WoW Journal - 12-May-2006

One of the reasons that I never saved enough money for an epic mount is that I tend to spend my virtual money spontaneously, to overcome some obstacle or frustration. Since March my priest was blocked in his tier 0.5 upgrade quest, where he did the quest and spent a lot of money during the quest, and then couldn't get the reward because he didn't have the Devout Gloves. The gloves drop in Strat living, where few people want to go, and even when I managed to get a group together for there, the gloves didn't drop for me.

Yesterday for the first time I saw the gloves on the auction house. Overpriced, of course, for 150 gold. But given my frustration, I bought them anyway, and handed them and the devout belt I already had in for the virtous gloves and belt from tier 0.5 (or dungeon set 2, as Blizzard calls it). I'm fully aware that this was stupid. But the advantage of virtual money is that you can more easily justify spending it stupidly. :)

At least the dungeon set 2 for priests isn't as bad as the dungeon set 2 for warriors. For warriors the set is reducing your defense for more offense, which doesn't really fit for the tank role. The priest dungeon set 2 has less intelligence than set 1, I lost 6 Int for handing the belt and gloves in, but in exchange I gained +23 in bonus to healing, and faster mana regeneration. It is hard to claim that the virtuous set is *much* better than the devout set, especially given the money you have to spend on doing the quest. But at least it isn't much worse.

What still annoys me is the set bonus for the dungeon set 2. The dungeon set 2 has the reverse set bonus than the dungeon set 1. So if you had the complete 8-piece dungeon set 1, and replace 2 or 4 or 6 or 8 of them with dungeon set 2, you end up with exactly the same set bonuses. Good idea in principal, you wouldn't want somebody to lose his set bonus just because he has 4 pieces of dungeon set 1 upgraded to dungeon set 2. Where the idea fails is in the execution. There is absolutely no way to earn 2 or 4 pieces of dungeon set 2. The first quest series upgrades one piece, but the second quest series upgrades two pieces simultaneously. So you end up with three dungeon set 2 items. If you had all eight dungeon set 1 items before, you lost the bonus for 8 and 6 pieces, and only regained the 8 piece bonus from now having more than 2 dungeon set 2 items.

I don't think I'll ever get further in the dungeon set 2 collection. Not only would I need to do a 45-minute Stratholme Baron run, which in spite of many hardcore players finding it possible to do, is impossible for me to accomplish, as I simply don't have 4 other people who would be willing to try this repeatedly until perfection. Yeah, yeah, you might think that this is good game design, decent rewards only for perfect play, and I've given up on argueing about that. That doesn't change the fact that I'm stuck at this point of the tier 0.5 upgrade quest, a fate I share with 99% of the players that tried it. Even if I ever overcame that hurdle, the next hand-in is three dungeon set 1 pieces simultaneously, and I don't have all of those 3 pieces.

Getting into a successful 5-man dungeon group has become very hard for me. When the raiding half of my guild is raiding, it draws away all the essential classes into a raid, and it becomes impossible to form a decent guild group covering all needed archetypes. I tried pickup groups, but those have the unfortunate tendency to never finish a dungeon. The last pickup group to Stratholme I joined, we only got to the deed in the first room, when the guy who had organized the group and a mate suddenly realized that they had to go on a raid. The chances to kill the end boss of any dungeon with such a group are slim, and then there is a 89% chance that he drops an item for another class than yours. What I need is a network of people that have the right class mix for tackling a hard 5-man dungeon, play well, and are online at the same time as I am. I'm working on that, but progress is slow.

Since Scholomance and Stratholme are 5-man only, it has become very difficult to find people to go there and actually finish it. With 5 people these dungeons obviously need more time than with 10. Casual groups are notoriously slow, especially since the reason why they go to these places is that the gear they are currently wearing is worse than what they could gain there. Thus the time requirement even for a 5-man dungeon is now often more than what a casual player has available in a continuous block of time. And the not-so-casual people who have lots of time in the game aren't interested in going to the 5-man dungeons any more, preferring to raid instead.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:10 AM Permanent Link