[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

And awesomest.

[Gothos]

Also: patch 4.0.1 - all your mounts go at the highest possible speed now - means that since I had the Frost Wyrm, all my flyers go at 310% (or 280%? dunno really) - even the Ebon Gryphon, yay! Also, land mounts - even the 'normal' ones go at 100% if you have the riding skill - means the 'normal' unarmored wolves are fast now too! YAY!

[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

So the speed is no longer related to the mount, but to your riding skill, instead?

[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

[Gothos]

Green Pig, on 18 October 2010 - 05:44 PM, said:

hahaha Awesome

[Bulwyf]

Man, I haven't played since early June.
Every time I get out they pull me back in!
Bastards...

...thinking of reactivating soon, but Force Unleashed II comes out next week so that will hopefully delay those cravings for a while.

Anyone know how the new hunter resource system is working out?

[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

I had thought it was the same as before but they changed 'mana' to 'focus' but I could be wrong.

[Bulwyf]

Green Pig, on 19 October 2010 - 07:52 PM, said:

I had thought it was the same as before but they changed 'mana' to 'focus' but I could be wrong.

ya, the focus makes them more like a rogue now, except it doesn't regenerate at a set interval like energy?
I'm kind of curious to check it out, but I've kept away for a while now so I don't know much of the details. Do they have the new pet classes this patch too (with healing pets?) or is that change in the expansion?

[Kanubis]

It regenerates slower than energy, but the hunter has more abilities that regenerate it  - so they have more control over it than Rogues have over Energy.

[Defiance]

My subscription literally just ran out the day before the big patch. How are the talent changes? Honestly, everything about Cataclysm looked good except for those - it now seems that people's specs are going to be even more cookie cutter than before, which is what I thought Blizzard wanted to get rid of. Apparently not.

[Kanubis]

Defiance, on 19 October 2010 - 09:37 PM, said:

My subscription literally just ran out the day before the big patch. How are the talent changes? Honestly, everything about Cataclysm looked good except for those - it now seems that people's specs are going to be even more cookie cutter than before, which is what I thought Blizzard wanted to get rid of. Apparently not.

But the idea that they could get any more cookie-cutter than they already were is a fallacy. Even with 51 points to spend, for the majority of specs you spent those 51 points in the exact Elitest-Jerks approved configuration or you got kicked from groups/mocked.  The new situation is no more or less cookie-cutter, it's just getting rid of what was a total illusion of complexity. The cut talents had no purpose other than smoke-screen and giving some of the utter twats that play the game more ammo to abuse new players with. 

This post has been edited by Kanubis: 20 October 2010 - 08:42 AM

[Gothos]

To be honest I find my current spec a lot more flexible. Focused Insight, Telluric Currents, Acuity, Elemental Weapons, Ancestral Resolve, Blessing of the Eternals are more or less interchangable for me depending on how I feel about the task at hand at the moment. It will also considerably change when higher level spells are available (esp. Healing Rain) and the new stamina vs damage model kicks in.
All in all, I love the new talent trees.

It has to be said, however, that the game is SLIGHTLY off-balance at lvl 80, but that's just about exactly what they've said it will. If I were you I'd hop in a few days before Cata to get used to it and hop right into leveling. Raiding right now is a bit... silly (60k melee hits from LK heroic when demo shout falls off - instant wipe! some tanks losing some cooldowns - LOL SOUL REAPER wipe)

[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

Kanubis, on 19 October 2010 - 09:57 PM, said:

Even with 51 points to spend, for the majority of specs you spent those 51 points in the exact Elitest-Jerks approved configuration or you got kicked from groups/mocked.

That's the only thing that really annoys me -- the fact that everyone ends up being exactly the same because once it's been figured out how to squeeze absolutely everything out of your character, there's no longer any other acceptable way to play it and if you don't have your spec absolutely perfect and you're gear gemmed and enchanted in exactly the right way, then 9 times out of 10 you're not 'good' enough to be in a group with anyone else. The amount of times I was rejected from joining an ICC group before I got an achievement, it was infuriating -- how the hell am I supposed to get the achiev if you WON'T LET ME ON THE DAMNED RUN?!?! It's not like I wasn't good enough for it or anything; I could have done it, no problem but because I didn't have the achievement no one would let me on!

"You're doing your rotation wrong--" I'LL DO MY ROTATION HOWEVER I GODDAMN LIKE! /wrath

The stupidest thing I ever did though, was accidentally picking the wrong Quel'delar at the end of the quest chain.

What I've always thought is that it would be good if they had several sets of gear (for the same class) that have the same stats, only the appearance is different because I always think that once you reach end game content and everyone's wearing tier gear, we all look the same. I'd like the opportunity to just be a bit different from every other paladin out there (in a way that's actually acceptable to the elitist bastards who decide how you're allowed to play).

Reforging looks good too, might mean you're able to wear different gear from normal, now that you can optimise it for your own spec (yeah, i know you can only change one thing, though I haven't managed to play since this last patch).

This post has been edited by Green Pig: 20 October 2010 - 08:58 AM

[Gothos]

If you had to link achievements to get on ICC runs, means it were pugs. Pugs aren't populated by good players. They're just douchebags that want to make themselves look good by imitating others and quoting calculations someone else has done for them.

Just join a raiding guild. I've never had to link my achievements or give them my gearscore.

[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

Oh yeah, they were pugs because we only raid casually, we don't have enough players to go to ICC with only guild members so either we try and find those we're missing, or if everyone's done ICC without me, I'll try and find a group that's going.

I don't raid enough to warrant leaving to join a raiding guild (I find a lot of them are WAYYYY overly serious and probably wouldn't let me in anyway). Actually, someone left my guild the other day to start a raiding guild so I'm sure he'd let me on any runs that I've had to miss if/when my lot decided to do it.

As I said sometime before in this thread, though (I think), once cata is released we'll all be starting the new raids at the same level so we'll be able to run what everyone else is running.

[Gothos]

From my experience, the two most important things about raiders are, in order:
1) Being online for raids. Regularly. You can be Kungen himself but it won't mean shit if you're offline half the time.
2) Not making stupid mistakes. Move out of the fucking fire. Don't explode in the raid. Don't get cleaved. Run in the right direction. Attack the right target. You can be Kungen himself but it won't mean shit if you're dead. Or make other people die.

Having someone do pro dps while doing all that is an added bonus, but really, wipes are caused by stupid shit like this, VERY rarely due to, say, lack of dps.

Anyway. Casual raiding has it's place. Can just run 10mans, np. The game has really come a long way since vanilla and accesability of raids for casual players.

[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

I agree. I remember one particular time, not that long ago, when we organised ourselves an ICC run and had to pug a healer and a couple of tanks (or something like that anyway). Right the way through it they were moaning that we were shit (specifically "bad group is bad") when in actual fact we weren't doing anything wrong and we actually had no problem getting through it, they were just moaning because we weren't doing the world's most DPS.

I always think it's hypocitical when people whine at you like that because we were all 'rubbish' at one point and just because they've run the instance a few times or have better gear, it doesn't mean that people who haven't got that can't do it!

I think you're right with the accessability too. While some people aregue that it's unfair that any old player should be able to do the same things that they've put so much effort into being able to to, I think it's unfair that less hardcore players (who maybe have more important real life business to get on with) are penalised and are unable to to those things just because they can't afford, or are unwilling to devote the same amount of time and effort to - after all, it's only a game.

EDIT: Long sentence is long!

This post has been edited by Green Pig: 20 October 2010 - 10:34 AM

[cerveza_fiesta]

I've often thought it would be nice to add some instances that were 3 or 2 man.

something that a truly casual player (like me) that did not have time to commit to a guild, could get into no problem with out having to trawl for a pile of other PUG jerks that drop out 5 min before we FINALLY enter the instance saying g2g sry.

You could make em as easy or hard as you like and have heroic and all that...just something to open up instances to the player who's trying to advance through levels and gets bored of grinding/questing.

And I know there are 2 player quests and all that, but you can NEVER find anybody for those at lower levels.

[Jade-Green Pig-Hog Swine-Beast]

cerveza_fiesta, on 20 October 2010 - 01:07 PM, said:

I've often thought it would be nice to add some instances that were 3 or 2 man.

something that a truly casual player (like me) that did not have time to commit to a guild, could get into no problem with out having to trawl for a pile of other PUG jerks that drop out 5 min before we FINALLY enter the instance saying g2g sry.

You could make em as easy or hard as you like and have heroic and all that...just something to open up instances to the player who's trying to advance through levels and gets bored of grinding/questing.

And I know there are 2 player quests and all that, but you can NEVER find anybody for those at lower levels.

What realm are you on?

EDIT: Kind of a pointless question, actually, as you won't be on the EU servers anyway.

This post has been edited by Green Pig: 20 October 2010 - 01:25 PM

[cerveza_fiesta]

I forget. Haven't played in a year.

It was mainly during the leveling portion from 1 thru 80...like if I wanted to start a new char, then I had to be resolved to grind or quest, or sit around waiting for some jerk to join my LFG and maybe, just maybe on rare occasion actually stay with the PUG long enough to get to the instance front door.

Thing is I always enjoyed cooperative casual instancing more than anything else. It was always just such a pain to get a group into the instance in deserted vanillaland. Hence why I thought it would be nice to have a few instances geared for less players to make it easier.

I never played WoW when vanilla was the only flavour however, so I don't really know what the realms were like before BC existed.