Phase 2 is on PTR

[SinR]

https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/news/w...r-notes-330039

Since MMO-C doesn't seem to think this is news worthy yet, go check it out.

[AtomR]

AH WOTLK You made me look! Damn you!

[Relapses]

Curious to see how the new Heroic+ dungeons pan out. Kinda weird the Blue post basically says "no we won't tell you which bosses drop what but you'll figure it out!"

[SinR]

the Titan Runestone system could be interesting for alt gearing and filling those few holes in gear.

Wonder if BOEs are going on bosses and if trash drops are going on the boss' loot tables, considering my enh shaman's best offhand is a trash drop from 10man

[Notdev]

Ulduar is gonna need buffs. Everything but yogg0 will be stomped by most semi serious guilds.

[Celarent]

I just don't see players who need 10-man gear putting up with the hassle of challenging 5-mans. Maybe guild groups farm for one guy who needs that oddball BiS, but cost-benefit is way in favor of 25-man, and even 20ish-or-fewer-manning Naxx.

I think Titan Rune will flop, and while it does, diverting a healthy pool of players who don't really care if Meathook is a pushover because that's part of reliving Wrath.

Edit: Oh, shoot, the loophole is even bigger. Why not just grab 5 more people and run Naxx 10 for its new i213s?

[Sting]

I really hate mythic+ but this seems like an interesting way to help somebody gear a fresh alt. Gonna run some with guildies later in the week to see how it feels. I don't expect these to be very challenging since it's still only ilvl 200 loot. Maybe the last bosses drop the 213 KT/EoE/OS10+2 pieces?

I hope the items aren't completely random, that would make for a terrible experience.

[SinR]

Ulduar is gonna need buffs. Everything but yogg0 will be stomped by most semi serious guilds.

We're going in pre-nerf.

Which means completely random disconnects on XT, server crashes followed by server shutdowns,

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I just don't see players who need 10-man gear putting up with the hassle of challenging 5-mans. Maybe guild groups farm for one guy who needs that oddball BiS, but cost-benefit is way in favor of 25-man, and even 20ish-or-fewer-manning Naxx.

I think Titan Rune will flop, and while it does, diverting a healthy pool of players who don't really care if Meathook is a pushover because that's part of reliving Wrath.

Edit: Oh, shoot, the loophole is even bigger. Why not just grab 5 more people and run Naxx 10 for its new i213s?

Two things:

One: The ilvl 213/226 gear from 25man is on a much larger loot table. Even if they copy it 1:1 per boss, the loot table for a 10man is going to be very inflated. Which leads to...

Two: Drops in 10man vs 25man. 10man drops 2 pieces per boss, 25man I believe 3 or 4. Now take that inflated loot table from lets say Patchwerk and have it only pick 2 items off it.

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I really hate mythic+ but this seems like an interesting way to help somebody gear a fresh alt. Gonna run some with guildies later in the week to see how it feels. I don't expect these to be very challenging since it's still only ilvl 200 loot. Maybe the last bosses drop the 213 KT/EoE/OS10+2 pieces?

I hope the items aren't completely random, that would make for a terrible experience.

It doesn't seem to be Mythic+, more like a Mythic0. No timer involved, and a unique per dungeon mechanic thats not just a flat +HP +Damage buff.

From what I've seen end boss drops 2-3 pieces including KT, OS10+2 and EOE drops.

[Flurryfang]

Edit: Oh, shoot, the loophole is even bigger. Why not just grab 5 more people and run Naxx 10 for its new i213s?

There is without a doubt gonna be people, who will do the math of what is most effective, doing runes or doing naxx10, and if history has shown us anything, then it is that dungeons are always easier.

Runes are gonna be very succesfull, especially because they will proberly just replace heroics as a gearing method. People are gonna take fresh lvl 80s and just spam them through these dungeons no matter how hard they make them. Just by the simple fact, that they are easily repeatable, makes them superior to raids.

[Celarent]

Two: Drops in 10man vs 25man. 10man drops 2 pieces per boss, 25man I believe 3 or 4. Now take that inflated loot table from lets say Patchwerk and have it only pick 2 items off it.

This makes sense! I'm talking more raid vs. Rune dungeon. (And I still think many people will just try their luck in 10, weighing logistics, time and difficulty.)

Runes are gonna be very succesfull, especially because they will proberly just replace heroics as a gearing method. People are gonna take fresh lvl 80s and just spam them through these dungeons no matter how hard they make them. Just by the simple fact, that they are easily repeatable, makes them superior to raids.

On fresh 80s, if 100% HP and 30% damage boosts don't make much of a difference overall in success rates - we end up not noticing and nearly everyone goes straight to them - I'm mostly fine with that. It'd be Blizzard's stealth Groundhog Day design adjustment, and then okay, sure.

I'm not sure the loot would be much of a draw if Ulduar 10 shifts to i226. People will want i213, and for T7 10s, launch dungeon epics and blues are sufficient - and I would say players typically seek the path of least resistance.

I guess we can compare difficulty somewhat to ToC and WoS/PoS/HoR, but each dropped true catchup level. Sure, you can spam, but just for i200? And although something "there for players if they want" *might* not hurt, I imagine it'd split people. "O this isnt rune d? my bad" more than once a day, and it'd be harder to assemble groups.

[Flurryfang]

This makes sense! I'm talking more raid vs. Rune dungeon. (And I still think many people will just try their luck in 10, weighing logistics, time and difficulty.)


On fresh 80s, if 100% HP and 30% damage boosts don't make much of a difference overall in success rates - we end up not noticing and nearly everyone goes straight to them - I'm mostly fine with that. It'd be Blizzard's stealth Groundhog Day design adjustment, and then okay, sure.

I'm not sure the loot would be much of a draw if Ulduar 10 shifts to i226. People will want i213, and for T7 10s, launch dungeon epics and blues are sufficient - and I would say players typically seek the path of least resistance.

I guess we can compare difficulty somewhat to ToC and WoS/PoS/HoR, but each dropped true catchup level. Sure, you can spam, but just for i200? And although something "there for players if they want" *might* not hurt, I imagine it'd split people. "O this isnt rune d? my bad" more than once a day, and it'd be harder to assemble groups.

With 1-2 people geared in 213 gear, even 100% HP increase will do little to the fight and most tanks will not even need a healer.

It will ofcourse with time lose relevancy when it comes to Ulduar, no matter how good the gear is, but people will always need some upgrades to just get them up to the point where raid leaders will take them when they are desperate enough for players.

I also don't think it will be come harder to assemble groups, because i truely believe that very few people will run heroics when rune-dungeons comes out, cause the gear is generally much more different. I also think you will see a lot of boosting going on internally in guilds, so i don't think the speed will take much of a hit either.

[Warning]

The item level changes are pretty bad for PVP. For one having PVP gear go from 232 to 238 while weapons go from 239 to 252 makes the game burstier than it was. In addition 252 trinkets are going to add to that burst as well as be broken for humans able to use an extra trinket.

Secondly PVP offset pieces are still only at 232, a full 20 ILVLs behind hardmode. PVP trinkets are even worse off, with the 1800 PVP trinket at Ilvl 226, and the Wintergrasp new trinkets coming out at ILVL 213, a full 39 ilvls behind Hardmode. The stated goal was not making Hardmode mandatory for PVP but this does exactly that.

Imo PVP pieces with rating requirements at or above 1800 rating should be buffed to ILVL 245 (helm, shoulder, PVP weapon wand and offhand, PVP trinket). The 2350 rated weapon is then fine at 252. PVP offset furious pieces should be at ILVL 238, and the new wintergrasp trinkets should be at 232.

[Tojara]

It's just a good way to gear up alts. The old system is still there and you can choose whether or not to interact with the system for better gear, but harder tuning.

The reason they're doing this is because ToGC release will be an absolute disaster with how the classic community plays the game. Going back and doing Ulduar during T9 will feel incredibly bad if the gear isn't relevant, but if the gear is relevant and both are run at the same time that sort of alleviates the problem. Back during OG WoTLK the only reason most people went back to do Ulduar was to begrudgingly finish the legendary or perhaps farm mounts, not so much for loot itself. It made a really good raid feel useless, especially considering you could run ToGC four times . ToGC only being able to be ran twice this time around means that a 5 boss tier for 'x' amount of months will feel pretty bad, and Blizzard removing the ability to run it four times due to new lockout restrictions is sort of saving players by themselves.

Regardless of the changes to Ulduar, it's still not going to be incredibly hard. There are some changes they hinted about that weren't really experienced by players fully, so who knows how it's going to play out. Is it still going to be cleared by the majority of guilds in the first week? Yes. All Classic content for the foreseeable future is going to behave this way. Does that take away from the raid? No. Is it going to be harder than most previous raids. Yeah.

Unless they continue with iLvL changes in ToGC (which I doubt, but who knows) it should even itself out overall by the time T9 comes out. In the meantime the only real issue is that sets are probably going to be borderline obsolete for a lot of classes if the relative iLvL of the sets aren't shifted upwards. PvP tier and weapons much the same. All the Ulduar HM drops at 252, and even if they shift tier (which they probably will), the chance that most people forgo tier sets unless they're incredibly powerful would be pretty high.

The whole point of phase 2 (at least how I view it) is to make sure Ulduar is incredibly relevant during phase 3, and also set in motion events that make more things in the game relevant. If you look back at Vanilla, nearly all raids were run until Naxxaramas came out giving people a lot of content to do. TBC did this as well (although to a lesser extent). WoTLK without changes would've been the first in the run of classic raids where pretty much every raid prior is obsolete and the dungeons would've been mostly useless aside from a single daily. Upwards shifting of dungeons maintains them as a catch up mechanic (relevance throughout the entire expansion, with perhaps interesting spins), and changing Ulduar so that it runs parallel with ToGC likely makes WoTLK raiding a more enjoyable experience.

Doing loads of content in Classic was only really possible because of lack of options and whacky itemization, otherwise you likely wouldn't have seen people going back to Molten Core. Most people never did T5 when T6 was released, but Gruul's Lair was always relevant because of DST and the 10 man dungeons were always popular simply because they were a quick easy way to get badges in a world where you only needed one type of badge.

ToGC can't stand on it's own, at least with how classic players play the game. It needs Ulduar to prop it up. If ICC goes forward with it's delayed launch of wings, you'll still see the previous raids being relevant until it's fully open. ICC once fully unlocked CAN stand on it's own, as it's also a patch that releases with 3 of it's own dungeons.

Basically how I see it is that the more raids and content that are relevant (to a degree) the better. A lot of classic evolves into raid logging which is fine, but if your options are just do the new thing every 4-5 months and ignore everything else, a part of classic deteriorates. With re-releases, I think this aspect is more important during the start and middle, as opposed to the end. Most people historically peace out on the final tier because the content is done and you don't really 'need' to break your back getting every piece of gear from the final raid just to level faster (to each their own, and there are plenty of people who do this still).

[SinR]

I'm wondering if TOC is going to receive any kind of buff at the start since the ilvl going into it is going to be higher than it was back then.

[Fkiolaris]

I am not sure what version of WotLK Classic some of you guys are playing, but what alts are you talking about? It might be that my server (NGK in EU) is a special case, but the vast majority of the server simply raid logs nowadays. Practically nobody is levelling any alts other than the occasional DK and everyone that I have asked about it gave me the same answer: "it's too boring since it's just questing and takes too long". Considering this will be out in 2 (?) months and even the people still levelling will probably be fully geared by then, who exactly will be benefitting from this Mythic-0 system or using it? Obviously, they could tackle that issue very easily by introducing the cross-server, insta-teleport RDF tool in the game, but modern Blizzard doesn't let reason get in the way of any moronic decisions of theirs.

[Relapses]

I am not sure what version of WotLK Classic some of you guys are playing, but what alts are you talking about? It might be that my server (NGK in EU) is a special case, but the vast majority of the server simply raid logs nowadays. Practically nobody is levelling any alts other than the occasional DK and everyone that I have asked about it gave me the same answer: "it's too boring since it's just questing and takes too long". Considering this will be out in 2 (?) months and even the people still levelling will probably be fully geared by then, who exactly will be benefitting from this Mythic-0 system or using it? Obviously, they could tackle that issue very easily by introducing the cross-server, insta-teleport RDF tool in the game, but modern Blizzard doesn't let reason get in the way of any moronic decisions of theirs.

Blizzard is obviously anticipating an influx of new players coming into WotLK Classic specifically so they can experience Ulduar again. I'm one of those people and a few of my retail friends have mentioned a similar shared interest.

[Flurryfang]

I am not sure what version of WotLK Classic some of you guys are playing, but what alts are you talking about? It might be that my server (NGK in EU) is a special case, but the vast majority of the server simply raid logs nowadays. Practically nobody is levelling any alts other than the occasional DK and everyone that I have asked about it gave me the same answer: "it's too boring since it's just questing and takes too long". Considering this will be out in 2 (?) months and even the people still levelling will probably be fully geared by then, who exactly will be benefitting from this Mythic-0 system or using it? Obviously, they could tackle that issue very easily by introducing the cross-server, insta-teleport RDF tool in the game, but modern Blizzard doesn't let reason get in the way of any moronic decisions of theirs.

This mythic-0 thing is just not for alts now, but also in the future. Alts are being made right now, leveling a shaman myself atm, and i see a good number of people leveling through outland atm. Yes, it is a lot of DKs, but that just makes sense, as most people leveled up their TBC main first and just now are getting time to look at secondary characters.

People are ofcourse gonna go through Ulduar on their current mains first, those who have cleared Naxx a number of times already, but when we are a month into the Ulduar patch, we will without a doubt see many players start making heavy use of the feature as they want to do the content on other characters than their mains. Besides, its just good value and good value have always lead people to do content.

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I'm wondering if TOC is going to receive any kind of buff at the start since the ilvl going into it is going to be higher than it was back then.

It would be very surprising if not all gear from now on will be getting some form of tweak.

[shise]

I just don't see players who need 10-man gear putting up with the hassle of challenging 5-mans. Maybe guild groups farm for one guy who needs that oddball BiS, but cost-benefit is way in favor of 25-man, and even 20ish-or-fewer-manning Naxx.

I think Titan Rune will flop, and while it does, diverting a healthy pool of players who don't really care if Meathook is a pushover because that's part of reliving Wrath.

Edit: Oh, shoot, the loophole is even bigger. Why not just grab 5 more people and run Naxx 10 for its new i213s?

You are wrong imo.

People will only do this, and not the old normal HCs. Because why would you spend the exact same time but get no worthy loot?

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I am not sure what version of WotLK Classic some of you guys are playing, but what alts are you talking about? It might be that my server (NGK in EU) is a special case, but the vast majority of the server simply raid logs nowadays. Practically nobody is levelling any alts other than the occasional DK and everyone that I have asked about it gave me the same answer: "it's too boring since it's just questing and takes too long". Considering this will be out in 2 (?) months and even the people still levelling will probably be fully geared by then, who exactly will be benefitting from this Mythic-0 system or using it? Obviously, they could tackle that issue very easily by introducing the cross-server, insta-teleport RDF tool in the game, but modern Blizzard doesn't let reason get in the way of any moronic decisions of theirs.

No idea what game you are playing.

Everyone has 1 or 2 alts, one of them on full Naxx gear by now.

LFG is completely pointless, you can start a group as a DPS and get into the dungeon 5 minutes after you even started.

[Tuor]

People will only do this, and not the old normal HCs.

I was thinking in the same. A feature designed to provide catch up gear whille levelling that will turn problematic for those that are levelling alts. The wholle heroism badge farm will be broken.

[Celarent]

With 1-2 people geared in 213 gear, even 100% HP increase will do little to the fight and most tanks will not even need a healer.

You are wrong imo.

People will only do this, and not the old normal HCs. Because why would you spend the exact same time but get no worthy loot?

So, first thought on these observations: if no one notices any differences, similar to the Naxx buffs...what's the point of dev time spent on the change when they could just shift loot tables to heroics and be done with it? One DPS getting one-shot by a mechanic they used to be able to ignore, so when somebody spends 12 seconds rezzing and rebuffing it feels more thrilling? Nearly 6% additional grinding through mobs?

My main concern is that this potentially splits queues pointlessly. My personal investment is being a public service tank. Back in OG Wrath I loved tanking random groups long after it was materially beneficial to me, and the biggest reason why I enjoyed it was how low-stress it was. (And corollary, how many people were in the queue pool right up 'til Cata.)

So either the Rune stuff is either hardly noticeable or kind of a pain that turns people away. In the case of the former, why complicate things? Legit question. In the latter, just why even when it's Wrath? Also legit question.