I actually played my shaman alt so much as of late that she eventually ran out of restedness again for the first time in ages. There's something about lack of restedness that always makes me want to stop playing, though I'm not sure what it is. I'm not obsessessed with levelling as quickly as possible; I think I just find the blue bar much more aesthetically pleasing...
Anyway, I decided to dig up another low-level alt of mine, my troll warrior, and take him to the Barrens. The Barrens are an interesting place, very iconic and typical for the Horde, but also infamous for housing a lot of stupidity (Barrens chat) and being a pain to quest in. In fact, Green Armadillo of Player Versus Developer made an interesting post about two months ago in which he analysed just what's so bothersome about questing in the Barrens, the most important point being that a single quest chain to kill harpies for example requires you to do twenty minutes of running back and forth, and that's without counting the time to actually kill anything.
Some quest descriptions are also incredibly vague for today's standards, like the infamous Lost in Battle, the quest to find Mankrik's wife. There's mention of "a small tauren camp" and the Gold Road - what, you mean the same road that spans the whole freaking zone? Though I have to say that in all fairness, I never actually had problems with that quest myself. My very first Horde character was a tauren, and thus I first approached the Crossroads from the south. Being new to Horde lands I took everything in with great interest and immediately noticed the burnt huts and the female orc corpse next to them. So when I got the quest from Mankrik it didn't take me long to make the connection and I considered it a very easy source of XP.
In fact, despite of their bad reputation I have many fond memories of the Barrens, though I never went back there for long after my first Horde character did most of the quests in the zone. Take WANTED: Baron Longshore. While Green Armadillo complained about respawn timers being too long, this guy is the exact opposite: If you just run down the coast south of Ratchet randomly killing pirates, you're bound to run into the baron at least three times or so. He respawns fast and all over the place, which makes for a nice running joke. I'm happy to say that I got a good laugh out of it on my troll warrior as well.
I then proceeded to do The Guns of Northwatch. I remember that when I levelled my first Hordie, a friend recommended that we do this quest as a group. These days I'd say it's definitely soloable too, but nonetheless tricky, with lots of fleeing mobs in a densly packed environment with healers. Also, you get to do what's probably the longest escort quest ever in the same area, leading a snotty high elf ("Finally! Someone to rescue me!") out of Northwatch all the way to Ratchet. While doing this he will run into packs of mobs left and right, all the time screaming about being attacked. Good times!
I think the reason that I enjoyed the Barrens quite a bit the first time around was that I was completely new to playing Horde-side and thus revelled in the search and exploration aspects of the zone. (Where's that centaur leader now?) However, due to the endless runs it's definitely not a good place to level in if you want to make progress quickly and without too much hassle. As it is I'm surprised that I'm enjoying it as much as I do to revisit the zone on my troll - I think it's because I largely went in there with the mindset of wanting to remind myself of all the quests before Cataclysm comes and tears the land asunder. My only "problem" is that with the increased quest XP I'm getting ahead of myself too quickly, with quests turning grey way too soon - but that's a rant for another day...
31/10/2009
30/10/2009
Miss Medicina's healing questionnaire
Miss Medicina posted a sort of meme to get healers talking about themselves. I wasn't tagged by anyone, nor is this a "healing blog" per se, but I'm definitely a healer at heart and felt like answering the questions anyway, so there!
What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?
Shintar, priest, holy.
What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
With Shintar I'm mostly healing raids these days, both ten-mans and twenty-five-mans, simply because she's done all the five-mans to death and has got absolutely nothing to gain from running them anymore. I still like healing five-mans though and keep running (and healing) them on my alts.
What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?
Like Miss Medicina I like circle of healing for its effectiveness, but I think prayer of mending still holds the top spot for me, simply because it's so unique and fun. No other healing class has a spell even remotely like it, and the randomness of the bounces can sometimes lead to great results if you know how to make a situation work in your favour. For example many a melee character has been saved by my ProM bouncing back and forth on the King Ymiron encounter, after he decided to dump a spirit fountain next to the tank just before stunning everyone. In raids with lots of raid damage or multiple tanks it also feels great to shoot it off every cooldown and then continue to cast something else, safe in the knowledge that your little ambassador of holy healing powers is doing its job just fine even without you watching.
What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
I rarely ever use Holy Nova for healing, only for loldps.
What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
That we have so many different healing spells and thus have a tool for every situation.
What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?
I think our biggest strength is also our biggest weakness in some ways. We're good at everything but not really great at anything, leaving us with a bit of an identity crisis. I often have the impression that even the developers aren't sure what priests are really supposed to be about other than "they heal lots". We still don't stack that well in raids, and are rarely the first choice for a specific role, making us feel like stopgap healers sometimes. "Well, we don't have a shaman to heal the raid. I guess one of the priests can do it. If we must."
In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?
Raid healing that isn't too spammy, because it leaves me with some time to do other useful things like throw renews on the tank (and thus plays to the priesty strength of being able to do a little bit of everything). Extremely spammy raid healing always leaves me feeling inferior to a chain-healing shaman, because oh, circle of healing is on cooldown again, not everyone is in range for prayer of healing and so on. Heavy tank healing on the other hand makes me run out of mana fast, and easy tank healing is just plain boring.
What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?
I think this isn't so much a matter of class as of... chemistry, for lack of a better word. It's about being able to predict what the other healer will do when and where, and complementing each other in the process. I had great fun learning ten-man Naxx with a resto druid friend of mine for example, we were playing very well together.
My current Trial of the Crusader ten-man on the other hand has me grouped with another holy priest, and our teamwork is pretty good as well. Not to mention that having dual divine hymns, prayers of mending and circles of healing is kind of awesome.
What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?
I haven't made too many great experiences teaming up with paladins and shamans. Obviously we can make it work to get things done, but in tends to feel a bit like we're constantly stepping on each other's toes. So in the case of the shaman I'll be casting renew on someone who's just taken a little bit of damage at the same time as the shaman casts riptide, when the melee gets stomped I cast circle of healing just before his chain heal goes off and so on. Similarly I don't feel that I have great synergy with paladins because they'll be able to easily solo-heal any tank, leaving me to twiddle my thumbs, but if there's AoE damage all of a sudden I suddenly have to go into overdrive because they just can't keep up.
What is your worst habit as a healer?
Being competitive. Healing is supposed to be a team effort, but I can't help looking at the healing metres and wanting to be on top (or at least high up). I don't need to brag to anyone about it, but it's probably more important for my personal satisfaction than it should be.
What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
Lack of recognition for healers and their work. As long as the boss dies, it doesn't matter if healing was easy or hard, or if everyone actually did their job. So what if all the dps stood in the AoE? You healed through it so it obviously wasn't a problem, right? Or to give another example, in one of my Trial of the Crusader runs last week I was duo-healing with a holy pally who was extremely clueless about how to play his spec. We made it through, he got loot at the end and everyone was happy - while I just felt exhausted because he had barely contributed a quarter of all healing, but who cares, eh?
Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?
I think that at the moment things are pretty well-balanced. However, I'm sure that it's only a matter of time until some mechanic will surface again that suddenly makes one kind of healer vastly overpowered for some reason or another.
What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
Well, whether my target lived or died obviously does matter, but other than that I like to look at healing metres on Recount and World of Logs. I check how I compare to other healers and especially to other holy priests (if there are any). If there's a big difference I look at what spells we both used; you can learn a lot that way. Oh, and my own survival matters too, of course. I always feel like such a failure when I die to environmental effects because I was too busy staring at health bars. A dead healer is a useless healer.
What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
That we can dispel anything other than magic and diseases. Though this has got better as of late.
What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?
Getting to grips with all the different healing spells and when to use them. You can usually recognise newbie priests by the limited amount of spells they use, be it flash heal spam or a prayer of healing at the slightest sign of group damage, simply because they haven't yet figured out that there might be better ways of doing things. I remember running Karazhan with the priest alt of one of our druids and he never used prayer of mending even once. /gasp
If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?
I tend to place pretty high on overall healing done and about mid-field on overheal. The most remarkable thing though, and one that I find striking every time I compare myself to our only other active holy priest at the moment, is how addicted I am to instant casts: prayer of mending, circle of healing and renew specifically. Even though they are also useful I tend to avoid flash heal and prayer of healing whenever I can.
This is a habit that I developed in the past year due to my computer not being quite up to WOTLK standards. I never had any performance problems during BC, but the first time I walked into twenty-five-man Naxxramas everything just locked up. I was absolutely horrified at first and worried that I might have to stop raiding altogether due to being completely useless while playing at two frames per second, but like someone who lost a limb I managed to adjust by getting stronger in the areas that are least affected by lag spikes and low frame rates: my instant cast spells.
Haste or Crit and why?
Well, I try to maintain a balance, but I'm leaning towards crit: Due to the aforementioned computer troubles I have problems to get many spells off even within their normal cast time, so haste wouldn't do much for me. When you only see one frame per second, reducing your global cooldown by a half-second does nothing for you.
What healing class do you feel you understand least?
Resto shaman, simply because it's the only healing class that I haven't levelled to eighty and raided with yet. It's in the works though.
What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
I'm a Healbot user and very fond of it. I used to be an addon-avoiding purist (and some people complimented me on my healing skills even back when I manually targetted everyone and then clicked on the healing spells on my action bars) - until one day I got to watch a friend who plays a resto druid play on her home PC. She had Healbot installed and I was just stunned. You could heal people just by clicking on their health bars? It was obvious to me that this would save a lot of reaction time, and since I was (and still am) dedicated to being the best healer I could be I just had to get the addon as well.
I also have a timer addon to track my renews and such, but I think I accidentally disabled it the other day but didn't end up missing it that much, as Healbot's integrated tracking worked well enough for me.
Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
I try to maintain a balance, though my main priority for enchanting and gemming is spellpower. I don't stick runed gems in every socket though - in fact being able to go for (sometimes relatively useless) socket bonuses is one of my guilty pleasures as a healer. When you're dps there's usually one way and one way only to gem for absolute maximum dps, and it usually involves ignoring socket bonuses. For healing things are a lot more flexible, so people aren't likely to argue with me if I decide to go for a purple gem just to get the six stamina socket bonus too.
What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?
Shintar, priest, holy.
What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
With Shintar I'm mostly healing raids these days, both ten-mans and twenty-five-mans, simply because she's done all the five-mans to death and has got absolutely nothing to gain from running them anymore. I still like healing five-mans though and keep running (and healing) them on my alts.
What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?
Like Miss Medicina I like circle of healing for its effectiveness, but I think prayer of mending still holds the top spot for me, simply because it's so unique and fun. No other healing class has a spell even remotely like it, and the randomness of the bounces can sometimes lead to great results if you know how to make a situation work in your favour. For example many a melee character has been saved by my ProM bouncing back and forth on the King Ymiron encounter, after he decided to dump a spirit fountain next to the tank just before stunning everyone. In raids with lots of raid damage or multiple tanks it also feels great to shoot it off every cooldown and then continue to cast something else, safe in the knowledge that your little ambassador of holy healing powers is doing its job just fine even without you watching.
What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
I rarely ever use Holy Nova for healing, only for loldps.
What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
That we have so many different healing spells and thus have a tool for every situation.
What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?
I think our biggest strength is also our biggest weakness in some ways. We're good at everything but not really great at anything, leaving us with a bit of an identity crisis. I often have the impression that even the developers aren't sure what priests are really supposed to be about other than "they heal lots". We still don't stack that well in raids, and are rarely the first choice for a specific role, making us feel like stopgap healers sometimes. "Well, we don't have a shaman to heal the raid. I guess one of the priests can do it. If we must."
In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?
Raid healing that isn't too spammy, because it leaves me with some time to do other useful things like throw renews on the tank (and thus plays to the priesty strength of being able to do a little bit of everything). Extremely spammy raid healing always leaves me feeling inferior to a chain-healing shaman, because oh, circle of healing is on cooldown again, not everyone is in range for prayer of healing and so on. Heavy tank healing on the other hand makes me run out of mana fast, and easy tank healing is just plain boring.
What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?
I think this isn't so much a matter of class as of... chemistry, for lack of a better word. It's about being able to predict what the other healer will do when and where, and complementing each other in the process. I had great fun learning ten-man Naxx with a resto druid friend of mine for example, we were playing very well together.
My current Trial of the Crusader ten-man on the other hand has me grouped with another holy priest, and our teamwork is pretty good as well. Not to mention that having dual divine hymns, prayers of mending and circles of healing is kind of awesome.
What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?
I haven't made too many great experiences teaming up with paladins and shamans. Obviously we can make it work to get things done, but in tends to feel a bit like we're constantly stepping on each other's toes. So in the case of the shaman I'll be casting renew on someone who's just taken a little bit of damage at the same time as the shaman casts riptide, when the melee gets stomped I cast circle of healing just before his chain heal goes off and so on. Similarly I don't feel that I have great synergy with paladins because they'll be able to easily solo-heal any tank, leaving me to twiddle my thumbs, but if there's AoE damage all of a sudden I suddenly have to go into overdrive because they just can't keep up.
What is your worst habit as a healer?
Being competitive. Healing is supposed to be a team effort, but I can't help looking at the healing metres and wanting to be on top (or at least high up). I don't need to brag to anyone about it, but it's probably more important for my personal satisfaction than it should be.
What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
Lack of recognition for healers and their work. As long as the boss dies, it doesn't matter if healing was easy or hard, or if everyone actually did their job. So what if all the dps stood in the AoE? You healed through it so it obviously wasn't a problem, right? Or to give another example, in one of my Trial of the Crusader runs last week I was duo-healing with a holy pally who was extremely clueless about how to play his spec. We made it through, he got loot at the end and everyone was happy - while I just felt exhausted because he had barely contributed a quarter of all healing, but who cares, eh?
Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?
I think that at the moment things are pretty well-balanced. However, I'm sure that it's only a matter of time until some mechanic will surface again that suddenly makes one kind of healer vastly overpowered for some reason or another.
What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
Well, whether my target lived or died obviously does matter, but other than that I like to look at healing metres on Recount and World of Logs. I check how I compare to other healers and especially to other holy priests (if there are any). If there's a big difference I look at what spells we both used; you can learn a lot that way. Oh, and my own survival matters too, of course. I always feel like such a failure when I die to environmental effects because I was too busy staring at health bars. A dead healer is a useless healer.
What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
That we can dispel anything other than magic and diseases. Though this has got better as of late.
What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?
Getting to grips with all the different healing spells and when to use them. You can usually recognise newbie priests by the limited amount of spells they use, be it flash heal spam or a prayer of healing at the slightest sign of group damage, simply because they haven't yet figured out that there might be better ways of doing things. I remember running Karazhan with the priest alt of one of our druids and he never used prayer of mending even once. /gasp
If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?
I tend to place pretty high on overall healing done and about mid-field on overheal. The most remarkable thing though, and one that I find striking every time I compare myself to our only other active holy priest at the moment, is how addicted I am to instant casts: prayer of mending, circle of healing and renew specifically. Even though they are also useful I tend to avoid flash heal and prayer of healing whenever I can.
This is a habit that I developed in the past year due to my computer not being quite up to WOTLK standards. I never had any performance problems during BC, but the first time I walked into twenty-five-man Naxxramas everything just locked up. I was absolutely horrified at first and worried that I might have to stop raiding altogether due to being completely useless while playing at two frames per second, but like someone who lost a limb I managed to adjust by getting stronger in the areas that are least affected by lag spikes and low frame rates: my instant cast spells.
Haste or Crit and why?
Well, I try to maintain a balance, but I'm leaning towards crit: Due to the aforementioned computer troubles I have problems to get many spells off even within their normal cast time, so haste wouldn't do much for me. When you only see one frame per second, reducing your global cooldown by a half-second does nothing for you.
What healing class do you feel you understand least?
Resto shaman, simply because it's the only healing class that I haven't levelled to eighty and raided with yet. It's in the works though.
What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
I'm a Healbot user and very fond of it. I used to be an addon-avoiding purist (and some people complimented me on my healing skills even back when I manually targetted everyone and then clicked on the healing spells on my action bars) - until one day I got to watch a friend who plays a resto druid play on her home PC. She had Healbot installed and I was just stunned. You could heal people just by clicking on their health bars? It was obvious to me that this would save a lot of reaction time, and since I was (and still am) dedicated to being the best healer I could be I just had to get the addon as well.
I also have a timer addon to track my renews and such, but I think I accidentally disabled it the other day but didn't end up missing it that much, as Healbot's integrated tracking worked well enough for me.
Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
I try to maintain a balance, though my main priority for enchanting and gemming is spellpower. I don't stick runed gems in every socket though - in fact being able to go for (sometimes relatively useless) socket bonuses is one of my guilty pleasures as a healer. When you're dps there's usually one way and one way only to gem for absolute maximum dps, and it usually involves ignoring socket bonuses. For healing things are a lot more flexible, so people aren't likely to argue with me if I decide to go for a purple gem just to get the six stamina socket bonus too.
27/10/2009
The trouble with TotC
In the past week I had a couple of days off, so I had more time to play WoW and raid. Here's what I did:
Trial of the Crusader (10-man): four full clears (no, really)
Trial of the Grand Crusader (10-man): two or three hours of attempts spread out over two nights, two boss kills
Trial of the Crusader (25-man): one full clear
Trial of the Grand Crusader (25-man): about six hours of attempts on Northrend Beasts, also spread out over two nights, no kill
If you think that sounds slightly insane, you're not the only one. And here I thought I was hardcore when I did two full Karazhan clears in one day back in BC...
In the end the experience mostly just left me with a very weird feeling. Obviously nobody forced me to raid the same instance over and over again, and it certainly felt cool to get the achievement for clearing it on all of my alts. However, on the other hand I'm starting to get seriously tired of doing the same fights over and over again (especially the Faction Champions), and in a strange way it feels as if Blizzard isn't leaving me much choice regardless. I mean, I'd quite like to do some Naxx and Ulduar runs again for a change, or even Sartharion and Malygos, but none of those would do anything for my characters' personal progression anymore, as the emblem items have made huge chunks of the gear in there completely irrelevant, even for my alts. My hunter for example has never even cleared Naxxramas, yet she's completed Trial of the Crusader and was only outdamaged in there by a mage in full twenty-five-man gear. How wrong is that?
I think raiding right now suffers from the same problem as the levelling game, namely that Blizzard seems to think that making things accessible means forcefully funneling people towards the end as quickly as possible, even if that means skipping a large part of the journey. Which is really bizarre, considering that the journey is what makes up ninety percent of the game. No wonder that I feel the pull of low-level alts stronger than ever as of late - at least they still have some roads left to travel.
Trial of the Crusader (10-man): four full clears (no, really)
Trial of the Grand Crusader (10-man): two or three hours of attempts spread out over two nights, two boss kills
Trial of the Crusader (25-man): one full clear
Trial of the Grand Crusader (25-man): about six hours of attempts on Northrend Beasts, also spread out over two nights, no kill
If you think that sounds slightly insane, you're not the only one. And here I thought I was hardcore when I did two full Karazhan clears in one day back in BC...
In the end the experience mostly just left me with a very weird feeling. Obviously nobody forced me to raid the same instance over and over again, and it certainly felt cool to get the achievement for clearing it on all of my alts. However, on the other hand I'm starting to get seriously tired of doing the same fights over and over again (especially the Faction Champions), and in a strange way it feels as if Blizzard isn't leaving me much choice regardless. I mean, I'd quite like to do some Naxx and Ulduar runs again for a change, or even Sartharion and Malygos, but none of those would do anything for my characters' personal progression anymore, as the emblem items have made huge chunks of the gear in there completely irrelevant, even for my alts. My hunter for example has never even cleared Naxxramas, yet she's completed Trial of the Crusader and was only outdamaged in there by a mage in full twenty-five-man gear. How wrong is that?
I think raiding right now suffers from the same problem as the levelling game, namely that Blizzard seems to think that making things accessible means forcefully funneling people towards the end as quickly as possible, even if that means skipping a large part of the journey. Which is really bizarre, considering that the journey is what makes up ninety percent of the game. No wonder that I feel the pull of low-level alts stronger than ever as of late - at least they still have some roads left to travel.
25/10/2009
Instance Review: Zul'Farrak
Today I'd like to talk about another low-level instance that is very close to my heart: the troll city of Zul'Farrak.
1. Accessability
Zul'Farrak is located in Tanaris, which lies pretty much at the end of the world if you're looking at it from anywhere significant (like a capital city). Your first journey to the zone will take a fair amount of time, but it's worth it: Where else would people get their fix of Noggenfogger Elixir? The quests in the area also have as much synergy as you're currently going to find in any part of the old world, which makes it a fairly pleasant place to level. (Pirate quests!)
Once you've actually got the flight path to Gadgetzan, getting to Zul'Farrak is easy enough, as it's only about a minute's ride away from town.
2. Atmosphere
This is personal bias speaking here, but I absolutely dig any and all instances with trolls in them. I'm not entirely sure why that is - after all I play a troll myself and hearing their death noises has been known to make me twitchy on occasion. ("What was that? Am I still alive? Phew.")
Maybe it's because all the troll instances have a certain old-school adventure flair about them. "Indiana Jones and the secrets of Zul'Farrak", anyone? I could totally see it.
3. Story & Quests
Unless you want to get into troll lore in general, the "story" of Zul'Farrak can be summed up pretty simply: There's a bunch of bloodthirsty troll bastards who have lots of stuff. Let's take it! They are clearly evil anyway. Does a good adventurer really need any more justification?
As far as quests for the instance go, there are a ton of them; and almost all of them are available to both Alliance and Horde. Conveniently a lot of them can also be picked up quite close to the instance and don't have any pre-quests. It's interesting that they are without exception about stealing stuff from the trolls for other people. You're not the only one who wants a piece of those riches! (Though you could argue about the objective value of things like scarab shells and troll tempers.) This makes Zul'Farrak an excellent place for gaining a huge chunk of experience in your fourties.
4. Length
Obviously people's ideas of what's the ideal length for an instance will vary a lot as it's very subjective, but I find Zul'Farrak's length to be quite close to ideal. With a competent group it shouldn't take all day, but you're getting a good chunk of content for your time.
Due to the instance's circular nature there is no single predefined route through it, so if you're short on time you can always just aim for the part you are after and skip other bits, thereby adjusting the length to your needs.
5. Layout
As just mentioned, Zul'Farrak is basically one big circle. This can be mildly confusing during your first visit ("Wait, haven't we been here before?"), but it's not too bad. There are a lot of walls, huts, nooks and crannies that make the instance feel like a real place, but due to the circular layout you can't really run into any dead ends.
6. Trash
Sandfury trolls are hard. Well, at level anyway. This makes Zul'Farrak a good place to practice playing your role in a group, because there's a lot to do for everyone. First off there are many patrolling mobs to watch out for, which can easily lead to overpulling if someone doesn't watch where they are standing. Most trolls will also try to flee when low on health, increasing the risk of unwanted adds even more. Slowing abilities and focused fire are key.
They also have a whole host of abilities to annoy you, like heals, totems and crowd control - their hex in particular is extremely overpowered, can be cast on the tank and doesn't break on damage, like, at all. Ouch! Dps needs to learn to help with things like interrupts and dispelling.
7. Bosses
I'll be honest here and admit that many of the bosses in Zul'Farrak aren't very memorable by themselves. There's that basilisk guy, that zombie guy, that chief guy... but who even remembers their names? The only one that really stands out is Gahz'rilla, but that's simply because he's the only boss that isn't a troll, and seeing him emerge from his pool of water for the first time can be quite awe-inspiring to the average newbie. Plus, back in the day you needed a special item to summon him which was quite hard to acquire, so actually getting to see him felt special. Zombie boss can also be memorable if you've ever been in a party with someone who refused to listen to the instruction to not touch any of the graves.
However, there is one thing that's more epic than any other instance boss encounter that I can think of: the "stairs event". There's nothing quite like running up that pyramid, freeing the prisoners and just as you're congratulating yourself on another job well done, you turn around, look down... and suddenly there's a sea of trolls in your way. Then you have to spend the next ten minutes fighting your way out in a truly epic manner. For that encounter alone the instance is worth visiting.
8. Loot
You can't talk about Zul'Farrak loot without mentioning Sul'thraze the Lasher, an epic sword that is acquired by combining two rare blue boss drops from the instance. It's actually not that amazing a weapon, but at level fifty owning an epic still means something and is great for showing off. You do need to get quite lucky though, to see both halves of it drop and also win the roll.
As far as more ordinary boss drops go, Zul'Farrak still has some odd leftovers with questionable stats on them. I mean, were items with negative stats ever a good idea? And which class wants to spend their time meleeing with a staff? There's still some awesome loot for clothies and caster druids though, plus a few items for rogues and other lithe melee fighters. Any plate wearer not wearing heirlooms will also be happy to pick up some Big Bad Pauldrons.
The quest to kill Gahz'rilla also rewards people with an interesting trinket, the Carrot on a Stick. It's hardly amazing, but at low levels it's easy to not get any trinkets at all for a long time, so having something to stick into that empty slot feels quite satisfying.
In summary, Zul'Farrak is an instance with amazing atmosphere and some interesting and unique rewards. Since it's easy to get to and has a lot of quests to offer it's pretty much always worth a visit, even if you're trying to power-level. And it has the stairs event, which is one of the best five-man boss encounters ever and fun at any level. 'nuff said!
1. Accessability
Zul'Farrak is located in Tanaris, which lies pretty much at the end of the world if you're looking at it from anywhere significant (like a capital city). Your first journey to the zone will take a fair amount of time, but it's worth it: Where else would people get their fix of Noggenfogger Elixir? The quests in the area also have as much synergy as you're currently going to find in any part of the old world, which makes it a fairly pleasant place to level. (Pirate quests!)
Once you've actually got the flight path to Gadgetzan, getting to Zul'Farrak is easy enough, as it's only about a minute's ride away from town.
2. Atmosphere
This is personal bias speaking here, but I absolutely dig any and all instances with trolls in them. I'm not entirely sure why that is - after all I play a troll myself and hearing their death noises has been known to make me twitchy on occasion. ("What was that? Am I still alive? Phew.")
Maybe it's because all the troll instances have a certain old-school adventure flair about them. "Indiana Jones and the secrets of Zul'Farrak", anyone? I could totally see it.
3. Story & Quests
Unless you want to get into troll lore in general, the "story" of Zul'Farrak can be summed up pretty simply: There's a bunch of bloodthirsty troll bastards who have lots of stuff. Let's take it! They are clearly evil anyway. Does a good adventurer really need any more justification?
As far as quests for the instance go, there are a ton of them; and almost all of them are available to both Alliance and Horde. Conveniently a lot of them can also be picked up quite close to the instance and don't have any pre-quests. It's interesting that they are without exception about stealing stuff from the trolls for other people. You're not the only one who wants a piece of those riches! (Though you could argue about the objective value of things like scarab shells and troll tempers.) This makes Zul'Farrak an excellent place for gaining a huge chunk of experience in your fourties.
4. Length
Obviously people's ideas of what's the ideal length for an instance will vary a lot as it's very subjective, but I find Zul'Farrak's length to be quite close to ideal. With a competent group it shouldn't take all day, but you're getting a good chunk of content for your time.
Due to the instance's circular nature there is no single predefined route through it, so if you're short on time you can always just aim for the part you are after and skip other bits, thereby adjusting the length to your needs.
5. Layout
As just mentioned, Zul'Farrak is basically one big circle. This can be mildly confusing during your first visit ("Wait, haven't we been here before?"), but it's not too bad. There are a lot of walls, huts, nooks and crannies that make the instance feel like a real place, but due to the circular layout you can't really run into any dead ends.
6. Trash
Sandfury trolls are hard. Well, at level anyway. This makes Zul'Farrak a good place to practice playing your role in a group, because there's a lot to do for everyone. First off there are many patrolling mobs to watch out for, which can easily lead to overpulling if someone doesn't watch where they are standing. Most trolls will also try to flee when low on health, increasing the risk of unwanted adds even more. Slowing abilities and focused fire are key.
They also have a whole host of abilities to annoy you, like heals, totems and crowd control - their hex in particular is extremely overpowered, can be cast on the tank and doesn't break on damage, like, at all. Ouch! Dps needs to learn to help with things like interrupts and dispelling.
7. Bosses
I'll be honest here and admit that many of the bosses in Zul'Farrak aren't very memorable by themselves. There's that basilisk guy, that zombie guy, that chief guy... but who even remembers their names? The only one that really stands out is Gahz'rilla, but that's simply because he's the only boss that isn't a troll, and seeing him emerge from his pool of water for the first time can be quite awe-inspiring to the average newbie. Plus, back in the day you needed a special item to summon him which was quite hard to acquire, so actually getting to see him felt special. Zombie boss can also be memorable if you've ever been in a party with someone who refused to listen to the instruction to not touch any of the graves.
However, there is one thing that's more epic than any other instance boss encounter that I can think of: the "stairs event". There's nothing quite like running up that pyramid, freeing the prisoners and just as you're congratulating yourself on another job well done, you turn around, look down... and suddenly there's a sea of trolls in your way. Then you have to spend the next ten minutes fighting your way out in a truly epic manner. For that encounter alone the instance is worth visiting.
8. Loot
You can't talk about Zul'Farrak loot without mentioning Sul'thraze the Lasher, an epic sword that is acquired by combining two rare blue boss drops from the instance. It's actually not that amazing a weapon, but at level fifty owning an epic still means something and is great for showing off. You do need to get quite lucky though, to see both halves of it drop and also win the roll.
As far as more ordinary boss drops go, Zul'Farrak still has some odd leftovers with questionable stats on them. I mean, were items with negative stats ever a good idea? And which class wants to spend their time meleeing with a staff? There's still some awesome loot for clothies and caster druids though, plus a few items for rogues and other lithe melee fighters. Any plate wearer not wearing heirlooms will also be happy to pick up some Big Bad Pauldrons.
The quest to kill Gahz'rilla also rewards people with an interesting trinket, the Carrot on a Stick. It's hardly amazing, but at low levels it's easy to not get any trinkets at all for a long time, so having something to stick into that empty slot feels quite satisfying.
In summary, Zul'Farrak is an instance with amazing atmosphere and some interesting and unique rewards. Since it's easy to get to and has a lot of quests to offer it's pretty much always worth a visit, even if you're trying to power-level. And it has the stairs event, which is one of the best five-man boss encounters ever and fun at any level. 'nuff said!
24/10/2009
Fresh from Onyxia's hattery
Considering the effort I put into acquiring the tier eight helm for my hunter and how excited I was about finally getting it, it was a bit of a shame to already replace it after two months. Still, I'm proud to be able to add yet another wonderfully over-the-top helm design to my collection.
23/10/2009
Instances: the new battlegrounds
So Wow.com had an article up about the new LFG interface as it can currently be seen on the patch 3.3 PTR. My reaction to said article and the attached screenshots can be summed up in four letters:
WHOA.
Never mind grouping with people from other servers, it's everything else that's going to change instancing as we know it. Basically, they are turning instance pugs into battlegrounds. Forget: "LF1M [instance], need tank... come on, anyone?" Forget: "Um, anyone beside me coming to the summoning stone?" In the new LFG interface, you check which role(s) you can play in a group and which instances you want to go to and then you just wait. The system will automatically build a group for you, informing you with a pop-up when it is done. Then you just have to click another button, and you, as well as everyone else in your party, will be teleported straight into the instance. Presumably you'll also end up back where you left off once you are done, just like it is with battlegrounds. This is a huge change.
To be honest my first reaction to reading this was one of pure glee. Only a little more than a week ago I praised the convenience of joining a battleground while in the middle of questing. This is going to make pugging instances just as easy and remove so many of the small everyday annoyances people have to put up with while forming a pug at the moment, like the frantic search for that last group member while everyone sits around in Dalaran twiddling their thumbs, wondering whether the group will ever actually go anywhere; or the eternal problem of people not making their way to the instance and demanding summons when nobody is even at the stone.
As far as the cross-server part of the new system goes, I tend to agree with Ixobelle about its usefulness (and lack thereof) at level eighty, but it does give me hope for being able to run instances "properly" while levelling again. In the past year I've got into the habit of just letting my boyfriend boost my alts through any dungeons where I want to get a quest done, and I used to despise boosting - but with everything being so focused on endgame, assembling a full party for a low-level instance at any time of day has become next to impossible. One can hope that there'll be enough interested players across a whole battlegroup, but we'll see.
Oh, and you'll be able to queue for any and as many dungeons as you want, regardless of level - how cool is that? Anyone who's ever tried to join LFG for an instance while levelling just to realise that they were one level too low or one level too high to queue for that particular dungeon will really appreciate this change.
Of course changes that drastic also raise a lot of questions, and the comments in response to the WoW.com post reflect that, though even there they didn't address everything I found myself wondering about. Will you still be able to disenchant and trade shards, seeing how trading doesn't work in battlegrounds? What happens if you wipe, do you just respawn at the entrance? What if you have to leave the instance temporarily, say to repair? Can you do that at all or will you be locked in? So many questions and so few answers... however, I think this is one of those things that we'll just have to sit out and wait for. I have enough faith in Blizzard to believe that they will consider all those issues and make things workable one way or another.
The only thing that makes me slightly sad about this new system is the fact that it will mean another blow to immersion in the game. As much as I enjoy the convenience of being able to quickly jump in and out of battlegrounds, it makes them feel like very isolated places - things that aren't really part of the world of Azeroth. I still remember the very first time a friend dragged me into a battleground - I think it was Arathi Basin - and how massively confused I was at the time. I had explored much of Azeroth already and thought that I understood how it all worked, but then I was suddenly teleported to some strange place, away from the middle of Ironforge, to somewhere that was supposed to be Arathi but clearly wasn't... I had explored the whole zone and there were no lumber mills or gold mines there!
I can see instances suffering a similar fate once the system just starts teleporting you everywhere. Where was Razorfen Kraul again? Pfft, who cares, it's just some swirly portal in the middle of nowhere, click this button and you'll be teleported there instantly. Things like that make me worry about the "world" part of World of Warcraft.
Still, on the whole I'm definitely anticipating patch 3.3 with a lot of excitement now. I pug a lot while often having limited time for it, and the thought of it becoming that much easier is definitely appealing.
WHOA.
Never mind grouping with people from other servers, it's everything else that's going to change instancing as we know it. Basically, they are turning instance pugs into battlegrounds. Forget: "LF1M [instance], need tank... come on, anyone?" Forget: "Um, anyone beside me coming to the summoning stone?" In the new LFG interface, you check which role(s) you can play in a group and which instances you want to go to and then you just wait. The system will automatically build a group for you, informing you with a pop-up when it is done. Then you just have to click another button, and you, as well as everyone else in your party, will be teleported straight into the instance. Presumably you'll also end up back where you left off once you are done, just like it is with battlegrounds. This is a huge change.
To be honest my first reaction to reading this was one of pure glee. Only a little more than a week ago I praised the convenience of joining a battleground while in the middle of questing. This is going to make pugging instances just as easy and remove so many of the small everyday annoyances people have to put up with while forming a pug at the moment, like the frantic search for that last group member while everyone sits around in Dalaran twiddling their thumbs, wondering whether the group will ever actually go anywhere; or the eternal problem of people not making their way to the instance and demanding summons when nobody is even at the stone.
As far as the cross-server part of the new system goes, I tend to agree with Ixobelle about its usefulness (and lack thereof) at level eighty, but it does give me hope for being able to run instances "properly" while levelling again. In the past year I've got into the habit of just letting my boyfriend boost my alts through any dungeons where I want to get a quest done, and I used to despise boosting - but with everything being so focused on endgame, assembling a full party for a low-level instance at any time of day has become next to impossible. One can hope that there'll be enough interested players across a whole battlegroup, but we'll see.
Oh, and you'll be able to queue for any and as many dungeons as you want, regardless of level - how cool is that? Anyone who's ever tried to join LFG for an instance while levelling just to realise that they were one level too low or one level too high to queue for that particular dungeon will really appreciate this change.
Of course changes that drastic also raise a lot of questions, and the comments in response to the WoW.com post reflect that, though even there they didn't address everything I found myself wondering about. Will you still be able to disenchant and trade shards, seeing how trading doesn't work in battlegrounds? What happens if you wipe, do you just respawn at the entrance? What if you have to leave the instance temporarily, say to repair? Can you do that at all or will you be locked in? So many questions and so few answers... however, I think this is one of those things that we'll just have to sit out and wait for. I have enough faith in Blizzard to believe that they will consider all those issues and make things workable one way or another.
The only thing that makes me slightly sad about this new system is the fact that it will mean another blow to immersion in the game. As much as I enjoy the convenience of being able to quickly jump in and out of battlegrounds, it makes them feel like very isolated places - things that aren't really part of the world of Azeroth. I still remember the very first time a friend dragged me into a battleground - I think it was Arathi Basin - and how massively confused I was at the time. I had explored much of Azeroth already and thought that I understood how it all worked, but then I was suddenly teleported to some strange place, away from the middle of Ironforge, to somewhere that was supposed to be Arathi but clearly wasn't... I had explored the whole zone and there were no lumber mills or gold mines there!
I can see instances suffering a similar fate once the system just starts teleporting you everywhere. Where was Razorfen Kraul again? Pfft, who cares, it's just some swirly portal in the middle of nowhere, click this button and you'll be teleported there instantly. Things like that make me worry about the "world" part of World of Warcraft.
Still, on the whole I'm definitely anticipating patch 3.3 with a lot of excitement now. I pug a lot while often having limited time for it, and the thought of it becoming that much easier is definitely appealing.
Faction Champion Fail
I really dislike the Faction Champions in Trial of the Crusader. I know that I'm not alone in this; a lot of crying has been done about how the fight is too much like PvP and people don't want that in a PvE instance, but that's actually not really it for me. I don't mind a bit of PvP and occasionally even participate in it myself.
There are two things that I dislike about the Faction Champions, the first one being that I really feel sidelined as a healer in this fight. I realise that no fight is equally interesting to everyone, but this is a pretty extreme example of inequality if you ask me. Especially in twenty-five-man mode our raid leader has to spend ages discussing the strategy for this fight every time (since the group composition is always different): who should (try to) crowd-control what, interrupts, kill order, and so on.
However, in the meantime the healers don't need any kind of plan, because our role is always the same: 1.: Heal anyone that takes damage (this is completely random). And 2.: Run away from things that try to damage you (this will also be completely random). So I get to spend ten minutes twiddling my thumbs while a lot of things are being discussed that have zero relevance to me and then I spend a lot of time seeing one of my favourite activities in the game being reduced to Whack-A-Mole in its purest form. No strategy here, it's all random. /yawn
The second thing that I dislike about the Faction Champions is that they have somehow turned into the personal nemesis of my ten-man group. We have downed them on both normal and heroic mode, but if anything is off one night, this fight is where the shit will hit the fan. And unfortunately tonight was one such night, as we just could not get them down on heroic mode and nobody seemed to have a clue why. From my point of view it was because we healers were being silenced all the time, but that didn't really make it any better because I had no idea how to solve that problem either.
I mean, usually when I encounter a problem in a fight like this I take the following steps:
- Ask myself if I did something wrong and if so, how I can avoid it next time: In this case I couldn't see what I could have done to avoid the constant interrupts from the mage, the enhancement shaman and the warlock's felhunter. I can't really get rid of the fel puppy when it's absolutely set on chewing on my toes. Both counterspell and the shaman interrupt are ranged instant casts, so I can't avoid them either, seeing how I can't constantly be out of range of those two guys while staying in range of the raid.
- Ask myself if anyone else obviously did something wrong and if so, how that could be corrected next time: Now, I wasn't sure whether anyone was supposed to keep the shaman and the mage busy, but even if they were, nobody can be expected to keep a champion's attention one hundred percent of the time, so an instant cast targetted at someone else can always go off anyway.
Which left me... completely lost and helpless. On absolutely every attempt I would get interrupted and locked out of my holy spells for ten seconds after a few casts - and ten seconds are a looong time in a fight like this, a time during which people would get dangerously low despite of the other healers' efforts. When the silence finally wore off I'd get a few casts off before being interrupted again, and during the next ten seconds the whole thing would then quickly devolve into a wipe.
Nobody really seemed to know what to do either, people were constantly asking to change the kill order but it didn't seem to do us any good whatsoever. Eventually it got late and we got so frustrated that we left for the night and went off to do something else, but I'm sure I wasn't the only one who had a sour taste in my mouth.
Maybe I do dislike the Faction Champions for being too much like a PvP fight after all, because it's all so random and impossible to fully control, so nobody knows what can realistically be expected from everyone else at any time. So it's random trial and error every time... Trial and Error of the Crusader, hmm.
In the immortal words of G.I. Joe: Knowing is half the battle - unfortunately that also means that if you don't have a clue what's going on, you'll always be fighting a battle that's already half-lost.
There are two things that I dislike about the Faction Champions, the first one being that I really feel sidelined as a healer in this fight. I realise that no fight is equally interesting to everyone, but this is a pretty extreme example of inequality if you ask me. Especially in twenty-five-man mode our raid leader has to spend ages discussing the strategy for this fight every time (since the group composition is always different): who should (try to) crowd-control what, interrupts, kill order, and so on.
However, in the meantime the healers don't need any kind of plan, because our role is always the same: 1.: Heal anyone that takes damage (this is completely random). And 2.: Run away from things that try to damage you (this will also be completely random). So I get to spend ten minutes twiddling my thumbs while a lot of things are being discussed that have zero relevance to me and then I spend a lot of time seeing one of my favourite activities in the game being reduced to Whack-A-Mole in its purest form. No strategy here, it's all random. /yawn
The second thing that I dislike about the Faction Champions is that they have somehow turned into the personal nemesis of my ten-man group. We have downed them on both normal and heroic mode, but if anything is off one night, this fight is where the shit will hit the fan. And unfortunately tonight was one such night, as we just could not get them down on heroic mode and nobody seemed to have a clue why. From my point of view it was because we healers were being silenced all the time, but that didn't really make it any better because I had no idea how to solve that problem either.
I mean, usually when I encounter a problem in a fight like this I take the following steps:
- Ask myself if I did something wrong and if so, how I can avoid it next time: In this case I couldn't see what I could have done to avoid the constant interrupts from the mage, the enhancement shaman and the warlock's felhunter. I can't really get rid of the fel puppy when it's absolutely set on chewing on my toes. Both counterspell and the shaman interrupt are ranged instant casts, so I can't avoid them either, seeing how I can't constantly be out of range of those two guys while staying in range of the raid.
- Ask myself if anyone else obviously did something wrong and if so, how that could be corrected next time: Now, I wasn't sure whether anyone was supposed to keep the shaman and the mage busy, but even if they were, nobody can be expected to keep a champion's attention one hundred percent of the time, so an instant cast targetted at someone else can always go off anyway.
Which left me... completely lost and helpless. On absolutely every attempt I would get interrupted and locked out of my holy spells for ten seconds after a few casts - and ten seconds are a looong time in a fight like this, a time during which people would get dangerously low despite of the other healers' efforts. When the silence finally wore off I'd get a few casts off before being interrupted again, and during the next ten seconds the whole thing would then quickly devolve into a wipe.
Nobody really seemed to know what to do either, people were constantly asking to change the kill order but it didn't seem to do us any good whatsoever. Eventually it got late and we got so frustrated that we left for the night and went off to do something else, but I'm sure I wasn't the only one who had a sour taste in my mouth.
Maybe I do dislike the Faction Champions for being too much like a PvP fight after all, because it's all so random and impossible to fully control, so nobody knows what can realistically be expected from everyone else at any time. So it's random trial and error every time... Trial and Error of the Crusader, hmm.
In the immortal words of G.I. Joe: Knowing is half the battle - unfortunately that also means that if you don't have a clue what's going on, you'll always be fighting a battle that's already half-lost.
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