Patch 3.2 Gems You Might've Missed

[Maticus]

I've just had a good read through the Patch notes and here are some things I think are just awesome but have flown under the radar:


The local Postal Service has grown tired of walking so far each day to collect mail and has decided to install a large number of new mailboxes to Stormwind, Undercity, Darnassus and Orgrimmar.
When standing at a capture point that you control, you will gain a buff called Honorable Defender. This buff grants +50% honor gained from kills. This currently affects Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm and Isle of Conquest.
There is a now a 20-minute timer on Warsong Gulch. After that time, the team with the most flag captures wins. If this would result in a tie, the team that captured the first flag wins. If neither side has captured a flag, then the game ends in a tie.
Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.
The Heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph.
Druids will now be able to see their mana bars when shape-shifted.
Quest creatures and objects will now show on the player's world map.
The quest log is now double-paned for more easily viewing quest information.
Vendor prices will now be listed on items whether or not players are at a vendor.


I know there will be QQs about some if it :P

What are your highlights of this patch? Need a reminder? Check the full patch notes here (http://wow.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=422068).

[Tater]

"Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism."

So we will get T8 gear badges from Naxx and Heroics now? That seems weird.

[elsegundo]

"Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism."

So we will get T8 gear badges from Naxx and Heroics now? That seems weird.

wait.... what??? this is friggin awesome... but it also makes it that much easier for people to get great gear also. it does sound wrong to me as well.

[triplex]

wait.... what??? this is friggin awesome... but it also makes it that much easier for people to get great gear also. it does sound wrong to me as well.

That's moronic. What will they do next? Give you ability to get full geared lvl 80 character at charcter creation?

I hope this change is only on test realms to make testing easier and wont go live.

[det]

Triplex, take a deep breath. I am decked out in Ulduar 25 gear and I still don't mind the badge change. Why is that?

-I had fun aquiring my gear and I have seen great content. Somebody else now gets part of the gear by running daily heroics until he is blue in the face. Not my idea of fun.
-The new badge system allows to easily gear players that we need to recruit as replacements for raiders that quit. They can work at that gear themselves or in PuGs. My guild doesn't need to babysit and do gearing runs for them.
-Bad players will still be bad in great gear and will not pass raid trials.
-I love gearing my alts as I never know which of them will be raiding next
-I play for my own fun, and couldn't care less if somebody else gets gear one tier below mine easily
-Fail guilds also are still fail guilds. We have guilds who are geared for Naxx 25 and cannot do it due to general raid incompetence (see "Bad players will still be bad in great gear")

See...you always seem to assume Mr Übern00b who never raided suddenly can buy a full T 8 set and cut in to take a piece of the action - but rather people who want to raid, but took a break / had RL issues / had guild issues / always missed out on one or two pieces can now easily gear up and catch up.

[Bancduese]

Aye, what Det said...

[Maticus]

Aye, what Det said...

Spot on. I love what US community manager, Zarhym, said about the outrage too:

I left out the patch note that says we're just giving tier-8 gear to everyone for downloading the patch. That's my bad.

[Bancduese]

LOL, now that "would" make patch day interesting, wouldn't it...

[Shellar]

A couple of things to keep in mind:

1. Conquest gear can only fill 5 slots out of 17 (6 if you're willing to buy Runed Orbs for crafted boots). In particular, weapons and trinkets - which arguably have the greatest impact on one's performance - are not available via Conquests. In other words, you'll still have to run Ulduar if you want to get prepared for Colliseum's hard modes.

2. In TBC, people could stockpile badges for months before the patch went live and turn them in en masse when the vendor became available. On other hand, Heroics/Naxx/Ulduar10 won't start dropping Conquests until 3.2, and we won't be able to exchange existing Heroisms/Valors for them, so there's no way to cheat the system by excessive early grinding.

[rgirty]

I'm not sure why there is so much QQ over the badges. If you haven't figured it out by now this is the blizzard strategy.

New gear/content. Tougher to get.

When a new patch comes with new tier gear guess what?

Old tier gear becomes much easier to obtain, because of course there is new tier gear.


How else is a new player supposed to level to 80 and get ready for say, 3.2 Colosseum content? If no one is doing naxx or ulduar because they are old raids how does this player gear up?

Blizzard just game them a way by allowing them to gear from the heroism/valor/conquest badge tables by simply running daily heroics. They will also be able to slowly obtain triumph emblems and gear from that table by running the daily normal and heroic dungeons.

I believe this will be a great asset to people trying to gear up their alts and or mains and catch up to a progression guild.

I have a friend who had to take a break from the game, he isn't geared enough to join us in ulduar yet, however after 3.2 he will be able to quickly gain gear and bring him into our current progression.

[prion]

>>Quest creatures and objects will now show on the player's world map.

this is really insulting.
there's no role anymore. it's dead. the game is just an item hunt.
they may as well go ahead and allow race and class changes.

[rgirty]

>>Quest creatures and objects will now show on the player's world map.

this is really insulting.
there's no role anymore. it's dead. the game is just an item hunt.
they may as well go ahead and allow race and class changes.


I see it as thus:

Blizzard reviews the most popular wow addons and views them as features players would like to see in the game.

Vent/teamspeak, attempted in game chat (poorly, but its there) Check

Outfitter? Check

Doublewide? (enhanced quest double pane window) Check

Chatmod/prat (coloring of class names in chat, ie paladins being pink) Check

Price of vendor items AH enhancements (some of auctioneer functionality)? Check

Atlas style addons for dungeon maps? Check

Questhelper style of pointing to the quest objectives? Check.




They are simply providing by default many of the options that players go out and use which are provided by 3rd party addons.

[det]

The maturity and argumentation of this place is always refreshing to behold. Just back from checking mmo-c and I feel I need a bath.

Unfortunately that place seems to generate a lot more traffic and posts in the forums - which means too many people just seems to need their daily aggrevation....

[clevins]

I see it as thus:

Blizzard reviews the most popular wow addons and views them as features players would like to see in the game.
...
They are simply providing by default many of the options that players go out and use which are provided by 3rd party addons.

Yeah. what a waste of time. That's the point of HAVING an addon capability - to allow people to add features so you don't have to. Bringing it into the native feature set is duplicating work and usually half assed. Outfitter is still FAR better than the ingame equivalent and if I didn't like the way it worked I'd switch to one of the other addons. If I don't like the ingame version... i'd do the same thing - which means the work was wasted.

If they have people dedicated to the client features fix guild banks to make ninjaing harder, the guild managment UI, etc.

[rgirty]

Yeah. what a waste of time. That's the point of HAVING an addon capability - to allow people to add features so you don't have to. Bringing it into the native feature set is duplicating work and usually half assed. Outfitter is still FAR better than the ingame equivalent and if I didn't like the way it worked I'd switch to one of the other addons. If I don't like the ingame version... i'd do the same thing - which means the work was wasted.

If they have people dedicated to the client features fix guild banks to make ninjaing harder, the guild managment UI, etc.

I understand your point here.

But it seems to me their idea of having addon capability provides an external research team free of charge to develop ideas that get installed into the game itself at a later date.

I know numerous people who swear by outfitter, however I know at least a few people who do a simple gear change when doing daily quests that now use the in game functionality instead of outfitter.

The reason the other changes with guild management/bank aren't getting fixed is probably because it takes some work.

Kinda like dropping through the world any time you use a speed boost on the numerous ramps in ulduar on the way to FL. Really, how does something like that get out of testing? Do they not have anyone that tried the first boss and wanted to take more than 45 seconds to get up a ramp?

[prion]

with most of those there's an option to turn it off. If they give me the same option with the handholding feature then i'll still play.

[rgirty]

with most of those there's an option to turn it off. If they give me the same option with the handholding feature then i'll still play.

I'm sure there will be an option.

I once read a post by someone on this very board who wanted to turn off every option that enhanced the game at all he wanted it to be almost like a real world first person adventure.

He played in first person in what is commonly referred to as screen shot mode.

[Cattleya]

I'm not thrilled about the badge thing. I think Blizzard was going the right direction with the tiered badges. I think the biggest issue I have with it was I really really really got to hate Kara. I like that the current setup doesn't force me into Naxx 10 and endless heroic runs every week. Sure, it's great for alts and such, unless of course your main is a healer. In that case you will have to bring your main and let your alt rot in quest rewards. (No, this change won't ruin the game, but at least for me, I see the poroblems outweighing the benefits.)

If they want to consolidate badges a bit, I'd rather see all of the heroic/T7 10 mans upgraded to Valor, and the 25 man stuff upgraded to Conq. Bascially, just shift everything up a "teir" in badges. It keeps the low end from falling too far behind without risking the "BT gear from Kara" issue.

The 20 minute WSG thing makes me kinda sad too. I remember some 90 minute games that just felt epic. I understand that most people really don't like those games, but 20 minutes seems too short for an upper limit. I remember some excellent premade games that went 30 minutes or so. Games where both sides were using strategy, trying to outplay each other, and where it ended 2 caps to 3. It felt like what PvP should be. I can't see that being as possible with a 20 minute timer. I'd be much happier with 30-45 minutes as the upper limit.

[rgirty]

The badge thing also makes me think that there will be a bigger content patch late in the year and blizzard is trying to avoid a sunwell incident by allowing people an easier gear path than kara/ssc/tk pre 2.4, its not like MH was dripping with gear a lot of guilds even went the badge route instead of MH..

Perhaps that is what is going on here?

[LunarSolaris]

I like the proposed changes, and I agree with Det's previous statement about it. With people being able to buy T8 (keep in mind that unless they change the amount of pieces you can buy... you can only buy TWO pieces - the head and chest), it's not like people running heroics and lower level raids will be able to fully equip with Ulduar level gear. They will be able to gain a few pieces though, and it really helps lower level toons to become a bit more viable to get into a raid environment given gear gaps.

In the end, the objectors are mostly just QQ'ing unecessarily. Many people just like to cry for the sake of doing just that...

[rgirty]

My guild really isn't that advanced in the least, yet we have people taking t8 pieces for off-spec already. Most in the raid have the two piece head/chest and we have quite a few people with the 4 piece.

Honestly, running VoA each week 10/25 man is the easiest way to get t8/t8.5. That is easier than collecting badges imo.

[clevins]

VoA is a luck thing. For a long time I got crap in there... then I got both sets of T7 pants in one run (only priest on 10 man).

rigirty - if you have people taking T8 for offspec your guild IS that advanced. Sorry, but that means you have the Keepers on farm and have for a while.

The thing about collecting badges is this - it's not luck based. My guild only runs 10s and we're in the Keepers with Thorim down and Freya close. We run 2-3 nights a week. That means 1-2 T8 pieces per week for the entire raid. Contrast that with the 3.2 alternative - we could take a week off Ulduar, run a lot of heroics during raid times and get the 58 badges for a T8 piece on everyone in the raid. Do that for 2 weeks and we have all 10 people in the raid in 2 pc T8. Add in a night to clear the farm bosses in Ulduar and you'll have more loot plus those badges. Now, we may be far ahead of this when 3.2 is live, so who knows if it will be worth it by then.. but if it dropped right now, that's what I'd do.

Do I MIND this....? Not really. For example my DK alt will be able to gear up much much faster. Do I think it's odd to take the badges that are currently only available from the 25 man version of the cutting edge raid and 10 man hard modes and make them available for running heroic Nexus? Yeah, I do.

[Wintrow]

Nice example

My boomkin turned 80 recently. I have a couple of selected quest blues, two crafted/world drop epics and i'm still not capable of running Naxx25 (according to be imba). I still need a low level trinket to get to the hit cap.

This will bump me up a notch so I can join my guildies who are doing Naxx25 and Ulduar10 atm.

[Shellar]

VoA is a luck thing.
All non-badge loot is a luck thing, to be honest. In 10-man Ulduar group, Protector tokens drop 9 times as often as Vanquisher and Conqueror do (probably because we have only 1 hunter, and 0 shamans/warriors).

My boomkin turned 80 recently. I have a couple of selected quest blues, two crafted/world drop epics and i'm still not capable of running Naxx25 (according to be imba). I still need a low level trinket to get to the hit cap.

This will bump me up a notch so I can join my guildies who are doing Naxx25 and Ulduar10 atm.
1. BeImba is not really an accurate measure of one's readiness.
2. I recommend heavily focusing on Wintergrasp, then; you can acquire a ilvl213 trinket with 95 hit rating for just 25 WG marks.

[clevins]

All non-badge loot is a luck thing, to be honest. In 10-man Ulduar group, Protector tokens drop 9 times as often as Vanquisher and Conqueror do (probably because we have only 1 hunter, and 0 shamans/warriors).

Lord, don't I know. Killed KT on 10 and 25 last night... did the T7 Conquerer helm token drop on either? Noooo....

The more I think about this change, the more I like it, though I still think it's really odd to move the emblems from Ulduar 25 all the way to heroic 5s. But I won't have to try to farm KT25 etc for a stinking helm upgrade... I'll run some heroics and a naxx, then go buy the T8 helm - for both specs. If the purpose of raiding for someone is loot, I can see this pissing them off... but I just want to see the content.

[rgirty]

rigirty - if you have people taking T8 for offspec your guild IS that advanced. Sorry, but that means you have the Keepers on farm and have for a while.

I should have stated that head/chest pieces are going to offspec because most if not all of our players have the two piece combo either from badges or looting one piece from hodir/thorim in 25 man.

We've only downed through hodir/thorim on 25, however we do have all 4 keepers down on the 10 man.

In my mind this really isn't advanced as we're only ranked around the 25th guild on our server.

As far as the badges for tier 8.5 go, its a good thing. Clevins sites a good example, and honestly it won't just be non-raiders getting the pieces. We have 4-5 druids in most of our raids (i know, its a lot) and even if their tier piece drops every other week you are looking at 10 weeks if they go to druids only, which they won't as there is a lot of other competition.

I really do think it is a wise move, rewards those who spend time at the keyboard which is what this game is all about.

[Cattleya]

Ah, random loot...

I never did get my T7.5 gloves. Stupid Sarth. (I also think Mimeron has dropped double Protector for at least 3 weeks in a row now.) For the last 3-4 weeks, the only fragment we've seen is the 100% drop from Yogg. There are guilds still working on keepers with more fragments than us.

For that reason, I really liked the ability to buy tokens with the appropriate badges. It gives you a non-random path you can follow to get tier gear. Also, while you can't get a 4 piece T8 bonus just from the badge available tokens, the fact that they switch up who drops what token between 10 and 25 man means it's easier to get the set bonus. Your guild may not be able to kill Yogg in 25 man for the T8.5 shoulders, but 10-man Thorim may be a lot more accessible.

As I've already stated though, I don't like the badge changes. I can certainly recognize where I benefit. Runed Orbs have already dropped in price on my server, and it will be a lot easier to keep my DK in more current gear. I just found that one of the nice things about the tiered badges was that once I was done with a piece of content, I was done with it. I have no desire to run Naxx 10 every week until it's time to level to 90.

[Wintrow]

I want to add that I've been no-reading this topic for a while because I thought it was about Jewelcrafting-gems in 3.2. Then I got REALLY bored and thought "what the heck" and it was actually quite interesting!

And yes, I'll be getting into WG a bit more. Hopefully I'll be able to flow into a VoA run right after...

[rgirty]

Has anyone gave any thought of how the badge changes are going to cause the issue of "all instances full, try again later" to be even worse?

Conquest emblems in 5 mans = a lot more people running 5 mans.

How many times will people wait 20 mins for an instance until something is done?

surely blizz has thought of this and has a fix for 3.2

[Shellar]

Here's a wonderful change that I overlooked at first:

"Flying over Dalaran and Wintergrasp is now possible so long as players keep a healthy distance above the ground."

[Maticus]

Here's a wonderful change that I overlooked at first:

"Flying over Dalaran and Wintergrasp is now possible so long as players keep a healthy distance above the ground."

I hope, for Blizzard's own sake, that the instances issue will have a solution either in place or lined up by BlizzCon, because the developers will be in for an ear bashing from the crowd if not.

[elsegundo]

That's moronic. What will they do next? Give you ability to get full geared lvl 80 character at charcter creation?

I hope this change is only on test realms to make testing easier and wont go live.

i thought about this some more. my conclusion? you should really think harder before you speak/type/whatever. but thats just my opinion.

anyway. i really am looking forward to the patch. it really does seem counter-intuitive at first, but it will keep a lot of people chasing that carrot bliz always puts out.

[Peter]

That's moronic. What will they do next? Give you ability to get full geared lvl 80 character at charcter creation?

I hope this change is only on test realms to make testing easier and wont go live.


whoa chill out there buddy, im in full uldar gear too and i don't mind

having more poeple in tier8 gear = selling more enchanting mats so I say . .bring it on!!