First impressions of 3.3
v3.3
OMG! Thank the Blizzard gods for finally making Shadow DPS competative!! In mostly item level 245 gear i’ve gone from about 4.5k DPS to just under 6k! Sure we’re still 700-1.3k DPS behind the real DPS, but at least now I won’t feel like a fill in DPS every time i’m asked to do it (not that I mind DPSing for a change).
Anyway, thats my biggest impression so far but it’s not the only one. 
The addon pain, oh the pain. Actually it wasn’t too bad. x-perl was borked until about halfway through the raid when half the guild logged off to go get the updated version. I don’t use it but several others in the guild do. All my main stuff mostly worked. Power Auras had a few issues, but I think half of that was my out of date version I was using before.
Did you know you can type /logoff to log off if you don’t have a little game bar visible? I discovered that last night before I updated Bartender4 (which also fixed the horrible changing spec issues too).
As soon as I realised I was actually going to have to update my addons I just:
- Opened File Explorer
- Navigated to my Wow addons folder
- Open Firefox
- Google each addon and if its been updated in the last month download it.
- Unzip them all and copy to the wow folder.
The worked a treat and I got some new features like triggers based on specs in Power Auras Classic.
Lets talk about Ice Crown. NPC’s inside the instance for repairing is nice. I love the new portal animation and sound when people use the internal navigation system. I bet Lady Deathwhisper enjoys the fast access to her chamber each morning when she comes to work.
we set up our 25 man raid with lots of excitement. We have a number of old guard raiders so there was some caution approaching the first trash. The Damned, which explode, were fine and seemed appropriate. Then there is a huge pull from the middle of the room. About 10-12 mobs. We discussed CC and applied some, which mostly worked. We accidentally pulled one of those giant skeleton warriors. I don’t think i’ve heard raiders sounds so excited as when they saw this giant unexpected skeleton turn up in the middle of a pull we were expecting to be hard. DPS switched to the huge skeleton and the CC kinda worked, but then they were all dead, then someone said it.
“I can’t believe we can just AoE the trash in here”
It’s true. From then on we just line-of-sight pulled the groups and AoE’ed them to death. T’was quite a let down actually. 
After that the trash was cleared quickly and we arrived at the first boss, Lord Marrowgar. He looks pretty cool I must say. Strategies were discussed (again) and we finally pulled. We were slow targeting the Impaled people and stood in a little too much bad. His whirlwind was a joke. I expect it will be buffed soon. Even us clothies were mostly ignoring it and focusing on dodging the real danger, the blue flames. I was DPsing and died at the end of the first whirlwind at the agro wipe. I didn’t realise that Lord Marrowgar’s reach is about three times the size of his hit box. I was about a third of the way across the room when he sabre lashed me… We eventually wiped.
Round two. One death and he’s dead. I know he’s the first boss in the instance, but he’s a bit of a push over.
More AoE trash pulls.
As expected Lady Deathwhisper is a great boss. Complicated, challenging but possible. This was my pick as being the best of the fights in the first wing and I wasn’t disappointed. We wiped for a couple of hours eventually getting her mana shield to about 6 million. A fun fight with lots going on. Melee learned to avoid Cult Fanatics (eventually) as they are melee immune and cleave for one-shot deaths or close to. Casters eventually learned that doing 1 damage to the Cult Adherants is bad news. A learning experience.
Another first impression is that the raid was remarkably stable. We had about 4-5 players with DC issues, but compared to ToC launch, where we couldn’t raid the first night of a patch due to DCs, this was little league.
Being a DPS for the night and curious abut the new shadow priest changes I had Recount on. Wow! Frightening DPS. We’ll be seeing 8k easy, maybe 9k, by the end of Ice Crown. A few DK’s, mages and rogues were doing around 7k DPS and thats before upgrades from Ice Crown.
We finally wound up the raid and I headed over to check out the new random heroics thing. New interface is easy. Especially as a tank or healer. Click random heroic button, after selecting your potential role and Blam! Instant group ready to start a heroic. I guess the huge number of people online helped too.
There was a server reset count down that started just as we got to Trollgore in heroic DK. I figured we’d not make it, but didn’t say anything. No one said anything, but the bear tank stepped up the pace. When I figured no one was going to pike I started helping by pulling the next group as soon as the bear had agro on the current one. We made it with 2:45 to spare. A H DK run in about 13 minutes. Then I left the group and blam! I was back in Dalaran. Quite good really. The time between me deciding to do a random heroic and getting back to Dalaran after it was about 15-16 minutes. It would have taken my 5 minutes to fly out there in the ‘old days’. 
You should have seen the main inn in Dalaran after the instance server was reset. About three hundred toons all hearthed in within a couple of seconds. Dalaran came to a standstill. Very funny! Well, was for me who was going to be anyway
I must break the greed habit. Click the shiny new disenchant button not the greed one ok?
Best patch yet in terms of the new raid actually working and generally not too many DCs. No major stuff ups that i’m aware of except perhaps the Emblem of Frost bug, which I assume was patched last night when the instance server was reset. (I logged in last night to discover a guildie has been running heroics all day and is at 25 EoF before we even start on Ice Crown!)
So thats my first impressions. Generally really good. My only real complaint is Lord Marrowgar was a bit easy and the trash was a bit of a waste of space. Hopefully the trash in the later wings is more like Ulduar. i.e. requires some thought.
Good luck all.
Gobble gobble.
Posted in Blogging 
