Tobold's Blog
Thursday, October 19, 2006
 
BC Journal - 19-October-2006

I moved my Alliance priest to the Burning Crusade beta servers as well. Not only does that give me more opportunity to play around with different aspects of playing a priest in the expansion, but he also came loaded with far more materials for jewelcrafting. That plan had limited success. I managed to get my jewelcrafting to 148, but I'm stuck again, and even to get that far I had to do some more mining. And that's with loading every available slot with metals and gems. I slowly begin to realize that it won't be possible to skill up jewelcrafting to 300 just materials stockpiled on just one character, you will need to use at least one other character as mule to store all the stuff. The good thing in testing it in the beta is that now I know that I'll need exotic stuff like Soul Dust, mana potions, and large fangs to skill up jewelcrafting, and can prepare better for the real transition to WoW 2.0.

Both my priests on their regular servers are holy/discipline spec. On the beta server the Horde priest (who has lots of +healing epics) is 0/0/51 shadow spec, while the Alliance priest is 5/46/0 holy spec. Both priests visited the Hellfire Rampart, the first 5-man dungeon of the Outlands, and both healed just fine. To put that into context: The Alliance priest, who doesn't even have more than 2 tier 0 armor pieces is able to heal in the first instance because he specialized in healing. The Horde priest can get away with shadow spec, because what he lacks in holy talents he makes up with gear that gives him +400 on healing spells.

So having raided and gathered epics *does* help, I certainly wouldn't call it wasted time. But if your level 60 doesn't have more than the gear he arrived with at level 60, he can still continue playing, as long as he distributes his talent points wisely. I might move my troll warrior, who is wearing tier 0 gear, to the beta server as well, because the effect of gear is probably different for other classes. But as far as I can judge it, people leveling up to 60 after the Burning Crusade comes out won't be forced to spend a lot of time at 60 gearing up before they can move on to the Outlands.

In a way that is problematic. If Hellfire Rampart isn't much harder than Scholomance, but gives much, much better loot, who will ever visit Scholomance again? Or Stratholme, LBRS, Dire Maul, etc.? I still like the idea of level 65 to 70 groups one day visiting Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Ahn'Qiraij or Naxxramas on "easy mode". But I'm not really sure that will happen. Maybe it is just that my "reason to raid" is just wanting to have fought the boss once, not minding the loot or the achievement. But the people who are interested in the loot won't want to go to BWL at 70, and there isn't much achievement in killing Nefarion at that level.
Comments:
Shadow vs holy:
A shadow *can* heal but a holy will always be superior. When it comes to high lvl content (atm Naxxramas, AQ40) you either spend weeks in equiping yourself or you won't progress if the others can't make up your failure.

I leveled my priest as a shadow and never had problems with healing when I played instances. But when I play my warrior I see a fair number of priests who don't know what they are doing (healing too less, no fade, no renew, no decurse etc). Gear and Spec can make up a lot but nothing beats skill when it comes to healing.

The best example is a dwarven priest in our raid who is only T1 equipped and he is always in the top3 of total healing and effective healing. On the other hand we have a BWL/ AQ40 equipped priest who hardly makes it into the Top10 of effective healing with at least 40% overheal.

@raiding:
I hope they will take their time and BC won't come out soon. First because I hate unfinished products and second because I want to kill Kel'Thuzad first. :)
I don't go raiding for epics or nice pictures on the guild website. It's the fun to accomplish something with a group. Last time we killed patchwork we lost our second OT at ~30% and 6 priests kept the last OT alive just before Patch went down. It was just awesome and I am raiding for such moments.
 
I think Scholomance, Stratholme, LBRS, Dire Maul will still be visited but less then now of course. The reason will be that Blizzard has placed some unique crafting materials into these instances e.g. Righteous Orb, Dark Runes etc. as long as there are people who want to craft these items or need the enchants that require these materials, farm-groups will still be running these instances.
Ok the motivation and the challenge will be changing but i think this ok. The instances are lvl 60 dungeons. Who cares that Maraudon isn't visited by lvl 60s at a regular basis in spite of quick farm runs to equip with some NR-Gear to Defeat Princess Huhran. or to get some shards for the +100hp Chest enchant.
 
Tobold, did you had the chance to check if there are improved rewards from Argent Dawn, Timbermawn and Cenarion Circle factions for levels above the 60?
I was thinking about all the people who grinded faction until now. Will the work done still be useful after TBC?
 
Don't forget .. MC & Naxx/AQ40 are the three instances where you get the only known legendaries in the game right now.

Thudnerfury? Need to keep killing bosses in MC.

That multi-class staff? Need to keep killing in Naxx/AQ40.

They may change the placement for these items when the populace gets closer to 70 because it'llbe easier to get these items.

Speaking of legendaries, anyone found any of the upgrade quests that were talked about?
 
"Tobold, did you had the chance to check if there are improved rewards from Argent Dawn, Timbermawn and Cenarion Circle factions for levels above the 60"

From what a friend of mine in the alpha/beta said, there are new factions (Cenarion Squad or something) and the old ones are basically dead.

Thinking as a game designer, i.e. trying to keep you hooked as long as possible, it wouldn't make sense to put in 61+ rewards there as I want you to come grind, kill, and faction in my new place, which you have to pay for.
 
I just checked the Cenarion Circle vendor in Silithus. No new rewards except for a jewelcrafting recipe. I think it is a Oz said, you can forget about the old factions, unless you really, really want a specific tradeskill recipe.
 
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