Posted by Spooner | 3 Comments

Oculus Loot Improvements

Wow there must have been some serious complaints about Occulus for Blizzard to go this far. Let’s face it, Occulus sucks. It’s nothing I’m cutting my wrists over like a lot of other people but the instance itself is just a pain in the ass. Hell anything involving the mario-death-fall-drop mechanic is obnoxious as hell (like the Aces High quest in Coldarra that can lick my taint) but Blizzard is pretty much giving you 2 more badges and the chance at a blue drake just for completing the instance. Do you guys think this is a bit much or a step in the right direction?

Special note: It must be selected through the random dungeon finder for you to see the new loot bags.

Personally I think they’ve gone a little over the top as now I want to run nothing but heroic occulus just for the extra badges.

To encourage players not to shy away from the many invigorating adventures to be had in The Oculus, we have applied a change to enhance the rewards players are provided when selected for this dungeon via the Random Heroic option in the Dungeon Finder. Once Ley-Guardian Eregos is defeated, one loot bag per character will be provided in his chest in addition to the current rewards. Each loot bag will offer players rare gems, two additional Emblems of Triumph, and a chance of being rewarded the Reins of the Blue Drake. These fine treasures could be yours should you honor your fellow party members by besting the challenges contained within The Oculus! Keep in mind, however, that these extra loot bags will only be awarded to each party member if Oculus is selected by the Dungeon Finder when players choose the Random Heroic option.

In light of this change, the Reins of the Azure Drake will now have a chance of dropping in both 10- and 25-player versions of The Eye of Eternity.

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Posted by Spooner | 3 Comments

LFG Tool: First Impressions

This is single handedly the greatest thing to ever happen to the World of Warcraft and I sincerely hope that other MMO games can borrow from it’s amazing inception.

The random dungeon finder has replaced daily 5-man dungeon quests. Using the tool for the first time a day grants 2 emblems of frost and almost 30g. Every subsequent random heroic grants 2 triumph badges in addition to whatever badges drop in the instance. Doing the random normal difficulty dungeon grants triumph badges the first time as well. That’s an awesome way to rack up gear for a fresh 80, and alt, or even an off-spec and be immune to DKP rules or other stipulations. It basically means that you have no excuse to lack the gear to play in Icecrown while skill and a good group are now bigger issues.

When you enter the queue you pick your role, in my case tank, and then during prime time after about 12 seconds you can enter the dungeon! I love it, no mucking about with daily quests or who has what and can you share. No more waiting for everybody to stop being lazy and get to the instance as you are all directly teleported inside. If you lack healers on your realm, no worries they’ll find one for you elsewhere. The groups are always made of 1 tank 1 healer 3 DPS and the groups lately have been remarkable. Doing a full heroic Drak’tharon Keep in 12 minutes without a single death or even dropping below 50% health is incredible.

You get a buff inside that boosts health/dps/healing by 5% and the new need before greed won’t let people roll need on any armor outside of their class level (hunters can’t need on leather only mail armor, and so forth) which to me is actually pretty awesome because it stops a lot of the loot drama. What with Cataclsym on the horizon there really isn’t any reason for plate to be using leather anyway. You can still roll greed and win so if it ever becomes an issue then you can work it out in chat, also remember loot can be traded for 2 hours after it’s picked up to those eligible for the drop.

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Posted by Spooner | 8 Comments

Universal Tier 9 Tokens and Badge costs for 3.2

I’m speechless. What a completely and unbelievably WONDERFUL idea! Why didn’t they do this back in ZG when the token concept took off? There are 3 different item levels of Tier 9 gear coming in Patch 3.2 and the new Crusaders’ Coliseum raid. That’s A LOT of tokens and many pages of possible loot. So then how will it all be managed!? Blizzard has decided that every boss in the raids will drop a universal token that counts for any armor slot of that tier set. You will be able to buy the lower quality T9 pieces for badges of triumph bu the best will drop from the heroic raid bosses.

No more waiting for those shoulder tokens, no more waiting for that one special upgrade! You will be able to build your armor set at your own pace with whatever upgrades you need the most right away.

Slot	258	245	232
Head	1 x	75 x	50 x
Hands	1 x	45 x	30 x
Chest	1 x	75 x	50 x
Legs	1 x	75 x	50 x
Shoulders	1 x	45 x	30 x

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