The Queue: Oh no, it’s Friday

Time has been very weird lately, and I just don’t seem to be able to keep up. Somehow it’s once again time to write the Queue, even though it feels like I only just wrote it yesterday. The day before, max. How am I supposed to keep up with all of these days, anyway?

But before I get lost in the intricacies of time, let’s answer some questions.

I had a lot of trouble with the Sylvanas fight because at 15 minutes long (give or take), it just strained my attention span. Particularly when the first two phases were just boring and had a lot of downtime. Phase 1 had a huge swath of time where you were running around dodging across a massive platform while Sylvanas threw things at you — which was very tedious as you couldn’t damage her and there was just nothing to do. And phase 2 is even worse, including a whole lot of time where you wait for Thrall or Jana to make a bridge for you to walk across, and then another bridge for you to walk across, then another. Sure, there are things to dodge and things to kill and occasionally you had a chance to hit Sylvanas herself, but most of the phase was just walking.

Once I had the first two phases down, they felt boring, simple, tedious. That meant I didn’t give it my full attention and that meant I made stupid mistakes and died, just because I couldn’t keep my attention span going from start to finish.

The Raszageth fight is a few minutes shorter than the Sylvanas fight, which I think makes it a lot more managable. (It’s still long, but not as long.) And at least for my particular focus problems, the fact that there’s always something going on, without large periods of downtime, helps me stay in the game. It’s a hectic fight, but I actually think it’s just around the right amount of complicated. There are a ton of mechanics to know, but they’re mechanics that repeat throughout the fight and throughout the raid. Each phase is a little different, but also a little the same, and no matter which phase you’re in you’re always learning how to deal with phase 3 because it’s so much like phase 1 and phase 2. I think that feels pretty good rather than getting to phase 3 and you have to learn an entirely new fight, which is what each phase of Sylvanas felt like.

I actually feel the biggest problem with Raszageth is that the fight has some really hard breakpoints. You spend a lot of time wiping without getting to the first intermission. Then you spend a lot of time wiping during the first intermission. Then you spend a lot of time wiping breaking that phase 2 shield… you see what I’m saying. Every phase and intermission is a very hard breakpoint, and it feels like you aren’t making any progress as you wipe at the same place over and over. but once you’re past each breakpoint, you wind up making fast progress until you hit the next breakpoint.

It’s really difficult to keep morale up and keep going when it looks like you’re not making any progress.

But as to whether people enjoy complex fights? Absolutely, there are people out there who do. But there are plenty of fights that take complexity too far. I feel like Raszageth is borderline in this regard.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but after patch 8.3 launched, a serious MacOS bug caused regular kernel panics for a significant number of Mac users. I could play solo… mostly… but group content was right out. This was when Ny’alotha came out, and every time my raid group pulled Wrathion I my computer would black screen kernel panic within 5 seconds, completely reliably. Out in the wider world it was more intermittent.

It showed up right after the patch and I, a naive fool, assumed that a bug this game-breaking wouldn’t last until the raid was released the week after the patch. And yet it was broken for two or three weeks.

In short, Blizzard doesn’t have a good recent track record on serious Mac bugs. I’m not having this problem myself, but I’m also running Ventura.

As to why no one’s posted about it… I notice that Mac bugs don’t get a lot of attention in the wider public eye. If you use a Mac you’re aware of them, but they don’t get covered with the same urgency you might see with similar Windows bugs. This — and the fact that these bugs make it live in the first place — is a downside to being the smaller part of the game’s player base, and it sucks.

I will say that there’s a reason we don’t usually cover bugs on Blizzard Watch: they’re often come and go so quickly that it’s just not worth the time. By the time I’ve gotten someone to write a post and someone else to edit and schedule it, the bug could already be gone.

Of course none of that actually helps you with the problem, and I’m sorry you have to put up with it. I was going nuts during 8.3 when I couldn’t do anything in game.

I feel like the process is excessively, stupidly complicated… but it’s actually pretty quick once you know how to do it (and also recruit a friend to help). It’s definitely quicker than endlessly killing things to get that one rare reagent.

But it’s also ridiculous. You have to get your soul inhaler and also some soul cages, then go fight elite elementals of the appropriate type and use the soul inhaler on them as they die. But while channeling the soul inhaler you can’t do anything else, so you either need to get it to the brink of death and have a DOT or pet push it over or you need to have a friend. I suggest having a friend who can finish off the kill while you channel — it makes the process a thousand times easier. (Ask me how I know!)

Of course, that’s only the start. You’ve now captured some kind of proto elemental soul in the soul cage, but you have to wait 15 minutes to see if it’s actually the elemental soul you want. You may be tempted to click the clickable item in your inventory after you’ve successfully used the soul inhaler, but you must resist the urge. While you’re waiting, the soul inhaler is on cooldown, so you can’t even go grab any more. You just have to wait it out.

Then, after that 15 minutes it may or may not be the soul you’re looking for and you need to try again. However, I helped someone in my guild get one last week and it took 20 minutes. When I needed two earlier in the expansion to craft some pants, it took an hour to get two of two different types. While the soul inhaler is annoying, this is wildly fast for farming up rare reagents, and makes all of those high-end pieces of crafting gear that need these souls pretty accessible. That’s definitely a good thing.

But go get yourself a buddy to steal souls with. Warlocks are great, both because they have DOTs and a lot of experience stealing souls, but any class makes for a good helper.

So phone a friend and go out there and vacuum up some souls.

And that’s all for today, friends. Take care and have a great weekend!