Scenario 1:
Player A sees an unprotected node that is clear for gathering. 1/2way through gather it disappears ‘invalid target’. This happens over and over until Player A realizes that all of the unprotected nodes were likely cleared by someone else and gathered.
Scenario 2:
Player A sees a node that has to be cleared to get and pulls the mobs.
Player(s) B(CDE…) swoop in and gathers the node and flies off.
Player A finishes killing and the node disappears 1/2way through collection, ‘invalid target’.
Player A was shafted, but starts the process over down the road.
Scenario 3:
Player A sees a node that has to be cleared to get and pulls the mobs.
Player B sees the node, but stops to help clear the mobs.
Player(s) C(DEF…) swoops in and gathers the node and flies off.
Player A and B were shafted, but starts the process over down the road.
Eventually:
Players A, B, and everyone else has learned that if you clear or help anyone else you are a sucker that will not get the node. Your best bet is to swoop in on someone else.
Two things usually cause this. The first is switching phase or shards. The second is that you are behind someone to a group of people harvesting nodes and they are in the process of despawning but stil show up on your minimap/you can see them.
Not much you can do about the first. For the second reverses direction or waiting a thirty seconds should cause new nodes to spawn. Then you can come back in the same direction after a minute because a new batch of nodes will have started to spawn.
I’ve tried waiting for a couple mins, I’ve tried moving to a different place. The problem I’m seeing must be exasperated by increased number of gatherers as it seems to be norm no matter what your actions during popular play times.
I literally go 180 degrees from anyone gathering in front of me, most times that solves the problem.
What I do wish Blizzard would change, if harvest has started allow that player to finish the harvest. My guess is they have a time extension on successful harvest and don’t want to enable ongoing harvest to complete.
Perhaps you are in a lucky phase, no amount of changing direction has alleviated this. It is all folks either swooping in on you, or you doing the same, or else you fighting the mobs getting no node.
Yes, you can sometimes get lucky and see a node on its own or fight to clear and still get it. This is NOT the norm.
It’s not one person taking a node. Several people can tap a node. It despawns after so many people tap the node but no one person is stealing a node from you.
I don’t think anyone is stealing it. I think it is an anti-social design.
You are on a timer to get that node and quite often the added time of stopping to kill mobs will make it so that you do not get the node. It is designed in a way that you should not to waste any time in gathering the node, which means cooperation is counter to the process. Any other gatherer around you is competition. Any social interaction is counter to the goal.
Shackle Undead? Or fear them all into their friends?
Kidding aside, I know you are trying to be helpful. I was able to get to the point of not needing to dismount for gathering, so now I have even less incentive to be social. I just don’t care for unfriendly atmosphere these timers generate.
After a node is tapped the first time, it then disappears from the map after so many seconds, and nearby players have a small window to also use the node. Everyone with gathering professions in my guild has had frustrating experience channeling a node to completion, only to say you cannot loot because the node vanished midway. I think they should at least make it where you’d still able to loot the node as long as you started the channel before the node disappears and it wasn’t interrupted and ended prematurely.
I agree. Vanishing nodes is one of the most frustrating things out there.
As people have said, once a node is gathered for the first time, it effectively goes on a timer before in vanishes.
A big issue is if a node vanishes mid-gather, you end up taking the same amount of time as the person you’re effectively “behind”, meaning you don’t catch up and keep encountering vanishing nodes.
When this happens to me, I just start skipping a few nodes and that generally works out ok.
Long ago it used to be one gather per node, so this is much better than that, but yeah it doesn’t mean it’s not frustrating.
Folks that swoop in to take nodes that you’re fighting stuff for are equally frustrating and quite inconsiderate. Not much one can do about that other than pop CDs to end the fighting quickly (generally if you had to fight for it, the node hasn’t been touched yet). And set a good example by help others out.
It is very annoying when there’s a lot of gatherers early in the expansion or in new patches.
I had this other player twice run in and get nodes while I was fighting mobs. The nodes despawned. I got revenge when soon afterwards with three wolves on my case in he rushes. Night elf druid fade… and the mobs were all his. He was not happy.
I wish there was some mechanism that once you had done the initial tap it did not despawn for you. The despawning algorithm was initially designed to prevent multiboxers getting 5 lots of ore/herb from one spawn. I think it is better than that now but still awful… maybe a node with <15 seconds to despawn could have some visual so that it could be avoided.
How about this scenario? You’re gathering a dynamite node and someone comes along and overloads it, cancelling your mine. Kind of annoying. I do my overloads after I gather.
I’ve believed for years this is a netcode and/or phasing flaw.
What I think happens is that the server tells your client a node exists when you enter its ‘awareness’ radius, but doesn’t tell it when it vanishes (sometimes, not always). Your client only learns about it when you start to gather and it asks the server for the drop list, at which time you get to know it’s gone and so it fades away.
I used to think it was bot hacks running under the world’s surface but the timing of the node’s disappearance relative to when you began the gathering operation is far too consistent for that theory these days.
Like the OP, I too find myself getting shafted by clearing a node of mobs or helping someone else clear a node. Doesn’t matter what faction they are, I cannot stand it when I see someone getting jumped on by mobs. I help, and I know I will probably lose that node as a result.
The stealing of a node from someone who you can clearly see is fighting mobs to get to that node feels anti-social to me. I do love it when even just one person rushes in to get that mob or group of mobs down. As a thank you, if they are same faction as me I will put a buff on them if I can, and or throw some heals on them (I main healers).
Not a possibility for me on most of my chars, but it does show why nodes that are protected by mobs disappear on us so much when we attempt to clear. I surely hope that the gathering wasn’t designed around requiring a tank spec, a specific mount, and duping either the protecting mobs/other players.
Nothing against what Nuggets is doing, I think this is exactly the behavior that is most successful under the current design. It would be the exact behavior that professional farmers would use to compete with the average player.
