The “responding to silly searches people found this site with” bandwagon.

totem timers not showing maelstrom when using two handers

Two things wrong with this.

Firstly; Lern2 Shock and Awe, nub.

Second; Why, in the name of the elements, are you using a two hander as an enhancement shaman? Seriously. Dual wield. Do it now. You want to use a two hander and also do magical pewpew? Reroll DK.

I hate my raiding guild

Quietly scamper off and find a new guild, or go down in a blaze of anger and drama… and find a new guild.

is a shaman draenei worth the effort

Urrr, yes. Draenei are sexy. This is an undeniable fact. Males included.

Joking aside, Draenei are the only alliance race that can be Shaman, and this alone makes it worth the effort – you’ll be in high demand to be the heroism hore. In addition, for the DPS type Shaman, you’ll have a tasty 1% bonus to your hit rating, that you’ll also provide to your party.

new heigan safe spot 3.1

Stop cheating and either – learn to dance, or emigrate out of Oceania. You may find the following video useful.

-halo- What?

be my bitch 6 screens

WUT.

blood elf woman vs blood elf man duel

Impossible situation. All blood elves are women.

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Why yes, filler post is, indeed, filler. Nothin’ exciting happening recently… what with a recent guild merger, raid nights were scheduled on the two nights a week I am guaranteed to be unable to raid.

The original Laser Heal – none of yer wannabe Energy Ball Heals.

At the limits of my patience with Keristrasza and her stupid mace, I decided I wanted to try and heal Naxxramas, with or without it.

As luck would have it, Kiaara was putting together a group for Naxx10, so I joined up with them to put my lazurz to the test. Patchwerk was already down, so we started with Grobbulus. It was kind of a sloppy kill, but we downed his fat ass, and as a reward for not destroying WoW due to Keri’s stinginess, he dropped a shiny Infection Repulser. Hurrah! –strokes his lovely mace-

Due to raid makeup, we decided not to try Gluth, and instead doubled back to Spider. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you will know that PUG + Me + Anub’Rekhan = fail. We failed twice, then we had success! For the “easiest” boss in the place, he’s always given me the most trouble!

Faerlina was totally uneventful. We wiped once on Maexxna – at 2% no less! We had four druids, and I swear not a one was using Abolish Poison! (Kia, you are allowed to not due to being Feral, but what was the tree’s excuse?!) I wasn’t in the main tanks group, so my Cleansing Totem wouldn’t affect him. We squished her the second time, though.

Moved onto Noth, and despite copious amounts of decursers, you betcha, I was the only person decursing. I was technically the raider healer, so I had the most time to do it, but still. Mneh.

Heigan was hilarious fail. Everyone but me (who was cheating and had my Enhancement boots with a run speed enchant equipped) and the tank died on the first dance phase. I was so tempted just to keep on going till Heigan was dead, but figured that might take quite some time, and the tank wanted to die, so we wiped and called it.

For my first raid healing experience, I’d say it was fairly successful. When I finally looked at the meters at the end of the raid (I’m a strong believer in basing your healers performance on “Did anyone die that you could have saved?” rather than LULZGAIZIDIDTHEMOSTHEALZ!) I had done the most overall healing, with (surprisingly) the least overheal (still like 28% or something).

On the other hand, healing assignments were kind of… loose. Whilst we had said that the Priest was on Main Tank, Druid on Off Tank, and me on raid, the other two were doing a lot of raid healing (probably why they were ending up sucked dry of mana when I still had 60%), and for my part I was doing a lot of panic heals on the tanks.

Contrary to somewhat popular belief re: shaman healing, no, chain heal was not all I used. There were some chain heal-tastic times, such as when a whole group of people were impaled on Anub’Rekhan, but most of my healing was actually in the form of Healing Wave (kinda surprised at that myself), though Chain Heal was very close behind.

Things I think I need to improve upon:

1. Clever use of Riptide. Riptide is a decent instant heal with a snazzy HoT component, and it will boost the next chain heal on that target by 25% (if they are the first target), consuming the HoT. I rarely used Riptide for this – it was used mostly for the HoT component (particularly on Maexxna, where every little HoT helps!) or as a quick heal if I had to keep moving (on myself at Heigan )
2. More use of Lesser Healing Wave. I love the Riptide animation and sound so much that I used it as my quick patch-up spell in Heroics. Raids do not really allow for it to be used like this, so I tried to use LHW more, but wasn’t really successful.
3. Sticking to my assigned role. The other two healers weren’t great about this either, but I found myself throwing panic heals at the tank far too often, possibly sniping other heals (though I would interrupt casting if I saw another heal going through)

Overall, it was pretty fun for my first attempt at healing in a Raid. I’d much rather be up there doing the pewpew, but still, I won’t be too miffed to switch over to healing on the rare occasions that I need to.

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S’been a while since my last update, so here’s some random stuff.

Little montage of my recent achievements (pre that Naxx run). Basically all self explanatory, except Orbital Bombardment. We left the Flame Tower up, which was kinda fun in an “omg I can’t move I’m surrounded by walls of fire eeek” way. It may have been a better idea to do something else – perhaps Storm tower? –shrugs- In any case, I got to be a chopper driver!

Hells yeah. Unfortunately, I was somewhat limited by game mechanics, but in my head, Ella was firing off lightning bolts and bursts of lava as she weaved in between dwarves and the legs of iron giants. She also tried to hook an iron dwarf on her claw as she drove by, but being made of metal, all that achieved was a nasty bend on her claw.

I’ve been putting together a wish list of what I want from there, and I realised, hey, I might as well put it into a blog post, so I can easily find it, and it might help others.

It’s worth pointing out, for any Hunters that may be reading this (if I didn’t make you all run off in disgust when I turned traitor and mained my Shaman!) most of the gear is good for you guys, too. Exceptions are Weapons, Tier Gear (No, Duh?) and anything that has Expertise on it. Expertise is not for Hunters! –shakes fist-

This list is –not- going to tell you what is “best in slot” for this content, as I find that a rather ephemeral concept. It’s all well and good to say “Oh, those boots are best in slot!” – but what if they are loaded with crit, and are replacing some boots with expertise on them? Then the issue gets murky. Use your own judgement here – if you need the Hit Rating, grab some hit rating gear. If your hit is fine, feel free to roll on that haste-ilicious pair of gloves!

This list also assumes you are doing 10 Man Progression – not that you are going into 10 man Ulduar from 25 man Naxx.

A quick note on stats:

So that you know what you are aiming for, here are some caps:

Melee Special Hit Cap: 8% total. 2% hit from gear, or 1% for a Draenei Shaman. 6% will come from your Dual Wield Specialisation talent. This will ensure that Stormstrike, Lava Lash and Windfury procs will never miss the target. There is no reason you should not be able to reach this cap.

Expertise Cap: 26 Expertise total. 9 Expertise will come from Unleashed Rage, leaving you to make up the remaining 17 Expertise – which is roughly 140 Expertise Rating. Reaching this means that when attacking the boss from behind (as you should be) they will be unable to dodge any of your attacks.

Spell Hit Cap: 17% (446 Rating) total, or 16% (420) for a Draenei. Unfortunately, the Dual Wield talent only affects melee hit, so you need to make this number up entirely from gear, unless you have a Moonkin Druid with Improved Faerie Fire or a Shadow Priest with Misery in your raid group.

Weapons:

I’d like to point something out here – There are far, far more Ranged Weapons available in Ulduar than there are Enhancement Shaman itemised weapons*. I counted four Normal Mode Ranged weapons suited to Hunters – two bows, a crossbow, and a gun. You want to know how many Enhancement Shaman weapons I found from normal modes? One. An axe from Yogg-Saron. I’m sorry, but what the hell, Blizzard? At the very least, we get an iLevel 213 Main Hand from Kel’Thuzad, but we’re left high and dry in terms of off hands unless we get two items from Yoggy!

* The ideal Enhancement weapon should have a speed no lower than 2.5. This is because Windfury + Flametongue do more damage with slower weapons, and slow weapons have a greater chance of proccing Maelstrom Weapon (An Enhancement Shaman should have a lot of melee haste from Windfury Totem, so slow weapons will proc Maelstrom rather quicker than you might expect)

That aside, let’s look at our slim pickings;

Kinetic Ripper – Off Hand Fist, Flame Leviathan (Normal)

This is not a great weapon for an Enhancer, due to the extremely fast attack speed. However, you may find the white DPS boost over Greed or The Stray pulls it ahead. If I get a hold of this, I’ll test it and let you know how it compares. It’s basically your only 10 man Off Hand option with an iLevel higher than 200 until…

Touch of Madness – One Hand Axe, Yogg-Saron (Normal)

Orc Shamans everywhere – rejoice! Everyone else, you are allowed a woot. This fine edge is not just our only decent 10 man Ulduar off hand choice, it’s also one handed and not unique-equipped, allowing you to potentially have two of these babies! For normal modes only, this’ll be your only real option.

The Masticator – Main Hand Fist, Iron Council (Hard)

Ah, another beauty. Aside from the fun name, this is simply amazing weapon for us Enhancers. If you can do IC10 on Hard Mode for this, it’ll be well worth the effort.

Headgear:

Circlet of True Sight – Iron Council (Normal)

If you are lacking on hit, look no further than this piece of forehead finery and its lovely red LED.

Valorous Worldbreaker Faceguard – Mimiron (Token Drop, Normal)

If, however, you aren’t in need of hit, here’s a tasty piece of Tier-8 gear, complete with added lolwut laser gem! C’mon, Blizzard, what’s up with the slightly ridiculous Shaman headgear, eh?

Neck:

Choker of the Abyss – General Vezax (Normal)

Seed of  Budding Carnage – Freya (Hard Mode)

A hard mode drop that may be quite difficult to get, but certainly worth it. Ridiculous stats and a gem slot perfect for some Expertise or Agility.

Shoulders:

Ironaya’s Discarded Mantle – Auriaya (Normal)

Ol’ Ironaya had some good stuff back in the day, eh? Must have left it in Ulduar before she got herself locked in that tiny room in Uldaman!

Valorous Worldbreaker Shoulderguards – (Token Drop, Thorim)

Tier gear – one of the few places you’ll be seeing Expertise on your gear. I’d definitely try and grab these, even if you have Ironaya’s Mantle.

Cloaks:

Shawl of the Shattered Giant – Kologarn (Normal)

Cloak of Mastery’s more refined older brother. Abandons the awesome skull motif for some bizarre modern art.

Winter’s Frigid Embrace – Thorim (Normal)

If you don’t need the hit, the haste on this will do you good.

Chest:

Chestguard of the Lasher – Freya (Normal)

For hitting hard, fast and accurately!

Valorous Worldbreaker Chestguard – Yogg-Saron (Token Drop, Normal)

If you could possibly need any more hit rating on one piece of gear, along comes this with the potential for a whopping 92 Hit rating, if you need that much!

This has, in my opinion, the unfortunate attribute of being a robe. Wha-what? Our War Kilt (see Legs section) is a pair of Trousers, and our Chestguard provides the actual kilt? Lern2notfail at armour design, Blizzard!

Bracers:

Bracers of the Smothering Inferno – Razorscale (Normal)

More of that delicious hit rating, with a side helping of Armor Penetration. These are BoE, so if you are having awful luck getting Razorscale to drop them, you could buy them from the AH for an arm and a leg – and then you’re gonna have an excess bracer!

Hands:

Gloves of the Taut Grip – XT-002 Deconstructor (Normal)

I wouldn’t say no to these, but I’d much rather have these…

Valorous Worldbreaker Grips – Freya (Token drop, Normal)

Precious expertise and more attack power, though less Mana and Armor Penetration. You can’t really go wrong with either.

Waist:

Belt of the Blood Pit – Thorim (Normal)

Legs:

Leggings of the Insatiable – Yogg-Saron (Normal)

Hit rating and haste galore, with a generous helping of raw attack power. Toss up between this and…

Valorous Worldbreaker’s War-Kilt – Hodir (Token Drop, Normal)

More hit and haste, plus gem slots for your Expertise needs, or just plain Agility gems. However, these have a lot less raw attack power, less crit from Agility, and less mana. If you are aiming for the Tier Bonus, or maybe need some extra expertise, go for these.

Feet:

Boots of Unsettled Prey – Trash Drop!

These are our only iLevel 219 option – may be somewhat a pain to get to drop. These are BoP, too, so you can’t even buy them up from another guild! Good luck!

If you can’t get these, the Pack-Ice Striders (iLevel 213) for 40 Emblems of Valor are pretty good too, especially if you are still in need of extra hit rating.

Rings:

Band of Draconic Guile – Razorscale (Normal)

Pretty decent ring for pure damage – but I personally find Ring slots a good place to grab some Hit or Expertise.

Loop of the Agile – Iron Council (Hard)

While this has the same lack of Hit/Expertise as the Band, as this is from a hard mode, it’s an iLevel 226, and comes with a gem slot. Certainly wouldn’t say no to this!

Trinkets:

Pyrite Infuser – Flame Leviathan (Normal)

An insane amount of hit rating, combined with a Mirror of Truth-esque proc (which will stack with your mirror!) make this a nice Enhancement Trinket.

Elemental Focus Stone – Auriaya (Normal)

Kinda interesting item – while Enhancement is a “Melee” class, we are not a purely “physical” class – we’re close combat, physical/caster hybrids – Earth Shocks and Lightning Bolts make up a lot of our damage output. We’ll have quite a good chance at proccing this, and haste is one of the better stats for an Enhancer.

Given it is a “caster” item, I’d suggest you let typical ranged casters have this. If none of them want/need it, or you just have none with you, I’d snap this one up.

Totems:

There aren’t actually any totems (or other relics) available from bosses in 10 man Ulduar – instead, the 25 Man Naxx relics have been made available for 25 Emblems of Valor.

Totem of Dueling

This is the actual Enhancement totem. Since haste was boosted a bit for us in 3.1, this is looking pretty good these days. However…

Totem of Hex

It was suggested that the Elemental Totem was actually better for us in 3.0, so this may also be a worthwhile investment. I’m really not very sure on this matter – but you can’t go far wrong with either of these.

Totem of Splintering

This is actually the 15 Emblems of Heroism totem. I’m mentioning it here because, despite my having it equipped (I haven’t go another Totem at the moment, thanks to not doing my research before I bought this one) this totem does not work. It’s not worth the Emblems. The comments on Wowhead for the Dueling totem suggest that this was a 400 DPS boost over that totem.

I have no idea where they got that number from, because in my tests, there was a miniscule difference between having the totem equipped and having nothing there. I’m talking about a 5 damage difference.

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Hopefully, this list will help give you an idea of what you’re looking for in U10. If I’ve missed anything (I have a feeling I might be missing some hard mode drops), just leave me a comment and I’ll be sure to include it.

Yes, I can make a blog post out of anything. It passes the time!

With 3.1.2 hitting the EU realms today, I was able to spend all those Champion’s Seals I’d saved up. From the release of the Tournament until 3.1.2, I’ve had numerous different plans…

First I wanted the Hippogryph for Faulsey, and the Turbostrider for Ellaria. Then, I got irritated with the 3-man daily, so Faulsey’s goal was dropped to a Moonsaber. Then, they announced the overhaul of the mounts, so I aimed to get a plethora of Tabards, pets and mounts. Then, finally, we heard the Gryph would be dropping to 150 seals, prompting me to decide to pick that up on Ellaria.

Here’s my haul:

Look at me, all Darny’d up. Faulsey only had 55 seals, allowing for the purchase of a Darnassus Tabard and a cheapish Moonsaber.

Ok, so it’s not the omgawesome pure white hippogryph we’d originally expected before 3.1 was even released, but it’s not too bad. Ellaria now has a whopping three flying mounts, but they are all pretty unique. Roflcopter, Bronze Drake and now this. Won’t catch her riding a Gryphon, no siree!

Turbostrider! With flames omg yes. Now, all I need is some sort of Tabard with a flame on it, and my Flame Warden title, and she’ll be the hottest Shaman around. …

I apologise for that terrible joke.

Also, thanks to Rilgon, I am now actually considering doing another eight days of torture Argent Tournament dailies for a Mechanopeep, since I now imagine it to be somewhat like a mechanical Roadrunner.

MEEP MEEP! –raspberry, zooms away-

Soooo, Ulduar tonight! Having cleared the Siege of Ulduar last night, we moved onto the Antechamber.

First up was Kologarn. We wiped the first time – Kiaara must have eaten some eyebeams, our main tank followed soon after, and it snowballed from there. Our second attempt was much better. We kept the two tanks on Kologarn at all times, and our Kitty went Bear to pick up the adds that spawned when we killed his right arm. We lost someone towards the end, but by that point, Heroism had been popped and we were just racing to get that last few percent.

We then doubled back to try the Iron Council, though we debated trying Auriaya first. That might have been the best idea, in hindsight.

I dunno if we just had rotten luck, or if this is common, but the vast majority of our wipes on the council were due to Steelbreaker being midway through a Fusion Punch cast when BAM! a rune appears under him, splattering our tank all over the wall. That is really, really not cool. It’s not even like we can avoid it!

The one time we had any success, we actually made it to Stormcaller, but wiped due to eating an Overload, followed quickly by him floating into the air and disintegrating us all with lightning. Ow.

Still, pretty good progress. Not sure if we’ll see much of Ulduar for the next couple of weeks – our Guild Leader, and top healer, is getting married soon, so he’s not going to be on very often – not that we can hold that against him

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In other news – Drop it! Drop it! Or I swear by the dragonqueen I’ll never stop killing you!

Stupid Keristrasza and her stupid mace…

More Ulduar shenanigans tonight!

Started with XT-002 who had given us bother the last two raid nights. We one-shot him. Still let quite a few scrapbots through, and we had about 20 seconds left on his Enrage Timer, but we did it!

Since we’d taken him down with almost no bother, we doubled back to try Ignis, and his Vibrating Willy Warmer. The fight was pretty hectic – we had too many constructs up most of the time, one of our healers was splattered at one point, and much hot crotch pocketing was had. The fight seemed to drag on for ages, and I thought it would all fall apart in the end – but nope! Another one-shot!

So, that’s Soul Haven (plus Kiaara! ) officially cleared the Siege of Ulduar! Woot!

We then went ahead to try Kologarn, coming very close to a wipe on the Pokeball Rune mobs, then again when we managed to aggro the 3-mob trash pull and one of the big stone guys. Tank got two trash purples to drop here, too! Lucky bugger. We didn’t have time for Kologarn, but we’re going to continue on tomorrow night – hopefully take the Iron Council down, too.

I wanted to hear him shout “OBLIVION!” though, so…

Hehehe. Oops. –halo-

…and business is good!

My WoW goal for this week is to get Ilthiran, my Feral Druid, to Outland. Thanks to that Zul’Farrak group a few days ago, I got a nice jump start to levelling again. I hit level 50 today, which means… Mangle!

With Mangle, I’m now taking great delight in making enemies bleed to death. Pounce –> Mangle –> Shred –> Rake –> Rip –> Cackle evilly. Probably not the most efficient levelling rotation, but it’s fun!

At 60, I’m considering shifting over to a bear-heavy build – tanking is what I want to do on this character, but I’m not sure if Outlands has enough population these days that I’ll do much in the way of instancing there. Might be worth it to keep with a totally Kitty DPS build till 68, in that case. Hmmm. Thoughts, anyone? Oh, and no – I’m not dual speccing at this stage.

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Shammy news:

Work struck, and gave me a shift for Wednesday coming. The guild usually does FL (and Razorscale now, probably) on Wednesdays, so I’ll miss that – and guaranteed that the Pyrite Infuser will drop. Tomorrow we should be continuing Ulduar – hopefully we’ll finally get at least XT down, maybe Ignis and one of the Antechamber bosses too?

Ooh, and I need to tell you my idiot PUG story. So, I’m looking for HC Nexus, since I still need that damn mace for my resto set. Get an invite from a Paladin, and we end up just needing a tank. Nothing in LFG, so I ask the guild, and a guildie agrees to come. Paladin is totally oblivious to the other three party members saying “Hawl, you, invite this guy, ffs.” Guildie tank understandably decides he has better things to do with his time than not get invites. This was the first sign that the Paladin was an idiot.

Finally, we get the Paladins attention, and another DPS’ guildie comes to tank. We’re doing OK – DPS isn’t great, around 1.6k average, but it’s not horrible for a Heroic. The Paladin starts saying how the DPS is crap, and picks out the mage especially. I point out he’s hardly doing much better, to which he replies “Yes, I am” – at this point he’s doing 1.7k DPS. Ooh, so strong. –eyeroll-

So, we’re fighting Telestra, and the idiot Paladin immediately draws aggro on her first split and dies. We manage to keep her splits under control, whilst the Paladin, clearly not content just to eat dirt like a good idiot DPS, informs us (and I quote)

ul will wipe coz im not aliv not enuf dps wivout me

At this point, I’m healing like absolute crazy – Riptides and Lesser Healing Waves are zipping about the place every GCD, barely managing to keep everyone alive – so yes, it’s looking close, but I was determined that we’d survive, just to prove that fool wrong.

Then, he asks “no1 got battle res?” The remaining party members were Shaman, Death Knight, Rogue and Mage. Tired of his idiocy, I reply “No, because we have no Druid you blithering idiot. ” –facepalm-

We manage to down her without anyone else dying, and I reluctantly res the idiot. The rest of us move onto the floating platforms with the dragons – skipping the trash pull just past Telestra. I dunno about you, but every single party on my server skips that. Guess what idiot Paladin does? He aggros them, and drags them to us, wiping the party. Needless to say, people were furious. Fortunately, he left the party (I hadn’t healed him, in the hopes this would mean the mobs would leave us alone) and we were rid of him. Calling in another paladin (amusingly, from the same guild, though he wasn’t an absolute cretin like the other) we made it through the rest of the instance without a hiccup, unless you count the mace not dropping, as usual.

I think that has to rank as one of my worst PUG experiences ever – even worse than groups that just wiped endlessly… at least in those groups people were silently stupid.

Finally!

I am free – free of the tyranny that is doing daily quests!

That’s not all I got today, oh no. Let’s see…

Talk about overachieving! The amount of achievement spam was only half planned – I didn’t intentionally raise my Darnassus rep to the level where this would all happen at once. I just noticed that I’d be one commendation badge short of Exalted by the time I was finished being a valiant for Stormwind, so I grabbed one and used it when I handed in quest.

Ahh, I’m just glad I don’t have to do those quests anymore. I did enjoy the jousting aspect (when my mount wasn’t bugging out) but I just… don’t like dailies. Doing the same quests every single day for the past month was such a pain.

Now, I’m just waiting for patch 3.1.2 to drop, so I can use all those seals I saved up to get a cheap Turbostrider, two pets, and hopefully fixed Gnomeregan Tabard (City Tabards from the tournament currently display as your guild tabard.)

Progress – it tastes sweet.

Guild run of Ulduar tonight, and I actually got past Flame Leviathan! Ok, sure, we only downed one more boss, but still rather pleased.

We took down Razorscale – our first try we were kind of slow to ground her, and when we did, we had a couple of mishaps that resulted in DPS dying and her reaching the enrage timer. Second attempt was much better, and we took her down without any of us dying.

Lady Loot was on my side, and blessed me with two items. The first, a pair of awesome bracers to replace the crafted blues I had, and some legs for my offspec. Both items kinda fell to me by default, since the Hunter had the Bracers, and no one else could use the legs. Muwahaha.

I was really pleased with my DPS performance, too. Given I’m still in a lot of Heroic Blues (still iLevel 200 though – same as Naxx10), I think I’m doing pretty well. 2.7k on a boss where I had to be on the move for the first half, to take care of Watchers is not to be sneezed at, right?

We tried XT again, and did a lot better than we had on Monday night, where we didn’t get him much past 65% – and he just healed up after that anyway! We managed to get him to about 37% tonight, but due to one of our healers having problems, and letting too many scrapbots slip through, we weren’t able to kill him.

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In random alt news, I dusted off my Feral Druid last night. Whilst in Tanaris, I got an invite to an at-level Zul’Farrak party. I was sort of the tank – but an overzealous Ret Paladin did most of it. –coughs- We ripped through the place, and though I didn’t get the Embrace of the Lycan, but I did get a pretty good staff. Oh, and an entire levels worth of EXP just from the mobs, then another third from the quests, taking me from 45 to 47.

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In random silly news, Bytor sent me the code for some pet biscuits, so I was running around with a super Speedy tonight. Thanks!

This is an idea you’ve no doubt seen bandied about before – reworking the Vanilla / Burning Crusade raids and instances to a Heroic level. Most recently, @Bytorsnowdog mentioned it on Twitter, and I thought it would make a good blog post.

Heroic old content; Why?

There are a few reasons people would like to see such a thing.

Firstly, nostalgia. People who have been playing since release may have fond (ish) memories of old world dungeons, and would love to relive those. While it’s true that those dungeons are still there and open for anyone to enter, people are often not keen on doing so if they already have the achievement, and even when you do get people together, they may not really present much of a challenge. Even people who only played BC are aching for Karazhan – I’m looking at you, Pike!

Another reason is that newer players, like me, haven’t seen many of these old things – I, for one, would love to go and see Karazhan, and having at a real difficulty level would make it that much more fun.

A final reason is that Blizzard put a lot of work into a lot of these places, that now see very little action – by tweaking the mobs inside, they could keep these places current and fun, for people to enjoy.

Why not?

Of course, there has to be a catch.

For one thing, it’s probably not as simple as adjusting the level of the mobs within; Dungeons would have to be rebalanced around Replenishment and the presence of Death Knights. It would take a huge amount of work to take every old instance, every old raid and bring them up to level 80 standards.

And then, after they’ve put in all this work rebalancing the place, there’s the issue of gear.

People like myself would be more than content just to do such dungeons for the sake of enjoyment – the bosses could drop 10 copper, and I’d still give it a shot.

But what about everyone else? Let’s be frank here – for lots of people, their motivation for raiding is to get the best gear, so they can be the best they can be. So these people would have no interest in doing a loot-less Raid that was just as difficult as one that did drop loot – and if a large number of people aren’t experiencing the content, then what’s the point? All that hard work Blizzard did in rebalancing the place – wasted!

On the other hand, say they did make these Heroics drop loot on par with current level content – that would make things far, far too complex! In addition to their Wrath content, people would also be progressing through Heroic old content for gear – Personally, the idea of having even four raid areas that gave equivalent levels of gear I find overwhelming.

Complexity aside, we again return to the issue of people experiencing content – all the Wrath content that most of the work should be going into could end up getting neglected in favour of rehashed old content! I think we can all agree it’s much better to focus on improving recent and creating new content.

So… as usual, a good idea that’s not so good?

Yeah, that’s kind of a theme with these posts, isn’t it?

As fun as it might be to see heroic versions of old content favourites, it’s really not practical.

But who knows – maybe there could be a compromise. Maybe just take the most popular raid from Vanilla (I dunno – MC? ZG?) and BC (Kara, surely?) and give them the CoT treatment.

Edit: The Naxxramas Experiment

As Keladria noted in the comments, Blizzard have already given this a shot – Naxxramas, the only full length raid to go live with Wrath, is an upgraded version of the original level 60 Raid. Of course, being entirely new to raiding and Naxx, it just slipped my mind that it had existed before its Wrath incarnation. A Failsey moment!

Blizzard’s justification for bringing back Naxx was that it had been a highly creative instance, then unfortunately very few people had experienced when it was new, due to the extreme difficulty. So, they revived it and made it WotLK’s entry level raid.

Opinions differ as to the relative success of this move. Personally, I liked it. Contrary to widespread “Naxx is easymode you can pug it no problem!” sentiment, it was actually still a very challenging raid for people new to it (I.E. 80% of my pugs!) but the bosses were good fun.

On the other hand, I have to admit that Naxxramas lacks a bit of “polish.” I go into Ulduar, and I’m immediately awed by just how huge the place is, and how impressive the bosses are. Naxxramas? Not quite so much. It’s cramped, but doesn’t feel even the slightest bit scary, after you get over the Thaddius screams. Apart from Sapphiron and his impressive entrance, most of the bosses are pretty dull and unassuming looking.

The key difference between Naxxramas and the Heroic Old Content idea is that Naxxramas was basically the only real raid for months after the release of the expansion, whereas Heroic old content should not take the place of new content.

In a way, I think that may have been the biggest problem with Naxxramas – it was old, we knew it was old, and we wanted something new and fresh, even if Naxx did work fairly well.

-blinks- Hmm. 2:40 AM edit is rambling. In any case, Naxx is perhaps a good excuse both for and against reviving old content. It allowed people who never got the chance to see the content to do it, but it also left us hungering for more raids.