f13.net

OK. so trotski the ratfucker got me back into WoW with a shiny new account (old one was banned for some reason or another about 2 years after I had last played...tried to go through the steps to recover it, but not one @ Blizzard seemed to be able to find the info I faxed no less than 5 times to at least 3 different numbers, so I gave up). I have leveled a frost mage to 40 now (old mains were rogue and mage). I am playing Alliance for the first time, so I am extra confused about how to get around, find things in the capital cities (god Orgrimmar is so much better than every other city), etc.

I am stumbling through mostly blind, but since WoW does such a good job of hand-holding for questing, I haven't had any trouble leveling. I am still confused by a ton of changes though. I skimmed/read the Cataclysm thread and was totally fucking lost. Can someone help a brother out?

 What are the major changes from TBC to now (last time I played)? I haven't purchased the expansions yet, but did buy the vanilla game.

Is AoE leveling still viable for mages now that Blizzard is such a high level?

What add ons should I be using? I have Curse installed and about 20 add ons, but don't really know how to use many of them yet.

Any decent strategies/guides for efficiently leveling crafting? I am currently tailoring (about 175) and enchanting (about 103). I seem to have come to kind of a deadend with enchanting- I started off with inscription, but leveled to 25 without doing it at all and then realizing I basically needed herbalism along with it, and so switched to enchanting, which means all the greens and blues I sold from the first couple of days of play when my guildies ran me through Deadmines and SFK came back to haunt me- not enough low level stuff for enchanting mats. Now I have a bank full of mats but very few recipes that match my mats.  :oh_i_see:

Any sekret places to buy the expansions on the cheap? Battle.net is still charging $30 for fucking TBC (which I have already bought once, ffs), and Wrath and obviously Cat are full price still. After buying vanilla for $20, I discovered I could have bought the Battle Chest with TBC and vanilla for $40 (it might even have another D2 copy included).

How do all the new guild mechanics work? Things like my rep within my own guild, the guild levels, etc?

Also- my new guild is very cloth-wearer DPS and tiny, so I might need to level a healer or tank at some point. Any suggestions? I would like something solo-friendly, and something a bit more complex than a mage (which are just about the easiest leveler I have seen so far).

My newfound enthusiasm for WoW is about 99% due to having some people to play with and voice chat with as I level. If/when they start disappearing I won' t be far behind, unless there is a robust F13 guild going somewhere (or maybe I will catch on with the goons or something).

Anyway- any advice is welcome.

Major major changes:
-New races/classes with the expansions.  If you grab BC, you get Blood Elves and Draenei, If you grab Cataclysm you get Goblins and Worgen.  If you get Lich King, you get Death Knights, the game's only Hero Class so far, which unlocks once you get a character to level 55 (I think, might be 58) and then allows you to roll one Death Knight per server who starts at level 55.

-New leveling cap/zones with the expansions, in vanilla the cap is 60, in BC it's 70, Lich King is 80, and Cataclysm is 85.  New zones in each expansion, and BC adds flying mounts.

Without any expansions:

-All the vanilla content has been redone.  The questing is WAY better (as in, more fun) now than in vanilla, levelling is crazy fast until 60, and gold and items are a lot better, too.

-Tons of balance changes.  For example, hybrids can now perform multiple roles instead of just healing.  Paladins and druids can tank or heal or DPS depending on spec, Shamans can DPS or heal, etc.

-Blizzard added a "Looking for Dungeon" system, which is cross server and puts you into a pool of random people who want to do a dungeon and tries to find a group for you.  Works really well for easy dungeons (most levelling content), but has some issues with difficult dungeons (heroics currently) where random PUGer number ten million and one might not know how to do the fight well enough to win.

-You can dual spec if you visit your trainer.  You can switch between specs at any time which allows you to have a priest who can DPS when he's questing or heal for his guild raids.  Also on the subject of specs, you get serious bonuses now for just picking a tree to spec in, rather than having to wait until level 40 for your tree's defining ability.

-There's a "gear manager" in the character screen you can assign different outfits to if you've got multiple sets of armor.  Usually for high end stuff, so characters can have (for example) a +STR set for their DPS spec paladin and a +INT set for their healing spec paladin.

-Tons of accesibility/convenience changes.  Too many to mention, really.  Everything is super streamlined now.  Guns don't require ammo, wands don't require you to mash the shoot key, you don't have to train new levels of skills (meaning if you know "Fireball" you won't have to go back to the trainer to learn "Fireball rank 2" when you level up), mounts are cheaper and available earlier, more flight paths, that kind of thing.

Also, ditch the Curse addon client. It is very very bad juju, and its security is frequently compromised, leading to tons of account hijackings.

Pretty much everything has changed in some way; I'd say the major changes are the addition on heroic dungeons (harder versions of regular dungeons with enhanced loot), the streamlining of reputations (many reputations can now be 'championed', whereby you earn rep by running dungeons while wearing their respective tabard), the random dungeon finder tool, battleground experience and heirlooms.


Mob grinding is dead, gone, irrelevant (with only a couple of tiny, incredibly niche and irrelevant exceptions). The default means of levelling is quests, and the new quest structure is really really well designed (with the exception of Outland). You have alternatives in the form of running dungeons and winning battlegrounds. Random Dungeons give you a cash and xp (or JP at level 85) reward for completing the first one, and you also get a sack which has an 85% chance to give you an item which is utterly useless to you, but is a nice touch nonetheless. Winning battlegrounds nets you quite a lot of XP, but it's a bit hit-and miss, and you may not enjoy getting destroyed by twinks in heirloom gear.


Addons vary hugely by preference. Personally I need five as a minimum: Unit Frames (I use Pitbull 4.0), Action Bars (I use Bartender), Recount (Damage, Healing and Activity Meter), Raid Frames (Grid, vital for healing) and a cooldown monitor (I use CoolLine). A lot of old addons are now baked into the UI by default, such as scrolling combat text, power auras and questing addons. A lot of people use Auction mods, gathering mods and chat mods (spam blockers are pretty handy). As a DPS you probably want to pick up Omen, or some other threat meter. Otherwise there are so many mods you could go for, yet in my experience most are crap. When you get past 70 you'll probably want to pick up Deadly Boss Mods (DBM) which gives timers and alerts for abilities used by bosses in Raids and Dungeons.

My suggestion is to get your UI to the state that you are happy, and then only add mods where you feel you need them.


Ditching Incription was probably a smart move, since it is a fairly lacklustre profession right now. As a fellow Tailor/Enchanter I can say that the best source of cloth is dungeons, and the best source of enchanting mats are disenchanting what you make from tailoring and all your quest rewards and spare drops. You will end up with a lot of left over dusts and essences, but they do sell on the AH, so they are not a total dead end. Crafting while you level is hard though, and due to the way the economy is, most people rely on max-level mains to either farm or buy mats to powerlevel professions. My main advice is not to spend ANY money on your professions bar buying thread, training new levels and skills, and buying the base rods for enchanting (since those have to be crafted, buying the mats is often cheaper). Professions are a huge gold sink, and really won't make any money until you are max or near-max level. If the cloth you are getting from your quest mobs and dungeons is right for your level of tailoring (Mageweave I guess?) then keep on collecting it and levelling; otherwise you might want to go back and farm some at some point at your leisure. I wouldn't make it a priority.

If you only want easy max-level professions take a combo of skinning, mining or herbalism, since they are piss easy to level. Otherwise stick with what you have; tailoring and enchanting have nice benefits that start to kick in around 350 skill and make the professions worth having.


No idea, sorry


You gain rep with your guild by completing quests, guild achievements; really a lot of things in fact. Until you are max level you shouldn't have to go out of your way to find activities to raise it. Guild rep allows you to access guld rewards which are variously earned from guild levels and guild achievements. Guild experience is earned by people in the guild doing almost anything, but there is a daily cap which prevents you from grinding it rapidly to the max. There are 25 guild levels, and each has some perk of varying usefulness.


Paladins are probably the most solo-friendly class, and they tank, heal and DPS well. The downside is that paladins are the most common class in the game, and they are not the most interesting to play. From my experience playing Priest, Shaman and DK, they are all fun to play, but I'd say the Shaman was the easiest and most fun to level, and offers varying degrees of complexity (Elemental is one of the easiest specs in the game, Enhance is one of the most complex, and resto is a nice and fun, varied healer). Priest is the most satisfying healer, and DKs have a lot of fun abilities, but they are common as dirt and generally played by utter morons.


Ingmar's guild seems to have a lot of F13 people in it, and seems like a fairly casual-friendly guild.

Yeah we're on Alliance/Doomhammer if you get the urge to de-orc.

There's a minecraft server called Doomhammer? What a coincidence!

(http://www.minecraftforum.net/images/smilies/mobcreeper.png)

First thing you should do is get an authenticator and use it.

Second is ditch the Curse client updating thingum. It is bad juju.

After that, everything else in this thread is golden. Well, mostly. Mage? Seriously?  :why_so_serious:

Curse client is fine. Been using it for years. As has everyone in my guild. Not a single hacking. People posting on assorted forums "I got hax0red after installing Curse client!!" are just the usual retards who click on phishing email links and don't use an authenticator.

I can second the paladin advice - they're versatile, fun to play and pretty much immortal while levelling, especially as Protection. You get a quest that says "Kill 20 foozles" and do it in one pull if you can find 20 close enough together.  :awesome_for_real:

If you're not hot for a pally then warriors are fun, although I wouldn't level as Prot, and it's hard to go wrong with druids.

Professions... ugh, well, personally I think professions are a bit fucked. The gains to the character from professions are minimal and the cost of levelling them is huge. 2 gathering profs is the way to go while levelling (any 2 - you can show both herbs and mineral veins on your map at the same time now) and if you decide when you get to level cap that you want an extra +90 whatever or a BoP crafted epic then you can level a prof fairly easily. WoW-Professions (http://www.wow-professions.com/) has a bunch of good guides.

And stay the fuck away from Archaeology, it's fucking terrible.

Leveling as a protection warrior is fine now.

Protection has been fine since LK.

Arch isn't that bad. It's fluff, but there are a ton of pets and clicky gadgets to find, if you're into that. A couple of fairly decent BoA items are in there to help leveling. It's dull, but what else is there to do while waiting on 50 minute queues? Fishing?  :ye_gods:

Generally, I can fly around mining or fly around digging up old bones. Half a dozen of one, six of another.

When you hit 60 you're going to want ALL of the expansions, unfortunately.  Burning Crusade alone won't let you buy the flight license you need to fly around in the old world. You need vanilla + TBC + wrath + Cataclysm for that.

Naturally.

Gonna stop by Fry's and see if I can find some old boxes to mitigate the upgrade costs a bit. If not, I might be out $100 or so.  :mob:

I would like to play a druid, but the Alliance races just aren't an option. I will never play a Night Elf (I am having enough trouble being on the same side!), and Worgens look stupid and require further expansions.

Does no one buy stuff on the AH anymore? I have gotten some really decent BOE drops that are just rotting on the AH.

Low level BoE gear often has competition for BoAs and thus doesn't sell too well. Also with the faster 1-60 leveling, some people aren't even bothering to buy anything as you'll replace it with a quest reward in a few minutes anyway.

Most low level greens just get bought to be disenchanted as far as I can tell. You can still get a better price than what a vendor will pay though.

Yeah that is kinda what I figured. Got two really nice blues- one sold (which financed my purchase of all my bank slots  :awesome_for_real: ), but the other hasn't yet, and very few of the greens.

Spent 30 minutes on Sentinel hill to and gathered a couple of hundred linen and a few greens to D/E- just set my pet on aggressive and hit and AoE every few seconds, and they died faster than I could loot- that took care of linen bandages  :grin: Might need a few more minutes to get enough for heavy linen, then it is on to wool. Any suggestions for that?

You can sell the enchant mats you don't need to buy the ones you do (maybe) - prices get better as you go up in level.

Wool cloth - worgens or ogres in Duskwood or Thistlefur in Ashenvale.  Basically humanoid mobs between 20 and 30.

I can't say for sure (since the option didn't exist back when I did sub-375 enchanting levelling) but I'd guess too that stuffing enchants onto scrolls (rather than serially re-enchanting some bit of kit, which used to be the norm) and trying to sell them might not be a bad idea. There are several low-level enchants which will sell to an extent as they can be placed on heirlooms. If you check wowhead for the best chest and weapon enchants that don't require a minimum item level then you'll find them.

Most of them are impractical for levelling (crusader, +15 agility etc) but I think the +stats, +hp and +mana to chest enchants are viable to skill off.

Ugh I totally forgot about scroll enchanting. Dammit. Will try a few of those to supplement what I need, as well as selling some of the midgrade mats I have now.

Use your tailoring to make clothing you can DE for mats.  Farm cloth and look for super cheap cloth/bolts/greens on the AH.  Run yourself the through lower level instances to get both.
Get to 55 (or 60?) with your Mage, buy the expansions, then make a DK.  Otherwise make a Warrior.

Just bent over and bought all the expansions. I blame Lantyssa- her advice about making a DK after 55 made way too much sense.

I also figured that I am going to spend nearly that much on hockey and beer tonight, so it makes sense in an entertainment hours/$ way. Just don't tell my wife!

I would've made a warrior, personally, and leveled through a different newbie experience. DKs get shoved into shitty Outland right away.  :oh_i_see:

Muahahahaha.

Save your DK starter set.  You'll never get as cool looking gear again.  Maybe one day they'll add an appearance tab.  (Yeah, right.)

Not sure. I always used (and use) direct fire. It just feels more efficient when soloing, unless you seriously outgear the mobs you're killing.



You honestly don't need any. I haven't used any since 4.0 which broke several of the old ones, but I do intend to redownload:
TomTom
Lightheaded
An aggro/recount mod



Enchanting is a huge money sink without a lot of payoff unless you plan to catass your way to the top. Blacksmithing is much the same. Engineering always has some cool toys but is never top of the line. Tailoring is only really useful in terms of making your own bags and leg enchants. Gemcrafting seems to be a middle ground. Inscription seems to be something that can actually make money on the AH with some consistency without being the highest level or catassing it.

If you start a tank, go for Herbalism/Mining. The buffs they give you will help you as a tank, and you can sell metals/gems/herbs, or supply a crafter character.



WoW battle chest doesn't have D2 in it. Aside from the cheap sale they had briefly, $5 TBC/LK, Blizz are keeping up the prices on the expacks, and haven't even announced a new Battle Chest with all-in-one, which is a bit fucked.



Guilds level up via members questing and killing. You also rep up within your guild (very slowly) by questing. As the guild levels up it unlocks perks, and eventually, items that you can buy which require a certain guild rep to purchase.



Druid can do a bit of everything, but I'd recommend a Warrior. Something I'd always avoided because it seemed like a boring class to play, but it's actually kind of awesome. I was initially Fury, but it turns out that Protection kicks all kinds of arse these days, solo or in groups. You also have 3 stances within each of the 2/3 specs you choose, so there's a lot of ways you can play.



Good luck with that. Your best bet seems to be playing with Ingmar and Sjofn and friends from the f13 crowd.

The first 2 sets of DK armour are both pretty good. The starter set, and the full upgrade you get from playing through the noob experience. FWIW, I've seen some nice looking LK-era plate gear as well.

This isn't true anymore. My Warlock is level 37, Tailoring 230-ish, Enchanting 251.  By DE'ing all my tailoring goods, dropped items, and gear once no longer using it I've bought at most a full stack of materials and the rods.  I've spent far more on Tailoring with thread than Enchanting.  (And feeding cloth from alts.)

Enchanting isn't too bad of a moneymaker at 85, provided you are able to reliably obtain the materials for the semi-common enchants that sell well (Hurricane sells for about 800-1000g per enchant on a good day on my server, and if I have to buy materials I still make between 300 and 500 gold profit).

Tailoring isn't bad either with selling spellthread to the suckers who will buy it. The tailored epic pants/belts never, ever sell on my server.

I'm like you, I hadn't played seriously since BC (did all of that though) and had skipped WotLK when it was shiny and new. Then I jumped back in 2-boxing a mage and priest in mid-2010.

So ... some of the negative things a returning person like me notiiced. Something defintely was missing this time around, and part of it is the overall feeling that they really dumbed the game down. Way down.

1. Mage + priest was awesome AE combo (mage nova, blizzard + priest holy fire or whatever the ones is that dmgs and heals party). Even though questing has always been the main way to level, AE was at least speedign up the kill tasks and could also be used for faction grinds. Now it ... is ... gone as far as frost goes. A frost mage gets like NO AE forever, unless you try to count nova, arcane explosion and (haha) cone of cold as AE. I suspect maybe fire has more of it still since they may have rationalized to give better AE to the spec that can't cc as much. Priests can't heal for shit any mroe compared to before, but that won't matter since I don't play him.

2. The spec trees just suck to me. SUCK. Goddamnit do they have to continue to make this game for 10 year old retards? There is zero variety in specs now. Absolute zero. You only get like 31 points now, not 1 each level (every 2-3 levels now). Same with spells. No spell ranks, no down ranking, they even tell you exactly which spell you just got (notiice I said spell singular). I'm sure they don't want to fry your sensitive little brain with more than one spell at a time. And you cannot even spend points at all in the other 2 specs for a looong time; they force you to just max out the one tree.

3. Strange decisions like: take away mages refreshments PRECEDING that which you can buy, and make them LAG the store bought ones. Why the fuck do we even have those spells then?

4. You will just love Gear Score. For someone returning and with a giant disadvantage with knowledge, guildies, and gear - good luck.

5. I actually had a blast leveling on my own, then at end game I parked my two level 80 mage and priest never to touch them again before Cata came out. At all. Becuase it just isn't interesting enough to try to wade through (or even figureout) where to start again at end game when no one wants to bother.

6. No new servers AT ALL for Cata. For someone starting back up or rerolling, why in the hell would I want to be on a server with 10,000 fuckers who already are so far beyond me I will never catch up? I know why THEY want me to do it, but how Blizzard thinks any sane new blood would bother is beyond me. And I tried.

7. World PvP is (and has been) dead. Just wanted to point that out too, since even moreso than when you last played BGs, Arenas, instanced stuff is all there is. You can't even intimidate someone into ganking you for free any more. Sad.

Okay, a positive just to show I'm not too mad :)

1. The goblins areas are very funny and clever, worth a look at just leveling oneup to see it. Heard the worgen is good too but didn't play it. But again, the fact that there is no new server where you feel like all that new content and rerolls are on a brand new world basis alongside you just blows for me.

2. The needles underwater stuff is well done. You move fast under and over water, with your own ship and such. It is one of the few mechanics I wish had been in the game all along.

3. The nostalgia and explanations in the quests and lore for what has happened and all the inside jokes are funny and a sad reminder of how much you will miss the old things. They play off the world changes well but it is kind of sad, since you will remember every single inch of what used to be where.

4. As someone said, they did streamline quests a lot, hubs pop up a lot more frequently with flight paths, and the running back and forth is almost gone - to the point it starts becoming a negative that it is too easy. Remember Amee and the mithril casing you need to get? Now you just pick up a coconut on the ground next to her and break it on a rock. And she is standing outside the gorilla cave to begin with. There a lot of that sort of thing. I know they did it to make 1-Outland really fast, but it wasn't even hard as it was.

My simple advice to level at this expansion is to simply enjoy the questing content at your own pace, and make sure to bind yourself to Stormwind. They implemented a dungeon finder for 5 mans, which is long if you are a dps. Just start your queue and do something else until it hits.

Don't rush to the endgame as it's not ready yet.

I've just taken up fishing and drinking beer. Works about as well in a virtual world as the real one. And draenei fishing animations are more amusing than real ones (haven't got a hook caught in my ear/horns yet anyway).

Ingmar is the jerk, I don't care!

Hey, I have narrow nostrils...it's not my fault! :why_so_serious:

Are there any up to date leveling guides that aren't hidden behind some pay add-on? Most of the stuff I find is for pre-Cata, which usually takes me an hour or two of research to discover. Even a map of what zones are appropriate for what levels (since so much of that changed!), and how the fuck to get to them would be nice. I spent 45 minutes trying to figure out how to get to Blackrock (was going t meet some guildies there, but it fell apart and two of us just did a PUG in BRD)...never did figure how to access it. Between the Cataclysm and the fact that this is my first Alliance character I have no goddamned clue how to get around Azeroth anymore.

I made a baby dwarf warrior. Watching him run around is amusing. Not really looking forward to grinding him through 85 levels, but I will just use him when he has blue experience. Ideally I would like to have several high level characters from which to choose so I could do end game stuff as different classes for a change of pace. Be nice to be able to start one of each character at 55 or 60 once you max one character out, but I guess that would completely trivialize all the revamping of the n00b stuff. I have been trying to sell a blue level 25 2H sword on the AH for a week now; finally decided to make a warrior and just put it to use myself.

Need silk. Read a guide saying the SM was a good place to farm it, but the non-elites don't drop it fast enough and the elites still take too long to kill (level 55 mage). Any non-instanced secret spots? I just need 150 or so to get me over the hump in tailoring- I have stacks and stacks of mageweave and am now accumulating runecloth semi-regularly. AH prices are a total non-starter, with a single stack going for like 300 gold or something insane.

I seem to recall long long long ago farming silk off of ogres in Duskwood.

Just thought of some more questions regarding gear.

I vaguely remember that Agility and Stamina was good for rogues, while Intellect and Spirit were for casters. I have since heard conflicting reports regarding spirit's efficacy for mages, locks, etc. So basically- what stats are most important to which classes now? That will help tremendously as I hand out shitty low level enchants like candy to my alts and guildies. A run down on stuff like haste, crit, resilience, etc would be most helpful as well.

Primary stats are:

Str - all tanks minus feral druids, all plate dps
Agi - rogues, feral druids, hunters, enhancement shamans
Int - all dps casters and healers

Spirit is a secondary stat that governs mana regen but really only matters for healers because they are the only ones who can make any use of it during combat. Balance druids and elemental shamans use it like hit rating (this enables them to share gear with resto specs), otherwise it should be avoided by non healers.

On the haste/crit/mastery/hit/expertise front that varies widely by class and spec which ones are most important so it would be hard to give a general overview.

Resilience is a pvp-only stat basically. Everyone wants it in pvp.

Spirit only matters for healers because healers get a "You can regen 50% of your spirit-determined mana during combat" talent ability.  Mages don't get that, they're supposed to go burst DPS till they're OOM and then drink up.  I've levelled up an alt mage to about 43, and I rarely had to drink actually.  Now and then, past L20 when my mana pool got bigger.

IMO, there's a little bit of a built-in nerf to our ability to hit (with spells or melee); I always needed a little bit of +Hit gear in order to not miss vs. equal level mobs while levelling up.  After that, if you're a class that relies on criticals (rogue, cat druid, fire mage), you want +Crit (as your second priority after your primary stat), it's nice.

Biggest needs for my alts were bags, a dedicated AH character with space (you often need to wait for the weekend to get deals or sell your stuff, and it accumulates fast during the week), and, if levelling up professions, gold.

EDIT:  nevermind, was suggesting to buy silk from the AH.  It should be cheap, but maybe everyone on your server is levelling up first aid.

Are tanks really prioritizing str over stamina now?  I remember getting shit for that in Lich King.

Stamina is not a 'primary stat' in the sense I'm using it here. All gear has the same amount of stamina on it now basically so it never really factors into 'is this for my spec?'

Shadow Priests have the spi -> Hit talent as well.

IIRC, the intent was for caster dps to never have mana issues via mana regen mechanics within their trees (cast X, proc mana return type stuff), but it doesn't really work for a lot of specs.

1. 5% is the base miss chance.
2. Chance to miss increases by by 1% per level difference between you and the enemy.
3. Magic has an additional penalty against enemies 3 levels higher.  This penalty is 9%.  Thus the total miss chance against said enemy would be 17%.
4. The dual-wield penalty is 19%, this only applies to auto-attacks.
5. When in doubt about a stat, read the tooltip, it tells you everything you need to know.

Pally and Warrior tanks are also favoring mastery in their secondary stats these days due to block. DK's are favoring parry. Druids, I have no idea.

Buh? When the heck did that start? DKs have been favoring mastery like nobody's business for a bit now. There is no reason to favor parry over dodge for them though (or more specifically: balance the two as much as possible)

Mastery completely confuses me.  It sounds good but does it really help?  Besides tanks, I mean.  Haste seems so much better for what I play (hunter, lock, shadow priest, druid).

It's entirely class and spec dependent as far as the value of mastery. Next patch is supposed to change a lot of that, but the numbers are still in flux (unholy dk mastery is changing from useless disease increase to slightly less useless all shadow damage increase, but simming it Haste still beats Mastery by a mile. But every tank spec seems to love mastery, and my holy priest adores it)

It entirely depends on the class and spec.

It doesn't help unholy DKs much at all so it's not favored over crit or haste and probably hurts you more than helps if you have a lot (diseases do so little damage anyway.. so even 3x that is still nothing.) However, frost DKs favor it over crit or haste. Meanwhile, blood DKs want to stack as much of it as they possibly can for the damage shield.

Shadow priests don't really care about it because they only need one orb to get their bonus, so haste and crit are favored, meanwhile holy priests want to stack the hell out of it.  Disc priests, from what I've read want to keep a blend of everything else after Int and Spi, so it's a "meh" stat there as well.

They've failed to do what they appeared to want, which is make Mastery matter to all the specs so they can tweak them just using that stat.  It matters a lot for some specs to not at all for others.

Ed: reading up on hunter it looks like BM wants it balanced with crit since it buffs pet damage while Surv and Marks go Crit > mastery > haste.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

As I recall, the big talent changes were enacted to make all specs viable and more or less equivalent.  I don't see these changes as being any better at it than it was before. 

Aside from a few classes, the dps specs and such are pretty solidly within 5% of each other. The simplification of the trees just made it so it's nearly impossible to gimp talent yourself.

Mastery just needed a LOT more simcrafting done in beta on it to say "hey, these numbers just do not work for some specs"

They are now, but I get the sense that's changing some with the upcoming patches. Jury is still out. Parry and Dodge are equal, yes, but parry is beneficial due to the threat generation in addition. Warriors for certain are favoring parry over dodge right now due to talents.

I don't think that was the primary motivator, the primary motivator was when you have 76+ point talent trees it becomes nearly impossible to not just bloat the trees up with stupid filler talents. Plus they kept having to move the sexy 21/31/41 point talents farther and farther up the tree to keep people from being able to pick them up in their off spec, which meant that new characters took longer and longer to get those signature talents, which sucked, etc.

I *love* the new talent trees, a lot. Easily the best Cataclysm change other than the revamped old world.


Yeah parry is a bit better than dodge for warriors because of Hold the Line, but mastery still is better than either in general. The fact that we get parry from strength pushes parry rating into DR faster though so I'm not sure if it actually works out that we will want more actual *rating* from parry than dodge. I haven't really worried about optimizing yet though.

I disagree with this completely. One of the coolest things about the old talent trees was that you got to make an INTERESTING decision not just where you spec, but for which tree you offspecced into. A Holy pally, for example, had a choice between increased crit in the Ret tree, or picking up Divine Sacrifice (now Divine Guardian) in the Prot tree for greater raid utility. PVP Assassination rogues running Mut/Prep is another example, SL/Felguard locks (although you can do this 80+, it was a good leveling build), grabbing Meditation as a leveling Spriest, etc. With the way the talents are now, all you get from whatever subspec is more "useless filler" talents that simply provide flat bonuses. It wouldn't be SO bad if they didn't force you to spend 31p before you sub-spec, but the way it is now you have almost no choice in how you spend your talents beyond "I want to play an enhance shaman".

I always felt the old system was more the illusion of choice than actual choice. There were very few specs that could pick up X or Y without having a major difference in performance. Usually those choices still exist as well (floater points to advance the tier. Unholy DKs have two points where no option would increase dps, so spend them however you like)

The "pick a tree, get an immediate skill" thing helped the fact that leveling some specs was terrible, because you didn't get your spec defining skill until level 50ish and had to limp along without it. Lowbie shadow priests used to be painful because they were simply expected to smite the day away until 20/30ish.

There was no interesting offspec decision to make for any of my characters, I'm not sure what you played but protection (or arms) warrior, elemental (or resto) shaman, arcane mage, and balance (or resto) druid had no meaningful secondary tree choices. I don't recall anything meaningful on my ret paladin either but I didn't play him all that much.

I have only capped my protection warrior this time around but there are definitely choices to be made in my secondary trees that have at least as much value as they did under the last model. PVP and PVE specs are still different, too, so it isn't like that went away. What went away is "I have to play my shaman to level 50 before my spec feels different than the others". A++ for that.

You could argue that Arms with Deathwish was viable.  It wasn't what I would call interesting.

As much as I dislike Cata I ended up loving what they did with the talent trees. The old ones were just too big, and even though you could have some wacko builds, it led to alot of talents being nerfed because a spec that wasn't designed for it could take it.

As for druid tanks, mastery is not junk, but it's not great either. Dodge is far superior, and even crit comes near it as a defensive stat. Due to the way it works, it also has a soft cap: because a hit will consume it whether it's for 1 damage, or how much the hit actually is, there is no point in stacking more of it then the content you are in hits for.

While they made Holy Priests a lot more fun to play, they did not achieve this by making the Holy tree fun in any way. There's only 37 points you can take in the tree max, and the points you don't take are talents that are literally dire (i.e. nobody takes). Before the revamp you could build a holy priest in several different and fairly distinct ways; now there is one way to spec and that's it. The upside to the talent revamp is the change such that the first row in every tree provides benefits for any member of that class.

I've gotten the hang of my hunter and mage again, was curious, if I was to try playing a tank, would it be better to try Paladin, Warrior, or Death Knight?  I like the idea of Warrior with protection or fury, but the utility of the other two classes looks interesting, but then I'd have to learn healing as a paladin.  DPS or tanking would be more my style, so I think I might try that, is the shaman enhancement any good at tanking or is it more like dps-meele w/ the ability to heal or range attack options?

Enhancement can't tank except in really trivial sorts of situations. I prefer the paladin or warrior to the DK mechanically, so I'd go with one of those, but it is more a matter of taste than anything. Also, Paladins can DPS as retribution, you wouldn't have to learn to heal.

Play a DPS dk for a bit.  If you don't like the mechanics for DPS you'll hate them as a tank.   For starting off I'd go with Pally, myself.  At least they have 3 roles instead of 2, so if you discover you dislike tanking you're not stuck with only being another DPS in the crowd.

Yup.  Same rationale for trying a druid.

Plus, a druid can take two types of DPS.

True.. 3 specs, 4 roles. Bastards.

3 specs, 4 roles, only 1 toolbar (out of 5) that changes with your forms.  Pain in the butt.

I've (re-)discovered that I suck at melee, and the reason why is because with a ranged character I can see the spell fly over and hit and can thus chain/rotate them properly, but in melee range such feedback is lost in the crowd so I end up spamming random buttons.

Have gotten my mage up to 63 and am branching out with a couple of alts...rogue and warrior. I went subtlety with the rogue (only 11th level atm)- is that viable for leveling? All this has changed since I played last. How about for the warrior? Going to be level 10 now and locking myself into a tree- any suggestions? I am leaning toward arms, since I like big giant 2h weapons (and my main has a shitton of 2h enchants). Speaking of enchants, wow is nice to twink with them...huge differences at low levels. Of course, I will outlevel the equipment sooner than later, but the enchants make it last a little longer and make it not nearly as miserable as a lowbie.

If you use Bartender, you can have any of your bars change with your form. Even works for non-druids who have "forms" like shadow priests.

THIS  

Seriously, I COULD NOT handle the drood after a certain level and was going nuts due to the forms and toolbars, so I got Bartender 'just for the drood'.  It only took 3 days before I'd configured it for all my chars.

It's GREAT, particularly for a Drood.

I'd go with Prot Paladin.  Leveling is painless, and I found it to be pretty fun.

I started a Prot Pally just after they released the old world changes prior to Cata, as I was enamored of the idea of playing a Tauren Pally.  All I started with was chest, and shoulder Heirlooms, and one of the hammers, which I ditched at level 20.  Leveling to 60 was completely trivial.  Mulgore > Azhara > Ashenvale > here I did about the first 10 quests each in Stonetalon, and Desolace then I did the quests in Camp Mojache in Feralas then to 1000 Needles, and did the quests on the boat > Fellwood > Winterspring.  I ran a couple dungeons, pvp'd once or twice.  Going to Outlands, I did the Blood Elf quests in Hellfire, and the Troll & Neutral Horde camp in Zangarmarsh, and also some quests in Nagrand.  Other than that it was running Hellfire dungeons for rep.  70 - 80 was Borean Tundra, and Howling Fjord, and running the dungeons.

All told, it probably took me 4 days played to 80, maybe 5, but I was far from being efficient.  I rarely drop below 80% health, unless I am soloing elites, or large groups.  Word of Glory, prior to hitting 80 and dipping into the Cata gear, is just that good.  Avenger's Shield/Judgement to pull, Crusader Strike/Hammer of the Righteous x 3, WoG.  Rinse/Repeat.  With Seal of Insight, and normal tank related damage reduction from armor, parry, dodge and block, I rarely have to worry about health/mana.

I'd go with the DK, simply because you can get a good number of your abilities fairly quickly and can figure out if you like it or not.  There's no need to play to 30 or 40 to figure out you don't like what you have.  If the DK isn't your thing, then try one of those other two.

If it comes down to Druid tank or pally tank I would go with the pally (I mean that literally, that's what I did). The druid tank has essentially what amounts to one button, and all other buttons are just there to augment it.

If you don't use a barmod or are like me and can't spare the extra bars (I am crazy and have I think 8 hotbars showing at a time) you can just macro your abilities. Like so (http://www.wowpedia.org/Useful_macros_for_druids#Feral_Macros_for_version_4.0.1).

Prot warrior is incredibly easy to level and has the bonus of an instant dungeon queue any time you want one. Just remember to always pull at least 3 mobs at a time when levelling!

If the hankering for 2-handers is too strong then you could always go Fury and use *two* 2-handers at once.   :awesome_for_real:

Only at level 69 and above, which frustrates as it used to be 60!

It goes beyond frustrates and into "really pisses you off" when the change was implemented in the middle of leveling a fury war who had just hit 62.  That 2nd heirloom reaper.. yeah, JP well spent.

Thanks for mentioning heirlooms, since that was another question that popped into my mostly empty head last night. I have heard it mentioned, and know it has something to do with items that level with a character or get passed down from character to alt to alt or something, but I haven't seen any mention of it in game. How does it work, and when should I start worrying about it?

You purchase Heirloom items with Justice Points, I think they call them now.  You get the points from the first random dungeon queue you do for WotLK, and Cata, Normal, and Heroic dungeons.  You also get them from offing bosses in the Heroic dungeons, though I haven't paid attention to that since before 4.0. 

So, basically, you need a character that's 70+, and probably 85 and running Heroics regularly, if you want to kit an alt out.  Though, having a full set really can make a difference, as you can now get a 40 - 50% bonus to xp across all your heirloom gear.

Hierlooms are account bound items that level with you.  The armor will even intelligently switch types based on what you can use (IE an heirloom plate chest starts off as chain).

Heirlooms purchased in WOLK level from 1-80.  Cataclysm heirlooms are 1-85.  These are purchased with dungeon/raiding points or honor (used to be PVP tokens from WG as well).  A ring was able to be won from fishing contests.   Certain heirlooms I believe are also tied to guild leveling/rep.

Certain heirlooms also increase XP obtained from killing and questing and are thus pretty popular for twinks.  The weapons are also quite popular since they're usually better than any blue you're going to get questing.  Some of the trinkets have nice effects like mana/health restoration upon kills.

I leveled my goblin with my armor ones off (chest/shoulder +XP) until around level 50 because I was just leveling too fast.  But around 50, the zones got less interesting/new so I put them back on.  The heirloom gun stayed equipped the entire time.

1-80 Heirlooms are also available from the Argent Tournament for commendations. If you have time it might be worth doing, but there's a long rep grind to get to the dailies that give the tokens to purchase them so if you're starting out now it may not be worth doing.

Basically, Way, no you don't have to worry about it. It's something to spend points on once your max level and have nothing else to spend points on.  I bought all mine during wotlk when I was raiding and had more badges/ points than I could ever use.  I equipped 5 alts with full heirloom sets and still had leftover currency.

Doing the AT stuff is best done on a main due to the lengthy daily time investment.  But there's a plethora of stuff available as rewards - faction, companions, mounts, Heirlooms, and the Pony Bridle (which can be a lifesaver).

Jefe, what is a plethora?

Right, you get one. But if you wanted to change MORE than one bar when you change into shadowform, you can do that with Bartender. Did you miss the original complaint about only one bar changing when you change druid forms, or are you just being a dick?

Missed the original complain, but I'd have to wonder why you'd bother.

Can't comment on Shadowpriests, but the reason you bother with Warriors and Druids is that one bar simply isn't enough and displaying them where you want them and how you want them has now become vital for me.

Even simple things like button placement, consumables and macros can all be arranged in the different 'forms'.  Bartender is really, really good.

Hmmm, I may try that, my druid is pretty ugly at the moment.

Thanks all!

Been leveling my Mage 1st, then will work on Hunter, then start a Warrior, I watched my son play his Death Knight a lot, where he was showing how Blood for tanking and Frost for DPS (he doesn't mind the changes, was kinda miffed that blood got tanking now, he likes the look of the big 2 handed weapons), it is kind of a race in our house hold, which one of us will hit 85 first :)  Chances are we both will get tied up in studies again and won't get to play for a couple of months, but it seems a lot smoother and quicker to level now.  But after watching him with the DK, I think a Warrior will be more to my liking, with the duel talents eventually I can DPS or Tank, plus having "2" 2 handed axes or hammers looks pretty killer.

All three DK specs can use a two-hander effectively.

In my limited experience it is smooth sailing until about 60. Then it slows way down. Then it seems to slow even further at 70. It feels like the pre-60 stuff was a beta, and that the release version nerfed leveling speed. It is making it harder to log in for sure. I did a dungeon run last night (whatever keep in CoT)...I was a bit higher than the rest of the group (71 vs mid-60s), but we still had some grindy spots and had about half the party wipe once or twice. When I got done, whichever addon I have told me that just another 129 runs like that and I would level! Granted, it is not bleeding edge for my level, but the content was still tough and took plenty of time...

Come on now, that's early LK versus middle BC. That's a huge gap at higher levels.

Specifically, there is a huge jump in XP required to go from 70 to 71 (same at 60-61) as you're now in a new expansion. The dungeon you were doing was a BC dungeon, which means the mobs and everything are all on the previous expansion's XP scale; as a result the dungeon is worth shit to you, and you should be queuing for WotLK dungeons instead.

The only reason I was bothering was because I had a buddy who was still behind and wanted to group with him. I didn't realize the huge difference betweenn 69 and 71 (as far as XP needed). Is it strictly level that dictates which dungeons are available, or does someone have to actually visit Northrend to get WotLK dungeons? I talked him into making the leap to Norhtrend at 68- I think he was 69 and we did Utgarde Keep or whatever. The XP was MASSIVE in comparison. The more you know...

I still haven't hit 72 yet though- 2 dungeon runs and quite a few quests. Leveling does slow way down after 60 and again at 70, or it sure feels like it does.

Some n00b questions as I get prepared for MoP.

For specializations, if I want to mess around with all three talent tree specializations in a particular class it looks like I'll need 2 characters per class, assuming I'm too poor for constant respecs?

E.g. for Monk I would have one character with, say, dual-spec Brewmaster & Mistweaver, and another character with, say, Windwalker & Mistweaver?

Can the other races play through the Pandarian starting area or that for pandas only?

You'd need two characters per class if you wanted to have 3 'active' specs, but it probably makes more sense to just pay for the respecs. Especially with the new talent system and the cut-down on ability bloat, it shouldn't be too bad to redo bars each time (or you could grab a bar addon that will probably do this for you). Edit: Here (http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/actionswap2) is an addon that saves keybindings, talents, and glyphs for a third spec.

Only Pandas can play in the Wandering Isle 1-10 quest area. They are technically their own third faction up until level 10 at which point they pick alliance or horde and leave.

Thanks. How much is a respec?

Pro-rated depending on how long and how many times you've respeced recently.  For a fresh toon, I think it's in the neighborhood of 1-10 gold.

I believe there is a cap too so it should never get prohibitively high. Last I checked the cap was 50g, but it may have increased.

NOTE that 50G is not the insanely huge amount of money that it may have been the last time you played.

Each toon that I leveled through the new Cata zones made roughly 5k gold just from selling vendor trash and unusable quest rewards. That includes the actual gold rewards from quest completion. But, not the gold I made selling crafting mats on the AH.

Daily quests in Cata are worth, what, 16G each? 18? I can't remember.

The point being, you have to work at it in this game, to wind up too poor to afford a respec.

I'll be starting basically from scratch. It'll be a long long time before I hit max level (if ever).

If you start on a server with pretty much any one of us, I'm sure we could donate a few decent-capacity bags and a few hundred gold without an issue to get you up and running.

My old characters are on Windrunner. If I can get at those accounts (they are pre-B.Net move) I'll likely play on there. They don't have much since I stopped at the mid-30s but it's better than starting from scratch. If I can't get at those accounts for some reason or they've been looted I may pick a server with some active f13ers to play on.

You can get someone to scroll-of-resurrection you. That will give one of your characters a free bump to level 80 and also a free server/faction transfer to your friend's server. I can give you one to Proudmoore, I think myself, Paelos and Ginaz are here. Shop around and find a server that has people you like on it.  :grin:

I have like a bazillion characters though if I can resurrect my old accounts :awesome_for_real:

Heh, I probably should try to update that list of Who Plays Where thread i started ages ago.

Probably worth doing. It'd be interesting to see who's still playing.

There's a new Wow offer open now - you can get the Battle Chest at $20usd which comes with Wow + BC + WOTLK, or you can get everything up to MOP for $60usd.

http://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2012/september/newBattleChest.jpg (http://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2012/september/newBattleChest.jpg)

Holy crap the world looks so different now, even the small part I vaguely remember from the original game. Also my characters are starting out as flagged for PvP for some reason and of course there are Horde camping in the cities waiting to gank players like me :oh_i_see: (this is on a PvE server too)

Chars flagged for various reasons e.g. playing in battlegrounds, healing other flagged characters etc no longer unflag in 5 min after logging out. You have to wait 5 mins to unflag then log out.

One trick I use to insta unflag, is to take a flight or enter an instance. The moment you fly off you get unflagged (cant fly if in combat though). Entering a pve instance will unflag you too. (hint : ragefire chasm in Org, or Stockade in Stormwind.)

I think it was cause of the area I left my characters in 7 years ago :awesome_for_real:

I started in what used to be Southshore (fortunately not close enough to any hostile NPCs) and apparently that flagged me for PvP. One of my characters I ran to the Refugee flight point to the east and died twice, once from a PvP blast from some random person and another time from 2 hostile NPC guards I didn't see guarding an archway along the road. On another character I hearthstoned immediately to Stormwind but that didn't clear the flag and some random Horde Shammy camping near the flight master blasted me as I was trying to catch a flight to Stormwind.

What does the "(*)" after some guild names mean?

Probably telling you they're from a server other than your own.

OIC, I didn't realize the cross-realm stuff extended to the regular non-dungeon areas like cities.

Shouldn't be in cities (though maybe it is in low-pop cities like Darnassus and Exodar?) but it's certainly the case out int he countryside, up to and including Cataclysm zones - though due to the over-phased nature of that expansion, you'll rarely see anyone anyway.

Anyone have a good link to a site that talks about the basic of tanking with the different types of classes?

I've got a paladin I was leveling and decided to try tanking.  The shield throw is pretty cool, but I seem to be taking forever to kill things at times.  Protection spec BE paladin, I'm thinking I'll get him some heirlooms eventually so it won't be so painful.  The dungeon's I've been in so far on LFD have been great, no wipes and I kept everything on me it looked like, but I'm always wanting to figure out other ways to make it better.

The other question is kinda the same, how about healing for druids?  I think I can figure most of them out, but it seem's there are lots of assholes that bitch no matter how good you keep them healed.

If you're not killing 4+ mobs at a time as a prot pally, it's going to take forever.  As one mob dies, grab another. If mob density isn't enough for you to do this or you can't survive doing it, switch to ret or do a dungeon instead. 

Alas, this is human nature.  A lot of people complain at tanks/healers/dps even if no-one's died, lost aggro or the time to kill ain't bad.

My advice is to ignore these fuckers.

Or try to get them killed 'accidentally'

"Oh, shit, what hit you?! Your bar was full and then *BAM* empty!"

 :wink: :raspberry:

Not that I've ever done that..

My favorite is to let them die right before the mob dies.  I'll use spirit shell and GH/shield people to ensure victory and then let the twatwhistle die.  The best feeling.

I logged in yesterday for the first time in a couple of years, and can't play yet because my bags are all full and my bank is all full, and of course I have to respec since everything has changed. I managed to clear some space but still have to set up my action bars in some sort of order that makes sense. After an hour or so I did manage to get to a point where I can play with Battle Pets.

It seems a little jerky and not smooth at all. I wonder why? I don't recall WoW being this way. I've been playing Diablo 3 without any problems at all. Hmmm.

This is a different computer than I used to use, chiefly different is a cheaper and different manufacturer video card. I wonder if that's it.

I visited a Battleground that seemed unfamiliar. I was trying to set up my action bars in it but some dumb rogue was having fun sapping me over and over again. I couldn't even remember how to sic my pet on him.

Suffering from oldtimers WoW syndrome (can't remember how to do anything!).

All the graphics stuff defaulted to ridiculously high levels when I reinstalled the last time.   Sure, it's an old game, but auto-setting everything to ULTRA was asking a little much of my laptop.  They've added a lot of stuff, shadows in particular, that can be a pretty big speed hit, so take a look at the graphics settings and see what's up.  After I turned down the shadows and put antialiasing at like x4, then the framerate was much better.

The other possibility is it's still downloading stuff, but if the bar is all green on the loading launcher thing, that's not the case.

If it's been a few years you didn't have the particles and shadows that are in the engine now.  Turn those down to something reasonable if you don't have a vid card that at 'good' specs for about 1-2 years ago.  Textures and everything else should be able to remain up at the upper end.

Bingo!

I thought it had finished but nope, it's at 34%.

I think it's cool that it's playable (sorta) while it's downloading.

Also, I have no bow or gun. I have a polearm.

What happened to my weapon? I bought one for a few hundred off the AH, but my daughter just logged into the kids' account, and her hunter is also missing a shooting weapon.

check your bags.

They changed the weapon system so that Bows and Wands now clasify as Main Hand weapons.  They no longer fit in the Offhand / Ranged weapon slot, so were probably dumped into your bags instead.  Hunters nolonger need mele weapons (all attacks can be made exclusively with a Ranged Main Hand weapon equipped.  Mele weapons for hunters are purely cosmetic now.

Not in my bags either (or my daughter's). Odd that I should get to keep my polearm and not my bow/gun.

If your bags were full it was mailed to you, and lost since you haven't logged in in forever.

My sister (le sigh) suddenly started playing this a few weeks ago so I made a new account to help her.  I can't watch her play in person because the way she moves her character makes me sea sick.  :(  Anyway, we're on some rp server what starts with a W.  (or maybe an M)  I forget.  I only ever played off and on, just one character maxed but haven't even thought of playing since well before Cataclysm.  I updated so I could possibly find new and different quests and I've been marginally successful.  This game should go free or it'll hemorrhage subscriptions, I think.  Everyone else is doing it.  I got a free month with the update.  I won't sub.    I'm a werefurry right now and also have a Horde panda.  I've never played mamminals in a game before.  I don't think I like it.  I feel dirty and matted and I keep smelling wet dog.

I  :heart: the battle pets though!!

Please tell me you didn't pick Moonguard...

Haha!

I'm just so irritated playing WoW again. It is exactly the same irritations (with the community) only worse maybe.

I miss the old Barrens chat. As bad as that was, it is not nearly as bad as what it's like now.

I joined a guild because I was tired of being spammed every 5 seconds to join a guild.

It seems like the average age for playing has dropped to 13.

The combat seems slow and clunky. Everything about it seems slow and clunky. I think I'll go back and play Diablo 3 instead.

No, I looked and it's Wyrmrest Accord.  Whatever that means.

Administrative mail doesn't time out before it has been read, I thought?

It wasn't in my mailbox or my bags or my bank. Just gone. So was my daughter's hunter's bow/gun.

But thank god I got all those worthless keys back to fill my bags up.

I know that's the case for a few months, but I've never tried it for years.  Though this was a MOP change, so it should be in her mail.  Did you try sending a ticket, Xanthippe?

I sent in a ticket for my daughter's bow. Mine, I just bought some green bow for 300g (honestly, I can't remember what I even had). Haven't logged back in to her account to check, but when I do I'll let you know what happened.

Sure seems like a bizarre way to handle hunter weapons, though. Just delete the useful one!

I did get other administrative emails. Bow/gun wasn't one of them.

I take it the same thing happened to wands for casters?

Correct. The Ranged Weapon slot was eliminated for everyone, not just Hunters. If you wield a wand, it goes in the main hand slot.

I've decided I can't play a Worgen.  The horrible posture and the running position makes me very nervous.  Maybe if it turned into something more wolfy when it runs, instead of wearing all it's clothing, it would be less disturbing.  Good-bye Worgen.

Their idle sound doesn't help. Holy shit, that's annoying.

SNORT

Yeah, I've levelled two worgen up to the end of their newbie zone and then deleted them shortly afterwards. That *sniff* *sniff* *SNORT* is awful (plus the female ones look like a cross between 70s-era Disney characters and EQ2 characters).

Wow, they never removed that?  Pretty much EVERYONE hates that animation.  I know there was a mod you could get that would at least remove the sound effects of that animation back when I used to play.

The idle I didn't mind.  The sounds I did.

The only reason I've been able to tolerate playing a Worgen is to level one up enough to get to the pet trainer and buy the Worgen-specific battle pet (Gilnean Raven) which is quite cool and a great pet if you like pet battles...and sells nicely on the AH if you don't.

But you only have to be level 10 or so to do that.  Then I delete them.  Can't stand Worgen.

The alternate path would be to roll a werewolf worgen DK. I don't know if that would be faster than going through Gilneas, though.

I saw they were having a sale on character changes so it's half price if you want to turn all your Worgen's into Night Elves. 

So, I decided to give the 10 day trial a go to see how things work this go around. I haven't played since the beginning of Cataclysm.

My first question, what happened to Victory Rush on warriors? I keep getting this buff that says Victory Rush is available, but I don't see that I can use it as an arms warrior.

Check  your spellbook for the Victory Rush Ability, then drag  it to a toolbar.   I think it is now designed so that you  have to attack something while the buff is up to get the heal, and it only pops up after killing something that gives exp / honor.   Might be you accidentally  deleted it off your toolbars?   Cant think you would  get the buff if you dontt have the associated abillity yet.

Correct - I know it and bloodthirst are awesome for leveling as fury. 

Not specific to Victory Rush (as I don't have a warrior and don't know) but for some things, they are bestowed as talents when you pick them, and only appear in your spellbook after you've chosen them, and you can then put them on your hotbar.

Aside: I was finally able to finish AQ solo on my hunter. Twin Emps were a piece of cake, and that slimy Viscidus mob that will only die when you freeze it first? I was able to switch out my level 100 talent and switch in Exotic Munitions (where I can pick Fire/Frost/Poison on my ammo) in order to freeze it and then my pet meleed it to death once it froze. I got the pet drop too so I never have to do it again - yay for having a Travelers Tundra mammoth and being able to buy the books to change talents inside AQ!