Green Fire Part Two!

No, it's still not finished, but I'm very near the end (of course, given that the final stretch - or really the bulk of the chain - is a scenario, you'll have to repeat most of it if you step away to try later.)

The one major thing I've discovered is that Destruction has a huge advantage here, with the immense self-healing of Ember Tap and the lack of a need to Life Tap for mana.

After defeating the Essence of Order (aided greatly by the use of Ember Tap and Harvest Life) you will have to fight your way out of the room. Akama will ask you to help him rescue some people down in the basement, but your Imp shows up and has another idea - let's loot the place!

You can then gather a ton of stuff in the Den of Mortal Delights on your way to the top of the temple. You'll get a decent chunk of gold here, though it'll be hell on bag space.

After fighting your way through, you can go to the top of the temple, where you place the gem from the Essence of Order into Kanrethed's (got the name right this time) soul well. This summons him and begins what I have to imagine is the final boss fight of the scenario.

And this is where I have hit a wall for now.

The major feature of this fight is that he summons a Pit Lord, which you need to enslave in order to beat him. The guy uses a ton of different techniques and abilities, all of which are tough to deal with.

I'll give you more info when I beat it, but believe me, this is not an encounter to take lightly. It'd be nice if one could save one's progress here, but I think I've "solved" the Essence of Order fight.

Green Fire Part One!

Well, after camping out on the Isle of Thunder, my warlock Morcanis got his Tome of the Lost Legion, the item that begins the epic Green Fire warlock quest chain.

There are actually some big lore reveals and also some interesting nitty-gritty about the way that demons and fel power work, so if you're super spoiler-conscious, read no further. If you don't play a warlock, though, you won't get this elsewhere in-game, so you should take a look.

To begin with, you get the Tome and unlock it with a Healthstone (presumably this soulbinds it - if you've already done it or for some bizarre reason don't want to do the quest, you can sell it on the AH, but only Locks will see it drop.) You then need to summon your various demons and chat with them about just what the deal is with this book that you cannot read. Most of them don't have a clue, until one of them will tell you that it's written in a tongue the pre-dates the Legion.

As you might know, most demons were once completely other sorts of beings before Sargeras formed the Burning Legion. As far as we know, the Nathrezim (dreadlords) were the only confirmed demons pre-Sargeras' fall.

You go to your faction capital (I assume only SW or Org) and talk to the local head Warlock, who tells you to read "Legacy of the Masters" part 1. This thing has been there since 5.0 hit, and is a book that tells of the forming of the Circle of the Black Harvest, a group of Warlocks who decided that, in the face of a post-Cataclysm Azeroth, they needed to delve deeper into the secrets of their craft to continue doing their important and dark work. Incidentally, if we have a Legion-themed expansion (possibly the next one?) this would be a great faction to add.

To avoid just murdering each other (Warlocks, what can you do?) the group pairs them up, using the buddy system to make sure that they don't betray each other. Essentially, if you come back alone, they kill you and banish your soul to the Twisting Nether eternally, yadda yadda yadda.

So two such Warlocks head to Outland: Jubeka... something and Kanathred Ebonlocke. The Warlock trainer gives you Jubeka's journal, which actually gives you some insight into some of the new talents and abilities, such as how she discovered how to summon the new, powerful demons, or how to summon two at once, etc. You use hints in the journal to find various locations in Outland where there are soul shards to find. Doing so will reveal little cutscenes between the two Warlocks. In Netherstorm, we find that for some reason, even after the Legion and Illidan are gone from Outland, the Observers stay (and that summoning one is tough because they tend to just fly through space all the time, meaning they're hard to pinpoint.) In Blade's Edge, Kanathred's Doomguard reveals that his people were originally employed by the Titans to seek out people using sacrificial magic. Essentially, they're like drug-sniffing dogs that became druggies when they were let off the leash by Sargeras. Finally, in Shadowmoon Valley, Kanathred tells Jubeka to kill him should the power he's seeking overwhelm him.

With that, you can now head into the Black Temple to continue your pursuit.

Now, here I should point out that my Warlock is not particularly well geared. He's not even ready for LFR (though I'm now two points away.) There are boss fights in here that probably require a bit more power, so part two of this could take a little time.

You first need to get through the grand courtyard (no sewers for you!) and sneak past the various Ashtongue guards. Luckily, your Succubus/Shivarra have a handy crowd control ability that will let you waltz past them. The workers here will call out for help, but as long as you stay outside the red circle of a guard who's not CC'd, you'll be fine. Otherwise, you simply get stopped and sent back to the beginning.

After you get inside and attempt to take the Warlocks' scroll, Akama will come over and sap you, confronting you. If you talk to him, though, he'll realize you're not there to pillage the place (and may in fact recognize you from earlier - still need to do BT on Morcanis. Probably should before I complete this.) He gets the Ashtongue to give you free reign of the Temple and then leads you to the Reliquary of Souls.

To get there, you need to navigate a maze that's made of invisible traps. To get through, first unsummon your demon (and if you're Demonology, either switch specs or use the Imp Swarm glyph so you don't get a bunch of Wild Imps setting the traps off) and use your trusty old Eye of Kilrogg to scout the path before you walk it. I recommend taking it slow and taking out the ghosts you see there. Make sure to make a little room on your left for the Eye when you summon it, because it will also set off the traps.

Once you make it past the maze, you get another scene. It turns out that the Reliquary was how Illidan got so many demons to work for him. The place is a font of Arcane power that rivals the Sunwell. In another little cutscene, Kanathred explains that Illidan's demonic minions did not have the Fel green taint of the Burning Legion because this was his source of power.

After the scene, the Essence of Order appears and you must fight it. And this is where I've been unable to succeed so far.

The fight has three major aspects to it: The Essence will send waves of blue fire at you that stay on the ground for a while. They're easy enough to side-step, but you can get cornered. He will also do Hellfire, which deals a ton of damage and should be interrupted with a Felhunter/Observer. Finally, he'll summon a bunch of spirits to attack you that you need to AoE down quickly.

Last time I attempted this, I was iLevel 452. I'm now 458, but it's clearly a challenge. Self-healing is paramount here.

So far I'm loving this chain. I look forward to more of this kind of stuff in the future. But what class should get it next?

Last Stand of the Zandalari

The first wing of Throne of Thunder has unlocked for LFR, and so the first thing I did upon logging on today was to run it.

The first wing, as you might gather from the name, is all about Trolls. All three bosses are troll-based, and it's here that we see the Zandalari represent.

The trash (which we found rather tough on Normal, though the guild is way undergeared) before Jin'rokh is not too bad, though my co-tank was a little overeager, making it next to impossible to pick up anyone off him until he died, even with taunts. Did I mention how much Vengeance needs to be redesigned?

Jin'rokh the Breaker:
In case you're wondering, yes, this is the old Dire Troll guy from Yojamba Isle. I'd always held out hope that the Zandalari we had been friends with back in the day were actually still good guys, but it would seem that is not the case.

Jin'rokh is a simple fight, but not Patchwerk-simple. Essentially the whole thing is based on water and electricity. There are four statues that will get shattered over the course of the fight, and they'll create a big pool of water. Standing in this water gives you a boost to damage and healing, but it also makes you take more from his lightning attacks. Tanks will have to switch when the other gets Static Wound, because with the debuff they deal damage to the raid every time they take a hit. The damage decreases over time, but you'll still want to do some swapping. When he tosses one tank at a statue, he'll go to number two on his threat list, causing a kind of automatic tank swap.

He will also send balls of lightning at random raid members. Those who are targeted should run away from the raid, and seriously avoid doing two things: dropping an orb on the spot where another orb detonated, or bringing it into the water. Either of these things will do massive raid-wide damage.

Finally, the conductive pools of water eventually get electrified when he casts a Lightning Storm, so move out of them when that happens.

Trash before Horridon:

The trash here is actually one of the hardest parts of the wing, at least if you don't do it carefully. There are several bridges covered with gusting winds that will threaten to push you off and make casting spells nearly impossible. Do defeat the Mogu spirits floating above the bridge, simply pull them back to an area without wind. There is a Voodoo Golem about halfway through that does nasty tank damage (he sunders, so you probably are supposed to tank-swap, but given my co-tank...) Meanwhile, troll spirits hover above providing big spots of death that you should avoid.

Horridon:

Horridon himself is a giant Direhorn (triceratops) and is not terribly tricky. One tank grabs the dino while the other goes to the first of four open doors where Farraki, Gurubashi, Drakkari, and Amani trolls pour in. DPS and the second tank take on the first tribe of trolls until a Zandalari Dinomancer shows up. When he's down, anyone can click on the orb he drops to make Horridon crash into the currently open gate, stunning him and stopping the flow of that tribe of trolls.

The tanks now switch jobs to allow Horridon's debuff to fall off, and you alternate between the two until all four tribal gates are destroyed.

After that, War-God Jalak jumps down. The free tank picks him up and dps burns him down, and then it becomes a burn phase on Horridon until he's dead.

The one trick for Horridon is that he will do something called Double Swipe, where he swings his head and tail. There's a generous cast time on this, so everyone, including the tank, should run out of the way. Occasionally he'll charge a random raid member, and he always does Double Swipe after one of these.

Trash before Zandalari Council

The trash here isn't so bad. Essentially Gara'jal (from MSV) raises the dead trolls you kill so you have to fight them again.

Zandalari Council

There are four members of the Council - one of each of the major Troll tribes. I don't recall their names, but their tribes are pretty obvious, so I'll just go with those.

The Amani guy cannot be tanked, and just charges around hurting people. The Farraki guy will summon sand elementals that turn into sand puddles when they die, which will snare and eventually entrap you if you don't get out in time. The Gurubashi priestess summons spirit adds and might do some healing, but is fairly light on damage. Finally, the Drakkari guy needs to be traded between tanks as he puts on a debuff that eventually stuns the tank.

One tank picks up the Gurubashi while the other picks up the Farraki and they trade duty on the Drakkari.

Meanwhile, Gara'jal will possess one of the members at a time, empowering their abilities. DPS wants to focus on this one, because they will build power as long as they're possessed. To de-possess a member, you need to do 25% of their health in damage.

Unlike some council fights, these do not have a shared health pool, nor do they heal when another one dies, so cleaves and multi-dotting is a good idea here. Overall, it's a chaotic fight, but not terribly difficult.

Overall Impressions:

I'm really liking the place. Obviously, we've only just scratched the surface here, but especially once people get better used to the fights and geared up a little stronger, I expect this to be a lot of fun to run many a time.

Oh! And I got the Sand Elemental pet off the Council fight. It's really cool.

The Violet Rise... and Sunreaver Something-something

Well, after a full week of 5.2, my server has completed stage one. Thus, with a little solo-scenario-ing, we now have our permanent base set up on the island.

The use of Scenarios to do those "big moments" in a server-wide progression is, I think, inspired. One of the problems with a game like this is the fear of missing out. In Skyrim, for example, you don't have to worry about missing out on the big Alduin raid, because it's a solo endeavor that waits for you. I remember doing the Isle of Quel'danas way back in the day, and it was pretty cool to see parts of the island open up as we progressed. If there was a big event to mark that, I surely missed it.

I have not done the Horde version yet (though I suspect Area 52 finished Stage One a while ago) but the Alliance scenario has you and Vareesa Windrunner prepare to mount a huge assault on the troll stronghold of Shao'ola or whatever it's called. When most of your squad inevitably gets blown out of the sky, you and Vareesa 2-man the trolls, rampaging through the place and climaxing in a fight against a priest guy with an enchanted tiki mask and a mechanic reminiscent of the first stage of Jin'do the Godbreaker in Zul'Gurub 85.

With the fortress unlocked, a new round of dailies opens. It's not a huge amount, pretty much just stuff in the Diremoor area, but you can also choose to do the PvP dailies now, which send you against the Sunreavers (or vice versa - I try not to be faction-biased, but I've grown more and more Alliance-aligned over the years.) I suspect we'll still have our three other hubs, but this means that rep is going to be coming at us at fire-hose levels. Jarsus and Oterro are already revered, and with more dailies per day, plus the Grand Commendation, I suspect getting a new toon exalted here will be pretty quick (especially as more stages unlock.)

Tomorrow the first wing of Throne of Thunder unlocks on LFR, so my focus will be reading up on those fights.

I've got to say, this patch is looking to be one of the better ones in a very long time. The gating does not feel as restrictive as it was at the Molten Front, and the solo scenarios could mean wonderful, fantastic things for the future (remember me talking about solo dungeon content in the past?)

Shiny New Unannounced Feature

There seems to be a developing tradition among final patches in expansions. 3.3 brought us the Dungeon Finder, 4.3 brought us the Raid Finder, and it looks like 5.4 (or 5.5 or whatever winds up being Mists' last one) is going to bring us... something.

But we do actually have a bit of information, in that hints have been dropped. The thing is, WoW is by far the biggest and also one of the longest-lived MMOs out there (I believe Everquest is still up, which is where a lot of the older veterans of my guild started out.) The point is, there's a ton of content. Altogether, excluding those that have been shut down (and counting revamped ones as a single raid) there are twenty-nine raids in the game, with at least one more coming during Mists. And if you think that's something, consider that there are seventy-two 5-man dungeons.

When Burning Crusade was first released, I was a wee newbie, with hardly a character above level 30, walking around in "of the wolf" gear. I had heard about these new things called "heroic dungeons," which were lower-level dungeons re-tuned for level 70 (the max level at the time. Keep up, people.) What I thought was that this would apply to all the dungeons, but instead it only applied to BC-era ones, which in retrospect was fairly reasonable.

The new feature they're teasing us with is supposed to open up a lot of old content for players who are already at the cutting edge (or really just current.) Obviously, there are a numerous ways this could be applied, but here's a concept:

We know that Blizzard can futz with our iLevels, lowering them for challenge modes or even just testing on the PTR. We also know that they can futz with the iLevels of individual pieces of gear, thanks to the since-removed upgrade Ethereals.

So here's a radical idea: what if they could simply scale a dungeon and all of its rewards up to the max level?

Let's propose a fourth difficulty level for dungeons (or a third for raids,) a kind of "throwback heroic" difficulty. What this would mean is that the dungeon scales up to your level, and all the loot that drops off the bosses becomes the iLevel of whatever heroic dungeons ought to be dropping during the current expansion (so 463 today.)

This would vastly expand the options for people who might be tired of running the same nine dungeons over and over (though I have yet to get tired of the new Scholomance - love that place.) It also means you could pick up things like that trinket from ICC25 that turned you into a Vrykul and have it actually work well at level 90.

Even without the upgrading of loot off those instances, the ability to power yourself down and see the place as it was meant to be seen would be fantastic. It's pretty seriously hard to get ten level 70 people together to hit up Karazhan, and in fact, given the way talents, abilities, and mastery has shifted around, many people would not have a complete toolkit to be serious raiders at that level anymore. With a system like this, you could toss down your Hammer of Light to round up those dancing ghosts outside of Moroes' chamber.

One of the traditions my guild has is the old-school run. Back when we were a regular raiding guild (the glory days of ICC - a main run and an alt run each week) we did old-school runs every week, hitting up an old raid from the BC or Classic era just to see the place. It was great, because otherwise I'd have not been able to see those places until 5.1 lifted the requirement to be in a raid group in order to enter one. It also meant those bosses with mechanics that just plain needed multiple people would go down just as easy.

If the new feature is anything like what I described, it will make for an even better version of the old-school raid, in that you'll actually be able to experience the boss mechanics, rather than killing things in a matter of seconds.

Of course, the new feature could be totally different, so who knows?

First Impressions of the Isle of Thunder

Well, 5.2 has now dropped. We still don't have Throne of Thunder via LFR yet, so the main event is yet to come (except for those who are actually ready to run a new raid on normal the first week of a patch.)

First of all, the island itself: I adore the place. It has that great spooky Gilneas/Darkmoon Isle vibe that Blizzard is really good at pulling off. Likewise, the new Zandalari troll models and overall style is fantastic - we've seen the various Troll Tribe stuff, but until now they've mainly looked somewhat ruined or worn down - the Zandalari have brought what the real troll empires ought to look like to the island.

The load of daily quests is somewhat large, but unlike Golden Lotus, you can switch up the order in which you complete them. Getting around the island, or really getting onto the island is a bit of a challenge because you have to go through the Troll area to do so, but you have quests there every day, so you'll be going there anyway. Once Stage 1 ends, we'll have hubs more conveniently placed, so while it's kind of cool hanging out on Jaina's ship, it'll be cooler to have a Kirin Tor base.

I've been able to run the Trove of the Thunder King twice now, once on Jarsus and once on Oterro. It's clear that at least for your first couple trips, you won't be able to get a ton out of it, but rewards I have come across include tons of Elder Charms (as we move out of the 5.0 raids, these are getting other uses) and a number of things to boost rep gains and valor points.

Right now my focus is on Jarsus (who finally got a 10th - and 11th - sigil of power in MSV, so hopefully he'll eventually get back on track with the Legendary chain. Still no Sha-touched weapon though.)

I'll be very curious to see the other parts of the island, but it will still be a couple more days to get the Kirin Tor (and Sunreaver) town, after which stage 3 I believe will open up the upper levels.

Life Still in those 5.0 LFR Raids + a little ranting about Subtlety Rogues

I finally got my Undead Rogue, Darsino, up to LFR-levels, through a combination of finally realizing that I could replace those crappy boots of his simply by running the Sha of Anger once, dolling out over three and a half thousand gold for a new dagger, and getting really lucky on the aforementioned Sha and getting the normal-mode tier 14 gloves (I actually got the PvP gloves as the first drop, but decided to chance one of my three precious Charms.) So actually he's leapfrogged Ardten to become my #3 toon, but much as Jarsus and Oterro have been kind of jockeying this expansion, I expect Ardten and Darsino will do so as well (poor Tarbhad hasn't even run a heroic yet.)

Anyway, while the big news is that come tomorrow morning, 5.2 will be dropping, the LFR version of the raid will only open its first wing a week later. I'm as anxious as everyone to start downing some Mogu (or as the case may be, Trolls) right as the patch is released, but it looks like we're going to have a week to kill before we can start to scratch the surface of the raid (unless you have an actual raiding guild, which sadly mine does not seem to be these days - I partially blame myself, as I am a guild officer.)

This is actually good news for a guy who just barely got two toons geared for MSV, and needs to get them running to gear up. Hopefully we won't see a ridiculous jump in LFR queue times for the older raids, but if Blizz really wants alts and latecomers to gear up through LFR, they'd better have a plan if no one runs them anymore.

The rest of this post is me-stuff, if you're not interested in that.

It feels good to finally have Darsino on the road to better gear. He hit revered with Dominance Offensive today and he's done the first branch of MSV (no dagger yet from the first boss.) I'm committed to keeping Darsino specced as Sub this expansion, because it is my dream to see Sub work well, and I can't really see how well it works if I reforge and enchant for Assassination. I really do think Blizzard needs to examine the Rogue in a serious way. They've said they don't think it needs a Warlock-level revamp, but I disagree. This class is dying out, and if we ever get Demon Hunters (and yes, I do hope we do some day) they're going to be seriously endangered.

The things I'm noticing while playing on the rogue is that there's a lot of times when I think I can do something, but I can't yet. You might have enough energy for something, but then you won't have enough combo points, or sometimes it's the other way around. This would not be such a bad thing if finishing moves were simpler.

For example, on Oterro (and I realize that Frost DKs are not a terribly difficult spec to play) the biggest decision I have to make constantly is whether to hit Obliterate or Frost Strike when I have Killing Machine up. Sometimes, the runes for an Obliterate are right about to come up, and in that case I wait. But if my runes are all down, and I'm sitting on some runic power, I'll waste the proc on my Frost Strike to keep the momentum going, hopefully getting a Runic Empowerment proc, which will of course then feed me more runes and thus more Runic Power, etc.

On Darsino, first of all, I have a couple things to establish at the beginning - I need to Ambush out of Stealth for the Expose Weakness debuff, then I need to get Slice and Dice running for the Energy it provides Subtlety, then I need to get Rupture up for Sanguinary Vein, and then I need to squeeze in as many Eviscerates as I can before I need to refresh again. The durations of Rupture and Slice and Dice are such that they often fall off at the same time, so maybe I need to refresh them earlier or something. I don't know.

But we're not finished. Subtlety is also all about using Shadow Dance and Vanish to get more Ambushes in there (for the Expose Weakness, not to mention the damage from Ambush) and also get Shadow Power, which increases damage done while in Stealth and for a few seconds after breaking it.

OH, and don't let me forget - you have to be behind the target at all times because Backstab is your main CP generator. (But you also have to weave Hemorrhage in there even if you are behind them to keep that extra bleed ticking.)

Believe it or not, this is a simpler version than what we had in Cataclysm, where you had to maintain Recuperate as well, but while a little bit of juggling is ok, I think they have got to cut Subtlety some slack somewhere.

Barring some radical redesign (and frankly, it might not be a bad idea,) there are a couple things that could be done to make the spec less absurdly difficult to play well:

1. Do something about Backstab - I know Rogues Do It From Behind, but this positioning thing leaves you at the mercy of your tank and fight mechanics. Any time the boss spins around to cast a spell on a random person, your rotation (which as we just showed, is pretty damned complex) is interrupted. The most obvious but also most radical shift would be to rename it "Stab" and hopefully give it some mechanical difference to Sinister Strike so we don't have to use Sinister Strike. (Combat Rogues - go play a Warrior, amirite?) Dagger requirement! There we go.

2. Simplify Finishers - Assassination get to refresh their Slice and Dice to full with each Envenom. We should get a way to refresh either that or Rupture easily. I'd say every Eviscerate refreshes Rupture to its 5-point duration, plus a redesign that has Rupture's various combo-point levels only affect duration and not damage. With only Slice and Dice and Eviscerates, there's a lot more freedom to focus on the more interesting aspects of the spec.

3. Do something about Shadow Power - Vanish ought to be an escape or deception mechanism. You disappear, and then you can either flee, enjoy the drop in threat (not so much of an issue these days) or get a quick on-demand use of your openers while your enemies can't see you. It feels wrong to be blowing Vanish on cooldown in a boss fight, so I'd prefer they have something else proc Shadow Power, or perhaps allowing Shadow Dance to trigger it as well (though this starts to make Expose Weakness redundant. Is that such a bad thing?)

Now, I realize most of these things would make the spec more powerful, but all that would need is just a simple numbers nerfing.

I doubt Blizzard would implement all of these, even though I think the spec deserves all three, but I do hope that come the next expansion, when they see how low Rogue numbers have dropped, they'll really give the class a re-tooling like they did with Warlocks. Rogues used to be the most badass class in the game, and the underlying flavor of them remains pretty stone cold. Throw in a bit of decent Rogue lore (if that World of Cold Warcraft situation comes about, there'd be tons of potential for spy stuff) and most important: make the class easier to play.

Meanwhile, I'm happy to report that my Death Knight is absolutely destroying, and he's a lot of fun to play.