Prepare to conquer Azeroth with confidence! This week on Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth, we bring you the latest updates and strategies to keep you ahead of the game. Ever wondered how to seamlessly transition from PvE to PvP? We break down the crucial tactics for PvE veterans like Gabby the Gobby to handle the unpredictable nature of PvP combat. Plus, get the edge in your weekly activities with tips on managing the current mythic affixes—Incomporeal, Sanguine, and Fortified—and strategies for dominating the Shadow Pan Showdown brawl.
Feeling overwhelmed by the complexities of class balance? We delve into the sophisticated playstyle of Frost Mages, comparing them to other classes such as Demon Hunters and Hunters, and discuss the ongoing challenges of class tuning. This episode also shines a spotlight on the War Within beta, offering insider knowledge on raid testing schedules and how you can get involved. Tune in for a blend of expert advice, engaging discussions, and the latest news from the world of Warcraft that you won't want to miss!
Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!
Prepare to conquer Azeroth with confidence! This week on Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth, we bring you the latest updates and strategies to keep you ahead of the game. Ever wondered how to seamlessly transition from PvE to PvP? We break down the crucial tactics for PvE veterans like Gabby the Gobby to handle the unpredictable nature of PvP combat. Plus, get the edge in your weekly activities with tips on managing the current mythic affixes—Incomporeal, Sanguine, and Fortified—and strategies for dominating the Shadow Pan Showdown brawl.
Feeling overwhelmed by the complexities of class balance? We delve into the sophisticated playstyle of Frost Mages, comparing them to other classes such as Demon Hunters and Hunters, and discuss the ongoing challenges of class tuning. This episode also shines a spotlight on the War Within beta, offering insider knowledge on raid testing schedules and how you can get involved. Tune in for a blend of expert advice, engaging discussions, and the latest news from the world of Warcraft that you won't want to miss!
Hope you all enjoy and hope you relate to any of these stories. And I will speak to you all in the next episode!
The Thank you. Welcome to the Pig and Whistle Tales from Azeroth. As always here at the Pig and Whistle in Instalwind, I go through a variety of subjects with regards to World of Warcraft. I grab a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy. With regards to World of Warcraft, grab a bottle or a pint, sit back and enjoy this episode. We'll be looking at a few things, mainly the war within beta and a few bits and bobs from the forums. As always, we're going to be debunking some of the stupid stuff that's been said on there, sometimes agreeing with it, but most likely debunking the stupid stuff. But let's get into the weekly news. As always, we have Basil's K elders and aero star as your world bosses for the week. Basil, located in uh, where is it as your span? That's the one. Uh, zikali elders are in the zara, like caverns, and aero star in the emerald dream. Uh, zara, like caverns and uh, the raids and world bosses that go along with it. So avarice and the sakali elders are your awakened raids and bosses. So you get the current season item level gear from that raid and world boss. So if you're doing any sort of raid, it will be that one.
Speaker 1:
This week, battlegrounds are your bonus event for the week. This means that you get more honor for doing battlegrounds. If you're looking to gear up a new alt, now is the time with get some on, like getting some honor, gear and stuff. Like that shadow pan, that showdown is your brawl. This is essentially a 6v6 and you'll put into oh my god, what's the tiger's peak? That's the arena and you have a boss to kill, like your team has a boss to defend and your team has a boss to kill. The objective is to kill the enemy's boss before they kill yours and you can pvp the enemy team, um, and you get respawns. I think it's like a 30 second respawn, but ultimately, whoever's boss dies first is the loser. Incomporeal, sanguine and Fortified are your mythic fixes for the week.
Speaker 1:
Incomporal essentially, there are ads that spawn. You have to just cc them. It's very simple. Whether this be through a blind for a clone, through a mind control, through anything like that, you just simply cc them. Sanguine when a mob dies, it leaves a pool on the ground. This pool needs to be sidestepped and ignored. You move mobs out of it. You don't stand in it. It's very simple. Please don't stand in it for your healers sake. You know it's. They won't like you for that. And finally, you have fortified the non-boss enemies have more health and damage and anything that they spawn, so bring a talent build that can accommodate for that.
Speaker 1:
So let's start with the beta testing now. The beta went up last week and since last week there have been a few bits and bobs that have been added and told to us about it. What we do know is that raid testing is scheduled very, very soon. So, hi everyone, the time has come to test some of the upcoming raid encounters within the war of him team is very excited to hear your feedback. We'd like to remain remind everyone that the raid testing schedule is fluid and subject to, uh, the realities of a test environment. We may have to change the time of a testing session, change the bosses being tested or cancel the test entirely due to bugs uh, server hardware issues, etc. So if you are testing bosses and suddenly it despawns, just know that you're probably not going to be doing that boss again because it's bugged. Um, keep an eye on the forum as the boss, feedback threads and latest information. Thank you in advance for testing you all that stuff.
Speaker 1:
So the test schedule how do you get into the raid zone. So simply, um, in a major city you speak to a npc called the nexus lord and essentially he will teleport you to the raid zone, uh, when it is open for testing. Uh, what character should you use? Uh, you can use whichever character you want. Uh, there'll be obviously scaling you to level 80 for the raid testing and the item levels will be appropriate for that sort of threshold and the encounters and stuff. And how long will the test last? It's going to last for a while well, a while, I say like a decent raid sort of night, while they need information to balance encounters, evaluate how mechanics are playing and stuff. Once satisfied that they have enough information, they'll be shutting down the testing and it's anywhere between sort of 45 and two hours long.
Speaker 1:
But there's no guarantees to this because it can change very often on how short or long the testing is. Essentially, if you obviously are going to do the raid testing and you want to send in feedback they always have that little bug report like a ui thing please just click on the little bug symbol and you can submit your feedback there. It's very, very simple. So we actually do have times for this. So we have on thursday, the 13th of june, which is already gone, sadly. Um, we have two bosses which is ulgrax the devourer and the bloodbound horror. Today, as of this episode going live, you have Nexus, princess Kaiveza, I think that's how you say it, roshanan and Blood Twister, ovinax these are some weird names, I'm not going to lie. They are at 8 CEST, 9 CEST and 10 CEST or, if you're in NA, it's going to be 11 PTD, 12 PTD and 1300 PTD.
Speaker 1:
For Thursday, the 27th of June. You have Sky Captain Zeriki, I think that's how you say it, and the Silken Court. There's always a council boss in any raid, isn't there? Your standard council boss? These are the heroic testing. Then you get into the mythic testing at the end of june, so the 28th, which is all of the bosses that have been recently stated below, but the first mythic ones are Olgrax the Devourer, the Bloodbound Horror and the Captain of the Cherokee. They are on the 28th of June. The normal raid, the full normal raid, except Ansarek, which I think is the final boss, is from the 28th of June as well, until the 1st of July. So that's open for a few days for testing of July. So that's open for a few days for testing. For the next batch of mythic testing, you have Rashaan and Blood Twister of Inax on Wednesday, the 10th of July these are two weeks like after the first set of mythic testing. That's crazy. And then the Thursday, the 11th of July. You have Nexus, princess and the Silken Court on the 11th and then finally you have the raid finder testing for Wings 1 and 2 of the first raid, obviously, and that's taking place on the 12th of July.
Speaker 1:
Now I personally don't see much of the testing. I think a lot of high-end retail raiders I definitely think those who are mythic raiders, such as Liquid or Echo, anyone like that they are obviously going to be testing out these bosses to get sort of a head start on the race to world first and have a look at tactics, potentially stuff like that. They're the ones that you want to tune into most likely on these days to watch them test the raid. But I don't see much of the raid testing. So whoever does that? Fair play to you, because I I personally don't. That's not what I look for. I just look for the passes themselves and how they actually function and if they are a decent functioning class essentially. But you know, that's. That's all picked up anyway within the raids, if there is any. But that is your raid testing schedule. Now the raid testing schedule is going on for about a month, essentially, like every other week or every week there is something new to test raid-wise. Obviously, there's going to be a lot of information Then I would imagine, after they've tested the mythic, they'll give everyone sort of a day or two to test out the raid as a full, like normal heroic or mythic and yeah, just to see like if there are any more bugs that might have occurred during that time. But that is the raid testing schedule. There's nothing much more to it. It's very, very simple. But the war within beta notes. Obviously we know that.
Speaker 1:
The announcement for when oh my god, I'm losing my words the what is it release date, that's it. The release date of the expansion is the 26th of august, so this is just under two months away. Those who bought the heroic edition get to three days early access, even though it's kind of four, and they get to play the game on the 22nd of august. So the extra few days might help them level. Obviously you're going to get someone who max gets to max level at the very start. There is no rush to get max level. Okay, because season one starts on the 14th of september. So you've got two and a half weeks, two and a half, three weeks before the season one even starts.
Speaker 1:
So there's no point doing pve, pvp. Well, unless you want to do pvp and get some honor more than welcome to I think that you would be allowed to get some honor gear before, um, everything starts up. So and I think it's a good way to test what everyone is now like in pvp relations. So obviously everyone's going to have hero talents yeah, that's a given now. So these hero talents will need to be looked at and for pvps anyway, you can see what their visuals are, you can see when they're doing big damage, you can see when to press a defensive, you can see when to go on the offensive, when they've used their defensives, etc. All of that stuff. You know there's a lot to look at essentially for that.
Speaker 1:
But with the war of him releasing, you'll obviously have the new allied race. You'll have delves, war bands, new hero talents, sky riding. You'll have all the new dungeons. You'll have the new zones, which is isle of dawn, ringing deeps, hallowful and ashkahet. You have the new battleground, new raid. When it releases.
Speaker 1:
You have so many things that are happening um, especially with all of the classes as a whole, because they're all getting hero talents. A lot of them are getting reworks to their um base talent trees. So hunters, I believe, are the latest class that had a revamp in their talent tree. And this is to all three specializations of hunters that you can test it out on the beta um as to where, like or what sort of changes have happened to your talents. Now some of these talents are either gone or just, you know, tweaked slightly, but it's more the layout of the talent tree, because a lot of them have changed from the Dragonflight ones over the course of the expansion, but mostly within the War Within beta. So have a look at them. If you go to Wowhead, there is a talent calculator or talent tree calculator on the website. On Wowhead website you simply go to wowhead, go to tools and then the war within calculator is the very top option and then you can test it out and see the talent trees for yourself and see what changes there are. But that's all for the beta. Really.
Speaker 1:
We just got the announcement of the date, which means that I was kind of wrong in my assessment. I thought it was going to be end of July. They maybe want to just take a little bit extra time to make sure that there are no bugs, but honestly I think that they could have released this end of July and it would have been fine. It probably would have been a lot of work to do so, because if there are a lot of bugs to be you tested and, you know, moved around, then it kind of makes sense that it they leave it a little bit later. But I always I'm one for loving bugs in the game. I think that they bugs within a game are amazing and a lot more enjoyable than a lot of what other people like find. Essentially I, I love the fuckery of like bugs in games. I think that they're very, very enjoyable. Um, but let's move on to the forums now. Some of these are ridiculously stupid. Some of these are good. Some of these, you know, can do with a bit of improvement.
Speaker 1:
But we're looking at pvp and this one I will address first as it. It is actually quite a nice forum post. So hi everyone. So I've been a hardcore PvE player for years now. Frankly, pve has always seemed like the more complex and skill incentive side of the game and game. So it's held my interest, since I love a challenge, but I decided to dip my toes into PvP to collect those elite set appearance and I've been eyeing since season 4 is a waste of time right now. Anyways, I imagine this won't be too hard as a healer, since I have insta-cues and I'm familiar with avoiding mechanics from PvE healing. However, I thought it must be a good idea to gather some tips from you PvP folks. However, I thought it must be a good idea to gather some tips from you PvP folks. What should a PvE pro like me keep in mind when making this transition?
Speaker 1:
Okay, there's a little bit more to this, but firstly, I get that you're good at avoiding mechanics as a PvE healer, but avoiding PvE mechanics, compared to avoiding PvP mechanics, is a completely different set of skills. It really is. You can sidestep a dragon's breath, okay, or something falling you. The difference is can you fade a survival hunter's trap within the split second that you have when he harpoons to you? Can you death it? Can you, you know, do whatever you can to not get hit by that trap? Or can you prevent your team from dying? So pain suppression before you get trapped? Can you do that before you get trapped, otherwise that might lose you the game. You know there's many different things to it.
Speaker 1:
Uh, keep it broad and general, as I'm not looking to push rank one or anything, or at least not yet. Maybe I will, depending on how easy 1800 is. I'm sure most of it will be pretty basic, since, from what I read, 1800 is like an average player. But humor me. Thanks in advance for your input. Okay, I do like how he signed off with this. Cheers Gabby the Gobby. He's a goblin Call Gabby. It's, uh, he's a goblin called Gabby. It's amazing. Um.
Speaker 1:
But firstly I want to state that 1800 should not be the average player. It really shouldn't. I I do have to say that if you start 1800 in solo shuffle, people who are newer to pvp will not get that lucky. It should be 1500 starting rating as a solar shuffle, fresh character pvp. It shouldn't be 1800 now. 1800 at this current stage or towards the end, that's fine because inflation kicks in and your average player will go up about a few hundred per like season, few hundred rating. But in my honest opinion it's a completely different kettle of fish. Um is the best way to like. Put it essentially, you are looking at a completely different game when it comes to pve and pvp.
Speaker 1:
Personally, I think pvp is a lot more skill based than pve, because pve it's rinse and repeat. Yeah, you, no matter what the bosses will always do the same mechanics at the same percent, at the same time, so you can base your rotation or your positioning around that. Pvp you can't. You've got to think on your feet a lot more, and a lot of people can't do that as often because it's just not how their brain functions. Their brain functions a lot more in terms of OK, in 10 seconds he's going to do a thunderclap, I've got to be behind a pillar. You know something like that. Other people like myself okay, I've just been harpooned.
Speaker 1:
I play monk. I tend to play monk. I want to instantly Tiger's lost myself so that he misses the trap. Port or just sweep him as he's there, you know anything like that. Or just revival to immune the trap. Port or just sweep him as he's there, you know anything like that. Or just revival to immune the trap. You know there's many different things that I can do, but a pve player wouldn't even think about doing like until they've played a lot of the games that they have, you know.
Speaker 1:
So there's a lot more to it than just avoiding mechanics, because avoiding mechanics in pvp aren't a thing all right, they just aren't, because pvp players can do damage to people and it's tough to avoid their mechanics. Isn't it like? How are you going to avoid a final reckoning? The? The only chance you avoid? The only time you have time to avoid a final reckoning is if the paladin is 20 yards away and you can see him getting ready to use it. Then you can maybe pre-fade it or anything like that, but you're not going to be able to avoid that mechanic. It's ridiculous. It's a ridiculous insight. What I have to say is don't think that you're going to be a pro immediately and be a bit humble with it. Like if I was to go into PvE, I would be a bit humble with it and I would still have to learn the mechanics and give it a bit of respect. I think you're not giving enough respect to the other players and saying that you can avoid mechanics because that's not going to help you in PvP. It just won't. Um, it just isn't so in my opinion.
Speaker 1:
Now this is going to sound really cliche, but record your screen, record what you're doing and you can play it back if lose a round. You can see where you went wrong, or you can see what actually happened to lead up to that death Not your death personally, but the death of someone else Because you could have prevented that death. It's not just on them, it's a team-based game. It's very much team-based in Arena, so you can do something to avoid them dying. It's not just on them. So there's multiple things that you can do, but I would recommend, as a very starter, is to just simply record your screen. That way you can see what happened, what you could have done to avoid cc, what you could have done to heal your teammate, anything like that.
Speaker 1:
Um, obs is a very good one. Obs is your like standard one. You can just do nvidia, screen shares and stuff like, or screen captures. You know all of that stuff, um, but yeah, have a look for a screen capturing machine or software, I should say, and go about it via that, because you definitely want to have a look at your own gameplay and see where you're going wrong, because it's very easy to see a hunter die or a paladin or a druid or any other class really die and then say, oh well, that's your fault. When you have let's say, you're a disc priest two pain suppressions, dome left, leap of faith, void shift you know it's very easy to say, yep, that's your fault for dying. I have all of my cooldowns left and it's like, well, that makes no sense. Really you should have used a cooldown on them. Like when could you have used a cooldown on them? Could you pre-paint sup them? Could you have pre-void shifted them before the trap? Did you do many different things and the answer is usually yes, you could have. There is always something, looking back at it, that you could have done to save them, but you just didn't know or didn't have the experience at the time. So that's what I would recommend always look to do that, as it should help you in the long run.
Speaker 1:
Now the next one is something I find quite tough. I think I'm going to be battling an uphill battle on this one. Um, mages need tuning. I'm just trying to point out that battle on this one Mages need tuning. I'm just trying to point out that mages have such good control and damage and can easily solo an arena team just off of their raw burst and triple poly Ring of Frost, basically just to tone the damage down. It's insanely. Mostly just Glacial and Ray of Frost. Okay, firstly, ray of Frost and Glacial are from frost mages.
Speaker 1:
Obviously you train a frost mage, the damage that they can get out is substantially a lot less. It really really is. But if you're looking at tuning mages damage, you should look at tuning demon hunters damage really. Um, if you're not complaining about demon hunters damage or in this case this is a hunter player saying this mm hunters need tuning damage wise, burst damage wise anyway. Um, because I think mm. Hunters or hunters in general lack defensive purposes. Well, bm and mm, I'd say lack defensive purposes. But, um, yeah, I would argue now this is going to be a real hot take because I think everyone doesn't like this. I would argue mage is the perfect amount of tuning now, not damage wise. I'm not saying damage wise. I think damage majors can do with a little bit more, less burst and more consistent damage. But some majors always been bursty since classic.
Speaker 1:
When you look at you know frost nova and then frost bolt, kona, cold, like combo, the shatter combo. That would nearly one tap someone if you're fully geared and stuff. Um, I'm looking at more mobility and the skill that is required to play the class, because the skill for a very high end mage player is a lot higher than, say, the skill of a very high DH player, dh player now, don't get me wrong, people are still very skilled when it comes to playing dhdk. Paladins, warriors, hunters, you know every class in the game, but to master a mage, I would say, takes more skill than it does to master a dh, and I would say everyone needs tuning in that regard.
Speaker 1:
Like to get your damage out as effectively as possible, um, and still be effective while being trained, or just simply you know living um, which is like kiting, and you know just your defensive rotations and stuff like that. Because if you look at a mage and how they play the game, yes, you have two melee chasing you. Let's say you have two melee chasing you. You are looking to blink and then displace, blink back and then blink again and then use your wall. And then you know if you have to block, you use your block or to frost, know from them off of you, or blast, wave them away from you. You know you're using your rotational defensives. If you look at a warrior's defensives, he has ignore pain macroed into every single button. That is their defensive and then their other defensive is die by the sword, which is a damage reduction, and you can press that for one global cooldown, yeah, whereas a mage's defensive rotation is a lot more. So. Fighting it out, you know, using the blinks, using the like, everything at your disposal, your knockbacks, your frost novas, your everything a warrior will literally just have ignore pain on everything in his like macros, so he never has to press it and it's always constantly up.
Speaker 1:
So how, how different is that you are actively doing your damage still, while being defensive. That shouldn't be a thing. You should sacrifice damage for being defensive. That's how it should be, in my honest opinion. That's how it should be. But then you've got the argument of but then you can't do any damage, and so so you're always on the defensive side of things, which is true. But you can, uh, kind of soft reset yourself. You can get behind a pillar with your healer healer could top you up and then you go back out again as a group, as a team. That's how you sort of soft reset and get out of that sort of situation.
Speaker 1:
But at the same time, it's tough to balance everything without having its own sort of identity still, and I would argue that everything needs tuning to majors, like level, if that makes sense, I think no one would complain about well, people always complain about something, but no one will complain if a major's, if everyone needed the same skill to play their class as they need the amount of skill to play a mage, if that makes sense. Like defensive wise, damage wise and stuff like that. I do agree that mage's damage is very, very good and it can do with a little bit of nerfing, but that's burst damage, constant damage. They don't do a lot, I'm not going to lie. So yeah, that's my hot take, that everything should be scaled up to mages skill-wise, in comparison to mages just being tuned down.
Speaker 1:
That's my honest opinion because, let's face it, mages in Classic were very simple. I think warriors were, maybe rogues Nah, I don't. I don't really know what was skillful in classic. I suppose nothing. When you bring it like, get down to the fundamentals of it, cause boomies were just starfire and one shot things. Warriors, press, mortal strike and that's about it. Rogues would just CC everything and as long as you knew the CC rotation, which is cheap, shot into a kidney shot or something. And as long as you knew the CC rotation which is cheap shot into a kidney shot or something, and then a blind. You know that kind of deal. As long as you knew that you were fine, I don't know. Maybe Feral's, maybe Feral's were the most skillful class during Classic time, but you know, that's besides the point. That's my hot take, that is it. That's besides the point. That's my hot take, that is it.
Speaker 1:
Mages should be what every class aspires to be when it comes to how skillful you need to be to play the class. Now, I'm not saying you need to be an AWC pro to play these classes. I'm saying that you'd need some sort of skill to play these classes. If you look at Fury Warrior, for example now there are very good Fury Warriors out there't get me wrong. But your rotation is essentially press rampage, which is good fun, I'm not gonna lie, it is good fun. Same with bm hunters. You press kill, command off, cooldown and make sure you have three snacks, your barb shot up, that's it. I don't even play bm hunter and I kind of know it. You press your heart like not hot, yeah. Heart of the wild, no, that's boomy. You press your call of the wild, that's it. Uh, you press your bestial vigor, bestial wrath and then kill commands. That's it. That's your rotation. It really isn't tough. But um, yeah, that's that's where I think.
Speaker 1:
My hot take is that everything, everything needs to be scaled up skill-wise to a mage, rather than the mage be skilled down. But that is where I'm going to end it for this episode. Sorry, it's a bit shorter as the usual Friday episodes, but I've been having PC problems and, yeah, I've done this once already but it kind of killed me. The PC just cut off. So it is what it is, but hopefully that will be sorted by next week. So thank you all very much for listening. As always, do check out the socials down below Constant stuff happening over there. But thank you all very much once again. And go aval a friend, goodbye all. And go aval a friend, goodbye all. Do do, thank you.
