All Things Gaming
Sometimes you’re looking for a new look for your characters and just have no luck thinking of something to wear. Well, never fear, because… well, I’m here, metaphorically speaking. I’m going through a toon by toon process of my transmog in a new weekly article. Today: The Paladin. (more…)
Have you ever wondered why exactly you need to collect 8 random flowers or kill 10 gnolls/troggs/wolves/etc? Do you know why you killed Malygos? Or the guardians of ulduar? Or all those orcs in Hellfire Ramparts over and over again? Sometimes I wonder about these things. For Lich King content, since that is when I really started raiding and doing instances, I’m pretty aware why I’m killing most of the bosses I’ve been sent to dispatch. On the other hand, while leveling or questing, I pretty much take the quest and read just enough to glean what I’m supposed to be doing and start doing it. I have almost no idea why I’m in most of the pre-70 instances. Most players probably don’t care the reason they are questing, the ones who might care that they are out doing “good” assume that the quest givers, being friendly NPCs, are good and want the best for the world. This isn’t the case everytime. Sometimes, the results of the meddling of we adventurers can cause pretty disastrous things.
I really enjoy the faction pairs that let us choose which side we’re killing and which side we’re helping. In Sholazar Basin, we get to choose between the Frenzyheart Tribe and the Oracles. At first you do quests back and forth between the two and are eventually faced with choosing. Although some may like to get exalted with both (and I hear there is some way of doing that, not sure how), I like that we at least get a choice. Elsewhere in Northrend we get pitted by the Kalu-ak against local wolvar. As far as I know, there isn’t an option. You either help slay wolvar and generally mess up their business (including stealing their pups) or skip the quest area. Who says those Kalu’ak are the ones deserving our considerable services? You might have sided with a tribe of wolvar in sholazar and would like to be able to do the same here? No such luck my friends.
As I mentioned before, some of our deeds done through our relentless questing for knowledge, glory, and topping the meters can have dire consequences. There’s a series of low-level quests involving morrowgrain. *Minor spoils incoming*. I can’t recall if it is revealed in-game what these quests do, but through reading about the Stormrage novel, I learned these herbs we were gathering we being used to poison Malfurion (the leader of the Night Elf Druids, general bad-ass, and savior of the world). Yet we blindly chose to gather and turn in. What else might our actions have cost us? One theory is that it may have cost us…the entire world (of warcraft). *Sort of spoilers incoming*. The titans that shaped Azeroth into a world of life an order battled the Old Gods and although beat them, knew they were too integrated into the world to be removed without harming or destroying it. Cosmic beings of immense power knew better than to kill an Old God, but what did we do? We killed Yogg Saron in Ulduar. Yes it was a Monster that has spread is influence and corrupted people, creatures, and even the ground itself possibly all over Azeroth, but maybe it was also part of the fabric of that world. Maybe killing Yogg Saron destabilized Azeroth. Are all these events going on in-game now with elementals invading caused by Deathwing just preparing to come out. Or is Deathwing taking the opportunity caused by the after effects of our meddling?
So be it kidnapping Wolvar pups, gathering deadly herbs, or killing beings integral to Azeroths survival, us players, adventures, continue to press on with blind faith that we’re fighting the good fight. Or maybe it doesn’t matter cause, hey, at least we got the lootz.
I didn’t too much max level content last night with the exception of a couple of weekly quests for some Justice points. I do have some thoughts relating to that, but I’ll get to it at the end of this post.
Lowbies are OP
You read that right. Low level characters are crazy over powered right now. I’m going to extend this to all the ones I played with or encountered last night; warlocks, priests, warriors, rogues, shaman, and especially paladins. On my warlock I queued up with a priest healer friend of mine and we tore up 7-8 instances last night. As healer, the priest was completely bored the entire time for lack of anything to do. All the runs were fast paced chain pulls and he barely had to drop an occasional bubble or renew. As a lock, I could pull ahead of the tank and eat the aggro without worry because most mobs would die before they ever got to me. Keep in mind, we’re not overgeared, twinked or even using heirloom gear. At level 22 we have only 1 ring each, no trinkets, no shoulders, no head-piece, and I’m using a melee dagger cause I’ve gotten nothing better from our chain runs. I do 100 dps at level 20 in destro. My immolate DoT can crit for 150+ and the initial damage has hit for 250. I’ve seen over 300 damage hits from my Searing Pain spell (which I can make automatic crits with my soul shards ability).
So Define ‘Overpowered’
One of our runs had a pally tank in full heirloom gear. I say tank because of the role but he was running in ret gear/spec. At level 20 he was averaging between 200-250dps. His Templars verdict ability that uses his holy power never hit for under 700. I saw it hit over 1100, almost one shot an elite mob and easily enough to one shot anyone in the group. I think being able to do 50-100% of a potential PVP enemy’s health in one move is overpowered. Of course, the priest with me could do 50% of our best geared tanks health in one crit. The relatively geared rogues in our groups between levels 16-18 were already doing 100 dps and could do finishers for 250+, or half of their health. Each instance, be the characters geared in heirlooms or mixed questing greens, was a mad chain pull with no deaths or wipes or breaks needed. We plain destroyed the content. Admittedly, it’s possible that every player in all the groups were total pro’s with 8 alts they’ve run through the content before, but that seems unlikely. More likely, is with the new level 10 talents and bonuses for picking a spec, lowbies are just OP compared to level appropriate content.
Outside of the instances, a level 1o shaman wearing heirloom gear that dueled me could do half of my level 18 health in 2 globals. Fortunately I didn’t lose, but a level 10 who can do 175 damage earth shocks is pretty intense.
Maybe it isn’t just low levels
Last night I joined a random group to do the weekly quest which was XT-002 The Deconstructor. This of course required us to do the vehicle boss fight vs Flame Leviathan. FL, as it has been for months, was terribly easy even with half of the players hardly doing anything. My issue comes up on our fight with XT. For those who don’t know the fight, there is periodically a phase where his “heart” is exposed and if you kill the heart during its timer, hardmode is triggered. Here we have a group that had enough gear to easily kill the heart, a feat which was considered a gear check at the time it was relevant because of the high dps required to do it, yet lacked the skill or experience to know they shouldn’t kill the heart. With gear inflation and boosts from talent points and scaling recently we’re able to hit harder and do more damage than our skill would otherwise represent. After the group killed the heart, even with at least one dps (myself) stopping and possibly another, the hardmode easily bested us as only two people there had any idea what the mechanics were at that point. Sounds like a case of “with great power comes great responsibility”. The characters are more powerful than the players know how to handle or when to slow down.