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Well, this is my third installment in re-learning WoW after not having played it for a LONG time.  A RL friend and I want to see as much of the game content as possible without having to play a warlock or hunter.  Any suggestions on the best duo pairing for instances, leveling, etc?

Thanks.

Most classes have some synergy with each other. Druid+Rogue or ShadowPriest+Rogue are probably the best combos. Massive duo damage plus one of you has a bit of healing for the bosses and elites. Evasion tanking for when you're in trouble. Different armor/weapon classes so you don't fight over loot.

Maybe shaman would be good too, I was alliance pre-bc so I haven't duo'd with a shaman ever.

One could also play a pally, but honestly his damage isn't high enough to make an effective duo class. He works better in larger groups.

If you're going to go melee + other,  I've always found that other is best as a druid or shaman.  Healing + dps + utility.  A shadow priest isn't bad either. 

Funny though, most of my duo time has been shaman + shaman.  Both when I first started playing and then when I came back for BC and switched servers.   

Shadow Priest and Druid.  Gives  great DPS, Healing, Tanking depending on what you need at the time.  The added healing/mana regen while the SP does DPS makes for very little down time.  Most versatile yet effective duo I think.

Another less optimum is Rogue and Druid.  Great DPS, but less for healing/tanking.  However, awesome for stealth runs, which can make finishing quests a snap.

I second the druid + rogue.  The druid is a versatile class, and if you want to "see as much of the content as possible", and that includes a little bit of the end-game raiding, maybe a little Kara, maybe Zul'Aman, I've found that druids are accepted in guilds either for healing or for tanking, and you won't have any trouble levelling him up (even solo) in cat dps form.  The rogue, of course, is fun, easy to level up, and can offer solid DPS and some CC to a raiding group/guild.  Both of you can stealth past stuff and get certain quests done a lot easier than otherwise, and in general it's a good team-up.  Heck, even RP, street urchin + wilderness sage = kickass one-liners.

my mains are a 70 druid, and a 70 rogue, my 2v2 is druid/rogue and/or rogue/rogue

played hunter, priests etc.

I can't say enough about the druid rogue combo especially given the love that druids have received and will be receiving.  If pvp factors in at all to your gaming delight, then again it is a great combo.   when you get up in the levels assuming you have a bunch of mage water, that duo will have next to  nothing in down time.

When you get up in lvls and are running BC 5 mans you have a great start of a group:  heals and dps/cc or tank and dps/cc ... though there is boomkin which imo is sweet IF you have the gear to back it up.  a lot of the boomkins running around simply don't have the gear to back the spec up.

the downside is early on you will be competing for armor i suppose

But not for weapons, which matter more to the rogue than armor, esp. with pocket druid buffs and heals.

Do you have a preferred play style?


While not flashy, Warrior+Paladin is the solid staple for duo teams. You'll be able to tackle anything PvE wise, You'll have the two most important parts of any 5 man in your control and you can eventually form a 2v2 arena team and be successful with minimal hassle.

I've found warrior-druid to be very amusing and easy. You can tank while druid does dps, then druid flips over after fights to heal you, then back to the action.

Really, any class combination where 1 person can 'tank' and the other can dps and/or heal will work.


That's why things like Druids, Shamans and Paladins make great duo partners for everyone else.


In the case of druids, you can just go Druid/Druid really, no reason why you couldn't.

By as much content as possible I assume you mean instances. You can't go wrong if one of you plays a healer and the other a tank. Takes all the hasse (other than just general moron hassles) out of making a group when you don't have to look for a healer or a tank and you know that neither of them suck. Add 3 dps and you can do almost anything in the game. Even 2 pallys, one spec'd holy the other protection, would be fun. Two druids, the traditional warrior/priest or any variation on that works too. Shaman kick ass as instance healers as well.

A Resto shaman is probably the best 5 man healer in game as things stand currently. EarthShield is a HoT that doesn't over heal or run out and ChainHeal is just cheating  :-) Then you have totems that can cover any group make up, plus things like poison cleaning totem make some boss fights complete jokes. Shit, even healing stream is pretty cool with 1k+ healing power.


Windfury + Warrior =  :heart: (any melee class that isn't a druid will spooge over windfury really)

For levelling, just a few days ago in Outland I (protection spec Paladin) was grouping with a Restoration Shaman, and it was so insanely effective that it seemed broken.  He was only level 57, so he didn't throw too many spells, but he did drop windflurry and mana tide totems, which combined with my own Reckoning talent and seals, judgements, and blessings of wisdom, meant I literally couldn't spend mana faster than I could regen it, unless we were fighting demons (when I got to spam Holy Wrath and Exorcism).  He just ran around pulling mobs back to within range of my Consecration, threw a heal or two if I was too busy to do it myself, and we were killing three, four, five mobs at a time for something like a solid hour.  It was pretty crazy.

As for which two classes duo well together, I'd say that Wizards are a handy partner class, since they can summon food and water for their buddy (as well as nice crowd control and DPS).  In my experience, if you're just duoing in the normal world (i.e. not instances), you're not going to be throwing tons of heals around (since the non-group content can generally be beaten solo by the tank anyway), but food and drink will still be handy.

Also, I did have a lot of fun duoing two Rogues.  We'd stand on opposite sides of the mob and one of us would backstab until the mob turned to face the guy doing the backstabbing, and then the other guy would start backstabbing him.  Shredded normal mobs.  Elites kicked our asses, though (and we'd have been fighting over the same loot, too).  Plus, since we were both stealth, we could do some neat things like stealth through an entire fortress, kill the last guy, and then stealth back out, which you can't do if you're duoing with a non-stealth class.

Warlock\Mage is good fun for pure mage DPS and the built-in tanking abilities of the voidwalker, free healthstones, etc.  Having a friend to portal you around eventually is nice too.

Mage\Priest is great for fast leveling as the mage can DPS the hades out of monsters with AOE and have the priest keep them alive.

I would personally not suggest 2 of the same class due to arguments over gear, lack of variety, and potential problems if something one of you can't handle comes along and frustrates you.

Two of the same class is fine as long as you use one of the hybrids to pair up.


A Feral Druid and a Balance druid could not be further apart from each other gear wise even if they tried for example.

If you just want to level up any two will work since you can do it solo easily enough.

If you want to instance as you level a tank/healer combo would provide the two hard to find members of a 5 person instance run. Just grab 3 DPS and you're off the newbie instances.

If you want to 2v2 arena at 70 (nice toys for non raiders) you have to be careful about pairings. Go to the armory and browse the high ranked 2v2  teams to see the combos/builds that work.

Warrior+Healer is the best duo you can possibly make if you want to do everything. Leveling up doesn't matter so much, any 2 random classes are fine. For instancing you want a tank and a healer. For 2v2 with a healer you want to base your team around rogue, warlock, or warrior for the best chance of success and only one of those can tank. So warrior+healer is where it's at.

Who you choose for the healer depends on what you want to do most. I'd recommend NOT going for priest if you intend to 2v2 PVP at all as priest+warrior is by far the weakest warrior+healer combo and it's very frustrating to auto-lose to every other warrior+healer and to lack the auto-win against rogue+healer teams that other warrior combos enjoy. If you lean more towards instancing any non-druid would be better due to the cooldown-less resurrect. If 2v2 is your thing druid is the best. If 5v5 is what you want to do then I'd say Paladin is the best healer for warrior based teams. For BGs any healer is fine. So either warrior+druid or warrior+paladin gets my vote.

Unless this is something you have your heart set on doing, I'd avoid this, because by the time you get to 70, it's quite likely the expansion will be out, and everything in arena will be different.

So how do you suggest they pick an arena pair then? Wait till the expansion comes out and the current teams hit 80, then wait a month or two longer for the high scoring pairs to get sorted out in the rankings, and then finally start playing WoW?

Some new god duo might form, but I doubt any of the combinations that currently work well will suddenly go to hell at 80.

That's if you plan on playing significantly less than half an hour a day on average for the next year. Note the year on the expansion 'due date' - its not this November, its 2008. Plus Blizzard, so no chance it will happen without at least one delay.

If you want to 2v2 and not put up with bullshit, i would point out that in no iteration of this game has warrior/paladin been weak.  Think about all patches since release...  Other then the first month when warriors weren't getting rage off parrys and some other wierd stuff that left them starved alot of time, one thing people always dreaded (on horde) was the warrior/paladin.

In todays current arena meta it might not be the most optimal (warrior/druid as has already been pointed out) but you can be fairly certain that no amount of "tweaking" on blizzards part will make your duo "bad".  Warrior/Paladin teams played by competent people are pretty much garanteed to have access to season 3 weapons for example.

Additionally, one of the greatest things about the paladin as a healer is their pvp spec is exactly the same as their pve spec.  You don't even need to move 1 fucking talent point.  As a warrior, the upcomming talent changes that are more clearly defining the fury vs arms tree, leaves more points available in prot for a pvp spec warrior.  I know several warriors who think forsaking fury in 2.3 and going for improved disarm and concussion blow is were its at.  That means you will have defiance by default (+threat) since you will need it to get deeper in the tree, which means even spec'd for pvp you willl be a serviceable tank for heroics (assuming you collect the gear for it).

This being a "fun" combo or not however is entirely contingent on wether the height of gaming fun in one or both of you opinions is seeing the flash of huge red numbers over a targets head.  If this is the case, and it is the case for a great many people, i would humbly suggest rogue/mage as a rock-solid double-dps duo.  This pairing is loaded with crowd control, enough to exhaust both opponents trinkets, the slowing effect of your frostbolts combined with the rogues crippling/wounding poison means its hard for people to run away, the mage can spellsteal the blessing of sacrifice off the warrior after the rogue saps the paladin (forcing trinket or bubble usage early), the ability of the mage to counterspell a distant healer's holy/nature treat is house, the synergy between a rogue's stuns and a mage's slow-casting high-damage frostbolt is also obvious.

If you are going to play a double-dps pair, i would highly recommend playing alliance.  We have many times the healer and significantly higher tanking population then does horde.  If you level a double dps pair as horde, you will (no exageration, no hyperbole) be in an endless sea of dps looking for a tank/healer.  I have 4 characters horde side above level 60, and i play none of them for this reason (i am loathe to play a shaman as resto spec, as i see their class design as much better suited to dps groups).

Thanks for all of the input.  It turns out that my friend wants to play a mage or a shaman.  I'm thinking that a shadow priest or warrior may be my best choice (priest with the mage and warrior with the shaman).  He's also considering playing a warlock now, so I'm at a loss to decide what might work best with that.  I think this is mostly for pve as he's not a pvp person.  The goal is to see how soon we can do some of the 5 man instances with a solid duo.  I've been leveling a rogue so that I can pvp solo as much as I can.

Warlock/Rogue worked out pretty well with my partner on Alliance. Being able to vanish, fear and ultimately ditch your tank works quite well. We kept First Aid and Cooking maxed (for stat foods) and I (rogue) took up Herbs/Alchemy while he took up Tailor/'Chanting (bags and breaking down greens.)

We'd never done instances duo tho - we'd always bring along some others.

Regular PvE is no problem.  We seem to struggle only when we get larger pulls or pulls with multiple elite mobs.  The rogue/mage worked ok at first.  I'd sap one target and he'd sheep another then we'd work down the third.  Then re-sheep the second etc.  The problem arose when we'd get to the instance bosses.  They do so much damage so fast that it seemed that our rogue/mage pair just had no way to tank after 15s when evade went down.  I'm hoping that something like warrior/shaman will be better and was kind of considering whether a paladin would be better with a shaman.  Any thoughts?

So, if he plays a shaman, should I play a warrior, paladin, or shadow priest?   Is there something I should consider?


FWIW the rogue is by far my favorite character to play and I'm looking forward to doing as much pvp as I can with it at the endgame.  I just have to convince my friend to give pvp more of a try... that or I may consider re-rolling on a pvp server for something to do when I'm not helping my friend out.

I'm pretty sure you won't be able to duo any instances your level.  If you are very interested in instancing (it's really not necessary to set foot in an instance in order to get to 70), then I suggest you make a tank/healer combination so that all you need to ask for is dps or maybe a cc'er and dps.

But really, you should both play what you enjoy.  The class strengths and weaknesses are different at different levels.  What seems OP at 30 isn't at 60.  Plus, it being an MMO, things change all the time, as you know.

We're not really wanting to do it "at out level" so much as before it gets too low green.  We've enjoyed playing the mage/rogue duo as we have a ton of CC to handle larger groups but find that we're really lacking a tank when it comes to the bosses.  Maybe we just need to experiment with the lower level instances with a few level 25 or so toons and see what synergy seems to do the best.  Again, we're interested in a duo suited primarily to do instances/instance quests as a) my friend will never pvp with me and b) the surface pve is so stupid easy that any two classes can do just fine.  I am leveling a shadow priest and a warrior right now and my friend will have a druid and shaman soon.   

Again, thanks to all of you for your suggestions. 

Any 2 hybrid class combo will give you a lot of options.

Especially with the changes they are making tomorrow, levelling should be a lot less of a "find the perfect combo" than it is now. And now it really works well to have any two classes that won't really compete for gear.

Hunter + healer was horribly OP when I levelled my first hunter way back in the pre-anything but Marks sucking days. I did levels 25-60 basically duoing 75% of stuff with a shadow priest. When we went after elites he healed the pet out of shadowform, when we were grinding kills, it was just a DPS festival.

Right now, BM hunters are retardedly OP levelling, esp above level 40. A BM hunter can solo the vast majority of the 2-3 man recommended group quests in outlands (which are harder than the old group quests in the old world) no problem. You add in a class that can heal/buff to that makeup, and you are going to town. Hunter+shaman would be pretty OP I would think, but any class that either has a pet to tank, or a pretty good tanking ability of it's own (pally/druid would be my first recommendations over a warrior as warriors are totally gear dependant even at the mid levels) you will plow through stuff. The only thing I would recommend outside of the getting a good comp like that is that you find a third person who want to level with you guys, as you get back about half the XP lost from grouping when you have 3+ members in the party. There is a 50% reduction in kill XP when there are only 2 members in the group.

Oh and the biggest advice I have:

AVOID ULDAMAN!


Worst instance in the game, even Blackfathom Deeps or Lower Blackrock Spire are more enjoyable, and those places are about as fun as having your brains eaten by Hannibal Lecter with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

 :eat:

1. I don't really care about xp (if you can believe it).  I'm mostly wanting to enjoy as much of the content as I can without having to rely on too many other people.  I tend to play very odd hours as does my friend (we're both academics), so I'd rather focus on things that I can do solo or duo.

2. I've been pondering between a warrior and a paladin for days.  I figure that I have my rogue to farm cash to keep the warrior geared and that should I ever breakdown and join a guild, that the warrior may be more useful.  I could be wrong on the second point.  I've been leveling the priest for the same reason.  The game is giving me some fun for now and I like having the option to try a few different things.  If I stay with it for the long haul, leveling something for a guild won't be a problem if I can find people that play the crazy hours that I do.  One of these days I'm going to learn how to sleep.  

I've been doing Uldaman solo on my rogue, but I can't imagine going in that place with a visible group.  I've only been doing it because I'm trying to get my Ironforge faction to Exhalted (I'm a gnome and hate my robo-chicken).  I think I completed like 4 of the quests solo while they were still green to me.  The only trouble I've had is that the boss in the map room and at the end are too much for me still at level 48.  Level 40 instance bosses are just too much at 46-48 solo.    I've come very close to beating them, but it's so dependent on the RNG that I can get one to 10% one fight and to 80% on another.  I figured I was just a noob and screwing something up or that my gear was limiting my ability to kill things.  I think I've only seen one usable blue drop in the first 50 levels playing. 

Warrior. And you will have to make clear to him that if he want's an easy time making competent instance groups he'll have to go a bit towards resto no matter how much he loves fucking shit up or blowing it up.

If your going to stick to PvE, A Protection Paladin + Resto Shaman  means you laughing all the way.

Read the Lack of Tanks thread.  There's a lot of good information in there.  I don't know if it will help you or confuse you further, but more info is better.

I was under the impression he wasn't trying to pick an arena pair as the primary thing so much as just a duo pair to play the whole game - leveling up and everything.

If he wanted primarily to arena, that's different, but that wasn't what I thought he was asking.

Unfortunately, part of "content" when it comes to instances is the feel they have when you go there at the appropriate level; I mean you could go to Deadmines at level 60 but then you're just looking at the scenery.  And the problem with level-appropriate is two-fold:

1.  The con system (green, yellow, orange mobs) isn't quite accurate in instances, or the instance starts as grey mobs but ends up with a deep red boss.  Supposedly they fixed the level ranges now so they're tighter.

2.  Instances are designed for 5 people in ways that can't be beaten by being slightly higher level:  groups of 5 elite linked trash mobs, for example.  Runners.  The pathing and frequency of patrols.  The abilities and damage output of bosses, some of which are scripted to require 2 tanks or specific crowd control or actions.

It kinda sucks, but you'll probably have to invite an additional 3 people to instances, if you want to visit them when their content is level-appropriate.  And that's why you see all the suggestions for making a tank/healer combo so that you only have to invite DPS, which are easy to find.

If you have absolutely odd hours, server choice might be the top factor.  Some servers have late-night or off-hours guilds or teams of people, too.

Just a FYI, Nebu, I don't know how far you'll get duoing instances.  Granted, with a non optimal trio of shaman/shaman/mage we were able to do most of Zul'Farrak in Tanaris, but Uldaman was mostly too swarmy.   More succinctly, you'll run dry around level 40-50.

Ahh, or yah, from reading an earlier post of yours in this thread: you'll just have to massively outlevel everything. Which means the drops you do end up getting are worthless when you get them.  Outland will exacerbate this.

So basically, it's what I suspected all along.  That solo/duo groups are considered second class citizens and aren't allowed access to a large portion of the endgame even though they've paid for it.  I guess it's my own fault for not hopping on the WoW train at release.  DAoC was similar in that if you didn't have a dedicated group of 8, most of the game was just blah... but at least you could find a nice solo sub-game nestled underneath. 

So my choices are to find a guild and play the game as it has been dictated or just do what I can solo and be happy with the fact that there will be a large number of things that I won't be able to experience.  Meh.

Sorry, but if I never heard about this point about MMOGs again, it would be too soon. It just always sounds whiney no matter how you say it.

Yes... because you never vent about things that piss you off.  Thanks for the input. 

You can actually see it without paying for it.  There are videos and pictures and screenshots and whatnot scattered all over the internet. 

Yes, I know it's a reductio ad absurdum argument, but think of what you are asking.  Access to all the game's content solo or with two people?  Surely you realize that isn't what an MMOG is about.  There are single player and duo/coop games out there, but this isn't one of them.  You're asking an apple to turn into an orange.

Heh, one of the main reasons I quit this time around.  I had a duo partner for a while, but we ran out of stuff to do, and he got bored and disappeared for a long time  :| (only knew him in game).   There's a decent amount of stuff to do solo at any level and more at 70, but the difference in shinies and content available to people without my restrictions just really started to grate on me.  Once I got completely bored with my lazer turkey, I was just done in a flash.  Didn't even bother to say goodbye to my guild.  :uhrr:



I'd wager you're too involved with the status quo to have any sort of objective look at this.  When I was doing bleeding edge raiding I somewhat snickered at the plight of folks trying to enjoy the game at the sub raid level.  Similarly, folks that have no problem getting 5-10 people together at any time, tend to baffle at the struggles of the person that has to rely on PUGs or extremely sub-optimal grouping conditions.

Although Blizzard considers their solo friendly exp climb just "accessibility" and a gateway to the end game (raiding), for some (like me currently) it's the most attractive aspect of the game.  There's no reason they can't apply "accessibility" to the rest of the game instead of just sprinkling it on the carrot, outside of pure stubbornness and/or resource limitations.

The game is what it is (my favorite saying that means nothing). I ran out of fun stuff "for me" with a still large portion of the game unexperienced.

My 'toon sees more content then I do, since I'm lucky to be in a guild of RL friends who have no problem logging me in and running me through instances. For example, I logged on Monday AM to see that my 26 rogue had been run through a couple instances and quests so that he had a a full level and a half of xp, two new blue weapons, and all new enchants. Turns out a husband/wife combo wanted to do some low level BG and decided to twink out my rogue a bit so I could join them.

Gotta love that.

Thank you for saying what I could not.  I just need to learn to be "ok" with what I can do and then move on to something else.  I apologize for ranting... I realize that there's really no point in it beyond just venting. 

I can't speak to how involved Paelos is with the status quo, but I'm not, and I agree with him. There was a time when I had enough time to raid, and though it wasn't bleeding edge, it was fun and it took a lot of time and people and all that.

Since then I have never had time to raid, but never ran out of things to do either.  I've been playing for the better part of three years, and still have only had 3 max-level (for their time) characters, still have never had a high level enchanter, tailor, engineer, blacksmith, leatherworker or jewelcrafter, never been to the majority of the BC dungeons, never done a daily quest, never done a heroic, don't have an epic flyer, never maxed fishing... the list goes on.

I think the problem is sort of self-fixing to some extent. If you have enough time, there are definite time sinks.  If you're casual, you will never run out of casual things to do.  Now if you don't like (or get tired of) most of the casual or other things to do, that's a whole different problem.

Regardless of my whining, I do appreciate the input from everyone here.  It seems that my choices are to just do what encounters I can or wade through a sea of pugs to find 3 additional people to group with.  Either way, I have been enjoying the content that I missed in beta as well as the newer stuff.  Even if I only last another month , it has been a fun experience. 

There are plenty of things to do without ever instancing at all.   There's plenty to do without raiding at all.

It's annoying though, for someone who can't raid, that Blizzard has focused so much of the game on raiding, and that raiding is necessary to get the great equipment.  I very much like the recent moves toward reputation as a means toward epics (Ogri'la et al.).

I'm a hardcore casual.  I put plenty of hours in the game, but I can't put the hours in when people raid, and I often can't instance because I can't play uninterrupted for 3 or 4 hours at a time.

I can get welfare epics (aka arena loot) and battleground epics, but I likely won't see high level raiding instances.  I'd like to but the days of old guild MCs and BWLs are over.  (It's interesting to me how some predicted just this turn of events - I didn't think it would happen.)

If this sounds whiny, then you're an elitist jerk.

Not sure what you mean by, "... the days of old guild MCs and BWLs are over."

You seem to be of a similar vein to myself regarding this game.  The BC experience will be worth it to you, although it may end up making you feel a bit sad at what the game could be if it chose to.  :|  There's a lot of fun solo/duo stuff in Outland zones, and you can find ample ways to challenge yourself on the way to 70.  I think you'd really enjoy the entire Nagrand zone.

You are wrong. I am a casual soloer and I'm hijacking the MMOG acronym. If you don't like it, go play Vanguard.

Eh.  On this last run of WoW, 4 months, I spent 2 months levelling a toon to 70, Horde-side (which was new to me), to join a friend.  Lots of solo quests, some of which were fun.  Small PUGs here and there to complete some of the elite quests.  Then I spent about a month getting faction and unlocking keys, which was mostly solo-grinding for cash to buy faction items (600 sunfury signets) or random PUGs for non-heroic instances, and more quests.  Then I spent a month raiding; saw Karazhan the first time, the other 3 were kinda boring, same with Gruul's.  Voidreaver, clearing to him was tougher than the actual boss fight.  Lurker Below, meh.  At'al, we attempted and didn't get him.

Then guild drama happened, friend disbanded, so did I.  Don't feel like logging on; one raid dungeon is the same as any other, you read the strat, you try to follow, you finally figure it out, and it's just choreography.  Meh.  I don't really care to see SSC or BT or whatever; what's gonna be different?  The textures and animations, pretty much it.  We did an ad-hoc run through Zul'Aman on the test server; first try we got the first boss, cleared past the hut with the repair guy, attempted that cat boss a couple times.  Don't really feel like going back there.

Anyway, I think that my point is, this content that you think you're missing, the end-game raid zones, it takes like 8 hours to see each tier, and then you have to repeatedly grind it for a month or more before you can go to the next tier.  8 hours is not "a large number of things".  It's a small number of things that you're just forced to do over and over and over for a large amount of time.

It's not a large portion of the game.

Unfortunately, you've already seen the large portion of the game that is the rest of the game, so...

2 months to 70?  Wow.  My best has been about 1.5-2 months to 60.  First time it took me a year to 60, then 6 months to 60, then 3 months to 60, another month or two to 70.

Well, as far as me being deep in the status quo, I run one raid a week now on one day a week, and that's SSC. I wouldn't say I'm bleeding edge anymore now that I'm going to school again full time, but at the same time I can still do what I like in the game in a shorter time frame. Why? Because at some point I realized that this is a purely social game, and if you don't play it like that, you'll never get anywhere.

Networking, people. I know a lot of you hate it, but it's about meeting people, making new friends, and forming alliances. Hell, most of life is about getting to know people so it improves your experiences. This game is no different in that respect. I worked my ass off to get a raiding alliance off the ground by leading raids, but I could have just quit and walked away. The reality is that over time that leading became fun for me and stopped being work, and it's what I enjoy.

Some people don't want to play the game by expanding their social group and would rather just stick with 1-2 people they like. That's perfectly fine up to a point. If you want to play that way but still want to get the rewards, I'm here to tell you right now that your goals are totally in conflict with the design and unrealistic in this gaming format. If you want to goof around and don't give a shit about upper tier rewards, you wouldn't be in this thread.

Elitist Jerk.  :-D

(They nuked the "just kiddin'" smiley. Bastards.  :cry:)

Yeah, 2 months, I was in a hurry cause she was already at 70 and in a raiding guild, so I hauled ass.  Only the most time-effective quests, done in an efficient order, no tradeskills, no instances, upgrades every 5 levels from the AH (I started with like 300g which I managed to slowly spend then I made back once I was 70).

RE: it being a social game, yes it is.  Every time I had fun in WoW was cause I was in a good guild.  Every time I didn't even feel like logging in, like now, was cause I wasn't, and the prospects of finding another good guild were bleak or required too much work.  Good guilds don't last forever, either; typically 6 months, which is just about the stretch that I end up playing for.  WoW seems to be "take a month or two to make some friends, enjoy a month or two with them, then everybody disappears and takes a break" replayed over and over.  Expansion packs, class revamp patches, arena seasons, all those are just excuses one can use to break the ice and make "finding friends" easier, IMO.  I imagine that putting 3000 people in a bland chatroom and letting THEM come up with things to talk about and get together for would be a massive failure.

I do not and never will care about having the best gear in the game.  That's my point.  While drops are nice, I don't play the game for the shiny.  I play it for the content.  This may be hard for you to understand, but I don't really go for the diminishing returns that the arms race brings.  I guess this is a good reason why the diablo games never appealed to me.  I'm just not all that interested in loot tables and usually give most of my drops away to friends as I get more satisfaction from making others have more fun.

If we were to consider loot, it seems like it would be stupidly easy to make instances scale (both in mob difficulty and in loot table) for the type of people wishing to adventure through them.  They obviously have done this to accomodate 5 people.  They could easily do it for 1 or 2.  If you've ever played CoH, you'd know what I'm talking about.  Hell, I think EQ 2 and D&D online had these features to a degree as well. 



 

I play for content as well. Loot is a side issue for me that I just need to get to the next content level. Ask anybody I play with how I roll on items and they'll tell you why I feel that way about it, because I'm usually dead last.  :-P

Still, scaling for 1 or 2? Come on. If you can't even get 5 people together to enjoy something, why the hell are you playing this game? That's the bare base minimum to enjoy most of the content that was released. Sure you can solo around, but designing a bunch of solo or duo content in a game that's Massively Multiplayer doesn't make any sense to me at all. I mean at that point, I go buy the newest Elder Scrolls game and just play it over and over with new character plans.

It's not "designing solo/duo content", it's allowing instanced encounters to be scalable.  That way the leet kiddies get to beat their chest and proclaim that they play on "hard mode" while the rest of us that play in smaller chunks can still enjoy the content.  What is it about this concept that bothers you so much?  It removes some of the barriers to play for those of use with demanding careers.  I'd say that's a good thing for Blizzard as the part time players offer more net income.   I just don't always have the freedom to accomodate the schedules of 4 other people yet would still like to pick and choose the content to enjoy.

Now the Elder scrolls comment is even more cliche than my complaint.  "Play a single player game" is a pretty pathetic attempt at a discussion on your part.  There are significant differences in the gaming environment between an MMO and a single player RPG and you know it.

5-man is minimum just because that's the way they designed the game. 

COH instances are actually questing areas designed for solo play; short scenarios that you can tackle in a building, alone, instead of out and about where other players are.  The fact that the number of monsters scales up if you bring more people was an afterthought, a feature that was patched onto the system.

WoW instances were from the start supposed to be epic places that you conquer, not quest in, and only to be done as a group.  And their group size is 5, and that's that.  They'd have to design dungeons for solo play before they can implement code where if you bring 2 people in, the number of monsters doubles too.

And by the way, it's always easy to double the number of monsters.  But to shrink something designed for 5 down to designed for 2...  some things like cutting the HP of everything in half might work, while other things, like reducing a pack of 6 mobs to just 2, would cut away too much CC or special boss abilities to really maintain the feel of the instance.

Besides, as much as everyone bemoans the presence of trash before the bosses, would MC have been the same if you could enter solo and then inside the instance only see like 4 hounds, 3 elemental giants, 5 fire elementals, and only 3 bosses instead of all of them, and the rest of that huge cave being empty space like most of the COH missions are?

Ability is not the issue here.

I like scaling the content, and I would prefer that all instances work that way. The concept of scaling down to one man though? You just took a community game and made it lazy. I don't think the person that can't get 4 other people to play with in a multiplayer game (be it through timing issues, playstyle issues, or various other points) should be playing this game. I don't want to give people that option because challenges enforce grouping and grouping makes the game fun. If you make it solo a lot of people will get lazy, just use that scaling as an excuse not to group with the community, and dick around by themselves.

Should people be able to see all the content in a solo form? That's my issue. I don't think you should. It trivializes the game and the goals. I don't think the game should be totally assessible at all levels by all people without any kind of grouping or progression because it destroys the foundation the game was built on. On the flip side I don't think you should make content for 1% of your population either. This game was based on leveling RPG with a polished casual beginning and a loot achiever endgame, and it caters to that crowd at the high end while also allowing people to achieve similar epic goals through other pursuits like pvp and heroics. However, at all facets grouping is important. Solo scaling doesn't help that.

Beyone fun, what are the goals of the game?  Does my wanting to have fun solo/duo trivialize that?  I guess we just look at gaming differently. 

Definitely, when Paelos says things like:  I don't want to give people that option because challenges enforce grouping and grouping makes the game fun. you have to know you're on completely different pages.

For me, forced group does NOT make the game fun. I enjoy running around WoW with my RL friends that play, and our small guild of people will do everything for 3 person runs for solo quests, to running the smaller instances as a group. When we do that, it's not about being forced to group, it's about deciding we want to run around and bullshit with each other while we collect crap. Being forced to group is a pain in the ass.

My bigger complaint is that I'll never see the higher end instances because I'll never be able to put in the time to see them. ;)

Did you really type that? Five is not "massively multiplayer" any more than two is. Ironforge and Orgrimmar are massively multiplayer content (woot), a five man instance is not. People enjoy instancing in small groups in a game world where there is a shared community, hence the success of these instance based grouping games. Games such as WoW would more reasonably be called shared community games, but we're stuck with the term massively multiplayer, even though they fall far short of expectations on that count. There is no reason why Nebu shouldn't want a shared community game to support regular play between two or three people, and I think you've just been caught trying to justify the status quo using specious logic simply because its currently the game that you want to be playing.

Two feral druids:

pros:
- Both parties are able to do good dps.
- Both parties can heal
- Both parties can stealth around
- Both parties can tank
- If one of you die somewhere lame the other can rez them.

Cons
- You both want the exact same gear.

I'm not going to debate symantics of "massively multiplayer" because that's a dead end. Five is the minimum. I consider that a game-breaker check honestly. If you can't pull off four people who want to play with you in a game the size of WoW, you have an issue that will keep you from doing most of the stuff in this game. That was my point about the number. This isn't the game for you in it's design, so move along. They aren't going to suddenly change or patch to something you will enjoy at all. Quit now and save the headache.

You may not like forced grouping. I would say in an achieving-based loot machine like WoW, you're up shit creek on that one. I honestly can't wrap my mind around why people would want to avoid each other all the live long day only to exist in a world where you can occasionally pull your head out a hole to chat with other people or partake in evolving markets. Some of you apparently want this. Ok, push for it in the next game, or find the game you want that has this goal. I'll be sure to avoid this game when I see it up front because it would probably bore me. In the meantime, there are a lot of people out there in the WoW world that like groups, like myself, and I don't want that aspect diminished by making everything solo.

I can remember in the times before I raided in this game I thought the same way and didn't like grouping. However, the forced aspect got me involved and showed me something that I really enjoy. I would have never participated in large group events were it not for the dynamics that required it, and I'm happier in the game for that fact with a much larger social network of friends. Succeeding as a group is so much more enjoyable to me than simply soloing content and beating bosses. It's retained me as a user in this game far longer than I would have if I just plodded along by myself. In this, Blizzard has won me over as a user of their service.

So you are right in one sense that I like the status quo, and you don't. However, what you don't like about the status quo is an absolute fundamental shift in game dynamics. You may argue that it isn't because it's simply offering someone something and I'm cockblocking them, yadda yadda yadda, elitist dick, etc. However, what you're suggesting is to take a game built on the high-end of large group coordination, and scale it so that you can also solo-duo content like Illidan? Seriously?

I'm not really going to worry about arguing it much anymore because frankly it'll never happen until WoW is in it's death-roll and I've stopped caring. If even then.

You're behaving like some twat on the WoW forums. Try reading the posts. I'm not arguing against your rants because I don't like grouping, I'm arguing against them because they're idiotic. You can't use "massively multilayer" to justify a minimum of five people in a group. And the whole solo play thing is a fiction of your own making. Nebu was questioning why it is unreasonable to scale dungeons to two people. Trying to belittle his point by insinuating that he is some of social pariah incapable of grouping is a fucking absurd straw man argument. But hey, maybe I'm reading it wrong and Nebu actually did want an Internet pissing contest instead of an intelligent discussion about the merits or pitfalls of group scaling in a game such as WoW.

The main point was I think you ruin the social aspect of the game by letting people scale things down too far. People would never get outside of their shells and I'd never get to meet anyone new because who would want to group with some random guy? I like that stuff. So I'm not in favor of design decisions that would decrease that. That's my whole point. You may disagree, and that's fine by me. If you don't have time to make groups I can understand the frustration, but I think changing it would frustrate me, so I disagree with that idea.

I do think scaling is a good idea. It should be implemented in my view in such a manner:

- Instances would have a 5 - 10 - 25 man difficulty.
- 5 man difficulty would drop good quality blue loot, and random low rate chances at an epic item from the 10 man setting off the last boss.
- 10 man difficulty would be epic quality gear from all the bosses except weapons, and they would have a random low rate chance at a Tiered set item off the last boss.
- 25 man difficulty would be Tiered Gear off all bosses, and epic weapons.

I'd cut down on this cross dungeon Tiered sets crap. That's just annoying filler, and it trivializes boss encounter and loot tables.

EDIT: I'd also add that I think solo-duoing dungeon scaling for the 1-60 content in the old world should be put into place. Requiring those to still be five mans after the expansion seems stupid considering that most people just get 70s to stomp them. I think it would be preferable to scale them back to solo instances until 40 and duos after that. That's not hurting the social aspect of the game since there aren't enough people around to actually participate in those levels.

I don't know how you would scale 5 mans down to solo-able without trivializing it. Certain classes just solo so much better then others it isn't even funny. You would have to custom build each dungeon for each possible class/spec.


I don't see that happening any time soon.

Solo content is already trivial, and if what I'm reading about high-end content is right, raiding is also trivial except for the forced grouping part.

It's all trivial.

So go ahead and trivialize.

The thing is, by asking to make 5, 10, 25 and 40 man content doable by 1-2 people, it's like asking to play baseball with 2 people per side.  There are just not enough positions to make it proper baseball.  It's just not designed that way.

So two things: first, why are we not allowed to say go play a single player game if that's the situation?  Why is that a copout?  If someone comes looking for bananas and all we have are apples, why can't we say "Yes, we have no bananas"?

Second, there are plenty of bananas.  Fully 90-95% of the game is possible solo or duo.  I can stand here and name off every instance and world encounter ever invented for 5+ people, but in three years I haven't even SEEN all the 1-2 person content.  There's just too much of it to mention.  Asking them to redesign the last 5-10% to suit your tastes is just greedy, really.

Sorry, I'm with this camp.

Stop being so anti-social. The 'pubbies' at least have the ability to say "LFG SM Monastery". As retarded as some of the people can be, in a game with 9 million players you can meet friends. One choice is to *gasp* join a large guild. Just use them when you need to for contacts around your level. You will find some cool peeps and some to avoid. If the guild chat is unbearable, leave. After a while you may even find yourself a part of someone else's core of friends. Latch on. People did this with our guild back in the day and I've become very good friends with them (even to the point we stay in contact after wow).

Or.....use a /who and find people around your level. Many times when leveling up I would see the SAME guys all over the place. Hmmm, they seem to play around my schedule. I'll say hi and see if he wants to try to 3 man RFK for fun. They may have some small guild that plays around your time. Never hurts to /t . This is all basic shit that most people picked up on years ago. Call me a dick, whatever. I'm a dick that is able to say "Hi" to a stranger without going into a "OMG can't talk to the pubbies" spasm.

You know you're in Dire Straits when Slayerik is giving you lessons in being social.

 :roll:

I still think a key feature will be getting older dungeons down to a soloable level, especially when the 2nd expansion hits. At this point, they are actively trying to push people through old levels to get them quickly to the expansion content. I would imagine now that they removed the elite status from a lot of the outdoor quest mobs, they might remove the elite status from some of dungeons like Deadmines, SFK, Scarlet Monastery, Uldaman, ZF, and Sunken Temple.

You guys seem to have completely missed the point. 

1. It's not about being social/antisocial, it's about wasting my time.  I've led guilds in nearly every western MMO to date and am perfectly capable of making groups and running them through PvE encounters (which are largely trivial).  I'm tired of having to depend on the schedules and behaviors of others in order to have fun.  This was the real origin of my whine and I've already apologized for it.

2. The most reasonable point I've seen so far is that from Jayce and his baseball analogy.  I had considered that many times in the past and realize that it's a great way to rationalize the need for groups in these games.  It's a collection of specialists built to accomplish a task.  This is a community building exercise and is a carrot used to aid in retention.  It's a solid marketing strategy.  I'll remind you that some of the tightest communities I've been in online were in MUDs back in the early days.  Those were all solo combat games with a world/community feel.  It is entirely possible to have a massive online community without having to force people to face encounters together, but I do understand that this adds variety to the gameplay.  I'm not stupid. 

3. Most of the arguments I've been making in this thread were born more out of exposing people's elite attitudes toward gaming more than it was to solidify my stance.  See point 2.

4. Some of you posting in this thread need to ask yourselves: Why does anyone give a shit what loot others have, what instances others have done, and how many collectibles others have?  Do areas really have to be exclusive to be meaningful?  Do people need to feel like they have done something special in a game to have fun?  The only time I've ever cared about loot was when it imbalanced my pvp experience.  As far as loot and pve go, I could care less. If people can get their hands on a sword of uberfoozleslaying, then more power to them.  It's transparent that the whole game is based on the same get-loot-to-kill-mobs-to-get-better-loot-to-kill-tougher-mobs paradigm.   

5. Having played in very strong guilds, you all must also realize that being in a strong guild is also antisocial to a degree.  I'd wager that anyone currently involved in a tight play group seldom raids with people outside that circle.  Yes, you play in groups on a consistent basis, but how much does that really affect the larger server community.  There are many solo/duo players out there that will go outside of their circle because they have to. 

Having said that, I don't see what it hurts to give customers more choices.  You can scale any instance to different levels of difficulty just has been done in other games.  You similarly scale the loot to fit the difficulty.  It takes a little testing to balance, but would offer people more play options in the end.  I realize that Blizzard has no reason to waste resources on this and I'm fine with that.  I just hope that one day it may be an option so that the more casual gaming crowd won't feel as shut out of certain aspects of the game.

I laughed then I eyerolled. True story.

As far as loot goes, for many it's simply a stumbling block to the next instance. I think we all want to fight Illidan and see the Black Temple, but we have to slog through content to get there. I don't think they need to make content exclusive persay, but I do think they need to make it take time to get there or everyone will have the best stuff and simply finish. It's all about making people take more time to get things done that they want to do for money. So, I think you recognize that fact.

There are some out there who like to preen around in front of the bank and whatnot. Those people are usually made fun of by everyone else except the pathetic teenagers who wish mommy would let them play enough to be a lootwhore. I don't think you need to have something special alone in the game to have fun as I do have something special in that regard, the Mount drop off Attunemen. That horse is cool-looking but the novelty wears off quickly. The point of the game is to always have a challenge, and to always have a challenge you always have to have a current unattainable goal. Right now for many that unattainable goal is the Black Temple.

For me it's an enjoyable paradigm because I enjoy the ride. Getting to the goal would kill my fun. I think the day I sunk my sword into Illidan's cold, dead corpse with no other content available beyond that, I'd be more sad than happy because the ride would be over. In that regard, I don't ever expect that to happen.

I just want gear that's good enough to be competitve in PVP with.

That's what I'm hoping for as well.  In DAoC I could run around the frontiers and be successful with pretty cheap templates.  Since I'm unfamiliar with the level 70 pvp game in WoW, I'm not sure what to expect.  I'm afraid I'm going to be disappointed.

PvE instance and raid drop gear is relatively moot in the current lvl 70 PvP game. All it takes to get viable PvP gear is a massive timesink of honor/mark of honor farming, as the gear with all the PvP type stats are bought that way. Most of my pve gear is almost junk for doing PvP as I walk in with a 2-3k HP deficit vs "wefare" pvp epic'd people. In many cases, the PvP gear is actually better than the PvE gear for PvE purposes.

If you have a decent combo of 2 people, you can do well enough in 2v2 to get some of the gear there while doing the battlegrounds for the slots you can buy from them.

Unfortunately, the guy I duo with has ZERO interest in pvp.  I'm left to fend for myself. 

I need to learn more about the BG's (level ranges etc.)  I may have to blow off the pve grind and spend more time in there.  I've actually considered just rerolling a solo toon on a pvp server, but I wanted a safe place to re-learn game mechanics before I did.

Too bad you weren't playing WoW when I still was.  I needed a good pvp partner for my laser turkey.  However, I was on one of the more podunk, carebear PVE servers.

I've got a 29 undead Rogue that I'm hitting WSG and AB with right now. My problem is trying to figure out how exactly to spend those 20 talent points he has.

I'm terrible lining up a backstab, so I'm mainhanding a sword and usually opening with cheapshot since I'm usually playing with a Shaman/Warrior duo. They tend to defend, so I hang around in stealth and peel off the Shaman, or assist the warrior. Any spec recommendations would be grand.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-talents.xml?r=Alleria&n=Thrissa

There's what I'm using on my twink of the same level.  It' snot bad, as I play the same way you just described, but I'm sure there's better specs out there. 

I made a draenei shaman who I'm keeping at 29 for now, just to play WSG and AB with.  There's some items to get in the little battlegrounds that are pretty good - trinkets, rings, weapons, armor.  Unfortunately, you have to reget them for the next bracket once you level.

Battlegrounds can be very fun.  They can also be very frustrating.  I'd avoid the 19 BG because it's completely filled with twinks.  The 29 isn't quite so bad, although there's still quite a few people running around wearing that 30 stam leg armor.  I imagine as you go up in level, the twink to normal player ratio decreases.

World pvp is pretty much dead.  I mean, sure, there's the occasional gank, particularly if there are resources in the area, but it's not constant pvp all the time.  Roll on a pvp server, see how you like it.  My first server was pve, and it was boring as hell (this was before bgs, though) so I rerolled on a pvp server.

I'm surprised you didn't call them Timmies.

I suspect many of those who preen around are children.  My 9 year old daughter hangs out in Stormwind, playing dress up, going swimming, occasionally dueling, and mostly just "playing."

People of all ages play WoW - a lot of kids do for sure. 

Why don't you use a mace?  Don't you get a nice stun effect from those?

Don't you have to spec in maces to get that? You need 20 points in combat to be able to, and I'm only lvl 29. It is the direction I'm gonna go, but right now, with my limited play time, I just log in to get a game or two of low-level BG in.

I have mace specialization on my solo rogue and love it.  Were I to group more, I'd probably switch to daggers for the additional positional damage.  As to the question; you're not quite high enough to start speccing in mace yet.  If you solo a lot on your rogue, I recommend it highly.

Weapon availability for a rogue is pretty limited leveling up, too... especially if you're not keen on hitting the AH for a BOE blue or two every 10 levels. Swords are definitely the easiest to procure, through questing.

Don't bother. The only time daggers do more damage than sword rogues is on raid boss fights where you're staring at monster-ass for 2+ minutes and damage figures start evening out. Theorycraft says daggers do ~10% more damage, however that 10% is easily gobbled up in maneuvering time -- so much so that on 'trash mobs' like normals or lower level elites, sword rogues will always win in speed because they can attack sooner and get the first hit in -- that one extra sword hit skews the percentages quite a bit.

That, and soloing as a dagger rogue is simply less efficient and slower.

This is coming from a die-hard dagger rogue; I didn't touch a sword except when my daggers broke -- and I played for 1.5 years and killed c'thun :)

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Ursin&n=Sawbone

This is where I sit ATM. Took Subtlety just for 5/5 in Camo. Being able to move quicker in stealth is pretty sweet. Figured I'd try it out for a couple weeks and see what I think.

What I've discovered is that there are two different types of rogues to play.  There's the type I've been playing lately which is really a dual weilding warrior with some tricks (mace spec and almost all of my points in the combat tree) or you can play a more stealthy assassin type.  I prefer the first for the pve grind, but see how the latter could be more immersive/enjoyable.  I did enjoy using my stun and runnign around the back of things to get off a backstab.  It helped me feel like the PvE was more interactive.  Let me know what you think of the new spec.  I'm not yet 70, so the whole thing is still an experiment to me.  I do know that Rogue is the class for me.  The combination of tricks and high dps makes for the most enjoyment, especially solo. Granted, it does have its frustrating moments.

I like the spec, but I have realized that it didn't matter whatsoever how I specc'd, it's all about the gear.

Truth.  Playing in a shaman/warrior tandem at the moment and we do well everytime I can afford to upgrade my gear (every 5 levels or so).  I'm about ready to scrap the warrior (almost 40) until my rogue hits 70 and can farm decent gear for it on a consistent basis. 

Speccing 5/5 for Camo has been great for BG though.

In terms of most represented in the top 2v2 brackets (PvP):

Druid+warrior

Pally+ warrior

Warlock+ shadowpriest

In general, druid+ warrior is agreed to be the most powerful combo, although some match ups can be annoying without a dispel. In general though, any two classes played well together can do rather well.

For PvE, any two classes work well. Preferably one with a cc and one with a heal, but beyond that anything works.

Regarding sword vs. dagger rogues:

For leveling, swords/daggers/fists is the best set up. Sinister strike >>> backstab for just killing crap. Also, combat has way more tricks than assassination.  There are probably more decent swords on your way up to 70 so just use those.

For raid level DPS, combat swords is (with the new hemo nerf) still the best raid dps spec. Sadly daggers is weaksauce PvE now ( PvP as well).