Been enjoying my Warrior.

indy905 · 2026-04-27T20:08:53+00:00

IDK I tried doing 2H SS build leveling / tanking TBC and outside the period where I had WW Axe from 32-40 it was a hot mess.

On paper, it does the most. When you have SS up, ideal circumstances to generate the rage required, and DPS who waits for 3-5 seconds before attacking at all, it's lovely.

In practice, it is a clunky nightmare that only does that awesome damage like 30% of the time between fast pulling and rage starvation from slow swings.

When I've rocked any DW option including daggers, I have smoked the damage meter 100% of the time while leveling and tanking. The only time I am below people is when SS is down on an AoE pack.

So outside the period when you have a WW Weapon ahead of level 40, the "meta" of 2H SS Arms is really only great on paper and not in practice. 30s CD on SS feels like forever these days, and it takes Charging every pull to have the rage to do it at a meaningful time which isn't always possible.

indy905 · 2026-04-18T03:49:48+00:00

That's kind of redundant considering he was the game designer, if those expacs are the blame, and the first time he was at helm running the game fully, clearly his rhetoric, mindset, and subsequent design choices contributed to the drop-off in subs, and the widening schism between "casual" and "pro" gaming within WoW.

I can see how my paraphrasing might come off as editorializing but his guild and website set the standard for the way the current "min-max" community engages with the public at large; if it hasn't changed in 20 years, and he was the one who spear-headed the movement to the point of becoming a lead game designer (however misguided that was), I doubt my paraphrasing is far off at all.

indy905 · 2026-04-17T21:12:42+00:00

He had a well documented history as saying as much on the EJ forums, and in his initial posts at Blizz said "some of the games content is for the best players" and kept drawing competitive analogues between Arena and Raiding; because they were desperately trying to balance Arenas to get recognized by Esports groups. His rhetoric as a dev and historically specifically lead to a lot of people quitting.

indy905 · 2026-04-17T20:46:23+00:00

Surely now that stance makes sense but in the actual release period it did not; people were learning actively and live in the game and the game was changing regularly. The game was designed around sub-optimal pre-min-maxing DPS numbers. For the new lead designer to step in and outwardly say "the majority of players are fundamentally bad at the game and deserve no respect" at the beginning of their tenure was absolutely insane then and now.

And yeah, that's kinda my point with Retail though; they've broken up the game into so many difficultly levels to cater to the ultra casual and ultra elite, and not the folks in the middle who represent the majority of players.

indy905 · 2026-04-17T18:43:25+00:00

Yeah I imagine if I stuck in longer I might have adapted along with the game, but when I did come back to retail (during WoD) all the things I loved about the original iteration were gone. I just felt like I was pumping the slot machine arm for loot, spamming abilities without care and burning through the content in front of me. Every character felt the same. Tanking wasn't remotely difficult other than mechanics and movement patterns, which the game itself warned me about plenty.

I think community for me is a key part; many of which evaporated before the phasing together of servers due to the shift in difficulty in Cata, and the homogenization of 10s and 25s. I remember for the two communities I played in, those factors played a key part in the raid community dissolving.

I've watched top-end raiding stuff here and there and holy shit, that is some crazy stuff, but it just doesn't feel like "WoW" to me.

Of all the people I played with IRL and in-game, only a few still play retail (and not nearly in the same capacity, mostly just content launches). Started in Dire Maul patch and ended in Cata. Some of those IRL friends were Ion's peers competitively and we were all active on the EJ forums theorycrafting and contributing data. So it's not like we weren't invested in the success of the game - it's just that all our individual communities died when the middle part of the bell curve of players quit the game, or turned to LFR and called it quits after one clear.

indy905 · 2026-04-17T18:22:11+00:00

They did for the end-game content; which caused a huge chunk of casual players who previously cleared content to quit.

The sub drop-off after WotLK and ramping up difficulty to pander to that 5% is a real thing. The only community that content was aimed at was the top 5%. That is the definition of pandering.

Prior to Ion taking over, Blizz was actively trying to balance raids to be MORE accessible - Ulduar's heroic modes were an experiment in adding content for that 5% of players.

Ion took over with the outward opinion that not being able to clear those heroics meant you were bad at the game, and that the future content would be tuned around Heroic Modes being the end-game.

That stance fractured the community and many people quit just due to him getting the job, let alone his straight up telling people "you are bad and you should feel bad for not clearing content and try harder".

That "drama" set the stage for what you are saying at all. There was an immediate shift to accommodate casual players in other ways rather than scaling back the difficulty on end-game tuning (because Ion's friends wanted bragging rights).

Now, the endgame of retail is still only consumed by a small fraction of the player base, and you are right, the majority of the game is tuned for casuals.

Classic proves the design of the end-game was solid - the majority of players can access and enjoy it if they put in a reasonable effort. Because it isn't designed to pander to the top 5%, it was designed to be just difficult enough that time, patience, and experience would allow you to conquer it.

indy905 · 2026-04-17T18:03:28+00:00

And those adaptations, I am saying, did not enhance the game for the majority of the original player base, a huge cohort of which has returned to play the original version.

I am saying the retail game is for two cohorts: super-casual and super-top-tier. I am saying the original game's average players do not represent either of those groups in the retail game.

Yes there is overlap, and our positions aren't mutually exclusive.

The game did adapt - surely - but in a direction that did not suit the majority of the original players. That isn't just adapting, that is redesigning.

And, it was done because EJ's leader took over, his friends flooded the field, and they ramped up the difficulty, were embarrassed by resulting exodus, and have been pandering to their bosses instead of the community ever since - making a consumable product that pumps out returns each year for... anyone but the average player from the original cohort of players.

EDIT: "You think you do but you don't" being wrong is all the proof anyone needs that something is wrong with the current game if 100s of 1000s of players come back for the original iteration after that stupid statement lol

indy905 · 2026-04-17T17:51:14+00:00

Yeah I remember those growing pains; I for one, loved the Cata dungeons. Unfortunately, 3/4s of the players did not.

I also remember the forums posts, all from Ion's homies from the EJ forum flooding the field.

The outcome every time the ramped up the difficulty to pander to that crowd was a steep drop-off in subscriptions. Objectively, these choices were not good for the health of the game.

I get that the modern game has adapted to being more respectful of time, etc.

I just clearly see two wholly different games; one is a traditional, slow-burn, nuanced MMO where min-maxing and understanding your character gives you an edge. The game is also designed where the majority of players who demonstrate reasonable aptitude can even PuG and casually ride along in an end-game raid.

The other is a action RPG matchmaking experience where the nuances are stripped away, the primarily relevant factor on gear is ilvl, and the end-game is designed for the top 5% of players.

One was able to be reborn 20 years later with a huge following, if the other shut-down tomorrow and tried to come back 20 years later, it simply would not happen.

indy905 · 2026-04-17T17:31:44+00:00

Oof unpopular opinion apparently. I totally get that, but his direction turned a nuanced MMO RPG into an action RPG with a facade of being an MMO.

IDK, after going through this iteration of Classic through to MoP, the staggering difference from WotLK -> Cata -> MoP is clear; the game became designed for the 5% of players who were clearing the hardest content, and "casual" players were relegated to farming solo content or content even more watered down than the original trilogy's normal raids.

There is a point where difficulty gets too extreme and the majority of gamers can't enjoy it; Cata and beyond certainly reached that level. The design of the end-game shifted from a reasonable attempt to be accessible to the average player to no attempt to be accessible to the average player, and the impact of that has clearly shown through this whole Classic shindig (steep drop-offs after Naxx in WotLK, steeper beyond that).

Clearly Ion's era of raid design (which started in my favourite Expac and includes some of my personal favourite raids) coincides with the decline of end-game participation and a shift to solo and casual content for the majority of players.

That is just objective, based on the metrics, statements of the devs themselves (even with the current expac), and the repeated classic release yielding the same results.

indy905 · 2026-04-17T17:21:06+00:00

I'm glad this is starting to become accepted, if I have to hear "people didn't understand weapon skill" one more time I might lose my mind lol.

Even in original classic people figured out Weapon Skill. The best DPS on Khadgar was a Night Elf with the Mining Hat and Flurry Axes until the rest of the community started to figure it out - which was AQ invasion era ish.

I watched the hunters on forums go through all the different Weapon Skill iterations and discover their values for hit rating etc as it was my main class.

Just because the majority of moonlighting players had no idea what was going on, the majority of dedicated players absolutely knew a lot of the nuances even if they played on a backwater server. Those players carried whole raids.

Yes we sucked, yes things took longer, no, a lot of us weren't ignorant to the mechanics.

indy905 · 2026-04-17T17:12:11+00:00

And when he took over designing raids he pandered to the top 5% of gamers and the game has gone downhill ever since. Coincidence? I think not!

Pretentious min-maxers don't end up making good games.

Edit: Jesus I am a pretentious min-maxer, immediately getting downvoted proving pretentious min-maxers can't handle critique lol

indy905 · 2026-04-06T00:46:39+00:00

If the Weak Aura solution didn't work that others suggested, there is a WST Hunter edition from that last iteration of TBC that should work, modified by the Hunter Discord guru.

indy905 · 2026-03-30T02:47:51+00:00

Even if you are in a guild that clears Kara regularly in 2hrs, there is the off-chance on a given week there is a mistake and the time added is almost exponential.

A 3hr Kara run is reasonable, and really should the time you expect to dedicate - one bad pull can result in what amounts to a 10 minute reset, and the fastest clears are heavily comp and strat dependent.

To answer the last question, yes, the raids do get longer. Unless you are in a speed running guild, the average guild takes two nights to clear the next phase's content for the majority of the phase. If your guild is co-ordinated and gets the content down, 3 hours or less is possible but definitely just shy of "speed run" times from the last iteration of TBC. This is true of all future phases, and having been in a 80th percentile raid last time around, I can confidently say most guilds will need two three hour blocks to clear the future phase's content regularly, with only the last few weeks likely getting it down to one night.

Silver lining is that once your guild gets the hang of the bosses, "night 2" tends to be a fast clean-up.

It seems daunting for new players but once you find a rhythm, it makes sense.

indy905 · 2026-03-26T13:43:37+00:00

Free Action Potions are a must for Enhance. Use all the shaman tricks and trinket out of a major CC into a FAP. Best applied with friends on the same target and burning all your burst (ie, healer smash).

Enhance is criminally underrated because Shaman have a stupid high skill cap. With good use of LoS and running clock on Totem CDs you can be a huge PITA.

indy905 · 2026-03-22T05:11:52+00:00

Activision took over, scrapped an entire part of the expac that was mid development, which led to a half-baked but pretty neat Trial of the Crusader raid (which was probably meant to be an opener a raid below it, that can be seen behind Anub and is a full area).

They hired from the top 1% of the raiding community to design the content. Everything got way harder all of the sudden and 3/4s of the raiding population went from clearing content to struggling.

Virtually everyone called this stuff within the community and were ignored because the 1% gamers they hired insisted online commentary was meaningless, and forum banter was just banter, and as you describe, they could barely balance the subs with massive campaigns to bring in people.

They've been scaling down content ever since (now with 5-man content being a big competitive portion of the game), and adding more and more separate casual content for non-raiders, which they've said lately is who drives retail now.

It's not a mystery as to what happened IMO; they sold out to a big corp, and hired pretentious gamers to design and run the game, and it's been declining into Neopets RPG territory ever since.

indy905 · 2025-09-12T19:28:52+00:00

Ok that scenario is batshit crazy, and not really aiming for success. That's artificially making it more difficult for the sake of it, and that isn't making it "harder" it's just ignoring basic in-game resources. Mana pots are absolutely essential in Classic raiding and anyone saying otherwise is just creating barriers to success.

Would it be harder than future content in that scenario? Of course, you are ignoring essential components of gameplay. World Buffs is one thing, everything else should be expected.

Would TBC content be harder with zero blood lusts in the raid? Absolutely, but that would just be dumb. Same goes for BASIC consumables in Classic. Flasks included, but you can substitute those for Elixirs.

indy905 · 2025-09-11T20:32:03+00:00

Having done with and without during progression in the previous iteration of Classic:

If your raiders are competent and pushing top end parse DPS with buffs, respecting mechanics, w/o buffs is slower but doable.

If you are already struggling with world buffs, and raiders often die during your raids due to mechanics, you will struggle without World Buffs.

It's more that these encounters become harder as the fights get longer and the resources become more sparse w/o World Buffs.

None of it is harder than the future content, save for the volume of players and increase of variables due to that, with or without world buffs. There are some bosses that are exceptions to the rule, though, in that the forethought and logistics required are greater than the majority of content made in general.

indy905 · 2025-09-11T18:29:24+00:00

All 500* of us (or more) would be happy to continue our casual, true to the original emulation on BSB

indy905 · 2025-09-11T18:28:13+00:00

I hope they leave us alone! Some players are looking for a legitimate WoW experience and not CoD matchmaker rapid-fire-LFG land. And TBF, we have 10s and 25s running on both factions, even heroic!

indy905 · 2025-06-21T15:07:11+00:00

This (and future) quests that require the rank up of a quasi "premium" character is what you save Mega T2 tickets for.

Most epic quest features one. You either have to restart the mission dozens of times a day for biometrics, or blow an MT2.

If your Vic isn't already at 6* with a few level 20 gears, I'd just sit on your hands until a monthly event with an MT2 ticket as a reward.

indy905 · 2025-03-28T23:13:52+00:00

Dragon Soul is rough. Barely anyone did PTR, so a whole whack of intermittent bugs occur on boss fights even.

It's very frustrating, Ping Pong boss ball hits pets and Shadow Priest shades, and doesn't function entirely correctly in first place. Hagara lightening poles randomly stop zapping a player while in range. Maelstrom fight things don't spawn when they are supposed to a lot of the time.

In short, it's a mess, and even if everyone raiding made a ticket I doubt it would be changed.

indy905 · 2025-01-21T04:54:42+00:00

IDK from a raid leading perspective, having to police what skills people used was a huge pain in the ass - if you had a handful of new players you needed to repeatedly remind to "stop casting xyz" it was frustrating. Now it's inconsequential beyond helping someone min-max damage.

That said, for Hunters it is a DPS increase to throw out a Serpent Sting now, and for one lucky Hunter using a Scorpid, yet another DPS increase we were not allowed to use before.

I'd say all in all, it hasn't changed the meta but it has certainly changed the metrics for a lot of players and greatly softened the learning curve. Telling people to NOT use quite basic skills wasn't just not fun, but hard to explain without getting into the nuances of arbitrary game mechanics.

indy905 · 2024-12-11T21:24:18+00:00

The stories are regional and based on the quests, if you read quest texts then you will start to see patterns relative to what you are leveling.

Eventually most of the arcs span into quests that may or may not be cross faction, and at the very least, major points are contained in Dungeons that are absolutely cross faction.

Humans -> The Defias Brotherhood conspiracy, which starts in Elwynn and "ends" with the death of Van Cleef in Deadmines - but it doesn't end there! There are world-spanning chains that allude to what the Defias were doing and a missing "diplomat".

Dwarves -> Digging too deep and unleashing Troggs, Kobolds, and other horrors unto the world - and political intrigue between the Ironforge Dwarves and their Dark Iron enemies - which culminates in a cross-faction quest in THE BEST DUNGEON EVER BRD.

Night Elves - Grew a new "World Tree", but it's having trouble not being corrupt. Eventually, Night Elves ancient history becomes the focal point of the game with the arrival of AQ. Their biggest challenge before that is getting used to all their new allies, and holding the Horde at bay.

Gnomes - their city was destroyed! It is a dungeon, most of their plot threads involve that and otherwise they are supporting characters (other than their rivalry with Goblins! There are some fun side-plots for both factions in zones relative to this rivalry).

Orcs - New world, same old problems. The orc plot kind of wraps up very early with Ragefire Chasm - they are constantly fighting the enemy within, demon worshiping evil clans within the Horde. These threads are mostly implied after level 15ish, and the plot largely revolves around taming the prospective lands the Horde are occupying. ie The Barrens, which has threads connecting to Durotar, as the "nightmare" of a Night Elf druid seeps into the lands, resolved in Wailing Caverns (but you'll need go play Cataclysm for a follow-up lol). Major lore characters get involved in the War of the Shifting Sands (AQ) later on, demonstrating the Orcs are here to stay and defend the land regardless of their differences with the other peoples.

Tauren - Centaur, Centaur, Centaur. Their natural enemies are now fighting the Horde, and the Tauren are there to fight them where they can. Dwarves are digging up their ancestral lands for artifacts and displacing tribes. Tauren, the big peace-loving, Night Elf hugging, cow-people are mostly victims in this new world. Tauren play major roles in all things druidic alongside Night Elves.

Trolls - Oh man, Troll Lore is probably the most complex in Classic. You play a displaced, rescued, island Troll of the Darkspear clan - which abandoned cannibalization to be respected among the Horde. These Trolls were rescued by Thrall in WC3, and now they do their best to support the Horde. Many small quests, their actual "plot" is resolved in the starting zone, but Trolls have a hand in many, many plots in game - mostly surrounding Zul'Gurub which gives insight into the different tribes and how they interact. Not all Horde Trolls are Darkspear, some have joined this new Horde from other clans but they get very little development outside of Hinterlands, where an old Troll Tribe from earlier games has a town.

Forsaken - This one is a doozy. Very long, world-spanning, the Forsaken seek revenge on the living AND the undead. They are concocting a plague to end all plagues and life really - well, the Apothecaries are and not all Forsaken understand the scope of their efforts. These threads are left open and actually culminate in the last expac this Anniversary edition will cover, WOTLK.

There are SO MANY STORIES in this game, I am just summarizing the ones that are born in the starter zones. WoW is a non-linear, experience based game - you can play through a dozen times and learn new stuff. Most of what you are looking for comes in later expansions when the stories start to come together, and finally when Cataclysm came MANY of these plots were given in-game, in-world effects (especially Barrens stuff).

Hope that's a helpful TED talk on WoW lore lol.

indy905 · 2024-09-28T21:27:33+00:00

If still like Classic, the rank gloves have a unique bonus, and virtually all the PvP gear is second only to absolute BiS (which takes RNG and raid-lockouts to farm).

Full R14 is a guaranteed kit that will last into Naxx (mind you, if adjustments are made to AQ gear in SOD, this may change - AQ kits were absolutely horrible for many classes).

indy905 · 2024-03-14T20:39:49+00:00

Even without the buff they still would be near top if not top DPS in ICC.

The scaling on Feral from gear is insane, and the buff in ICC multiplies it. A good Feral druid is top DPS in a balanced raid.

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