Granny says
the amount of grinded gear you need has increasedand everyone can grind itthe amount of skill it takes is constantly decreasingthe bosses get harder, and the remedy is, you need more and better gear, that's allit doesn't take brains any moreplus there are quite a lot of people who dislike pandas
The amount of skill it takes is constantly *decreasing?* I'd be surprised if he's ever done *ANY* heroic mode, and I can guarantee he's never done Heroic Nefarian, Sinestra, Al'akir, Cho'gall, Ragnaros, Spine of Deathwing, or Madness of Deathwing.
If anything, the amount of skill required is constantly *increasing.* The boss fights used to be much simpler and it was more about having enough warm bodies with enough gear instead of actually being good.
Now, what *has* changed is that the ultimate hard stuff used to be the only game in town. If you couldn't do it, too bad. Now there's an easy, normal, and heroic mode. So yes, easy mode is easy. And gives worse rewards. But the hardest boss fights have *never* been tougher than they have been this expansion. And "tougher" does not mean "needs more gear."
Webshaman says...
Because someone else on the NWN boards says that is not true. That the opposite is true - one needs items in NWN to "compete".Not so much so in WoW...You know more than I do about WoW.How important are items to DPS maxing and Raiding?
Granny says
you aren't be able to kill deathwing in hard mode without having grinded items in normal mode
That's simply not true. We cleared all of normal mode week one in Dragon Soul (the raid where Deathwing is). Over the next twoish months, we steadily beat each boss on heroic mode one by one. Once we got to Deathwing, we were able to kill him. We were *never* held back by gear. We *never* had to grind items in normal mode for months to do hard mode or something (now, we got better items from hard mode, sure).
Furthermore, only something like 2% of the playerbase even *does* heroic modes. And for normal modes, your gear can be pretty terrible if you're good. They're not tuned strictly.
That's not to say items are meaningless. They certainly help. But if you have the gear needed to do Dragon Soul, then you can do, say, 30k DPS. If you ground normal mode DS and had every item from there, you might be able to do like 40k DPS. So from no normal mode gear to grinding for six months or something gives you a 33% increase. That's the equivalent to 2-3 attack bonus in NWN.
In other words, if you're not quite as skilled and are 5% damage short, another raid or two might get you a few items and allow you to win. But if you're very good, it is incredibly rare that gear is ever actually the factor holding you back. Maybe for the top like 10 guilds in the world because they raid seven days a week. But even for them, it's the difference between the group dying at 5-10% on the boss versus winning.
WebShaman says
Pandas...>.< sounds like kung-fu pandas...ack!
Pandaren. And they've been in WoW since like 2003. They were almost the Alliance race for The Burning Crusade.
The Pandaren are a peaceful culture trying to live in harmony. Because if they get angry, jealous, scared, or a similar emotion then giant shadow demons spawn, feeding on that negative emotion, and try to kill everyone.
Oh, and there's an insect race called the Mantid that try to kill everything every 1,000 years. And now they're invading ahead of schedule.
Oh, and there's an Ogre-like race called the Mogu that used to rule the continent and enslaved the Panderan. They're launching an offensive to take over the continent again as well.
And on top of that the Alliance and Horde arrive, bringing plenty of hatred and conflict.
Take a look at this:
That giant shadow thing? It's called the Sha of Doubt and it's about to cause a ton of havoc since it was released from its prison. And it's just one of at least four major Shas that are known.
Granny says
you aren't able to do the normal mode raid, without having grinded items in hard mode dungeons
You can if you're good enough. If not, you can get better items to make you 20-30% better. But your power doesn't double or something.
Granny says
pve leveling < normal mode dungeons< hard mode dungeons < normal mode raids < hard mode raidsthat's the ranking
What's not mentioned in the timeline here (and note that this only applies at the start of an expansion or for a new character).
The first four steps there? We'll be done with those within two weeks. And that's only because we raid at the end of the week. Other groups will be done with steps one through four within like eight days. And again, that's only because you *cannot* do normal raids the first week. They're not even open.
What's also not mentioned is 75%+ of the total time is spent all in that last step: heroic raids.
And for future raids within the expansion, nothing will happen beyond one week of normal raids and then the rest of the time is heroic raiding.
Webshaman says...
So, from what I have garnered, one *needs* items to be able to raid at the higher levels - check.
I never said otherwise. I just said it wasn't as big of an impact as in NWN. And that you never simply died or couldn't do a particular boss since you didn't have a specific item. And each item is a 2%ish impact in most cases (maybe like 5% for a weapon).
Would you expect to take a level 40 fighter with nothing but a standard full plate and longsword and be able to fight tough enemies? Of course not. You need at least some decent gear - all RPGs follow that rule.
Webshaman says...
Also, from further conversation, the new expansion is making everything (skill trees, etc) simplier, i.e. easier,
which many WoW pros are screaming and crying about. As well as Pandas.
No, just no. "Pandas" I mentioned above. And perish the thought of pandas in a world with cow-men, goblins, werewolves, elves, fish-men, dwarfs, orcs, rodent-men, etc.
Talent trees are actually being made harder. The difference is that instead of filling in a spreadsheet based upon optimization someone else did and you just Googled and where you only actually make one or two choices...now you make *six* choices instead of one or two. Personally, my "two choices" meant I took 4% less spell damage.
Such choice! It's overwhelming! I actually have to *think* about the new stuff and figure out the best way to use them and what choices will be better in which situations.
Also, what is "etc" in this case?
The actual WoW-Pros are not screaming about it at all. By Pros I'm talking about, say, the top 1000 World guilds (out of 60,000+). There are some people who may not like the changes, but the majority are at least fine with or even enthusiastic about it. And from what I've seen, the people who don't like the changes simply don't understand the reasoning behind them and are suffering from a knee-jerk reaction.
Webshaman says...
Which brings us to a favorite comparison of mine - I play NWN for free (one purchase, then I do what I want). I don't have to worry about some dev getting wild hairs up his ying yang and changing the rules on me to a point where I don't wish to play the game anymore.
If you play on a specific PW, sure you do! And if the rules have been changed much (particularly some custom feats or something) then that character isn't even playable elsewhere. Even if the rules have changed, you can't take the character to another PW.
Now, if you're talking about single-player, then sure. But on the flip side, many authors do change the rules and you simply don't play their campaigns.
Webshaman says...
It would cause me no end of grief, and I would be absolutely livid if I was paying to play a game, and the devs did what they are doing to WoW in the upcoming XP. All that time and money invested into something, and in one fell sweep, it all gets trashed.
I don't always agree with Blizzard. And even if I do, many times I'm not happy about it but I understand their reasoning.
But for Mists? I'd say I'm very happy with at least 90% of the changes. Some stuff I don't like but it's fairly minor stuff or stuff I recognize as necessary even if I don't personally like it (like not having all raiding be at the ultimate hard mode).
Webshaman says...
And needing items of a certain level just to play certain raids just...gah. It sticks in my throat.
I don't think you understand the situation. You're basically saying "it sticks in my throat that my fighter with a +1 longsword can't get past the damage reduction of this Dracolich." Though in WoW it would be more like "it sticks in my throat that my fighter is expected to do 30% more damage than he can do for this really hard boss fight when I just hit max level."
If you did each dungeon once or twice to see and explore them, you'd basically be set for normal raids. You do not have to spend months doing them or something.
Modifié par MagicalMaster, 12 septembre 2012 - 07:49 .
