Patch 4.2: a Week’s Worth of Impressions

Patch 4.2: a Week’s Worth of Impressions

Released a week ago, Fire-themed patch 4.2 brought a lot of changes to the mix. There are new dailies, a new raid, new gear (including a legendary caster staff), class changes galore, and a variety of nerfs to tier 11 content.

Unleashing the Lightning

My favorite new addition so far has to be the new glyph of Unleashed Lightning. By allowing us to continue casting Lightning Bolt while moving, it keeps us from having to use lower-damage abilities while repositioning due to all those nasty surprises the ground has in store for us.

Fire Nova changes

Fire Nova now deals 15% more damage, which is welcome news, but the real selling point is that now it increases the duration of Flame Shock on targets affected by Nova by 6 seconds, which is great for packs of high health mobs. Switch to a new target when the Flame Shock is coming up, and cast away.

Firelands

As one might expect, there is plenty of fire in the newest raid dungeon. Aesthetically, this means you’d better get used to lots of yellow, orange and red (I think I stared at a light blue wall for 10 minutes after our first Firelands raid, just to cleanse my retinas).

The amount of trash mobs is positively obnoxious, which should at least allow you to quickly reach Friendly with the Avengers of Hyjal. You will fight charging Surgers, spinning turtles, flame vent spewing Molten Lords, angry scorpions and salamander packs, and that’s probably just in the first 10 minutes.

We tried Beth’tillac and Shannox on our 25 man raids on Tuesday and Wednesday, but as was the norm since ICC, not much progress was made until we went with a 10 man on Thursday and finally downed Shannox. Not that I can complain, since now I have my first Eternal Ember, with 24 to go on this early stage in the legendary staff quest.