Bloody hell it isn’t half busy at the upper-end o’ Azeroth. Seems everyone is keen on getting in on the action and helpin’ out wi’ the new offensive.

So, like just about everyone else on the wow-blogosphere, I have been participating in the shiny-newness that is patch 2.4. I know, I know, everyone’s already spoken about it and probably more eloquently than I’m about to but this is my little spot where I get to squee about the stuff I liked / disliked.

New Dailies / Quest Design

Some of the new quests are just damned funky. I’d tried some of them a little bit on the ptr but had avoided doing too many as I didn’t want burnout before the new content actually came out. It’s odd to be doing a flyover quest on Azeroth and the Fel Spark one in Hellfire, whilst it can be annoying, certainly moves towards making a “kill x mobs” quest less boring.

Some of these quests can be quite hard, though, for spellcasters. I had absoloutely no trouble on Aurik, my rogue, but on my newly elemental shammy, Avarix, I was getting killed left right and centre at first. Why? Because of the wretched elf quests - “oh look, two mobs together, lols time for some chain lightning, pewpew kill” Er no. More like… *pull, silenced, double-mana-drain, mana drain, silence, chain lightning which takes ages to cast due to interrupt, mana drain, oom, dead*. Ok, half of that is probably because I’m a nublet at being a caster but, still, the mana drain and mana stealing moves they do are icky and costly.

Still, they are new and that makes a huge difference.

The other thing I like is how Blizz have utilised some spaces in Outlands which have not been used heavily before (Throne of Kil’Jaeden, etc.) and also put quests in places which have become somewhat quiet. They’ve made it a lot more worthwhile for those who’re doing, say, the cooking dailies, to haul their rear end up to Blades Edge or Netherstorm or out to Nagrand as there’s something else to do along the way, most times. Oddly, I notice there seem to be no dailies at the moment which send you to Shadowmoon? They send you to every other zone in Outlands at the moment. Hmm.

Magister’s Terrace

Wow. I love this place! Well, ok, sometimes I do, sometime I feel like I should be bombing the place instead of the Dead Scar. Disagreeing entirely with Matticus on this one (at my peril!) - this place is a prot paladinorama. I feel sorry for prot warriors, I really do (I renege on this, a competent prot warrior can do this place really nicely) holy paladins and resto shammies oh.. and anyone who doesn’t have cc…

As someone mentioned in the comments of the above linked post - this instance really weeds out those who just don’t have a clue. If your prot paladin is pulling from a few yards back and hoping those casters will suddenly decide to run to him he’s probably just respecced for the weekend in the hopes of getting more rep runs. Feral tanking is not much harder here and a swipe-happy druid shouldn’t have too many issues - except of course aggro-happy DPS’ers. (It’s always an idea, though, to make sure your mage understand that if he stands and dps’s a mob whilst you try to corner pull it’s his own damn fault when he dies).

I’ve done a 40 min run with no wipes and it only took that long because our warlock had to go change a nappy (diaper) before the last trash pack. Paladin, rogue, rogue, warlock, priest group where two of those had never been before. This leads onto my second big peeve of the week - ‘You must do it this way’. No. There is no this way. The way changes dependent on your group makeup and for this instance it is especially so. The third boss is, of course, my biggest gripe for this kind of behavior. Not only your party makeup but also their party makeup makes a difference. If you’re short on crowd control classes or have unusual methods (paladins fearing one of the demons) then you’re going to need to approach it differently to groups with three mages.

This place feels like raiding done small scale - if you mess up you’re gonna cause a wipe. If you’re not prepared for it, you’re gonna cause a wipe. If you don’t listen to others in the group you’re going to wipe!

Of course, on the other side of it, I believe it is not really that hard if you’re running with competent players! (ok, so that can be said of almost any instance…) I’m over 1/4 into revered now, which gives you an idea of how much of the inside of that place I’ve seen in the past few days and I can tell you now that it can make all the difference in the world having a competent tank no matter what the class.

A few pointers -

• Vexx - /target Pure Energy. Make this macro, bind it to the biggest ‘red button’ you can find. The number of times I heard “I can’t target them tho!” these past few days on the second boss has nearly driven me bonkers - especially on heroic where it really begins to hurt when people miss one. Rogues - CloS, Mages - Ice Block. Anything which removes magic affects seems to remove the debuff. Get two stacks, use your cleansing thing, get two more. If you’re organised enough you can do rotations - this really helped on a few of my runs where we had multiple melee.
• Priestess - If you have a sheep and you have the warrior (warlord) then, for your own sanity, sheep him! The warlock also there? Doesn’t matter. She goes down like a wet paper towel, he mortal strikes, charges, fears and makes ugly faces at you. Keep him locked down until everyone can concentrate on stunning, avoiding, fear-warding etc. etc. Aggro changed wildly here and the tank should don dps or healing gear rather than bothering much with anything else. Interrupts also make this fight go down faster.
• General - Make someone imp-killer for the run. After they’re done cc-ing or once the tank has pulled their priority is to get the imp down. That little bugger is a healer / clothie dps killer. Don’t be afraid to let a rogue lock down one mob if you trust them. On several runs where I’ve had hasty tanks I’ve easily locked down the mob which was supposed to be sapped - rogue offtanks are not bad for caster mobs which don’t hit hard and can be interrupted and mitigated by CloS.

Island

Maybe I’ll not feel this once more of the dailies open up but the Isle of Quel’danas feels a little… empty. I’ve been flying over it both on my way in and on my way around the flying dailies and I just felt there seemed to be less scenery and random little bits of fluff round the place. This is in stark contrast to the populated areas which are, of course, a lot busier. I guess this perception might change once the other quests open up and I get to explore other regions a little more closely. Conversely, though, I expect the place to feel pretty bare once people are done with their rep grinds and can’t be bothered to make their way all the way out there. Time will tell, I suppose. Wouldn’t be surprised if the place was to be launch-point for travelling to Northrend.

Fishing

I love the new fishing daily. Love it. Lots. So much it’s getting its own section for me to say it!

Recipes

Want more, now! Can’t wait until more open up but I’ve already got my revered gem cuts and the new meta gems which are selling for a tidy profit on my realm.

Add-ons

Omen - I did the whole ‘wtf’ thing when I saw the new interface but it’s grown on me and I don’t mind it too much.

Gatherer - This was one of the few addons that majorly bugged for me. It threw so many errors I had to turn it off. Since I like gatherer more than other gather addons I am currently bereft of a map full of herbs and ore.

Recount - Oddly buggy. Somtimes it’s fine, sometimes it will sit and throw errors every time I hit something. Usually it eventually starts working again of it’s own accord. I’ll need to find out what’s causing ths so I can try to avoid it for now.

Can’t think of anything else right now - except that our server is being a bit slow so it might be a few days before I get to see some of the other funky stuff open up. Get a move on, Bloodhoof!