So, 2.4's been out for a couple days now. Most of us have their servers on Phase 2 of the Offensive. We've had a chance to run Magisters' Terrace a couple times, and some folks have even dipped into the 25man, killing a boss or two in there. So...what are your thoughts?

So far, I've seen Magisters' Terrace. I liked it quite a bit, and thought that the Kael fight was quite a treat. I'm on the fence about the third boss (The PvP 5v5 team thing). Attuning to Heroic MgT was painless. I've had a look over the SSO rep rewards, and don't see much my hunter would be interested in, but I do see some very nice items for other folks. The dailies are quick and painless, even with the Island drowning from the weight of all the PC's on it. I do very much like that you can team up with the folks in front and behind you on the Bombing daily to get it done that much more easily.

I'm on the fence about the combat log changes. It's wreaked havoc with mods, but that's for the mod makers to worry over more than me. I do like the "What happened to me?" feature, but it...needs some work.

So, what do you think of 2.4, for better or worse?

I'm not very happy with the MH/BT attunement being lifted. We spent an evening in MH last night, and it was fun, but I'd rather have spent the night in TK working on Kael'thas, as we have been aiming to do the past few weeks (Spring Break raiding dearth for the loss).

I'd much prefer if Blizzard had simply instituted account-wide attunements (so alts could be attuned automatically) and perhaps made it easier for raids to attune folks once they have killed Kael and such a few times and don't plan on going back (scrolls of attunement that drop plentifully from the bosses, which can be banked for later use, etc).

Of Magister's Terrace, I went in to replace a tank after they had wiped 8 times on the trash just before Kael (undergeared, underskilled tank and little CC), so my only experience there is a single trash pull and killing Kael'thas.

I look forward to doing him on Heroic mode. I hope it'll be more challenging. I was a little disappointed it was only a two phase fight, consisting of very little that was difficult (tank and spank one phase, avoid orbs on the next, he dies).

I like it.

...

What, you want more? Sheesh, you jackals.

Okay, as usual, the patch broke a few things. For one thing, weapon sizes when sheathed are smaller than wielded for taurens, which doesn't actually irk me as much it does the frothing rabble in the official forums. It's disconcerting, yes, and it's odd, but hey - at least my Savagery enchant shows up better on my CWA.

What does annoy me is the bug regarding the selection circles around monsters - They're all tiny, about the same size as the average humanoid's, regarardless of how huge the monster is. This irks me as a hunter because that ring was actually a pretty good indicator as to when said mob would trip a trap. Sigh.

That said, I have pretty good feelings about the patch so far. Ravenholdt is (last checked less than an hour ago) only 46% through phase 1, but that's mainly because the Staging Grounds is scene to a perpetual bloodbath A bloodbath that was started, probably, by someone accidentally right-clicking an opposing player. Yesterday.

(Okay, I know we had rolling restarts this morning.)

The increase on daily quests has really helped, it gives me plenty to do a day, even after I've finished my Shattered Sun duties (7 quests at phase 1). I'll ding Revered for the Netherwing today, and even if I can get all the dailies done (10), with the cooking and fishing (2) done that leaves me with an extra 6 quests to do.

On the word of the thread giving the locations of blue PvP set, I ran across the worlds gathering up every piece, and using some of my leather and dust to slap some armor kits and inscriptions on the gear. Even ungemmed (Except for the meta on the helmet) I get more crit than my current gear, and only a little less damage, which I can probably boost a lot more with the right gems. Hell, I might actually keep the helmet and pants as regular items to cover inferior quest reward items. The only problem? I feel ridiculous.

Anyway, got a gold begger in Orgrimmar staring at the 1g I've left on the table. Let's see how long it takes him to give up.

Regarding the Hyjal/BT attunements:

My guild has been working on Vashj for... Two weeks.

In February.

In March, every week, we were consistently screwed over by either server instability, no-shows , or Easter. To the point that our GM was going to surprise-cancel the T5 farm nights in favour of progress on her. Only to face no-shows.

I really wanted to see her and Kael down before we step foot into BT/Hyjal.

Last night, we stepped into Hyjal, to "get it out of our systems", one-shot Joke Winterchill five minutes before his enrage timer (After absolute gems, like the MT getting a BoP, people not trinketing out of frost bolt, and people just standing around aimlessly for the first minute of the fight), picked up the badges, cleared SSC. Tomorrow, I assume we'll be going for Vashj again, and Sunday, we'll farm out TK/Mag (Whom we finally might get to kill - our GM did not believe he was helpful to progression).

Rage seems to be getting added to our farming rotation, which I guess isn't all that bad, considering that it takes us less then 2 hours to clear 3/4 TK, on 4-hour raid nights. I guess I shouldn't complain, considering I'll be getting all the epic JC patterns - even if the only one that's dropped so far was 13 spell penetration.

I didn't like the wasted time with going from instance to instance, but I see why it had to be done. I'm not sure how people are going to feel when we're still wiping on Vashj two weeks from now. I'd rather not be stepping into BT until we at least get her down.

I've yet to face him on Heroic, but I understand the main difference is that he has his shield and 48k pyroblast. You need to chew through the shield to interrupt him...and better hope you have someone along who CAN interrupt him. Would make it a bit more of a challenge.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the patch. All things considered its been pretty smooth. The biggest issue I am having (aside from broken mods) is that they changed they way the chat windows work. When you go into settings there is now a check box called 'channel'. This wonderful category is everything from people joining channels, to the information returned on /chatinfo commands. Since I want to see when people join channels, I now get to see chatinfo responses in 4 chat windows. Its not a huge thing, but man is it annoying.

New combat log is almost worse than the old one. It now notifies you of things that are just worthless. Standing in shatt you can see EVERYTHING that people do. The range is also pretty huge. When we were doing Gurtogg last night people were seeing combat log entries from Illidari council (one of the 4 casts some buff on themself periodically I guess.) Which is fun since DBM picks up on that and enables the mods for them.

So far, it's a snorefest for me. Perhaps if I try Magister's Terrace it will gain a bit of value.

The extra Ravagers in the Mines are an improvement, though.

PvP gear: I snagged up a piece to use in my paladin's tanking gear already (though I mistakenly got the Ret piece instead of the Holy piece, sigh), as it was vastly better than the crappy green that was in the slot.

Combat log... urgh. I hate it. It bogs down my game every time I load an area, it looks ridiculous, and I can't have any other it in any other windows. Plus, they royally #$%&ed up the General Chat window as well -- I usually run with three chat windows; the General chat window with loot/s/yl/general/trade/LFG/etc., a Party/Guild chat window with my most important stuff (/p, /g, /r, /bg, /w), and the combat log. I cannot turn off *ANYTHING* in the General chat window for more than the duration of that session; as soon as I relog, it's reactivated. It bugs me all to hell.

Sunwell is neat and stuff. I'm just not that interested, for some reason...

MgT is hell for tanks -- and I'm mostly a tank. There's very little actual tanking going on in there. Only been once, but I don't really like it, at least as tank.

Heroic is Phase 4 and 5 of Kael in Tempest Keep, or very close to it. It's very brutal, if you do not have the DPS or if you're distracted by an egg at the time, someone will die. Your best hope is it is not the healer and you can push Kael into phase 2 (if the tank is dead and you're close to phase 2, you can still win). So use Heroic MgT as training for the actual Kael fight in The Eye so once your raid force gets past phase 3, you should be ready for phase 4 and 5.

I haven't been to Magister's Terrace yet, but expect to become very familiar with it this weekend (I'm trying to grind out the rep for the Alchemist's Stone upgrade).

The new daily quests are great, and I love the variety. Most of them are very quick and easy - I think I knocked off 7 in an hour before work today. "Multiphase Survey" is basically 10 free gold. "Intercepting the Mana Cells" is very cool - when you're out of phase the world looks a bit like the "wearing the ring" sequences from the Lord of the Rings movies. For "Blast the Gateway" you don't even need to tag the Fel Sparks yourself - you can be near somone else's when it dies, and your Flare will still get buffed.

For once I'm starting to feel that the money will my priest earns from daily quests will be enough to keep ahead of raiding costs *and* eventually pay for an epic flyer.

Two nights in Sunwell Plateau so far. There's a lot of trash to clear to Kalecgos, and its reasonably demanding, but we improved quite a bit from our first night to our second. We got Kalecgos to around 60% or so on our best attempt. The tuning feels about right - the main issue for us seems to be getting people to jump through portals at the right time.

So far:

I haven't bought any of the PvP gear but probably will. It'll be nice to come into BG's with more than 75 resilience (I'm using S1 gloves + instance drops with resilience right now). It's good news.

Shattrath lags less at the moment. It's excellent. (Last week, it was so bad one night, that I bubbled on my paladin after running off the Aldor Rise, and things slowed down my fall so the shield wore off before I hit the ground. Ugh.)

Terrace is fun but the difficulty doesn't scale well, in my opinion. It's way too easy at the beginning, and somewhat frustrating at the end. Healing Kael is a nightmare for Shamans and, I assume, Paladins, although it'll probably be better once people actually figure out how to not get themselves killed better. People not moving away from orbs, and not noticing the beam damage = BAD.

Raiding costs are a joke now - even our MT isn't complaining about them anymore, now that bosses drop 10g per player.

I actually make money from raids - and I'm not playing a Rogue or a Hunter.

Although, I guess, not being a mana pot-chugging class helps.

Rogues and hunters have some pretty high costs associated with raiding too, you know. On any given raid night, I will spend about 40g on repairs and ammo. Yes, I have FD, but I can't always use it. I imagine the same is true of rogues. By the time an encounter gets to a wipe...they are dead already.

It'd be nice if folks would stop assuming hunters and rogues have no repairs bills. Mine can be just as high as 'yours'...

I've Main tanked in SSC and I've played my hunter in there (and lower raids). The hunter almost always ended up spending more for a run. Like Mirajj said a full quiver (24 slots) of ammo is over 19 gold. And the repair bills aren't that different. Fully broken tanking set costs about 5g more to repair than a fully broken gear set on my hunter.

Like Mirajj I get really annoyed at people assuming I'm not paying as much as them and on some fights hunters end up sucking mana pots as well. I now for a long time I was paying MORE than anyone else in the raid for an average raid even if I did manage to skip a few repair bills with FD. I got used to 40-50 gold repair bills +10-20 gold in ammo on learning nights. Of course I didn't gripe too much as I had a pretty easy time farming and it was way lower on repair costs than farming on the warrior.

Bosses dropping more money is a very nice thing though.

Not as dead as a melee class with no aggro dump and a marginal threat reducing ability.

I can buy the ammo expenditures, but rogue costs?

Those 25 copper flash powders must really add up.

It's really built for a pally tank, moreso than any other. Warriors are going to have the hardest time tanking in MgT with Pallies being the easiest (place is one big AoE tankfest for the most part).

This right here.

I'm really liking some of the new dailies. Easy gold, a green to DE, a new rep to grind for a marginal upgrade- what's not to like?

It seems to me that brand new 70's benefit most from the changes in this patch. A full set of blue armor and well-itemized weapons for (relatively) easily obtainable SSO rep makes gearing up for heroics or Kara much easier than in the past. My 1 run through MrT was very enjoyable despite multiple wipes and I'm looking forward to trying it on heroic.


What I'm REALLY looking forward to is finding out some more WotLK info now that they're (more or less) done patching TBC.

Our most frequent hunter, Teeth, survives most wipes. His costs mostly just come from arrows and mana pots, not that those aren't costly enough by themselves.

I'd say switching from Warlock to Prot Paladin was about the worst economic decision I've ever made in-game.

A tank class wearing plate that has to chug mana pots on some boss fights because I don't take enough damage. Add in respec costs for the times I ever manage time to PVP as well.

My warlock almost never lost money on raids, even before 2.4. Cloth armor, not being in melee range of mobs, no mana pot use (usually), and no respec costs for PVP.

The patch also helped these costs for some classes. It was only Kara, but the other night I felt like I had an obscene amount of mana due to the regen changes. I think I had to drink (water, not pots) about 4 times going Attumen --> Nightbane and Curator.

WTB spirit on paladin gear.

I'm guessing he raids with folks who don't think that it's fun, cute, necessary or their outright perogative to drag bosses over to FD'd hunters/vanished rogues?

If I avoid a wipe, it's because something else went wrong. Tank died, and the boss is pounding on the melee, giving me time to get away and FD (usually). Being FD'ed and then Graved while Morogrim is wiping folks is always fun. Or seeing a spate of FD resists is always 'nice', too.

The 'cheapest' raid I can ever recall cost me 15g between repairs and arrows. I think it was an MC speedrun we did towards the launch of TBC.

I realize all sorts of folks have all sorts of costs, what I'd like to see is folks stop bitching about how others have "no" costs.

If you are dead set on thinking that hunters are 'free' in raids, consider this. Most of the higher end ones I talk to (BT/Hyjal) tell me they spend 1.5-2g on a stack of arrows (Depending on how rich they are feeling) and go through a full quiver (24 stacks) and then some per raid. I hear it's quite often 'easy' to go through 30 stacks of arrows a raid. And that's JUST the ammo. So yeah, we all have to spend money to raid, and we all do 'cause we love raiding anyhow. Grass/greener, and all that.

I'm not going down the farming path, as some classes/specs clearly have it easier than others. Let's just say I'm very glad that dailies have come along to help a lot in this regard.

Yeah, any class/spec can pretty easily make around 100 gold a day on dailies and not have to kill much of anything to do so. As soon as daily quests were put in, I pretty much gave no credit to anyone griping about raid costs with one execption, enchant mats. Some classes still had issues with some of the farming you had to do if you wanted an enchant sooner than the gold grind of the dailies would get you though food wasn't too expense and even my prot warrior could sustain 400 or so DPS while farming but it came with a lot more downtime than even a holy priest. Of course I generally stopped farming with my raiders and used alts that could still get exp for doing it to get me the mats and stuff. And since I was our survival hunter for a while I even have to back pedal on the farming aspect of the hunter a bit as survival hunters generally have the worst aggro holding pets (pet did better when I was marks survival than when I was survival marks and neither comes close to a beat hunter of course). The only reason the ammo costs weren't bad farming on the hunter is because I would use the uber cheap ammo when farming and give up a decent chunk of DPS, which I could afford to do because I was still above the 350 DPS line which is what I consider the minimum to not make soloing horribly painful.

The influx of easy greens from Shattered Sun Supplies packages may help lower the price of enchanting materials.

Nobody said you can't wear cloth...

I thought you liked wearing dresses

I'm really not sure it will matter that much, how often are you outside the 5 second rule anyway? Pallies and shaman don't have any in combat spirit regen talents like priests and druids. So more spirit won't help you unless you actually stop casting for 5 seconds. I don't see that happening a ton in SSC and TK and I figure it just gets worse in BT and Hyjal. Dunno. I would still rather see plate and mail with MP/5 rather than spirit.

Questing last night with my hunter, I did notice gaining quite a bit more mana in between mob packs. Less time to be hypnotized by the video slot machine combat log

My paladin would kill to have an aura akin to my hunter's Aspect of Viper but relying instead on something like stamina or block value; not like Devotion or Retribution Auras are game-breaking boosts anyway. Spiritual Attunement is nice & all, but spamming max rank spells vs. trash in 8 sec. rotations wipes out my blue rage bar if I'm careless.

addendum: I'd just like to add that the WSG change to flag-carriers... painful. Just been in 2 WSG matches... 34 mins. then 63 mins.

Ryan: I'm curious about which WSG change actually led to the matches being longer? I did a few yesterday because I was trying to get the 2 minute pvp trinket and I had a shortage of WSG tokens compared to every other battleground. There were matches that were longer than I woudl have liked (win or lose, I just wanted the match over quickly so I could get my token(s)). The length of the match seemed to depend more on the attitude of the participants than any game mechanic. If one or both sides wanted a turtle, they could quite easily drag it out until the 100% damage debuff kicked in. If the match went on for an extended period after that, I can only assume that offence was bad and/or the flag carrier had an platoon of healers. (And yes I was in a match where the flag carrier was sitting in the graveyard with 3 healers).

My observations are that its much harder for the flag carriers to hide now (you can see where they are on the mini-map), and you need a lot of healing to keep them up against a determined assault once the full damage bonus kicks in.

I also wondered if they tweaked the matching system a bit. I wasn't doing a lot of BGs, but I didn't run into a single pre-made all weekend, and most of the matches felt pretty evenly matched.

The token turn in quest was great honor if you had a stockpile of unused tokens. Most serious PVPers have probably moved far beyond honor pvp gear by now, but its much easier to get than it was.

Magister's Terrace: Finally got in to check the place out. Haven't done Heroic mode yet, but I ran normal mode over and over and over. The length of the instance feels right - we were clearing it in 30-45 minutes. There were no upgrades for me, but I suspect other players would find a lot of nice stuff in there. First two bosses seemed pretty easy. The third boss is chaotic fun. It's been called a "5 versus 5" arena match and the description isn't too inaccurate. Normal aggro rules are right out the window, and I was much more successful when I started treating it like a pvp match (cast and run, keep moving, fear liberally etc). Gotta love a boss fight where an explosive sheep gets used against you.

I'm impressed that they managed to keep so much of the Tempest Keep Kael fight for Magister's Terrace. That being said, phase 2 is an unholy nightmare to heal, and I play one of the healing classes better suited for it.

Still I got enough runs in to hit Revered with Shattered Sun Offensive over the weekend.

@ icebird: Both of those long WSG matches I mentioned (my only WSG wins of that day) had a ton of flag drops by alliance; our FC just couldn't stay alive. On the 2nd win, we eventually abandoned base def 5 mins. before the win & every healer & cc became flag support. Making the FC's visible on the map is a great change, but the increased dmg was a bit much. Maybe because of my class bias, but base indoors is no place for a druid anyway. I really really hope WoLK sees a heavily revamped WSG.

I thought I read it someplace, but I swear pre-mades are only matched vs. other pre-mades in 2.4. I can't find it in the patch notes now so maybe I imagined it.

I love the new turn-in quest as well. Anything to make grinding less painful than it already is; now if only I can exchange tokens for another kind, maybe I'll start liking PVPs

WOW Blue PvP gear is nice. Statistically of course, it's a huge downgrade from my T4/5 stuff, and when I work with the sockets they're going to get cheapo gems =p, but the resilience really does make up for it somehow. Those little numbers are magical. I bought a couple (the ones that were handy) before doing some lousy arena matches tonight, and this being my first time *in* the arena, I wasn't sure how much of a difference they made. On the other hand, just two pieces (plus the S1 gloves I got a while ago, Medallion of the Alliance, that trinket from Heroic Black Stalker and the Dagger from Thorngrin) made a huge difference, it seemed to me.

Of course, I still didn't win any, because Ruin Alliance are not very good on the whole. In fact I've been wondering, have horde been buffed a lot in AV or do people play even worse now? In 2.3 I had >50% wins in there...since 2.4 I have been in one victory, and that was reinforcements-based (we didn't even capture all the towers...)

I went back to Magisters' Terrace, on Heroic this time. It's pretty fun on heroic, with better difficulty balancing in my opinion. I still died on Kael though...didn't heal myself at all during the first Gravity Lapse. Excellent! Not to mention the pull right before him. Arcs and I went down twice.

While I was there, I got [Vial of the Sunwell]. I'm wondering if anyone else has any experience with this trinket, since I'm really torn on whether it's good or not. Certainly, I love the mp5, as my gear and gems are tweaked much more toward +healing in general, and I tend to use Elixirs for another +50, at the cost of some potential mana regen in Flask of Mighty Restoration. The Use effect though...I haven't been able to get much out of it aside from another Healthstone for myself. It's a little awkward to use in raids on other people, from what I've seen so far, because odds are if they need it that badly somebody else is about to land one on them anyway. But hey, what do I know, I'm just a guy who tries to not stand in fire and presses the Chain Heal button a lot.

I am jealous of Druids and Priests though. Everything I've been hearing about their regen...is insane.

Void Shatter is dumb, you can learn it at 360, but it requires the 375 enchanting rod. Thanks for that one Blizzard. Doesn't seem to have affected the price of mats much either, for the better anyway.

The nice thing with the blue PvP gear is that the two-piece bonus currently stacks with the two-piece bonus on arena season 1. At the moment I'm decked out with the helmet and pants of the blue set (To replace my Divination questline reward helmet and a pair of pants I got from early on in the Netherwing line) and the shoulders and gloves of the S1 set, which is about all I could be bothered to farm before I realised that working towards the epic flying mount was a much better waste of my time.

Both sets have +35 resilience at 2/5, and both sets have a rather mediocre reduced cooldown on Concussive Shot (Blue) and Multi Shot (S1) at 4/5. +70 resilience or +35 and a second off a shot? Tough decision It seems that the set was pretty much designed for folks like me, i.e. too lazy or stuck in a bad battlegroup to get the full S1 set, and need something to pad out the remaining slots. Misery is an aptly-named battlegroup if you're Horde.

Going back to the earlier discussion about the cash rewards from the upped daily limit, I've been struck by just how the change has made so many things... Well, affordable. I'm not terribly motivated, and generally have bad luck with drops anyway. If there's a farming guide out there that promises an easy 100g an hour, I'd follow it and only get 25g with my luck. I lose greed rolls, I lose need rolls, everyone else in an instance gets the better drops while I have to empty the trash out of my inventory. My main income is and always has been through certain payoffs - Namely, quests. Quests are a guaranteed source of cash, and I did pretty much the entirety of great 5200g grind for the epic flying mount (No way was I riding that ugly Sha'tari spacehopper just to save 40g) in daily quests that returned a total of about 75g per day.

A few days ago, after doing the basic Outland dailies for the Shattered Sun (Throne, Multiphase Readings, Nether Residue, and Sunfury Attack Plans - We hadn't reached phase 2 by then) I spent a pile of cash in the auction house buying enough Fel Armaments to almost get to exalted and the wrong friggin' gem to fill out the last slot in my new PvP helm (Not my fault the +8 strength shares the same icon as the +16 AP). Before doing the Shattered Sun quests on the isle, as well as my daily Netherwing fix, I had maybe 4g.

At the end of it all, as well as finishing some group quests in SMV (Varedis Must Be Stopped, Battle At Crimson Watch) I had about 300g. Wow.

The reason why everything is affordable is that inflation really hasn't hit the servers yet. In fact, a lot of stuff I'd buy isn't prone to inflation (Ammo, food, water, all of which a hunter needs plenty of stacks of) or is even actually cheaper than the prices I used to pay (Being exalted with at least three convenient Outland factions means I save a fair amount of money on repair bills). Granted, I never splurged enough at one time to prevent me from maintaining my daily upkeep, but my increased income essentially means those costs are negligible. A solid day's worth of dailies can bring in enough cash for about two or three respecs (Still doesn't stop the warriors from complaining), a single-man guild like myself can afford extra tabs on my essential guild bank.

Inflation hasn't hit though, as I said. The Fel Armaments I bought were the same price as they were before 2.4 went live, and as a result I now have enough dust I don't know what to do with. A single gem at 65g would have a fairly large chunk out of what I'd be earning that day, now I can actually afford to make a silly mistake like buying out the wrong gem. Another source of my income, selling Netherweave, is still a fairly steady price, swinging from between 2.5g to 3.5g, despite the fact that Netherweave is dreadfully common and everyone can now afford to pay a little extra.

Hell, I may be able to afford primals for the Netherstrike set I plan on building. The only real snag with that set is the Netherscales, which never seem to sell.

As a Tier 4.5 Enhancement shaman, I'm looking at the PvP blues, and the prospect of losing some odd 100 AP and 2% crit. Per piece. For some 20-30 resilience.

I'll just say that I'm not looking forward to that prospect. I'd rather get spiked down in a few of my matches before my healer can react (Although most of the time, that happens when he is silenced/interrupted, with plenty of room for killing me to spare), then be unable to kill enemy healers decked out in Season 2/3.

My paladin partner, on the other hand, bought all the pieces, which is a very good idea, seeing as how +heal is a lesser stat for PvP.



I've done heroic MT twice, with a Enh Shaman/Mage/Hunter/Tank/Paladin setup, and honestly, it didn't seem much harder then the regular. The trash got a bit of a buff to damage and hit points, and the second boss required some forethought, but that was it.

I'll have to say that I'm happy that I finally got an instance where Enh shamans are superior to rogues, in terms of benefit to the party. Between off-tanking, Earth Shock, and purge spam on the Sunstrider Warlocks/Mages, grounding and tremor totems, plus off-healing on the second boss... I bring quite a bit to the table.



That trinket dropped both times I've ran the instance - it went to our holy paladin the first time, and to me for off-speccing the second time.

It's an amazing trinket for Paladins and Shamans. It gives you an insta-cast heal, that can be used on the move, or when silenced. Your +healing stacks with the 2000 heal, too, resulting in a +3000 insta-cast heal. It's like a Power Word: Shield on crack. While it's true that there isn't too much use for it in some of Tier 5, I could think of a few fights where it would be good - Vashj, Tidewalker, Leotheras (For when the whole raid stays in through a 10% whirlwind...), Lurker, Void Reaver, A'lar.



That depends on what you're going for. Items like Fel Armaments are consumed at a low rate, and produced at a moderate rate. There is rarely a shortage of them.

On the other hand, on my server, gem prices sky-rocketed. Uncut metas are now at 150g, where they were 75g. Mystic Dawnstones are ~60g. Runed Living rubies went up to ~80g. Adamantite ore went from 20g/stack to 30g/stack (Although the latter could somewhat be contributed to one of my gold-selling guildmates to get sick of mining some odd 500 stacks/week.)

And I've been buying uncut gems, ores, and the rest like crazy - because once the badge vendor is unlocked, demand for them will go up dramatically. With the new dailies, people have a lot more gold to burn, and with sockets to be filled, I'm hoping for at least a 15g profit on each of my gems.

Ever tried to take the flag back from a T-6 geared prot warrior with 2 or more healers + a dps? If you had you'll see the reason for the change. If you haven't then know it was hellish.

Other than a single evening's visit to Quel'Danas and MGT on my 70, most of my post-2.4 experience has been in a lowbie instancing team. We have a Paladin, a Priest, and a Druid (just pick up some DPS and go!). Here's what I've noticed:

Sweet New Blues: Many named whites in 2.3 are now relatively impressive BoP blues. Things like the
Bloody Brass Knuckles: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=7683 and the Snakeskin Bag: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=6446 (Strangely, I had the bag equipped in my bank and it unloaded itself into my character's free inventory)

Insufficient New Flightlines: I'm highly disappointed. Quel'Danas is now connected to the full complement of Alliance flightlines via IF, but traveling between Silvermoon and Undercity still requires that you use the transporter. Very, very lame. Did Metzen forget to check his notes again and imagine that Silvermoon is on a different continent or something?

There IS a flightline between Undercity and Silvermoon. Unfortunately to use it you have to have Light's Hope Chapel, Zul'Aman, and obviously Silvermoon flight points discovered. I can't remember if you also need the Tranquillen flight point.

The economy issue is an interesting one. On the one hand, the increase in number of daily quests (both in terms of quantity and the increased cap) will introduce a lot of extra money into the economy. On the other hand, supply of some items has also increased (primal fire, primal mana and fel lotus are three examples I can think of immediately). Obviously prices set by Blizzard are fixed, so things like talent respecs and flying mount purchases suddenly seem much more affordable.

In the auction house economy where players set the prices, the two forces I mentioned are working in opposition to each other. For some things this has meant that prices have stayed the same or had smaller changes that you might expect. For other items, the changes might be much more substantial.

As a herbalist/alchemist, its suddenly much more attractive to simply buy the herbs I need for raiding consumables that pick my own herbs, at least until I have a fast flying mount.

There are a great many other items for which supply has increased.

I can speak for my personal behavior, but the addition of a daily quest for gatherers that gives SSO rep, I've been doing a LOT more mining and herbing than I usually do... a LOT. I'm apparently not alone, because despite how much more money some people have, and attitudes of raiders more willing to buy their mats, the prices of most of the herbs I sell on the AH has (generally) decreased. In some cases (mostly herbs available throughout outlands like dreaming glory and felweed) the decrease is very signficant.

The most interesting item I see in the AH is the Nether Vortex. At any point this can be an indicator of the value of badges, because from what I've seen this is the best "gold per badge" BoE item. In the past week the prices haven't stablized really (on Terenas anyway). I've seen from 300g -400g ish on the low end and 1500g on the high end per.

Currently raiding guilds who have a surplus of these are siphoning them off to the AH to make some cash. However, when the supply of these from guilds who no longer need them dry up, what will happen to the price of these? Will they stabilize because some people will trade badges for gold by buying these and selling them on the AH? Or will supply dry up and these will become more expensive?

I found Dreaming Glory prices have been low ever since the 2.3 patch introduced the Mad Alchemist potion. I frequently have to price it below Felweed to move it on Malygos. I treat it as extra cash that my gatherer picks up while hunting for adamantite. In my experience Nightmare Vine and Netherbloom have been the "cash" crops, but keep an eye on Terocone prices.

My epic flyer equipped miner/herbalist completed the Nether Residue collection in one sweep on Nagrand. My slow-griffon riding herbalist priest (different server) is still sitting on 4/8 after about 4 days with the quest. With the current drop rates, the time-to-reward ratio just doesn't make it worth it.

This has been my experience as well. I've yet to complete it on any toon. One of my miners got 3 stacks of adamantite and 1 of fel iron and still only got 7 residue. I'm not ever trying to complete it intentionally at those rates.

I usually couple Nether Residue with another quest or task. For instance, if I need Netherwing Flayer Hides, I take the Nether Residue quest as well, if I'm grinding Felboars for Fel Glands for A Slow Death, then skinning them will probably turn up enough residue. Otherwise, I head to Netherstorm and use the opportunity to grind a few Nether Dragonscales.

It's really a "buddy" quest more than anything. If you're doing something that has you skinning, mining, or er, herbing, then you may as well pick up the quest as well.

I guess I wasn't clear. I've had that quest in the log for all my toons since it became available and of the 5 toons I have at 70 none of them have yet to complete it, even while doing my other quests or other things. One of my miners has now gotten to 85 adamantite ore and 48 fel iron ore while on the quest and still hasn't finished it. It's not going to happen.


Of course I also had a toon that took 65 kills to get the sunfury attack plans and another one gave up last night after 30 kills and not getting it. My game luck has just turned to crap lately. And yes I had the quest, I didn't already have the plans, that's why I know it took 65 kills (thanks to mods that track this stuff for me) because they dropped on kill 65.

Yowza, that does indeed suck. As a skinner, I rarely take longer than, maybe, twenty or thirty skinning attempts before getting all eight residue.

Something's definitely wrong there.

Especially when GG sees my little miner get 3-4 out of one rich adamantite node.

I got one from skinning the Big Bad Wolf, in Karazhan.
Yeah that was freaky.

Can this stuff be found on Quel'Danas?

I have received residue from gathering on the island, yes.

P.S.
This thread is officially a messiest I've seen. Completely unreadable in outline view.

We had a skinner looting it on the Al'ar trash mobs in TK the other night, too. Caused some nice laughs.

Now that I've actually given the 2.4 dailies a pretty fair shot (most of them, anyway) I like them. Especially the Bash'ir landing one. I really like the Ethereals, and the first time I got myself phased I started laughing. I liked it too much. Plus it's not quite as crowded as Quel'Danas.

Also, I got the Void Shatter recipe, which despite being learnable at 360, requires max Enchanting to perform. BAH. I was hoping to get some and use them to finish spamming ring enchants to 375, but it looks like things are going the opposite way; I might buy now and sell later. I'm 11 skills away...this is going to be expensive. Not that it wasn't before.

I took my little level 40 skeletal horse and rode to LHC last night and (as promised) I can now fly from Silvermoon to UC. The complete flightline (passing through Tranquillen and LHC) takes around 8 minutes.

This still seems a bit silly to me. After all, SW to IF and Org. to TB are both direct flights and always have been. There should be direct flights between Silvermoon and UC as well as Exodar and Darnassus.

More thoughts on the removal of attunements:

My guild just downed Lady Vashj last night - On the fourth attempt of the night, and with no deaths.

Considering that we've only gotten about four hours worth of attempts on her, period... A month and a half ago, everyone is very, very happy. Even our Main tank/guild leader's rage bar is down to zero (He didn't even yell at us when some clown pulled Mogorim Tidewalker, in addition to 2 murloc packs on the way to him, after we killed the overgrown medusa ).

Now, with one Sunwell vial under our belts, we're gunning for Prince Kael'Thas.

It took this to appreciate the attunement removal in 2.4. Our Vashj raid was slightly stacked with hunters, so we're going to be spending the new few weeks shuffling people in and out, so everyone can get their vials, for the Hyjal rings.

I can only assume the same will be done with Kael.

And I'm really glad that we'll be able to progress into Hyjal/BT, without weeks of farming those two bosses for the vials.

Gotta love the Patch 2.4 combat log improvements.



{star}
{moon}
{cross}
{skull}
{circle}
{square}
{triangle}
{diamond}

Thankfully it doesn't work in /2 Trade Chat. Unfortunately works in /whispers (as if your friendly neighborhood spammers hasn't shown you yet). I can't wait to use this in tomorrow's MT run; even thinking of making macros so /party gets to see skull, moon (sheep), square (trap) etc.