So I haven’t written much about recent raiding efforts and lots has happened (well it’s also been over a year). In that time I’ve ended up changing guilds twice and have progressed through all heroic content while it was current and am currently progressing in mythic Tomb. Specifically, we recently killed Mistress Sassz’ine and are now on Maiden of Vigilance.

Now of the two I would definitely argue Mistress is the more interesting fight, with lots going all almost the whole time. Phase three gets especially intense and getting the kill in the end was quite sweet. She seems to be a somewhat annoying boss for us to rekill however, since people seem to have forgotten how to play phase one and two which presents certain problems considering the fight is still a DPS check.

The Maiden on the other hand is a ball of funny frustration. The fight in itself is quite simple, almost the same as heroic with one small addition: the orbs (from phase two) now randomly spawn on a player of the opposite colour, with a small AoE effect on the ground and delay. Also, a bomb exploding in the raid is an instant wipe. This means that as people are learning the fight, while the wipes can be quite funny at times (the whole raid instantly explodes) it’s also quite frustrating because one keeps dying to the mistakes of others. The fragility of it all led to us having around 50 wipes on Maiden with most of them without seeing phase two. Which somehow gives me the feeling we might be spending a long time on Maiden.

However, it’s been really good to get into some proper progress raiding again and the guild I’m in is quite lovely (silly mistakes aside). Hopefully I and the guild have a long and bright future ahead of us, as I rather hate changing guilds. Now just to make sure we manage to clear Tomb before Antorus arrives, would be good to have the content cleared again before the next comes out. It’s been way too long since last.

Blizzard recently made some pretty big changes to how mythic+ works, both in the way of loot and how the keys themselves handle. The big points being:

• Beating the key quickly no longer rewards more loot, rather higher level keys (15+) have a chance at giving more loot. Completing the key in time also provides one extra piece of loot.
• Keys no longer get depleted, rather downgraded. If you don’t complete the dungeon in time, you get a new random key one level lower. If you don’t complete it at all, you get the same key one level lower.

Now I did not exactly like these changes, to be more precise the change that downgraded keys. In theory, this sounds like a great change: you always have a chance at loot when completing a mythic+ dunegon. For me however, since I’m mostly doing them for the challenge or to get a high key as possible done, it adds a lot of stress to always do a 100% tries for the keys in order to not downgrade them. A depleted key could always be redone and then upgraded once one knew the instance better, not so much when it’s a new random dungeon. It also greatly adds to the frustration of learning the dungeon and affix combo every week, since not getting things right there mean downgraded keys.

The loot change on the other hand has actually worked in my favour since I already tried to do higher level keys and not 3-chesting lower level ones. Though for those who were participating in that, I can understand the frustration.

Now these changes overall were quite odd, in that they seem to punish the people that were actively doing mythic+ content and mostly benefitting the people who weren’t overly interested in it in the first place. Presumably this was an attempt to get more people into doing mythic+, but at the same time the requirements for joining mythic+ groups seem to be more extreme than ever and there seem to be fewer groups up.

Now then, how do the changes feel after a month or so of living with them? Well, still kind of terrible and a downgrade from the old system. I would strongly prefer the option of depleting a key rather than downgrading it, especially since sometimes downgrading is down to one bad pull or an unlucky combo from some mobs. It’s really frustrating at that point to be put, essentially, two dungeons behind from where one was before; especially if one was running a dungeon one was interested in pushing/doing well in at the moment as one then again is at the mercy of luck to get that key again.

The loot change on the other hand, I like but seems to be the more controversial one.

In the end though, the changes aren’t the end of the world. Even the key downgrading at times has proven useful (e.g. Cathedral keystones…) but even at those times it has been somewhat bittersweet as it might have been useful to be able to try it again.

So the prepatch arrived a few days ago and I have had some time to do raids and dungeons with the changed talents and spells. So far it has been rather excellent, which has been a slight surprise. So far the removal of Spirit has not been a bother, though admittedly the content has also been made easier so the true test will come with the Legion dungeons and raids. I actually think healing has been more enjoyable now, the flow with Holy Words and reducing their cooldown is quite satisfying though it can lead to moments of slight frustration when there has not been a sufficient need to use other healing spells and a burst of damage comes in. Managing that though, is probably the idea behind the whole thing.

As for the removed spells, I have not ended up missing them. Mana has been fine, so Mindbender being gone has not been a problem. I had gotten used to throwing down Lightwells, but never did feel like they did a whole lot and not having to think about them has been kind of nice; though I do catch myself going “Oh, remember to cast Lightwell! Oh, right…” at times, especially during pulls. The place where I actually notice the removed spells the most is when doing quick Heroic dungeons, as I had gotten into the habit of doing light DPS with Mindbender and Shadow Word: Pain, both of which are gone. Feels especially odd to be without a DoT during the rare times when I end up killing mobs though. Holy Nova is also something of a bother when compared to Mind Sear, though that is more rarely used.

Concerning raiding, we managed normal HFC quite quickly as is to be expected, we mostly went in there to explore the potential for improved Warforged (Titanforged?) loot. Heroic on the other hand, did not go quite as well, probably because people are still familiarizing themselves with their new spells. One of our Shadow priests seemed to have particular difficulties, admittedly the playstyle is quite different to the old Clarity of Power style. Raiding has continued to be highly enjoyable however and the reduced health and damage on the mobs and bosses oddly has not felt overly extreme. Perhaps the changes in player power really did warrant those changes as well.

The new transmogrification system is worth mentioning as well I suppose, though I have not had a real reason to use it yet. Though it did allow me to finally get rid of the glow from my weapon enchantment without bothering a enchanter, which was nice. The change with head, cloak and shoulders being hidden through transmogrification rather than interface options is something of a drawback however, though admittedly I rarely changed those options anyway. It might end up being more problematic for roleplayers, as I understand they used those options to indicate taking ones helmet on or off. The addition of being able to hide ones shoulder armor was nice though.

Speaking of small annoyances, there is a small bug that seems to have persisted from the PTR: sometimes flying mounts seem to “land” for a split second while flying around far from the ground. I am not sure if the movement speed is actually modified by this, or if the bug is merely affects the visuals/sound, but it is a small new annoyance that has been introduced. Hopefully something that will be adressed soon, one would hope regressions would be somewhat easier to fix.

Overall though, I have been enjoying the patch greatly so far and look forward to Legion with greater interest. I suppose one might call that a success on Blizzard’s part.

It’s been a while, and I’ve been playing WoW again and actually had quite a bit of fun. I leveled a warrior because I felt like tanking a bit again and during that process ended up finding a guild which I’ve been raiding with on my priest since (priest because there wasn’t a need for tanks).

And it’s all been quite excellent, the guild is fun, Hellfire Citadel has been fun to explore properly instead of in LFR. Even got some Heroic mode HFC done, which has been great fun.

Sadly, there’s been a bit of a lack of people in the recent weeks and we’ve ended up having to PUG some people. Hopefully either the prepatch or Legion launch ends up solving this problem, as I really enjoy raiding with the people in this guild. It might also be as simple as summertime being a less active gaming time for people though. The coming weeks will tell I suppose.

I’ve also gotten some mythic dungeoning in with the guild and PUGs at times and those have been quite enjoyable as well even if the groups tend to be rather overgeared.

Overall, I’ve just been enjoying my time with WoW again which has been great. Hopefully the Legion changes end up not being detrimental to that enjoyment, though I think I’m more prepared to take things as they come this time around. Might have to go exploring on the beta a bit to get a better idea of have the changes end up impacting the feel of the game. It’s a tad of a pity to see Cascade removed, I’ve actually ended up enjoying that spell quite a bit, almost as much as Prayer of Mending.

If all goes well I look forward to many more raids with this guild!

So quite a bit has happened since my last post, most notably the closing of Nostalrius where I had played. Admittedly, I did not end up playing much more since my last post, primarily due to the concern of something like closing down happening. And while Nostalrius was well managed I do still have a preference to play on the official servers even though the game in some aspects feels inferior.

I’ve ended up examining my prospects as far as it comes to joining a guild and while it is yet to be finalised will probably be joining a casual-ish raiding guild on my priest that is about to start in Hellfire Citadel Heroic, so far having downed one boss. If nothing else, it should give me a better feel on how I enjoy the current state of healing, considering I’ve yet to do any “proper” content since the revamp in Cataclysm though the signs haven’t been all that good, though the changes coming in Legion to Holy priests do seem promising. Mostly though, I’m just looking forward to getting some proper raiding in.

Pristine Realms

Now, the response provided by Blizzard on the backlash caused by the closing of Nostalrius and consequent community demand for official Classic realms did also provide an interesting though lamented idea for recapturing some of the things players at least alledgedly miss, namely community. That idea was Pristine Realms. Specifically, these would be realms where certain “quality of life” features would be disabled:

• LFD/LFR
• Heirlooms
• Character boosts, transfers
• Cross realm zones
• Recruit-a-Friend bonuses

Personally, I’m not too sure how to feel. It does remove several things I feel are problematic, however content would still be obsoleted at a unecessary pace due to catch-up mechanics like PvP gear or Tanaan/Timeless Isle and badges before them. Even as I say that, I have been leveling a warrior and quite enjoying being able to level at a quick pace through dungeons (at least until Warlords of Draenor content, at which point one is force out into the world to gear up grumbles), which wouldn’t be possible without LFD. So these features certainly aren’t without merit and I’m not sure if such realms would generate sufficient interest for them to stay playable without the cross-realm features. In the end, I’d be very tempted to participate, though having to give up my characters would be a somewhat difficult thing to bear. Another thing preventing me from enjoying unofficial servers as well.

Legion

On the matter of Legion’s current state, I’m not sure I have too much to say. I do look forward to the changes coming to Holy priests, specifically the new Word spells. Especially having a properly strong single target heal again is appealing. How I feel about the removal of Spirit as a stat I’m not so sure yet, on one hand it should keep regeneration from getting out of hand at the end of expansions necessitating more bursty damage yet it’s been a stat I’ve enjoyed being able to increase the most (less so with the changes in Cataclysm admittedly).

There was also a recent worry over the proposed changes to respeccing, namely: characters have a primary spec, changing from it costs an increasing amount of gold (up to 62g, a curious number) but changing back to the primary spec can be done for free. This functionality would be available anywhere, and dual-spec would be leaving us. Personally, I’ve generally been very attached to the spec I choose to play on a give character and am consequently not overly concerned over this change. At current gold rates, this also seems like a quite minor gold sink. To be fair, it is an extra cost incurred during raiding, as changing specs for specific bosses or even for clearing trash has become popular. It remains to be seen if this change would discourage such a change, potentially serving Blizzards goal of empowering class and spec fantasy by encouraging players to stay in spec. It’s an odd change in that it probably primarily hits the top and bottom end of raiders, as the top cares the most about optimisation while the bottom end probably needs the flexibility provided by hybrids the most. I’ll be watching with interest how this ends up playing out.

In the end, there’s a lot of wait and see here with how Legion changes end up playing out and how I enjoy the (potential) guild I join. Hopefully it all ends well and there’s some enjoyable gaming on the horizon. For now, it remains to be seen.