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You clearly said, Kara gear is S2 Gear, and requires the same amount of difficulty to get either one.

Why is it in wotlk to get the equivalent Naxx Gear (from PvP) you have to do arenas?

No Kara gear is not S2 gear, and who are you to criticize me when you can't even realize that?

As it is currently in TBC:

I think Kara gear is much harder to get because you have to deal with rolling for loot against potentially 9 other people and that is if it drops, and if you have a good group, and if you are are a good player.

With PvP you can simply go into a BG by yourself and it doesn't matter if you win or lose, you will still end up getting your S2 set. Either way, beginning raiders that stall on Kara, get all their gear and the same goes for beginning PvP'ers, although with less effort.

As it will "theorically" be in WotLK:

I think Arena will replace BGs for the most part, but not in level of difficulty. You will have to actually do something to get your PvP gear. Which puts it on par with what beginning raiders have to do, they have to put forth some effort to get their gear; you can't go afk in Kara/Naxx.

So in essence, Blizzard is balancing what has gone wrong in TBC. Hence the need for changes in game mechanics.

But this is completely besides the point. You are playing symantecs with my words attacking everything I say instead of proving your point.

pvp IS Harder than PvE. PvE is scripted in that the boss does the same thing everytime you see him. You dont face the same team in PvP and they dont do the exact same thing time after time. Thats what makes PvP harder than PvE in the higher arena brackets.

pvp IS Harder than PvE. PvE is scripted in that the boss does the same thing everytime you see him. You dont face the same team in PvP and they dont do the exact same thing time after time. Thats what makes PvP harder than PvE in the higher arena brackets.

I think that makes it more interesting. But every class has set skills, and don't try to tell me that every class doesn't pick that "cookie cutter" PvP build. If you encounter a rogue/lock/hunter/etc, it's most always the same, give or take the the gear and real skill the opponent has.

And yes, PvE is repetitive, no one is arguing that. But it is only repetitive once you down the boss for the first time. Up until that point, it very different because you are changing out classes and until you have the boss on farm you are always trying new strategies.

I will leave it at this: PvP is no doubt a difficult road all the way through up end arena and PvE is difficult all the way through end game content.

pvp IS Harder than PvE. PvE is scripted in that the boss does the same thing everytime you see him.

it's different, not harder.

If you're willing to accept Priest/Mage/Rogue encounters as "not the same every time" then neither is something like Kil'Jaeden. The number of abilities varies, but you know going within seconds of the match what sort of things you'll be dealing with and (if you're not clueless) what appropriate counters are.

You dont face the same team in PvP and they dont do the exact same thing time after time. Thats what makes PvP harder than PvE in the higher arena brackets.

While that may be true, the average team rating is 1,500 where skill is measured by not being AFK and the majority of PVP is battlegrounds where its more or less /random whether you win or lose.

On KJ you're dodging darts and heading for the shields at the appropriate time

In arena you're dodging rogues and hiding behind pillars at the appropriate time.

Also, by nature the out-of-game management for PVE is harder than PVP: managing a group of 25 people will always be more difficult than 2-5.

It's difficult to compare difficulty directly because they're so different.

In terms of the number of top-rated PVP players vs top-rated PVE: the numbers are fairly balanced. You don't have a lot of people in full Sunwell gear and you don't see a lot with S4 shoulders either. Using that as a metric I think the two are equally balanced.

pvp IS Harder than PvE. PvE is scripted in that the boss does the same thing everytime you see him. You dont face the same team in PvP and they dont do the exact same thing time after time. Thats what makes PvP harder than PvE in the higher arena brackets.

again

if PvE is so easy and the bosses are so easy because they do the same thing so the same strat should work every time then how come every guild in the world hasn't downed KJ yet?

Slane, my whole argument against the changes to PvP gear requiring arena points is that some people don't like arena. Kinda defeats the purpose if people just make losing teams...what's the point of that then? Come 3.1, they will up the arena points to 700 and next expansion, no rewards from BGs at all.

So your mad that there's no more welfare gear. And you'll have to actually work for gear? Are you a welfare player? Gear might actually start to mean you have some sort of knowledge of your class and core game mechanics. Tried doing a Kara pug last night, just me and three alts from my guild, using people from Trade and LFG. All said well-geared and epic'd out. All were S2/S1/Honor gear and sucked. But hey they thought since they had gear they were awesome and the ****. The new system sounds to me, more like you'll have to work and have some sort of knowledge/skill/luck/whatever you want to call it, which makes them a better person then somebody who wants welfare gear, which is how you are sounding Emorex.

Eve made my point for me, and everything I believe in for the most part, see his post.

And nobody has bought it up, but I swear if anybody mentions I don't have alot of time as an excuse to not getting gear, then you need to ask yourself why you are playing an MMO. A genre of game that always require time.

again

if PvE is so easy and the bosses are so easy because they do the same thing so the same strat should work every time then how come every guild in the world hasn't downed KJ yet?

I'm not saying PvE is easy per se. Kil'jaeden and muru are hard. However unlike PvE you cant watch a video or strat to defeat a particular team(well you could but again pvp is not scripted so it wouldnt be all that accurate). I think theres a general concencous that getting Gladiator for an arena season is much harder than say killing Kil'Jaeden(and of course getting Brutal Gladiator is way more harder). If you want proof of that look at how many teams earn Gladiator in all of WoW compared to the guilds that have killed KJ.

I'm not saying PvE is easy per se. Kil'jaeden and muru are hard. However unlike PvE you cant watch a video or strat to defeat a particular team(well you could but again pvp is not scripted so it wouldnt be all that accurate).

Watching a video doesn't make you an automatic winner at PVE or PVP: what's your point?

Even if I detailed our raid make up, class specs, gear choices, consumable lists, and exact positioning for any given Sunwell fight you can't take that to 25 random folks and have them be successful: if you could, people would be pugging their way through Sunwell because 4/4 and 4/4 is extremely powerful in arena.

In much the same way as there are generally strategies to dealing with PVE (tanks grab x, run to Z to avoid Y, counter ability X with abilities a b or c), you find similar strategies in Arena (save your trinket for blind, keep out of LOS of the priest, swap to soft target 2 when target 1 gets BOP, etc).

PVP tends to focus on using your character/team abilities and the environment to counter abilities of other teams. The challenging part is testing your team against other teams and seeing how you do when given access to roughly identical sets of resources. PVP is like boxing. Is that sport easy because you know the other guy is going to be trying to punch you?

PVE tends to focus on using your character/team abilities and the environment to counter the abilities of significantly more powerful characters/environments that simply wouldn't be possible in a PVP match. PVE is like Formula 1. Is that sport easy because you know you're just driving in a circle?

I think theres a general concencous that getting Gladiator for an arena season is much harder than say killing Kil'Jaeden(and of course getting Brutal Gladiator is way more harder). If you want proof of that look at how many teams earn Gladiator in all of WoW compared to the guilds that have killed KJ.

Gladiator is awarded to members of teams that place in the top 0.5% of their battle group.

Kill'jaeden kills have been claimed by the top 0.25% of raids.

Clearing Sunwell is twice as hard as being Gladiator?

Hardly.

Clearly the amount of work required for PvP Gear is much higher than PvE gear, and it will be evident once Wotlk comes around. You guys can argue as much as you want and defend how hard WoW PvE is, but everyone knows WoW PvE is a joke, where you just repeat the same things other guilds did or what worked last time.

Crack pipe anyone?

Really I see them as eual playing grounds but what I didnt like was all the way thru TBc we saw people easily able to farm "welfare" epics out of PVP which often be-littled the stats of that found in PVE. I know Blizz wants everyone raiding but when you have people running around in epic gear with no meta gems, and Hellfire Peninsula to Green quality gems in maybe 1 out of the 3 sockets the epic has its a bit like wtf. Espec when they gear there using has a similar item lvl to that found beyond TK/SSC and into BT/SWP

I haven't been following those classes, but I have seen level 70 ret paladins AOE grinding 5-10 level 80 elites in front of Icecrown wearing Tier 6. That's broken no matter how you look at it.

By the same logic should you have STFU'd and learned to play better against priests and warlocks?

Do you really expect us to except that world+dog is horrible and ret paladins have been down on their

luck so long that they're just naturally better players from overcoming adversity?

You must have missed the whole 2.0 raping that paladins got (from gods to clods in 2 weeks), The pathetic state of hunters in 2.1, The crap kicking warlocks take wrt. mages in 3.0. Etc.

The nerf bat is swift and merciless.

Seriously the elitist Pony isnt a high horse so you may wanna get off it .

At no point did I say and "I personally get pwnd by locks etc" but they have been a thorn in the side before.

Also if youd played a Ret in end game then yeh you would know what Im talking about. Running with no threat reduction and having to maximize dps in 25mans thru ssc/tk was awful but we did it, and that took some serious adapting. The phrase Over Aggro came swift at fast when using even a 3 CS 1 Judgement dps cycle sometimes as high as 4. So a lot of the old Retters are a bit more clued up espec those who are running later PVE instances now as many have been around for years and went thru the **** of it.

Edited by Colicab
Seriously the elitist Pony isnt a high horse so you may wanna get off it .

Which part was elitist exactly?

Also if youd played a Ret in end game then yeh you would know what Im talking about.

I've played the as the flavor of the month class and as the "might as well re-roll". To say:

  • Try adapting and using your own abilitys[sic] better. Its what a lot of Rets have been doing/trying for
    years now. So expect them to have that going for them aswell.

When the issue is clearly a matter of broken game-play is ignorant and self-serving at best. Its no different

from ~3 months ago when mages were doing 3-4x more DPS than other classes because frostfire bolt was

double dipping from damage increase/crit chance tallents.

Running with no threat reduction and having to maximize dps in 25mans thru ssc/tk was awful but we did it, and that took some serious adapting.

Even with threat reduction talents, salvation, and feign death/soul-shatter hunters and warlocks have been threat capped. Shaman, balance druids, and Shadow priests have also been fighting similar issues from day 1 so what exactly is it about those issues that would make a retribution paladin a better player than those on those other classes?

So a lot of the old Retters are a bit more clued up espec those who are running later PVE instances now as many have been around for years and went thru the **** of it.

Am I understand you correctly?

"Paladins have been allowed to raid as retribution since 2.0 and have had to watch threat in raids; that has made them better players than people playing other classes despite them having done the same thing for 4 years or more."

Also what does "espec" mean? You've used the word a few times but I can't figure out the meaning based on context.

Also what does "espec" mean? You've used the word a few times but I can't figure out the meaning based on context.

I'm going to go with especially.

And concerning no threat, if you meant no Feigh Death, Soul Shatter, Fade, etc. Umm, have you seen an DPS warrior? We raid with an arms/fury and a retadin nearly ever raid. Last night on Teron, the retadin was at the 6th spot on the dps charts with the fury warrior at third, and at of the two, the warrior was the only one who came close to me in threat. The retadin spiked once at the begining of the fight (as do every other person), but once I got situated I was fine on threat spare the hunters/locks. I've never seen a retadin have to worry about threat, except maybe on BB (which every other class has to also). So I'm not getting what exactly the point is.

Not gonna bother with you tbh mate. Every 2 -3 posts here you are acting like some wise wow sage. Well no one likes a smart arse and "espec" would be short for especially. Its a kind of internet short hand. Would of thought that was a little obvious but ah well.

In fact the smart arse approach isnt what annoys me its this attitude that your opinion is final as you know all. So you might like to STFU yourself some day before screaming at folk for simple stating there enititled opinion of a class theyve played for 4yrs.

Not gonna bother with you tbh mate. Every 2 -3 posts here you are acting like some wise wow sage. Well no one likes a smart arse and "espec" would be short for especially. Its a kind of internet short hand. Would of thought that was a little obvious but ah well.

In fact the smart arse approach isnt what annoys me its this attitude that your opinion is final as you know all. So you might like to STFU yourself some day before screaming at folk for simple stating there enititled opinion of a class theyve played for 4yrs.

When you claim retadins are more skilled and deserve whatever they are getting and no one should complain, etc. it sounds like you are the smart arse and some wise sage and your word is final.

Every dps spec/class at one point should be threat capped, yes some classes it may happen to more often than not. But that doesn't mean you deserve more than anyone else or you are better or entitled to more than anyone else (which is what it sounds like to me). I understand what you are saying about threat capped, as all classes experience that, and yes it does suck you don't have an ability to drop threat, but that's part of your class. To be able to maintain top damage/dps and stay below the tank's threat is what makes you a good player in raids. Don't try to justify the reason for all the OPness of retadins. I personally suspect at 70 you will be OP, but once you hit 80 as well with everyone else, it'll even out again, and you want be OP but at the same level of others. Enjoy the month of OPness.

It's always fun to be the flavor of the month. Just to clarify, not saying you aren't entitled to your opinion, but when you try to make it sound like your's is the word and you are the only one who can say something about it, it annoys people.

Blizzcon PvP Panel notes:

Future of PvP / New Announcements

* Strand of the Ancients is getting changed from 10vs10 to 15vs15. The amount of Vehicles is also being doubled.

* They also want players to be able to level up in battlegrounds through XP rewards in addition of honor. Daily quests will also be added.

* In the future, players will be able to queue in Arenas and Battlegrounds from anywhere in the world.

* They want to bring back competition into Battlegrounds, they're working on a new rating system to help with that and are also working on a way to let guilds compete in battlegrounds.

Ring of Valor - Orgrimmar Arena

* This arena has always been in Orgrimmar but just wasn't used. They like to keep the Arenas in the "real world" instead of having a portal just like a regular instance.

* The main features of this instance are the animated platforms moving up and down at non-random intervals. (Developpers don't want anything random in Arenas)

* There are also walls of fires going on and off periodically, going through them will give you a 10% damage DoT. Getting crowd controlled in the fire won't get you killed, the fire DoT effect will be restricted to 3 ticks in this case.

* The other important point with this Arena is the starting location, teams start very close to each other and enter the Arena through elevators slowly going up before the match begins.

Dalaran Sewers Arena

* The main feature of the Sewers is a huge pillar of water at the center of the main platform of the arena. The water is activated periodically and will knockback anyone in its way. As long as it's on you will be able to fight very close to it but you will get knockbacked again as soon as you touch it.

* Players starts in pipes above the level of the room, to prevent people from staying in these pipes without being reachable there is a mechanic pushing them out of the pipes at the beginning of the match.

Strand of the Ancients Battleground

* Strand of the Ancients was created to provide players with an attack/defend PvP map. Developers also wanted to take advantage of the new destructible buildings technology.

* When your team is attacking, the time required to take the enemy's fort will be the time given to the defending team on the next round to capture your fort. Attacking faster will make it harder for the other team to win the round once they're on the attacking side.

* Currently, Strand of the Ancients is a 10vs10 battleground. In a few days it will be changed to a 15vs15 battleground and the amount of vehicle available here will be doubled.

Lake Wintergrasp

* Lake Wintergrasp was created with the goal to have a popular non-instanced PvP Zone, developers want hundred of players fighting here and a lot of work was done to make sure that zones won't crash when it happens.

* Just like SOTA, Wintergrasp will feature an attack/defend gameplay where the attacking team attacks and capture a fort at the north of the zone by breaking fortifications with siege weapons.

* You will have to gain ranks to be able to use siege vehicles from factories (also capturable) in the zone, these ranks are earned by killing enemy players and they were added to make sure that all players are participating in the match. Right now it only takes 2 kills to get the first rank.

* The current timer for Lake Wintergrasp is 2 hours 30 minutes between matches and a match shouldn't last more than 30 or 40 minutes.

* The faction controlling the fort will get a free portal to teleport to Dalaran (and also one in Dalaran to teleport to Wintergrasp), an access to The Vault of Archevon featuring a new raid boss dropping both PvE and PvP gear (1 day reset timer), and all bosses in instances will drop spirit shards used to buy rewards from vendors in the fort. (Mounts, patterns, etc ..)

More rating systems? For gear I take it? I think when they made BGs about a grind for old arena gear it killed BGs they made arena ratings for arena gear, it slightly damaged arenas. This isn't me being bitter because I can't find a 1800 plus team or anything. It's me just thinking it's made the arenas poorly balanced. A 1500 team going against a team with full S4, therefore they lose and lower their rating and can not obtain better gear? Arena ratings help only those with high ratings once they get there.

Also, wtf is with "moving obstalces" in arenas come WoTLK? Fix the known issues people are having in terms of balance.

I still love to play WoW, but that epic feeling of pre-BC is just dead.

Screenshots don't do WotLK justice. In game it's an extremely noticable upgrade from Classic/BC.

The game looks better than ever, but it doesn't compare to the new games graphically.

I think it's cool the way their cartoon-style has held up so well over the years. When you

try to make 'real' graphics on a PC you'll fail: we're just not that good yet. When you try for

cartoony fakeness you can pull it off so you don't get dated so quickly.

Fortunately it's fun - I don't really care if it's not pushing my graphics card the way Conan did.

I think it's time for a graphics overhaul. Then again, I doubt that's possible. Blizzard might as well create a new MMO.

THey've been working on a replacement for a couple of years now. No details have been given but the job postins are on Blizzard's site every so often and they confirmed it's existence at Blizzcon.

It makes sense that if anything is going to kill Warcraft that blizzard is going to be the one to sell it to us.

After all this time learning how to handle PVP, PVE, raiding, etc. their next game is going to be incredible.

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  • Posts

    • Why you need to take back control of your synced passwords and how to go about doing that by Paul Hill Credit: Pixabay Last month, when Google decided to introduce daily and weekly caps for Gemini, it reignited an anxiety of mine, that you can’t really depend on service providers to maintain features forever, and it got me looking into free software (as in freedom) in other areas too. One app I quickly came across was KeePassXC on desktop and KeePassDX on Android as an alternative to password manager lock-in within the Chrome or Firefox ecosystems. I personally like to switch around with browsers, and using either password manager is inconvenient, so something like KeePassXC was interesting to me. The main issue with it now is syncing; I was not sure how to do that. After a bit of research, I came across Syncthing, a tool I was vaguely familiar with but had never used because it seemed complicated. 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    • Microsoft Paint used to be my favorite Windows app as a kid, and it's still pretty good by Usama Jawad I have been using Windows since the early 2000s, when I was around 10 years old or so. I vaguely remember playing around with Windows 98 and Windows 2000, but that may have been on school PCs which had old operating systems installed. My main OS on the home PC, and the one I recall spending most time with, was Windows XP. At that time, I used the home PC to create Word and PowerPoint documents for school, but a lot of the time, I simply used it to play games. My dad would bring game discs which we would try and install on the PC, sometimes unsuccessfully, and sometimes, we would rely on flash games in the browser, like Bubble Trouble on Miniclip. However, the problem with the latter approach was the internet speed. On a good day, our dial-up internet would offer us speeds of 56 kbps, but on most days, it was closer to 33 kbps. This did not facilitate online gaming as I would often have to wait minutes for a game to load or "draw" on the screen, and trying to download pirated games wasn't simple either. I remember getting tired of waiting for online games to load and just downloading simulator games from the Big Fish Games website instead, only to be disappointed after finding out that I was just being given access to trial versions of the title, and I needed to fork out money to pay for the full version. All of this is to say that it wasn't very easy to find entertainment options on the home PC when I was a kid, due to a number of reasons, mostly outside of my control. This situation pushed me towards a rather unconventional ally: Microsoft Paint. Whenever the internet wasn't working as good as I expected, I would simply spin up Paint and draw complete rubbish on the canvas. Of course, that wasn't always the intention, but it usually happened when I messed up drawing a straight line or something, and then I would give up on that particular piece and simply draw a random collection of objects. Microsoft Paint was extremely accessible and easy to use. Even if you weren't an artist, you could quickly understand the tools at your disposal and how to leverage them on a canvas. The absolute breadth on offer ensured that each painting was truly unique, as you could utilize various combinations of tools like the pencil, paint, spray paint, and more to truly personalize your creation. Since I wasn't particularly good at drawing both on digital screen or a physical screen, I remember that my main style of art would be to insert a bunch of randomly intersecting lines and then fill them with random colors through the paint can. I have trying to replicate that art style in the latest version of Paint below, and as you can see, it's truly Pablo Picasso-esque. The human imagination truly knows no bounds Microsoft Paint kept me occupied for hours and was my best friend when video games on the home PC were inaccessible for one reason or the other. There was no academic or professional reason for which I would need to use Paint, but I still loved using it in my personal time, even if what I created wasn't worth being shown to anyone. It was simply fun. Fast-forward to today, and the situation is mostly the same. Now that I am almost 29 years old, and I still have no reason to use Microsoft Paint in a professional capacity. In fact, I don't even use it in a personal capacity, except to dabble with it from time to time, just to see if core functionalities are still intact. And I'm happy to say that I think Microsoft Paint still offers the same accessibility and inviting experience that it did to me a couple of decades ago, even though its UX has been refreshed and it's been integrated with Copilot features. Interestingly, things could have been a lot different, had Microsoft had its way. Microsoft Paint was marked for deprecation with the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update in 2017, and even began displaying a product retirement alert, urging customers to shift to Paint 3D instead. Fortunately, after consumer backlash, Microsoft reversed course on this decision, and Paint continues to be a native app inside Windows installations that can also be updated quite frequently through the Microsoft Store. Instead, Paint 3D ended up on the chopping block, which is for the better, I think. I have intermittently played around with Microsoft's refreshed Paint experience in the past few years, and I do think it has received worthwhile upgrades. the UI and the UX has been modernized while retaining core functionality, and the app is still fairly easy to use. It doesn't meet any of my use-cases, but I've never really had any use-cases ever, as described previously. Of course, the elephant in the room is the Copilot integration. Personally, I believe that this is one place where Copilot does make sense, environmental concerns aside. I know that a lot of creatives use AI to generate images, and while some may be using professional alternatives, Paint still offers a decent casual experience, with the power of Copilot. Of course, you do need to have a valid Microsoft 365 Copilot license and available credits to use it, but even if you don't, you still get the big Copilot button in the toolbar, unfortunately. All in all, I am glad that Microsoft Paint continues to be a native feature in Windows 11, and a piece of software that has evolved to meet modern needs without cutting off its own roots. It's just an iconic piece of Windows history that was an essential part of my childhood, and while I don't use it anymore, I'm just glad it is still there.
    • 2TB WD_Black SN7100 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD drops to its lowest price in over three months by Fiza Ali Amazon is currently offering the 2TB WD_Black SN7100 internal solid-state drive at its lowest price in over three months, so you may want to check it out, if you have been considering a storage upgrade, before the deal dries up (purchase link is toward the end of the article). Featuring a PCIe Gen 4.0 interface and M.2 2280 form factor, the SN7100 promises to deliver sequential read speeds of up to 7,250MB/s and sequential write speeds reaching 6,900MB/s, offering as much as a 35% improvement in performance compared with the previous generation. It also achieves random read speeds of 1,000,000 IOPS and random write speeds of 1,400,000 IOPS. The drive uses Western Digital’s TLC 3D NAND technology for reliable performance and is further supported by a five-year limited warranty. It also offers strong endurance, rated at up to 1,200TBW, making it suitable for demanding workloads such as gaming, content creation, and high-speed recording. Moreover, its DRAM-less architecture claims to improve power efficiency (the SSD relies on system memory for caching via HMB), while the WD_Black Dashboard software enables users to monitor drive health, install firmware updates, and activate Game Mode for potentially better performance. Finally, it operates within an operating temperature range of 0°C to 85°C, and can withstand storage temperatures from -40°C to 85°C. 2TB WD_Black SN7100 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD: $242.96 (Amazon US) Check this deal out if you want a 4TB option. Good to know This Amazon deal is U.S. specific, and not available in other regions unless specified. We only use first-party seller links (at the time of article publishing); ensure that you purchase from a first-party seller link only. Check out Today's Deals on Amazon | or our recent tech deals. Become a Prime member (for Students or SNAP) via Neowin Get Prime Access - Prime for half price (for qualifying Medicaid, EBT, SNAP) Subscribe to Prime Video, Audible Plus, Music Unlimited or Kindle Unlimited via Neowin As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
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