Cataclysm

[apocrypha]

Did about 10 PUG runs yesterday as DPS. Queues have shortened considerably at 85, usually only 10-12 minutes now.

All but 2 of them were great. In every single run at least one person said "I've never been here before, how do you do it?" and people explained and it all went smoothly. We had target marking, CC, single-target burning down and no loot dramas. 2 of the groups had dipshits in and involved either a bunch of votekicks or abandonment early.

Annoyed that I can't queue for BRC at 85, still haven't done that. Hopefully we can guild group it at the weekend. I'm iLvl 328 now so hopefully able to try a heroic soon! 

[Rendakor]

Karsh Steelbender (the fire boss in BRC) is WAY harder in Heroic than he is on normal; harder still if you know the normal strat (as a tank) and attempt it here. Going in and out of fire for 2 stacks and letting them drop will wipe you VERY quickly as you get overwhelmed with adds and their fire pools.

I'll offer up Andorhal (US PVP), Horde side as another potential server for people looking to play. I run a semi-serious raiding guild, that anyone's welcome to join and chill in, run heroics with, etc. We mostly play late night EST, which would work for West Coasters too.

[Merusk]

Seems like word has gotten out about non-equipped gear letting you queue, or more DPS are realizing they can queue for heroics as tanks with their DPS ilevel.   Had three tanks last night who were squishy as hell, having only 136-139khp.  The difference between them and the final, ACTUAL tank who came in with 143khp was astounding.

[Raguel]

I really really liked stonetalons quests and the flow around the zone. Hands down one of the best zones I have experienced leveling up so far.

So far I'd say Redridge and Stonetalon have been tough acts to follow. The Booty Bay climax was bad ass, and Thousand Needles was cool (bar fights, ice cream, a boat,pirates, and cynical, oppressive imperialism; what's not to like?). Burning Steppe (I think that's the name) was sort of anti-climatic (but then most sequels are), but did have some fun bits.

[01101010]

Seems like word has gotten out about non-equipped gear letting you queue, or more DPS are realizing they can queue for heroics as tanks with their DPS ilevel.   Had three tanks last night who were squishy as hell, having only 136-139khp.  The difference between them and the final, ACTUAL tank who came in with 143khp was astounding.

Those number are just retarded - and not in a good sense. To me, it just screams "Kids like big numbers, so we'll take what we've been doing and just add two zeros at the end and they'll LOVE it." 

[Paelos]

I just hit level 82, and I'm at the part where I've just set the demon guy free in Mt. Hyjal. The levelling seems really fast. All I've done other than that is run both low level dungeons once, and get Arch up to 100.

[caladein]

Seems like word has gotten out about non-equipped gear letting you queue, or more DPS are realizing they can queue for heroics as tanks with their DPS ilevel.   Had three tanks last night who were squishy as hell, having only 136-139khp.  The difference between them and the final, ACTUAL tank who came in with 143khp was astounding.

Those number are just retarded - and not in a good sense. To me, it just screams "Kids like big numbers, so we'll take what we've been doing and just add two zeros at the end and they'll LOVE it." 

The numbers are that high for the same reason we have item level 359 gear right now: it's above where Wrath left us.  Tanks with CDs in Wrath could get up to the high five-digits so everyone's health had to be inflated above that to create a new baseline so the healing game works like it's supposed to.

[Paelos]

I find it funny that my level 85 shaman healer friend doubled my health as a level 81 warrior tank when we did our last instance.   

[Rasix]

Stonetalon was a joy.  It was a pretty cool, streamlined affair with a minmal amount of "why the fuck am I doing this?".  The pop-culture reference peons were working overtime.

Hellscream threatening to kill me is starting to get mildly amusing.  That's twice, big guy.  A third time and you might need to actually punch me or something.

Anyone have an opinion on what zone is better to do next?  Southern Barrens or Desolace?

[Hutch]

I liked them both. S Barrens is now alli vs horde, so if you're into that, go there first.

Desolace is essentially Desolace v2.0. That is, the quests all center around the same parts of the zone (nagas, satyr-demons, centaurs, burning blade, mannoroth) but the quests have been given the Cata treatment like everywhere else in Azeroth. Oh and they plunked down a big druid grove in the center of the zone. If you're Horde, you can still go visit Shadowprey village, but it's a husk of its former self, quest-wise.

[Threash]

Seems like word has gotten out about non-equipped gear letting you queue, or more DPS are realizing they can queue for heroics as tanks with their DPS ilevel.   Had three tanks last night who were squishy as hell, having only 136-139khp.  The difference between them and the final, ACTUAL tank who came in with 143khp was astounding.

Actually its because the pvp season just began and people upped their ilvl with their stockpiled honor.  Resilience now provides zero benefit in pve so that gear is extremely artificially inflated for heroics.

[kildorn]

Seems like word has gotten out about non-equipped gear letting you queue, or more DPS are realizing they can queue for heroics as tanks with their DPS ilevel.   Had three tanks last night who were squishy as hell, having only 136-139khp.  The difference between them and the final, ACTUAL tank who came in with 143khp was astounding.

Actually its because the pvp season just began and people upped their ilvl with their stockpiled honor.  Resilience now provides zero benefit in pve so that gear is extremely artificially inflated for heroics.

It also tempts people to equip it because it's higher ilvl (333 vs 339) than non heroic blues. A PVP equipped tank will have far more hp than a non heroic tank right now.

That said, my tanking set when buffed is around 133k hp, because I stopped stam stacking and started gemming avoidance and mastery. I had 153k hp and was a total mana sponge, swapped to avoidance (including the parry runeforge instead of the stam/armor one) and wound up a far better tank.

[Fordel]

Stonetalon was a joy.  It was a pretty cool, streamlined affair with a minmal amount of "why the fuck am I doing this?".  The pop-culture reference peons were working overtime.

Hellscream threatening to kill me is starting to get mildly amusing.  That's twice, big guy.  A third time and you might need to actually punch me or something.

Anyone have an opinion on what zone is better to do next?  Southern Barrens or Desolace?

Southern Barrens is far more entertaining then Desolace. Desolace is a detour that has little to do with the over all story-theme of Kalimdor now.

[lesion]

(including the parry runeforge instead of the stam/armor one)

This should have been a non-issue! The parry forge drips blood! Blooood!

[Dren]

I just hit level 82, and I'm at the part where I've just set the demon guy free in Mt. Hyjal. The levelling seems really fast. All I've done other than that is run both low level dungeons once, and get Arch up to 100.

My experience so far:

I've spent my time only questing.  So far with only 3 long play sessions totalling maybe 9-10 hours (been busy and travelling,) I'm at about 84.25.  This last bit to 85 will take awhile, but I actually did Hyjal at 83-84 so I backtracked a bit to just get all the quests done for money and achievements.  If I pushed to all the level appropriate areas I would probably be at 85 already. (I went water area->Maelstorm area->Hyjal->now in Twilight area.) 

I have been doing a moderate amount of herbalism and alchemy, but only as I travel around doing quests.  I've done archeology only once in one area for 2 points just to see what it was about.  Oh, most of my experience from kills has been rested due to my long periods of time between play sessions, so that helps some.  Our guild also has the 5% gain.

I've had no issues with killing things or dieing (maybe died 2 times.)  It helps that I started with nearly 6k gs though.  Even after paying for flying skill and other training, I have over 3k more gold than I started with too.  Collect it all and sell it all equals major coin.

[Draegan]

On the leveling process, I have a few questions.

I'm outleveling stuff quickly.  The general question though is, while doing quests, dungeons and two gathering profs, once you start greening out quests should you just drop what you're doing and move to the next zone?

Example: Almost finished Azshara, but I'm way off the level for it, should I just head to Stonetalon and jump in?  I'm trying to level quickly, so no need to lecture me on the journey.

[Sjofn]

If you don't give a shit about the story/achievement/whatever, skip ahead to where ever the warchief's call board suggests.

[Dren]

On the leveling process, I have a few questions.

I'm outleveling stuff quickly.  The general question though is, while doing quests, dungeons and two gathering profs, once you start greening out quests should you just drop what you're doing and move to the next zone?

Example: Almost finished Azshara, but I'm way off the level for it, should I just head to Stonetalon and jump in?  I'm trying to level quickly, so no need to lecture me on the journey.

If you don't care about the journey, then definitely drop grey-green quests and move on.  You might run around and get all the fp's and maybe clear the maps for the achievements, but even that is pretty fluffy.

You might break up some of the longer quest chains by doing that, but there are more than enough quests to get over that quickly.  The biggest drawback might be skipping over instance content, but I imagine you are like me and don't really care that much about it.  I typically either go back when I'm bored and solo those or run the high end ones as heroics when at level cap.  The exp gain in them is mediocre compared to questing and the items will be replaced within 4 levels, which anymore is in a few hours played maybe less.

[caladein]

If you're consistently picking up green quests and have a new zone to go to, you probably want to move on.  This is especially true because you're double gathering and running dungeons.

The Command/Call Boards and inter-zone breadcrumbs aren't bad guides for this as you'll either wind up skipping the ends of zones or finishing them off but skipping the next one and the former is probably better from a speed perspective.

[Tannhauser]

I haven't seen this mentioned and I just now found it, but there is an NPC named Behsten who, for 10gp, will stop you from gaining experience.  You can go back to him to restart it.  He is in King Wrynn's keep in the room to the king's left.   I don't know the Horde guy yet.

I am seriously considering using this so I can set the xp pace the way I want thru some zones so I don't outlevel them.

If this is common knowledge, please excuse, but I have been wondering if such a thing was possible.

[01101010]

I haven't seen this mentioned and I just now found it, but there is an NPC named Behsten who, for 10gp, will stop you from gaining experience.  You can go back to him to restart it.  He is in King Wrynn's keep in the room to the king's left.   I don't know the Horde guy yet.

I am seriously considering using this so I can set the xp pace the way I want thru some zones so I don't outlevel them.

If this is common knowledge, please excuse, but I have been wondering if such a thing was possible.

I guess my question is why? Just so the quest is a yellow color? So the quest mobs are a challenge? I am honestly curious. I do grey quests to keep the story going, even if it's for no/little xp.

[Ingmar]

That guy exists for the xp on/off BG crowd, I don't think he's new.

[Tannhauser]

I have a bad habit of outlevelling instances I want to do.

[DraconianOne]

I haven't seen this mentioned and I just now found it, but there is an NPC named Behsten who, for 10gp, will stop you from gaining experience.  You can go back to him to restart it.  He is in King Wrynn's keep in the room to the king's left.   I don't know the Horde guy yet.

I am seriously considering using this so I can set the xp pace the way I want thru some zones so I don't outlevel them.

If this is common knowledge, please excuse, but I have been wondering if such a thing was possible.

It's been possible for a while now - since patch 3.2. They cater to the twinks who want to do BGs at the top of the level groups but don't want to go any higher. Also, level 60 hardcore vanilla raiders.. The Horde guy is called Slahtz as in Behsten Slathtz. (Best in Slots?) Yeah, I know!

Just so it isn't asked but if you freeze your xp, you don't get the gold equivalent for quests as if you were at level cap - just the gold you'd get as if you were levelling.

[01101010]

I have a bad habit of outlevelling instances I want to do.

Oh the instances... oh ok. I get it now.

[MournelitheCalix]

I have a bad habit of outlevelling instances I want to do.

Oh the instances... oh ok. I get it now.

I am in the Burning Crusade content now at level 62 and the slow down has been tremendous almost horrendous.  Someone said earlier that the Burning Crusade had not aged well and I can agree with that completely.  Most of the quests go at a snail's pace and unlike the pre60 experience are really both empty and boring.   

[Rasix]

I have a bad habit of outlevelling instances I want to do.

Oh the instances... oh ok. I get it now.

I am in the Burning Crusade content now at level 62 and the slow down has been tremendous almost horrendous.  Someone said earlier that the Burning Crusade had not aged well and I can agree with that completely.  Most of the quests go at a snail's pace and unlike the pre60 experience are really both empty and boring.   

Yah, the whole place seems just completely disjointed.  It's a bunch of small little, uninteresting stories that don't blend together well at all.

Did most of Southern Barrens last night. It's OK, but somewhat of a let down after Stonetalon (I never thought I'd say that).  I'm staying through each zone, even when it gray/greens.  I'm getting in a little bit of trouble in that I'm starting to hit gaps in cloth/ore now that I'm leveling so fast. I stick with a zone for a while and tend to spend too long in one cloth/ore range and then jump ahead.  That can be bad.

Onto Dustwallow or Feralas.  Not sure which one to choose. Although my current breadcrumb would likely lead me to Dustwallow (which isn't bad, just swampy), I always liked Feralas.  I'd just rather play which one has changed more and offers a better experience.

[kildorn]

I did dustwallow, it was mostly the same, with some flow changes.

The choice I will make for you is Silithus vs Blasted Lands. Silithus is identical and kind of silly due to that, while blasted lands has been heavily revamped.

[AutomaticZen]

Did most of Southern Barrens last night. It's OK, but somewhat of a let down after Stonetalon (I never thought I'd say that).  I'm staying through each zone, even when it gray/greens.  I'm getting in a little bit of trouble in that I'm starting to hit gaps in cloth/ore now that I'm leveling so fast. I stick with a zone for a while and tend to spend too long in one cloth/ore range and then jump ahead.  That can be bad.

Onto Dustwallow or Feralas.  Not sure which one to choose. Although my current breadcrumb would likely lead me to Dustwallow (which isn't bad, just swampy), I always liked Feralas.  I'd just rather play which one has changed more and offers a better experience.

Just finished Feralas last night.  Smoother experience with maybe 4-10 quests per hub. 

And they fixed that damn quest where you had to hunt down the forest elemental.  Hated that thing.  There were only three or so in the whole zone and the patrolled around.  Now the fuckers are everywhere and you only need to kill 3.

Note, some quests will try to send you inside of the Dire Maul instance, while only one send you into the building itself, but not the instance.

[Nissl]

Onto Dustwallow or Feralas.  Not sure which one to choose. Although my current breadcrumb would likely lead me to Dustwallow (which isn't bad, just swampy), I always liked Feralas.  I'd just rather play which one has changed more and offers a better experience.

Dustwallow is largely unchanged.  I would say Feralas, in particular the questline at the ogre fortress is pretty neat.  Take note, the first 2 flight points aren't connected to anything unless you get the third.  

The three zones I've done so far that I would strongly recommend, by the way, are Stonetalon, Thousand Needles, and Badlands.  (Note that as Horde the breadcrumb quests now allow you to fly to Badlands from EPL without running there first).  The quest hub in northern Felwood is also pretty cool.

[MrHat]

Just got the "go to thousand needles" from the combat board.

I got really excited when I saw it.

[Tannhauser]

Just finished Westfall quest line.  Really good.  I think I will start going into a zone and not leaving until I get the achieve. That said, I now have very little interest in going past 60.  When I ding I'll just make another toon. 

[Selby]

And they fixed that damn quest where you had to hunt down the forest elemental.  Hated that thing.  There were only three or so in the whole zone and the patrolled around.  Now the fuckers are everywhere and you only need to kill 3.

They fixed that in the patch or 2 after WotLK launched.  I was doing a happy dance that day.  And at the same time they changed "Testing the Vessel" to use bears in the same zone rather than require you trudge off to another continent in the Hinterlands for stupid owlkins.

[Oban]

I reached my "meh" point in WoW.

Made it to 85, did heroics till I got the cataclysm dungeon hero achievement, tried raiding, got my ilevel up to 349, grinded some of the new dailies, started archaeology, and tried to help guildees gear up with the new heroics.

Pretty sure I am just burned out, but being max level is, in my opinion, not nearly as fulfilling as it was in early WotLK.  Heroic pugging is rather painful as a squishy melee dps right now. Way too many people do not understand the value of CC.  A lot of the trash and boss fights are highly melee unfriendly even with proper crowd control.  Raiding is just monstrous for melee dps.

Also people who think they can just hop in to raids without even completing normal let alone heroic dungeon gearing is just ... 

The thought of grinding Tol Barad rep to get a rather ugly spirit wolf mount, a disgusting drake mount, or an on use trinket made me gag.

Archaeology... I really wish I had OCD because flying all over the place to get nine pieces of something that makes a grey piece of vendor trash for three skillup points is just awful.

On the bright side, wow, the 1-60 experience is fracking amazing.  I made a worgen and got it to level 22, then made an undead mage and got it to level 28.  The new quest designs and flow is impressive, but it makes me ask the question... "Why couldn't Blizzard do that for the 80-85 experience?"

Ah well, I will try it again in a couple of months and see if the level 85 game has changed.

[Sjofn]

Well see, they DID do it in the 80-85 experiences. I don't find much difference in the flow at all (it's all very directed, just like the low level stuff, each zone has a story, just like the low level stuff, etc), but the zones tend to drag like hell because you're a) not leveling very fast and b) each zone is more like three sub-zones, and you feel like you spend forever in each one rather than "I FINISHED THE STORY, NEXT SONG" like you do in the low level zones. Vash'jir is the worst offender for me, the other zones I've done have finished around the time I got sick of them (I haven't actually finished Deepholm or Twilight Highlands yet, of course).