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So, my warlock got the Crusader title a few nights back, but I am up in the air about what to do.  I'd like to level a tank and healer as an alt, so that means I leve either a paladin or a druid.  Should I buy the EXP items that both can use (leather) or just pick one and buy that armor?

Pick one.  You won't be doing your paladin any favors by having them wear leather.

I just bought the Chest and shoulders to prepare for leveling my goblin shaman.

Friend of mine used the cloth shoulders all the way up on his pally and never complained. Its not like you need max def/armor/whatever while leveling.

If you've got a pally, get the shoulders and sword. Then get the trinket. Chest later, but it's kinda optional (obviously a PvP oriented queue, but it works well in PvE, too--just put the trinket off to last). Which shoulders don't much matter; I have both, but my warrior twink has priority over my paladin twink. I tend to mail them back and forth, but the Valor is more PvE oriented. Also, if a warrior is in the mix, then get the axe over the sword (axe spec > all others). Don't ignore the trinket; I rarely (make that practically never) see it in PvP encounters. My warrior often lives or dies on the damned thing (can't wait for Juggernaut).

The main reason I never bought the chest was enchants. The +hps stuff is pretty much necessary for PvP and really nice in PvE, so no Valor for my plate twinks. Crusader on the weapons-- though you can make a strong argument for +9 to damage, especially the further you progress past 60.

The Biggest deal will be the weapon you get.

Sadly, the Feral Druid Weapon and the Plate DPS weapons don't really overlap very well.

If you're a feral druid, you're pretty much stuck with the lava dredger. Otherwise, it's crap. I've seen a few shaman with it, but they didn't know what the hell they were doing anyway. Don't be them. Or do, if you're horde. I like free HKs. I'm kinda dreading the 49 bracket and enhance shaman. They're strong in that level range. Still, most don't have a clue and I'll have Juggernaut (finally).

Having that automatic Best in Slot weapon every level as a paladin or warrior is pretty much cheating for the first 50-60 levels really.

Unless you plan to park in BGs ignore the people telling you to skip the chestpiece. 10% more xp outweighs by far any benefit you might get from a dinky +HP enchantment while leveling to 80.

You should definitely just pick one and buy the appropriate gear for them. 2h weapon + shoulders + chest, BOA trinkets are pretty optional. If you go with plate you'll have gear you can re-use to level a DK and a warrior, too. If you go with leather you'll have armor for a rogue but would need to get weapons separately.

Oh, and the fishing ring if you can get it. (Good luck).

You could probably use the leather for a hunter as well, since a hunter isn't really getting hit while leveling up.

Yeah I've been using the leather chest on my hunter, and the stats are still better than most of the blue drops I've come across (I'd still wear it for the xp bonus even if they weren't, but still, it ain't shabby).

The Lava Dredger is probably a decent hunter stat stick as well, so there is that.

It would be if they could equip it anyway.

Oh right, it's a silly mace ain't it.

Silly person, hunters can't use clubs.  That would make no sense. :why_so_serious:

So, this stuff is gotten with tokens from heroic dungeons right?  Any way else to buy it?

I've got a lot of alts and I like the idea of BoA gear that levels with you...

There are a few ways:

- One set of things you get with dungeon badges. This includes shoulders, a variety of weapons, and a couple trinkets.
- Another set of things you can get with Wintergrasp shards (which can be obtained either via Wintergrasp not-actually-daily quests or by killing dungeon bosses while your side owns Wintergrasp.) Again these are shoulders and weapons, typically with slightly worse PVE stats than the badge items because they have resilience on them for PVP purposes, but the opportunity cost of buying them is a lot lower since there's really not that much exciting stuff to buy with shards, unlike badges.
- Chest pieces can be bought with either dungeon badges or champion seals from the tournament.
- There's a ring coming that you get for winning the Northrend fishing contest.

Can't you also get it from the jousting quests?  That's how I got the chest and shoulders. 


Oops... missed that part. 

I like the shoulders and chest for leveling, since both of those give you exp bonuses.

Someone completed an entire Ulduar 10 in blues.  *shrug* Doesn't mean one recommends it.

Listen to this if you plan on PVPing all the way up.  Otherwise, ignore it.  The PVE BOA chest has the EXP boost.

I recommend buying the leather shoulders/chest for all your physical DPS since the stats are applicable for anyone.  You're wearing the BOA stuff for the experience boost, any additional perk from stats is just a perk.  The Swift Hand of Justice can be put to good use by any physical or caster dps class, so I highly recommend buying one or two of those too.

How long does it take to get BOA items from scratch?  The next time I will play WOW will probably be in 4.0 with the new leveling content. 

Just curious.

If you're trying to do it solo with tournament seals, it takes a LONG time.  I think every other path to get them is light years faster.  

If I recall correctly you have to
- become a champion of all
- get exhalted with all major cities
- grind dailies to get something like 7 seals a day.  I think the chest cost 100-150 seals. 

It's about 90 Heroism Badges for the Shoulders/Chest combo.  So, 30 Heroics or thereabouts from scratch.  120 Champion's Seals, so if you're maxed out completely on the Argent Tournament stuff... 12 days.  The weapons vary in cost.

And again, if you're leveling a Ret Pally, the difference between:

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=48689

and

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=48685

Paladins gain 2 AP for every strength, so the difference in AP is around 19.  Strength scales with Kings, AP does not.  More armor as well.  At that point it becomes a difference of Hit or Crit.  I'd go with Crit personally.  Up to you.

The only classes I havn't leveled over 40 is a rogue and druid.  If I were to come back at all and reroll, it would be with those two classes or a mage.  I already have 60+ Priest/Paladin/Shaman/DK and 40+ Hunter/Lock/Warrior

Stone keeper shards are my preferred way of getting heirlooms, since you can get ~40 every week in wintergrasp for free (and you should be doing that for the honor anyway), and a ton of them for running instances and heroics when your side controls WG. I ended up buying the shoulder piece + staff from stone keeper shards; sadly you can only buy weapons, shoulder pieces and a leveling pvp trinket (useless) that way. You have to buy the chest and pve trinkets via emblems or maybe crusader seals. It's true that the stone keeper pieces have less PVE-ish stats, but they're just fine for leveling, and obviously much better if you pvp as you level.

If you're thinking about leveling multiple alts, you should optimize what pieces you get; I leveled a druid as boomkin spec with the spellpower staff, the *cloth* spellpower shoulders, and the *cloth* chestpiece.. then I gave them all to a mage alt who I might level sometime down the road.
It pays to make sure your chosen heirloom(s) are useful for as many classes as possible, in case you want to level another alt later or get bored of your 'chosen' alt. The 2h sword (or axe) and plate shoulders/chest are pretty much a staple for plate characters, though you can downgrade to leather; the axe is probably a bit more useful to hunters, but if you have a LOT of shards / badges to burn, you can buy the daggers with +agility and dual wield them (along with a suitable ranged weapon, of course). Hunters can probably get away with using leather pieces that you can also use to level a feral druid, enhance shaman, or rogue with. You probably don't want a one-handed spellpower weapon, since very few useful offhands exist until level 60+. The only decent shaman leveling weapon is the Venerable Mass of McGowan, and you'll want two; daggers are only good for rogues/hunters or -maybe- to stick in the offhand for a leveling shaman; the slow 1h swords are only good for rogues and MAYBE warriors/paladins if you want to level as a tank. Etc etc.

Edit: the pve trinkets (discerning eye of the beast, swift hand of justice) are pretty awesome for leveling generic melee / caster classes and reduce downtime significantly. I'm still using the discerning eye on my level 80 boomkin since no trinket wants to drop for me... sigh.

Leveling is incredibly easy, so it's not a great big deal.  I'm not playing the game right now.  I havn't since maybe January.  I was wondering if I were to want to play again with the next expansion, how much effort would I have to put in to get those pieces just to make my leveling time easier.

It actually isn't quite that bad - you only have to be a champion with one city to open up the first bunch of champion seal quests (and don't need to be exalted), which if you do all of them I think amounts to 5 seals per day or so. I think there are more once you get to be an exalted champion of everything, though, I don't know anything about those. The tournament instance also drops champion seals on heroic that anyone can get. 60 seals for a chest piece. Can you get shoulders that way? Not sure.

The reason I'd personally spend champion seals on it rather than dungeon badges currently is there is still stuff I can buy to improve any given level 80 character with badges; seals just buy things like pets and mounts for me as I don't need any of the blue or Naxx level other stuff you can buy with seals. WG shards are the most attractive thing to spend, although the items you get are lamer from a PVE perspective. When heroics/Naxx still just dropped heroism badges is when I bought most of my BOA stuff, as I just had no other use for them. Now that they drop conquest (and soon triumph) I still have things to buy.

On the other hand I suspect Lanty would probably buy every pet in existence before starting on BOA chestpieces.

This is exactly why I used the Stone Shards for the shoulders, even though they're 'pvp' shoulders.  :drillf:

It's a definite worry.  (Pet or goodies for alts? (http://iria.chem.uh.edu/smiley/huh.gif))  I think I'm up to 40-41 seals now.  I only do the jousting and kill cultists quests.

Maybe I should consider doing that Wintergrasp thing.  The only instance I've run since hitting 80 is the Stockades...  I had signed up for Naxx on Saturday, but realized I have a big annual event I need to attend.  So heroic badges just aren't happening.

I bought all of mine with Conquest badges.  As a tank, I've done a good number of Heroics, VOAs and Ulduars.  Had them lying around.

Think I'm sitting on 140 Seals.  But you do get 10 per day if you get exalted with all that Argent Tournament jazz.

I've been reluctant to spend Conquests on them since I haven't picked up the tank belt or any DPS suit goodies yet, and I have been mostly off this month anyway. But then I have a full suit of cloth and plate and trinkets plus a staff and 2h sword BOA stuff already from WG shards and old leftover heroism badges, so it hasn't been a pressing question either I guess.

It makes the same amount of sense as paladins not being able to handle staves.

HOW U WERK STICK?!

Why buy conquest gear? Do the daily heroic and pug Ony for Triumphs and buy the better tier.  Conq are the low end.  Everything's switching over to triumphs on heroics in a few weeks, anyway.   Cash those conqs in for the sweet, sweet twink gear.

Because I was getting conquest badges by raiding and not spending much time in Heroics? We've killed Ony a few times, but the triumph stuff is not particularly cheap, and for various reasons over the last month we haven't been doing much at all. Also note that the triumph and conquest items don't exactly overlap completely in every slot.

At this point the only twink gear I would possibly use anyway is some stuff for a rogue, and I'm just not going to worry about that since I won't be leveling one til Cataclysm anyway.

Ultimately the point I'm making is, to me it's not a good tradeoff to sacrifice an upgrade for a character who is already 80 in order to get leveling gear for an alt.

If you get the leather shoulder/bp, you can use to to level a warrior, rogue, hunter, paladin, shaman, or druid.  I'd recommend it over anything else.  I guess you could use it on a DK too for that matter.  20% bonus xp is worth much more than a few stats when you're leveling up.

Grinding the Champion's Seals isn't the hard part. However, when you are only champion with one city, all you can spend the Seals on is pets, mounts, and blues/ilvl200 purples. You need the Crusader title (Exalted Champion of the Horde/Alliance + Exalted with Argent Crusade) in order to spend the Seals on BoA gear; that's considerably more work than running a few heroics.

Ah, I didn't realize that part. Well shoot!

The daily quests involved in getting Crusader are very lucrative, and once you get the title it opens better quests.  They're worth doing for the gold and easy rep alone; building up champion seals to buy awesome XP-boosting gear for your alts is just icing on the cake.  Anyone with an 80 should be farming the hell out of the Tournament.

I'm not debating the worth of the Tournament for acquiring gold or rep. You cannot argue, however, that it is the easiest path to BoA gear. PUGing heroics is ridiculously easy, even as something as overplayed as a DPS DK, as long as you aren't an obnoxious fucktard. Grinding all 5 of your factions to Exalted takes a LONG time; longer if you are using the Tournament as your sole source of reputation gains.

Took me about 24 hours on my DK to hit Exalted on everything.  Characters who actually had to level-up through noob zones and areas that gave faction gains should take less time since they're most likely at least honored with their lowest city.

If you like PVP, run AV. Stay on defense and do turn-ins of armor and blood/ druid orbs (Wing Commanders don't typically live long enough to do the medal turn-ins anymore).  You start gaining "Horde" or "Alliance" faction instead of Ironforge/ Org after you're exalted with that rep. 

I've never had a problem with city faction.  My Druid was exalted with two, and revered with the other three before I ever reached the tournament.  I'm maybe one quest-based run through Gnomeragon and a handful of Azuremist quests from maxing everything.

I reached exalted with all the Horde cities by doing all of the quests in the pre20 areas, which are  unique for each city.  Once you reach 20 it's off to Silverpine or the Barrens.  The hardest part for me was the Argent Crusade.  I did every quest that gave reputation in Ice Crown and Zul'Drak, and then still had to spend a week doing the Champion quest for rep to finish it out.  I am glad I did it on my warlock since she got 7 titles for it, but it's not something I'd repeat on an alt.  I'm actually taking a break from the dailies to powerlevel Alchemy.

In order to become a Crusader, you need to complete 125 daily quests (25 tokens to turn in per city faction to become a champion of that city).  That's 12,450 total rep you'll get per city faction: 250 per quest for the faction you're working for, 62 per quest for the other four.  In addition, each quest gives 250 in the new Argent faction as well, for 31,250 with them.  Once you've become a champion of one faction, you can start doing the champion quests.  There are four of those, they give five champion seals between them, and you can get one token per quest that you can turn in for another 250 (+62 for the others) faction for the city that you turn it in to, on top of 750 argent crusade rep for doing the champion quests.

So basically every day you get:

2000 rep with one city.
500 rep with each other city.
1000 rep with the Silver Covenant.
750 rep with the Argent Crusade.
5 Champion Seals.
100ish gold.

For doing those eight easy daily quests.  The game basically forces you to do this for 25 days, as there's no way to increase the speed of getting the 125 tokens to become a champion of all the cities.  Once you're done, though, it's nearly impossible not to be exalted across the board and have access to very lucrative new daily quests, on top of the very nice goodies only available to crusaders.

The tournament is awesome, I get that. However, the question was how best to acquire BoA gear; if you run two heroic dungeons a day for 8 Emblems of Conquest, it would only take you 10 days to get both the chest and the shoulders; 5 days if you already have the shoulders from WG. Of course, there are more than two heroics out there, so you can actually get them MUCH faster (in terms of real days, not timed /played) if you are willing to run more dungeons/day.

Jousting is terrible and not fun.

Jousting isn't horrible if you group up.  While someone on a different mount can't help you, they can dps your opponent if they are not on a vehicle.

Jousting solo is a miserable experience that sometimes causes me to yell at my monitor.

I wouldn't mind it so much if it didn't cause my system to lag. 

I wouldn't mind it so much if it worked.

It's part of the "those ideas" that Blizzard is shifting from again. I give them credit for trying, and I honestly believe they had a place for jousting in a fight for Icecrown, but they tested it in the five man to see the reaction for the playerbase. Guess what? It was overwhelmingly suck-ass. At the beginning of the expansion, vehicles were the rage and they were using them in full force. It was supposed to be the defining mark of this expansion that vehicles were a viable mechanic in pve fights.

Now, the shit hit the fan. The dragon riding scenario was a disaster, the Ulduar stuff had to be upgraded to gear rating, and the jousting was blasted as horribly out of place. Three strikes and you're out on vehicles in the future of raiding.

If they had made the vehicles scale with gear from the beginning and they hadn't lagged as badly as they did (jousting is still horrid for this) they probably would have stood a chance.  As it is, they can stick them, and the majority of the player base appears to agree with me.  No one does Maly or Oculus unless they have guilds or friends for the achievements.

It makes logical sense when you step back from the design template or the keyboard and analyze why people play WoW. The game revolves around levelling up characters and throwing new clothes on them. It doesn't matter how you do it, but that's your base audience. Vehicles take everything WoW is based on and essentially throws it out the window. You might as well be playing a horribly shitty shooter on some of the earlier fights. I won't even get into the shock value of not being able to use any abilities you are familiar with...

This is where 90% of the Maly fights end badly.  You are DPSing the boss normally, get a phase with some mobs to kill and some stuff to avoid, then *bam* vehicle fight that isn't like anything else in the game and no way to practice elsewhere.  People freak the fuck out and don't know what to do, and the raid wipes since at that point it's a pure DPS race and when people are dropping like flies, the few who do keep it together can't do enough damage regardless of their gear or skills they have practiced and learned everywhere else for the last 80 levels.  Whereas in a heroic or regular raid boss fight even if you lose some people, if you have good DPS you can at least stand a chance to make up for the piles of bodies on the floor (25-minute Heigan dance anyone?).

Ulduar is at least quick and out of the way early.  If it had been minus Flame Leviathan as-is until you get to Yogg and then a vehicle fight?  Nerd rage.

Not to nitpick, but there is actually a daily quest, up on one of the rings of the Occulus (outside in the main world zone) that has you take controll of a red drake that is pretty much EXACTLY like the drakes you will later be using in the Malygos fight.  And after you do the daily at least once, you have the option of grabbing the drake and practicing how to use it's abilities to your hearts content.   So it is not entirely true that they slapped you with a vehicle fight that you had no way to prepare for.   That the vast majority of people still suck at controlling a vehicle in a 3d movement environemnt in a group situation is still very true however.

While the controls were the similar, the maneuvering of everyone around and the healing of others were surprises to many people.  No one I knew ever did that quest except me ;-)

There is a daily which supposedly gets you ready for Malygos. Now that defination of "ready" has a lot of room for interpretation,  but the mechanics still suck regardless of whatever "practice" you manage to get in (and the daily blows goats as well). The death of vehicle mechanics is a good thing. A very good thing. A truly great thing.

It won't be missed in Cataclysm.

The daily might get you ready if it dropped your ass in the middle of a fight and said GO!

I dunno, personally, I liked them.

Now, I never had to do any of the vehicle raid stuff, so I have no idea about that.  Maybe it is a retarded idea, or maybe it can work if it's done better.  Maybe not.  I dunno.

But when leveling up, those were often my favorite quests.  Gives me a bit of a break from my "snare dot fireball fireball fireball rest" routine.  Plus, some of the really epic stuff was done on vehicles, like that storm giant bit.  More variation in gameplay is something I enjoy.  Plus, they generally had less of a "locked in mortal combat with a hideous monster" feel and more of a "HAHAHAHAAHHA DIEDIEDIEDIEDIE AAAAAHAAAAAAHAAAA!" feel to them.

I can see where they'd be annoying if you had to do them over and over again (jousting was not my favorite), but I don't know that I'd like to see them gone from everything.

Only Flame Leviathan of the raid vehicle encounters comes close, but even that misses the stupid fun of the storm giant.  With Flame Leviathan, you could actually get overwhelmed.  Most of the other vehicle encounters were the mobs getting the " "HAHAHAHAAHHA DIEDIEDIEDIEDIE AAAAAHAAAAAAHAAAA!".  Maly and occulus really highlight the fact that 3d control seriously lacks and the camera is crap for it when you actually need to fight in 3d.  Figuring out which dragon is shooting you in Occulus can be really thrilling.

The only fun vehicle fights were the quest ones where the fun of stomping things overcame the flaws of the system.

The raid and heroic dungeon vehicle fights were awful except for FL, and I believe they even made some changes on that when it was on PTR before it went live to ensure the playerbase didn't nerdrage all over the place over it.

I didn't think that vehicles were bad either.  Then I went to raids where you get dumped into them in the middle of a fight and aren't overpowered or designed to crush hundreds of mobs with zero effort like the quests.  You had to rely on 9 or 24 other people to know how to maneuver and hit all of the right buttons in the right order and with the right cooldowns, regardless of how their class originally played.  Then the frustration becomes quite apparent.

Flame Leviathan is actually pretty fun. Though, after the 40th time, it's gotten a bit old, but so does about anything. Some of the PvE stuff (Storm Giant, Titan walker/weapon construct) is OK. The rest of it--especially the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned jousting--sucks syphilitic bison balls. It needs to die yesterday.

I was looking to pick up another trinket for my ret pally, but I sat for about five minutes staring at the jousting quest and thought, "No. Just no. No sir, I don't like it." Pally has to wait for mail from my warrior.

If you ever raided later in the second expansion, and you remember the Teron Gorefiend fight from Black Temple, then you remember the absolute low point of Blizzard using vehicle mechanics. The funny part was it happened way before they ever put actual vehicles into the game, but the mechanics were exactly the same. Even then, people went apeshit over the fight, but Blizzard pressed on believing that wresting control of a player's character would somehow result in fun.

So far, it never has.

I"d blocked the Gorefiend horsehit from my mind. Yeah, that was bad. Really bad.

Soooo...it's no surprise it's really annoying and infuriating in WotLK. Fundamentally, I don't like losing control of my characters (they are why I play the game; not some half-baked minigame), and I don't like trying to learn a new mechaninc 10 seconds into a fight--when I have 70-80 levels of practice doing something else. A few things are fun--like the giant whupass or the werewolf escape ride--but only as a brief interlude. Less is more. A LOT less. Make it so.

My absolute "favorite" moment in vehicle raid fights to date is the time we managed a good phase 1 and 2 on maly 25, only to plummet straight past the drakes to a horrible death at the start of phase 3.  I'm pretty sure that's the last time we've been back there.

I think vehicle mechanics are okay if used sparingly.  Sadly, that has not been the case with this expansion.  I think jousting could be "fixed" if they'd just add equipment levels to your vehicle, but they'll likely do this long after everyone stops doing it.  Which will probably be about a week before the release of 3.3, as people gird themselves for yet another rep grind.   :awesome_for_real:  :awesome_for_real:  :awesome_for_real:  :awesome_for_real:

 :heartbreak:

Yeah, and all the vehicle/gimmick shit is what made Isle of Conquest a big fat flop. There's NEVER more than one IoC running on my server group, but frequently two or three instances of AV.

Didn't one of the lead devs for WoW turn around at a fairly recent developer conference and basically say "Yeah, that whole show-piece gimmick for WotLK that is vehicles? Fucking terrible idea"

If he did, give him a raise. Also give him more control.

Just checked, and it was Tigole's presentation at the GDC earlier this year, and there was already a thread about it. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=16539.0)

Hey, at least they try things out, keep them when they work and scrap them when they don't. That's not "turning around" that'ts learning from experience.

Not everything that sounded good at the developer meeting turns out to be a great idea once it's implemented in the wild.

Having the guts to openly state this at a public developers conference? Even better.

Oh, it's good and I'm glad to see they do pay attention to the playerbase--and that they learn from these mistakes.

Nevertheless, the vehicle stuff largely sucked and it needed to be toned down a LOT. So it looks like they're doing just that. Great. I'm still going to gloat, however, since it did suck and I've had to put up with it for a year.

You also have to keep in mind that they have to compete with the rest of the market, and siege weapons were a big selling point for Warhammer.  It's just one of those things where you watch the demo video and think it would be cool.  They're probably thinking, "Hey we should do this too."  But then like, it isn't cool - at all.  I can't hate them for that, though.

How'd that work out for Warhammer?  They stole queue-anywhere.  That was enough.

You know the first vehicle I liked?  The banquet table.  You can sit around like you're having dinner and toss food at people.  It rocks.

What other devs watching WoW's vehicle attempt should take home is not that vehicles are bad in an RPG.

Rather, they should realize that if you're going to introduce a new gameplay mechanic you can't half-ass it and Blizard has clearly half-assed their vehicles. Their vehicles control exactly like your normal character, down to the lack of momentum and everything being done using skills/spells. Their server probably can't handle a more simulation-type gameplay, but that's really not an excuse.

One of the biggest flaws with vehicles was them simply not being any more powerful then your average character. In most cases, they are dramatically less powerful.


The only siege vehicle that actually magnifies player power is the Siege tank in the Isle of Conquest. It's the only one where if it's fully manned by non-retards, it will destroy you. Everything else is completely at the mercy of a single player on foot. The Isle siege tank though, I've seen that thing rip through 20-30 guys without blinking.

Are you guys mostly talking about raiding- or PvP-centric vehicles? I have never done any WoTLK raiding, WG or IOC but I've flown the dragons in the DK starting area and the Wyrmrest daily, and used the banquet tables, and haven't had too much to complain about.  

But then, most of those do something radically different than a player on foot would do, so that isn't a comparison. It's more of a UI issue, and it isn't a terrible UI.




edited for clarity because there are no dragons at banquet tables

I think it is a very iffy proposition to say that WoW's vehicles would be a better system if they worked less like your character. The single biggest problem with them in a PVE context is that they take people out of their comfort zones because they *don't* work like the character.

Ah they'll all be gone next xpac cycle anyways (except for the ones in Strand and the Isle), sitting empty and collecting dust. That's the only reason I don't really bother to bitch about them right now.

They can keep giving me quest chains where I finish by riding on the shoulders of a Giant and slaughtering thousands of cannon fodder though!

I HATE the vehicle quests.  I mean hate with a seething passion.  The vehicle quests in WotLK are what drove me away from the game... again. 

You can pry my storm giant from my cold dead hands sir!

I can't complain about vehicle quests. They are one of those things that if you don't like, you don't have to bother with them. Dropping vehicles right into my direct line to Arthas? Go fuck yourself.

Your spells get replaced and you lose the ability to jump, but otherwise they work exactly like your character. It still feels like your character while the UI is trying its damnest to tell you otherwise. Take the storm giant as an example. You get stuck to knee-height trees that you'd expect should just snap under your feet. It doesn't feel like you're controlling a storm giant, it feels like you're controlling your character who is inside an air-filled storm giant costume.

My biggest problem with the storm giant is being pretty much unable to see a damn thing around me and having to rely on the counters to tell me that stuff is dead.  Not to mention that when done with the quest I am in combat for 5m or so...

I just zoomed out and looked down, /shrug

I did this one for the first time today (late to the party). I agree that it's too easy to get stuck and they don't let you zoom out far enough, at least the stock UI. I had to zoom all the way IN to be able to target things.

That said, I didn't find it all that bad.  As a gimmick, it should have been a little easier, but hey.

Ok I need your help people because my brain may not work right with this.

I'm thinking of leveling a rogue.
I have 250 stone keeper shards and 34 Hero Emblems and 7 Valor (I can buy hero's right?).
I'm thinking the weapon with the shards and the breastplate with the emblems.

Here's my problem.  If I choose another class with the expansion because who knows how long I'll last with this rogue, I'll have a useless leather chest item and a sword if I pick a different class.  I guess that's what happens.  I'm neurotic I suppose.

Anyway.... Kang and the Shadowcraft thing I'm going with.

Both the shoulders and the chest give a 10% exp bonus. I do not know if that stacks. If you get the leather, you could use it on a Druid, or Hunter, and if you get the sword you could use it on a Hunter, Warrior or Paladin. So not totally worthless.

It's not like armor is going to matter that much in regards to type or the specifics of the stats.  You can use that leather on a druid, shaman, hunter, rogue, and I've known people that have used it with ret paladins and warriors. And yah, the exp stacks. 

Get the shoulders, BP, and while you're leveling: do WG dailies for a weapon.

Yeah, leather's the most useful armor class there is in Heirloom stuff unless you've got a thing for casters or tanks. 

The idea is not having to do any more work in getting more stuff.  I don't really want to grind out 150 shards for a weapon.

With the WG 'dailies' on Tues and Sat you can get 150 shards in two weeks.

Yeah but that's in two weeks.

Yeah, armor class means jack and shit while levelling, and no stats have even 1% of the impact that +10% xp does.  If you get 1 set (i.e. shoulder & chest) of leather and 1 set of cloth, you're golden for any alt you'll ever need.   Heck, you could just get the cloth if you only have enough for one set.  You could go 1-80 with caster-itemized cloth shoulders and bp on a warrior, and you'd be unlikely to even notice.