3.2 - a new direction

Just some initial thoughts on 3.2. We all know that the colloseum 5 man will drop marks of conquest, epics from every boss (ilvl 200 for normal, ilvl 213 for heroic (so naxx10/naxx25 equiv). Seems like the loot tables are pretty large too, so it's possible to gear up most of your toons in naxx gear pretty easily. I would expect within a week the dedicated person will be fully geared in naxx10 gear from greens/blues, and a casual person would be able to replace several pieces. It may be that the challenge level is high like MgT from 2.4; in that case we could expect people in blues/greens not being able to cut the mustard. However in a guild like ours, we have half of us in good gear, and the rest in crap gear. Most of us have 2 or 3 toons at 80, and maybe one is naxx geared. So i can see having well geared people run it first, then switch out, say a good tank and healer and 3 badly geared dps, and run it on normal 5 times.

What does it mean though? It means that guilds like us who are struggling in naxx are going to suddenly have much more firepower. It also means that we don't need to do naxx since we won't have many upgrades from it. Which is too bad, because by the time we'll be able to finish naxx, 3.2 will be out and it will be meh, just like 2.4 when they nerfed the crap out of the raid bosses.

Honestly it means within a month of 3.2, any guild that can put together a few nights of raiding, even a guild like ours, is going to be done with naxx and moving into ulduar for better gear. We can forget about running naxx10 when 3.2 drops, because not only is the gear going to be nearly identical to the colloseum gear, but the marks will be pretty much obsolete. So, i predict we're going to ulduar pretty soon, then 10 man colleseum, well that will take a while but maybe by xmas.

For blizzard, it's an interesting strategy. Its basically saying, okay, if you are going to do icecrown, here is your chance; gear up quickly then push through ulduar and colloseum (which i predict will be a quick, fairly easily mastered instance designed mostly for gearing up). It means that if you hit 80 a week ago and ARE SKILLED (this is key), you could quite conceivably get naxx10 geared in a week, start doing ulduar/colloseum with your guild, and within one-two weeks be ready for icecrown. So, conceivably a month to be pretty well geared and a useful addition to the raid team.

Whereas now. Well my DK hit 80 a month or two ago. I bought the saronite set, bought the tanking epics, and started to run heroics. Well, 5 heroics later, i have exactly one piece of tanking gear. My guild mates have similiar issues. We all badly need gear, but it just doesn't drop. If we can do colloseum in say 30 min, its conceivable to run it on normal a few times a day and get say 6 pieces of naxx10 gear. ANyway enough musing, I think this patch is going to be really useful for guilds who just get get any traction in raiding due to the random drops and not enough time.