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Lovely justice: Charms now dropping for healers in instances

Posted by Keeva | Achievements, Changes, Rants | Wednesday 10 February 2010 5:56 PM

Seems that during this week’s maintenance and tweaks, the “just go farm Ulduar derp derp” strategy (I use the term very loosely) has been nerfed and no longer works. You can no longer use vehicles in Ulduar, on bombing runs, or to trample Icecrown skeletons to get your charms.
In addition, healers are reporting that they are passively receiving Lovely Charms in instances, without doing any damage to the mobs. They are receiving charms for contributing to the group, but don’t have to deal any killing blows in order to be eligible. This is how it should have worked from the very start. No more Holy Nova spam for Mephitik.
Farming Ulduar wasn’t cheating – but it wasn’t right, either.
So now the healers are happy, and the Ulduar farmers are crying. Awww. It’s tragic when Big Bad Blizzard steps in and stops people from trivialising achievements. I shed a single glistening tear for all those people who can no longer “farm” charms in bulk.
(Not really.)
Cassandri over at HoTs and DoTs wrote a great article on exploits and how we define them. I don’t think the Ulduar trash farming was an exploit as such; I’m sure Blizzard would have jumped in much faster if it had been. But I do believe it went against the spirit of the event – mass farming charm bracelets in bulk and then listing them for 20g a pop on the AH.
Those bracelets are supposed to be special, people – not mass produced in some cheap dwarf sweatshop! Where’s the love?
I don’t think the developers intended people to jump into vehicles and blow up hundreds of mobs a minute to procure bagfuls of bracelets. The fact that it has been nerfed confirms this thinking – it wasn’t working as intended.
As an aside – what made me laugh was all the people whose counter to the healers was “onoez, you have to work for your achievements.. QQ”. Yet they were trivialising the achievement themselves by farming 50 bracelets in a siege engine, instead of working for them in the way it was intended….
It wasn’t against the rules. But it was a bit dirty. Call me a carebear or a goodie-two-shoes – I don’t like doing things that go against the spirit of the content, and yes, I do look down my nose at people who think it’s ok to do it. I believe that most reasonable people have an inkling that maybe something isn’t really the way it’s meant to be done. I just think that as grown-ups we can tell the difference between intended and unintended, and then make the choice not to take advantage of these temporary oversights by Blizzard. They didn’t intend us to be able to farm 500 charms in half an hour and then flood the auction house with them.
Was it cheating? No, of course not – the mechanic was there – kill high level mobs, get charms. People thought, “where can I kill as many mobs as I can, in as little time as possible?” It was pretty smart, in terms of efficiency.
It definitely wasn’t in the spirit of the event, though – and I wouldn’t participate in that, because it falls inside the boundaries of what I personally consider cheating.
Smug Keeva is oh so smug.
Obviously, some people aren’t too happy that Blizzard took away their ezmode bulk farming strat. Someone wrote in the WoW forum thread:

yeah you could have gotten 100x more charms from the ways you were told but atleast you ruined it for everyone else

Oh boy, I just couldn’t help myself… I HAD to respond:

In the spirit of the past 20 pages, there really is only one response to this.
Don’t worry, you can still get charms by grinding mobs or doing your dailies!
*smiles*

Oh man, if only they could have seen the enormous shit-eating grin that I had on my face when I posted it.
PS: The healers didn’t get the Ulduar strategy nerfed, and it’s pretty dumb to pin that on us. We were talking about a completely different issue – most didn’t even care that you could go into Ulduar. I don’t think I ever saw anyone asking for the Ulduar method to be shut down. We just wanted the imbalance in dungeons to be fixed. The healers said “we can’t get them in heroics, please change this” and the response was “go to Ulduar”. We weren’t the ones who brought it to Blizzard’s attention
Anyway – hooray for Blizzard listening to us and doing the right thing!

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Comments (13)

13 Comments »

Comment by Aurik — February 10, 2010 @ 8:20 PM
Whilst it’s nice to get them in instances when healing, I really wish they hadn’t ‘fixed’ the vehicle-getting ones. Whilst I wasn’t doing it in Ulduar, I was doing it with another vehicle quest and spent 10 minutes farming up some bangles to do my dailies with. This meant I didn’t have to spend a good long time grinding them – time I’d rather, at the moment, spend out in the garden.

Although it’s nice to come down on people selling them, it’d have been better if they just, you know, stopped them being able to be put on the AH…

A bit on both sides of this, though it really is nice to know I don’t have to AoE in instances when I’m supposed to be healing – not that that really ever worked for me anyway…
Aurik´s last blog ..A Little Problem With Gear in Wrath

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Comment by Brajana — February 10, 2010 @ 9:35 PM
I agree about stuff like that, it’s not an exploit, but it just feels a little dirty.

That’s exactly how I felt when the “zerg” method of Sarth 3D appeared. Yeah, you will get her down that way… but to me, a boss strategy where the intention is to leave everyone in the raid dead at the end is not a good strategy.
Brajana´s last blog ..WoW Word of the Week: ken

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Comment by Cassandri — February 10, 2010 @ 10:31 PM
Huh? What’s this about an Ulduar farming bug?

Perhaps I don’t believe in exploits because I rarely seem to hear about them in time anyway. LOL.
Cassandri´s last blog ..There’s No Such Thing as an Exploit

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Comment by Keeva — February 11, 2010 @ 12:10 AM

“Lovely Charms now stack to 40.

Any player who has a Lovely Charm Collector’s Kit in their bags now has a chance to receive a Lovely Charm when in a group or raid and a group member gets a killing blow as long as they are within a certain range of the kill.”

Hooray

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Comment by Cyren — February 11, 2010 @ 1:45 AM
Lovely charms still stacking in ten’s

Just had fun in ulduar wondering why I wasn’t getting any as well

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Comment by Anea — February 11, 2010 @ 6:40 AM
In the spirit of the past 20 pages, there really is only one response to this.

Don’t worry, you can still get charms by grinding mobs or doing your dailies!

*smiles*

Ahhhh…. I bet that felt SO good Anea´s last blog ..Advice to New Bloggers

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Pingback by Big Bear Butt Blogger » Of COURSE it was an exploit! — February 11, 2010 @ 10:51 AM
[...] me be clear, in reference to Keeva’s post; Yes, farming Lovely Charms in this way WAS an [...]

Comment by Karthos — February 11, 2010 @ 1:51 PM
Yes, I did indeed noticed some charms drop for me whilst I weas healing a couple of heroics. Saw very few, however, while killing the (HORRIBLY MIND-NUMBINGLY BORING) trash leading up to Lord Marrowgar last night… Think I mabe got 3 or 4.

I’ve a fairly easy way to grind charms anyway. I have a Warlock alt… using Affliction, I find a large group of mobs, and throw on 2 insta-cast DoTs. Many DoTs. Many Charms. Win.

By the way, Keeva… saw you last night outside ICC, dancing your butt off with your guildies /giggle

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Comment by Adeanna — February 12, 2010 @ 3:30 AM
this post is so full of win. it’s nice that blizzard listened to healers and did something to make our lives a littler easier. (although truthfully i just used my second spec and swiped and mangled for my charms :P)
and i had to LOL at the smug part. i think sometimes us healers *do* need to speak up more.

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Comment by tkc — February 12, 2010 @ 3:46 AM
Alas, my “Shoot ‘Em Up!” method got the nerf bat too.

No worries. My off spec is Bear/OT and those groups of fallen heroes can be soloed.

I also have a DK alt. I saw a rogue farming the Crown Chemical Co. in Crystal Song like they weren’t even there. And the respawn rate there is high. Like 5 seconds. The DK shouldn’t have too much trouble with that.

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Comment by Pugnaciouspriest — February 12, 2010 @ 4:03 PM
I did the ulduar thing shhhhhh. But only enough for me get finish up my acheivements I also spent 3 hours farming mobs too so I think I did my penance

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Pingback by That Was The Week That Was « Pew pew lazers! — February 13, 2010 @ 4:51 AM
[...] me old-fashioned if you must but I’m superstitious about stuff like that. Keeva over at Tree Bark Jacket seems to agree as does Kae at Dreambound and I’m not going to argue with the Resto Druid [...]

Comment by Chimy — February 18, 2010 @ 7:35 AM
Nice. If they would only go ahead and do that for the BOA trinkets so that when we’re healing a low level instance, we get the mana or hp we so richly deserve, that would be great.

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