Been playing around with some new image trickery so thought it was about time I got back into the Sunday Screenshot and also remembered that I forgot to post last weeks podcast here too.
Just realised that I've slacked the past month at posting my podcast here. Partly because I've not been uploading the show to YouTube /fail on my part. So below are all the shows I missed!
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The past week I have been mostly....
1. PVP druid: lvl35 long Qs levelling by herbing and cook/fish/pet battle dailies.
2. Garrisonless shaman: Got another level and Shadowmoon now complete
3. Evlyxx II: been neglected this week /hangs head in shame
4. Evlyxx: 8/10 BRF progress on Maidens. 4pce at last half normal
5. Exhumed: now been made GM but still not promoted coming soon!!
6. Hearthcast AoE appearance
7. IRL: Changes incoming to my life schedule that may force a show change. Still trying to work out details in my head as nothing is confirmed and times are still fluid.
and now the news...
General News
• BlizzCon will be November 5th and 6th 2015
• Tickets $199 USD via Eventbrite at 3 am BST on 16 April and 6 pm BST on 18 April.
• Players now deal 10% less damage against other players while in PvP combat.
Raid News
• MC BRF: 19 guilds now have killed MC Blackhand
• 12 EU guilds, 4 Chinese, 2 Korean, 1 US guild.
• 3 Alliance and 16 Horde
• Blood Legion leaving the World First race for now.
• Blizzard confirmed that you get more legendary drops on alts.
• BUG FIX: Blackhand - Siegemaker's Battering Ram ability is no longer considered to be an AoE attack on all difficulties.
Priest News
• BUG FIX: Cascade will now properly use the casting Priest's Multistrike chance for bounces beyond the first one.
Ranty News
• hotfix next week that will increase the item level of all raid drops from all difficulties of the Blackrock Foundry raid.
Talk Talk
Was all about class balance Mail Time
Syene (@_3ske) said: Divine Insight does make PoM instant although not reflected in the tooltip;
This is How We Do It
This week what I looked at the tier 6 or level 90 talents.
In next week's Talk Talk I'll be looking at the standard Blizzard UI and why I don't use it. I'd love to hear if you use the standard UI and your reasons for why you do or don't use it.
Please contact
the show by email to: podcast@evlyxx.co.uk
or alternatively via Twitter
to the show: @EvangelysmCast
or to me: @Evlyxxmore »
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The past week I have been mostly....
Not levelling my druid Ursula on Aszune by PVP but by herbing and cook/fish/pet battle dailies;
Not logging onto my garrisonless shaman;
Getting Evlyxx to 7/10 in HC BRF and progress on Maidens;
Playing shadow in RBGs on Evlyxx;
Neglecting Evlyxx II beside Garrison missions;
Becoiming the new GM of Exhumed;
Being eliminated from the Wow podcaster Tournament of Epicness because I failed the cut;
Appearing on Girls Gone WoW - show 171;
I'm now getting comfortable with doing this show and am now looking to upgrade my equipment;
Preparing to man up and start begging the accountant (aka wife) for some fundsfor the above;
General News
WoW Token;
6.1.2 now on PTR;
BUG FIX: Dark Heart of Pandaria (Scenario) bug fixed;
Raid News
Mythic Race: Grats to Midwinter for world 3rd / Alliance-US 1st.
3 tanks?BUG FIX: fall damage on Blackhand
Priest News
BUG FIX: Archangel should no longer incorrectly increase Flash Heal's mana cost.
BUG FIX: Vampiric Embrace should no longer incorrectly factor in damage caused by Searing Insanity.
Talk Talk
Was all about instance difficulty and what would make it better
Mail Time
email from Dan (@TheSteakhaus) about class balance;
Jon (@jvirangaming) asked: What comes after talents and complained about my levels;
This is How We Do It
This week what I looked at the tier 5 or level 75 talents.
Next week my Talk Talk section will be focusing on class balance in Warlords of Draenor and I'd love to hear your views and personal experiences on this so please contact the show by
email to
podcast@evlyxx.co.uk
or alternatively via Twitter
to the show: @EvangelysmCast
or to me: @Evlyxxmore »
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The past week I have been mostly....
I've started 2 whacky WoW projects this week the 1st is levelling my shaman through Draenor without a garrison, so far it has been quite difficult as there are not many quests once you hit the point where the next step is to build the garrison. Getting around is also difficult as I have no quick way to get to Shadowmoon Valley from Ashran which is where I decided to set my hearthstone. The 2nd is levelling a new druid but only via PVP. Very early days on this one.
In my raiding I missed a guild first kill of Kromog because I was working but was able to be there as Exhumed went 7/10 HC with an Oregorger kill.
• Realm connections are complete, for the moment at least.
• Some dungeons have had shortcuts blocked off in undocumented changes in patch 6.1 and this may lead to the resetting of some Challenge Mode dungeon leaderboard times.
• Players are now able to whisper or send party invites to players on any realm.
Raid News
• Paragon have joined Method in being 10/10 in Mythic Blackrock Foundry, the US 1st and Alliance firsts are still up for grabs with MidWinter in pole position to claim both with Blood Legion and ScrubBusters close behind them.
• Drak'Tharon Keep: Fixed an issue where Novos the Summoner was unkillable on Heroic difficulty.
• Culling of Stratholme: Fixed an issue where the Dark Runed Chest after defeating Mal'Ganis could not be looted on Heroic difficulty.
Priest News
• Saving Grace (Disc, Holy) now heals for 34% less in PvP combat and now correctly reduce absorbs done (absorption taken).
• PvP 2-piece set bonus effect for Shadow Priests is now removed at the beginning of a boss encounter. The set bonus will still work during the encounter.
• The Glyph of Purification is no longer bind on pickup
Talk Talk
What is Ashran
The ultimate objective of this battleground is for each faction is to kill the opposing faction's leader. When the Battleground is won by either side, there is a 5 minute pause; after which, the Battleground simply restarts fresh at the Crossroads.
Before you can defeat the enemy faction's leader, you must win several "battles" along the Road to Glory (NOT the side events)
In every Ashran instance, the population of both factions is tightly controlled to maintain equal numbers.
Ashran Design Goals
Blizzard's primary goal with Ashran was to create a zone where two factions were competing against each other throughout the zone. Players entering Ashran have two motivations: earn 200 conquest to fulfill the Ashran bonus portion of their conquest cap, and kill the faction boss for their daily chance at loot from the Gleaming Ashmaul Strongbox.
The problem pre-6.1
There was the ability for both sides to get the same reward at two different places at the same time as players could earn that conquest by either killing the faction boss or by doing events, and there was this unofficial player defined rule that Alliance did one and the Horde did the other, which faction did what was generally dependent on the server cluster you were on.
Ashran simply was devoid of real PvP and both sides earned their reward.
Blizzard's Fix
Blizz removed conquest from the bosses knowing full well this meant the Alliance and Horde would be forced to compete against each other in events for conquest. They also "knew" that facing new opposition at events, the Horde would once again engage in the central road. Quite how they "knew" this fact is beyond me as there is no reward for killing the opposing factions boss.
Blizz acknowledged that killing a faction boss only to receive the 600 ilvl Aspirant gear wasn’t motivating so they removed that from the Gleaming Ashmaul Strongbox so it will always award either Combatant (ilevel 620) or Gladiator (ilevel 660) gear. But the drop rate is pathetically small for a once a day shot.
The Problem post-6.1
In sort there is no PVP in Ashran, the epic tug of war along the Road to Glory just simply doesn't happen often enough because after the first kill where every got rewarded with their Gleaming Ashmaul Strongbox and failed to get their epic players move to the events as here lies their Conquest points and when new people join the "battle" nobody goes to help these guys get their Strongbox, which means everyone is now sat at the the events.
But, I hear you cry, surely that means there is PVP there? Well Blizz claim there is increased competition between the two factions in both events and the main road. But maybe my luck is bad or my timing is off because I'm not seeing that at all.
What I'm seeing is queue times have droped, no main raid group killing the faction bosses and the Alliance camping the quarry and burial grounds while the Horde are camping the Stadium and the Ogre event. As an Alliance player if we move to the Horde event areas, we get butchered because of the tunneling effect of each arena and if the Horde try to come to Alliance events the same happens to them.
My biggest issue is that the whole purpose of Ashran has been removed, killing the faction bosses because the events are where the guaranteed rewards are.
I cannot understand why the events are not simply a way of boosting your factions chance of success in killing the faction bosses. For example when the faction bosses are reset each event generates some bonus and only once all 4 events have occurred are the faction bosses spawned. Once spawned the side events stop until one faction boss is defeated and the winner of that battle gets Conquest and a Gleaming Ashran Stronbox and then after 5 minutes the events start again.
This would encourage both factions to do everything in Ashran, because each thing happens once per battle and the faction that wins most events has the better chance of killing the opposing faction boss, sure this sounds like Alterac Valley but wasn't the overall goal of Ashran to reproduce the epic AV battles of vanilla?
Mail Time
So this week I've got my first real e-mail, makes me feel a little bit humble as previously it has come from people I knew before the show started.
Bruce (@btarro2) asked 3 questions:
1. What drew you to the priest class above all others?
I was told by the friend that got me interested in WoW, that a healer was the best thing to play as you always found a group easy and that priests were the best healers. In D&D I'd also played mainly clerics and this was the nearest thing to that in WoW so I stuck went with it and have never looked back.
2. Do you have any plans on complementing the priest information in the podcast with youtube content as well?
In a perfect world, I'd love to do this, but real world commitments and wanting to play wow means the time isn't there to do it regularly. Also, having a slow (2meg) connection means that streaming is impossible so until British Telecom put the infrastructure in to give me fibre speeds that is merely a dream. But when that happens I may start streaming as I can play and do the videos live which removes the need for editing which in itself is time consuming.
3. Maybe some recorded raid/pvp footage as an overlay to your podcast you publish on youtube.
This is something I hadn't considered but I may try that for this show and see how long the upload takes as this is something I can do while I sleep and/or while I'm at work.
This is How We Do It
This week what we're looking at the tier 4 or level 60 talents. Like the tier 1 & 2 talents, the choices are the same regardless of role and spec.
Void Tendrils also are much safer to use in PvE than Psychic Scream, an AoE fear that causes upto 5 enemies with 8 yards to run away for 8 seconds. There are times when fear is safe to use though so it can be useful. However, it is exceptional in PvP and depending on the group your in can be much better than the third option, Mind Control.
Mind Control is now known as Dominate Mind and it allows a priest to control an enemy for upto 30 seconds as long as that enemy isn't mechanical. MC has uses in PvE and has been needed on certain fights Razuvious in Naxxramas was the biggest one where all a priest would do on the fight was MC adds that would off-tank the boss. However, the most common use for MC is in PvP and is exceptionally good at removing enemies off of cliffs, like the lumber mill in Arathi Basin and the central flag area in Eye of the Storm. I also had great fun throwing adds off the edge in Vortex Pinnacle during early Cataclysm but eventually this got hot fixed as I discovered when the 4 adds that I had MCd off the edge came running into the fight on the last boss. Which caused a lot of laughs on TS with my guildmates. Thankfully it wasn't pug.
Something I have really neglected this expansion is my weekly screenshot, so I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things and I promise I won't be using the S.E.L.F.I.E. Camera.more »
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The past week I have been mostly....
1. Removing the egg from my face, last week I predicted that 6.1 would hit last week. I was wrong but only by a week! So The US already has 6.1 and here in the EU we get it today so I hope you're all enjoying Tweeting from in game and posting your SELFIES!
2. Mount farming, yes still But not while I have been queuing for Ashran, I've given up trying that until next week! My route takes in Dragon Soul for the Blazing Drake and Experiment 12-B, Onyxia, ICC25 for Invincible, Zul'Gurub for the Panther and Raptor mounts, Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle for the drakes, Sethekk Halls for Anzu (yes I know you got it in TBC), Firelands for Smoldering Egg of Millagazor and Pureblood Firehawk and Throne of the Four Winds for the Drake of the South Wind. But next week I won't need to go to the Throne of the Four Winds as my hunter, Vonuberwald managed to get the Drake of the South Wind, on his first visit but I had been many times before!
3. Evlyxx has been raiding of course and this week we got Flamebender Ka'graz down on HC and on our weekend normal BRF run we did the achievement on Ka'graz of not killing Aknor Steelbringer which means he is now one of my Garrison followers.
4. I actually did some PVP this week too with loads of 3s with a hunter, Alkathraze and Funjitsu a brewmaster monk we had a lot of laughs and a reasonably fast Conquest cap. I also had a run out with the RBG team last night and while we won most of our battles we still have a lot of improvements to make but considering we started late this year due to a visit by the drama lama our RBG team is looking very promising and the leadership trio of Dumix, Appljack and Dyloxe are doing a fine job.
5. IRL stuff has been really boring and the reason the show is late out this week is because my shifts this week suck as it is Monday/Tuesday days and Wednesday/Thursday nights so I miss out on raiding and deliver the show late to you guys and gals. Sadly this will happen 2 or 3 weeks in a row every 2 months but hopefully I'll find a job with a better work schedule soon and then I can have a defined 7 day week and have a regular day of getting the show out to you all. Anyway that's a different story for a different day.
In the news this week:
Blackhand has been defeated by Method and at the time of recording only Method. So congratulations to them on a true World 1st as the US guilds have now entered their 3rd week mythic raiding. There has been some drama around this as there have been accusations of cheating by account sharing and I'll cover that in a bit more depth in this week's Talk Talk which is all about Exploiting WoW inspired by this very topic.
6.1 has hit the servers, Twitter has remained stable which means most of the naysayers and doom prophets got it wrong, or I follow the right people! Talk Talk...WoW Exploits.
So last week Method killed mythic Blackhand and the accusations of cheating started almost before Blackhand hit the ground and took his last breath. The crime that Method stand accused of is account sharing. Now cast your mind back to Christmas time, not to the turkey and your presents but to a pair of guys named Reckful and Sodah who were banned for account sharing while streaming and openly admitting they were playing each other's accounts, stupid boys that they were.
The method of Method's alleged account sharing is slightly different though, the accusers claim that certain players created a 2nd account and then transferred their geared alt to it to allow a 2nd person to play the geared alt instead of playing their own lesser geared character. Now this is harder to prove as the alleged incident wasn't streamed and unless the 2 players were playing at different locations and not masking their IP addresses to be the same, it is perfectly acceptable to have 2 Warcraft licences online from the same Battlenet account at the same time. So really unless the Method guys are dumbasses their guilt cannot be proven.
But this type of cheating, and let's be honest if the accusations are true it is cheating, is far from new.
Back in Vanilla anyone who wanted to become Grand Marshall or High Warlord account shared. Each servers PVP community at the time decided on the weekly winner of the title and that guy (or gal) was guaranteed the title because they would be played 24 hours a day for the 7 days and the only way that is possible is to account share.
Also in Vanilla there were raid exploits, Razorgore the first boss in Blackwing Lair could exploited by Alliance guilds by casting Divine Intervention on him in the first phase which reset the fight and when Divine Intervention wore off the fight restarted in phase 2! In Ahn'Qiraj 40, one guild discovered that you could amend the game files and fall through the floor after the first boss and end up at the last boss!
There have also been other "exploits" that have been widely used as a valid tactic because guilds cheesed mechanics by clever positioning of bosses and/or players fights like Bloodlord Mandokir in the original Zul'Gurub could be cheesed by the whole raid, except the tanks, hiding behind spears or standing on a ledge that the raptor pet he had couldn't charge a random victim. Prince Malchezzar in Karazhan could be made considerably easier by the ranged and healers standing in the doorway when fighting the boss as the infernals couldn't land there, while never confirmed a fix was implemented in 2.4.
Also in TBC was the rumoured cheating on the world first Lady Vashj kill. The exploit was to purposely wipe at 20 percent and have a paladin use Divine Intervention, Vashj will reset to Phase 2 and as her HP is connected to the pillars, the HP will disappear when they despawn leaving her at 1 HP, a priest uses a soulstone and then uses Shadow Word: Death to kill her.
In Wrath, the world first kills of Yogg Saron and the Lich King were overturned because of guilds cheating. The first by making killer adds evade and the latter by making the platform rebuild itself by throwing engineering bombs.
Back in Dragon Soul the world first guilds, including Paragon and Method, found a way to exploit the loot by trading loot to characters that had already had their once a week chance of loot.
All this shows is that the world first guilds will stop at nothing to get their world first kills and really if that means so much to these folk let them cheat their way to the top. It matters not to me nor to most WoW players who killed a boss first and the only way these guys get remembered is to have some controversy linked to the kill. Personally I kill raid bosses for the achievement not the public worshipping me, as if that is liable to happen!
Anyway grats to Method on their kill, cheats or not they earned the respect of us all however brief that glory moment will be.
Mail Time
I'd like to thank Rho of Realm Maintenance and Extended Maintenance for plugging this show on his show and also to Alt of Alternative Chat and Extended Maintenance for the retweets /bow to you both.
As good as it is to get feedback from guildies I'd still love to hear from my less biased listeners so if please email me at podcast@evlyxx.co.uk or via either of my Twitter accounts.
The show account is: @EvangelysmCast
My personal twitter account is: @evlyxx
And I'll wrap up today's show with my tip section...
This is How We Do It
This week what we're going to look at is the tier 3 or level 45 talents. For the first time the talents now vary between specs here, but only between healer and DPS specs.
As I'll spend more time on the healer stuff I'll look briefly at the 2 that are different for our shadowy friends.
The first is Surge of Darkness and in short this turns Mind Spike into an instant cast spell that deals 50% more damage and does not remove DoTs as it normally would. This is great for fights with high movement and as you can save your procs for when you're on the move.
The third choice is Insanity, which transforms Mind Flay into a more powerful spell, 100% more powerful, for 6 seconds after consuming a Shadow Orb. This one is great for fights were you can turret for long periods.
For us healers, this tier of talents is all about mana savings. The first option is Surge of Light, each heal and smite you cast has a chance to cause the next Flash Heal to be instance and consume no mana. Personally I think this one is great for holy priests and also for discipline priests in RBGs where healers are the primary target. But in PVE this talent is very lack lustre.
The second choice is Mindbender, now the observant ones of tyou may have noticed I went from first to third in my Shadow section, the reason for that is that the Mindbender is the same for all three specs. This simply reduces the cooldown of your Shadowfiend, note he is not a Shadowfriend, and over 15 seconds will deal a crap ton of damage. Since 5.0, I've been saying that the damage output of Shadowfiend's needs nerfing not by a lot but the mana return needs to stay the same. However, 6.1 sees our little shadowy friend gets a 33% BUFF as it will last 5 seconds more.
And last, and by no means least, is Power Word: Solace which converts your Holy Fire into Power Word: Solace which increases its damage and returns 2% mana when cast which we can do every 10 seconds. This became my default choice last week because I worked out why top end priests were using Solace over Mindbender, but the 33% buff to Mindbender in 6.1 makes that my default choice once more, because mana > DPS output right now.
Before I cover what the show is all about this week I'd just like to share my current set of Weak Auras for all 3 priest specs as I have just updated my Shadow ones:
On Evlyxx I have been mainly farming mounts (fruitlessly as it turns out) while waiting for my Ashran queue to pop. Which has consumed a lot of time for very little reward and I'm hoping the fixes coming soon will stop that.
Killing 2 new heroic bosses also on Evlyxx, in Blackrock Foundry, Hans'gar and Franzok which was possibly the funniest fight to listen to ever and Operator Thogar, he with the trainset and man what a fight that is and I am asheamed to admit I failed horribly at dodging trains on more than one occasion and here is a free tip to all of you, if you have to move off of a track don't dither, don't change your mind because you'll end up dead and that applies to any fight not just Thogar!
I also cleared 9/10 Blackrock on our casual guild raid this weekend and failed to get any gear from there and
Evlyxx II also got some raid action this week in my second outing with the lovely folks of Cotton Candy and we managed to kill HC Kargath and got close on Twins and Tectus.
I'm also considering renaming Evlyxx II because, it is really confusing having 2 toons on the same connected realm with the same name especially when I'm trying to talk through this section.
I've also spent a good portion of time learning some more tricks in Audacity and hopefully over the coming weeks you'll hear the difference in the show as I get better with the software and techniques of audio production.
Raid News
At the time of recording Mythic Blackhand still remains the undefeated champion of Black Rock Foundry and only Paragon and Method look like real challengers this week as both are 9/10 Mythic. There are many guilds at 8/10 and all are stuck on Blast Furnace. And having done that fight only on normal and found it both challenging and dull god only knows how these guys are feeling about it as their bashing their heads against the wall
I also found it rather comical that many US guilds were proudly announcing "world firsts" on Mythic bosses last Tuesday despite their 24 hour head start on the EU guys and yes technically they were correct but seriously its almost as bad as the Super Bowl winners declaring themselves as World Champions
This week also saw Blizzard announce major graphical overhauls to the engine running Warcraft that are coming in 6.1 and these are of course already live on the PTR. The changes sound great and are evidence that Blizzard are trying to make the game prettier than ever and of course future proofing it. Hopefully wont screw over those players with lesser systems as they are optional upgrades.
Talk Talk
This week, I decided, wrongly as it turns out that the patch would drop in the EU on Wednesday18th February (it is actually coming Wednesday 25th February) and rather than go through EVERYTHING, I just covered what interests me most with a heavy focus on priests and raiding but I will go through in the order that I found the patch notes on the official site, but I will cover the priest changes at the end.
Rather than post everything I covered just take a peek at the official 6.1 patch site here.
Mail Time
I'm still getting no mail and this week I failed to even get any questions / feedback via Twitter or the guild /cry.
However, I have nominated myself for Sheep Moon's 2015 Podcaster Tournament of Epicness and I'd like to ask you all that you go and nominate me and any other podcasters that you listen to. You have until Feb 24th which really isn't far away so go and do it now by visiting the Sheep Moon site here.
So I really really really want to hear from you guys and gals so please email me at:
If you'd like to get in touch with me the email address is: podcast@evlyxx.co.uk
The show twitter account is: @EvangelysmCast
My personal twitter account is: @evlyxx
As usual, I ended the show with my tips section...
This is How We Do It
This week what I looked at was the tier 2 or level 30 talents. As we had in the first tier talents all priest specs have the same three talent options.
This tier of talents is all about movement, the first option is Body and Soul which increases the movement speed of the target of your Power Word: Shield and Leap of Faith Icon Leap of Faith by 60% for 4 seconds.
The second choice is Angelic Feather allows you to place up to 3 feathers on the ground. Moving over a feather increases the player's movement speed by 60% for 6 seconds. This ability has a maximum of 3 charges, and a 10-second recharge time.
And finally we have Phantasm causes your Fade to remove all movement-impairing effects from you. It also makes you unslowable for 5 seconds.
My favorite is and always has Body and Soul because it allows full control over who gets your speed buffs it is also passive as being Disc you're already putting bubbles on your raid members. This does cause problems though as if someone needs a speed buff and you shielded them a few seconds before you Weakened Soul prevents you from assisting them It also means they may be unable to get a shield when they need the damage mitigation because you gave them a speed buff a few seconds earlier.
Angelic Feather gives a longer speed buff but you lose the control as the person you want to speed up must actively running through the feathers left behind which can be consumed by other players.
Phantasm is more of a PvP talent, and can especially when combined with Spectral Guise, the priest invisibility tier 1 talent we discussed last week. But in PVE it is pretty much useless.
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In the past week I have been mostly....
1. working IRL and promoting the podcast
2. Gearing up Evlyxx II and doing some more relaxed raiding in Highmaul with the wonderful folks of Cotton Candy
3. Raiding Blackrock Foundry with the wonderful people of Exhumed, on Shadowsong EU but only 1 day cos of server issues.
4. Doing a lot of preparation for raid leading in Blackrock Foundry
News
In this section I reviewed:
• WoW Stable at 10+ Million Subscribers;
• Blackrock Foundry goes Mythic (no LFR);
• In 6.1, Saving Grace one of the priests level 100 talents is being buffed by 50% and becoming an instant cast (currently 1.5 seconds). As this would be insanely strong in PVP it is then beig nerfed by 33% in PvP.
Talk Talk
My topic of the week was Twitter integration because in patch 6.1 Blizzard are giving us the ability to link a Twitter account to our WoW account and send "tweets" from inside the game, including attaching a screenshot.
Now WoW isn't breaking new ground with Twitter integration, far from it, Rift had this when it launched back in 2011 and I personally liked this feature in Rift for the short time I played it.
The UI is unobtrusive and if you don't use Twitter you'll not be affected in anyway. If you are a Twitter user you probably Tweet about the game already and this feature is simply saving you the effort of grabbing your phone or alt-tabbing out to do that especially when it comes to attaching screenshots.
Of course there are concerns, and there are the "slippery slope" arguments like:
omg my twitter account will start spamming my followers with every single achievement - I'm sure there will be the ability to choose what you tweet, if there isn't simply unlink your Twitter account and tweet as you do now.
I don't want to see everyone else's tweet spam. Well 2 things for this one why are you following someone if you don't wanty to see their Tweets? If someone is Tweet spamming your feed simply un-follow them or let them know their spam is annoying, they may not realise it. Heck I know this one from personal experience, I played with adding a RSS feed from the armoury to my Twitter account and it spammed my followers with every epic I looted, every raid boss I killed and every achievement I obtained and that included stuff on alts, from all expansions and as someone that ran many fun runs with my guildmates through ICC, Ulduar and the like on a Saturday that was a lot of tweets and I got a lot of complaints all justified. I soon broke that link.
we'll soon see Blizzard offering promotions to "Tweet about #Warlords to win a free battlepet" or "Tweet your favorite character for 100 free garrison resources!" Even if it does happen it won't be game breaking and only viewed as compulsory by haters.
others are concerned that when we kill bosses and it will pop up "Want to share this with your friends?". I'm 99.99% certain it won't and even if it does if it annoys you that much again unlinking your Twitter account will disable the feature.
there are also concerns over the api allowing addons to seize control of your Twitter account, if that happens don't use the addon or once again, and I hate to say it again, simply don't link your Twitter account.
So for my money, its all good and there are simple steps to stop it being annoying. What are your views?
If you'd like to get in touch with me the email address is:
podcast@evlyxx.co.uk
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In this show I looked briefly at the big news of the week which was:
Blackrock Foundry opens with Normal and Heroic difficulties available.
World boss Rukhmar becomes available in Spires of Arak.
In the Talk Talk section of the the current secondary stats and how viable they actually were.
At the beginning of Warlords the secondary stats changed. In Mists we had Critical Strike, Haste, Mastery, Hit, Expertise, Dodge, Parry.
Critical Strike: Increases your chance to get bonus damage/heals
Haste: Increases the speed of your attacks/heals
Mastery: Increases a spec specific bonus to your abilities
Spirit: Increase mana regen for healers and hit for damage dealers
Hit: Increases your chance to successfully land an attack on your target = GONE!
Expertise: Decreases the chance of your target to dodge your attack = GONE!
Dodge: Increase your chance to avoid all attacks regardless of direction = GONE!
Parry: Increases your chance to avoid attacks from the front = GONE!
Crit, mastery and haste are great stats as is spirit for us healers, but even to me, there seemed to be duplicity there as hit and expertise always felt like they did the same thing and for casters in Mists that was the case.
Dodge and parry are very different in the real world, but in game they were only tank stats and therefore achieved the same thing, unless the tank decided to not be facing off with the target.
One of Blizzard's reasons for removal of these stats is that they were unexciting, which let's be honest, they were.
So it made sense when they announced the removal of those stats. But rather than remove the stats they were replaced. The stats that were added were:
Bonus Armor: Increases armor & is stronger than other stats for tanks.
Versatility: Increases damage and healing, and reduces damage taken
Multistrike: A chance for your damage/healing abilities to repeat at 30%
Now is it me or does there seem to be duplicity once more, with the exception of Bonus Armour? Which seems to be a great stat and therefore is just fine by me.
Versatility introduces a new concept, reduction of incoming damage as well as boosting our damage/healing output. But couldn't this have been rolled into armour by making armour reduce spell damage as well as physical? Would that have broken PvP by making casters ineffective? Maybe but just have armour work differently in PvP by NOT reducing armour, it's how it works anyway, so no harm no foul. While in principle it is not a bad stat it is just plain old dull, less interesting than hit and expertise. So dull I can't think of a reason to carry on talking about it.
My real biggest pet hate is Multistrike. It sounds great, we all love free attacks right? While for some classes this is a mathematically wonderful stats it is simply a bad stat, it is lazy and also seems to be counter to another design philosophy to counter lag in encounters. Remember when Blizzard told us they had identified smart heals as the cause of lag in encounters and that they want to eliminate the cause by reducing the amount of healing activity in the combat log? Well doesn't multi-strike just repeat that mistake? Are we likely to see a repeat of the lag as our multistrike chances rise? I think we may. Also isn't this pretty much the same as Critical Strike but instead of doing 100% extra damage it does 30% extra damage. That makes it Critical Strike Lite to me and is that exciting?
So what is the answer?
For me Bonus Armour stays, it works perfectly as a tank stat even if there is a question mark on it increasing their damage output.
Versatility is a dull stat, make it Amplification, which was a planned stat, if there is felt to be a need for more than crit/haste/mastery for damage dealers.
Multistrike isn't a dull stat but is really very flawed therefore remove it completely and increase the amount of crit on items by 30% to counter its loss in the game.
If you'd like to get in touch with me the email address is:
podcast@evlyxx.co.uk
A week further on and the crowds of players seems to have pretty much disappeared, no more server queues, very few bugs and most importantly, garrisons seem to be able to be trusted again. So much so that I have now started to log off there on all my alts that have one.
The daily routine is setting in too and this means many taxi rides around the world to the quest hubs and this week's screenshot comes from one such journey as I was flying over Shattrath. Shattrath was always a great city and the version we have in Draenor is stunning, one I'm really sad we wont be inhabiting unless we get a patch to cleanse it of the demon invasion and if that happens I'll be a happy man.
Moving on, this week is the start of the 10 years of WoW celebrations and Exhumed involved early on with a guild Molton Core lfr run and to celebrate, I've included a second bonus pic of our run there for you all.
Sadly we only managed to get 37 guildies/friends on line so we had to pug the last 3 spots but we had a really great time on TeamSpeak and the scariest moments were when I could recall the strategies not only for most bosses, but also the trash packs. To make that a bit more concerning, I wasn't even a raid leader back then and even as late as Naxxramas (Wrath edition) I was horrified at the thought of doing so.
The Sunday Screenshot is back and today I'm celebrating dinging 100, finally. The road to 100 has been frustrating. Not because the Warlords of Draenor questing is rubbish (which it is NOT) but because the servers have been awful. I'm a vetaran in this game and I've experienced launch day on every expansion.
TBC was my first, on the launch day I went to my local Game store and purchased the CE box at 9am (as it happens I was served by a certain John Bain before he went off to the US), there was no problem logging on at 10am, yes there was lag, yes there was a shortage of mobs but players grouped together for quests and shared kills, we made friends there were pretty much no douchebags and we had no server crashes. What the servers were like at the midnight switch over I cannot comment.
My second experience was Wrath and my guild decided to have some midnight launch fun. I decided to take part late and hadn't pre-ordered. At midnight, I went to the local supermarket and bought myself a copy of the standard edition (which irks me as it is the only CE I'm missing), returned home and was on line by 1:30am, again no problems logging on, server was laggy, very laggy we got DCd, we got straight back on and after a while, the Northrend realms crash, I rolled a DK and did the whole starting area without anything more than a bit of lag, OK a lot of lag. After the first few hours everything was smooth.
Cataclysm was the third launch, once again I was taking part in this at midnight, I pre-ordered the CE box and this arrived ahead of time and I was ready to go at midnight when Blizzard restarted the servers. We had log on issues, the start zones were chaos, there was lag, servers crashed but as had happened in Wrath, afer the first few hours everything was smooth.
In Mists I once again took part in the launch at midnight, I pre-ordered the CE box and was very disappointed when this didn't arrive ahead of time. My guildies all ordered the digital edition and were online and playing at midnight. The servers did not need a restart this time but, if I remember correctly, players needed to log out and back in to activate their access, the login servers got swamped and people couldn't log back in. I was getting the itch to join in though and decided to buy a digital edition and beg for my money back when I upgraded to the CE (this didn't happen but I did get my std edition key back to reuse). I got in and there was lag and a buggy quest which was only allowing one person to do it at a time /facepalm. However this was fixed quickly and while there was a bit of lag around certain quest hubs the game was very playable after the first few hours.
This year, I once again oredered the CE and hoped to get it ahead of time, I didn't and once again caved in and bought a standard digital edition knowing that I would get the key back to reuse or gift. I did this because I wanted to play and play early, I had booked time off work that the following 2 nights to be able to get to 100 before the weekend. The servers once again didn't need a restart, and we didn't need to relog. However, as usually happens the servers couldn't cope with the demands and there wa lag, quest congestion and DCs. Once getting past the initial starting experience we all got driven into the garrisons. The garrison is an instanced area, there is no portal or load screen but it IS instanced.
The servers could not cope and players got DC's and then couldn't log back in because the character was either not found or already logged in. After an hour of this I decided to give up and go to bed and just play normally Thursday morning. This I did for about an hour before I went back to the garrison for a quest. Then I hit the same wall as I had the night before, many guildies were in the same position and eventually the server crashed and freed us all. I continued playing and that evening the problem happened again more players were stuck and when zoning into the garrison, a personal instanced location, the garrisons were full of other players all unable to move without DCing.
I decided to switch to one of my other level 90s, when Itried to log on I got to 90% load bar and then DC'd I repeated this on 4 characters before deciding to try a lowerlevel alt, I got in. So now on expansion launch day I was only able to play low level characters, After being unable to play, I decided to go to bed aerly and try Friday morning, Friday was basically the same deal, everyone that used the garrison was unable to play. Guildies that avoided them managed to level quite quickly. To ease the problems Blizzard reduced server capacity which resulted in every server being locked and having queues. So if you were unlucky enough to get DCd, you'd most likely hit a queue.
Saturday was a day I feared the worst as more players were going to want to play, I logged on early and decided to avoid anything garrison related and that strategy worked amazingly well as I stayed on line all day and got to 99 before I had to sleep. However, other people had all the issues of the previous 2 day. Warlords of Draenor has truly been the worst launch of a WoW expansion pack.
I'm sure that the reason is because of server connections because while these are not officially mergers, the realms are all sharing the same physical servers of only one of the realms. This of course means there are less servers to accommodate the majority of subscribers at once and while this is an unusual occurrence, it is a predictable event as it only happens every expansion and Blizzard really should have been prepared better for this.
I'm hoping for at least some game time credits for all subscribers, not because I want the compensation (quite frankly this would be 2 days pay for me because of my wasted leave days) but as an admission from Blizzard that they messed up the launch big time.
What has your launch experience been like? Did you manage to level to 100 yet? I'd love to see your answers to all 3 questions in the comments below.
Continuing on from my last post about how I dislike Evlyxx's new look, which all revolves around her face I thought I'd share a series of screenshots that I have uploaded as a video to my YouTube channel (please subscribe and leave comments).
The biggest changes are on the last 3 faces, the new versions don't look like the originals (although they are probably the worst of the original faces in terms of both quality and "prettiness") if I had one of those as my toons face I would feel like I'd been robbed!
Thankfully, I've discovered I'm not a lone dissenter and I really hope that the issue is one of the "beta" issues seen so often before.
If you have beta or PTR access I urge you to go and check the new models out and see what you character looks like after the change. It is possible to switch between new and old models in the menus go to System > Advanced and tick/untick the option Show New Character Models.
Other related articles/forum posts you may want to read:
This end of expansion lull I have been fighting has finally arrived. I'll admit that things have slacked here at Evangelysm and while I am slacking I really am still focuses on the blog, I just struggle currently to invent content that is worthwhile posting about.
I'm in the beta but to be honesst I am not keen on spoiling the new content befoe live and so am spending my time in game slacking on alts and slacking at picking up the legendary cloak on as many of my Shadowsongsters as possible in preparation for leveling them uo in Warlords. I'm also leveling my Hordie alts and it is there that I obtained this weeks image. Clearly someone had too many banquests and too much time!
How are you spending the lull period? Are you even still playing WoW?
Got a few minutes yesterday to take a peak into the Warlords Beta, something I never had the chance to do with my alpha access, on loading up you are presented with the image above as a splash screen. I was expecting the images to link to other items, but currently they don't.
I'll be taking a better look round over the next few days and will most likely post a few things here also.
Decided that this week is the week to bring you guys up to date with my latest and greatest kill shots as it seems to have been months since I did the guild killshot pictures. So forgive me if there are any repeats!
Something a little different this week as I'm looking at a screenshot I took from a video from my old guild in Vanilla from a healer perspective.
Rewatching it
reminded me of how much panic there is in today's game compared to
Vanilla. Today you have so little time to react to a situation compared
to then.
However, I'm not saying the Vanilla situation was
perfect, For one look how little activity the healer has. Casually
casting a spell whenever Rejuvenation falls off the tank and very little
else, because he was simply healing his assigned target not trying to top meters because back then the name of the game was mana regen and keeping your assigned target(s) alive.
If you tried to meter whore and snipe other healers heals you soon went oom and ended up with your assignment dead. Over time this model became unsustainable as damage went silly and with smaller raids you simply didn't have assignments, you healed all who needed it and this led to the healer meter whoring we see today and it gets worse as mana conservation is simply not an issue in today's raids.
You'll also notice how little game world was visible. It
was this that led many to run clean custom UIs but even then it wasn't
much better as 40 health bars takes up a load of space regardless. It is funny seeing addons like Group Buttons which put your main heals as a button next to each raid frame, stuff like Raid Status Monitor showing the mana and HP of key raid members (by class because each class only had 1 role!) and Emergency Monitor (now banned) which gave you a big ass buttom to click to target the most needy players so you could heal them.
Finally look at the Tank Targets, that isn't the mobs that are targeting the tank, that is the list of designated tanks and their targets, here you'll see 9 tanks! Finally, I thought I'd share the video with you too, enjoy.
Interested in joining me at Exhumed on Shadowsong EU?
Exhumed is a guild for the time challenged mature player. We're focused on raiding and PVP progression but won't penalise you if you put real life before the game.
We are currently recruiting for PVPers, healers for our 2nd raid team and social members.
By day I'm an IT Server analyst for a major telecoms compnay in the UK and I've been playing World of Warcraft since November 2005 when a pair of colleagues bullied me into playing! I have evolved into a raider (summer 2006), an auction house wheeler dealer (2007), a guild officer (2007), an altoholic (2008), a raid leader (2008), a Warcraft blogger (2010) and a PVPer (2012)
My main has, and always will be Evlyxx, a priest and I love to heal. I started as Holy in vanilla, dabbled with the shadow side during the middle part of Burning Crusade, before returning to Holy but I have been mostly Discipline since mid-Wrath.
