f13.net

First off, I only played Vanilla. I stopped well before TBC. I was on my 3rd Guild (I left one because of poor leadership, another fell apart, and then the 3rd one also fell apart.)

I was max level (for the time) Paladin in mostly Molten Core gear.

So, I missed out on Burning Crusade and Lich King. Is the game worth going back to? Especially if I've lost interest in raiding in general? And have no guild to go back to?

Edit: I was in Asa Tru on Icecrown, I left it because it was poorly run at the time though I am pleased to see that it still exists, while the 2 raiding guilds I went to self destructed.

Sure. Between daily quests, flying mounts, dual spec, random dungeon finder, endless class revamps, blah blah and so forth, it's basically a whole new game compared to what you played. Go for it.

If you're on the fence and not interested in raiding, I'd say wait until Cataclysm when they revamp the game from the ground up. You'll probably have a much better time then than now.

Yeah, the main question is should you wait for Cataclysm to come out or not. It depends how much you think you'd hate going 1-60 in the content you already saw before, although it goes pretty fast now, and you can make 1-20 different at least by playing a draenei or blood elf.

It takes a long time to get to 85.  It might be worth starting a new toon and leveling it up to see what's changed.  By the time you're 80 Cataclysm will be out. 

I might have to totally redo a character. I went to look at my account and it seems unaccessible unless I have a battlenet password but it says a battlenet account doesn't exist for my email address which is B.S. because I played geeze....months and months of Diablo 2 a few years ago and I had this same email account back then.

Part of why I was wondering is my wife was complaining the other night she never got to try WOW because by the time she met me I was done with it and she doesn't want to play alone.

Diablo 2 B.net account != new WoW/SC2 B.net account, you've gotta make a new one.

That aside, if the two of you are going to play together I'd say go for it, and make sure to RAF. You'll get through the old content you've done already faster, and can get to the new shiny (BC and WotLK) faster.

If you're starting from scratch I'd say wait for Cataclysm, because they are going to rehaul the entire levelling experience for you. Win-win.

On the other hand, if you're introducing your wife to it as well, she might have somewhat more appreciation for Cataclysm when it hits for having seen what it was like before. Choices!

Yeah, I'd definitely wait for Cataclysm if you're starting fresh.  If you want to check out the new stuff though, your Paladin can jump right into Burning Crusade/Wrath of the Lich King stuff.

He's...hmmm..level 60 or 65. Whatever the max was back in the day. Of course, if I want to play with the wife playing a level 60ish character with her might not be a good idea anyway. :)

If my wife was actually suggesting playing together, I'd jump in with both feet now!  YMMV

Even if you both get chars to 80 and have to still wait for Cata to come out, you can do it again with new races in a differrent class to get the new newbie experience.  Like said before, you can then compare the two experiences first hand.  The newbie differences in Cata will not be near as impactful to somebody starting completely new after it launches.

Even while waiting, there is plenty of opportunity to do instances together at anytime and quickly.  If you do raid, the systems are much easier now than vanilla.  Not sure if you like PvP, but that's very easy to jump in and out of anytime you feel like it too.

If you create a tank/healer combo of some kind, you'll have no issues at all.

Tank/healer combo is hysterical.   All those kill 15 boars quests?  Two pulls.   The only real limiting factor is how dense the monsters are.   Tired of quests?  You can instant queue dungeons whenever you want and get plenty of training in dealing with moronic dps.   Feel like being saucy?  Kill Durn by yourselves at level 66, just because YOU CAN.

The current game is vastly improved from what you did in Vanilla, but the Cata expansion will make the current game seem old and busted.


The only reason to level someone new up right now, would be a sight seeing tour before Cata blows it all up.

Level, shmevel.  Create the new b.net account then merge it with your old wow account.. if it hasn't been hacked by now.

Then make a DK.  Choose which of you is the tank and which is the healer. Transfer the pally to the healer's new WoW account and go merrily along having skipped the whole vanilla thing with your Plate/Plate Tank/ Healer duo or Dual DPS badasses.    60-80 in BC and LK is all you really need to do to get a feel for the game and the experience is much better than the old vanilla zones with their useless quest rewards for classes that are 5 years out of date. (And weren't of much use when they WERE up-to-date.)

This idea is genius.

Ask your wife if she will care about seeing the world pre-explosion or not. If she will, start now and start from scratch. I wouldn't even RAF unless you wanted the two seater rocket thing, if you don't want to raid there's no reason to sprint to level 80. There IS stuff to do for non-raiding 80's, but for someone BRAND NEW to the game like your wife, there is ALSO plenty to see/enjoy before then, so why rush?

Anyway, if she DOESN'T care, Merusk's idea is a pretty good one, or just wait for Cataclysm to come out. If you go the Merusk route, you might want your wife to be the DK, simply because it is designed to be jumped into at 55, your paladin isn't ... and your paladin might be a bit overwhelming for someone new to the game. :P

Which one is Durn?

http://www.wowhead.com/quest=9938/wanted-durn-the-hungerer

With the changes I would say cata release would be a great time to give it a try. They are revamping talents so playing a new character and leveling up in the revamped old world should be a lot more amusing. Also with every expansion there is pretty much a gear reset and you would see tons of brand new worgen/goblins out there so there will be lots of folks across level ranges to group with.

If you have the itch the new expansion would be a good time to jump back in.


Oh forgot to note one thing you won't need to buy cata for 90% of the new 1-60 stuff that is being updated to everybody so you can see a lot of the new stuff when that gets pumped out without having to pay anything extra for a new expansion.

Ahhh... Him.

Thanks!

Ok. I sprung for the game for us. Gamestop had it on sale for $30 for the battlechest and $30 for Lichking which made it roughly the price of a console game. It'll probably take something like forever to get it installed. I'm on Icecrown and apparently my old account is still there. I figure I may just use my level 60 Pally and group with my wife and keep her buffed and stuff assuming I won't screw up her XPs by doing that.

If you havent opened her box yet, you should consider doing the refer a friend thing for your wife. It comes with a bunch of bonuses and benefits for both of you.

If you're going that route, you might as well RAF her and level up a new guy while you're at it.  Your pally won't be able to help much.  You could park him in town or something and buff, but pally buffs of that level are short, so it's probably more trouble than it's worth.  And you will royally fuck up her XP in or out of her group if you help at all.

Must not go there, must not go there!!!

I'm WEAK! 

If he hasn't opened her box yet, the "refer a friend" deal is the least of his worries.

whew! I feel so much better!

What are we like 12 today?

 :oh_i_see:

You asked the addicts in the WoW forum, who play WoW all the time, whether you should play WoW.

They were always going to say yes. Did you really want an answer?

NO, it's not worth going back to. It's six years old and it's the same old shit. Mess with PS3 games or something, until an exciting MMO appears.

It's too late, we've already lured him back into the fold. He's even brought fresh meat with him. The masters will be pleased.

I did. Lol. I had today off so I sent her a RAF and will tell her she HAS to click on it before opening her box.

I logged on and realized I might as well start over. My Pally is in good shape but it has been Soooo long since I played the game I couldn't remember...well....anything. I felt like a total noob again.

If I know her, and I do, she'll make a night elf hunter. I just need to figure out what I am going to make.

Edit: And I'm sooo going to make a Death Knight just because. I'm disappointed to learn that you don't make your old char into a DK and have to make a new one from scratch. That kind of sucks.

It's not so much that the game has changed that's confusing you as the Pally class has had, um.. 4 different revamps since you last played.   Yeah, they've made some changes to play and interface, etc over the years but nothing you couldn't get a handle on quickly.   The only class that's changed as much as the Pally (other than quality of life changes) is probably the Druid.   They're actually enjoyable to play while leveling up now I hear.

If my wife makes a night elf hunter what would be a good class to go along with her? I'm thinking of just making a 2nd Pally since I have armor and healing and blessings to keep her alive.

Honestly I'd say another ranged dps or maybe a healer; if you played the pally as Holy that would work okay. Prot would probably work too, as you could gather tons of mobs for her to AoE down. The only thing hunters don't play well with is melee dps: by the time you get to the mob, she'll have killed it.

Bonus points if you go tank or heals: faster /lfd queues.

Druid.  You'll have versatility out the yin-yang (Ranged DPS, Tank/ Melee DPS or heals.. what's your taste today?) and can start in the same area without running around for an hour and a half.   Just play as a female since the male NEs look almost as bad as male BEs.

I second the druid thing. Don't listen to Merusk about having to play a girl NE, though. Unless you're into being a mangina, of course. Even if you don't like the way the boy NEs look, you are hardly ever looking at them as a druid.

Also the boy blood elves are  :heart: so he has no taste anyway.

Well, with the RAF we can summon each other apparently.

Just pick any of the healing hybrids, (paladin, shaman, druid, priest), which ever one you enjoy the most. You don't have to spec the actual heal tree, just have a class with the heal spells available. Hunters are just so ridiculously good at soloing, you'll mostly just be a damage add or pet support.


Just keep in mind if you pick a Tri-spec Hybrid (paladin or druid), you'll need like 15 sets of gear eventually if you want to do ALL your potential jobs. Like, you'll probably want to decide if you are going to be Feral druid or a Casting druid and then stick to either of those.

One time I started a NE hunter and, since the NE starting area blows, decided that I would be better off leveling in Dun Morogh. Having never played Alliance before, and not realizing that this journey was not quite as trivial as, say, Orgrimmar to Undercity, I set my sorry ass running towards Ironforge at level 8 or so. It was a harrowing trek involving countless corpse runs, but I finally met with my destination and promptly set forth killing snow wolves or whatever it is dwarves and gnomes do at level 8. Then I dinged 10 and the goddamn dwarf hunter trainer told me I had to go to Teldrassil to learn how to tame a pet. Never logged onto her again.

Point being, have your wife summon you and not the other way around.

That trip isn't as harrowing anymore. You just take a boat to SW and the tram to IF.

You do still have to get the pet quest from your own racial trainer though I think.

Well she'll be home from night classes in 30 minutes or so. I'm still debating what to play. I tend to like Pallies because I get melee plus some healing even if my damage output sucks. Soooo....not sure what I'll do.

Feral druids get the same, and their damage output doesn't suck.

Pallies DO doesn't suck anymore, either.  They melt faces and heal well as ret if you know how to work Art of War.  However they run out of mana at low levels pretty easily.. well at least they did a year ago, not so sure now.

Druids get their toys much earlier than (current) paladins. Paladins are a boring auto-attack-fest until pretty late in their lives, which is thankfully changing come cataclysm.

Druids are rad, play a druid!

Yea, if you are doing this right now, I would go druid, unless you pine for the good old days of auto attacking forever.

I wanted to stab myself repeatedly in the nuts while leveling my pally.  That's how bad it was.

Leveling a pally back in vanilla was awesome! (http://www.staronion.com/maiev/img/wow_paladin.jpg)  :awesome_for_real:


edit: fixed link

Well, she wanted to make a Dranei instead of a Night Elf so I ended up making a Shaman. It was alright I guess. Sort of feels like a low powered mage to me really.

Shamans are okay, if you can make it past the initial hump. They are another class that greatly benefits from Cata's new spell/talent layout.

I was levelling a shaman not so long ago and early on they're much better now than they used to be.  They now get water shield at level 20 as well as mana stream totem at about the same level, so the old mana problems are mostly gone.  Also, you can heal any instance while specced as elemental with no problems up to at least level 40.

Level as enhancement to get the most out of it.  Use a shield until you get dual-wield and then the mobs die at your feet.  The shield allows you to pull multiple mobs without much fear and solo elites up to the dual-wield mark.  With water shield you'll have so much mana you don't know what to do with (kill stuff!).

Well I have several characters in the mid twenties of various classes so an option I have is to swap out which I play when she gets of level.

I have:

A level 22 hunter
A level 21 rogue
A level 35 warlock
A level 25 mage

So, if I wanted I can swap to one of those if I want something that's not a shaman.

My big quandry right now is which will be my main in the long run, my new Death Knight or my Paladin?

Paladin:

Pros:

Has some achievements already
Professions and such built up to decent levels (high 200s)
Pretty much won't die under normal circumstances

Cons:

DPS? What's that? Isn't that how you find where you're at or something?
Feels "passive"
Sucks in PvP (At least they did in the past, I'm guessing it's the same now.)
In raids reduced to a heal/buff bot.


Death Knight:

Pros:
DPS!
Looks cool
Feels "active"

Cons:

A million of them around.
Will have to learn Professions from the bottom up.
No achievements except a couple of account wide ones
Even less money on hand than my pally and he's not exactly rich.

Ret paladins do perfectly respectable dps these days, just fyi.   They're not super-exciting - you have like 4-5 buttons - but they get the job done.

Edit:  Oh, you pooh-poohed them on pvp too.... paladins are actually pretty good at pvp, ret paladins pre-80 in particular.  Holy paladins are a tremendous pain in the ass to kill, despite several attempts to weaken them.  Prot paladins are almost as hilarious as prot warriors for getting 5-8 enemies whaling away on you and pissing them off.  Your 2006 paladin knowledge really should just be deleted.  :grin:

Hidden side benefit of making a DK: you'll rarely be grouped with one in random dungeons, since the finder tries to get distinct classes.    :oh_i_see:   Also, if you happen to be semi-competent at tanking on one, people will think you are amazing, since about 80% of DK tanks are terrible.

Well I'm not really a tank type of guy. I don't think like a tank. I think like a DPSer/Soloer.

Yeah you need to take all your vanilla paladin prejudices and throw them away (except for maybe "paladin healing is boring," that's still true in my opinion  :grin: ). I think you would be pleasantly surprised by today's ret paladin.

If you have a tank and a healer you'll often get dungeon finder groups instantly. Pre 80 things can take longer, but at 80 tank queue times are roughly one second.

Pre 80 as a DPS you can get really long queue times, I'll grab my tank and take a guildie to an instance sometimes after they've been in the queue for over an hour.

I leveled my tank character mostly by tanking instances.

Well she wanted to reroll as a NE hunter so I made a druid. I like it much better than a shaman.

I stopped playing a WoW many years ago, and never got past taking a look at SVT and running away screaming. Will coming back as a DPS class be worth it or is it still an issue?

Base game to 60 is still the base game.  60-70 is still TBC.  70-80 in the future will still be WOLK.  

Up to 60 you still have shit loot that makes no sense combined with the same quests spread all over the fucking place (some places got better, like Dustwallow Marsh).  You just level faster now, get mounts earlier, and the classes are a lot better off than they used to be for just about everything.  

It's the same stuff that sucks, but it just sucks less from an actual gameplay mechanic and it's less of a hassle.

That all being said, if you've waited this long, might as well wait for Cat.  They get better at the whole quest based leveling thing every expansion.  If you come back now, it's just to get in position for the 80-85 content or you're really bored.  It's not worth  it for the nostalgia.. that's like being nostalgic for time spent in a body cast after falling down some stairs.  

edit: As for paladins.. my paladin is the only lvl 20+ character I've deleted.  The low level play is just beyond boring.

hm. I've levelled a few characters to various points in the 1-60 game, all Alliance, though.

Beforew we stopped playing, my wife and I started Blood Elves, which were our first real hordies. Got them to 30, I think, mostly in BE land, but I believe we got them as far as Tarren Mill, I wanted to level up and do the horde-side quests to see how the other half live. Worth continuing before cata, or better to wait until after? (assuming we go back).

Also, do they still give you one of those penguin pets for merging your WoW account with your bnet one?  :awesome_for_real:

I guess so since I have a Mr. Chilly Penguin pet and had no idea where it came from.

Oh, and my wife and I played about 8 hours tonight and we got to level 16. Not bad since she kept getting lost and I am having to relearn some stuff. That was also taking some time out to level up herbalism for her and skinning for me back in the NE starting area where everything was grey.

Dude, you really need to be corrected on one point: Paladins rape face.  Even retribution does well compared to rogues and mages.

Yeah, Riggs you haven't played since Vanilla, so you don't really know what happened. Paladins were healbots with two worthless trees when you played. They got somewhat better in BC. They became real tanks, retribution got slightly less terrible, and so forth.

Then with the 3.0 patch just prior to and for months after the Lich King release, a wave of ludicrously overpowered invincible paladins (especially ret) raped the universe. RAPED THE UNIVERSE.

HOLY SHIT IT WAS SWEET.

Then we got nerfed back into the realm of sanity, but we're not in bad shape.

Yeah, when my wife is not playing I've been playing my Pally. It's not what I remember that's for sure. I seem to actually be able to kill things now. I'm specced in Retribution because I figured it'd be most fun for leveling/soloing.

Edit: I should clarify that all of my playtime so far is still in "classic" WOW. I was in Eastern Plaguelands farming Thorium to get my mining and engineering to 275.

I would almost say if you are concerned, then dont worry about mining until you hit level cap. That is only if you aren't having fun doing it or would rather do something else. If not then forget what I just said.

I'd honestly suggest speccing Prot to level, even if you're not going to tank, Prot does 95% of the damage that Ret does, and you're basically invincible. You can do normal quests in a single pull of 10+ mobs, and you can handle elite quests too with ease.

Do you have any suggestions RE: A specific protection build?

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sZV0xA0ugGsIufzE00p0M

This will work great leveling up, as well as if you decide to tank any dungeons up through LK heroics. Get everything in Prot except Guarded by the Light first, then go Ret until level 70. Spend your points at 70 and 71 on Guarded by the Light, then finish up the Ret stuff. You don't need GbtL before then, because you don't have Divine Plea yet. 

Rendakor understates the difference in DPS, and more importantly, the difference in downtime.  Prot is a fun build, but it only comes into it's own if you're soloing 4+ mobs at once.

Also, I'm firmly of the opinion that Reckoning is a shitty talent and taking it makes you a bad person.

Yeah, looking at that makes me think Stoicism might be a better choice. I'll consider this though I'd have to respec and I think I'm at 15g for it.

Edit: Oh and my wife and my druid character are at 21-22 now. We didn't play at all on Saturday and Sunday went much slower than Friday between me leading us to too low an area to quest in and her going "Oh! Herbs!" every five seconds and taking off to harvest them.

Edit2: So, Sheepherder, you're saying protection isn't the way to go for soloing unless you're fighting lots of mobs at once?


And in the irony department, my druid now has more gold than my Pally. His two profession skills are skinning and mining and he sells everything on the AH.

Sheepherder, are you implying that there is more downtime as Prot than Ret? Because I really don't see how. I also did mention that Prot works best by pulling tons of mobs, but how is that a bad thing?

I really don't get the reckoning hate; it's a solid dps increase, while Stoicism is only useful for PVP.

Protection is great for leveling. My protection pally has done 1-80 with minimal frustrations.

Yeah, it's best when you gather up a dozen or so mobs to burn down. Singletons can get...tedious. Bad for mana regen, too.

Reckoning is the heat for grinding or PvP. Tanking...not so much. That's assuming you're a raid tank, though. My own prot pally has been a huge success in PvP, but we're talking the last two brackets. I suspect anything under the 59 bracket would suck hugely. A PvP prot talent build doesn't look much like a tanking build. Not if you expect to do well, anyway.

Right, that's why I included it in there as part of a leveling build. The extra attack is nice, particularly when you have seal of command to make it a cleave.  :drill:

Seal of command is a hoot. I never used it in PvP, but boy I sure thought about it. For grinding and tanking trash, though, it's a lot of fun.

When tanking trash, it also makes you outdps most of the pug dps. Then everyone dies on the boss at 30% and you solo him from there (this actually happened in h-hor once at the second boss). Buff prot pallies! :why_so_serious:

More to the point, it keeps aggro from overzealous and/or clueless dps.

Yeah, I've finished more than a few bosses with only the healer up and at least four I can think of offhand solo. I always imagine the rogue/hunter running to the O-fficial boards with a bunch of "nerf pallies" threads bubbling in his pea-brain.

Also, he will eventually be duoing with my wife's hunter. Would a protection build be good for duoing with a hunter?

Also, speaking of PvP. I remember that in the old days you had no chance unless you were in raid gear. Is it still the same? Is there a viable alternate path?

1. Stoicism isn't that good for anything except pvp.
2. Selling stuff on the AH as you level is a great idea.
3. Paladins scale well with large numbers of enemies.  All three specs level fastest by taking on groups of mobs so long as you don't kill yourself.
4. Prot has more downtime, without stacking Int you would have to block/parry/dodge roughly 12.5 times in 8 seconds for Blessing of Sanctuary to equal Judgments of the Wise, which means you need to AoE farm to be mana efficient.  Spiritual Attunement is a non-factor if you self-heal.
5. Reckoning doubles your white damage.  Prot white damage is shitty.  You're better off getting more avoidance/mitigation/self-heal/damage that scales with adds and pulling another mob.

Anyways, I have to go for like... a week.

Reckoning procs don't (edit: or are not supposed to) proc SoComm.  Check Wowhead.

EDIT2: Wowwiki also says that reckoning doesn't proc SoComm.

I just started playing again, and have a server full of alts.

I have a main at 75 I can't be arsed to play because I'm at some weird spot where I have a ton of group quests (WHY????) no dungeon quests, and can't fly in Northrend for two more fucking levels, even though I have the cash.

I have a mage at 45 that I fucked with yesterday, managed to get from 43 to 45 just doing the random dungeon (one of which I happened to have the full quest load for) and decided to check out the new quest hub in that swampy place. I also futzed with her spells, talents, and tailoring/enchanting stuff.

I've got a death knight I'm painfully skilling up herbalism for, since my main is an engineer, which means "Broke".

The rest is a collection of classes between 10 and 20 that I haven't touched in ages, and whose talent trees have all probably changed like six times since I last touched them.

Still, I had a surprising amount of fun relearning to play my mage (hadn't touched it in six months, hadn't really played it at all in about a year) and the random dungeon thing worked surprisingly well. I do want to play my druid again, though.

None of those Dragonblight group quests are really important story- or gear-wise, just move on to Grizzly Hills or Zul'Drak and abandon them.

Yeah, that was the decision I'd come to. I'm just enjoying the mage. I specced frost, and it's just too fun. WAY too fun. (Admittedly, I'd specced frost because I had, ages ago, intended to PvP with the mage and my experience was that in the bigger battlegrounds, frost mages where a PITA with all the slows and roots, in terms of annoying and impeding a group).

The thing that pissed me off the most, though, was I accidentally deleted my gatherer and auctioneer databases when reinstalling WoW.

The bad news about frost is it is a-w-f-u-l for group pve.

I was sad that they made frost a garbage PvE spec... I have fond memories of my frost mage in BC.

Download the gatherer.db Wowhead file from Wow-interface fix gatherer. 
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info11707-GathererDBWoWHead.html

The auctioneer .db is worthless to you anyway since it's months out of date and you'd have been listing things way off their actual value.  Just run the Auction scan a few times a day for the next few days and this weekend and you'll be good.

I thought it was merely bad these days.

elitistjerks has it as about 15% back from arcane.   Comparing individual mage to individual mage you could come out ahead, but any given person will almost certainly do more damage in a raid as arcane than they would as frost.  But frost is more fun, so nyeah!

It's good enough for pickup groups. I have a bit in arcane, but everything else in frost.

Besides, I'm only level 45, play on a role-playing server, and stick to 5-mans with my mage. I played a BM spec hunter through every major hunter change (FUCK GOOD SPECS!) -- so I played overpowered and laughable beastmasters alike -- and I like frost. I like freezing things.

Speaking of, I need to install recount. I was consistently number 2 on DPS in groups, behind the warlock, and I wasn't trying terribly hard.

Merusk:
Thanks. Finding something like that was my goal for tonight.

Oh yeah it doesn't really matter while leveling. If you think you might go anywhere near a raid at 80 though, you'll want an arcane or fire dual spec option.

Supposedly frost will actually work for raiding again in Cataclysm, we shall see.

All this talk of mages reminds me I have a low 20s mage I could swap out for my druid to play as with my wife. On the downside we'd lose healing but on the upside we'd plow through mobs and I'm guessing XP.

If they put re-worked MC and BWL in, it will be the only thing again!

Ok. So last night I discovered I love dungeon finder as it takes most of the frustration out of trying to find a dungeon.

So, if, on my Pally, I want to do some dungeoneering as I level, which talent spec works best? Also, at end game, same question. I figure as a Pally I should probably queue up as DPS since my heals and tanking don't compare to the classes that specialize in that. Am I right with that?

Any pre-60 instance you can handle any role as any spec if you have a basic idea of which buttons do what and have semi-appropriate gear readied (like, use a shield and some stamina gear if you're tanking).  Nothing hits hard enough that losing aggro is a group wipe, and until the 50s you wouldn't have the end talents anyway.

At 80, any of the three paladin specs work fine in their niche.  Ret does decent dps, prot is a very forgiving way to learn to tank (tons of aoe threat and multiple taunts) and very durable (argent defender ho!), and holy is the preferred tank healer for raids and perfectly fine at 5-mans.   

You are not a hybrid so much as you get to pick 2 out of 3 things to be good at (your two dual-spec choices).

Ok. So. I specced Ret because I figured it'd be the most fun for leveling. I'm currently 61. Is it acceptable as a Pally to sign up for a dungeon as "DPS" considering I could knock some other higher DPS characters out of the running but will bring some off-healing and buffs and such to the table? Is there...ettiquette about this stuff?

I am still considering respeccing as protection but wonder if I'll be able to hold aggro and right now I don't have a one-hand weapon (though I did just get a shield from a quest). I'm walking around with a two handed blue axe I got from a raid back in the day.

How does loot drop from the dungeons these days? I've heard something about marks. So, let's say I go into a random BC dungeon and we kill a boss. Does he drop marks we all get and we collect them and take them to some vendor? Or is it like the "classic" dungeons and he might drop a couple of blues and if I want it I need to hope my rolls are good?

If you have no idea how to tank go as ret a few times and watch the tank...assuming you get a tank worth watching....before you try tanking one. A bad ret pulls down the DPS of the group a bit,  a bad tank wipes the group.

For the billionth time, ret is perfectly good dps. No one thinks ret paladins are bad. Stop thinking they are! Also, leveling up dungeons, no one gives a shit what you are or what your numbers come out as (USUALLY) so long as you aren't a moron, meaning running ahead of the tank, being afk half the time, etc. At 80 people can be bigger dickbags about that sort of stuff, although still no one is going to sneer at a ret paladin existing the way you seem to think they might. The only dungeon finder related reason you might not want to only be ret forever is your dungeon queues take longer than a holy or protection paladin, but that's a personal preference thing, not a "They're all gonna laugh at you!" thing.  :grin:

Pre-80 it is "classic" style, with the addition of if you picked 'random' off the dungeon finder you get a bag o' blue item from pre-TBC, bag o'useless blue item from TBC, and bag o' two triumph badges in WOTLK stuff.   The need/greed rolls are somewhat fixed in that you can't roll on the 'wrong' armor type which is good in preventing greedy ninjas but bad if you want a cloth item for your caster paladin or shaman.

At 80, heroic dungeons and the regular/heroic ICC 5-mans drop triumph badges in addition to the loot.  Triumph are the basic badge, with frost badges being the rarer but better ones that come from (a) your first random heroic of the day, (b) ICC raid, (c) weekly raid quest, and (d) probably someplace else I forgot.  Triumph is what you use to gear up for ICC, basically, and some random dungeoneering in the 70-79 times can get you a little bit of a head start on that (2 badges/day possible).  

I've tanked a few times in the past but I'll be honest, it's not my strength. I'm a decent healer and I'm good at DPS but tanking isn't my strong point. I can do it and am a good offtank where I'm told to "keep that guard busy for a bit while we burn this guy down" but when it comes to keeping multiple mobs on me? I tend to let a straggler go because I get focused too much. Now, if it is AOE tanking in some way that'd probably cover my weakness.

Yeah sorry. I just remember back in the day if you specced Ret people basically rolled their eyes at you and considered you a loser.

So, what I'm thinking is:

Dual Talents:

One, Ret for my "fun" times
The other Protection probably. Maybe I can learn to tank by trying to keep aggro off of my wife's hunter when she gets near my level.

Oh, and as an update, her Hunter and my Druid are 26 now. We're going so fast through levels it's hard to keep decently geared at this point. Last night we hit the random dungeon finder and did the Stockade. After she went to bed I did the deadmines and shadowfang keep.

I noticed noone bothers to have the quests and dungeon crawling is so much different from what I remember. It seemed to work like this.

Warrior charges in, gathers up 5+ enemies. I heal him, everyone else burns them down. Then move to the next room and repeat. The only times we had trouble was when I was too slow telling them I was low on mana. We went through the dungeons at like light speed and the warrior hardly ever got hurt and he wasn't even wearing heirlooms. Though he did have some kind of heroism buff. Is that a new warrior "aura"?

Hey, question -- noted the roll is now need/greed/DE? What's with the DE? How's that work?

It's an alternate to a greed roll that gives you the disenchant materials if there is an enchanter in the group that could disenchant the item that dropped.

Yeah, I remember. Happily, those days are gone, as many of us have told you. You can trust us! In this, at least.  :heart:

That heroism buff you asked about, I believe that is the "hooray, you are doing a PUG!" buff you get through the dungeon finder. I never actually looked at the name for it, but it's basically a bit of a safety net for PUG-ing.

Yeah, this feature is awesome.  :drill:

It really just takes practice, and a thick skin to deal with/tolerate knowitall dpser backseat tank assholes.  

Fortunately, paladin is like the second-best to learn on (druid is the best, they have like 4 buttons, so you can 'learn to tank', i.e., positioning monsters, watching for patrols, anticipating morons, without your own abilities adding to the learning curve).  The paladin has more abilities, but a lot of it is sort of an automatic routine: avenger shield, holy shield, consecrate, judge this, hammer that, and you can pick it up fairly quickly.  When you feel saucy, look up the 96969 rotation.

Warrior and DK are more involved.  I learned tanking on a paladin, but I don't play him much anymore because it is a bit too passive for me now that I finally got the hang of warrior (which took me an incredibly long time).  Plus I love charge so much.   :heart:

That buff could also be the Heroic Presence that draenei can provide, improving chance to hit by 1%.

So the party HAS to have an enchanter?

Second question: Is it rolled as a 'greed' roll? Or is it "needs" then "greeds" and then if no one does those, it's down to DEs?

 The DE rolls are put in with the greed rolls. And yes, the party must have an enchanter.

Ahhh...that's probably it. The random buff seems to be "luck of the draw"

That would explain why the option was always there when I played my mage, but not when I played my hunter....

Also, Violet Hold is weird. I pulled that one yesterday.

Lol, Violet Hold is just Blizz being lazy.. they didn't want to think of a new, extensive instaance layout so they just copied Black Morass from BC and put it in a prison instead...

And you should expect a similar dungeon in Cataclysm in another setting due to it's popularity. I personally love VH given the overall speed of the encounters from start to finish. Black Morass was a shit sandwich because it was poorly tuned, but they got it right in the long run.

I will say, VH is the easiest heroic. It's a breeze with a tank with 21k hp and 3 1.3k dps, even. The mobs do so little damage it's just trivial. Free badges, essentially. Probably why it's popular  :awesome_for_real:

VH is essentially Black Morass done right. That's not lazy design, that's iteration. Which is what good designers do.

I'm at a weird spot in leveling -- (75) and only had one dungeon quest (a single Violet Hold one) so I was running quests out of that Grizzly Hills place and just signed up for a random dungeon (decent XP, money, loot) and hit Violet Hold.

Am I just missing a whole shitload of quests somewhere for dungeons or what?

I was under the impression that dungeon quests came mainly from cities.  It's an impression because I've always played solo and missed most of the dungeons in WoW.

There should be a couple quests for Gundrak in Zul'drak. Not sure about others at that level, but there are usually only 2 or 3 quests per instance anyway.

In your level range there should be a few dungeon quests for Drak'tharon Keep that come at the end of a fairly long set of troll-fighting quests in Grizzly Hills, plus a couple quests for Gundrak that are near the dungeon entrance in eastern Zul'Drak. VH does only have the one quest.

VH Quests are in Dalaran, and there are two. Gundrak has two quests from a dude outside of there. Most of them have quest givers standing really nearby.

There's a VH quest besides Containment?

There's a feeder quest, I believe.

Ah, I just started with the troll stuff. I guess I'm a bit used to the older world, where some of my alts have four or five quests for a dungeon just sitting there. (It does make the occasional random dungeon very profitable).

I'm a bar short of 76. Once I hit 77, I can grab cold-weather flying and get back to enjoying life from the air.

Oh, for the record, any fucking quest that gives me a goddamn controllable pet and tells me to "go do stuff" is a pile of shit. If you give me Bob the Troll Smacker, or whatever his name is, I can't pull out MY pet. I'm a fucking hunter. You know what happens if I hit something equal level? I get the shit knocked out of me while I -- very slowly -- kill it. I got into three fucking fights getting Bob the Troll Smacker down so he could knock out a troll, and each one of them took forever and I almost lost Bob.

That is probably the worst quest in the expansion, FWIW. It actually used to be even worse in terms of not working intuitively at all.

I don't think any of the dungeons in WotLK have any more than 3-4 quests for them at most.  Things like Halls of Lightning are only given after the end of a 45 quest chain in Storm Peaks, Drak'tharon Keep has a similarly long chain for one of the quests given as well.  Gundrak even has a quest that you have to quest so far along in Zul'drak before you are given it (the remaining 2 or so are given any time outside the instance near the flight path).

I like the Utgard Pinnacle method of dungeon quest giving. Some dude right inside the entrance, wanting you to do shit for him.  :heart:

I groan when I get VH on my paladin tank. Divine Plea almost always falls off before the next portal spawns, it's freaking annoying. The time/badge ratio isn't even good. I mean, all of the heroics are a joke at this point so the fact that it's easier than other heroics isn't exactly a great selling point. I like a dungeon where I can set the pace.

They already shortened the time between portals because people complained... maybe an option to fight the first five at once?   :awesome_for_real:

I could get behind that.

And if you groan at the thought of VH, how can you stand HoR? You have a much higher chance of wiping and still can't set your own pace, for the same number of emblems.

Yes, HoR is the worst possible dungeon you can get if you're doing randoms. HoS/PoS also suck.

I think cold-weather flying is trainable at 70 now. 

Only if you already have an 80 to buy the book for you.

Got to have a level 77 to buy the book. My main just dinged 76. I keep putting the game down. :)

68 with the book! 77 without though, alas.

Pretty sure that quite a lot of the dungeon revamps in Cataclysm are going to be set up like this e.g. the ghost couple outside Scholomance will be moved inside, etc.

That's quite reasonable when no one's actually walking up to dungeon portals anymore.

That would be nice. Instead of "You there, go waaaaaay over yonder, kill this guy in this instance, then return to me when you've forgotten where I am," it'll be "You there, progress through this place and kill this guy then return to me at the beginning when you're done." Lol

My general distaste for the perceived direction of LotRO and the slightly-suspect allure of Cataclysm has made me want to ask two n00b questions which are on-topic:

1. When does Cataclysm drop?
2. What server?

:oh_i_see:

Cataclysm has no release date, but the smart money is on November. It could be pushed to January if things go rough in beta though.

1.  Like Paelos said, probably this year.  Novemberish.
2.  People are pretty spread all over.  There's a highish Alliance population (boo) on Doomhammer.  I play (currently unsubed) Horde on Shu'halo and convinced Nebu to play there for like an hour or two. :awesome_for_real:  I'll probably resub about a month before Cat to regain my bearings and finish a twink set for a goblin hunter.  Most anyone you play with can give you some cash/bags to make the start of the game less irritating. 

/whine
...but I don't want to play Alliance...

:oh_i_see:

OK, gameplan is to wait until after Cat drops and then roll up a newb on some server TBD.  I'd like to play with some F13 people but apparently we are all still assholes ten years later.  Enedwaith will be out well before then and I can find out if Turbine is really going to butcher LotRO dungeons as much as I fear they might.  I mean, if LotRO is turning into a game for the Looty McLootersons, I might as well just go play the real deal.

I'd be thinking somewhere betwen Nov and Jan.

I know there are a couple of us on Whisperwind. It's an old-line Alliance dominated server. Huge population and lots of available resources. Also--from what I can gather--a bit less douchebaggery in the raid scene, though that isn't really saying all that much.

Off the top of my head I think it's Ingmar, Sjofn, sickrubik, proudft, Fordel, Lantyssa, Mattemeo + other people whom I might misspell.  So, you're not missing much.  :why_so_serious:

But everyone else is really spread out all over the place.  Anyone else playing on the same server is pretty much by coincidence. 

And yes, alliance does suck.  Plus, they won't have goblins.

Yeah, we tried that whole "all f13ers on 1 server thing!" and it ended up crashing and burning for a variety of reasons.  I tend to stick to my old server just because it's home and I've leveled 8 characters to 80 and geared them out for raids, so starting over is an expensive proposition for me as there is no guarantee of raiding action.

If the server/faction transfer process wasn't so monetized, you'd see more people moving and coming together.  It'd cost me a decent chunk of change to move somewhere, and I wouldn't want to leave (RL) friends that already transferred to hang out with me behind.

I would totally transfer servers if my existing guild crashed and burned and all my friends there left, but it would have to be for people who play as much or as consistently as I do (aka raid every week).  Every time I've attempted something like that, it never works out because people's schedules are too different or the casual\hardcore discussion always rears its ugly head.  I mean it's not like one of my legion of alts would be missed from my main server ;-)

I leveled a DK to 80 on Stormrage but I usually play on Turalyon (hence the name). It was just discouraging! I knew nobody, and nobody knew me, and very few people knew I knew how to play my class, so finding a raiding guild was next to impossible. Wouldn't recommend a server transfer unless you know several people there or others are transferring with you.

And what is this aversion to Alliance?! Is there a reason for it, or is it solely because you started on Horde side?

GM-ship on Doomhammer is not in the hands of an f13er anymore, btw, so I wouldn't look to that as a real viable destination for any kind of pan-f13 play destination.

To be completely honest the guild atmosphere is probably way, way too PC for many of you anyway.

It looks like your cat is the GM now.   :awesome_for_real:

She's a Tyrant! :(

Two reasons:

1) At release, Alliance attracted the kiddies and mouth-breathers.

2) We all love brown.  A lot.

F13 guilds in WoW tend not to work because we all have conflicting goals, play styles and play times.  Not to mention those who play Horde always whine they want to be on a PVP server, despite it being a pain in the ass more than anything worthwhile.  :awesome_for_real: It would work better if we just glommed on to an existing # of guilds to provide some filler.

I know a bunch of folks on Zul'jin Horde side, but they're all so casual they've never even seen Naxx beyond what I dragged them through after they got the ToC badge gear.

In my time on the horde side(only recently) I saw no fewer mouth-breathers or middle school type people... but I only played alliance at release, and I was 12 then... proving your point, I suppose. And what's this about loving brown?

This has been true roughly never.


Unless you think Cowinator and Bullzeye telling chuck norris jokes in the barrens is the picture of grace and maturity.

YES.  I leveled to 58 on a PVP server and it was a miserable time with the roving gank squads of 70s coming to punish everyone.

Basically if I were looking to start fresh on a new server I would find one that wasn't always full, but had a high population on the side I wanted (check the raid accomplishments server-wide if you are into that end game).  Then I'd try and find a leveling guild to at least get some people to play with (and not feel bad about ditching if they are stuck in perpetual 40-50's mode).  Regarding getting into the end-game, badge gear is your friend and you should run run run as much as possible to get as much of it as possible (easy with random heroics via the LFD tool).  Choose a role and know it well.

Oh... I would hate to level on a PvP server. It would be like doing AV as a 51, but all the time, and with not just 60s trying to gank you all the time, but 80s too...

It sucks, particularly in Hellfire where level 80's drop out of the sky. 

I'll adjust that statement to my beta experience where horde was loaded with 1337 pvp-wannabe kiddies where alliance was just loaded with kiddies.  Barrens chat has always been painful, you win on that one.

Trade channel on my server is always interesting, Alliance or Horde... way better than Barrens chat. Always a few wonderful trolls online.

Alliance just attracted more people initially.  The WoW population seems to carry a fixed proportion of assholes and kiddies.  So, using the magical powers of math, you just ended up with more assholes, kiddies, and retards at launch.   Then the great Blood Elf rebalancing happened and the assholes began to migrate.  

Night Elf hunters became Blood Elf pallies! Lawl. And now they're DKs.

<sob>


We are a pretty PC guild, as far as that all goes. I dunno if we're TOO PC, depends on how badly you absolutely must use the words "gay" or "rape" or what have you to describe your various adventures. (If you had an actual gay romp, that's cool though.)

If there was an f13 Horde guild I would probably visit! I really like Moon Guard/Horde, though, even without a guild.  :heart:

Me and issa are doing the horde thing currently with a group of friends.

This is what we did in LotRO and it worked out great.


Eh... I'll consider Alliance if that's all I have to work with.  I don't act like an ass in game.  Much.  But if I'm going to play a white guy, I might as well stay in LotRO.

Do I actually need other people to level?  Really?

You definitely don't need other people to level.

You might not need other people to level but I'd say it makes leveling much less of a drag to have a couple friends to do it with.

What I've noticed that horde players like patting themselves on the back just because they rolled horde. Even some of my RL friends do this. No sense in it, but I suppose you do have to roll as something. Still, draenei >> everything else, so I can't figure it.

I went ally for two reasons: 1) my EQ guild that transferred over decided we were doing ally on WW, so there it was. 2) I won't play circus freaks or barnyard animals, so horde was out from the getgo.

Some of this, but mostly I like playing circus freaks.  Especially if I am in the most cartoony MMO this side of ToonTown, I need to do something to stand out.  See previous comment on playing white people.

Aw, I wasn't sobbing at you. Rasix was the one breaking my heart!

You definitely don't need other people to level, although I like having a guild line to shoot the shit on most of the time. And you don't have to be a white guy! You could be a draenei!  :grin:

You could be a black guy if you changed the skin tone.

I don't even know what that is.  I will assume it is something I might see in Twilight.

Also, sometimes I quote for comedy instead of context.


Ho hum.  I wasn't being that literal.  Dark-skinned humans are about as boring as pale ones... and I can also play one of those in LotRO.  I do actually play a dark-skinned dwarf.  No... I want to be a goblin.

That's just a puke green guy!

:why_so_serious:

And draenei are blue space goats. Epic.  :oh_i_see:

Who are on a side with white guys, short white guys, shorter white guys, and smurf elves.  Coming soon: winger.

I have to say, I prefer the Alliance elf to the Horde elf in general. But the boy Horde elves are  :heart:.

Meaning Sjofn thinks they're FABULOUS.

...and night elves are purple!

Heck, I was even told that (as my NE warrior) when I hit Honor Hold. I was walking past some soldiers towards the 'smith and heard something to the effect of, "What's with the creepy purple elves?". I did a literal ingame double take on that one.

But purplez r epic

And also sort of hot. Certainly the hottest males in the game, anyway.

Plus they're the only elf in the game that has an ass!

Oh yes, hot pixel ass!

I was bored so I decided to download the 10 day trial and see if I could get started in WoW again.

Nope sorry, uninstalled.

I don't know what it is, but I have a really hard time playing again after dropping it ages ago. Was never able to pick up AC or SWG after leaving, it's like "eww leftovers" or something.

Weird that EVE doesn't seem to have that problem - maybe it's the available options, rather than running through the same noob area with all the same quests I've done before?

Ah well, I don't have time for games these days anyways!  :uhrr:

All my toons are stuck on Mal'Ganis and I hate that server.  I only have one 80 though so it's not a big deal, but I have a 60 priest 40 something rogue, 70 paladin, 70 something warrior.

I would love to switch servers but it's cost prohibitive.  I suppose I could just give all the loots to my 80 and transfer.. but meh.  The Mal'Ganis server is full of mouth breathers.

I'll be subbing a month prior to cata to gear up my new goblin with some heirlooms.

They are all full of mouth breathers sadly...

Mal'ganis is the #2 US server for raiding 25s so I'd imagine it's quite populated. Usually the more populated a server the more the mouth breathers stand out.

Proudmoore continues to get deader and deader as we in the doldrums of the expansion waiting game. Everytime I attempt to log in during a weeknight, I'm greeted with 1-2 on the friends list, 30 people in the raid channel, and about 4 in guild. It's usually about 3-4x that on a regular day with something going on. I know Blizzard can't possibly keep content rolling right up to release, but 4 more months on pure estimates seems a long time to wait.

Considering how popular a game it is, yes, it does seem like a long time to wait.  The introduction of content doesn't seem to have kept pace with the sub numbers going up (or at least it doesn't seem so to me; this is one of those things that I may well be misremembering, though).

I agree it feels too long to wait, but for some reason our guild is at a pretty good high right now.  I can't explain it.  It is a pretty good mix of old people coming back and new people joining.  I do think the new people are just transfers from other servers to join other members, etc.  So, probably not an indication at all of overall growth for the game.

I'd like to know the current subscriber population. I know wow claims it's XMillion player-base, although how many of those people are still playing this late into an expansion, before other members re-sub to get prepared for cataclysm. I would assume around now would be the lowest the subscriber base has been in a while, but that's me talking out of my ass.

Can they still count the Chinese subs?  Has Cataclysm ever been released over there?

Even if its only the North American player base I would be interested.

If they have Cataclysm I'm signing up for a Chinese account now!

I don't think they've released sub numbers since their whole China vs. Foreign MMO issue.

Bah.  It took me this long to realize my brain fart.  I meant WotLK, of course. :argh:

I don't think so either; I imagine they lost a fair number of "subs" in that whole debacle, and see no reason to release a "WoW currently has 5m* US subscribers" Press Release.

*Spoiler: number pulled out of my ass.

I have chosen Kirin Tor.  Horde.

I'll take that as a direct repudiation.   :awesome_for_real:

That was my starting server!  So many lost and forgotten characters.

I think Kirin Tor is part of the Rampage battlegroup. I seem to recall seeing a few in LFD dailys...I think. Makes me wonder how the server pop is or if I'm just misremembering.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/219068-activision-blizzard-q2-2010-earnings-call-transcript

WOTLK never came out in china so Cataclysm wont anytime soon.  Based on that financial report China is about to get WOTLK for the first time. 

"I have some great news to share about what World of Warcraft in China. Our partner, NetEase, has received official written approval from JPP for Wrath of the Lich King. There is one remaining regulatory approval needed before the expansion can launch, but this is a positive sign for bringing our latest content to Chinese players"

I shall retort that I cannot repudiate one who is not currently subscribed. :grin:

I just returned to WoW after a few month absence.  None of my friends are playing at the moment.

I faction-changed my balance/resto druid from horde to alliance (same server), because mostly what I do is fool around in the battlegrounds.  Went from mostly-win-but-have-to-wait-15-min-to-queue, to mostly-lose-but-instaqueue.  The  communities seem about equal on the dick population.  Some guy opined that nobody ought to sign up for battlegrounds unless they had at least a 4900 gear score.  Bgnds r srs bznss.

I've played resto in the battlegrounds, and gone balance in a few heroics.  Terrible dps in my couple of crafted blues and wrathful/furious armor.  At this point, it doesn't matter all that much what I do - most people are so geared they easily carry me, but what a shitty shitty design for a game, particularly as we get further away from the launch of the last expansion. 

I saw a guy wanting 5k GS for a random heroic yesterday, Xanthippe. Demanding 4900 for BGs no longer surprises me.

Semi-on this topic - are there any good current class guides around? I've had a couple of dickheads bitch about my DPS in the last session, and while I assume it's mostly because my gear is 2 years out of date, I'm wondering if there's more I could be doing or new tricks that are used. I'm a fire mage at present.

You have to pay a trainer 1k to get the dual spec toggle thing? - I need to save since the last thing I did before quitting was buy a mammoth.

Dual Spec is 1k, yes. The only place I know of with class guides is Elitist Jerks, but I don't see a thread there for fire mages.

Fire mage at 80: put living bomb on every mob every time it's up (you do have the glyph that allows it to crit, right?  Good).  Put scorch debuff on the mob you are targeting (don't necessarily have to, it disappears from some mobs and I can't really find any *good* info regarding it), spam fireball unless you get a hot streak for an instant pyroblast.  Rinse and repeat.  If you aren't hit capped get there.  It's a bit more involved than arcane mages (arcane blast, missile barrage as it procs) but it's a bit heavier on the DPS for multiple mobs.

As for people bitching about your DPS, unless it's H-HoR or a raid with a stiff enrage timer, tell them to get bent if you are above 2k.

Tell them to get bent anyways.

That too.  Anyone who complains I usually ignore them or tell them to stuff it.

*cough* I do now. I had a Polymorph-dot one in it's place since I used to do a lot of PVP to get my gear back in the day.



Been pretty much doing that, but with more scorch, since it's got a faster cast time. I'm probably miles from the hit cap at this point though.



I just ignore them. Except for one massive douche who just wouldn't STFU about anyone in the group, but I bailed there so it's ok. No idea where it is atm, but probably well below 2k, since I'm rusty as all fuck and undergeared.

One last question - just bought Dual Spec. Given that Mages aren't going to be Tanking or Healing, and that I'll definately be keeping my fire spec, is the current wisdom in favour of Frost or Arcane? I already know how to play a Frost Mage, since that's my wife's character, but just before I spec frost, I was wondering what Arcane is supposed to be like these days (I've never specced that way).

Arcane is great DPS, particularly shines on single targets (i.e. raid bosses). Fire scales better with gear but at low-mid gear tiers Arcane seems to out-DPS fire. Arcane is a bit boring to play though. Arcane Blast until Missile Barrage procs at which point Arcane Missiles. Repeat.

Frost is more of a levelling and PvP spec. It's excellent for solo levelling because of the survivability. Ice Barrier rocks.

I would drop the fire spec and pick up arcane and frost. Arcane is the highest dps spec in PvE, and frost is the best for soloing(you're almost incapable of dying).

Depending on your gear and spec (which we don't know your talent choices ;-) ) you need between 11% and 18% hit for raid bosses.  Use less Scorch and more Fireball, and get your crit numbers into the 35% range to make fire really shine if you want to keep it.  Basically you want to keep hot streaks up as much possible to get all those wonderful DoTs on the mobs you are targeting.  One thing to consider, if the mobs die REALLY fast in your group, Living Bomb won't necessarily go off on all of your targets and your DPS will go down.  If I find the tank keeping decent aggro on all mobs and the group damage high, I just use Blizzard on groups.

My Arcane and fire specs are both neck and neck for DPS on single targets and AoE, so I don't see one particularly better or worse than the other.  Arcane is much simpler to do though and I like it for the no-brainer aspects.  I love frost for leveling and PVPing, but if you try and bring a frost mage to a raid people bitch because the damage is considerably lower.

Oh, frost is useless for raids  :oh_i_see: and yeah, fire can compete with arcane on a good mage, but arcane is easier. Depends on your preference,  really.

OK, I'll spec Arcane for the dual. I won't get rid of fire, though - I loves my fire mage. My wife is Frost specced as I mentioned, and we duo PVE quests so we get the slows and such from her and the pyroblasting from me. Arc looks like the best bet for random heroics with random douchebags though, if it's simple and high dps. And I guess it'll be something new to play with for awhile. Especially while I'm still undergeared.

Selby - I found that in some groups the mobs do die really effing fast, which is why I've been using scorch. I was always a fireball guy until a friend talked me into scorch before I stopped. But then again, Scorch had 5 ticks you needed to build up back then, so I guess it's changed a bit. I was using it more to get more spells off before the mobs fall down and have a chance for an instant pyroblast. It's also why I was thinking Frost might have been good, since you can jack up the damage from the Blizzards. But anyway - Arcane it is (for now).

Next question - is there a good Arcane spec tree guide for Heroics?

Fire surpasses Arcane at 264-277 gear levels for raids but Arcane is way better for heroics because you can just blow all your cooldowns and spam Arcane Blast on the boss for insane DPS. Also your Blizzard is better and trash dies too fast for LB (usually).

Really? I learned something today!

Try this (http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=8&tal=23002513010033015032310251532103000000000000000000000000002032030010000000000000000000).  I've been spec'd that for a good 6-7 months now (after they made some changes) and I do top 3 DPS in the 264-277 tier gear level of my raids.  Get the Arcane Blast, Arcane Missile, and Molten Armor glyphs and do the same rotation I stated before (4 stacks of arcane blast, missile barrage as it procs or just use arcane missiles instead).  Once you get the hit cap (11% for most) gem for +SP above all else and toss in +sp\+haste gems as available for the color matches.

According to WoL Fire is actually quite a bit ahead (4000+ DPS higher) if you look at the 25 heroic parses, especially like Saurfang or BQL where Heroism is popped late due to Molten Fury. When you have 90%+ crit and 1000+ haste you can put up some insane numbers (only thing that even comes close is fury warriors with shadowmourne).

I've read all that too... but I've just yet to actually make it happen.  Maybe I need more practice ;-)  I did pull 27k on a trash pull, so I know crazy numbers are definitely possible =P

A lock in my guild did 94k on a fleshreaper trash pull.

Thanks. Will definately go Arcane on both characters with that spec and glyphs for the Heroic DPS, and gonna stick with Fire for fun duoing.  :drill:

Be warned, you will be an agro magnet in most heroics. High AOE dps will pull a mob or 3 off of a lot of tanks, so be prepared to ice-block and/or eat the odd death. Don't be afraid of deliberately slowing down your dps with lower-geared/skilled tanks  :awesome_for_real:

That's cool, and I've already done a bit of that with my fire spec. I'm looking at getting as much DPS possible as going so I can just keep flying under the radar so I can gear up. I'll probably also have to do my wife's mage as well.  :uhrr:

Oh - the LFG tool seems to have completely morphed into the Random heroic dungeon finder. Is there still a quest-lfg tool? There's some group quests I'd like to do. Also, is there a way to set up for older dungeons, like TBC ones. Some heroics there I'd like to knock over, partially for the achievements and also to get old, old quests out of my log...

There's no quest-lfg tool. The /lfg tool works for BC dungeons while they're in you're level range. Once you outlevel them, you have to go to them manually.

fuck. That thing was useful.  :heartbreak:

Another question - is there an option to turn off the guildmate auto-fill in the mailbox? So it can be like it used to be and just autofills people from your actual friend list?

If you use Postal (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/postal.aspx) you can configure exactly what you would like to AutoComplete from: Alts, Recent, Contacts, Friends, Guild.

Feck. So many mods.

On another note - Emblems of Heroism and Valor - are these, for want of a better term, discontinued now? I was looking at some heirloom gear for my alt(s), but much of it uses these tokens. (Can you mail heirloom items cross-faction?) Also tossing up between some Stone Keepers' Shard Heirloom gear, or the Black War Mammoth. Leaning towards the Mammoth actually, since it won't be achievable once Cata comes out and these dungeons are forgotten about...

The old emblems are for gems and heirlooms.

You can also use stone keeper shards to buy a clickable widget that gives 2000 honor and is BoA. Nice for mailing honor to an alt, or use the honor to buy gems in Stormwind.

Sure can.

And the old badges are useless except for getting the gear that you can buy from them.  When starting out a fresh 80 some of that gear is pretty good (200-226 range) so there's no reason not to get it (especially if there isn't a better item from the ICC heroics).

Heh, I think you guys missed his point. You can downgrade from Triumph > Conquest > Valor > Heroism, so you can still get those Heirloom items for your alts.

How does that work? Downgrading I mean? Looks like I'm going to have a ton of Triumph over time. Also, is there really a max of 2 Frost badges per day or is there another way to get them? I worked out that it'll take 45 days min of running daily heroics to get a chestpiece. Which seems slightly excessive. :awesome_for_real:

The triumph vendor sells conquest badges at the low low price of 1 triumph for 1 conquest.  The conquest vendor sells valor badges at 1 conquest for 1 valor.  The valor vendor sells.... eh, you get the drift.

You can shift-click to buy a bunch, thankfully.

Frost badges are limited, yep.  You get a few from doing the ICC 5-man quests for the first time, 2 for your daily heroic, a couple from VOA, 5 for the weekly raid, and the rest each week from actually going into ICC and killin' raid bosses.

There's also a money changer NPC in the sewer inn that works for all.

Note that this is the only instance I know of that is not limited the the normal 20 at a time deal.  I was buying heirlooms and needed to shift 75 and found it out by accident.

Shift-clicking is limited by what the item stacks to; there has never* been a hard-cap of 20.

*at least not in WotLK.

Frosts drop from the weekly raid quest, and from running ICC and the top guy in VoA. The 2 frosts per day thing is more a bone thrown to people to let them get some mileage out of the dungeons than something intended to be the primary path to that gear. If all you're planning to do is the triumph-dropping heroics anyway then you don't really need the frost badge stuff anyway.

Probably one of those things I never really put 2 and 2 together.  Most things you could buy had a stack limit of 20, so 20's what you could buy.  The more you know.  Not quite as bad as figuring out at lvl 40 on my priest, note my soon to be 3rd 60 at the time, that you could eat and drink at the same time, but close.

As mentioned the 2/day is a bone thrown to folks who don't want to raid.  There's also a something you should know about what pieces you should buy.  Don't buy a Leg or Glove using frost badges.  Those drop off the Archavon instance bosses which are easily PUG'd after a Wintergrasp battle.  You only get one shot a week at the 25 and 10 man versions like any other raid but it's still better to do that than to blow frost badges on these pieces. 

The best pieces to pick up using your limited frost badges are (imo) your trinkets, then your rings/ belts/ etc. (Unless you're of a class where the T9s are equiv to the T10 bits.)   Only after that would I buy armor, because it's so damn expensive to get.   Without raiding you're not going to be able to get anything good for those slots out of instances and the triumph badges are better spent on your T9 armor bits and then heirlooms for alts and then gems for the AH.  Besides Full T9 is way overgeared for dailies and heroics and the first zone in Cata will replace most of your items. (Hello B.C.!)

I'm going for the full T9 set, and both rings. Figure I'll use my limited frost on trinkets, actually. Still got to figure out what to do about a ranged weapon.

Once I get the full T9 set, I'll get the heriloom items. You can get a LOT of triumph badges just doing a few heroics.

I got this gun (http://www.wowhead.com/item=50444) from the AH for my hunter when I hit 80, haven't regretted it since. Yes, I know it's a tank gun... it's also fairly cheap (I bought it for 1k) and due to the way how hunters scale with raw weapon damage/dps (see also here (http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2010/05/rowans-rifle/)), it does more damage than any non-raid weapon and raid weapons before the middle/end of ICC10. If you're BM spec, it's even better than some of the ICC25 ranged weapons due to its fast speed. With that gun and zero raid gear I can do 4.5k sustained dps in heroics and 7k in raids single-target as survival spec while also providing replenishment, which isn't too shabby imo.

If you don't want to blow money on the AH, the next best ranged weapon is this crossbow (http://www.wowhead.com/item=50262) from heroic pit of saron. Next step down is this gun (http://www.wowhead.com/item=47568) from heroic TOC and this gun (http://www.wowhead.com/item=49813) from normal pit of saron. I recommend against buying the 'intended BOE epic gun' (http://www.wowhead.com/item=44504), it is much worse than any of the alternatives and way too expensive..

Really? They're going the Hellfire route again? Didn't they get lots of complaints last time?

I was hoping that the heroic gear could be useful for a few levels at least -compared to the frostsavage gear we were wearing when we stopped playing

I don't know if they got "a lot" of complaints relative to their actual playerbase. I know the raiders were mostly annoyed, but back then that wasn't really a lot of people.

Another possibly-dumb question. I just got my triumph badge hat. Looks like shoulders next, then the wand. Should I be looking at the Hateful Gladiator's Chest and Legs? - there doesn't seem to be an upgrade path using triumph badges for those slots, and as we've seen, Frost Badges will take forever.

or is there something else?

There is indeed something else - if you go to the actual cloth vendors in the tailor shop they have the T9 pieces for sale - hat, shoulders, chest, pants, gloves. For most classes you want to hit the 4 piece set bonus so I would probably be looking at buying the T9 shoulders rather than the higher level off-set ones unless you have an unexciting 4 piece bonus on your T9.

By this point the only folks who'll be truly pissed are the ones with the legendaries that'll be replaced in the first zone or two.   It was a shocker for some of the old raiders who were used to the EQ model of "This will last you until the next raid progression, all that crap off of grinding mobs is for you to vendor to the plebeians who don't know better."

ergh. I went to the vendor in the alliance compound tonight, because I thought that was the only place to trade in the tokens. I bought the 75-point hat, and the 95-point one would have been achievable tonight as well and is even better (and has set bonuses). Fuuuuck.
And yes, my "tradeback" timer is up.

The 75-badge hat is usually your best option anyway, don't worry.   I think the only time I would consider set hat and 45-badge shoulders is if there is a bunch of unneeded +hit on the hat or something.

But yeah, the way they have the equipment split up is really confusing.  You can also shoot up to the tournament and one of the vendors up there has the whole set on him if you don't want to page through the armor dudes in Dalaran to find the right one.

The 95 would be a frost emblem one so don't beat yourself up over that. For most people the 'best' setup is offset 75 badge hat (ilvl 245), 4 pieces of T9 (ilvl 232). So, buying the 245 hat was probably the right thing to do.

I do enough heroics that I'll probably hit it sooner or later, though I need to gear up to do heroic ToC or PoS (I don't think I can do PoS on heroic yet. Maybe).

Right now, I'm using a titanium bow of some sort.

If you can't do HToC yet you're not geared enough for HPoS.   You're probably well-off enough for normal of both and the normal version also drops purples.

Frankly, I just hit the "Random" button and let the LFG thing assign me a group and a dungeon. It's working well so far, and if it sucks, I just go back to whatever daily and requeue. Blizzard does some really rough gear-checking for that.

It's amusing that I have a purple staff (I actually stared at it for a good minute when it dropped, because the stats were obviously for a hunter -- tons of agi, sta, +AP and +crit) but it was a fucking staff. So I'm carrying that thing around, waiting for a decent gun to drop. Isn't there an engineered purple gun -- or did they not add one for WoTLK for the top-level?

That's the one I linked in my previous post (the nesingwary 4000). It sucks compared to drops, it's overpriced (if you're AHing it) and takes too many annoying materials + requires a way-too-high skill level (if crafting for yourself), so don't bother. Like I said, if you want to get a BOE ranged weapon (instead of drops), "Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets" is your best bet.

Edit: As for melee weapons, there are some blue staves to start with, the staff of trickery from h-VH is good for a heroic drop (I assume that's what you have). After that the next step up is Marrowstrike (polearm) from heroic TOC, and then either a mix of the 1-handers from H-POS and H-FOS or the Orca Hunter's Harpoon (polearm) from H-HOR. I -think- there are some decent 1handers with +agi and stuff in the normal mode ICC dungeons, but I haven't run them too much to remember.

"Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets" drops so much in ICC that I've been seeing the AH prices dropping as the supply seems to be exceeding demand on my server (Bloodhoof)

Yup. I bought mine for 1k, but I've been seeing it for 600-700g nowadays. What is extra funny is people trying to sell the Nesingwary 4000 for the same price.  :oh_i_see:

Problem with the Nesingwary is it has to sell for a certain price or the engineer can make more money just selling the components. Some might not have gotten the memo, but I know I haven't made one in about a year.

Anyone out there a shadow priest? If so how do they play at endgame? What I mean by that is, what is their style like? I have a feral druid and I'm not a huge fan of their unforgiving super reactive play styles. I'd have no problem going over to a spammy class.

Also, having you and your mount in shadow form is just cool.

Bad news - shadow priests are the unforgiving super reactive play style of the ranged classes.   :oh_i_see:

They are not as complicated as cat druids by like, two things to keep track of, but they are by far the most complicated of the ranged dps:


You start off with Vampiric Touch (a dot with a cast time), then Devouring Plague (an instant dot).  Whenever either of those wears off, you need to reapply it.

Then after that start you need to get your Misery stacks up, so you Mind Flay once or twice to get that going.  Then Shadow Word: Pain (another instant dot, but will not need to be reapplied since later Mind Flays will refresh it).

Then you use Mind Blast whenever it is up and Mind Flay whenever it is not, while reapplying any of the other stuff that falls off.  It is quite the jugglng act, but fairly fun.

(For AOE you just lazily Mind Sear, but a cat druid would just Swipe then, so no difference there.)

 :cry:

What you want is a Moonkin.


You cast Nuke A until the magical moon says you cast Nuke B.

I guess Moonfire and Insect Swarm DoTs are out of the rotation these days?? I haven't played a boomkin since BC, and you kept the dawts up then.

You keep both up, but there is no special order or priority or anything like a shadow priest.



If you are in the super awesome ICC gear, you can even drop Moonfire entirely.

Elemental shaman is even easier, really, since your rotation is more predictable and it only has one DoT to keep up instead of 2. Also the elemental DoT doesn't make you go 'arghghgh I need to recast but I'll lose precious eclipse time', it has more interaction with the regular nukes in that it pretty much HAS to be up for lava burst.

Arcane mage is the faceroll prizewinner though.

And Eclipse always procs right as you need to reapply Moonfire and Insect Swarm.  Always.

Yeah I got some fair moonkin gear, but he's not my favorite playstyle. The reason I asked about the SP was because I'm probably going to level up some fresh new alts in Cataclysm.

Elemental Shaman you say? This is an intriguing development.

How's your connection? Playing elemental is just  :ye_gods: if your ping fluctuates wildly or you have packet loss. DPSing in highly mobile fights is also bloody annoying.

I'm not sure there's any caster that's very forgiving about ping issues. Affliction locks maybe, but it is pretty bad if you miss a refresh or whatever.

True that. Elemental rotation is pretty easy up until you add movement and lag into the equation, just wanted to warn him. Leveling shamans should be way less obnoxious in Cataclysm too. At the moment I wouldn't really recommend it, at least not as elemental.

Frost Mage.

I'm just...gonna blizzard those guys why Winter's Chill stacks. I guess if it's a boss, I'll use frostbolt.

Of course, mine's level...52. I suspect they get more spells. :)

Oh, the pain of restraint.

Man, even I know that frost isn't-oh wait. Uh, nothing.

Did I forget the green? :)

I admit, I'm a little spoiled because my mage is stuck running BRD at 52. So it really is just a shit-ton of blizzards, broken only by the random boss.

Elemental shaman is a LOT easier than shadow priest. Enhance is a lot more interesting and challenging to play. Shadow priest is a micromanaging headache to even get regular DPS, let alone stellar DPS.

Especially when almost everything (sometimes even bosses  :why_so_serious:) in a heroic dies before you can get your DPS cycle going and your alternative (mind sear spam) is kinda weak in pulls of only 2-3-4 mobs.

Ramp-up time = suxxor.

Destruction warlock are fairly easy fun.  Three buttons ftw.  Actually 4, but most of it's three buttons. Cast immolate, keep Chaos bolt and Conflag on cool down and cast incinerate when they are.  They blow things up right fine.  They are real fun in the 70 pvp bracket.  That's where you three button people. 

Heck, even DKs suffer from this. Every try and get diseases up with a bunch of T10 dps? Isn't really possible. Basically, it reduces you to throwing D&D and BB spam. Bo-ring. Enhance is even worse--you're always out of mana from dropping totems every 5-10 seconds.

Still, characters geared like this really wouldn't be doing heroics at all if it weren't for the badge system. Considering the alternative, I can deal with it, but it makes for some seriously boring gameplay every night as you do your "chores".

I hate warlocks in PvP. It doesn't matter how fast I kill you, I know I'm going to die shortly thereafter thanks to the 43 million DoTs I have slowly crushing me.

Of course, most of my PvP experience is as a hunter wherein I have a grand total of jack shit with which to fix that. I mean, at least druids I can throw up Aspect of the Leaf and pretend it helps.

I agree with you there.  Warlocks were the bane of my hunter in the 70s bracket.  Just about everyone else is kiteable.  You have to get the drop on locks or be in a pack with a healer.  About the only ones I did not worry about were the demonology locks.  Felguards are nasty, but you can burst the lock down before the felguard can do enough to you.  Deflection with the spell bouncing can help if you catch the dot application instantly.  They are going to get corruption on you, but deflection can ususally catch CoA, UA and Haunt.  But three minutes is a long CD in PvP.  If I get that off, make a beeline for the healing hut or hope a healing buff was up.

I generally only drop totems for fights I know will be somewhat longer than the typical non-ICC heroic trash fight. Of course, some people then bitch at you to drop them, but oh well.

People bitch about EVERYTHING. They bitch about your gear, your spec, your DPS, that you dropped or didn't drop totems that you dropped the wrong totems, that your rotation is wrong.

Fuck, if there's one universal it's that there's always going to be some asshole telling you how to do your job -- mostly while utterly failing at his.

"You need to respec blah-blah-blah". Shut up, dickweed. Either my DPS, my healing, or my ability to hold aggro is sufficient or it's not.

Wow. your battlegroups must be fucked up. People barely say a word in the heroics on mine. maybe 2-3/5 people will say "hello" and then "thanks for group" at the end with pretty much nothing else the rest of the time.

Actually, mine ARE pretty good about that. Our problem is more the "Oh, I dinged, leaving the dungeon now" or "Whatever I wanted didn't drop off this boss, leaving" type.

But when you get the bitchers and whiners...oh damn, is it ever annoying as fuck. Especially when it's some fucker bitching about your job, because he'd rather blame you than himself. (Healers who can't be assed to heal anyone but the main tank, tanks who can't be arsed to watch the healer's mana, DPS that doesn't bother with anything beyond auto-attack or doesn't watch aggro.....fuckers who tab-target, aggro another group, then rage-quit over getting wiped...).

My BG is generally quiet on all pugs. Usually I'm the only one joking around on there.

That's creepy though, lol. It's like playing with bots. They just remain silent, even if you ask a question of them.

I'm on the same server as Paelos, so same BG as well. I have to say, I prefer the mostly-silence of them compared to most conversation on WoW. Occasionally you'll get a group where the people chat, and most of the time, other players as faceless bots are polite enough "can I get some food pls mage?" etc, and frankly, that's good enough for me when stacked up against the PUGs I used to get into on my own server or trade/city/etc chat.

Our BG's have constant bitching going on.  Sometimes I'll get somebody whining before we even begin.  I like to play BG's, but I'd really like to see battlegroups increased in size or something.  Hardly anything changes in ours.  I'm also waiting to see what the Cata changes will be for PvP in BG's, etc.  If they can limit the amount of premade groups constantly owning pug's over and over all day long, I'm all for it.  It should be PuG vs. Pug or premade vs. premade, nothing else.

I even stepped into a premade group to see if it got any better.  Hell, now it is even worse on the other side of it.  Complete roll-over on the other side.  The real kick in the pants is that since it isn't for a random daily, I get less for a win than I was with a loss for the random.  Plus, I have no chance at my 25 Arena Points.

I'm finding it hard to understand why premades do it in the first place.  For the feeling of the wins?!

Oh in pvp, the bitching never ends on any battlegroup that's losing. The difference is in the pug dungeon running.

While what I said still stands, I mistook your use of BG to mean Battlegrounds, not Battle Groups.  Reading too fast today to catch the difference.  Carry on!

Before random battlegrounds premades were more useful since you get a lot more honor from winning and a little from losing with no added honor from the system. Now.... they're not as nice. Similarly, Blizzard pretty much killed twinking, since they're now in a bracket of their own in which it takes FOREVER to get into a single BG. I miss the days of hour-long WSG turtles and twinks being mixed in with the rest.

Moving the xp off twinks into their own queues was the single best pvp decision Blizzard ever made, at least for leveling characters.

I'm with Ingmar on this, one hundred percent.


Why? How could you possibly miss either of those things? For most of their Warcraft tenure twinks made battleground pvp unplayable for leveling characters.

Twinks are still alive and well. You just don't see the hyper-tuned permatwinks in xp BGs anymore. Heck, they're about the only thing that make leveling through the BGs halfway interesting.

This. Most people leveling up are alts, so it's not uncommon to see people in BGs with at least a full set of heirlooms. You just don't see the people who spent months farming their BIS in every slot for level 19, 29, etc.

I was kidding about the turtles, but waiting forever for a single WSG on my rogue pisses me off to no end. Why even have an xp off option if it ruins your chances of EVER playing in another BG unless you have hours on your hands to sit and wait? I like to stop at the top of each bracket and do a bunch of BGs, not play 3 then be at the bottom of the next bracket again.

It's hilarious because it shows up the so-called hardcore twink community for the bunch of bullshitters they were always suspected to be.

Twink argument 1: There's 1000s of us, loads of people play twinks! Blizz should stop trying to nerf twinks!

Twink argument 2: We don't just want to pwn non-twinks, we like fair fights honest!

So, Blizzard cleverly isolate twinks so that they can only pvp with other twinks... and lo and behold it turns out that without all the non-twinked easy kills most of them aren't interested and you end up with massive long queues because there simply aren't enough to fill a battleground on most battlegroups.

Hoist by their own petards I think.

I wouldn't mind having to fight enemies as strong or stronger than I am, but apparently almost everyone else does. It's fun destroying non-twinks every now and then, but a 250 hp priest isn't exactly a challenge. Not complaining so much about not being able to be in BGs with non-twinks that are basically free kills unless there are a bunch of them, but not being able to be in BGs at all with xp off.  It should auto-queue you if you have xp off  :awesome_for_real:

Out of curiousity, how does blizzard seperate twinks?

Somewhat ironically, the best twink experience in BGs is where you lose the BG, but still top the charts in kills/honor. By a lot. Otherwise, you outlevel it too quickly.

The mian reason I got involved in twinking (such as it is today), is because I'm usually stuck in BGs by myself with no one else to rely on for support. You just don't know who you'll be rolling with. What you can probably count on, though, is that they'll suck and/or be at the bottom of the bracket level. So you have to pick up the slack. Even very heavily tuned, if I went in BGs at x5 or x6 level, it'd be a very rough ride.

On the other hand, just a few good twinks can dominate a BG. I managed to convince a friend to try out PvP by harrassing him to twink his blood DK for the 79 bracket and run with my PvP prot pally. When these two hit a node or flag room, it was ugly (for the horde). AB and the Eye were particularly fun. Thing was, with just these two and maybe a mid-level straphanger or two, we could dominate a BG without too much trouble. My pally on her own, however, wasn't nearly so effective. She was plenty nasty to be sure, but the force multiplier of a simiilar friend was tremendous.

Well, from what I"ve seen, if you have xp turned off, you're lumped in with only other people with their xp turned off. There aren't very many of them on Rampage.

I recall leveling my DK through the 79 bracket. XP on, insta-BG. I remember waiting about two hours for a BG to pop with it off, however.

Alright, maybe they haven't ruined it, but they have changed it drastically. You now onnly have a limited nummber of BGs which you hope to lose so you can do more before you level. Then, you have to get new stuff for the next bracket.

Pretty much. Although, I like building gearsets for different characters at the various brackets. It's fun. Takes time and can be kinda expensive, but it keeps me occupied. Plus, I have a lot of tradeskill support from my 80s. Things like armor, jewelry, gems, some enchants, some weapons, BoA stuff, and just raw cash are easy to repurpose to leveling a new twink.

The main thing holding me back is lack of character slots. A couple might get transferred come Cataclysm. I want a BE warrior in the worst way.

I was frost through 80, it was luv, and as a plus I could do 2k dps as a brand spanking new 80 with frost.

Actually, Fire is the highest dps spec in PVE currently, once you hit top end gear.

You might've done 2k as a fresh 80 but it doesn't go up and up like arcane or fire. And yeah, SurfD, someone already told me fire surpassed arcane at high gear levels earlier in the thread.

EDIT: it was Azuredream.

You're right, it doesn't. I switched to arcane and arcane/fire when I started gearing up.  When my models suggested 100-200 dps gain with my crappy gear I respec'd out of frost.

I recently went arcane with my mage for PvP.  I was frost, but as discussed, my gear has improved enough to warrant getting my full bang for the buck on dps.  I'm actually amazed that I live longer now in arcane.  I never gave it much thought, but the amount of PvP talents in that tree were eluding me for some reason.  I'm really enjoying it.

I'm still not to the level that some pvp mages are at.  You know the ones.  The ones that are just IMPOSSIBLE to kill?  Yeah those.

Like the one that sorta critted me for more than my full health -- despite 5 fucking stacks of tenacity -- in Wintergrasp? Although that might have been a two-shot. It involved fire, and my sudden fucking death.

Now that I'm playing Wintergrasp, I'm sort of understanding why the Alliance gets fucking rolled. I think the best I've logged into was tenacityx5, which indicates a bit of a numbers disparity.

I have somehow lucked my way into playing servers on the "right" WG side. Doomhammer, Alliance always wins, Moon Guard, Horde always wins. It's silly.

Moon Guard's PvP is uh. Not as ... good as Doomhammer's. You know the stereotype of RPers not knowing how to PvP at all? They fit that as hard as they can.

I'm on the Ruin group, I think. The actual 'battlegrounds' with even sides tends, so far, to be about 60/40 in favor of the Horde, but I haven't played enough at 80 to be sure. I lose a bit more often than I win, but not that much. But Wintergrasp? I've seen it won once. I've seen Alliance holding it maybe three or four times over the last few weeks, and I've been looking because I had something I wanted to buy.

Our server is stacked in favor of Alliance wins nearly everytime for WG.  Yes, that means Horde gets a ton of tenacity, but our numbers just overwhelm them.  On the weekends they will sometimes get a big enough group to hold off destruction of the towers while they coordinate a 12 seige run at the walls.  That is typically too much to handle regardless of numbers.

Most the time I have a hard time just getting the "Kill 10 Horde" quest done before we win.  The other day, we didn't get the "Destroy 3 Seige Vehicles" quest done.  They didn't build a single one.  Not one!

We did have a great battle on Saturday.  We held it until about 3 mins left and they took it just barely.  That's what PvP should be.  Although, part of their success was some Hunter and Shaman perching above the GY in the keep.  They were freeze trapping and killing people that ressed there throughout the game.  We spent some time killing the hunter, but he would just get ress'ed by the shaman (out of sight.)  With their tenacity stacks it would have taken 10 alliance to leave WG and then reenter on top of the building to kill them.  Yeah, that wasn't going to happen.

Quick FYI - you can do the "Kill 10..." by taking out the enemy NPCs that your side NPCs are fighting throughout in-between the battles. Took me a couple weeks to figure that out.

Yeah, I do this now before doing anything for this reason.  Also, it counts towards being able to build seige vehicles too.  Heck, when we are on the offense, I go about 10 minutes early to finish the "Get me 10 items" quest and to kill 10 guards outside of the fortress walls before the event even starts.  For some reason when I do that, the first kill I get when the event starts lets me build catapults instantly.

The "kill 3 seige vehicles" quest is a tough one to get around if none are ever built!

Uh, isn't winning worth a whole lot more honor? why else would they do it?

Yeah, I meant to come back and correct this.  I ran with this group again last night and figured out I was looking at the wrong system message after each BG.  We hit AB over and over and were getting like 3.5k each win.  I can't remember what I was looking at, but it was saying something like just 1k and I took that for the total.  My mistake.

The leader of that group is transferring off server, so that group is done.  I'll try to find another even after my initial bitching.  Last night was a lot of fun, not in the cases where we totally rolled the competition, but when we actually had good players in a PUG fight back and do pretty well.  The battles we had were epic feeling and great fun.  The last one we did was our partial premade against nearly a full premade from another server.  That was a great battle that lasted a long time with us winning.  This got me to thinking that the rated BG's in Cata might be something to consider long term for me.

I'm playing a demo which is amazing pug damage. Short pack fights seed/meta (with its charge/cleave/aoe damage). Long fights keep CoD/Cor/immolate up and shadowbolt to <35% then soul fire.

Come to my server, feel the opposite side's pain...

Last time I won, it was following a zerg -- obviously pre-made group, actually, of about 20 people who went straight to the westmost-garage, killing NPC's along the way, managed to all be Lts, built 10 seige engines all with gunners (I was one) and simply rolled up and battered their way through while the bulk of the Alliance was fighting around Sunken Ring with the bulk of the Horde.

They weren't even anyone on the tower guns on the West side when we blew through. We saw reinforcements showing up right as we hit the innermost wall.

Also, I notice most Alliance don't seem to know how you can ask the Spirit Healer to move you to another controlled graveyard.

Yeah that's what I meant by a 12 seige run.  You can tell when a small premade group comes in on the weekends and makes a run at the wall quick and hard and win.  I've gotten good at recognizing this early and warning everyone.  When the other side has 12 seige vehicles up and running 30 seconds into the event, you know they are making a real attempt at it this time.  At the same time, they will have high pvp GS groups protecting the southern seige shops and towers.  Without coordination (pretty normal) those little groups will mop up the other side very easily.  Tenacity + High PvP GS = Nearly impoosible to kill and hit harder than a truck.

I saw this last weekend and warned everyone early.  We did well at defending the walls all around the keep, but they eventually whittled us down with so many holes we couldn't keep up.  It was a great fight down to the last 3 mins and they broke through to the chamber.  I'll take a fun loss over a boring win.

I fucking hate it when we're getting rolled so bad we're down to one GY and 2/3rds of the Horde and 20 catapults are there. The other third is generally playing anti-ninja to whatever stealthies managed to go snag back a distant garage or something.

Doomhammer Alliance got real good at stopping the Siege Train rush, which demoralized the already battered and outnumbered horde on our server even more.

Now we are lucky if the Horde manage a full raid half the time.

I think we have 1200+ defenses to their 200 now. The only glimmer of hope the Horde have is they still seem to capture the place once in a blue moon, both sides seem to have 500 captures.


But yea, it's pretty damn rare for us to actually be on the offense or not own WG.

Well the captures should be tied or within 1 of tied on every server, that's just how that works.

Yea, but some servers have capture rates still in the double digits. Those are places where one side just NEVER has WG. Our Horde still seem to grab onto it once in awhile, they just don't keep it.

Where do you look that up? 'cause, on Argent Dawn, Alliance NEVER seems to have WG. Myabe I've just hit a bad streak.

There's a book in the room right outside of the raid instance.

For Wintergrasp?

Yup.  It's got Archavon's thoughts in it and a history of how many wins\losses\successful defends\etc for each side in it.

Yea, it's across from the meeting stone, near the relic platform.

I just join from the hall in Dalaran.

The summoning stone for VoA, not Wintergrasp. It's on the ground, right outside the VOA entrance portal.

It's kinda funny first time you read it :)

Umm, has Blizzard fixed the dueling trick then? I haven't been to WG in ages, but last I was there you could get someone from your own side build a siege, have them hop out of the vehicle, then challenge them to a duel and have them hop back in. Kill the vehicle and it counted as having killed an enemy siege.

That sounds like my server, Andorhal.

Horde:
Keep Defended: 1705
Keep Captured: 361

Alliance:
Keep Defended: 76
Keep Captured: 360

We've got a, uh...RP/World PVP guild that considers WG our fifth capital city though, and they take it as a personal affront whenever the alliance actually win.

I am pretty sure they fixed that before I quit a year and a half ago.

I looked up Argent Dawn's stats -- yeah, it's pretty much a Horde Steamroll.

Got onto one last night, had an Alliance with some people with an actual clue and we had what looked like equal numbers. Alliance on offence, and were down to the inner wall 10 minutes into the game. Had the inner wall down to 40%, in fact. And couldn't take it. The Horde just turtled the fuck up, and too many people were making vehicles and running in piecemeal. The people who had a clue couldn't manage more than 6 tanks at a time, which wasn't enough to make it to the inner wall.

And of course, it was just everyone funneling in that one way -- the other 9 vehicles never concentrated either on the gap we'd blown in the wall, or bothered blowing in another wall on the other side and maybe relieving some pressure.

Siege engines die pretty quick to a 100 horde in a small area...

Yeah, in that situation you have to have rogue vehicles hitting all the other different angles while you keep the other side busy on the one inner wall breach.  Once you have multiple openings, the enemy gets spread out and can't react well to a 6 vehicle drive.  You still have to be able to bring in your full force all at once for the vault crash if the entire other side is in the courtyard.  Sounds like Horde was more organized and strategic than Alliance that run. 

Also, if they were able to get the 3 towers down, their damage gets boosted 15% along with the reduction in battle time.  That's nothing to sneeze at and really puts the offense at a handicap.  To truly get into the vault, you have to hit them fast and hard while having small groups slow down the destruction of the towers.  Not only will their forces (people and seige vehicles) be divided up onto the towers (and out of the fortress,) you'll have the damage advantage.  Since tenacity wasn't a concern in this case, it is your only advantage.

Damn near made it, actually. We've have won if we'd had a single extra seige engine on the first push. Maybe 2. Like I said, we blew towers, walls, and hit the inner wall down to 40% on the first push. Sadly, the rest of the Alliance vehicles were dicking around near Sunken Ring, mostly catapults chasing an individual horde guy.

I hate that.  People need to understand that one catapult isn't enough to take out most pvp players.  They will either just make you chase them, thus being ineffective, or tear down your vehicle, thus decreasing your overall might!  It amazes me how many people can't figure out that many of these BG's and WG aren't just about killing other players.  There are, you know, objectives to get for the win (flags, gates, walls, nodes, etc.)

I think most people -- and I'm guilty of it myself at times -- think "It's a FUCKING CATAPULT" and think that, yes, the flame-spewing war machine SHOULD fucking seriously hurt anyone getting close to it. And, if you have a lot of experience trying to kill one of the fuckers when it's surrounded by Horde, you notice how quickly you die in the green cloud and fire.

However, if you look back over your logs -- what killed you was the toxic cloud, the fire, and the four Horde guys picking you off.

I try mostly to gun on seige tanks. Two or three seige tanks hammering a cluster of horde with the guns WILL kill them pretty quick. Three or four catapults working together will tear through clustered horde. The best use for them, however, is tossing shit square into the grounds of the Keep, where the defenders are. In the end, it's just AoE and fairly light at that. But three or four demolishers, or seige engine guns, or even catapult toxic barrels landing into a small area with 20 horde will fuck them pretty quick.

Then again, I watched a close battle quickly turn into a 20 Horde Catapult Seige of the Alliance graveyard again. Strangely, I noticed the turning point happened around the time I got a triple tenacity buff. There's just no fucking changing superior numbers.

When people are turtling like that the strategy I always saw was to plow in with a bunch of siege tanks and players while leaving a few demolishers to snipe the door while the opponent is occupied. Even after they kill all the players/tanks they take a while to realize there's demolishers slowly plinking away their gate.

Yeah, that's what I was mentioning about picking on the other walls where nobody is.  Eventually you have 2-3 holes leading to the inner wall and it becomes harder and harder to defend.

Still, being vastly outnumbered is a big problem.  Basically, I think you just figure out you are going to lose, so just have fun with the tenacity and get some HK's and generally piss off a lot of people.  Once you are stuck at your own GY, just figure out a way to escape and go to a remote shop and try to take it over.  Basically be a nuisance while getting one shots on people!

I'm firmly of the opinion that the only time when it's acceptable to fire vehicle-scale weaponry at infantry is when you're manning a tower gun, there are no enemy vehicles within range yet, but the situation (too many enemies, incoming vehicles) doesn't lend itself to just dismounting and jumping into the fray.

You're manning the turret in a siege engine that has come under attack? Don't sit there shooting the enemy with that pissant gun. Jump out. Crowd control someone. Unload some real damage on someone else. Provide an alternative target of greater priority because it's actively beating the shit out of the attackers. If you win, the siege is slow enough to catch upto on your mount. If you die, at least you bought the siege a little time.

Firing catapult or demolisher rounds mindlessly over the keep walls and hoping to see yellow numbers is basically a waste of time. If you're doing it on defense, you're just wasting a vehicle slot while contributing essentially nothing. If you're doing it on offense THEN WHAT THE FUCK GO SHOOT A WALL. I've never found myself on defense going "Oh noes, the catapult artillery is fucking us up!" because frankly I'd need to be hit by ten of them at once before I started giving a shit, and if they're wasting ten vehicle slots for dumb shit like that then victory is nearly certain.

I'd rather hit one person for 5k than ten people for 1k each. At least my one person is going to stop whatever he was doing to defend himself. Your ten people will barely notice that they were hit.

Edit: Sorry. That guy driving a vehicle around Wintergrasp as if it were able to effectively attack infantry is my main PVP pet peeve right now. And on offense, as soon as you diverge from your course you've already lost. You're never going to kill that rogue with your siege engine's battering ram or whatever.

Well i am halfway to 75 already in less than two weeks and so far i am enjoying it plenty.  Having top level 70 epic gear has certainly helped the process along.  I wish i had any idea what all the badges and stuff i am collecting do though, I assume they are for gearing up once i hit 80.  Speaking of which, what is the best way to go about gearing up at 80?

Parking a demo in the courtyard and firing over the walls at the opposing siege engines in the adjacent areas is actually pretty useful. Driving a catapult around trying to kill people isn't, though.

Badge items.  4/5 T9 + 1 iLevel 245 head/shoulder piece (head is usually better).  Fill out the rest with pieces from Normal/Heroic ICC instances.

Heh.  I loved that.  "Well, knocking me back 20 feet was kinda fun (wheeee), but" <swipe> "I'm at full health now."  <swipe> <swipe> <doomboltthingie> "Next!"

You'd be much more useful firing off RP-GG rounds until you run out or get noticed, then running in to DPS on foot. Much more. Vehicles are good for destroying what only vehicles can destroy. In actual combat they're slow, clumsy, low damage turds.

The only siege engine that is actually good at killing players, is the actual SiegeTank from Isle of Conquest. The main cannon does like 10k AE damage every second and the two secondary cannons are doing 5-6k AE damage, either in ranged fireball form or AE Cone flamethrower form. The drivers ram is also obscene, if only for how it causes the tank to sprint a 100 yards and fling everything in its path to all corners. If you can actually manage to get that tank full of semi-coordinated people, you can clear out a 20+ person zerg in a few seconds.

Of course that is lol IoC though  :why_so_serious:




Ing, the reason we get away with having 16 demo's shooting into the wall-gap is because we've already destroyed the southern towers. Even then they aren't actually killing the enemy demos behind the wall, it's still the players going over and blowing them up.


There is one instance of a catapult being useful, it's in blanketing the lower level of the tower so the defenders can't fire RPGs into the tanks on the wall.

Nah, I play a protection warrior on the side that *doesn't* have tenacity. My dps on an opposing siege tank or demo is not competitive with what I can do from a demo. It doesn't really 'waste' a vehicle slot, we always have enough catapults down at the south to handle the towers.

I can't ever hit shit with those.

The RPG's need to be fired from clear and level surfaces, they can be elevated, but it must be level and/or free of random debris. Like, a 2 centimeter pebble could disrupt their pathing.

They also don't track movement at all, so its best to shoot things that are stationary, or shoot in the direction of where the target SHOULD be once the rpg lands.

Someone -- while we were getting fucking rolled again in Wintergrasp -- made the point that all the tenacity in the world didn't affect crowd-control abilities, and when you had a numbers edge you had a real edge in stuns, roots, and snares....

Which was true enough. With three stacks of tenacity I managed to pick off like 3 defenders at a garage. Unfortunately, there were 8 of them, and once I burned down three I got stun-locked and died about 12 seconds later. So did the two guys rezzing in right as I croaked.

I like the idea of Wintergrasp, but.....it's kinda frustrating playing on a server where you're outnumbered badly every battle. Where half of them end up with the last five minutes being an AoE fest as 20-odd seige engines sit outside the one GY they can't capture -- and when the Horde you do kill (and there are more Horde there than the entire Alliance side, with enough left over to keep you from ninjaing more than one garage -- and then only briefly) rez about 50 yards away.

In Cata the # of people that can join on the overpopulated side of a battle like this is dictated by the number of people that join on the underpopulated side. So if only X Alliance join, only X Horde can join as well and the rest can fuck off.

Meaning that on some of the less-balanced servers, the new world PVP events will more or less cease to exist. I don't know what Blizzard is thinking, unless they're just counting on raking in some extra dollars when a bunch of people transfer over it.

I dunno. Alliance generally fields at least 40, even late on a weeknight, and my server seems heavily overbalanced Horde-side -- at least in PvP.

Of course, it being a role-playing server that LONG had the reputation that if you wanted to win at PvP, you went Horde.....

I can see Wintergrasp going dead because of whatever new world PvP event happens in Cata, unless they somehow ensure Northend stays heavily populated. Maybe add some 85-level stuff in Wintergrasp.

It may be okay since a lot of people give up on the PvP if they're always out-numbered.  I started giving up on it for the reverse, even.  Some servers may devolve into 10 on 10 matches though.  We'll have to see.

Reading your talk about captures and all of this stuff makes it sound so exciting to play WoW, but man everytime I have tried I couldn't stand the game and I don't know why.  I couldn't even enjoy the newbie stuff and that usually is the 2nd to best stuff.

Is raiding still an important thing in WoW?  Because I don't mind a limited amount, but raiding can get too time consuming at times.

Nah. It never was really important in the sense that it was in some games. I did Molten Core mostly just for getting a feel to raiding, and since then Blizzard has worked to make it easier to raid.

With changing stuff to badge-drops, if you just do a daily random dungeon at cap -- then random heroics as soon as you can -- you can gear up easily and quickly, as groups form pretty fast although you have the usual PuG problems if you get a crap tank or whatnot.

I've not really raided, just haven't had the urge to. I still haven't seen Halls of Reflection yet, and that's the end-dungeon prior to the Icecrown raids, if I understand right. (I can do it -- I'm keyed, which meant I simply did Pit of Sauron dungeon). I just haven't pulled it as a random heroic.

As for not liking hte game - if you run through the Dranaei or the Blood Elf starting zones, and don't like the game...you won't like the game. Those are pretty damn well done (the original races, no so much) so it's a pretty good idea of what the game is like.

I'm sort of dreading Cataclysm PVP-wise. I forsee a lot of...

[2. Trade] [leeroylol]: LF2M for rated WSG, need healers, 8k gearscore or GTFO!

Followed by...

"You cannot join the Battle of Tol Barad at this time, because Alliance is overpopulated on this server. You could go BG, but since Unrated are worthless now and Rated only give points for winning, Alliance is shit out of luck. FACTION TRANSFER ASSHOLE, DO IT! GIVE US OUR $25 ALREADY!"

I may give it a shot then after I've messed around with Darkfall and finished my hours on APB.  I have done the starting area for Orc and Undead.  Neither really did much for me.

They've made some changes. The Dranaei and Blood Elf areas are more representative of what Outland and Northend are like. However, you should probably just wait until Cataclysm hits, since part of that is nuking the old starting areas and bringing the old world up to speed.

1. The Orc / Tauren / Troll zones are so fucking ridiculously huge they're subdividing them in the next expansion.
2. The Undead zones tend to be extremely tightly packed with mobs and tend to over-aggro and overwhelm lowbies.  This also should be getting fixed.
3. 60% speed increase mounts are now purchasable at level 20 for a pittance.
4. Queue anywhere for battlegrounds/dungeons.  Free teleport to the instance when the group is full.  Free teleport back to where you left off when it's done.

They're doing better, but I'll be honest and say the only two reasons I stuck around for as long as I did are because there are people whom I enjoyed the chance to chat and play with and Draenei.

There's still areas where they need improvement, and there are others which are conscious design decisions which are complete turn-offs.  It's okay if WoW isn't your cup of tea.

They might've been making it easier to raid but they certainly didn't make the raids much easier. As for raiding not reallly being important... I don't really get why you say that. It's kinda the point of reaching the llevel cap, unless you just want to go for non-dungeon achievements (not my thing).

Nah, it's not THE POINT of reaching the level cap nearly as much as it used to be, in vanilla there was fuck all to do aside from raid and wait in six hour battleground queues (and lo, it is the only time period I've actually cancelled my account). At the same time, they've made it so much more accessable, a lot more people do it these days than they used to.

To an extent the point is what you make of it. I've just come back to the game after near 2 years away and I'm quite content gearing myself up with random heroic dungeons, and northrend quests that I han't done. I'm also spending some of the badges from the forementioned dungeons to buy heirloom gear for my alts, since I figure that stuff is always going to potentially be useful.

I've got no intention of raiding.

The only things I can realistically hit are vehicles.  Those they do seem to track.

He did say it was never really important, not just now. Of course there are other things to do, but I honestly hate questing when I can do something else, and at some point you have all the heirlooms and leveling alts gets old for me (that depends on the degree of altitis though). Raiding is the fun of being max level for me, and whatever the point of being 80 is to other people, the object of the game is to defeat the Lich King before he destroys the world!  :awesome_for_real: Even if he's already been defeated a billion times.

People are different.  In the year and half I played the last time I upped, I did one wing of Naxx and one VoA for my raids.  Raiding simply held no interest for me.

Of course. Raiding isn't for everyone, for a number of reasons. I was just saying it's the ultimate object of the game to slay the big bad guy of whatever expansion is current.

The only reason I raid is because I like the group of people I raid with.  PUG raids make me stabby and I'd likely have many more 80's than the current 9ish if I didn't raid at all.  Although I'd probably play less if I didn't have a good guild on either side to play with too ;-)

One could just as easily say at some point you have all the upgrades from Icecrown you want, and doing the same fights over and over and over and over gets really old. In fact, it DOES get old.

My point was simply Back in the Day, you could raid, or you could ... hope to PvP but rarely get to do so because the queues were so terrible and even when you got in you would get completely outclassed by some raiding asshat who had access to vastly superior equipment than you. Now you can completely ignore raiding and still have multiple things to do, which means raiding as "the point" has lessened a great deal. The storyline aside, although seriously almost no one is raiding because the story says so, otherwise they'd go kill the Lich King once and move on with their lives.

Kind of-sort of. It was originally, when WOW was EQ 2.1. They've since realised that the larger proportion of their payerbase are not EQ1-style raiding catasses, and so there have been a lot of alternative objectives and attempts to give alternative objectives to the game. Most people won't ever slay the bigbad of each expansion, so they need to (and have) designed other objectives for those people.

There's a lot to do at 80 without raiding.  If you like to raid, you can raid with a guild or pug raid.  If you don't (I don't), you can do battlegrounds, quest anywhere you haven't already (it's darned easy to hit 80 without even seeing some Northrend zones), do heroics, gather or tradeskill, daily quests, make an alt, play Wintergrasp every 2 hours, go for reputation (Argent Tournament), and I'm sure things I haven't thought of.  There's a lot more in the game now than ever before for non-raiders.

It's become a larger segment of the population with each expansion, though.  Part of the credit for that has been their willingness to open that part of the game up to the non-catass types.  Realizing that the first raids in BC were too hard, for instance, means everyone who wanted to has seen Naxx and probably Ulduar and most of ToC by this point.  Ditto at least up through the beginnings of ICC.  PUG raids may be fail for getting geared, but they're great for just seeing the content and experiencing it.   

I expect we'll see even more folks in the Cata raids, since there won't be the "Oh you do 10 mans, here's your crap loot table" divide anymore.  Yeah, 25s will gear you significantly faster with their "3x the loot" carrot but you run into far more personality and scheduling conflicts with them.  10s have always been easier to throw together (in my experience) and will give the same loot, now making them much, much more attractive.  Not to mention, who cares how fast you gear-up. If you finish out the instance in 3 weeks and then do nothing but farm that just means 4-5 months waiting on the next one.   Pretty boring, IMO.

Anecdotal, but I know, but having helped run a 40 man, then a 25 man guild I know it's a PITA to find those #'s consistently across all time zones. Not to mention the problem of 8pm is a decent time to start and get things done for your EST/ CST players but means that your PST have to be people whose jobs get them home at 5pm.   Start it at 9 or 10 EST and you run into the midnight wall for the EST/ CST players who have to get up 5-6 hours from then. Smaller raids means a smaller pool and more convenient times for everyone, opening things up even more.  Hell, I know enough players to fill a 10 man in one or two time zones on my own, with no recruiting and no chances of pulling in a drama player. 

Watched three Horde run around the roof of one of the Wintergrasp keep vehicle shops just now, while one or two keep guns and three or four catapults blazed away at them until everyone realized they were never going to die and ran off to be more useful elsewhere.

Vehicles are worthless for attacking players. Worthless.

Edit: With the added benefit of not being able to tell you apart from an enemy vehicle on my map. That isn't a big wave of sieges coming at us, it's three of our assholes in sieges clumsily trying to chase one Horde catapult. Whoops, wish I hadn't run all the way over here. And called out incoming in chat.

They really need to add an ability with a 4 minute cooldown to the vehicles of Wintergrasp (say only the Demolishers if it would be an issue of griefing with it) that causes a Bigass knockback (maybe equal to Shaman Thunderstorm) that can be targeted and dropped at range.  Want to be a fucking asshat warlock with 20 stacks of tenacity dotting people to death on the roof of a building where absolutely no one can get to you? enjoy getting blasted off relatively soon.

Log onto Wintergrasp, and some fucker is running a macro that insta-kicks everyone out of the Raid, then spams the battleground with "if you're not in a raid, it's because you suck".

Apparently he's fucking notorious for doing this -- and other shit -- on our server. What I want to know is how the fuck can he have managed to pull raid leader enough to get a reputation for this?

It's amazing how fucked-up the situation got.

I thought they changed WG so that you were insta-raided and couldn't be booted, like other BGs.  It's just an insta-raid? That's fucked.

Raid lead isn't given out randomly, it goes to whoever clicks "Join Battle" first.

Sigh, I'm jonesing to play a MMO hard and I keep thinking of playing WoW again (last time I played it was release for about 5 months)

I know I should probably wait for the new x-pac before I even try to play again because I'd just make a new character on a new realm.

This game isn't that fun anymore, right? ....right?  :|

Currently, no it's not fun. After the expansion when all the people come back though...

Depends even then.  I'd let things shake out for a few months since balance is still suspect and they're introducing a world of changes.  At that point there should at least be enough feedback to know if it'll be your thing or not.

Depends where you're at. I've just come back after 2 years off and I'm having a great time, but that's because I already had max level characters and I can jump into stuff. If you're like Paelos and have played pretty much nonstop for that period, he's in a "seen it all, done it all" phase, so it's boring.

If you're wanting to start a fresh character, I say jump in. Blood Elves and Dranei have pretty good and fun starting zones, and the levelling experience is also faster than before. Get someone to use a scroll of resurrection promo on you though so you can try it all out - you'll get 10? days free. I''m happy to do it if you like, just PM me.

edit - most of the gripes are about the game at max leve;. Not going to be an issue for someone starting fresh at L1.

I'm with Azazel; if you're looking to just start a new character, go ahead. You'll get to experience the world and all the events leading up to the Cataclysm, then see the aftermath when the expansion actually hits.

If you can find some friends to play with too it'll be a lot more fun. I'm sure someone from here would welcome you onto their server (although they all sound slightly insane)  :why_so_serious:

There's a bunch of people who post here who have Alliance characters on Doomhammer.  They seem to listen to my great ideas for making fights awesome though, which is usually a bad idea and should not be done.