dark spot in the corner

A tank’s blog, mostly…

So. It’s live. I had not yet the time to try everything out, but enough to make some first wild and unsophisticated guesses and assumptions.

Magister’s Terrace

The Magister’s Terrace is very fun and fresh. It’s new, it’s shiny and it’s challenging. My healing gear is quite potent, but if you are new to a dungeon you recognize one thing quickly: It’s not so much about the gear, it’s about experience. The better you know a dungeon, the easier it will be to heal. The bosses, and the trash as well, will give you a nice ride if you don’t know them. Be on your toes and try to absorb any scrap of information that is handed out to you. It’s worth it.

We managed to finish the non-heroic version in about 100 minutes. Not very fast, but we had our fair share of wipes. We managed to one-shot all bosses except Vexallus. Out first two attempts on him had our 3 melee DPS stick too close together, resulting in very hefty damage spikes due to his Chain Lightning ability.

We had a semi-wipe on Kael’Thas, too. As soon as phase 2 started our group did not manage to stay away from the orbs and everyone but me died in short order. Kael’Thas was sitting at 45% and only the holy priest was left standing… err floating. However, in phase 2, there is nearly no unpreventable damage going around. You can easily avoid the spheres and the DoT applied to everyone ticks only for 300 damage. I managed to stay away from the orbs, and my Renew kept me at full health. I tried to uphold a Shadow Word: Pain on Kael’Thas all the time and put a Smite to him whenever possible. Luckily, Mashus released her Spirit and walked into the dungeon again. She was ported to Kael’Thas on the next Gravity Lapse, and we were able to finish him a lot faster.

Chat & Combat Log

I like the ability to link raid icons into the chat. Sadly it is not parsed server-side, but client-side. This means, if someone types {circle}, everyone with a german client will just see that. If I remember correctly, there is some universal syntax like {rt3} or so. I have to look a bit deeper I guess.

The ability to link spells and quests into the chat is very very good. I absolutely adore it. Very handy, especially if you, like me, use an English client to play on a german realm.

The new combat log seems to be a bit buggy. It’s very good. I see the potential. But having it scroll through walls of text every time you change your filter settings is very annoying and limits it’s usage. Fix this and I’m happy.

Daily Quests

The raise of the cap up to 25 daily quests is a very nice change, and surely a wise one with so many new dailies available. I did them only once (and not yet everyone), but the are not very complicated or time consuming. A fast flying mount is a huge plus, as you need to travel the outland quite a lot. Some of those dailies will reward you with Shattered Sun Supplies. These containers have a chance of containing a single Badge of Justice. So, you are able to acquire Badge Gear by doing solo quests. It will take abnormally long and require luck, but it’s possible. A nice change in my book. This will dedicate a lot of players to doing the dailies, I guess.

The new fishing daily quests are very nice, too. I’ve done two of them so far, and neither were painful or tiring to do. Contrary to leveling up that secondary Trade Skill. *grumbles*

Raids

We were able to assemble a Raid on Gruul’s Lair just yesterday. The increased cash reward is nice. Even better to have 2 Badges of Justice for everyone and an additional T4 to hand out. Nice changes. Makes raiding worthwhile for everyone even if no other loot can be acquired.