS specs at the moment. Currently some specs are doing near double the DPS of other specs despite being the same ilvl. If they raised all specs to the same level then all would be out-dpsing tanks.

Agreed, so to me the endstate is clear - all dps should be capable of outdpsing tanks, or at least of being on par in AoE situations for those specs that are weaker at AOE. If not in Normal or Heroic 5-mans, then definitely in Mythics, Raids, and Mythic+.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

So, this Suramar quest

Spoiler: Spreading Rumors

Show

Oh my god this is the worst quest I have ever done. I don't know who designed it, but they need to be banned from quest design for the rest of forever. It's labeled as a group quest in the middle of a single person quest line with nothing in the quest text itself to indicate that (so you don't know unless you notice the group icon in your log).

But even with a group, there is no fighting your way through this. The quest sends you deep into Suramar city, into an area jam packed with NPC Nightborne and Demons, mostly elites with 5-7mil HP and really high damage. There are enemies frikken everywhere that will undisguise you, and several of them have faster than normal warnings (to the point of basically being instant), so there's no dodging around them.

After dying my first 10 times trying to do it the sneaky way, I decided to wait until later in the evening when I'd have some friends on. So then last night I try again, this time with me in tank spec, and with a disc priest and frost mage backing me up. You'd think this would make it easy, just plow through the trash around the person you need to talk to, disguise up, walk up to them and talk to them.

Not so much. The area is so densely packed we weren't able to pull a reasonable number of mobs. I think the smallest pull I saw was 10. Which was still enough to overwhelm and kill us. After a half dozen failed attempts, I wound up going with the method of corpse running and rezzing as close as I could to the guy I needed to talk to... only to find out that guy will also aggro if you are not disguised, so you need to be far enough away to not aggro, but also close enough you're not getting hit by the detectors who will break your disguise who are usually sitting just a dozen yards away from the person you need to talk to.

I finally completed it after some more experimenting and corpse running. All told, the single quest took me about 1.5-2 hours of time investment, around 30 deaths, and my reward? 30 gold. Didn't even get a meaningful amount of reputation from it. And this is after paying the mercenary NPC ******* 1200 mana for the privilege of unlocking this ****ty quest.

rant over

I do feel a lot of sympathy for any non-Paladin on this quest: I found I had enough self-healing to just fight anything I grabbed and made it through just fine, but I suspect that, unless you're a Demon Hunter, no one else could do quite the same thing. It really IS a poorly designed area.

[The Glyphstone]

I had no trouble there, thanks to careful and judicious use of Hexing mobs who could break my disguise. A CCed enemy loses their Truesight, and CC can be applied without entering combat. For the handful of characters who lack ranged CC, though, i imagine it's miserable.

[Requizen]

It's fine as a Hunter, Feign Death only has a 30 second CD :P

[Seerow]

I had no trouble there, thanks to careful and judicious use of Hexing mobs who could break my disguise. A CCed enemy loses their Truesight, and CC can be applied without entering combat. For the handful of characters who lack ranged CC, though, i imagine it's miserable.

If CC doesn't break disguise, yeah I can see how that would make the quest much easier. Doesn't help doing it as a Warrior (or probably most other melee sans rogue), but means I probably could have tag teamed with the frost mage and made it through easier than what I wound up doing.

[The_Jackal]

It's fine as a Hunter, Feign Death only has a 30 second CD :P

The warrior has a zero-cooldown ability, called 'actual death', but it has expensive reagent costs and a protracted animation. I'm stalled on "Rumor Has It" as well, and I'm with Djinn on this one: The guy who came up with this quest/area should be horsewhipped.

[Seerow]

The warrior has a zero-cooldown ability, called 'actual death', but it has expensive reagent costs and a protracted animation. I'm stalled on "Rumor Has It" as well, and I'm with Djinn on this one: The guy who came up with this quest/area should be horsewhipped.

That was something I forgot to mention in my rant post: No graveyard on that side of the city. So every time you die, you've got a 2-5 minute run back. Because Suramar City doesn't allow for running in straight lines, you have to run up and down stairs, crossing back and forth to find your way back to your body. Then towards the end of it, I had a rez timer even with that long run back. That's why 30 deaths caused 2 hours or so of time wasted.

It's really sad because it had potential to be a great quest. Just slightly better stealth mechanics would have made the quest really enjoyable. But instead it is... well what it is.

[The Glyphstone]

There's also the parajumping option, for people who can't CC. Go up to the Twilight Vineyards region, then Glider off the top to your destination. It lets you skip about 90% of the intervening trash, possibly 100% if you land right.

[Seerow]

There's also the parajumping option, for people who can't CC. Go up to the Twilight Vineyards region, then Glider off the top to your destination. It lets you skip about 90% of the intervening trash, possibly 100% if you land right.

That was actually how I started. It doesn't help much because a lot of the detectors are right there next to the NPCs you need to talk to. Literally within a dozen yards. So if you don't land literally on top of the person, usually you're getting caught, and then you either run back and get caught in the cycle of inching closer and dying again; or you take the rez sickness penalty, hearth back to portal room, take portal to vinyards, and try parajumping again. Either way no good options.