Legendary Randomness

I'm not inclined to seek out the numbers and crunch data...but I swear legendary weapons sure seem to drop more often than you'd expect.

The Burning Crusade was released in China back in September, yet one ambitious guild has downed Illidan already and guess what? A legendary dropped.

IIRC, the first Ashbringer dropped early on when one of the top guild's during the Naxxramas era.

And it didn't seem long after Blizzard added the druid epic flight form quest that players were coming away with the raven mount, I think the next day?

Now I'm not complaining, and WoW does have a lot of players, but I wouldn't put it past Blizzard to conveniently have a much looser loot table at the beginning of things, just as advertisement.

Welfare epics

Welfare epics describe the arena epics you can purchase. They are called welfare epics because of the presumed ease at which you can obtain them.

The biggest complaint is the fact that you only have to participate in, not win, the arenas matches to earn points. You can essentially have a losing season and still come away with rewards.

Of course, you gain less points this way and players tend to gloss over how long it takes with the 10 games a week method.

Players also complained about the Headless Horseman helm and epic rings. The helm may have been on the level of tier 4 or better and the rings were exactly like the ones you can buy with heroic badges.

As a result, these higher rated pvp teams and players who had ran heroics over and over felt their efforts were diminished.

Blizzard is changing the arena awarding system with patch 2.3, but there are no plans to change the HH event to make it harder or remove the epic drops.

To those who think casual, not-so-skilled, or whatever category these welfare epics are ascribed to shouldn't have a chance at what some take for granted I say this:

This is a carrot-chasing game. We keep the cart moving by trying to bit at the carrot. For some of us it takes weeks, others months. Why one donkey cares what the other donkey is doing I'll never know. But to stay in business they have to let us nibble on the carrot sometimes lest we lose sight of why we're playing and get a taste for apples.

Boo!

After the seemingly abrupt end to Brewfest, the Halloween events have started!

The Headless Horseman is a level 70 5-man (recommended) elite boss found in the Scarlet Monastery graveyard. He drops some great purple treats - epic ring of some type is guaranteed, as is a broom (of various speed levels). There are chances other epics will drop as well. The best one, gear-wise is the plate [Horseman's Helm].

But since we all have different tastes of what we think would be a great drop, arguably the best overall may be the non combat pet [Sinister Squashling] or the mount [Swift Magic Broom].

Always good to see they add to events instead of just rehashing old events!

gg ret pallies?

After further discussion and testing we’ve decided to add threat reduction deep in the paladin's retribution tree. Fanaticism will now reduce threat caused by all actions by 6/12/18/24/30%, in addition to its current effect.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled blog

Let me try to steer the blog away from my priest concerns, what a surprise they only come up when I'm spending time playing one!

Back to fun stuff like Brewfest!

Were you lucky enough to get the quest to head back into BRD before they disabled it? The reward is a glowing off-hand [Dark Iron Tankard]. It's not as detailed as the main hand [Yellow Brewfest Stein], but I'm sure most dwarves only care about what's inside their dual-wielded mugs.

Priests - The Utility Class?

I think I may have figured out what has been bothering me about the priest class.

We have moved away from healing as our #1 selling point and now our buffs (and debuffs in terms of shadow priests) have taken top slot.

Now, this isn't really a problem per se. I just have to get out of the mindset that the class I rolled for a specific purpose has a new role.

However the problem arises when the utility I can offer is already offered by another priest.

If BC is all about buffing damage output instead of healing damage input then they need to give us more ways to do so.

Jack of all healing

...master of none.

AKA today's mini-rant AKA spent time playing my priest main recently.

If you check WoW's official site for class descriptions, the first words that describe the priest class are as follows "Priests are the masters of healing". I, like I'm sure many others, took that to mean if you want to play a healer play a priest.

Times have changed for the career healer. In my limited experience the master of healing in BC is the paladin. With this in mind, I understand the hard feelings warriors have when tanking is usurped by paladins and druids. Or when mages feel pushed out by warlocks. You picked a class because it was tailored for it. Yet another class does your pigeonholed job just as well if not better.

It's hard to describe without it sounding like nothing but sour grapes. But I can bitter it up even more. A priest can do the grunt (no pun intended) work. But becoming Master of the 5-man when no one can find a paladin wasn't in the job description.

Brewfest!

Don't forget to participate in Brewfest.

There is a very easy quest you can do to get a wolpertinger aka what-the-heck-is-that aka jackalope. And several other quests that reward you with tickets. With the tickets you can purchase a Brewfest outfit, perfect for celebrating the imbibing of spirits! Of course I think dwarves will just look awesome in them! I hope the quests are something you don't have to be 70 to complete all of them.

Lasting guilds

I've found raiding wasn't the culprit for all the time I spent in the game. I wanted to pin it on something. But I still play as much as I ever have it seems.

I came across a guild website that recently disbanded. They were "the" guild when I first started playing. They had all the first tiers, back when I didn't even know what instance dropped what. I would get close enough to inspect them and sometimes ask "Where'd you get that?" questions I'm sure they were asked many times before. But then, when you stand on the AH bridge or in front of the bank steps what do you expect? ;)

Yet after the rough part (so I've heard) of Naxxramas, and the sever caused by changing 40-mans to 25, this guild that competed on a worldwide level is no more.

BC has its casualties. I was really wrong when I predicted the 25-man limit would be a boon for raiding guilds. Instead it seems, having to be on your toes for every single raid is draining for many. And not being able to sub in replacements without extensive re-learning is painful. PvP and crafting offers you armor and weapons on par with what raid instances offer. The top guilds are pulling players from other guilds. Guild "loyalty" is fleeting. Guilds built on players desiring raid progression can't be surprised when one of their own leaves for even better progression.

I'd rather raid with people who like to play with each other. Those that put guild cohesiveness above progression. But that also has its drawbacks as you get tired of wiping on the same bosses. Those guilds tend to have players who raid with other guilds. And sometimes those same players just end up leaving to join the more progressed guild just like the top raiding guilds experience attrition. Its made me a bit of a cynic as far as raiding goes.

The guild I am in has recruited lots of new people that I don't know. Since I don't raid anymore, I haven't bothered to get to know them. Especially when they've joined just to raid. Even though I did the exact thing when I joined almost 2 years ago. I don't worry too much about it, in the age of revolving door guilds.