official World of Warcraft

[LaP]

You keep using this label but it has no meaning for me.

What exactly does "semi-hardcore" mean?

It means good players who are serious and want and can down hard bosses but who raid between 3 and 5 hours a week only because we have other things to do than playing wow.

[the evn show]

It means good players who are serious and want and can down hard bosses but who raid between 3 and 5 hours a week only because we have other things to do than playing wow.

Firelands is about 2 hours long on either difficulty: you shave about 10 minutes from a clear on normal mode vs hard because the bosses don't live as long but the bulk of the clear is trash. There's absolutely no content until pre-nerf heroic rag that required anything beyond heroic Tier 11 loot (as Paragon, Method, even my crappy guild) proved back in July.

If it was a matter of good players that wanted to down hard bosses in 3 hours a week then there was plenty of time for you to do that. The fact that so much of your second last post dealt with gear (RNG screws 10m, there's not enough trivial bosses feeding us 391) tips your hand a bit. Your problem wasn't the P3 third meteor timer, you were having people die to tornados on Alysrazor. If you think the only way to improve your character is through item progression (despite the knowledge that this stuff was done in T11 heroic gear) then you're overestimating your ability.

If anything a limited play time is exactly the reason you should be playing better: you just don't have the time to clear hard content any other way. Farming gear takes time, it's obsoleted by every new tier of content, it's non-transferable across toons or tiers. When you learn to play well enough that you can clear heroic content in an appropriate item level you don't have to sink hours-upon-hours a week into raiding.

I think you might be over-estimating your ability (or underestimating how far beyond your abilities "good" guilds are). This stuff was cleared on week one in 372 gear. Top-end guilds didn't clear stuff because they had more gear than you - they did it because they're more skilled. The sad fact of the matter is that Paragons incredibly fast rate of consuming content in week one means they spent less time in the zone that your 3-5 hours a week guild did. 1 week of ~50 hours getting world firsts followed by 25 weeks of 2 hours clears means they spent (on average) 4 hours a week in there. You might not be able to front-load time like they did, but if you were running into a road block like > 3 weeks (at 3 hours a week) on something like Baleroc then clearly the issue isn't gear or the quantity of content: it's player skill.

[LaP]

Where did i say we were a top guild in the world ? Or skilled like a top 200 group ? I think you probably missed something.

The fact you lost time comparing us to paragon made me laugh at lot. Seriously ??? What ???

I might be underestimating my skills even if i think i'm actually a rather average player who happens to be serious enough to down things. Who knows i might be actually a really really bad player? But i think you are totally underestimating how serious top guilds are or even how serious you might be. And how hard people worked for Rag heroic kill before the nerf. And we are not that serious and we do not work that hard.

You don't like semi-hardcore expression. Fine. Erase it from my previous post and replace it by one you prefer. I used it because this is the expression most people use online to describe group like us. Not hardcore but not really casual either.

I still stand to my opinion that the game should be accessible to all players.

Basically what you are saying is normal content should be so hard that it's impossible for the average joe to even kill one boss and a top 20 server guild on a highly populated server should wipe 8 weeks in it. 8 weeks of wipe. 1 boss progression every week. That means wiping around a minimum of 25 times on every boss.

It would not be my definition of fun. And i'm glad Blizz seems to agree.

[the evn show]

Basically what you are saying is normal content should be so hard that it's impossible for the average joe to even kill one boss

No, but I think a +1 standard deviation player (that is somebody 3/7 heroic) should probably spend 20 weeks working through normal mode.

If it's just about "the game being accessible to all players" then we've got LFR for that.

and a top 20 server guild on a highly populated server should wipe 8 weeks in it. 8 weeks of wipe. 1 boss progression every week.

I think hard mode should take a moderately successful guild like mine somewhere around 200 hours to clear. You can dump that progression up front like paragon does (they blew 50+ hours during the first week to go 6/7 heroic) or you can spread it out over 5 weeks like my guild did - in the end you still run out of content too fast when it only takes ~50 hours even with a fairly casual schedule like my guild (9 hours a week during progression, 2 hours a week while farming).

As soon as you into content where a guild like yours can complete it at anywhere near the rate that top-end guilds do (measured in hours played) you create content where skill isn't a factor and that sucks the fun out of top end content for players that actually enjoy difficult encounters. The bulk of your strategy (based on the previos post) seems to involve farming gear. "Good guilds" don't need the gear you do to clear content so desigined to allow you to complete it in a reasonable time frame with gear means it has to be trivial for "good guilds" to complete it without gear. The only way to force gear requirements on good guilds would either make the content completely inaccessible to you or would involve long-abandoned mechanics like resistance gear sets.

There's no issue with me comparing you to paragon because you're placing yourself in the same "race" as them by saying you should be doing similar content. If heroic modes are tuned for paragon (like T11 was) then it's out of reach for you. If it's tuned for your guild - then groups like paragon get about an hour of content before they run out of things to do.

I think normal mode tuned so that a guild like yours finds it challenging and rewarding. You've said that if normal mode was tuned for you then "regular" players would find it impossible. I think you vastly overestimate the difference in skill between a 2/7h and 7/7n guild: it's really not that great. At the other end of the spectrum: a 13/13 or 7/7 guild is orders of magnitude more skilled than a 11/13 or 6/7 group.

Plot skill levels on a standard normal curve. If mean skill is 7/7, 2/7 is within 1 standard deviation. 6/7 is 2 standard deviations away, 7/7 is 3 standard deviations away. Right now we have content that appears to be:

-3 => -1 STD: LFR

-1 => 0 STD: normal mode

0 => +3 STD: hard mode

I'm arguing for:

-3 => -1 STD: LFR

-1 => +1.5 STD: normal mode

+2 => +3 STD: heroic mode.

Calculate the areas under the curve and you'll see I want to take hard mode and make it suitable for the top 5%, normal mode should cover the middle ~50% of players, and LFR should allow basically anobyd to complete it. I do think there should be a small "gap" in skill level between 7/7 normal mode and 1/7 heroic so that normal mode players realize that the more difficult content is by-design exclusive.

One of the easiest ways blizzard could go about the above is simply leaving difficulty alone and making T12 normal mode drop T11 heroic quality gear. It would be impossible for normal mode players to out-gear heroic mode (which seems to be your strategy), it would allow hard mode players to stay in the content stream appropriate for them, and it would help reduce the gear treadmill: I wouldn't be obligated to finish off a week on normal mode for gear just because we only went 4/8 heroic this week because my months of heroic firelands farming has already given me enough gear to continue: my progression can be in skill level rather than item level.

[the evn show]

This fell off the front page. Anyway, we're finishing up for the year (no new content until after Christmas). I posted this clip from our first Ultraxion heroic kill. I was in a bit of a sour mood so I decided to troll the end of the fight.

Testing

[Bryan R.]

I'm wondering if anyone is encountering issues with disconnects and severe FPS drops in only certain fights.

In Morchok, when he spawns the crystals and pulls the raid toward him, my screen freezes for a second then resumes.

Yesterday was especially bad doing Madness. At times my FPS would go down from 60-70 to <10 causing visual skipping. At one point the game virtually stopped at 1 FPS rendering me completely useless for about 45 seconds.

As far as disconnects, it hasn't been as bad this week but I have been experiencing them completely without warning. My ping times are always <100 and usually ~80. I know my internet connection is fine as well as I am always doing some sort of live connection whether it be remote connections to clients or streaming audio/video (which I know have a large buffer but still).

My specs of the machine I play on are in my signature.

Anyone experiencing or know of this happening? Would be nice to know I'm not alone.

[DrunkenBeard]

^ There are lots of complaints in the general forums concerning LFR random disconnects, so you may not be alone. I haven't been using LFR the couple last days, so can't really say.

[Bryan R.]

^ There are lots of complaints in the general forums concerning LFR random disconnects, so you may not be alone. I haven't been using LFR the couple last days, so can't really say.

That explains the Madness I was in yesterday. Morchok has been an issue since beta for me though although it's not necessarily hindering me. It just scares me that I might disconnect when it happens.

I try to have understanding for the Blizzard developers when it comes to stuff like this but sometimes it's hard to justify.

[the evn show]

Some thoughts on T13:

• I was hoping to spend until February working to make 6/8 heroic - we made it there in December despite the compromised schedule with Final Exams/Christmas/New Years forcing us into ~8 hours a week with alts and friends helping us to progress.
  
• Being logged in while I'm not even in the house just so I can have chat open is probably costing more in electricity than the $3/month It'd cost for the remote guild chat service.
  
• Spine of Deathwing looks like Ragnaros 2.0. 6 comparatively easy bosses followed by the ultimate gear check. Madness is kill by 7/8h guilds very quickly - it seems like a much easier fight. This sort of brick-wall pacing just isn't fun.
  
• Nerfing T12 means we have dozens of guilds who out-gear normal mode but lack the skill to complete hard-mode content. They're going 1/8 and then getting stuck for weeks.
  
• Everyone but the top-3 guilds on my server look like they exploited Hagara. They haven't killed her since the exploits were hot-fixed out of her and none of them are posting kill videos and logs.
  
• 10m guilds are getting heroic Tier at a rate comperable to 25m guilds. While they get more tokens per player, those tokens are more likely to be 'useless' in a smaller guild. The larger guilds are envious.
  
• Making 4-peice bonuses so good that I have to downgrade heroic Tier 12 and run easy mode raid finder with horrible people is just plain crappy design. If there's a god in heaven we'll get conq. helm+chest on wednesday (when our warlock takes the day off to go bowling) and I'll never have to set foot in that crap again. Its the first tier I care about loot, not because it's "shiney epic" but because it'll free me from doing something I don't like just to be good at something I do like.
  

The only other "Good" horde guild on my server transfered to alliance. That was how I was able to see 25m heroic content while it was relevant (our joint alt run was 6/7h). The only other guild on my server with a "legitimate" 2/8 is my girlfriend's but they're not really playing at a level where we could be clearing hard mode bosses in only ~2 hours a week if we teamed up. It looks like I'll be stuck only doing 10m heroic this tier.

I'm expecting noticeable nerfs to heroic content in a month because you can't have the 99.9% of your player base stuck (legitimately) on one boss for 2 months. Once that happens it's going to be a very long and boring wait until MoP, my money is on a beta released in early spring. I bet a lot of players that aren't on the 1-year contract start dropping out once those nerfs come in. Everyone goes 8/8 (or whatever is trivial after the nerfs) and then realizes there's nothing to do. I don't think "easy heroic raid content for everyone" will bring people back nor keep them from leaving.

[Prosidius]

I'm not a huge fan of Dragon Soul. I really hate Spine of Deathwing, it's not fun at all and I feel like stabbing my eyes out after doing it. Madness of Deathwing isn't very fun either. Both of those 2 fights are repetitive and pretty boring in general. I'm impartial to the other 6 bosses. They seem okay, nothing to write home about.

Overall I think Dragon Soul is a disappointing end to Cataclysm. I thought Firelands was good and I expected something of that quality. Dragon Soul is stuck between TOC and ICC in terms of quality I think. TOC was a monstrosity and ICC was alright. It seems Blizzard cant top Kil'Jaeden for most epic expansion ending boss.

[Noveed]

Pugged a full DS run last week and even did Morchock on HC. Stupidly easy to be fair. Had the group been a guild that had more raid experience together I would have guessed we could have killed a lot more on heroic.

Some thoughts that hit me.

Previously in my last guild I did average DPS at best on hunter. Yes it pained me to see me at the top of meters when other classes in the same or better gear did less and also hunters are sitting around the middle of the pack (SV) in terms of DPS.

In the pug run that I did I noticed my own dps much much much higher. Buffs were all covered, buffs have never been an issue in the past nor are they an issue now. The only conclusion I made was playing with better or like minded people spurs me on to do better myself. I have kinda shocked to see this in action. Part of the reason is that its a pug and you want to keep face but the other part is pure competitiveness.

Overall thought very unhappy with the last tier of raiding and the state of class balance. Fail of a way to end the expansion, very anti-climatic! :angry:

In terms of LFR I think it's been a victim of its own success. I really did not want to do 10 man as I "already had done the fight" in 25 man LFR. Most others in guild and server thought the same and lost interest. There was no differentiation between LFR and Normal/HC which is a shame. Would loved to have seen some Raggy HC like differentiation between the two but hey its lazy blizzard.

[the evn show]

Through 6/8 I can't say that I agree with your complaints about class balance. Some are clearly better than others on certain encounters (mage v hunter on yorsahj) but every class has a spec where they're at least viable in a raid. Class balance is in a better state than it's ever been before. Not every special snowflake build or playstyle is useful but for 90% of the content it doesn't really matter what you bring.

At least that's true until spine of deathwing.

Spine of deathwing isn't fun. Unlike every other hard boss this expansion, I wouldn't mind doing that fight once and then never going back. It makes the instance worse just by being there. It has no redeeming qualities and blizzard should feel ashamed of it.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

What's the state of the Shaman and Priest for healing/DPS and solo levelling? (I ask DPS in case I don't get the hang of healing).

I'm tempted to venture back to WoW for nostalgia purposes and to see what's changed. Only classes I never really tried were healing. I've been a Paladin so it's a no go.

[DrunkenBeard]

What's the state of the Shaman and Priest for healing/DPS and solo levelling? (I ask DPS in case I don't get the hang of healing).

I'm tempted to venture back to WoW for nostalgia purposes and to see what's changed. Only classes I never really tried were healing. I've been a Paladin so it's a no go.

I would level a Shaman myself if I didn't have to choose between being a Dwarf or a Draenei. I would have loved to play a Restoration Human Shaman seeing how a buddy of mine enjoys the spec. Priests are good but I don't enjoy them to be honest (at least Holy), too complicated for my taste and I really didn't enjoy the stress I went through while trying one.

[the evn show]

At the very end of the game both priest and shaman are viable DPS and healers. This late into an expansion you're going to be hard pressed to keep up without a legendary as DPS but they're both very strong healers.

[Lithelinia]

My main is a Holy/Shadow Priest. Love the crap out of it.

[Lord Nite]

I leveled a shadow priest, recently, and went holy once I hit 85, and I am really enjoying it. I used to have my shaman as my main healer, but my priest has taken over that role now.

[Lucas]

64-bit WoW Client for anyone that wants to try it out. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3988300405 Seems a bit snappier.

[colealtdelete]

64-bit WoW Client for anyone that wants to try it out. http://us.battle.net...opic/3988300405 Seems a bit snappier.

Ooh thanks for this, going to try it out now. :)

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

My main is a Holy/Shadow Priest. Love the crap out of it.

I leveled a shadow priest, recently, and went holy once I hit 85, and I am really enjoying it. I used to have my shaman as my main healer, but my priest has taken over that role now.

Did you both level as shadow? I've heard levelling as disc to 60 (or is it 80?), then shadow, is recommended?

[Pink Floyd Veteran]

Havent played for like 2 months. Had 4 geared healers (pally and druid tank OS) and 2 dps. Got bored to play with kids on my server and was hard to find a 30 or 35+ ppl guild. So I simply stopped.

[Lord Nite]

Did you both level as shadow? I've heard levelling as disc to 60 (or is it 80?), then shadow, is recommended?

I leveled straight shadow. I wanted to try out the spec before making a final decision at 85. To be honest, it's the first priest I've ever played past level 5. Here is her profile if you wish to take a look.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

I leveled straight shadow. I wanted to try out the spec before making a final decision at 85. To be honest, it's the first priest I've ever played past level 5. Here is her profile if you wish to take a look.

Thanks :)

I'm going to give horde a try for the first time I think, any of NW play on a horde EU server? Think I'm going to go on a PVP server as well, haven't played on one of them since I got WoW years ago!

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Any tips when picking a new realm? Tempted to jump on a low population realm as in theory it should be more laid back on new players?

[Lord Nite]

When I first started playing, I let it choose the realm for me. Funny thing is, it was the realm some friends told me to get on to join their guild. When I search for a new realm, I normally check the general flow of the official realm forums, and look around to see which one would better suit my needs. Normally, I let friends choices influence me the most though. :)