Are Cataclysm Heroics Too Hard?

Are Cataclysm heroics too hard?

Are they harder than heroics at the end of Wraith? Heck yes. We don't over-gear them.
Are they harder than heroics at the beginning of Wraith? Yes, I believe so. I don't remember group makeup being important (besides the obvious healer/tank/3 dps thing), and I don't remember CCing.
Are they harder than BC heroics? Not sure, since I never ran them at level.

But there's several other things going on here that make difficulty harder to judge.
First, we've all been revamped. This hit some classes and specs harder than others, and we didn't have much time to get used to the new status quo before Cat.
Second, Blizz has decided to change the way we heal with Cat.
Third, we have far less control about who we end up grouped with (if pugging) and far less knowledge about them.
Fourth, CC/interrupts/stuns/kiting hasn't been needed for pretty much all of Wraith (unless you PVP), so most people are anywhere from a little rusty to completely unfamiliar with them.

Honestly, if we were coming into Wraith heroics this way, I suspect we'd find them pretty difficult as well.

But I think the better question to ask is "Are Cataclysm heroics fun?" Well, not for me thus far. Running with my guild makes them more entertaining, but I still haven't enjoyed one yet. I do them because I need gear to raid, not because I want to.

The unforgiving group makeup problem is really the deal breaker for me. A suboptimal group makeup, even if everyone in the group is a great player, makes for lots of wipes and frustration. Don't have enough stuns or cc? Then certain trash pulls are nightmares, nightmares that reoccur over and over again.  Call me a wimp, but I really don't enjoy that sort of thing. Most of the boss fights I've gotten to see I thought were great (except for the tornado boss since that's a little too RNG dependent), but the trash, ugh.

So for me, I think the answer is that, yeah, they are. They're too difficult for me to have fun in them, and I have to wonder why, with Blizz introducing the random dungeon finder to make it easier to run stuff, that they went to such a difficulty level. Seems counterproductive to have this tool to make finding dungeon runs easier, and then bring out a bunch of heroics that discourage pugging due to group makeup and difficulty level.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I'm happy

So, Deathwing has awoken, the world is shattered and I've got a huge smile on my face.

Important/Nifty Things:
1. The notice board in the capital cities gives breadcrumb quests appropriate to level. My rogue was sent to Ashenvale, for example.
2. The city quartermasters are near the flightmasters.
3. No, you can't fly in azeroth yet, that's coming with the patch.
4. Yes, you can roll a Tauren Pally, or dwarf shaman, but not a worgen or goblin anything.
5. The Explorer achievements seem to be bugged atm. My priest now has everything in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms explored except the starting zones. This varies by level, if you are 60 or higher you may now have these achieves.
6. Loremaster counts have been wiped. I personally am hoping it's a bug.
7. Yes, the portals are gone from Shat and Dal.
8. You can now fly to the Exodar. FINALLY!
9. The quest panel now shows you a picture of the particular quest mob you're going after for some quests, plus gives you a skull on the minimap.

10. The cursor has now changed when you're fishing. It's an awesome touch.

BETA: thus far (talent tree spoiler)

I'm going to put BETA in all posts discussing any aspect of the beta, so that people can avoid spoilers.  If I need to do more, please let me know.  I am going to try to avoid discussion of plot and zone changes as much as I can, but if something is OMG Amazing, well, I may not be able to resist squeeing.

Anyway...
thus far there has been a great deal of waiting to download, some crashing, some cowering, and a few nifty discoveries. I have yet to make it to a new zone (heck I'm having issues just getting Lyllea out of Northrend), but I have learned some important things.

One, Darnassus was not a good place to have Lyllea parked when I transfered her. I actually had to retransfer her (once I moved her to Dal), because she was stuck. I'm now having issues trying to make it off the continent via portal to Stormwind. My baby mage is also in Stormwind, and I can't load her either, but I suspect that has more to do with lack of zone info (the download's not complete) then anything else.

Two, beta is buggy. Very buggy.  Like randomly not being able to click on anything buggy. Like cowering every time you log in buggy. Like, um, crashing the game by casting levitate buggy.  Yes, buggy.  Did I mention the bugs? Good thing Blizz has me to point them out, right? Well, me and about 50k other people.

Three, the talent trees. Weird. I'm still getting used to the idea that you kinda have to fill out rows.

Without further ado... Random Screencaps!  Because I can.
The talent tree, to explain what I mean by filling out the rows.  That's shadow.

Dal under construction.

Power Word: Stand in the shiny for once

Vanity Glyphs (cat spoilers within)

Apparently Inscription is not working as intended, so come Cat it's getting overhauled. We'll be getting medium glyphs, and once you learn a glyph you can always switch back to it without purchasing a new one. Hopefully this will make glyphing less of a "set it and forget it" thing. Personally, I rarely switch glyphs and I don't really know anyone who does. Granted this will really affect the glyph market, but since I make Darkmoon cards and vellums for gold, not glyphs, I don't care overmuch.

I do also like the idea of medium glyphs being sort of vanity items. So I figured I'd come up with a few ideas....

Glyph of Power Word:Shield Rabbit(turtle, gnome, belf, penguin, whatever)-> Your pw:s now has a 40% chance to turn the target into a rabbit(turtle, gnome, belf, penguin,ect). Change is cosmetic only and lasts 60 seconds. I like this idea mostly because it would be amusing without being game-breaking. Plus I like turning people into rabbits. Perhaps each healing spec could have a version of this, just so everyone's in on the fun. And no, this has nothing to do with my delight in putting gnomes in bubbles. Really.

Glyph of Life Grip: Color Change-> Your life grip will now change the target's color, to indicate they were an idiot and stood in the bad stuff.

Glyph of Spirit of Redemption: Sex Change-> The sex of your spirit of redemption is now male. I'd also like to see a version of this for warlock's demon form, allowing it to be female.

Glyph of Incubus-> Instead of summoning a succubus, you summon an incubus (male version of a succubus).

Glyph of Tree-> Your tree form no longer has a cooldown (for the broccoli-lovers who want to keep their form)

Glyph of Not A Crit Chicken-> Your boomkin form is now a buff that does not actually change your form.

Glyph of "You're out of range you idiot"-> When anyone in your group gets out of range of your beneficial spells, they immediately turn fuchsia, and will not return to normal until they are back within your range. Great for "go go go" tanks and dps. Does not work in battlegrounds. (And should probably only work on your group in a raid).

Glyph of Armor Change-> This glyph would allow you to wear one armor set while looking like you're wearing another. Both armor sets must be set up in the Outfitter thing, and you must have both sets in your bags. So those of you who thought Tier 1 was the most awesome thing ever could wander around looking like you're wearing it. Or you could tank Deathwing looking like you're wearing a lovely black dress. This is one I really really want.

Glyph of "crap, I wasted Heroism/bloodlust"->Once a week you can reset your heroism/bloodlust. This also removes the debuff from everyone in your raid.

Things I'd like to see in Cat: Turning Dailies into Weeklies

Honestly, I am not enamored of the daily system. It feels too much like a chore, which might explain why Lyllea is not drowning in Frost emblems and why I don't have a ton of epic cuts.

Quite frankly I don't always have time to run the Jcing daily, much less the daily random. So I started thinking this weekend, and I came up with a solution that I kinda like...

Weekly Dailies. You get frost emblems for the first seven random dungeons you run. You get 7 quests from the jcing trainer, or the fishing trainer, and you have till server reset on Tuesday to get all or some of them done. Of course, you don't have to pick up all seven at once, you can get one, do it, and then get the next, but all seven are there, waiting for you to do them.

I'd also extend this to profession research. You can do it seven times a week. Whenever. Once you do it seven times, you must wait till server reset to do it again.

And for someone like me, who is a fit and spurt gamer (meaning that I play intensely for a bit, then wander off, then repeat), this allows me to do that. I can set aside a couple of hours and bang out all my "chores" for the week, then wander off to level an alt or work on Loremaster or even go knit.

Blizz does seem to be moving more to a weekly model, so I can hope they'll do something like this.

The Mana Regen Game

I was wandering around the blue post roundup on wow.com, and came across Running out of mana was never fun. Ghostcrawler's remarks were interesting, but what I'd really like to talk about is mana regen in healing and dpsing.

Now, when I got to 80 on my hunter, I was marks. Marks was rather horribly mana-inefficient at the time. As in sting, chimera, arcane, aimed, hey look there went a quarter of my mana pool. It was a challenge to do as much damage as possible given this limitation. I figured out which bosses in Naxx had mana pools and used Viper Sting + Chimera shot on them to get mana back. I spent a lot of time at the test dummies figuring out how to get the most mana back in the minimum amount of time with Aspect of the Viper while in combat. It was a fun challenge, but not an overwhelming one. If I failed at it, well, my dps went down. That was it.

As a healer, if I run oom, people die. If I have no mana, I am a useless priest. This means the mana game is no longer a game, and I do everything possible to make sure I don't need to worry about mana. Now, I have Solace, which gives me mana regen every time I cast a helpful spell, so I don't worry much. But I remember the not-fun days, where I was always worrying about mana, in addition to worrying about healing, where I was standing, and if I was doing okay or not. Healing's a higher-stress job, so having more worries is understandable and as long as the fun to worry ratio is good, I'm not going to stop healing.

But is there any way to make the mana game as a healer like the mana game as a hunter? From what I've seen, holy pallies do have that. They basically manage their own regen dynamically, and that's what I want as a priest. Hymn of Hope and Shadowfiend are all well and good, but I want something more. Don't know what, exactly, but I'll continue to hope that Cataclysm has it. Until then, you can have my Solace of the Defeated when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

Blog Azeroth topic: How will Cataclysm change your game?

I joined Blog Azeroth. They have this nifty shared topic thing, and one of the currentish topics is "How will Cataclysm change your game?" And there's the original suggestor's response.

Well, Cat has already changed my game. From the moment they said "hunters, no more mana for you," I realized I needed to have at least one more 80 so that if hunters get completely boned, or if I hate focus with the burning passion of a thousand stars, I have other options. Now, I'd already gotten an RAF account and was leveling a druid/priest pair, and the Cat changes just offered more incentive. And now, Lyllea (my priest) is my main, Garetia (my hunter) is my lvl 80 alt, and I've got a druid, a pally, and a DK slowly wandering through Outlands, just in case priest healing gets gimped. I don't think it will, but it doesn't hurt to be prepared.

As far as the new stats, I dunno. I think it will make my game slightly more inconvienent, since it's sounding like dps caster gear won't overlap with healy caster gear anymore, and that means two full sets of gear (three if you count pvp). Not so sure I'm thrilled with that.

More than anything, Cataclysm just provides me with more incentive to get things done. I am a procrastinator of the worst sort, so having a deadline helps me get things done.

There are things I'm really looking forward to, like rolling a warlock Alliance-side. I'm not a big fan of humans, and well, gnomes squeak, so warlock's the only class that is horde-only for me. I should probably figure out how to free up a character slot for that.

I'm also looking forward to the zone updates. Goodness knows, I've no desire to level through the same zones over and over again, and yet this is what I've been doing. The dungeon finder helps a bit with this, but let's face it, you have to do something while you wait, and there are only so many games of Peggle I can play.

Something I'd like to see in Cataclysm

This was all inspired last night by Matticus tweeting about the celestial horse obviously being a priest mount. It got me to thinking about other classes getting their own mounts and what they might look like. I tried to make sure each class had something unique and cool and something we haven't seen in game before. Ideally you should be able to tell what class is approaching you from quite a long distance away based on their class mount (if that's the mount they're using). Sadly, I didn't quite manage it (stupid horses being so iconic), but I welcome any ideas anyone else has!

Druids-> Well, they already have a travel form and two flight forms, so all they need is an epic ground mount. I'm thinking a recolor of Reins of the Raven Lord would be cool. Green maybe? Or you could get a dryad to ride on or one of the huge tree guys. Or summon something from the Emerald Dream.

Hunters-> So, I have a crazy (but cool) idea. Now we all know the most iconic thing about hunters is their pets. Now imagine getting an item that allowed you to turn one of your stabled pets into a mount. How cool would it be to go riding around on a spirit beast or a corehound? To keep this from being overpoweringly cool, you'd only be able to use the item on one pet at a time and that pet would just be a mount, and could not be used as a normal pet (but would still take up one of those valuable stable slots). But it would allow all those hunters who tamed a really cool pet to show them off, even if they aren't the greatest pet for dpsing.

Mages-> I'm thinking a water elemental for ground mount, and a fire one for flying. Or a large version of the Kirin Tor familiar. Some sort of levitate and a speed spell could also work.

Paladins-> Pegasus. Pegasi? Winged horses. Their ground mounts would stay the same, as I really feel they fit the class well.

Priests-> This one was hard. Obviously they should have wings of pure light (or shadow) for the flying option, but for ground? Mostly when I think of priests and mounts I think of mules, which aren't very epic or cool. Maybe a ball of light (or shadow)?

Rogues-> Something sneaky, like a Fel Reaver! Okay, those are only sneaky in Outlands. Hmm... Well, some sort of shadowstep teleport would be awesome, and fit the flavor of the class, but that wouldn't be a mount. I'd say a big cat because of the prowl bug, but nelves already have cats. Maybe a solid black cat, like a panther and you can stealth while mounted (but you go slower)! A chameleon mount would also be kinda cool. Flying-wise, a glider would be very stealthy, especially if it was painted the colors of the sky.

Shamans-> Earth elemental for ground, air for flying. I was also considering some sort of flying totem, based on the totem art for each race. Both could work. Ghost wolves would also be an option.

Warlocks-> A felhound mount. You know you want one. And for the flying mount, a smaller version of one of those winged demon guys from Hellfire maybe? I can't really come up with a flying demon that seems appropriate. Maybe a winged snake of green fire?

Warriors-> This was the other really hard one. A warrior is such a broad archetype, and most of the obvious mount options have already been done. So what about a chariot? Or a jeep-like contraption, but that doesn't really work for all races. Flying-wise, I think an armored drake would be the way to go.

And I like the mounts DKs have, so I wouldn't change them except to get rid of the screaming sound when you summon the ground mount. I do not like that sound. But, I suppose I should throw them a bone and they could have skeletal drakes.

Well, after over a week of no WoW, it's been good to be able to play again. Sadly, I may not end up getting Hallowed on Lyllea, due to lack of trick or treating, but I still have two days to get that stupid helm. All my hunter needs is GNERD rage, and I've just been procrastinating on that. Ick pvp.

I'm currently tinkering with a disc damage spec. Yes, I know, disc is for damage mitigation, but she does do decent damage. Really. Especially with the Glyph of Smite. Granted, shadow might do much more, and eventually I will try it, but for the moment, I love disc.

Other than that, I've mostly been working on my list of stuff to do before Cat and leveling professions. Loremaster's on hold till after the next patch, since I will be able to get an addon that tells me what I've done in old world. Yays.

And just a brief reminder, some pets may become unavailable with Cat. The Azure Whelpling, the Mechanical Chicken, the Ancoma Chicken, and the engineering pets from Gnomer are top of my list to get if you haven't already.
Azure Whelpling drops from elites in Azshara, and that zone's getting a complete revamp.
The Mechanical Chicken takes three quests (Feralis, Hinterlands, and Tanaris) and so if any of those zones is altered, it may go away.
The Ancoma chicken (and I may have that name wrong) is purchased at the racetrack in Thousand Needles, and with the flooding of that zone, the NPC may drown.
And with hints of Gnomer getting a revamp, the schematics for the two engineering pets may no longer be available.