Well Patch 4.3 landed on the EU server on Wednesday of this week and even though it’s awesome having some new heroics to run I can’t help but feel that this patch has been a bit of a let down.
For anyone who has been living under a rock recently, here’s the Patch Trailer – which is also a little lack lustre compared to previous patches.
New Dungeon/Raiding Content!
For the casual gamer there has been three new 5man heroic dungeons added (End of Time, Well of Eternity and Hour of Twilight) which all play really nicely and for once really set the scene for the newest raid content, Dragon Soul. Yes I know that Blizzard did something very similar with extra heroics in WotLK, but really only Halls of Reflection was a main part of the story line. As a few people have pointed out I may have gone a bit farming crazy on the new 5mans, but what else is there to do when off work for three days and new content coming out?
I had capped my JP/VP prior to 4.3 hitting the live servers so I was nicely placed to buy a few new items straight away and after doing a few of the new heroics I was able to give the Looking For Raid tool a go. I decided that even though I had been running as Prot that I would give my beloved Holy spec as I’ve always loved healing in raid encounters. I expected the worst, children bickering, nobody knowing (or willing to listen to) tactics, rage quits and more emo wrist cutting that backstage at a Paramore gig… however this wasn’t the case at all. Our Raid Leader was one of our groups tanks, a chirpy little dwarf from the Outlands realm who took the group by the proverbial balls and dragged us through the first four bosses with the greatest of ease. No wipes. No childish whining. No rage quits. It was a surprisingly pleasant expericne and a delight to try out some of the new raid content. the only down side for me was how easy it seemed to be, with all the bosses going down within 30minutes of us having started.
What do you guys think of the latest content so far? I’ve heard many a raider grumbling about how easy the latest “end game” content has been. Is it enough to last until MoP arrives some time next year?
New Gear!
For once I’m really pleased with how the new gear available from the new batch of heroics looks especially the plate! It actually looks like armour and I’m not left looking like I’m rocking out in Joseph’s Technicolor Dream Coat! Some of the models have been really nicely put together and it’s a welcome change form the troll duplicates that the majority of people have been rocking for a wee while now.
Which I guess brings me on to Transmogrification. So far I’ve not bothered to transmog anything, I really liked the look of the Paladin tier12 and even though I’ve loved some of the pervious sets I’m more than happy to stick with my current look. I’ve seen some really creative transmog attempts – Reliq‘s Stormwind Guard springs to mind – maybe I’ll need to do a little research in the near future for some novelty styled outfits!
The Holy Paladin Blues…
I’m also really feeling the Holy Paladin blues at the moment. Prior to 4.3 coming out I was Holy through and through, usually running with two different Hot Specs, however with the Holy changes I feel more like a rubbish version of a Druid which makes me really sad. So much so that I’ve taken up Prot as my primary spec again.
The buffs to Light of Dawn and Holy Radiance are welcome additions and were needed to an extent, especially with the amount of AoE damage that the bosses and trash in the new content are throwing out. But somethign just feels really wrong with Holy for me at the moment. In my LFR experience I ended up being a raid healer (sitting top of the healing tree on recount for each encounter) compared to my usual tank healing role which I did and didn’t enjoy. Holy Light seems to feel really lacklustre now which makes me a sad panda.
I’m finding it a little strange not to be Judging every CD – instead just doing it every minute to keep the “Judgement of the Pure” buff up, as long as it’s up and running there is no need to judge – I even had to remove my key bind as by Judging every cooldown now results in less mana overall.
Here’s my armoury link for anyone interested in my Spec/Gear.
What do my fellow Paladins think of Holy now? Love it or hate it? Let me know your thoughts.
Wabbage's Warblings 
So I’ve only logged on maybe twice since 4.3 came out, as it happens to fall in the middle of finals, but here are my thoughts…
The new dungeons were alright, but pretty easy. In a group of 5 people, none of whom had done the PTR, we managed to learn each boss after only one wipe, which is waaaaay easier than to be expected on the first day of a new patch. The gear was also very meh. There’s not much of a point of running the new heroics if you’ve been running Firelands.
I haven’t tried the raid finder yet, but I did try out the regular version of the new raid. I thought it was a bit too easy as well… my guild downed a boss the first night, and the second night (the one where I was with them), we got the second boss to 5% and just needed to bring up dps a bit to down him.
Mind you, I’ve loved WoW. I just don’t think this patch provides enough content to last until Panderia. I think that during Cata, Bliz has been extremely lazy with its end-game content and has been catering to the casuals. Mind you, I’m relatively casual, and I was done with Firelands months ago… Cata just doesn’t have the end-game content to keep its subscribers. I’ve got 5 85s and have had nothing to do with them to hold my interest. I’m mostly using this patch to hold me over until SWTOR comes out, because I tried out the Beta and loved what I’m seeing thus far.
I’ve seen quite a few comments since 4.3 landed about how easy everyone is finding the new content. The LFR aside (since it’s deliberately tuned to be around the difficulty of Baradin Hold, which is completable even with a certain degree of idiocy on part of some of your raid members), the 5-man content is in my opinion a refreshing change following the additions from 4.1: Zul Aman and Zul Gurub.
I don’t know about anyone else, but there are people in my guild who still refuse to run these two dungeons without a full guild group, and not because of not wanting to deal with the randoms per se. It comes down the perceived difficulty of them and the issues that then stem from these. To grind on this subject a little: the learning curve of these dungeons *if you’re a casual player* is much steeper than even Deadmines and SFK were in the initial days of Wrath. There has been a lot of backlash against these two dungeons because of that: casual players – by which I mean people who don’t necessarily raid or even play very often, not players who’re “bad” – weren’t running them due to the time it took to get through them due to the learning curve, and therefore didn’t like them because they were difficult (because – circular argument coming round to its start – they didn’t have time to run them).
So, Blizzard implemented new dungeons which are great story-wise, and also relatively easy to figure out once you understand the mechanics.
Add to this the fact that we had to wait ~6 months for these new dungeons, the 365 craftables that became increasingly affordable towards the end of 4.2, and many players went into 4.3 with at least 363-368 ilvl **even if they weren’t raiding Firelands**. If they were raiding Firelands, then they may have 371-378 or higher ilvl. Considering these new 5-mans were tuned for a 353 illv, is it no wonder that people sailed through the new dungeons as soon as they understood the mechanics?
Wow – ranty comment is ranty D: