Secondary picketting (or should that be "twiglets")

So, Warlocks have been very vocal in the opposition to the Life Tap changes. I made a comment that Druids had been less up in arms abour their Life Bloom Changes. I was wrong, as Leafie's posts show.

Nalor-wrecked

On our second visit to Zul Aman, the Ravens finally took down out first boss of the instance - Nalorakk, the bear boss who caused so much grief last time out. We got to him in 20 minutes or so with no casualties and promptly burned him down, losing only 1/2 a person in the fight (saved by a druid combat-res) and netting me a shining new pair of bracers.

Of course, the next boss - Akil'zon the eagle - was another proposition and I have the repair bills to prove it ...

Oh noez, ez-mode epix.

So, there's a backlash against the new badge rewards by certain elements of the WOW community, claiming they make life too easy and that people will, like the battlegrounds, be able to sleepwalk though the grind.

Tosh. Complete and utter.

The *cheapest* of the new rewards is 60 badges, with 75 for a few items but 100 for most. A complete Kara run nets (I believe) 22 badges and can be done once a week, and heroic provides 3-5 (+2 if its a daily), none of which can be said to be "easy mode". At best, running 2 heroics a day and complete clear of Kara you're looking at circa 60 badges a week but that implies a level of gear and commitment that suggests you'd already be in a raid guild of sorts - I know that realistically I'd only be looking at 20 or so badges a week (assuming the guild does heroics that week and can muster enough people for a raid) - so between 2 and 4 weeks for a bit of kit (the mage stuff needs about 550 badges, which is 3-6 months work).

Now, the complaints I could understand to a degree, but the exagerations used to decry the badge rewards are, to my mind, undermining the credibility of the opposition. "I can get 100-200 badges a week so this is OP" says one guy (really? How? You run 35-40 heroics a week?) "Its ez mode because we can clear Kara in 3 hours" (in T5/T6 gear, maybe, but in that case these rewards probably won't interest you ... and you can only do Kara once a week).

Then again, there are some valid points "These are better than MH/BT drops so why do MH/BT" (if these really are better - and I don't know enough to say - then might it not prompt some people to switch away from the raids. I don't know what the relative incidence of 25-man raid loot is, or the comparative quality of the items.)

That being said, I still think of lot of a "disagreement" is more in lines with toys being thrown out of prams - I mean, how dare the "casuals" be able to get loot similar to the "hardcore"? In actual fact, a number of "casuals" I know but in more time and effort than supposedly "hardcore" raiders, so to my mind why shouldn't that pay off with decent loot. It's a lot of work (certainly moreso that Arenas and BGs and this kit is the same itemlevel as the Season 3 rewards), but looks to reward "time invested" (in badge awarding instances at least) rather than "raids attended."

YMMV, obviously.

Badges forever

So, the promised improved badge loot has appeared on the PTR. All I can say is wow. I know they said there'd be near-BT grade rewards but kit with itemlevls 141-146 are pretty cool.

Currently my eyes are on [Boot of Incantations], [Legwraps of sweltering Flame], [Shroud of the Lore'Nial] and [Scyer's blade of focus].

Of course, they cost the earth - the cheapest is 75 badges, with the majority 100 badges and the dagger a whopping 150. Given that a "lower Kara" run is worth 9 badges and the average Heroic 4-5, then that's a lot of Heroic runs ...

The Raven Way

My guild, the Shattered Ravens, isn't particularly large and so we don't always have the optimim parties for 5 man instances, let alone raids. As a result, we take a degree of pride in coming up with "non-standard solutions" to encounters, whether its "ghetto crowd control" (using stuns and fears rather than sheep/sap/shackle/banish), slow-kiting (mage gets aggro and then runs around being chased by the mob while the party kills its friends) or the now-infamous "Windmill" (which I'll come back to in a moment).

Of course, many encounters can only be overcome by knowledge of the encounter - the Curator, Nightbane et al - and a degree of effort is needed to familiarize yourself with the fight before victory can be assured; I recall when both Moroes and the Curator were pains to do but now, thanks to knowledge of the encounters (and gear) they're fairly routine.

Not so encounters like Blackheart the inciter (with a very high random factor) or my current pet peeve, Kargath Bladefist (damn those random charges) which can be very frustrating as a random factor wipes even a well-equipped and prepared group.

And then there's the windmill. No matter how much you analyze some encounters (such as the Black Stalker in heroic Underbog), killing the target quickly is perhaps the best solution (and in fact over-analyzing things is a recipe for disaster). We call this "windmilling" (i.e. run in and hit the target) as explained in this educational video:



Of course, many encounters mix these up - a random element with a bit of windmilling, or a scripted encounter with some random aspects, but its scary that (in five mans at least) sheer, unadulterted aggression is often the way forward. The gauntlet in Shattered Halls is a good example - slow and sleady is a war of attrition the party will loose, but blasting through them (using pally-tanking to hoover up the mobs and then liberal AOE) is scarily effective.