(WoW) Version 3.1
Major content patches always cause some issues.
Servers were down for most of patch day. That's predictable. Anyone who expected otherwise hasn't been paying attention in the past or is new to it altogether. If things are pretty stable and mostly bug-free after 24-hours, that's good. Addons invariably take some time to get caught up and not cause problems. Coincidentally, it seems a couple websites out there have added security features that effectively killed WoWMatrix, which I had been using to keep track of all my addons and keep them updated. And I understand Questhelper is not going to be updated much more, if at all.
A lot of changes, tweaks, and a fair bit of new stuff. Dual-specs are an exciting option, but I haven't found myself jumping on that as fast as I expected. I tell myself it's because I want time to get used to changes to my main specs while researching secondaries further (that and making sure the characters have enough gold). What didn't really sink in was that all these changes meant talents were fully refunded. It hit me about the time I sent Reya into Wintergrasp and went "Oh my god, my action bars have been raped!" Thankfully, it was a battle in progress and ended shortly, so I wasn't out any real amount of time. After that, I restored Reya's and Sash's specs right quick - as best I could. After some practice, I'm left feeling I might want to move a few points around in that protection paladin build.
A new set of fishing dailies was available. Yay! Just in time for the reputation gains to not matter to me. Heh. The big thing in the patch is the Ulduar raid. Unfortunately, being a raid, it's going to be quite a while before I see any of it first-hand. I'm hoping to get my hands on some patterns/items/enhancements from it, but it's probably going to be a couple weeks before that stuff trickles out into the market, and longer before it settles into a "reasonable" price.
For me, the Argent Tournament has more direct impact. A number of new dailies, unlocked in sequence. At the end, there are some decent reputation-ish items, but I'm not sure how much of an upgrade they'll be. The quests are not as efficient as, for example, the Sons of Hodir dailies. You get sent all over in some cases. But it's something new to do and work toward. It also includes a fair bit of combat on tourney-specific mounts.
I don't really like mounted/vehicular combat in WoW. Dragonback, steam tanks, tournament horses... all of it. You lose all of your own abilities and bonuses, getting stuck with whatever the vehicle has. They also tend to handle... poorly? Not terribly, but the movement almost never feels right next to normal character moevement (dragons aren't too bad, but involve 3 dimensions). But, for all that, it does get positive points for being different. I'm starting to get used to the tournament mounts, but I am still annoyed at the slow turning and such.
Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom (Heroic)
I'd only run the dungeon a few times, never on heroic, and this was my first real dungeon run after the update. I also think it was entirely the first time for one or two of the group. Paladin tank, druid healer, a mage, and two hunters - all guild. An overlooked patrol made an early pull very much badness.
Elder Nakox: The big trick to remember is when the Guardian add spawns, it makes all the other adds and the boss himself invulnerable until it dies. The problem, at least for me, in that is the boss being a massive insectoid in my face. I had trouble angling the camera and facing to where I could click around the boss and on the guardian to switch targets. So I lost several seconds there each time. The fight's hectic, but it didn't slow us down much.
Prince Taldaram: Vampiric goodness. As confirmed, his Embrace of the Vampyr ability prevents the target from being healed on heroic (on normal, it's just inconvenient). He also launches flaming spheres, but the damage on those seemed bearable. His first embrace went at our healer - that's not good. I blew Lay on Hands after we got him off, just because I don't like the healer at a sliver of life. I had, at least, read up on this in advance so when he embraced me, I got him off with a Divine Shield (Ice Block is said to work, too), then dumped the buff immediately and taunted to me sure I still had aggro. His third embrace killed a hunter as we weren't really able to get over there and focus in time. But we got him.
We curved around Herald Volazj next. His big trick is his Insanity phase, where all the party members are shifted into their own "phases" of the room and have to face "copies" of the other party members. I'm not sure what all the duplicates actually copy. They have around 12k health, so they don't copy health/stamina. They duplicate whatever form a druid is in. I've read you can de-equip your weapons at the right time to make them weaker (though the timing on that has to be dangerous as you normally can't equip weapons while in combat, and you need to have them back on when you fight the boss again). Dupes of healing-oriented classes will heal. And when a party member kills their opponents, they shift into the phase of another party member and can help them. When all the copies are gone (or after a certain time) the fight resumes against the boss.
As a tank, my actual raw damage output is not stellar. I have trouble killing these duplicates and rely on others to finish theirs and help me, making sure I stay alive. In this case, that's all I could do. I simply could not kill the duplicate of our healer. My damage would not overcome the healing - I'd get them to about 9k, then they'd heal to full. On the up side, I was really in no danger of dying unless things had gone on for a long, long time.
In our first Insanity phase, we lost all out DPS. We came out of it with the tank and the healer (and even then only because of that timer, not because we killed everything), and... well, we went back at the boss. It was slow going. The mage was running back into the dungeon around the time we hit the second Insanity. Thankfully, dead party members aren't duplicated, but we were still stuck with that accurased copy healer. ;) Somehow, we still pulled this out on our first attempt, even if we were raising people afterward.
The pulls to Jedoga Shadowseeker are always a little hectic. There's a lot of patrols, groups are close together, and there's a lot of ranged/magic damage involved. The boss herself is a matter of fighting her down until she calls on a sacrifice from the (otherwise invulnerable) cultists around. If the sacrifice isn't killed by the time it reaches a point, the boss comes back down with a major damage buff.
I don't usually say this, but... I think we were short on DPS.
We could not burn down the sacrifice before it got where it was going. I ate a lot of damage. We died. When we got back, the cultists were still there (they normally spawn after engaging the boss). Now, I blamed a pet initially, but I think the glitch here was actually the encounter not resetting properly. When we pulled her a second time and got to the sacrifice part, additional elite adds spawned and blitzed the group from behind, causing a wipe. This happened a few times as we tried to figure out what was going on, because that is not supposed to happen.
Ultimately, we got through the fight with sheer tenacity and just about every trick we had. I used my abilities to reduce damage, the healer kept up healing. I saw the boss go red with that buff after each sacrifice (I don't think we killed even one in time). It was simply a matter of brute force, but we won.
We also checked out Amanitar, a fungoid heroic-only boss. For me, it seemed a crazy fight of trying to position where I could destroy a mushroom to get off the Mini debuff when it came up. I know I was slow on that sometimes by the sudden drops in my life total. I don't even know what killed the other people, but in this first fight with him, I ended up alone, with his life total low... but not low enough.
As close as it was, I think we could have gotten him on our next try, but it was late and one person had to go.
It was a painful slog through the Old Kingdom, resulting in a repair bill in excess of 30 gold for me (possibly more for the people who died more often). But I came out of it with a chestpiece for my DPS set (and exalted Kirin Tor rep, so new gauntlets after getting back to Dalaran), and we all walked away with 6 emblems of valor and some experience in what to do (or not do).
In retrospect, I wish I'd been running a DPS meter to look at more closely. I think overall we were lacking in damage output (as especially evident in the fight with Jedoga), but I can't say for certain where the problem was. Ultimately, though, I have no regrets about the run and feel it was a good thing overall. Sometimes pushing yourself means falling on your face once in a while along the way. ;)
Servers were down for most of patch day. That's predictable. Anyone who expected otherwise hasn't been paying attention in the past or is new to it altogether. If things are pretty stable and mostly bug-free after 24-hours, that's good. Addons invariably take some time to get caught up and not cause problems. Coincidentally, it seems a couple websites out there have added security features that effectively killed WoWMatrix, which I had been using to keep track of all my addons and keep them updated. And I understand Questhelper is not going to be updated much more, if at all.
A lot of changes, tweaks, and a fair bit of new stuff. Dual-specs are an exciting option, but I haven't found myself jumping on that as fast as I expected. I tell myself it's because I want time to get used to changes to my main specs while researching secondaries further (that and making sure the characters have enough gold). What didn't really sink in was that all these changes meant talents were fully refunded. It hit me about the time I sent Reya into Wintergrasp and went "Oh my god, my action bars have been raped!" Thankfully, it was a battle in progress and ended shortly, so I wasn't out any real amount of time. After that, I restored Reya's and Sash's specs right quick - as best I could. After some practice, I'm left feeling I might want to move a few points around in that protection paladin build.
A new set of fishing dailies was available. Yay! Just in time for the reputation gains to not matter to me. Heh. The big thing in the patch is the Ulduar raid. Unfortunately, being a raid, it's going to be quite a while before I see any of it first-hand. I'm hoping to get my hands on some patterns/items/enhancements from it, but it's probably going to be a couple weeks before that stuff trickles out into the market, and longer before it settles into a "reasonable" price.
For me, the Argent Tournament has more direct impact. A number of new dailies, unlocked in sequence. At the end, there are some decent reputation-ish items, but I'm not sure how much of an upgrade they'll be. The quests are not as efficient as, for example, the Sons of Hodir dailies. You get sent all over in some cases. But it's something new to do and work toward. It also includes a fair bit of combat on tourney-specific mounts.
I don't really like mounted/vehicular combat in WoW. Dragonback, steam tanks, tournament horses... all of it. You lose all of your own abilities and bonuses, getting stuck with whatever the vehicle has. They also tend to handle... poorly? Not terribly, but the movement almost never feels right next to normal character moevement (dragons aren't too bad, but involve 3 dimensions). But, for all that, it does get positive points for being different. I'm starting to get used to the tournament mounts, but I am still annoyed at the slow turning and such.
Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom (Heroic)
I'd only run the dungeon a few times, never on heroic, and this was my first real dungeon run after the update. I also think it was entirely the first time for one or two of the group. Paladin tank, druid healer, a mage, and two hunters - all guild. An overlooked patrol made an early pull very much badness.
Elder Nakox: The big trick to remember is when the Guardian add spawns, it makes all the other adds and the boss himself invulnerable until it dies. The problem, at least for me, in that is the boss being a massive insectoid in my face. I had trouble angling the camera and facing to where I could click around the boss and on the guardian to switch targets. So I lost several seconds there each time. The fight's hectic, but it didn't slow us down much.
Prince Taldaram: Vampiric goodness. As confirmed, his Embrace of the Vampyr ability prevents the target from being healed on heroic (on normal, it's just inconvenient). He also launches flaming spheres, but the damage on those seemed bearable. His first embrace went at our healer - that's not good. I blew Lay on Hands after we got him off, just because I don't like the healer at a sliver of life. I had, at least, read up on this in advance so when he embraced me, I got him off with a Divine Shield (Ice Block is said to work, too), then dumped the buff immediately and taunted to me sure I still had aggro. His third embrace killed a hunter as we weren't really able to get over there and focus in time. But we got him.
We curved around Herald Volazj next. His big trick is his Insanity phase, where all the party members are shifted into their own "phases" of the room and have to face "copies" of the other party members. I'm not sure what all the duplicates actually copy. They have around 12k health, so they don't copy health/stamina. They duplicate whatever form a druid is in. I've read you can de-equip your weapons at the right time to make them weaker (though the timing on that has to be dangerous as you normally can't equip weapons while in combat, and you need to have them back on when you fight the boss again). Dupes of healing-oriented classes will heal. And when a party member kills their opponents, they shift into the phase of another party member and can help them. When all the copies are gone (or after a certain time) the fight resumes against the boss.
As a tank, my actual raw damage output is not stellar. I have trouble killing these duplicates and rely on others to finish theirs and help me, making sure I stay alive. In this case, that's all I could do. I simply could not kill the duplicate of our healer. My damage would not overcome the healing - I'd get them to about 9k, then they'd heal to full. On the up side, I was really in no danger of dying unless things had gone on for a long, long time.
In our first Insanity phase, we lost all out DPS. We came out of it with the tank and the healer (and even then only because of that timer, not because we killed everything), and... well, we went back at the boss. It was slow going. The mage was running back into the dungeon around the time we hit the second Insanity. Thankfully, dead party members aren't duplicated, but we were still stuck with that accurased copy healer. ;) Somehow, we still pulled this out on our first attempt, even if we were raising people afterward.
The pulls to Jedoga Shadowseeker are always a little hectic. There's a lot of patrols, groups are close together, and there's a lot of ranged/magic damage involved. The boss herself is a matter of fighting her down until she calls on a sacrifice from the (otherwise invulnerable) cultists around. If the sacrifice isn't killed by the time it reaches a point, the boss comes back down with a major damage buff.
I don't usually say this, but... I think we were short on DPS.
We could not burn down the sacrifice before it got where it was going. I ate a lot of damage. We died. When we got back, the cultists were still there (they normally spawn after engaging the boss). Now, I blamed a pet initially, but I think the glitch here was actually the encounter not resetting properly. When we pulled her a second time and got to the sacrifice part, additional elite adds spawned and blitzed the group from behind, causing a wipe. This happened a few times as we tried to figure out what was going on, because that is not supposed to happen.
Ultimately, we got through the fight with sheer tenacity and just about every trick we had. I used my abilities to reduce damage, the healer kept up healing. I saw the boss go red with that buff after each sacrifice (I don't think we killed even one in time). It was simply a matter of brute force, but we won.
We also checked out Amanitar, a fungoid heroic-only boss. For me, it seemed a crazy fight of trying to position where I could destroy a mushroom to get off the Mini debuff when it came up. I know I was slow on that sometimes by the sudden drops in my life total. I don't even know what killed the other people, but in this first fight with him, I ended up alone, with his life total low... but not low enough.
As close as it was, I think we could have gotten him on our next try, but it was late and one person had to go.
It was a painful slog through the Old Kingdom, resulting in a repair bill in excess of 30 gold for me (possibly more for the people who died more often). But I came out of it with a chestpiece for my DPS set (and exalted Kirin Tor rep, so new gauntlets after getting back to Dalaran), and we all walked away with 6 emblems of valor and some experience in what to do (or not do).
In retrospect, I wish I'd been running a DPS meter to look at more closely. I think overall we were lacking in damage output (as especially evident in the fight with Jedoga), but I can't say for certain where the problem was. Ultimately, though, I have no regrets about the run and feel it was a good thing overall. Sometimes pushing yourself means falling on your face once in a while along the way. ;)
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