Tag: Preparing for Legion

Legion Day One: The Exhaustive List

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“The words of a good man can bring tears to a woman’s eyes.”
Sarah Addison Allen

Legion Day One: The Exhaustive List

  1. Zing! Legion begins.
  2. Update Addons to make sure.
  3. Encourage guild to get Gatherer so we can collectively find the three secondary profession nodes (mining, herbing and archeology).
  4. Move my four profession Alts to Dalaran.
    • Visit all five trainers to get the 800 cap.
    • Take all quests offered (likely only the Artifact quest).
    • Turn on my XP bar again via Bartender (there should be two, xp and artifact xp).
  5. Move my Hunter to Dalaran.
    • Visit all five trainers to get the 800 cap.
    • Visit the Pet Vendor and buy the toy and all of the pets with stocked-up Pet Charms. (Should I try to sell the three cagable? I have well over 3000 Charms).
    • Accept all quests. Do the Artifact, go to the Class Hall.
  6. Move my Druid to Dalaran
    • Visit all five trainers to get the 800 cap.
    • Accept all quests. Do the Artifact, go to the Class Hall.
  7. Begin questing on my Druid.
    • At 102, do the other three Artifact quests.
  1. With the 800 cap, each Profession Alt (and Mains) will blow through saved Draenor mats to get profession points, clear reagent tab and vendor for gold. This will be tedious.
    • After pushing profession points, circle Dalaran to see if they triggered profession quests.
    • Any Profession Alt or Main with gathering “might” return to the garrison for the easy mining and herbing profession points until it turns gray.
  2. Let my Main send Legion herbs to my Alchemist first in anticipation of that profession being leveled.
  3. Relax and enjoy the game, explore, quest and have fun.
    • This includes leveling for a while as Feral, Moonkin, Guardian and Resto. Learn the specs and discover the depth and Affinities. Honor the “13 trait” rule.
    • Only run dungeons when a quest sends you there.
  1. Find a macro to tie Mend Pet with the Dire Beast spell so I have Mend Pet up 100%.
  2. Run with my tenacity Quillan so I have the Shell and can brez Hati.
  3. My MD macro: 
    #showtooltip Misdirection
/cast [@focus, help] [@pet, nodead, exists] Misdirection
  4. Mend Pet heals both pets, MD is cast on your main pet, not Hati.
  1. Ding 110 on my Druid. Look and choose World Quests.
  2. Repeat on my Hunter. Look and choose World Quests. Finish questing in all of the zones.
  3. Explore Suramar and see what is what is what.
  4. Look at the calendar, raids begin three weeks after the launch.
  5. Try to get at least one Profession Alt to 101 for the lucrative World Quests before raiding.
  6. Begin fishing when football season starts (Sept 7th?).
  7. Begin folding in Toys, hunter pets to tame (Iron Juggarnaught) and the other mini-games.

It is an exhaustive list. It may take longer than Day One!

Legion: Secondary Professions

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Egbert Floud: [pouring champagne] What you want is… is… is… some more of this imprisoned laughter of the pleasant maids of France.
Ruggles of Red Gap

The Secondary Professions

Fishing, Cooking, First Aid, Archeology.

I do think that while leveling up to 110 that we should keep an eye on leveling up our Secondaries. I’ve been told that we’ll get quests in zones, so we might as well do them and not wait and go back.

Fishing, Cooking and First Aid will all serve to support our characters. At first, Archeology will have specific dig sites leading to a reward as we learned in Bubbles of Mischief’s Archeology in Legion.

While I tend to be a completionist and will want all of the recipes; it is important to keep an eye on the goal.

At first glance, it looks to be tedious. We’ll need to cook up stuff to use as mats to make more stuff. We’ll eventually ding Rank 3 and reduce the demands to create the goods. The volume of mats looks to me like the buff foods will be precious at first.

While in dungeons and questing, I’ll want a stack of Vendor Food to get my health and mana back up and not over-write the buff.

Back in the “olden days” it was common for a guild to have a Raid Cook. Everyone would feed extra mats to one player who invested their time in learning all of the recipes and consolidating all the many different mats to create and dole out the goods on Raid Night. The same was true for the Raid Alchemist. I don’t know yet if that will be a wise path for Legion.

My point is: while there will be a wide array of choices — direct yourself to getting the best buff food for you. Learn what your best secondary stat is for your class. Learn which fish you’ll need and which mats and then make stuff until you are well covered for the rest of the expansion.

I think First Aid will finally be important. Having our own bandages after downing a boss will only speed things up so that we can move on.
Silvery Salve looks to be an example of what we’d be making.

I’ll never forget my shock when I proudly dropped my Feast of the Waters for our raid team. And then someone dropped a Savage Feast, a much better raid buff food. That one wasn’t in my cooking recipes. What the hell! I’d played hard and planned well to have that Feast of the Waters. And then that bozo began dropping Savage Feasts in a design on the floor, he had so many. Ack!

Like an arrow released from a bow, we’ll point to getting the max buff food and bandages. But, as we’ve learned, you never know — something may come out of nowhere to surprise us; either by a different source or a later patch.

One Fel Swoop

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All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?
Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1605)

One Fel Swoop

I’m having a blast with the new stuff. I’m glad it has arrived and that there are things to do.

My Hunter has:

  • Completed the Broken Shore Scenario.
  • Collected all the tmog pieces from the Invasions.
  • Has both Feats of Strength via completing all six Invasions.
  • Bought two Felbat Pups (which look awesome).
  • Bought the tmog cape from the vendor for Nethershards.

My Leather, Plate and Cloth players are on various stages of collecting the tmog stuff; some much closer to done than others.

I was watching the Olympics last night, the floor routine of the women’s gymnastics. I was struck that what I saw was exactly like our Invasions. Perfectly honed, wonderfully designed, scripted and then that poor girl fell right on her ass.

The Invasions are fun and wonderful until you get to the final phase. I understand that there is a learning curve, players will learn to kite him away from the fire and things like that. What is unacceptable is a 14 FPS rate where you can’t use your spells or even move. A beautiful design falling right on it’s ass; world-wide embarrassment.

I’ve yet to start my Demon Hunter, Feltaco. I’ll need to do this sometime in the next few days as I think his spectral sight will see the Infiltrators in Stormwind. This should lead to the toy, but we are not sure yet. Some say you need the blindfold drop from Illidan in the Black Temple — the smart people will figure this out for us.

My horde character picked up the four toys BEFORE running the Broken Shores Scenario. That vendor will be phased when we come back. Alliance side has a strange vendor with little reason to live or stand on the docks.

And that was Day One.

It is perfectly designed for a three week span. Every and any one who wants to do it can get it done, we are not buried under new stuff. It is all pretty easy with some challenging visits to old places like the Crossroads (well done, Blizzard!). BTW: getting flagged PvP is pretty rough, I hated it; so watch your targeting!

Experience Invasions

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“Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows.”
Lucretius

Experience Invasions

The more I read about Invasions, the more excited I get. Did you know that it was the tech created for garrisons that allowed our designers to make the Invasions? Cool stuff!

I have this article here from PC Games magazine. It’s an interview with our hero, Jeremy Feasel aka Muffinus.

As anticipated, the Invasions are going to be massive. Huge! Large in scale, concept, activity, art work; in every way it will be completely outrageous. I like knowing that the Invasions will escalate; on August 9th we’ll have a few and by the time Legion launches it will be a full out Invasion of Azeroth. Boy-howdy, are WE in trouble!

We often talk of intent. Demon Hunters are supposed to make you feel like it is breaking the game. “It’s not fair!” I can’t wait to hear the Q-Q. This is fun with sprinkles on top.

I’m going to give in to the Dark Whispers, it’s already in my blood. The demons will be filling my head, prodding me, chattering in my ear, making me think that I am crazy. I will be a demon in Stormwind! Can you kill me? I’ll find a place away from the NPC guards, for certain sure. (You do have some control, simply turn off the whisper buff and go to the Auction House).

The demon-half of me wants to do all the Invasions and play them full-time. The “what’s left over” side of me knows to be reasonable and not eat up all the experiences all at once.

What a fantastic introduction into Legion. Certainly the next expansion will be as exciting as the Invasions!

Working as Intended

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Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.
John Ruskin

Working as Intended

It had become a punchline when we fail for some of my raiding guildies, “working as intended!”. We were so burned as a small raiding flex team before the hotfix to account for small raiding teams; a quiet blue post. Yes, I’m still bitter and I know it’s not fair to me, my raiders or Blizzard.

I was with a guildie last night, fishing in the Spires. We were in a party and one of us would … phase shift? Basically, one of us would disappear! I’d drop group and again see my friend next to me. Until another disappearance. Then I’d party up. Most odd and clearly not working as intended.

Once upon a time, I worked in the entertainment business. I did a lot of shows, a lot. Over time, I’d see a lot of scenery, scenes, special effects, etc. get cut from a show or simply not work during a show. We’d be disappointed but the real deal is: the audience would not know the difference. If it didn’t happen, they assumed that the show was working as intended. They didn’t know that balloons were supposed to drop and make them cheer!

In the pre-expansion era of Legion, we accept odd little realm shifts or sudden horrible lag as some “real time” testing happens at our expense. What I worry about is (for one example) running Ulduar 25 with no Watchers five times a week and then seeing a blue post, “Mimron’s Head will now drop on Ulduar 25 as intended”.

I feel sorry for the majority of players who do not follow the blue posts; they’ve got to be hurting.

My efforts are with the assumption that things will work. My spells, my healing, my damage, my groups, my raid encounters, my loot, my professions; I move forward thinking that they work … as intended.

Legion is ambitious. The systems and designs and classes and so much more are a lot to handle. We have to expect some failure along the way. If Blizzard would apologize for all of our failed efforts from their bad design, we’d dump on them hard and maybe even /ragequit. It is probably better to have that single statement, “it is now working as intended” and move on.

A Garrison Door Closes

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“Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.”
Thomas Aquinas

A Garrison Door Closes

I don’t know about you, but for me Legion starts tomorrow on July 19th.

I mostly have Night Elves because they do flips while running. I love that flip. The punishment comes with the game design funneling us through the human city of Stormwind. Tiny little humans. If I have any size buff up (and I do a lot with the Vrykul Drinking Horn toy macro’d to Disengage); I can’t fit through the door. Frustrating me over and over again.

The model for the Garrisons was Human architecture and a drag for us Night Elves. I’ll be glad to park my rather large self in (new) Dalaran!

It has mostly been tedious play this past week. The wardrobe, squeezing gold, re-setting my enchantments, clearing bags and banks have been like busy work in preparation for the pre-expansion patch.

Tomorrow will be tedious as well. I’ll do some of the Crate stuff tonight, opening some and mailing gear to my cloth, leather and plate alts. They’ll even put the stuff on; over and over again. And then it will sit in their bags to be “seen” by the wardrobe before vendoring it.

The fun part and anxious part will be resetting our spells and talents. Hunters are going through massive changes. All of that muscle memory will bind us up for a while, I have no doubt.

Tomorrow! Tell me if I am missing anything.

Step One: After the Reset, check my addons before logging in.
Step Two: Visit my scattered Alts across all realms.
Step Three: Take my main (who should have a quest) to Stormwind to do the Scenario and end up in (new) Dalaran. Woo Hoo!
Step Four: Visit the profession trainer to see if I can up my cap to 800.
Step Five: Toys to Tab
Step Six: Run EVERYWHERE in Dalaran to check it all out. /dance.
Step Six and a Half: Visit the Pet Charm vendor and buy everything.
Step Seven: Begin the chain of moving profession Alts up to (new) Dalaran, skipping the Scenario. More Toys to Tab, no doubt.
Step Eight: Begin the wardrobe thing — binding, clearing, cleaning, counting gold. Alt after Alt after Alt. No hurry; this can span days if I want.
Step Nine: Back to my main — spells, talents, terror.
Step Ten: Show off in (new) Dalaran with my fancy transmog!

That should take me all day if not several days!

Future List:
Can my Enchanter make the Tome’s of Illusion now or later?
Will I need glyphs for Fetch etc.? Can I have them now?
How insane will collecting Wardrobe stuff make me?

And so much more.

It will be so very nice to have a new “home” in the World of Warcraft; back in (new) Dalaran!

More of the Same: Scaling

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“Self-delusion is pulling in your stomach when you step on the scales.”
Paul Sweeney

More of the Same: Scaling

We’ll know more when we have experienced it. Today’s date is July 17, 2016. It is two days before the pre-expansion patch.

If everything scales to your character, then won’t your experience always be the same?

Leveling Up:
The journey from 100 to 110, with the bulk of your activity in DPS questing, we know that the zones scale to your character. Now, my ilevel is 730 with a four-piece tier set. When I start out at level l00, I should be strong and then less strong when I hit 101, 102, 103 until I even out and begin getting new gear. Ouch, that’s a nasty dip.

I’m told that for a typical player to get to 110 that it will take 16 hours of play time with all the standard qualifiers. The quests have got to be informative, interesting and fun because the fights will all the same. As my gear gets replaced (maybe around 107, I don’t know) then I should feel stronger but only a little. I won’t be a god walking through the zones at 109.

I hope I love my class.

The Onus is on the Designers
We won’t get six quests to kill 20 boars and race through the quests. Killing will take time; it will always take time. Our game is going to slow down, our progress is going to slow down. Collecting Pig Ears had better be damned entertaining with a satisfying story.

Dungeons:
They scale to your group. How this is done, I’m not sure but I would guess by gear score. Add all of the five players gear score up and divide by five. What we do know is that it scales. This means that every time I do a dungeon, it is the same.

The encounter with the first boss in a dungeon will take the same amount of time to kill, tank and heal no matter if it is heroic or mythic plus. Scaling means balanced, no?

Mechanics:
The “speed runs” designed into Mythic Plus dungeons won’t nor can’t be about us getting so powerful that we blow up a boss since it is scaled. It will be about mastering the mechanics, working in concert, anticipating travel, knowing interrupts and when to sneak. Imagine my disgust when one player doesn’t know when to sneak!

Raiding:
I don’t think raids scale. We will get stronger, kind of sort of; secondary stats are now additive so the ramping up won’t be as dramatic as all of our past experiences.

Editor’s Note: do we have faith that the designers have learned to design “flex”? The punishment of raiding in a small group in WoD will scar me forever. That later hotfix to adjust for smaller groups didn’t even come with an apology; our raid group was already broken.

Wimpy Tanks:
Tanks will need heals. Healers are starved for mana. How fun! Early on, this will be a chore with shackles on our feet. As we get more (additive) haste, it should be less painful. Still, with this dynamic, the bosses can’t hit as hard but will take longer to kill. This will make the dungeons and raids feel very even, right? The formula for fun, this tank/healer synergy kind of forces the encounters to be even.

Balanced Scales
I think (before we actually play) that this is the biggest risk in Legion. Taking away Player Power by scaling in dungeons and emphasizing mechanics on a fight is a different way to play this game. We will need honed skills in dispelling, interrupts, stuns, movement as much as pew, pew, pew. The question becomes: do you like to play that way? You can’t bring a friend with a super gear score to roflstomp your way through content. After two years of the same dungeon, you never get so strong that you can easily kill a boss (or trash mob); it will be the same mechanics rehearsed over and over and over again.

Player Power
I read a long time ago that the very first thing in any game design is that the player must feel Over Powered. As an archer, you hit that target every time! Your sword slicing matters. What you do is … meaningful.

Legion
A lot is riding on this expansion. Typical of Blizzard; with little content after reaching 100 in WoD, now when we ding 110 there is a ton. The solo player in Suramar should be getting stronger over the two-year arc. This should be satisfying.

TL;DR
For the group runners in dungeons, I think scaling is the biggest risk taking that I’ve ever seen in game design. Do you think that just because they have the tech that they should be using it? Scaling tech is the new tool in the kit for the designers; let us trust that it is used with wisdom.

Garrisons: See You At Home

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“First he wrought, and afterward he taught.”
Geoffrey Chaucer

Garrisons: See You At Home

I had to chuckle when Bodhi Rana posted his Busy Work through the Lull. For me, eight runs through Ulduar 25, three through Firelands, two through MSV, two through the Throne of the Four Winds this week. Because that is what it has come to; it has been a very long expansion, this Warlords of Draenor.

Yesterday, I finally got Mr. Grubbs by following this guide written in 2010! The guide is by Perks N Peeves. As with any grind, this time I chose Love Actually to watch as a movie. Eventually I ended up running through the graveyards in northern Eastern Plaguelands. And, I got two! This little pet will do a flip up over your head every now and then.

Gnomecore has some final tips in this long titled post to do the final days of 6.4 and leading into the pre-patch. Check it out.

I took a peek at Kamalie et alia’s post on some transmog looks; Rulers of the Warchief’s Navy. It made me think about what I’ll want to look like whilst running about (new) Dalaran on Tuesday. I think I’ll go for the “I did WotLK” look with this macro on my action bar:

#showtooltip Quel’dorei Steed
/summonpet Argent Squire
/use Bubble Wand
/use Pretty Draenor Pearl
/use Everlasting Alliance Firework
/use Quel’dorei Steed

Since I have the Pony Up achievement, the Squire will be mounted on his little pony. Not a bad look to show off now that we’ll finally see other players … in Dalaran!

The question that I don’t have an answer for come Tuesday (or Wednesday) is if the profession trainers in (new) Dalaran will let me up my professions to 800. I’d love to finish off some mats in my bags and use them for profession points.

We should get the Dalaran Hearthstone (20 minute cool down) on Pre-Patch Day. This will mean that for the first time in three or four expansions (years!) there will not be an optimal place to set our hearthstone! Imagine that. I might fly out to Gadgetzan to set it there for the Invasions.

Today I finally released Delvar Ironfist from service and his long-time bodyguard duties. After a long run of talking smack, drinking, fighting and offering a hearth; he simply said, “See you at home.”

xo

Silence Penalty

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“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Silence Penalty!!

Wowzers! There will be a new Silence Penalty in WoW starting with the pre-expansion patch. MMO Champs has the blue post, you can (and should if you have not) read it here.

Thank Elune that it will be investigated. Praise Elune that no one else would know if I got Silenced (it is a thing now and needs to be capitalized).

On one level I’d love to see a player gagged in game but I realize that the idea is pretty darn cruel.

Now, I think Blizzard has to define the term “troll”, so we understand the nuance of the Silence Penalty.

My big question is: 24 hours of Play Time in game or 24 hours in Real Time? Can’t we get clear language or did I miss it: I only see the implication in “silenced for a very very long time” suggesting in-game play time.

I applaud this. Plenty of players seem to play with the intent of starting a ruckus. This, this is like Ignore Squared with twice the satisfaction and half the frustration. If I ever worked at Blizzard, I’d love to be the judge on these cases.

I think we all have levels of different tolerance. I don’t mind swearing, for example, especially creative use of language. And that is simply me. I have little tolerance for racial slurs and hurtful language and I freely report; it feels like a duty to me.

How interesting would it be to save the cases over the next year and put them in a time capsule to see how we judge or rule “correctness” as a standard. Ten years from now it will be different as it is different from ten years ago.

“Reported”. I’ve seen that in Trade Chat and mocked for years.

Now if we want to piss someone off; we have to be clever, sarcasm honed to a fine point.

Peace.
Silence.

Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade

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“It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million sperm cells… to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin.”
Dave Barry

Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade

NB: Today’s date is July 9, 2016. Some of this information is from the Beta Legion and could change!

The Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade is a rare drop off of Armsmaster Harlan in the (normal) Scarlet Halls dungeon. The dungeon is level 30. One can re-run a dungeon ten times in an hour before being cut off until that next hour is over.

It took me 13 tries on my Druid and over 50 on my Hunter.

Once I won the rare tabard, I did a character copy to the Beta.

On the Beta, there is a new NPC at the Darkmoon Faire called the Scarlet Quartermaster. She is back in the corner behind the zoo area. If you talk to her, she will (pretty much) cuss you out.

If you are wearing your Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade, she will talk to you. As a Quartermaster, she has some goods.

For my Druid, there was one item listed to buy. The Cropped Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade currently goes for 25,000 gold. It is identical to the original except that it is cropped at the waist, looking like it is tucked in without that dangly part below.

For my Hunter, I could also buy a mail transmog set for 10,000 gold. Chest, hands, waist and legs in the “Scarlet Crusade” motif. The set was called Ensemble: Chain of the Scarlet Crusade; a single token that you click to open up the set.

I’ve read on WowHead that there will be a set for plate wearers also but none for the leather and cloth crowd. Otherwise, there is nothing else on the NPC to buy.

I won’t know until the pre-expansion patch (and needing the Darkmoon Faire) if the transmog version of the tabard is enough or you need the actual piece to talk to the NPC. In any case, if you don’t have the Tabard now; you might is well go do some dungeon running!