Patch 5.2 Rep Changes, No New Sha-Touched Weapons, Item Levels, Blue Posts, TCG Art

[chaud]

"Damage Reduction Considered for Dueling, What Mob Density Options Would You Like?, Multiboxing - Legal or Not?, Poll: Are You Going to Use Dueling?

Patch 5.2 - Reputation Changes
Along with the new Work Orders, Patch 5.2 will allow you to earn 750 reputation from the first heroic and 325 reputation from the first scenario of the day!

1) is the championing rep a flat rep you get at the end that's comparable to what you would get from doing all dailies that day?
Currently, the reputation for your first heroic is 750 and 325 for your first scenario.

2) does the dailies faction have reputation rewards as well? and are those intended as a sort of catchup for new players/alts?
The new dailies faction doesn't have any valor items.

3) if the valor rep is related to the raid (most likely it is), can you also get it through LFR?
The developers don't want fresh 90s to skip previous content and jump into the newest, so you'll still need 480 item level, but all the changes introduced to previous content will definitely help catch up quicker (lower prices, higher drop chance...)

Also, the valor reputation can be earned through the Raid Finder too but you need to kill bosses to get beyond a certain threshold. So we probably won't see something like the old Icecrown Citadel reputation runs.

But only for old factions (5.0, 5.1), or not?
In order to use the Work Orders in Sunsong Ranch, you need to be exalted with The Tiillers and all plots unlocked, but it's not required to own Sunsong. Work orders will be available for most 5.0/5.1 factions, but it will most likely not include Black Prince.

Patch 5.2 - No New Sha-Touched Weapons
Unfortunately it seems that some people missed that the Patch 5.2 Raid Gear Preview yesterday was not the final gear, and that much of it is placeholder items with placeholder stats. (Such as this Strength and Spirit tanking mace).

You're really best off sticking to information actually contained in our patch notes or other official channels of communication if you're looking to avoid confusion.

There are no more Sha-Touched weapons forthcoming. If you've been diligent about helping Wrathion and continue to do so, your reward in 5.2 is going to be a legendary meta-gem that can go in any helmet.

Patch 5.2 Raid Gear Item Levels

Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas saw this thread, and wanted share his thoughts on some of the issues you guys have raised:

We think it’s worth noting that many players began their Mists of Pandaria raiding experience with an average item level in the low 460s. Over the course of the past four months, Heroic raiders have seen their average item level climb by as much as 50, while normal mode raid groups that are just getting to Sha of Fear for the first time likely have an average item level that compares to what the cutting-edge guilds had when conquering Heroic Heart of Fear. Getting raid loot along the way has likely felt like a meaningful progression, and the overall damage and healing output of a raid group grows measurably from week to week with each piece of gear looted from a defeated boss. We like that, and we want Throne of Thunder to give players a similar sense of progression.

We could have taken an alternative, more conservative approach, where Throne of Thunder Raid Finder awarded ilvl 496 items and Normal awarded 509 items. A guild that has only done the current normal mode raids, but no Heroics, will then walk into Throne of Thunder with an average item level around 500 (lots of 496 items from Heart of Fear and Terrace, some of them upgraded to 504 with Valor). That doesn’t leave much room to grow – it means that players would only be a few percent stronger when facing Lei Shen at the end of the instance than they were facing Jin’rokh at the start. It also means that when raiders run into a roadblock halfway through the raid, there wouldn’t be much hope that a bit more gear from the next clear would have a significant impact.

Ultimately, we think that raid progression works better, and is more compelling, when there are meaningful increases in power from gear. The effort of downing a boss for the first time is properly rewarded with loot that is attractive to all members of the raid, and the steady increase in player power over the course of progressing through an instance allows us to scale the challenge accordingly. For example, we can now design Lei Shen around the expectation that the average raid group that reaches him will have an item level of nearly 520. The cutting-edge groups that tear through the zone in the first week or two will be comparatively undergeared when they reach him. Without any other changes on our end, item progression means that the same encounter can pose a stern test to a top guild when 5.2 comes out, while still being doable by the groups that only reach the same encounter a couple of months down the line. For example, Heroic Gara’jal was a brutal test of DPS for raiders who faced him last October, but now he feels like part of a smooth progression for groups that are just graduating from normal modes and beginning Heroics.

We’re confident that our planned item levels are not going to skew class balance or degenerate gameplay, and we’re monitoring the performance of all classes and specs in the new gear that will be available in 5.2 and going forward. Stat “inflation” was probably most out of control during the Wrath of the Lich King, but that was an issue with how powerful the gear was that was available as the expansion began perhaps more than any other factor. As a point of comparison, the item level 213 warrior set breastplate that was available in Naxxramas gave a level 80 player 2% critical strike chance; the item level 496 warrior set breastplate available in Heart of Fear gives 1.32% critical strike chance. We’ve learned from the past and carefully left ourselves a lot more room to grow this time around.

Normal raiders now, would have normal Throne gear, not lfr, I don't see why you're comparing Normal Ilevel -> LFR Ilevel.
If I'm not missing something, I don't think he was. He's comparing 5.0/5.1 normal mode gear to 5.2 normal mode gear.

This, really can't believe Blizz still force raiders into LFR to stay competitive, WE DON'T LIKE IT.
It's our expectation that Heroic raiders should have no interest in 5.2 Raid Finder gear. If you have item level 509+ gear from 5.0/5.1 Heroics, then the question is, why would you want item level 502 gear from the Raid Finder? Players wearing normal mode gear might find some slight upgrades in the Raid Finder in the first few weeks, but it's a safe bet that any gear that was upgraded with Valor Points will probably beat anything found in the Throne of Thunder Raid Finder.

PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues

We use PTR as a time of iteration to try out a lot of changes and see which ones work out or not. We think the time has come to revert some of the PvP nerfs that we made for noble reasons, but which aren't working out. Specifically, we wanted to remove blanket Silence and shift the game back more towards casting and interrupts. We think the continual arms race between instant spells, Silence and Silence immunity isn't good for the long term health of PvP. It is a shift we still plan to make, but we don't think patch 5.2 is the right time to make it. There are a great deal of instant spells and we don't think it is fair or reasonable to remove them all and force so many players (many of whom might not even participate in PvP) to re-learn their class mid-expansion.

Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
- We are reverting the removal of Spell Lock.

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
- We are reverting the removal of Improved Counterspell.

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
- We are reverting Cyclone having shared diminishing returns with other forms of crowd control. While we are keeping the cooldown of Cyclone cast by Feral druids in order to make Predatory Swiftness CC less dominant, we are lowering the cooldown to 20 sec from 30 sec.

Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Ring of Peace has been adjusted. It now forms a sanctuary around the friendly target, causing enemies within 8 yards to be disarmed and causes enemies who cast a harmful spell to be silenced for 3 sec. Moving out of the ring does not remove the silence, but it won't trigger again. The duration of Ring of Peace is 8 sec.

I also want to reiterate that we see very little PvP participation during the PTR. This isn't really too surprising since it takes a sizable time commitment and a Critical Mass of skilled players to really generate good Arena or BG testing. (By contrast, guilds trying out the new raid encounters gives us a lot of PvE testing.) We're not blaming anyone - PvP is just hard to measure until it gets into the "real world," so we are even more dependent on player feedback. Unfortunately, PvP feedback is even more subjective than PvE feedback for a number of reasons, including the lack of meaningful meters, the challenge of keeping in mind the evolving tapestry of changes to all classes, and of course the very human tendency that makes it easy for some players to be quick to take credit for their victories and quick to blame their class for their defeats.

This just means PvP balance is always going to take a lot of iteration. We appreciate your patience and all of the good feedback that we get.

We can't test PVP on the PTR because you disabled queueing for battlegrounds and didn't give premades PVP gear.
There are currently some bugs preventing BG queuing from working on the PTR, but I've been through enough of these PTRs to predict that even once those bugs are fixed, we'll see very few players participating. We have occasionally tried "BGs with the blues" and similar tactics, and maybe there are some other ways to encourage or even reward participation that we could consider.

If you do participate and share your feedback with us, then you are our hero. On the other hand, we still do get a lot of good feedback based on patch notes / upcoming changes posts. That is part of the patch development process as well.

We still plan on making it easy to try out the PvP and PvE gear on PTR once those items are built and relatively bug free.

GC gives in again to the demands of bad players. Relearn their class... lol!!!! How is waiting until you see a cast then pressing a button relearning your class. WEAK EXCUSE!
If you played a Holy paladin and found your Holy Shock had a longer cooldown, and found Word of Glory had been replaced with (making this up) "Phrase of Glory" with a 2.5 sec cast time, and found that Devotion Aura no longer prevented player Silence, you might find yourself a little disoriented. Those are the kinds of changes we think would be necessary to allow interrupts to sufficiently serve as a counter to healing at this point in time.

While it might seem impossible to the forum-posting contingent of our player base, we lose more players to frustration at constant class design changes than we do to perceived balance problems. We have to keep that in mind when considering any changes, even those that are ultimately better for the game in the long run.

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
We knew haste would be attractive to Protection when we gave them Sanctity of Battle, which only Retribution had previously. That's why we gave them Sanctity of Battle. Even if you have a tanking set with no haste, there are haste buffs in the game. We wanted all the tanks to benefit somewhat from what were traditionally DPS stats, since part of the active mitigation design was to make tanks care more about hitting things with sword (and claws). It only gets to be a problem, as I said previously, if dodge and parry (which are going to be on some gear) are perceived as pointless. (They aren't pointless, but that's really beside the point at this stage.) We aren't going to reitemize every plate piece in the game to remove dodge and parry. We also don't want to nerf haste for paladins, because it is fun, and for the most part working as intended. We don't have a solution yet that we're willing to share, but that's the intent. I state all this, because I feel like this already long thread has become a bit too dominated by this one topic in the past few pages.

I have to agree with an earlier post about how this game should be about bringing out a good product and making it a good game. It seems more and more the justification for changes (or not making changes in this case) is the number of subs that will be lost.
This is pretty off-topic, but I'll address it anyway. Making good games is about keeping players engaged, about their having fun, their being happy.

Any game designer worth their salt wants players to love their game. That's why you choose this business. Yes, we all need to put bread on the table at the end of the day, but there are hundreds of careers that can deliver on that. We chose this one because we like games.

Now WoW is blessed with a whole lot of players. Unsurprisingly, those players like different things. The forum community is very self-selecting and generally a lot more hardcore than it realizes. You guys are really important to us. You care about the game deeply. You help us improve it just because you want it to be better. There's even a business angle - you evangelize the game to others. Everyone wins.

But making a change to the game - any kind of change, even a great change - carries with it a certain amount of risk. I can almost guarantee that someone out there will hate any change we make. If enough players dislike a change, then there is a chunk of the community that is unhappy. Sometimes we make tough decisions that are unpopular at the time, usually because we think the long term benefits are worth it and players may just not fully appreciate those in the short term. But overall, we want players to be happy. It's not a vote or a poll or anything and we're not about to turn over steering the ship to the community. But keeping players happy matters.

Consider the opposite: what kind of responses do you think we'd be seeing if I posted things like "We don't care if you like it or not, we're making this change," or "We don't care how many players we alienate - this is the way it's going to be." That would be a terrible way to keep players happy. So all I'm asking is don't beat us up for caring about the impact that our decisions make on the whole player base, not just the minority who post.

Are you on some sort of cheap drug when you make choices. Tanks care about these things dodge parry block armor HP. Thats all that should matter. It has always been this way in every game ever made. It is the D & D way and the correct way. When you take this focus away you lose your ability to be a lead developer and deserve to be removed from the team.
The answer to your first question is yes. My answer to the rest is: have you seen all of the paladins begging us not to change the way haste works for them because it is both useful and fun? Are they all wrong too? Nah, never mind, don't answer that.

Either you need find a way to better weed out the bad feedback or your team needs better personal understanding of PvP. Patch 5.0 warriors were IMO worse than S5 DK's.
But do you see all of the warriors claiming that they are just fine now and have been over-nerfed for 5.2? Sure, it's easy just to dismiss them as wrong, but how do we know? How should we know during MoP development when warriors were coming off a bad Cataclysm season and begging for buffs? With 20/20 hindsight, I'll totally agree that we overdid it. How to ensure that we don't get it wrong next time? We'll keep listening to players and discussing their feedback. For PvP particularly, that's really the only way I know of to get things feeling right.

If anyone out there can provide the definitive list of players who are nearly always right, please let me know.

Some of us feel that making PvP better should be an extremely high priority even at the expense of some players feeling a bit confused when logging in after a patch.
Totally reasonable. Some players feel like more pet battle content is an extremely high priority. It's even possible there are more of them than there are PvP players. (I have no idea off the top of my head.) I would hope by the sheer number of PvP-oriented changes we've pushed and the number of conversations we've had that it's a priority, but I get that these things are subjective.

So you have no problems making warriors or shaman relearn their class mechanics mid-expansion?
No, we have a huge problem with it. It sucks and it's ultimately our fault. On the other hand, it doesn't seem fair to make other players live with overpowered specs because of our mistake. (This applies to PvE too by the way, where it's not okay for someone to be overpowered even if you aren't trying to kill each other.)

And this reasoning right here is why my account is canceled as of the 28th.
I'm sorry that you cancelled your account. I am even sorrier that you cancelled for a change we didn't make and stated we didn't want to make (removing haste gameplay from paladins). There may be a lesson in there about making decisions in the heat of the moment.

In 5.2, no healer will be able to live through the opener of a Mage/Rogue/X comp, blanket silence, instant CC and stuns will just make those 2 classes very strong together for another combination of classes to combat.
That's a healer point of view, and I get that, but from the warlock or mage point of view, it was going to be impossible to ever kill anyone because the healer can't be interrupted with all of those instant heals and a Silence-prevention cooldown on top of that. I'm just pointing out there are two sides to the argument, and it's not fair to just claim that you're right and they're wrong.

The reality is that moving more towards the 'interrupt heals, don't prevent them' paradigm would be wonderful. But a huge amount of changes to a great many classes need to be made to make that possible. 5.2 just isn't the time for that. I don't even think it's realistic this expansion, but I'll be they'll try.
Yeah, exactly, and we could even make the time, but we'd be scared of the huge number of changes it would take to get there. We're also concerned that some players might not even like the PvP style that we ended up with. We get requests constantly for dispel protection, impossible to counter abilities, stuff that works while CC'd and immunities to various mechanics. Those are all in the opposite direction of where we think PvP needs to go, so we have to factor in player response to all of that and leave even more design time and space for iteration.

Posts like this really bother me. Scared to even read this thread.
Yeah, that's one of the reasons I don't post much on forums anymore. Some players aren't here for a discussion. They just like to lob grenades. (The other reasons are that I don't have the bandwidth to address really long posts, even if they are well-reasoned, and that I can't communicate with anyone outside of the US here.)

If you somehow feel the energy cost is fair, what if we could Maim any target? Rather than only our combo target? Kinda of like having Redirect built into Maim? Or convert Maim into a bleed, so it ignores armor and scales with Mastery? Or make it so does extra damage if the target is immune to stuns?
The Redirect is part of what we're trying to get away from with the PS + Cyclone. It just feels like you can't counter or even predict it. We like trying to boost Maim as well because it gives druids another type of CC, but one that does take some build up and has a real cost. That's the same kind of gameplay I'm trying to advocate above: full of counters.

The problem with Feral movement speed is that they could get up to 215% speed or something like that. Yet there is no good way in the game to explain what stacks with what, so you'd have to try out mixing and matching boot enchants with Dash or whatever and figure out what worked. It was recreating the whole crazy CC DR matrix problem, which is hardly a design worthy of emulation.

I saw Bashiok post about Balance and I thought about posting something in there, but no, I'm going to continue harrasking here: Are you folks playing balance on the dev team? Do you have enough people playing on PTR? Do I need to find some time to help folks like Owlcapwn test so our cries can still be ignored?
If I could ask one thing of you guys as a community, try and tone back the "ignored and neglected" talk. None of the classes are specs are neglected by the design team. I just don't have the bandwidth (as I said above) to address each concern, even the very eloquent ones, even the ones that may be totally reasonable and accurate. When we want to comment on something, we'll comment. There isn't really a reasonable way to force us to comment on something, so just try and be at peace.

Folks, it's another long weekend, so don't expect updates before Tuesday.

On topic: Blood DK 4 piece design being off is not player perception at this point. Some of my and others posts previous on the matter show math that this bonus on raw numbers is not as good as the previous bonus.
It isn't a goal that every set bonus is exactly the same DPS / healing / survivability every time. We have a goal that we shoot for. Sometimes we overshoot. That doesn't mean every set bonus for the rest of the expansion has to also be over-inflated. Fortunately, the generous primary stats on every item solve the problem where players cling to earlier set bonuses and don't feel like they can upgrade again.

We do reconsider set bonuses that are annoying, too situational or awkward to use, or dramatically underpowered or overpowered. We haven't decided yet if Blood 4pc falls into that category.

- Glorious Tyranny weapon enchant was modified to 400 PvP Power, 200 Resilience, and 50% disarm Duration.

(No melee classes would have used it without the disarm duration.)

Blue Posts

Patch 5.2 PvP Gear Item Levels
Yes, very much. Your current mal will be a bit better than s13 mal
I don't think it's that cut and dry. If I'm understanding the numbers, 5.1 Malevolent will only be better than 5.2 Malevolent if it's carrying 2/2 item level upgrades (though it will have more stamina).

Currently, the PvP Power and stats on each tier of gear are tuned to ensure that they're the best choice for PvP compared with a PvE equivalent:

Malevolent > LFR gear for PVP.
Tyrannical > normal mode raid gear for PvP.
Elite Tyrannical > Heroic mode raid gear for PvP. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Marked for Death and Rogues
As it stands right now it is the easiest way to set up a 5 point KS and Shadow Dance with full energy.
In 5.2, Marked for Death will be the easiest way to do that. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Removal of LFR Boss Count
If you enter and complete a partial clear you will be given priority for a fresh run the next time you enter the queue, letting you pick up any missed bosses. The 45 Valor for completing that run too isn't a bad deal, either.

Oh boy 45 valor. For wasting probably an hour of our time? Not including the time wasted for the second queue and raid.
I generally find I'm in a 2/3 partial, and when I re-queue to pick up those first two bosses it does not take an hour to down the final boss. Is it taking you an hour to kill a boss?

45 valor for about 15 minutes more of my time is pretty efficient.

he was referring to the hour long queue - he had to queue TWICE for an hour each time to kill all bosses once instead of queue ONCE for an hour to kill all bosses once
Sure, and if we just let people pick and choose raids to join there could be 24 other people dropping group to wait in queue again. There are a few things you can do in the game all by yourself that don't involve other players, and we can try to make sure those really work as a single player experience. Raiding just can't be one of them.

And, taking a step back, LFR continues to offer an exceptional experience and reward for time invested value versus it not existing.

If he saw 2/3 bosses then what would he do? cancel the queue? Well then he has to wait again either way.
Oh, and that.

This presupposes that I have the extra time to actually run two LFRs per week of the same instance... I don't (2+ hours of queue = no). If I decide to queue for LFR (which I no longer do), I want to do a fresh run, period.
And I believe you presuppose you're the only person playing.

Bashiok, you know how much I love watching you work and running LFR, but I've got Azeroth's 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it; I'm swamped.
Well I appreciate the quote, at least. But, and don't take this the wrong way, think back to a time not-that-long-ago before LFR existed. How much raid content were you seeing then, how far had you progressed, and what was the time investment? I'm not saying we don't want LFR to be a smooth and pleasant experience, or be accessible, but it's putting 25 people together to let them see, experience, and even get awesome items from end-game content. That is pretty amazing. Automated game systems can only do so much to ensure it's a pleasant experience on the personal terms and whims for every single person.

The point I was shooting for is this: if I choose to take part in PvE content via LFR I don't want to have to run multiple instances (of the same instance) just to see each and every boss, most importantly by sitting in at least two very long DPS queues.
Absolutely. We don't want for you to run the same instance multiple times either. We'd be happy to entertain ideas for how we can put a group of 25 strangers together, who all have different goals, expectations, and time constraints, and see each of them remain until the end regardless of anything else that happens in the raid or in their life (drops, wipes, wife came home, cat peed on foot, etc.). (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Feedback: Jin'rokh the Breaker (10N)
Is this another fight where the debuff isn't going to transfer to pets? Not getting that damage buff for BM pets is unfortunate.
In our next build the benefits from standing in the pool will also apply to your pets. This is based on the player's location, not the pet's location.

I honestly can not fathom how you break the game so hard. How can a Paladins channel spells make everyone in the raid lagg?
Simple: There's a bug in this build that causes some cast-time paladin spells to have bad (negative) heal prediction values, which the UI that displays predicted healing isn't expecting, causing a ton of client lag for everyone that is trying to display those values. This is fixed in the next build. Turning off predictive healing in the UI may help, in the meantime.

Every new patch involves a tremendous number of changes to the game -- both obvious new content like adding new dungeons or outdoor areas and countless behind-the-scenes changes to code, client/server interactions, and so forth. With thousands of such changes, there are unfortunately going to be some bugs, and often some very unexpected ones. Part of the purpose of PTR is to catch as many issues like these as possible, so that they don't make it to the live servers and impact players' experience there.

Thank you, as always, for your patience and for helping test the 5.2 patch. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

New Talent Tree Simplicity
They gave us "variety" by making the choices irrelevant to the game. You have freedom to choose, because your choice is meaningless. How is this an improvement?

I'm not sure you've actually looked at the new talents.

The are doing the same thing with glyphs. The top tier was removed completely. Many of the best or "mathematically superior choices" have been removed and added to your rotation as baseline skills. Minor glyphs are now almost nothing but cosmetic changes.
You're upset that you got some glyphs as baseline skills? o.O

With all due respect... have you? As previously stated, only two of my six choices have any meaningful effect at all on my character. And those two choices don't really alter my experience much. Its mostly the choice between a cooldown and a passive ability to improve my DPS. It certainly isn't much of a fun or exciting choice now, is it? Well, I guess that's subjective, but its certainly not fun or exciting for me.

And it is even worse on leveling characters. I honestly am not sure I even have my talents set on some of my lower levels. They are so trivial and unimportant, I completely forget about them. Gone are the days that reaching a new level meant something.
Ah, so if it doesn't flat increase your DPS it's worthless? I think you may want to talk to some other druids on what is useful or not in various situations. Not sure I can argue against that kind of mentality except to say what you're looking for are item stats. If all you want is flat DPS increases, keep gearing up! The rest of us will enjoy employing various talents, and respeccing, to great effect.

I think he meant that he wishes all skill tiers were relevant to both PVE and PVP and not only PVP or PVE
Not all trees are going to be amazing for every situation. We're happy to hear ideas on how we can change a given tree to keep it unique and make it useful in raiding, questing, and pvp.

But did you get excited about that extra 2 percent damage to moonfire? Maybe for a few seconds, but it wasn't that talent point that enabled you to keep going and further your toon, it was the level itself. Sure, every 10-15 levels you got a talent that was really a game changer, but what does that sound like?
To be fair the old trees were successful in making themselves seem meaningful and fun, but yes most of the time they were either meaningless or required. Speccing down a tree by following a guide to maximize DPS wasn't a choice, and if you didn't follow a guide you were spending your talents wrong. Period. With the new trees you have six trees, and on each tree all three options are a variations on a theme, and the choice generally comes down to personal preference or style. That's at least an option that means something to you, to your character, and your identity in the game.

the only time ive used the T1 priest talent is on the last boss in msv. everything else in raiding is immune to thoes talents. so....
What about while you were leveling to 90? Or doing dailies? Or PvPing? Those talents are actually amazing in different ways, and for many different situations. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Content Difficulty Feedback
Do you personally consider that true progress? It baffles me.
Picture a group that is stuck on a boss at 30% hp constantly for, I don't know, two months. They'll definitely consider it progress when they finally move past him, and it's fine. For you that's not true progress because they didn't kill the boss on its hardest version, and it's a valid point of view as well, but that can't be a reason to block people from moving on, particularly if we keep in mind what the developers have seen when this happens: while there are guilds out there that have the will to keep on trying for as long as it's required, it's a rare treat in most other guilds, and they eventually give up.

While many people think they would easily make it into any of the Top 10 world guilds, the truth is most of them aren't.

How would I be able to tell the guys from Paragon (or any other top guilds) that I have accomplished the same thing they did, albeit a bit further down the line, when Blizzard has made that accomplishment 30% easier?
Would you really think you had? The fact you have killed a boss 30% easier doesn't mean you have become Paragon, far from it.

I wish my personal experience was of any use in this case, because from what I've seen, most people in those guilds did feel they had accomplished their personal goal (killing an end boss) but definitely didn't feel they were in the same league as the best guilds in the world. But my sample is terribly limited, so I'm not going to generalize and say that's the case for most guilds in that situation, because it'd be an outright lie.

By your logic, all my opponents in PvP should be nerfed by 30% by the end of each season, because I paid for the game and I want to have a free Gladiator title if LFR players are getting a free "Savior of Azeroth" equivalent of a title.
The Gladiator title is specifically tied to the 0.5% best players on a PVP season, so it's not the same thing. There's nothing that specifies "the Heroic end boss of a raid tier is meant to be killed only by the 0.5% best raiders of the tier", and we're talking, in any case, about something that happened on a different moment and on a different environment. WoWProgress shows Heroic Madness was defeated by around 14k+ guilds worldwide, sure, it looks like a lot, but the raid was available for almost a whole year. Fast forward to today, and this same website indicates that 260 guilds have killed Sha of Fear in Heroic (and they are getting as well the "Cutting Edge" achievement. So, if at any point the boss is nerfed, and the criteria is no longer met, they would be able to show that achievement to prove they did it without any nerfs.

Times have definitely changed in that regard (in my opinion, of course).

I am self mainly motivated by new boss kills and I do not mind really what other raiders kill or do. I have my own speed, pace and so on. I do not mind if 10 other DK's wear gear as I do, when they do content I do. Makes sense, yes ? However I roll eyes, when see that AFK guy in LFR run around with almost identical gear as I do. Without transmog feature you barely would make difference between me and the AFK-Hero, who does most cases 25k dps if not less.
The diference is that your AFK hero is wearing gear that is 26 item levels lower than yours and doesn't have stuff you do, such as vanity rewards (Glory of the Pandaria Raider and Guild Glory of the Pandaria Raider come to mind as an example).

Also, if you fancy doing challenge modes, it's very likely your AFK hero won't have the transmoggable set of gear you can get access to either.

Do not be too upset on me. You are talking to the player, who did not quit after 5 weeks of Kael'thas wipes on bench, nor 6 weeks of mu'rus wipes. And I lived trough 15-20 minute Nefarian respawn timer on vanilla, as well the complete hilarious wipe fest of Firefighter, Shadowtraps on Lich King and I sm sure am not scared of tsulong or Sha of Fear (which I believe might be block my team for a while). I am not a top raider even. I am just one of those 'raiding masses' - average Joe's of HC raiding, if you will.
You may not be a top raider in some community world ranking. Your dedication is certainly rare among players though. If you track back to M'uru, you'll probably remember that guilds were falling apart before reaching 6 weeks of wipes on him and Kael'thas was seen by many as a massive hurdle. So even if your progress spells "average Joe's of HC raiding" the fact is, when it comes to dedication, you have plenty of it, and hopefully your guild does too.

nice way to put majority of the wow population these days are spoiled little brats with no brain, its true tho. Sad part is that this CM here wanna turn this game into a console game. Im just curious if this is how blizzard as a company sees it or just this guy? if so what future we can expect from wow? will we be able to play it on x-box soon with pause buttom and cheat codes?
Oh, please, don't try to hyperbole my posts. Toning something down eventually so more people can complete it doesn't mean turning the game into a "console game", which, in the other hand, is a weird comparison, since there're plenty of challenging console games out there. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Guild Wars 2 Biggest Fan Contest
Guild Wars 2 Guru is holding a contest for three signed collector's editions of Guild Wars 2 and gem cards. Enter by creating something GW2 related and the staff will vote on some winners.

TCG Art Update
Blizzard has updated the Trading Card Game art gallery to feature ten new pieces.

[Myzou]

I'm a bit confused by the first quote.

Is the 480 requirement they're referring to for the new LFR, or for getting rep from sunsong/etc? O_o Seems like they randomly transitioned into talking about other things.

I still think 480 is a bit too high for the new LFR. Thinking 478 would be better.

There's not 483s in every slot for every spec available from HoF/ToES, making the current valor gear pretty much required to enter the new LFR, which is going against their philosophy that that gear is optional. And if we aren't lucky, we could literally spend a year waiting for a piece of gear to drop in LFR to bump our ilvl up from say 479 to 480. Who's to say a piece of gear you don't already have will drop, if anything at all?

[Yunru]

Hah so they added extra rep in dungeons after all. I realy rather do 1 scenario a day that touch the stinking dailys .

[Deleted]

why cant they add rep for for pvp factions there alot harder to get exalted with

[Ruck]

Like a band-aid on a gaping chest wound

[Brokeguy]

LFR is horrid at best, im tired of grinding dailies every single day just to get charms that when i use in lfr just gives me more gold which isnt enough to cover the repair cost for wipes. The people in these lfr groups are some of the worst people ive seen with horrible language as well as manners. It takes me almost 7 ques to get a full clear of terrace and hof just for one toon.

Going back to play league of legends till this &*^# gets fixed. DOUBLE IP WEEKEND!!!!!

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Love that Bolvar art.

[Deleted]

WTB - Shaman Patch notes.

[Deleted]

I'm a little confused. So there is no new valor items from the new reputation faction, but they are removing the upgrading feature, then what am i suppose to use my valor on then? Am i missing something completely obvious here, i thought they would remove it so we would buy the new valor gear?

[Deleted]

Those reverted CC changes are a punch in the stomach

[Penric]

So no new gear from dailies, whats the point of going to exalted?

[jimakos84]

sorry but legendary gems are a bit shit. no so legendary imo.

[Deleted]

I'm a bit confused by the first quote.

Is the 480 requirement they're referring to for the new LFR, or for getting rep from sunsong/etc? O_o Seems like they randomly transitioned into talking about other things.

I still think 480 is a bit too high for the new LFR. Thinking 478 would be better.

There's not 483s in every slot for every spec available from HoF/ToES, making the current valor gear pretty much required to enter the new LFR, which is going against their philosophy that that gear is optional. And if we aren't lucky, we could literally spend a year waiting for a piece of gear to drop in LFR to bump our ilvl up from say 479 to 480. Who's to say a piece of gear you don't already have will drop, if anything at all?

You know that 486 is possible for people who only run LFR and do dailies? LFR gear/Rep gear/upgrades
480 is even easier you can probably get that without upgrading anything.

[OneSent]

Damn, they just completely broke down with the reputation stuff didn't they?

MoP wasn't even out for 2 weeks before people started bitching about how long it would take and Blizzard has been making it easier and easier with every patch so far.

I'll never know where the mentality of having to gear every single alt character you have to the teeth, with maxed reputation on all of them. Oh wait, I know! It was when Blizzard decided to implement heirlooms and account-bound items/progression. That just opened the shit gates and now noone wants to do the same thing twice.

"Give them an inch and they take a mile." How perfectly accurate this statement describes altoholics. Make it a little easier and faster for them to level up and they start demanding more shit left and right.

[thunderdragon2]

hmm will we be able to get rep with the black prince rep with this? if not is there anything thing for those that already exalted with all other factions

i didnt think they'd add new sha touched weapons....

[Ferrouswheel]

Um, if there isn't any new valor gear and they took out upgrading...what is the point of getting valor?

[Deleted]

Damn, they just completely broke down with the reputation stuff didn't they?

MoP wasn't even out for 2 weeks before people started bitching about how long it would take and Blizzard has been making it easier and easier with every patch so far.

I'll never know where the mentality of having to gear every single alt character you have to the teeth, with maxed reputation on all of them. Oh wait, I know! It was when Blizzard decided to implement heirlooms and account-bound items/progression. That just opened the shit gates and now noone wants to do the same thing twice.

"Give them an inch and they take a mile." How perfectly accurate this statement describes altoholics. Make it a little easier and faster for them to level up and they start demanding more shit left and right.

To be fair, I don't think a lot of altoholics would have bothered with the reps on their alts if they hadn't gated the high end profession recipes behind them. And while the rep grind (at least after golden lotus exalted) wasn't so bad, I think it's fair to say that it wasn't working the way Blizzard intended or at least promoted it as; that is as an alternative route to gearing up with people playing the game the way they wanted to.

[Koji2k11]

does this reputation thing wor with older factions or just the MoP factions ?

[Deleted]

why cant they add rep for for pvp factions there alot harder to get exalted with

Them being hard is one of the main reasons their title/tabard rewards are still considered cool.

[F-Minus]

Well the more I bother with the "legendary" quest chain, the more I realize how completely useless the journey is. If my Sha-Touched weapon will become useless in 5.2, why the hell was I doing the quests for the Black Prince in the first place. I bet the final prize will be awesome, but in the meanwhile, spending over 30k gold on the (+500stat gems and sockets) to upgrade the weapons (LFR/Normal/Heroic) now seems like a complete and utter waste and I wouldn't have done it after the first gem, if Blizzard would come out sooner and say "hey, those weapons you have there, are only gonna be good until 5.2, where other weapons will be better".

I really expected maybe an upgrade for the said weapons or a new set of Sha-Touched thingies.