Welcome to Chataclysm, our returning column focused on Cataclysm news and speculation.  The expansion has been out for months now, but this punny column title didn’t get enough time in the sun back in the day, so it’s coming out of retirement.  Look here for discussion about future patches and events.

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I accurately predicted the release of patch 3.3, and even more impressively, totally called the Cataclysm release date 3 months early.  I’m pretty good at detecting these things, I guess.  So, why not put my wildly speculative nature to the test?  I’m sure there’s actually a valid answer to that question, but I can’t think of it, so let’s get started!

While trying to answer a question about item level today, I found myself charting out the numbers all the way from Tier 1 to Tier 12.  In the course of this, I noticed enough patterns, that I’ve decided to go on the record here with my guess on the item level of Tier 15 gear.  (Note:  Most of this is mathy bullcrap.  Feel free to scroll down if you just want to skip that and go straight to telling me I’m wrong about my conclusion.)

I started out by charting the item levels of all the previous and current tier sets.  I ended up with something like this:

Classic
Tier 1	66
Tier 2	76
Tier 3	86-92
BC
Tier 4	120
Tier 5	133
Tier 6	146-154
Wrath	10 Normal	10H/25N	25 Heroic
Tier 7	200	213	n/a
Tier 8	219	226	239
Tier 9	232	245	258
Tier 10	251	264	277
Cata	Normal	Heroic
Tier 11	359	372
Tier 12	378	391

Tier inflation (not to be confused with tire inflation)

The first thing I had to figure out was what kind of inflation exists within each tier.  Looking at the numbers, I could see that classic tiers went through 10 item levels of inflation, wheras Burning Crusade sets increased by 13 each time.  So far in Wrath and Cataclysm, we’ve seen increases of 19 from each tier to the next, with the one notable exception being the transition from Ulduar to Trial of the Crusader, which was only 13.

I’m going to guess Cataclysm’s raids will continue to have 19 iLevels between tiers — and quite honestly, wonder if Wrath’s gear may have been a little more balanced at 16-levels per tier — so I will assume that the following expansion will have gaps of 22.

How many patches?

The next step was figuring out how many raid tiers will exist in Cataclysm.  This one’s tough, since they keep suggesting they’d like to continue making smaller content patches more often.  Call me cynical, but I have a feeling that while Firelands is going to be awesome, the populous is going to be begging for more bosses per tier, which will encourage Blizzard to return to multiple small raids, or even one big Ulduar/ICC-sized raid for subsequent patches.

Assuming this, I’ll just go ahead and say there will be 4 tiers total in Cataclysm.  This, plus the previous guesses about tier inflation, allow me to expand my chart to this:

Cata	Normal	Heroic
Tier 11	359	372
Tier 12	378	391
Tier 13	397	410
Tier 14	416	429
??	Normal	Heroic
Tier 15	X
Tier 16	X+22

Which leaves only the final piece to figure out…the amount of inflation between the last raid of Cataclysm and the first raid of the following expansion.

Here’s where I really start pulling things out of my ass…

This is probably a meaningless find — and not the result of any actual rule by Blizzard — but I did find a pattern that I could use to estimate the inflation that will take place from tier 14 to 15.

The best tier gear from the classic game was iLevel 92.  The first tier from BC was 120, a jump of 28 levels.

The best tier gear from BC was iLevel 154.  The first tier from Wrath was 200, a jump of 46 levels.

The best tier gear from Wrath was iLevel 277.  The first tier from Cataclysm was 359, a jump of 82 levels.

28…46…82.  Where am I going with this?  Observe:

• (28*2) – 10 = 46
• (46*2) – 10 = 82
• (82*2) – 10 = 154

If there’s more to the pattern than sheer coincidence — and me seeing what I want to see — then it would put the first tier of the next expansion 154 item levels above Cataclysm’s heroic tier 14.  Since I’m using a tier inflation of 22, I’ll assume the normal to heroic jump in any given tier will be 16.  This leaves me with the following numbers for tier 15 (and 16!):

??	Normal	Heroic
Tier 15	583	599
Tier 16	605	621

So, there you have it.  Tier 15 will have an item level of 583 in normal mode, and 599 in heroic mode. You heard it hear first.  Unless this is completely wrong, in which case, this has been brought to you by Boubouille of MMO-Champion.

While I’m at it, I’ll provide you with a couple more wild speculations about tier 15:

• Paladins and Hunters will complain about data-mined lackluster set bonuses.
• Shamans and Druids will have the worst looking sets.
• Rogues will complain that their set isn’t “stealthy-looking” enough.
• Shoulder and head pieces will continue to be purchased with tokens to keep them rare, because I think Blizzard likes that model.
• My raid will see those shoulders and heads when we farm for them after tier 16 releases.
• Those shoulders will be fairly small…a nice reprieve from the giant shoulder pieces of Tier 14’s Deathwing raid.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a psychic hotline to answer.  I’ll see you next time with more completely baseless theories.  Peace.

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Tags: Baseless Speculation, Patch 5.0, Random Thoughts, Twitter Feed

Sometimes helping the guild comes in the form of materialistic objects such as gold or crafting mats (ok, so they’re pixelated materials, but they’re materials nonetheless).  Other times, helping the guild comes in the form of doing things with your fellow members.

Then there are times when it helps the guild to just provide a good example for the server.  To help our reputation by doing something nice for a fellow player.

That charitable spirit is what brings us both this week’s quest…and the reward!

This week, we’re asking you to go out into Azeroth to perform some random acts of kindness.  The specific acts are up to you.  This could entail offering free lowbie runs through dungeons, or tossing a few big bags to a lowbie you see wandering around the forest.

In order to get credit towards The Weekly Quest, simply provide some kind of proof to me of your deeds.  We’re working a bit on the honor system on this one, but screenshots or letters from those you’ve helped will certainly make things easier for me.

The Rewards:

The person that has the largest amount of distinct stories will win first prize:  3 GXP, plus a Cenarion Hatchling Pet!  These pets are normally purchased via a $10 donation to the Red Cross for tsunami relief.  I’ve made the donation, but one of you will get to call the pet your own.  He will bind to your account if you win, and will be available to all your characters!

Additionally, I will select one story which I think goes most above and beyond and that person will receive 2 GXP.

Finally, anyone who even submits proof of a random act of kindness will receive 1GXP.  So everyone’s a winner this time around.

Fine print:  As mentioned, this will be on the honor system to some extent.  It will also be up to my discretion as to how to tally acts of kindness and which acts really count.  Handing out 1 gold to a bunch of random lowbies may be nice, but it’s not really going “above and beyond.”  We’re really looking to see what nice things everyone has to offer.  Good luck all and have fun!

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Tags: Guild Relations

Our bank is full of meat, fish and metal, thanks to some special guildies of ours who worked very hard contributing feast materials.

This week’s winner is no surprise — having racked up points damn near every week, anyway — but the sheer margin of victory here is definitely a site to behold.

The Rewards:

First Place:  Syvarian picked up the first place spot again, by collecting a whopping 46 points worth of materials.  He will receive 3GXP as well as the Alliance Argent Tournament companion pet of his choice!  These pets include the Teldrassil Sproutling, Dun Morough Cub, etc… (Note:  The pet will be sent to you no later than Thursday, Syv.)
Second Place:  The next two contributors tied at 7 points worth of mats each, so they will both earn the second place reward:  2GXP and a pat on the back.  They were Circolare and Cullendunn.

Grats to the winners.  Be looking for a very special Weekly Quest going up shortly.

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Tags: /cheer, Grats!

Since we now have only the final bosses remaining in each tier 11 raid dungeon, I thought it was time to figure out how we can best balance progressing through these bosses and gearing people up through farm content.  As I’ve said in the past…the last thing we want to do is burn people out getting stuck on 1 boss when there is still gear and practice to be had elsewhere.

In the interest of this, I went ahead and looked through the gear of our usual raiders to figure out which raid had the best upgrades for our raiders, so we will know what non-Cho’gall bosses will be the best for us to murder on a regular basis.

	BoT	BWD
Circolare	II	II
Cullendunn		III
Cutaia		IIII
Darthworgen	I	II
Galnadir	II	II
Jasprock
Mineta		III
Nabulian	I	I
Rashmahal
Syvarian		II

Now, this list may not be perfect, but I’ll outline how I determined these numbers.  I used Ask Mr. Robot and looked up each of these characters.  A couple of them had logged out in some amount of PvP gear, so I did the best I could with those.  I found which bosses dropped best-in-slot gear for each character.  In any case where a player already had an iLevel 359 epic in a slot, I didn’t count the upgrade.  (Note that there are certainly 359 drops that are upgrades from some of the 359s many of us are wearing, but I was concerned with finding the “biggest” upgrades available to help the raid.)

Once again, this is by no means a perfect list…BUT it does do a decent job of illustrating which raid is going to end up gearing our raid the most.  Blackwing Descent simply has more desirable drops for our particular raid group (and as we’ve seen, can be easily and quickly cleared to Nefarian).

So, we’ll continue utilizing our Monday raid to get some good attempts in on Cho’gall — followed by Al’Akir and Nefarian, once he-with-too-many-eyes is down.  The Saturday raid, however, looks like it should be spent in BWD whenever possible.

The catch:

I’m not 100% sure if I can just keep extending our Cho’gall lockout week after week, or if there is a limit of how many consecutive times I can extend one raid ID.  If I can just keep extending it to our hearts’ content, than we’ll continue to kill easy bosses in BWD one day, then working on Cho’gall, the other day.  Easy peasy.

If, however, we can only extend it once, than every other week we’ll be forced to use our farm day to clear the first three bosses in Bastion.  You’ll notice the current calendar isn’t very specific about the Saturday raid because of this.  Once I get the lockout extensions figured out, I’ll adjust the descriptions to fit our new plan.

Anyway, we’re in a very exciting period for Linguist raiding.  We’re doing excellent on Cho’gall so far (we even had a couple of 15% wipes!),  and will have him down this week or the next, guaranteed.

If you’ve any thoughts on this subject, please leave them in the comments here or get in touch with me directly.

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Tags: Progression, Raiding, Strategy