More coupled news today, and this time a bit more serious as we approach a patch 6.0 and look towards the actual release.
Garrosh Heirlooms Removed with 6.0
The Perisian Torpedo continues to be our main butter and egg man, but still can not resist breaking big news over twitter. This weekend, we learned via this post from Ion Hazzikostas that Heirlooms from Garrosh would be removed with 6.0, as its trivializing the difficulty. It says Flex+ so I assume that’s all difficulties, but even more of an assumption is that they will significantly nerf this place beyond belief. Why would they do that, you might ask? Because they would have to. If you haven’t read my healing guides you may not realize exactly how Thok, Juggernaut, and Malkorok operate, but there is no possible way that they can remain the same as they are now, especially Thok, once spirit is removed from most our gear and all the other healing coefficients change.
Now, at face value, a lot of people may fail to understand whats happening here. Examine some of the responses to Ion’s tweet and you will realize this yourself. Christ, look at them as well. People complaining left and right about everything under the sun, having the nerve enough to say something so idiotic like “More like punishment for not being in a raiding guild.” How clueless can ya be! Hell, maybe you are one of them as well?! OK, OK, let me enlighten you!
Gimme’ back my Heirlooms. Put ’em right back where they belong.
Start to finish, these heirlooms were our reward from the raid to carry on into WoD. This isn’t rare, so to act surprised when things get removed like this shows you don’t pay much attention. Examine the mounts from Firelands, ICC, or Dragon Soul. All essentially the same thing, just not equip-able. Of course, those were actually guaranteed rewards, where as now these are rare from the start. You can’t make them more rare, so the only option if you are altering them is removal.
That is the first thing to understand. The next part that another select few special butterflies don’t seem to realize is that 6.0 means 5.4 is over. Not sure how its possible to overlook this fact, but it is indeed fact. Once a tier ends and the next one begins, that’s it for special rewards such as this. Some people look at 6.0 pre-release as a continuation of the previous expansion, but its just not the case. EVERYTHING will be different, so its best to examine the tier as closed. I for one just hope the mount isn’t nerfed too heavily, as I’d like to get it out to as many people as possible before the expansion hits.
The third and final thing to realize is that these are actually meant to be good pieces. Its mostly guesswork, but a lot of signs point to these being BIS pre-raid in WoD by a considerable margin, and it may not even be relevant whether they were obtained in Flex or Heroic. Time will reveal that answer, but the point is, if that IS the case, they have to remove it. Otherwise people will spend time doing Flex Garrosh instead of actual WoD content, and that just can’t be allowed to happen again.
So, I’m sorry to those that got unlucky but this tier will likely be at least 10 months old when this patch deploys. You had your chances, so don’t blame anyone but your own luck. I have not nearly maximized my chances, yet I have both the mace and the shield for my main spec after doing only our progression raiding each week. Never took any alts in anywhere, but I know people who did and have 8-9 pieces. Its all a gambit, but if you actually raided you have one. For most classes that’s all you need.
LFR Raid Loot-viability Removed?
This one is less of an announcement and more speculative (as usual!) but it does appear to be the case. This weekend, MMO-champion discovered pictures of gear sets tagged for LFR distribution and posted them via their armor level sets. Now, when we are breaking down gear sets by “Cloth” or “Plate” and its labeled LFR, this can mean only one thing! Well maybe it can mean other things, but for the purpose of this article, we will be narrow-minded.
If this truly is the case, and LFR will no longer reward raid gear, then I can say with a smile that this is a major step forward for the raid system. When Flex difficulty was announced and implemented, they should have just removed LFR. Flex is what was needed from the start: a weak difficulty that has actual mechanics that matter, and can be done easily with pugs using an in-game group finder system. Albiet its just the queue up system, but you can still find a group by going to the raid browser function and be raiding within minutes. That’s the way it should be, and that’s the option players not looking to do progression raiding should exercise each week.
This became blatantly obvious once the 90 boost was released and all these morons were crying about how LFR got so much worse. Of course it did, because people doing it are clueless as it is! You shouldn’t be doing LFR to get gear unless you are either partially AFK or really need a certain trinket or set bonus, thus having to maximize chances. Those are the only two reasons in my mind, because Flex is EASILY doable at 515-520 item level, especially the first part. Anyway, back on topic.
So ya, how it looks now is that both 5 man heroics and LFR will yield the same results. They will get you the same type of gear, potentially even the same quality and item level, and will prepare you for actual raiding, which has its lowest difficulty now set to flex. Previously, LFR was the lowest, and five man heroics (463 ilvl) were precursor to the 476 they dropped or above. Of course, this is pretty much irrelevant a few weeks into actual progression, but one of my favorite times is pre-raid gearing especially through 5 man content. I LOVE challenging five man content, almost more than I love raiding honestly. The fact that its not going to be overshadowed by LFR tells me they are really going in the right direction. They have already said that the WoD Heroics will be more challenging, and now that they wont be immediately trivialized tells me that they will make big plays to revive 5 man progression. Can’t wait to see them, especially in Challenge difficulty!
Anyway, thats it for this round-up of news. Unless we want to discuss Donald Sterling and how his comments effect WoD. We can, you know. Just let me know if you want that. I will make it happen.
Stay tuned as WoD approaches.
Recent Comments