The Rightplan on Blizzard – Patch 5.2

Hey RP Here!

The long awaited post to catch us up!

To start off 5.2 offers yet again new areas to explore, the Isle of Thunder and Isle of Giants. The largest change of the 2 lands to the actual story line is the Isle of Thunder. This area is being released in stages, the more quests completed and rares killed the faster the new area is unlocked. So far on my server (Uldaman) there have been 3 unlocks which brings us to the forge area now.

You will also be given 2 more reputations to farm, but they are far from a grind, in fact they are fun to lvl up. The 2 new reps are Shado-Pan Assault (rep achieved from the new raid bosses) and the Kirin-Tor Offensive (obtained through dailies and rep items). There is also a continuing bit of a story line with solo instances and cut scenes to better paint the picture of taking over the island and breaking your way into the Thunder Kings fortress. Here is a picture of the Map for Isle of Thunder, our areas that are unlocked and in the top left you can see the progress for the next unlock.

The new Raid is similar to that of Ulduar in LK in that it is a bit off the story line but not so much as to be right out to lunch. It is a filler patch that will keep us entertained while they prepare us for the next big release that will most likely be another smaller raid to get us back on a story line or the final raid which is rumoured to be Garrosh Hellscream, the new war chief of the horde since Thrall took his resignation after Cata. Getting back on topic… The new raid is Throne of Thunder (ToT) where you will encounter new bosses and eventually kill the Thunder King. So far the LFR version of the raid is not too bad if you have a decent group which is a 50/50 shot, but a new feature was added that reduces the bosses’ difficulty by 5% and stacks up to 10 times (10 wipes) so that each attempt will get easier and easier to make up for getting a bad group. The normal version of this raid does not let you down. It is MUCH harder than the LFR version and requires you to have a good group and good gear to even attempt to make it past the 2^nd boss. The trash between bosses is even much harder on normal mode and must be pulled carefully to make it to the next boss.

The new Rares in the Isle of thunder offer more Kirin-Tor rep and bonus Valor tokens, plus they have a chance to drop a “Key to the Palace of Lei Shen” or “Shan’ze Ritual Stones”. The “Shan’ze Ritual Stones” offer you the ability to summon another rare mob needed for a quest and also has chances to drop the same items. This rare does need 5 people to kill it and can be very easy (3 man) to not so easy (must have 5) so it’s safer just to always have a group of 5 when summoning. The “Key to the Palace of Lei Shen” gives you the ability to enter a solo instance that is basically a loot grab. You have 5 mins to open as many chests as you can to get bonus Kirin-tor rep, coins for bonus loot rolls on bosses and “Shan’ze Ritual Stones”. I saved one for this post and took a picture of the inside of the instance. As you can see there are a lot of traps that need to be avoided to prevent you being slowed/stunned and using up some of your 5 mins.

Many class changes were made as well and you can check out all of the changes here in the patch notes. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/8896363/ . Some got some decent buffs while others did not. As a shaman there were not many changes made (as always) and the ones that were done are not very noticeable with the increase in difficulty with healing. I haven’t heard a whole lot of complaining in the guild except that it seems the class that took the hardest hit was Mages, some complaining they are doing 5k or less dps than before the patch released.

Without picking every little part of the patch apart, the final major changes were the Isle of Giants and the new World bosses Nalak, the Storm Lord and Oondasta. Nalak, the Storm Lord is located on the Isle of Thunder above the Thunderking’s fortress and Oondasta is on the Isle of Giants. I have not had the chance to fight Nalak yet since the whole fortress has not been unlocked but I did take two 40 man groups to kill Oondasta at patch release, only to end up dead in the end, so needless to say they are not a walk in the park like the last 2 world bosses. Finally the Isle of Giants offers a whole island of elite dinosaurs and Trolls, the trolls are easy but the Dino’s get harder the bigger they get. Upon killing these elites you have a chance to get new pets, eggs, and dino bones. The eggs are about 1/500 kills to get and will hatch in 3 days into a red, black or green raptor mount similar to the egg mount in LK but with a higher chance to get a mount. The bones can be collected and handed into the rep vendor in the cave on the island for more rep tokens, pets or for 9999 bones a pure white raptor mount, which to me sounds a lot like the wintersaber mount grind… so like the wintersaber mount grind I will be doing this too. Here is a picture of my black raptor mount, the Isle of Giants and the world boss Oondasta. Took me a bit to find the perfect spot so enjoy J

Well that in a nutshell is 5.2! more posts will be coming soon! Let me know if there is anything you wish to have a write up on!

Happy Gaming!

-Jon