Disappointed With BRC
Jyger was still plugging away in Vash'ir Wednesday night. The zone and quests were fun. I came across one quest where the quest giver is a Goblin Shaman. He is using Earth Elementals to mine and dig, and it brought to mind some of the incongruity of the combination. Goblins seem to be more about using everything around them for profit. That just doesn't seem to fit with the idea of Shamans who regard the Elements as silent associates, who work for a time to aid their mortal allies before being released back to the Elemental Plane.
I'm still amazed by the questions in general chat asking where something is, or how to complete a quest. Where is this place they will ask, when the breadcrumb quests pretty clearly states, leave the cave and go west. Hmm, what direction should I go to find the next cave?
The Devs seemed to have added some guards to the caves as I saw an Alliance Warrior get destroyed by one when he attacked me. About halfway through Vash'ir, I would guess, and I've replaced only my bow from the mix of iLevel 251/264 epics I had. I have a couple of greens that I wasn't sure if they were better than what I had, especially when you factor in gems/enchants/reforging already done. I'm leveling as MM with Rapid Repercussion and Rapid Killing which basically refills my focus bar when I kill something. I've been very happy with it. I'm using Aslan (Lion) for my pet. He leveled with me during my Wrath days as well.
Near the end of my playtime, someone asked about doing an instance and I volunteered to go. We got Blackrock Caverns. I still haven't discovered Throne of Tides, so that was basically my only option.
I have to say that overall I was a little disappointed. Not many people were running instances during my time in beta, but I had heard encouraging stories of instances actually being challenging and needing old skills like Crowd Control and focused DPS. This was definitely NOT the case with Blackrock Caverns. The group I was with happily AEed the trash packs. The first boss required no explanation, we just blew him up. The second boss required minimimal explanation. DPS had to stand in a beam until a debuff stacked to 80 as we blew up the boss, then run out.
The third boss gave us a bit of trouble until the tank figured out how to postion him. He does a pulse AoE fire thing that gets strong the longer he stays in the fire, but if you don't get him in the fire, he'll go immune. You kind of have to hokey pokey him.
You put the boss in,
you take the boss out,
you put the boss in and you blow his butt up.
You do the hokey and you get your shiny loot.
That's what it's all out.
Speaking of shiny loot, I snagged a blue agility trinket that replaced the Mirror of Truth I had been carrying for eighteen months. Once the tank figured how to move the boss around, it was a piece of cake.
I loved the fact they put in a Core Hound Boss named Beauty to play off the Core Hound boss, The Beast in Upper Blackrock Spire. They used the Core Hound Pup model, the pet you get with an authenticator, as a trash mob. But outside of the one hiccup on the 3rd boss, it was good ole Wrath mindless AoE trash, and blow up bosses.
I've been selling everything I come across: ores, dust, volitales, etc. I've kept nothing to level Engineering, First Aid, or even Cooking yet. As more and more people reach 85, they will start farming heavily and the price of everything is going to go down. This is a once in an expansion opportunity to make some serious gold. I missed it last time being double production on Honors (JC/Engy). I won't miss it again.
I finished up the night about halfway to 82. Halfway to 82 should be about the equivalent of Level 73 back in Wrath of the Lich King. I don't remember being 73 on the second night. One of the really exciting benefits of a blog is looking back on your history. I wrote my Wrath First Impressions blog on 11/17/2008. I didn't write Ding 73 until 9 days later. It took me nearly 6 weeks to hit 80. I don't see it taking anywhere near that long to hit 85.
We already have at least two (maybe 3?) 85s in our guild, our Druid Main Tank and one of our Mages. I'm consistently the lowest level toon on. This is no great surprise to me, nor do I see the situation changing any.
I'm still amazed by the questions in general chat asking where something is, or how to complete a quest. Where is this place they will ask, when the breadcrumb quests pretty clearly states, leave the cave and go west. Hmm, what direction should I go to find the next cave?
The Devs seemed to have added some guards to the caves as I saw an Alliance Warrior get destroyed by one when he attacked me. About halfway through Vash'ir, I would guess, and I've replaced only my bow from the mix of iLevel 251/264 epics I had. I have a couple of greens that I wasn't sure if they were better than what I had, especially when you factor in gems/enchants/reforging already done. I'm leveling as MM with Rapid Repercussion and Rapid Killing which basically refills my focus bar when I kill something. I've been very happy with it. I'm using Aslan (Lion) for my pet. He leveled with me during my Wrath days as well.
Near the end of my playtime, someone asked about doing an instance and I volunteered to go. We got Blackrock Caverns. I still haven't discovered Throne of Tides, so that was basically my only option.
I have to say that overall I was a little disappointed. Not many people were running instances during my time in beta, but I had heard encouraging stories of instances actually being challenging and needing old skills like Crowd Control and focused DPS. This was definitely NOT the case with Blackrock Caverns. The group I was with happily AEed the trash packs. The first boss required no explanation, we just blew him up. The second boss required minimimal explanation. DPS had to stand in a beam until a debuff stacked to 80 as we blew up the boss, then run out.
The third boss gave us a bit of trouble until the tank figured out how to postion him. He does a pulse AoE fire thing that gets strong the longer he stays in the fire, but if you don't get him in the fire, he'll go immune. You kind of have to hokey pokey him.
You put the boss in,
you take the boss out,
you put the boss in and you blow his butt up.
You do the hokey and you get your shiny loot.
That's what it's all out.
Speaking of shiny loot, I snagged a blue agility trinket that replaced the Mirror of Truth I had been carrying for eighteen months. Once the tank figured how to move the boss around, it was a piece of cake.
I loved the fact they put in a Core Hound Boss named Beauty to play off the Core Hound boss, The Beast in Upper Blackrock Spire. They used the Core Hound Pup model, the pet you get with an authenticator, as a trash mob. But outside of the one hiccup on the 3rd boss, it was good ole Wrath mindless AoE trash, and blow up bosses.
I've been selling everything I come across: ores, dust, volitales, etc. I've kept nothing to level Engineering, First Aid, or even Cooking yet. As more and more people reach 85, they will start farming heavily and the price of everything is going to go down. This is a once in an expansion opportunity to make some serious gold. I missed it last time being double production on Honors (JC/Engy). I won't miss it again.
I finished up the night about halfway to 82. Halfway to 82 should be about the equivalent of Level 73 back in Wrath of the Lich King. I don't remember being 73 on the second night. One of the really exciting benefits of a blog is looking back on your history. I wrote my Wrath First Impressions blog on 11/17/2008. I didn't write Ding 73 until 9 days later. It took me nearly 6 weeks to hit 80. I don't see it taking anywhere near that long to hit 85.
We already have at least two (maybe 3?) 85s in our guild, our Druid Main Tank and one of our Mages. I'm consistently the lowest level toon on. This is no great surprise to me, nor do I see the situation changing any.
Comments
Made it somewhat easy to spend the day cleaning out by bags and bank of a bit of over a year of stuff.
Just half way to 81 so far on my Paladin just doing some quest for a short few hours. So far been fun.
Stone Core, sucks to heal or tank... so many pats, so many close stacked groups of mobs, mobs that cleave, mobs that cleave and charge. There is challenge to be had, just not from the first 2 dungeons.
With Heroics such a large step up I cannot wait to see the raid content but am definatly dreading the random que with healers that cannot keep up.