The Queue: This gnome is a great gnome

Welcome back to The Queue, our daily Q&A feature! Have a question for the Blizzard Watch staff? Leave it in the comments and we may choose it for tomorrow’s edition!

But before we get started on the Q&A today, I must say: I like this gnome in Lion’s Watch. She isn’t about gadgety tech-mabobs. She wants the bad guys dead. She deads the bad guys. She asks me to get the bad guys dead, and I also deadify them. A+ Gnome.

Will it hit the PTR? No idea! I’d assume that it will, if only briefly. As for the timeline, Ion Hazzikostas mentioned in the Wowhead Q&A he expects the patch will take weeks, not months. That could be two weeks, that could be six weeks — anything less than a plurality of months. If I had to take a guess, I’d say you can be somewhat casual about doing your Tanaan dailies. As long as you do it semi-regularly, you’ll be fine. And if you’re a few days away from flying when the patch goes in… hey, no sweat. You haven’t had flying this whole time. If it’s less stressful to take it easy, then don’t stress.

I was beat up about this at first, too. The whole thing struck me as way more of a bother than garrison missions. I’ve come to accept it, though — I look at it as more end-gamey now. It’s tough, it costs a lot, and there’s a lot more legwork involved. It’s for the people who’ve had their garrisons running like a well-oiled machine for months and have an enormous stockpile of garrison resources and the means to replenish them. I think there’s room for that kind of content. I don’t know whether I’d have chosen to go in that direction, but I understand what it is and I accept it. Given it’s set up that way, though — I admit, I might not go too deep into the system. It is demoralizing to the people who don’t have a lot of time to spend on it.

If all of the information is the same, it can’t hurt to ask Customer Service if they can make it happen. It seems like something they should be able to do, but obviously I don’t work in Customer Service — I don’t know for a fact that they can. Still, why not ask?

The droprate feels like it’s at a place where it feels streaky at times. I can do an hour of hardcore mining and get no Felblight, and then I’ll get four in a row. Or I’ll do that mining, get tired of it, and decide to go fishing — and get one felblight out of every Frenzy pool. Or get no Felblight from the pools, go back to mining, get a couple, and see no more for the rest of the day. The Felblight drop chance isn’t high, but it isn’t abysmal either. You get streaks.

Oh, I remember. I remember how badly we got flamed for it! Oh, you guys are making a mountain out of a molehill! Just clickbait! It’s obviously just a texture for Orgrimmar! Oh, ye of little faith.

I still have the Salvage Yard. They nerfed it, yes, but it remains one of the few small buildings with gameplay and/or rewards attached. If most players have one primary profession, that’s one out of three small buildings. Your options after that are the Salvage Yard, the Storehouse, and I guess the Jewelcrafting hut for the daily quest. For me, the Salvage Yard is the obvious choice even after the nerf. The Salvage Yard gives value to what is otherwise valueless: XP missions when your followers are all capped. That’s always been the beauty of the Salvage Yard — it masked the fact that most of the level 100 missions are worthless. With the Salvage Yard, they’re not. They’re still not useless, even if you get less salvage. It gives your followers something to do and you get something out of it.

Personally, while I have a Storehouse on a couple of alts, I don’t see the value in it. The level 3 garrison has a portal to Ashran (which has the bank, the auction house, transmog, void storage, and so on) and you can use your garrison hearthstone to pop back again. The Salvage Yard and the Jewelcrafting building will make the most out of your space (and resources).

Blizzard’s goal was the ensure the Salvage Yard wasn’t the One True Choice for small buildings. From where I stand, it still is. Most of the other small buildings are useless and the Salvage Yard adds value to garrison aspects that are otherwise valueless. Nerfing the Salvage Yard wasn’t the answer; they should be figuring out how to make the other buildings useful at all.