Tobold's Blog
Monday, March 19, 2007
 
Heroic mode dungeons in World of Warcraft

I did my first heroic mode dungeon in World of Warcraft this weekend. Given that it is easier to get revered with the Cenarion Expedition than with Thrallmar, and thus there are more people with the heroic key to Coilfang Reservoir than with the key to Hellfire Citadel, we we for the slave pens. The experience was pretty intense, even on the trash mobs everybody had to play just perfectly to not wipe. Being the sole healer on the second boss in heroic slave pens and everybody surviving was probably my best performance in this game ever.

We made it, and killed all three bosses, getting an epic and a primal nether at the last boss. Too bad nobody wanted that epic, and we didn't even have an enchanter, so I ended up vendoring it for very little gold. As the first bosses of the heroic dungeons just drop blue items, and only the final boss drops a primal nether with 100% chance, and an epic, I can see how shorter heroic dungeons will be a lot more popular than longer ones. I think we even could have skipped the second boss in slave pens, which is probably what people will do if they go to "farm" primal nethers.

The only thing that every boss drops are badges of justice, which you can exchange against epics. Only you need a lot of those badges, and the epics you can get are rather crappy. Why would I want to kill 25 bosses in heroic mode for a Bishop's Cloak when I alreade got Cloak of Whispering Shells from killing one boss in non-heroic Steamvault? The epic cloak gives 1 int less, and only 4 healing and 4 mana per 5 seconds more.

I don't have much BC raid experience myself, but from all what I hear the difference in power level between blue items and epics isn't all that big this time around. Apparently Blizzard noticed that giving out very powerful epics just means that in the next expansion you need to hand out very powerful greens to everybody, because otherwise people just keep wearing their raid gear. Hey, my level 70 priest is still wearing his Halo of Transcendence from Onyxia. But of course if you don't give out very powerful epics, and everybody expects to get better greens in the next expansion, the motivation to put in enormous effort to get epics now isn't all that strong. Of course that is hard to measure, but it seems to me that this time round there are less people interested in full-time raiding than before. I can't blame them.
Comments:
Itemization is a disaster in the Burning Crusade:

1) highend raiding epic gear pre-TBC being vastly inferior to early TBC greens and blues,
2) the ordinary level-70-instances in heroic have no new itemization at all, but for the final boss,
3) heroic rewards (for badges) or epic gear drops in heroics, Karazhan, Gruul's Lair or Serpentshrine Cavern has comparable stats to blue gear (be it from 5-man questlines or dungeon drops.
4) pvp-rewards grant you similar, if not not better gear than accessible from raiding; for a minimum effort. If you have a halfway decent team, those epics keep flowing in.

So one can honestly say, that the itemization is a disaster and lightyears away from well thought out.

While some gear changes have been applied hastily in the latest patch, the overall unbalancement is perceptible everywhere. Seems like Blizzard's magic GFH (gear harmony formula) is not working as intended.

They say the good bait catches the fish. So i am not a bit surprised, that people are not interested in raiding that much: the risk-versus-reward in comparison to the time investment (mindnumbing access quests anyone ?) needed sucks hairy donkey balls.
 
Just remember that we are talking here about Heroic Mode Instances and the first (of Many) Raid Instances.

That does doesn't bring the UBER Items is clear ,else nobody would be interested to invest alot of time to get the UBER items from later ,harder and with much more work invested challanges.

I'm sure that Illidan will drop some phantastic stuff, that everyone will die for.

The heroic instances, and the first Raid Dungeons are just "attunement" and training grounds for the real challange ahead.

If you see it like that ,you understand that the itemization is not a failure.
 
if the rewards from single-player quests or 5-man instances are comparable to drops from Aran, the Prince or Nightbane, something is rotten in Azeroth.
 
I'm all for raising the raider loot..... if they can't use it in PvP. I don't want to go back to pre-expansion WoW where keyboard turning raiders could two shot you due to their gear advantage.

Resilience was supposed to fix this, but it's extremely poorly implemented.
 
I need free epics too. As I iz a mage I think I should be able to pewpew everything with my ice lance. As of now I can only pewpew level 50's. If I get more epic gear, then I can pewpew levels 65ish. If I get a full set of epic gear I maybe able to pewpew level 70's. After a battle with me, I want to make people goto the official WoW forums and make posts about how over-powered PoM and AP are. I will wait on the forums for these people, and when the post comes up, I will make a whitey reply such as "QQ nub" and the famose "L2plAy nubcake". I will then corpse camp them for 15 minutes until they get a couple of guildies to come on down, then I go invisable and run away.
 
@crazyflanger: Your post may have been in jest, but I think that is the mind-set of most PvPers tbh.
@markus: If Illidan does drop 'phantastic loot', then the next expansion better be offering 'Ultra-phantastic' loot, otherwise people won't be happy.

At lv 60 pre-Bc I had just under +200 spell damage on my gear.
Now after a few instances and questing, at lv 68 I have +600 spell damage. I think I'm starting to feel 1337 now.
 
You know crazyflanger, it’s not because Tobold said you’re the official troll of the blog that you got to make all your post like this :P

Axelrod
 
@Axelrod

Some of my posts are legit. Pewpew is something everyone aspires to....except warriors or rogues, but I'm sure if they could, they would want to.
 
Don't upgrade the cloak if it's not an upgrade.

Upgrade a shield. I doubt you have better and they're one big upgrade from what I have and since i'm 10x the paladin you are I think you should listen

:-)
 
Heroic loot is better than the normal loot of the same instance. Check your latest atals loot add on and check the heroic flag on the instances. They drop differently.

Heroic mode is fun and challenging bit not impossible. In fact its much easier than most Karazhan encounters.

The odd thing is that in most heroics I have been in the trashmobs are much harder than the bosses themselves. In fact some bosses are so weak its a laugh.

The Hellfire Citadel 1st instance for example is doable on heroic and very interesting for people who need "Urnether" (dont have the english name, the Nether you need for most recipes): its the only heroic instance where the Nether drops on the second boss, not the final.
 
To the anon two posts up. Tobold plays a priest, not a pally. learntoread.
 
You only get 1 Primal Nether per heroic run?! That's just insane!
 
You always get 1 Primal Nether per heroic run, with a 100% drop chance on one specific boss in the instance, usually the last one.

There *is* a small chance to find a primal nether on other bosses, even in non-heroic instances, but that chance is so small that you wouldn't consider farming them for it. So yes, in most cases you get just 1 primal nether per heroic run.
 
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