Professions: August 2008 Archives

What follows are my early thoughts on the 8885 beta build that went live tonight.

• they missed something that should have been in this build, cause I am getting errors like crazy
• still no weightstones or sharpening stones
• it looks like most glyphs are actually craftable by scribes, including scribes as low as 100
  Paladin judgements are working again
• no noticeable change in xp required per level
• cooking daily quests in, with Dalaran Cooking Award, which can be used to buy recipes in Legerdemain Lounge in north Dalaran
• thanks to Zubr of Arathor, playing on Northrend for the /console error 0 command to stop showing errors
• glyphs seem to be 'used' with 1 hour cooldowns
• scribes will make a killing
  
• Mageroyal seems to be a big in demand herb for early scribe glyphs
• to use a glyph, you right click it. Some say they cannot be used, even when well beyond the level required. Odd.
  
• Overall nice, once you remove the errors, but more time may be required to work out some potential issues

There are many bad changes, many mediocre ones, and many good ones. It's beta, and things will change, but for now, I can play on my Paladin, though I am about to stop my leveling because I want to prep my live toons for the 3.0.2 patch and expansion.

So I mentioned here that I have begun in the Wrath of the Lich King beta test, and I have some thoughts and questions here. First, are there any mods for the beta? I am a mod fiend and I am feeling really lost without a single mod. I have my Statusbars mod which tells me in a HUD type display what my health and the mobs health is. I have died a number of times because of this. Second, Gatherer? Is there any way to mark gather nodes? I am finding Cobalt ore hard to find and would love to mark them.

As an aside, it is nice that WoW Head WotLK has comments with coordinates, but how exactly do I figure out those coordinates? How did they get the coordinates? I love the look of the zones in Northrend. I have seen both Borean Tundra and Sholazar Basin, though the later only when I pulled a noobish hop off the ledge without remembering that Divine Protection was changed, and thus dying on the rocks. No more suicide jumps from Aldor Rise. I wanted to thank a kind GM from the beta realms who unstuck me in the world so I could return to my journey on Aritas, who was stuck in a server issues last night. The final tip comes from Galanis on the Northrend beta realm, "Profession Trainer tracking is critical in the newbie towns", a good tip to put into practice when you are just hitting Northrend!

Lastly, below you will find the huge, massive gnome lore found in the Tundra. Spoilers may be found! Enjoy!



[Update: Thanks to Lassirra for the tip about WoW Interface for WotLK!]
[Update: Thanks to MrCynical in IRC for the reminder that Divine Shield still does what Divine Protection used to do, and for longer!]

I posted on my Twitter today that it is beginning to feel, after so many professions nerfs, the Blizzard is at war with their own professions. Make them too good, and you have to increase the difficulty and requirements of the encounters in raids, or so I hear so often. Having done a little raiding, I can see that they have a point, to a degree. I do, though, have some questions. I made a few of these in this post about the seeming death of the Alchemy profession with the huge nerf of potions.

I once heard an opinion that if you don't an idea of how to solve a problem, don't bother mentioning it. Well, here is my best solution. There are items and abilities which cannot, and could not once upon a time, be used in a particular place. There was a time when you couldn't summon at all in Netherstorm. You cannot use some long cooldown abilities in Arenas. Blizzard has even changed the cooldown of some abilities to make them either able or unable to be used in those situations.

My suggestion is that Blizzard, instead of nerfing these items across the whole game, make them work differently when in a raid. Instead of giving us Tennitus whenever a drum is used in game, make it so that this effect only happens in a raid, be it dungeon or world raid encounters. The same would go for the Potion Sickness. Perhaps, just to be fair, give them a 5% buff to the effects when in a raid group, but then you get the debuff. This would solve the raid encounter issue, but not take away the benefits of using potions and drums in your game play.

My biggest concern, and the reason I used in my previous post, is still a valid one. I found more than once in leveling my 4 70s through Outlands that there is a nasty habit of mobs to swarm a player. From Fel Orcs in Terrokar, to vultures in Hellfire, to mana wyrms up on Bash'ir Landing. Attack the one on the edge, and before you know it you are surrounded by mobs and have little chance of surviving the fight. Except you have pots or you have drums. Not all of us are Paladins or other self healing and other survivor based classes.

What do you think of this suggestion? Are you one of those who feel this is much needed to make raids more accessible? Or do you feel that Blizzard is taking a heavy hand across the board with stuff that they feel isn't helping one aspect of one portion of the game? Let me know and sound off, you might even get audio played on the podcast if you send it in.