My Thought on Cataclysm

Cataclysm is a dramatic shift from Wrath of the Lich King and it’s one that I am quite enjoying at the moment.  In this post, I just plan to highlight a few of the areas that differ from the Wrath era and give me thoughts.

Druid Healing – Now that I have had time to get used to it, I am starting to like it more.  It’s nice using most of our entire toolset rather than using essentially 2 tools.  It just feels more involved, more thought is put into what to cast and when to do it.  The current mana limitations also play a large part in that.

Saying that, I definitely still think we are missing something in regards to quick AoE healing.  It is curious that Blizzard is pushing us a little bit back towards Rejuvenation in the next patch, since they put in such an effort to push us away from blanketing.

5 Man Heroics – I have really enjoyed the change to heroics.  It actually seems a little more like an accomplishment now than the boring chore it was during Wrath.  I will however be the first to admit that they are a lot more fun if you can run them as a guild.

However, there are a couple things I wish they would change.  First, I believe they are a little longer than they should be.  This could be solved by simply removing some of the trash pulls.  Second, there are currently a few issues that need to be addressed with the Vote to Kick feature.  I have seen, more than once, a DPS character group with a tank to get a higher priority in the queue only to have the tank drop as soon as they enter the instance.  This is hugely annoying.  The other issue is when people get to an end boss or other boss with desirable loot and boot someone so they can invite a friend for the reward.  I’m not sure how this can be fixed, but I think it needs to be addressed.

Raids - I have had a lot of fun with the raids so far.  Our guild started off doing a lot of 10 man runs to experiment while everyone got their gear in order.  So far, I have seen every encounter except for the end bosses of all 3 zones.  For the most part I have liked what I have seen from the encounters.

Currently, most every raid is fairly unforgiving when it comes to missing or not handling a mechanic correctly.  You mess up and you usually die almost instantly and possibly take someone with you (Hi Beruthiel!).  Meaning, situational awareness is a key in these raids.  With healer mana being an issue, it is also very important not to take avoidable damage.

I think my favorite raid fight at this time is probably the Twilight Ascendant Council.  It is a fast paced fight with a lot of stuff to keep up with.  I also quite enjoy Maloriak as well.  Chimaeron is about as intense as they come healer wise.  I’m not a huge fan of the Halfus fight primarily because of the random nature of it.  The fight complexity completely depends on what active drakes you draw and I don’t really like that.

Miscellanous – I enjoyed the process of getting to 85 and gearing through normal and heroic instance runs.  I have done most of the quests in every new zone with the exception of Uldum.  The quests were mostly enjoyable even though they were fairly repetitive.  One thing that I wasn’t a big fan of was how all of the quests in a zone are essentially one long chain.  I would much rather them go back to the old quest hubs.

I also think that overall, they could have put a lot more thought into guild achievements, levels and rewards.  I know it’s been fixed now, but 10,000 flasks?? Are you kidding me??  I also think the low experience cap takes something away from it.  I wish they would have just made levels require more experience.  I hate artificial ceilings and the current system is nothing but that.

I think I will go ahead and wrap it up for today.  I know that I’ve done a poor job posting since Cataclysm and I will try to do a better job in the future.  I have been pretty busy.

What are your thoughts about Cataclysm so far?  What have you enjoyed most?  What do you think could be improved?

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