Blue Posts: First class, epic gem necessity
by Adam Holisky 
Feb 28th 2012 at 11:59PM
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Today's WoW news roundup includes:
Blue posts
Vaeflare
I've played a lot of characters over the years, but the first class I yearned to play when the world of Azeroth loomed just over the horizon was the druid. I'd loved them in Warcraft III, and the moment I saw one in World of Warcraft's original cinematic, I was sold. I didn't need to look at a single spell or ability to know that I wanted my first steps in this new, expansive world to be in the guise of one of those enigmatic characters.
Just reading this thread prompted me to look up the video and give it another watch. I'm just as captivated by it now as I was then.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/media/videos/?keywords=&view#/wow-cinematic
Just reading this thread prompted me to look up the video and give it another watch. I'm just as captivated by it now as I was then.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/media/videos/?keywords=&view#/wow-cinematic
Grimiku -- Epic gem necessity
Whether epic gems are optional or necessary will depend greatly on the raider and the raid. A raid struggling during progression pushes may require everyone to maximize everything they can while another raid will relax and simply take longer to overcome those challenges. There are lots of things to consider when deciding on what to do with your gear so I suggest simply taking it step by step.
WoW news from other sites
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- Wowhead News Cataclysm Post Mortem -- Quest Design with Dave Kosak
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- Totem Talk: While my Chain Heal gently weeps
- WoW Moviewatch: Y u so negative?
- The WoW Insider Show Episode 234: In which Alex guests
- Shifting Perspectives: Symbiosis, druids, and you
- World of Warcraft patch 4.3.3 64-bit client
- Reader UI of the Week: Magistrum's basic setup makes great addon starting place
- Dave Kosak talks quest design in Cataclysm
- Last Week in WoW: Yak it up edition
- The Queue: Awesome music
- Around Azeroth: The joys of being goth
- Lichborne: Further reflections on death knights in Pandaria
- Breakfast Topic: Do you have a special spot in WoW?
- EA clarifies Origin's ability to 'auto-add' games from other libraries
- Bethesda: 'DOOM 4 isn't cancelled'
- PAX East has fewer than 1,000 Saturday badges left
Today in WoW brings you the preceding day's WoW and gaming news. Also of community interest: our podcast listing, staff blog and Twitter listings and WoW websites and blogs (all part of our Guide to WoW Resources). Find out what's going on in the WoW player community every week in The Classifieds.
Filed under: Today in WoW
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jeff Feb 29th 2012 12:22AM
First class, epic gem necesity was a great read. I was sold on playing a hunter the first time I saw one in a cinematic too.
Pyromelter Feb 29th 2012 7:46AM
I maintain that blizz did epic gems perfectly in wrath, and completely bollicksed it in cataclysm. That being said, if you go to the source link, there is a green (mvp) poster about 10 replies under the blue that makes a lot of valid points, better than the blue imo.
Noyou Feb 29th 2012 8:45AM
It kind of sucks that they make one part of the game (epic gems) solely for one playstyle. I agree, they handled them fine in wrath. Raiders already get access to the best of the best of gear, and deservedly so, to shun PvP and non raiding PvE players the gems was a slap in face. Especially after making all the cuts available. If they wanted to exclude 2/3 of the player base they should have made another faction tied to the raid and gave out the designs that way.
amnbrownie Feb 29th 2012 9:24AM
Instead of debuffing the enemies, I think a fine alternative would have been to not throttle our gear upgrades by giving us such a terrible droprate on epics.
Mycroft Feb 29th 2012 1:14AM
For me, this was paladin. I liked the whole concept of paladins, from D&D to Warcraft 3, so my first ever character was a dwarf paladin, on an RP server. This was back in vanilla days, where a seal lasted 30 seconds and judging removed it. After a month of playing, though, I found a fun group of people to play with, but they were horde. So, abandoned my dorfadin, and went casually hunter up until late wrath, when I found I had lots of fun playing a druid alt, which I've been playing as my main ever since.
As for epic gems, I'll only use the ones I get while raiding, I'm not the kind of guy to go out of my way to buy them from the AH. Inferno rubies are still good enough. Might splurge for an orange or purple gem, if they're priced low enough.
Jinx Feb 29th 2012 3:15AM
Druid, and totally blame warcraft 3 for the bias :D.
Was and always will be my main.
Berna Feb 29th 2012 3:17AM
I'll put epic gems in BiS gear, they're too expensive for gear I'll (hopefully) replace soon.
Chetti Feb 29th 2012 8:09AM
This is exactly what I've been doing. My JC is doing the dailies and getting the cuts that both the people on my raid team could use and the ones my priest can use. My luck in drops from the geode though, not real good. Not that I plan on upgrading my gems. I'm putting them in my bestest best in slot. I think right now the only thing I have an epic in is my crafty bracers. However, I'm doing decently selling them on the ah. I'm pretty sure this is what the rest of the team is doing as well. I've even offered to cut a gem that I won and give it to one of our tanks (simply because priests don't use green gems, and I bought the cut FOR our tanks), and he turned it down. Our raid leader only requires that we show up to raids with our gear gemmed/reforged/enchanted.. not the level of gems that we use. For now, I hold on to what I get, and I have a fellow guildie that sends me the gems she gets (green/blue/epic) and I just hold onto em. She's my free enchant person, and I'm her free gem person. We work together on both stashes.
As for selling them, I did cut a green tank one and a caster yellow one, since I didn't need either of them, just to see if people would pay for em. I have sold them, sometimes it takes a couple re-posts to sell em, but I get a fairly decent amount. More than I'd pay for an extra 10 somethin. The reds I guard with my life (err.. my un-death..) because those are going to be what I want should I get a bestest best in slot.
crystallinegirl Feb 29th 2012 5:31AM
I'm still a little annoyed that the jewelcrafting profession bonus - three +67 gems - is not as good as other profession bonuses once the epic gems are out. It used to be +81 to a stat, similar to the other profession bonuses. With the epic gems, now it's only +51 to a stat. Which, really, makes it not as good as other bonuses.
Firestyle Feb 29th 2012 6:42AM
I guess they thought that made the +10 stat bonus on the 3 gems you get too easy to obtain. The things are still about 6k each on my server, so if you got them it would be the equivalent of getting 18k (on my server) free.
I hope they do put this in though for you guys, but then again I hoped we would see upgraded engineering cogs on the helms. But I didn't hope enough to actually keep that profession once I got a 359 helm, I hoped with zero faith in Bliz on that one and ditched Eng like the wind for tailoring.
Chetti Feb 29th 2012 8:22AM
I loved my killshades! I kept engineering, for the tinkers and the goodies (mailbox, jeeves, etc.. I hadn't made a jeeves at the time I made the helm), but I too kinda hoped there would have been an upgrade. Both firelands and dragon soul drop best in slot patterns for the tailors/leatherworkers/blacksmiths - why not the trusty engineers! My hopes of seeing said patterns aren't high, my spriest is a tailor/engineer, and neither raid was nice to me! Firelands wasn't really nice to anyone, I don't think we saw any patterns from there. Dragon Soul has been throwing patterns at our BS and Leather folks. So much so that our main BS and our main LW trained all the patterns, we kept the doubles in our guild bank, another LW was given the extra patterns because the first guy left the game, AND our ah person has sold at least 2 "extra extra" patterns. For the tailors - one pattern - the pants. I bought the spirit bracer pattern from the ah when I saw it for a reasonable amount.
I know that engineers got 2 weapons and the scope thing from the molten front vendor.. but that doesn't help a priest. Well it does in that I'm still selling woodchuckers. But I really thought dragon soul would bring us something in the way of a hat and cogwheels. Maybe the pandas will give us somethin!
TimR Feb 29th 2012 11:19AM
As has been stated several times on the forums, this variance in stats only occurs once you have epic gems in almost every slot. Until then you are just replacing blue gems, so there is no difference. JC's only get shorted once they've replaced all blues and need to put epics in instead of their Chimera's Eyes. Blacksmith's only see the extra advantage after they have replaced every regular slot with epic gems, and are then replacing their bonus slots. Yes there are a few people that are completely in epic gems, but it is such a super small minority. The arguments I've seen about this are way out of proportion to the actual situation.
Aaron Feb 29th 2012 3:28PM
Also, balancing for top-tier raiders would imbalance everybody else. Actually, it wouldn't benefit top-tier raiders that much because they're already farming Heroic Dragon Soul, so an extra 30 points hardly matters. So the only people who really benefit are those who (a) have downed enough bosses or spent enough cash to get completed decked out in Queen's Garnets, but (b) are still progressing on Heroic mode. Or those who can't sleep at night knowing they could theoretically put out another 500 DPS.
Boosting JC gems to +77 would balance it out for those fringe groups, but would give non-raiding JC's a 30-point advantage over everybody else. Does it make sense to sacrifice balance among the masses to provide a tiny benefit to a few dozen players per realm?
Legion Feb 29th 2012 7:11AM
I took a Tauren Warrior, because I figured if there was going to be any class like the Tauren units in WC3 (and be able to wield *trees*) it would be that one. Someday, oh yes, someday, they will issue totems as weapons, and I will be in heaven, pummeling my foes with TREES.
Plus, the Tauren mentality and culture really appealed to me.
Tauren Fan Feb 29th 2012 8:11AM
Absolutely agree with you on Tauren culture. I did not have any background in Warcraft when I started playing. After doing some research, I knew that the druid class was what I wanted to play, and fortunately that dovetailed perfectly with my choice of race. It's been troubling watching the recent evolution of Garrosh's Horde, and I really hope the pendulum swings back somewhat in Mists.
pinteresque Feb 29th 2012 10:04AM
I rolled a hunter initially because my toon in Diablo II was an Amazon and I'd discovered that I really liked the whole fighting-at-range thing and the hunter was as close as I could get, I thought.
And then I realized that hunters weren't a ranged class so much as a pet class (I hadn't made the distinction before) and that my backup Dii character was a sorcerer. Rolled a mage and never looked back. It was such a good fit that I recently told guildies that my first toon was a hunter and they literally don't believe me. They think I'm lying to them.
As to gems? I don't care about the epics 99% of the time. If they drop for me or fall into my lap, fine.
That being said, for that remaining 1%: I've got three cut Brilliant Queen's Garnets and a powertorrent in my bag for Dragonwrath.
3 days. S'gonna be awesome.
andrews Mar 1st 2012 1:11AM
It was completely annoying that epic gems were only for raiders. They will be effectively impossible once Pandas come out and people progress on as well. Poor decision by Blizzard.
goldeneye Mar 8th 2012 2:57AM
Druid, because of the vanilla cinematic