Yes, I play WoW. Now shut up. This is a WoW post. If you don’t want to read it, that’s fine.
Patch 3.2 dropped this week. Now, I usually don’t play Battlegrounds, so I haven’t seen the Island of Conquest Battleground yet. Hell, I haven’t even done the Stand of the Ancients yet. But I have done a fair number of Wintergrasp battlegrounds. So I can’t comment on the new BG, but alot of people seem to be excited over it. Supposedly some large scale battles going on there.
But I do like doing a lot of instances, and have been through the new Trial of the Crusader instance three times in the last 2 days. I like it. Quite a bit actually. The loot just on regular difficulty is on par with a Naxxramus 10 man raid. I haven’t done heroic difficulty yet, because the character I’m playing now is only level 79, and you have to be level 80 to do heroics (today, I promise).
The jousting part in the first section, I could do without. I don’t like their jousting mechanic. It’s clunky. And the transition from jousting to fighting is bad. The mobs should wait at least 30 seconds after the last one is dismounted for you to re-equip your main weapon instead of the lance you have to use while mounted. The transition is bad. The tank has great difficulty getting aggro, and the group wipes easily. It has happened every time. The only time I didn’t die was once when I was so far out of range that I got the “leaving combat” notice.
The fight right after the joust is great. You fight hand to hand against the champions you just fought mounted. And you get a different combination each time. Since I’m Horde, (BLOOD AND GLORY! FOR THE WARCHIEF!) we fight the Alliance champions. Human champion is a Warrior. Dwarf as well. Gnome is a Mage. Night Elf is a Hunter. Draenei is a Paladin. Weird thing with the Draeni, he does cast lightning bolts like a Shaman, but he’s a Paladin. Very weird.
After you wipe and come back, you start with the three champions. The fight is rather easy after that. They each only have about 185k hp. And nothing special. Its a simple tank and spank. No worse than three trash mobs in Naxxramus. When they go down, you get the loot chest.
The next fight is kinda nice. You get either the Argent Confessor, Paletress, or Eadric the Pure, a Paladin. I’ve always gotten Eadric, so I can only comment on him. He brings 9 trash mobs with him. You take them out in groups of three each. Easy. Then you get him. Its rather an easy fight. Mostly tank and spank. But he does two funky things. First is his Radience. This is an AOE that hits everybody facing him for about 4500 holy damage(I was in mail, so that’s the number I get). The way to avoid it? Turn around and look away. Real easy. Second is a Hammer of Righteousness that he throws at a random player, I think. I’ve gotten it once, and it did 14k damage. He does each a number of times. When he is defeated (you don’t actually kill him, or the first group either. They yield. “Well done, well done. Can I run away now?” actual quote.) the treasure chest drops.
The last is the Black Knight. But, you already defeated him in the tournament to get here. Not so fast. Do you think an agent of the Lich King could be bested by a puny mortal? This one has three phases. First, he kills the announcer. Then he raises him as an undead ghoul. Then you fight him. Tank and spank. When he dies, he is resurrected. And you fight him again, with some adds. When he dies this time, he comes back in spectral form. This one is harder, because he casts this kind of debuff (I didn’t catch the name) that hits you for about 2500 a tick, and everybody gets it. and you can’t remove it, you have to heal through it. And then he dies, and you get the chest. And you’re done.
Overall, quite a nice refreshing change from all of the complicated crap Blizzard has done recently. I look forward to heroic and the raids.
