Blizz Needs This Pre-Patch

Blizz Needs This Pre-Patch

I started this post right after the pre-patch went live and I had a number of issues. However, now that a couple of days have gone by things are starting to settle in. Java and Chaitee have the lead and they are pretty well oriented now. There were a few early issues: gear slots showing the wrong gear, buggy character information, new views that changed while fixes were in progress, that kind of thing. In addition, the pre-patch has no special patch quests or other events that could get snarled up by the glitches that have to be fixed before launching the full expansion.

The addons I need are relatively few and are working fine with one exception: Auctioneer. Chaitee manages the Auction House and admits to some frustration in getting her AH chores done each day. Auctioneer is the premier addon for handling the AH and as of this morning it still doesn't work and there is no expected date when it will be ready. Patience is the rule, here. The authors have lives and will get it fixed when they can. That doesn't make Chaitee feel any better, though. Working with the vanilla AH sucks. Gold is being lost. That said, Chaitee deserves a pat on the back for working to gain back at least some of the gold outlay the family has sucked out of the bank. About 26k gold has been added back to the coffers.

Once Java felt comfortable she headed out to do some combat in Shadowmoon Valley (where her garrison is). She went hunting in Socrether's Rise where there is a high concentration of level 100 mobs. By the way, Java's offensive spells grew by two when I got around to setting up her talents. Avenging Wrath (increased DPS and healing) and Seraphim (increases stats by 750) is now in the combat rotation.

The first time Java used the revamped Consecration, I was like WoW! The animation is truly cool. The spell one shots beasts and mobs under level 100. Fighting level 100s was also a joy to behold. As I figured, killing them took some time, but her health bar barely moved off 100% even against numerous mobs. I haven't pitted her against an elite yet, but the short test looks like she'll be very tough to kill.

Java already had one Level 100 Tanaan elite kill (the mangler) before the pre-patch. Now she stalked a new challenge with the pre-patch changes. The mangler was tough, but now she sought an even more dangerous forest beast - a Tanglewood Ancient, level 100 elite. The frozen tree waits patiently for someone to try him. Java did.

Java learned quickly that Ancients have a lot in common with protection spec. They are very, very hard to kill. The battle took almost twice as long as the pre-patch mangler. I didn't record the DPS of the mangler fight, but Java's DPS on the Ancient was 9068k. Decent but not thrilling. Java has 249k health. The Ancient has 1.2 million health. The battle was very even, with both health bars dropping almost in tandem. Java used nearly all of the tricks she had and even then it came down to those dicey last seconds. The Ancient died with Java at 15% health.

Java is getting used to the new look, and overall I like it. The entire player frame can now be seen without having to scroll down to see all the stats, giving it a cleaner look. Dominos also added some features I hadn't seen before, such as showing the cooldown counts for each active spell. That certainly helps with spell choices. I do miss the spell that grants +strength for one hour. Where did that go?

There are also some weaponizing changes. Protection Warrior Rakta uses sword and board, but she can now also use a Two-Hander in protection spec: she even got one (actually 2) for free! A nice idea, but Rakta's stats are far better with sword and board. The 2-hand probably works better with an Arms spec.

Tiphaine, too, received a pair of one-hand weapons for dual wielding, courtesy of Wow. It seems every spec is getting weapon changes of some kind. Tiphaine can't actually duel wield them, though, not until Legion is fully released. So these amount to teasers. And may not be used at all since her 2-hander is i705 and the one hands are just i655. Tiphaine will probably never use them.

Sista got no freebies at all. I guess she's already perfect. Right.

Evening Update: Around 9pm last night the main square in Stormwind was suddenly flooded with large masses of players. The number of players were staggering and people began noticing that many were from other realms. A bug/glitch in the system? No one seemed to know. I haven't seen such a concentrated group of players since the days when the Horde or Alliance would gather huge numbers into raids to assault an enemy city and attempt to kill their king. Was Stormwind under attack? No, so the only idea I could think of is that Blizz merged realms on purpose temporarily - or something went way wrong. Chaitee has been hanging out for a long time now and the square is still packed. The already overwhelmed auction house came to a crawl (not that the vanilla AH was of much use anyway) and things started to get strained. The game locked up and died, and a second attempt also failed. Shades of expansions of the past, where failed logins and all kinds of craziness was the norm. But Blizz has to be ecstatic at the turn out.

As of this morning the Stormwind square is still very busy. And still no Auctioneer.

Looks like the next chore is getting all of the other family members set up and ready for the real event - Legion. Only Java and Chaitee are fully set up so far.

This is a long post, so look for a second post with pics!