The Daily Spoon: Lunch with Spooner; Raid Order for Northrend, Player HP, and Heroic Expectations

So I’m taking a short break from the newsy type posts to just delve a little bit into some of the aspects of the Beta I’ve noticed and some recent posts as well by Blizzard that affect the entire game.

So I’ve put a lot of emphasis in trying to keep everybody up to date and educated on the state of the game and the new transitions we’re going to have to make when Wrath launches. Things for older players coming back with my latest Back to Basics, and some professions predictions here and there. All the time we’ve also been talking about raids and new loot but I’ve never gone into an explanation of the different progessions.

First off you have to remember there is no such thing anymore as 10 man and 25 man raids progressing along the same path; it’s two different ways to get the same content with better gear coming from the 25 man path (but nothing I’m messing myself over currently). Here’s the “order” of raids by level of difficulty from what I can put together.

Naxxramas and The Obsidian Sanctuary are the same difficulty. Malygos in the Eye of Eternity is the next step up. After Malygos comes Ulduar’s Raid (src) that has yet to be officially named and finished.

It’s a short list at the moment so we’ll see what happens next. Obviously Icecrown is at the very end but that’s not coming for a long time.

What about Heroic Dungeons? In Burning Crusade most Heroics are STILL not played because they’re such a royal pain in the ass and a major jump in levela nd egar requierments to pull it off that it’s just not worth doing.

We expect players who enter this dungeon to have upgraded their gear to at least the quality present in the Normal Difficulty level 80 dungeons in Wrath of the Lich King. Enchantments, Glyphs, and Gems are also expected to have been applied to all items and characters. (src)

That’s what you have to keep in mind going into the new breed of Wrath Heroics. Thankfully the gear is completely different and MUCH better than their normal difficulty versions.

Finally, what’s going on with player health? When BC shipped we suddenly saw people going from 4k HP to 10k HP and it being totally normal regardless of class. Hell if you DON’T have at least 9,000 (lol) health in the lowest rungs of the arena you’re hamburger meat.

Yes, we improved base health of players at higher levels. We’re also going to improve pet’s health to match it. (src)

I’m also starting to like the arena again even though I freaking hate the premise, arena in Wrath of the Lich King is starting to be fun! All the old maps still suck terribly. I’ll eat my own words and critique of the system if Blizzard actually takes the time to make it not such a cluster fuck.