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Author Topic: Initial Thoughts on Pandaria  (Read 114166 times)
cmlancas
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on: September 27, 2012, 07:19:59 AM

Creating a splinter thread from the original behemoth to specifically discuss initial thoughts of MoP.  I'm 87.5 while writing the post.

Overall world:  I'm playing just between Good and Fair for graphics settings, and the views are still impressive.  Some of the forestry and orchardry is exceptionally well done.   A few negatives here include falling off the continent a few times (sigh) and collision detection with plants that didn't exist before this expansion.  The best compliment I can give though, is the world feels new.  For an aging game, I think this is a huge win.  Overall grade:  A

Questing:  Lore is a huge factor here and I like that the quests aren't point A to point B forcing completion for completion's sake.  The quests are also created in such a way that you're meaningfully exploring the continent.  I felt like Cata suffered here:  okay, I have to get the world pillars, that's cool...but it felt very arbitrary when I had to go here or go there.  Pandaria quest lines have a good flow to them.  A huge negative about them is they are buggy as fuck.  I get that it's week one and all, but the bugs have been really, really apparent.  I had a quest added to the known issues list after contacting a GM.  A lot of it has been MoP's management of a group getting credit for an event but no applying it to an individual character.  For example:  girlfriend and I get a quest to fly somewhere and talk to the flight master.  She gets there first because, c'mon gentlemen, ladies first.  It awards her credit and pops the new ! icon for her next quest.  I get credit on the bird, arrive in the town, and don't ever trigger the next !.  Unfortunately, abandoning doesn't work and I just have to skip this line of quests.  Oh well.  We found the same thing when doing the four adventurers storyteller quest:  we were instanced separately, I got credit for something which then gave her credit but never triggered the next action for her to take.  All in all, quests have been very pleasant compared to WotLK and Cata expansions.  Overall grade:  B

Dungeons:  Dungeons are awesome.  They feel fresh, with exciting mechanics I can't wait to do on heroic.  Also, they aren't too punishing for the stand-in-the-fire types, so I find them pretty well balanced too.  The new wipe->walk in near your corpse in a dungeon thing is freakin' awesome too.  Lots of nice things to say here.  Only issues I've found so far here is the five suns event in Temple of the Jade Serpent has failed two out of the three times we've tried it.  But, forgivable with the other awesomeness involved.  Overall grade:  A

Professions:  Cooking, Herbalism, Fishing, and Alchemy are my chosen professions and the most underrated thing I've found so far is just how useful the professions are early on.  I can make +250 stat food very early on (think within the first 25 skill ups, which you get through a quest).  Also, alchemy potions and the IL 450 trinket you get feel powerful, extremely so when you can pot yourself for around 90k HP.  Oh, remember when you used to have to equip your fishing pole to fish?  And then you forgot to take it off until the last boss in your raid?  Not anymore.  Fishing poles work like old mining picks an skinning knives now.  Granted I haven't crafted very much other than food and potions yet, but I have very little negative to say here.  Overall grade:  A+.

Farming:  I've completed the quests so far, but I can't finish them for 24 hours while the crops grow?   Ohhhhh, I see.  I'm sure I'll have more to write on this later, but I have a hard time coming back to some random zone just for Tillers rep.  Farming itself was okay though.  The things you'll have to do grow the crops seemed novel at first, but I have a feeling they will tire quickly.  Overall grade:  C+

Pet Battles:  This is hearsay, but from the number of people getting the achievements I've been seeing in my guild and the number of people completing the Menagerie (125 pets) achievements, this has a lot of traction.  Since I haven't actually done it and I'm auditing the course, I'll grade this one on a pass/fail basis.  Overall grade:  Pass.


All in all, Pandaria has been worth my coin.  Extremely engaging, beautiful landscapes, and fun gameplay has trumped any mouthbreathing from anyone I've come across in-game.  I think this is the most telling sign:  from all of the DONTNERFPLZ and
WAHUHAETHUNTERZ111! before the game released, I haven't heard anyone say anything about disliking his or her class in MoP 85+.  In fact, I haven't heard anyone say anything negative about Mists with the exception of some buggy client behavior. 

I think that's because on the final exam, when MoP was asked the question, "Is it fun?" it simply replied, "Yes."

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luckton
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Reply #1 on: September 27, 2012, 08:27:10 AM

Regarding farming, don't worry about it too much until 90.  That's when the dailies open up that allow you to build up rep, which unlocks quests that open up more farm land spaces to use.  Crops grow to full at the stroke of midnight server-time, assuming you took care of whatever ailment the plant was suffering when you planted it.  You might even get lucky and get an instant harvest when you plant too.

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Rendakor
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Reply #2 on: September 27, 2012, 10:38:35 AM

The Five Suns event has bugged about half the time for me too; that's the only real glitch I've seen in MoP so far but I've mostly been soloing (I'm 89.1 at the moment) and most of your problems seem to have been group related.

Good catch on Fishing Poles; I hadn't realized that you don't need to equip them anymore.


Regarding farming, after the first 24 hour wait for your crops there aren't any more quests until 90 but you can keep growing crops to skill up your cooking, or for the daily which requires 20 of a food material.

Edit: Regarding Fishing Poles, they only changed it so you can fish without one equipped. If you have one that provides skill bonuses, you still need to equip it to get those bonuses.
« Last Edit: September 27, 2012, 10:41:55 AM by Rendakor »

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Merusk
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Reply #3 on: September 27, 2012, 10:48:54 AM

I haven't had a single problem with the five suns.. I didn't even know there was the possibility of a problem. Huh.

The crops thing does make me wonder if they fixed the unkillable weed problem from the beta.  The 7-line general chat channel spam makes me think it's not yet.

Didn't know any of that about fishing, thanks for the heads-up.

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Reply #4 on: September 27, 2012, 10:50:07 AM

Occasionally after killing all the trash, the boss will spawn but never become attackable.

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Hutch
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Reply #5 on: September 27, 2012, 10:52:11 AM

Level 86 and roughly a half, as of last night.

I had an early quest bug up on me, because I followed the npc into the cave, got distracted by something shiny, ran back out, and when I ran back in, the npc was gone.

Logging in and out didn't work, but, running off a ways did work. So I had a phasing issue, but not a fatal one.

The only professions I've got any real points into are First Aid and Mining, just due to the abundance of resources that I've stumbled upon.
I was at 193/200 of Iron Chef before the expansion, and then I bought, what, 15 or 20 recipes from the first panda cooking trainer I found.

I did not know that you can fish just by having a pole in your bag. That's fantastic.

I ran Jade Monastery and the Brew house last night with some guildies. The Brew house is a little silly (he said, as he played through a continent full of pandas), but the last fight is a lot of fun, so I'll take it.

I started pet battles last night. Check out the achievement list sometime. There's a heavy "gotta catch em all" vibe in there o.O

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cmlancas
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Reply #6 on: September 27, 2012, 10:55:29 AM

Regarding farming, don't worry about it too much until 90.  That's when the dailies open up that allow you to build up rep, which unlocks quests that open up more farm land spaces to use.  Crops grow to full at the stroke of midnight server-time, assuming you took care of whatever ailment the plant was suffering when you planted it.  You might even get lucky and get an instant harvest when you plant too.

My issue here is there is so much lag time for the next quest:  I shouldn't be able to bust out parts one through five in 20 minutes and then have to wait a day for part six.  I would've rather seen a one-time use grandfather's miracle grow or something.  I mean, we just found her favorite flower underneath the hut...

Edit: Regarding Fishing Poles, they only changed it so you can fish without one equipped. If you have one that provides skill bonuses, you still need to equip it to get those bonuses.

Interesting.  I think I have a blue pole, so I didn't notice that.  I've always wondered if +20 skill is really that big of a deal though.  Sure would be nice if they made it passive a la skinning knives and mining picks.

Oh, and let me reiterate:  I really suggest levelling cooking as you go...the stat food is a pretty large bonus that'll make a party member or guildie's day when you mail 5 food back to him or her.

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Lakov_Sanite
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Reply #7 on: September 27, 2012, 10:56:42 AM

Anyone wasting precious cloth on first aid can DIAF. *tailorrage*

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Rendakor
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Reply #8 on: September 27, 2012, 11:11:30 AM

Interesting.  I think I have a blue pole, so I didn't notice that.  I've always wondered if +20 skill is really that big of a deal though.  Sure would be nice if they made it passive a la skinning knives and mining picks.

Oh, and let me reiterate:  I really suggest levelling cooking as you go...the stat food is a pretty large bonus that'll make a party member or guildie's day when you mail 5 food back to him or her.
I saw it because I immediately tried fishing without a pole, and pulled out a wooden stick instead of my blinged out pole. Then I check my skill from the window and saw it wasn't taking the bonus either.

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Paelos
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Reply #9 on: September 27, 2012, 11:17:23 AM

When fishing in the spawned fishing holes, you don't need to attach your pole because those never have junk in them.

It's when you're fishing in open water that you need the full array of equipped pole, pants, hats, lures, and a nice cooler of beer to get the job done without catching a boot.

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cmlancas
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Reply #10 on: September 27, 2012, 12:20:09 PM

Oh, also?  The sniper rifle quest.

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Ginaz
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Reply #11 on: September 27, 2012, 12:36:04 PM

I've been mostly leveling my new panda monk the past 2 days (lvl 19 now).  Went with the dps spec to start (windwalker???) and I've done a few dungeons with it.  The dps seems pretty decent so far using only one heirloom weapon.  My rotation is mostly jab for 2 chi, tiger fist thing x2 for moderate damage and the 10% armor reduction per use, then kick to finish them off.  Fists of fury is fun to watch, esp. if you're in a group full of panda monks all doing it at the same time.  Doing rolls and activating Super Flying Kick is pretty amusing too.  For duel spec, I'll probably take Brewmaster just because while I'm not fond of tanking, I hate healing even more.  

I did a run in one of the new lvl 85 dungeons (Jade Something or Other) on my warrior, as well.  It felt much easier than when I tried the first Cata dungeons.  It was more WOTLK in difficulty, which I'm ok with.  No one needs to be cock smashed with the introductory dungeons.  

Pet battles have been more fun than I thought they would be and will be a nice time waster later on when you've gotten your characters to 90.  I have all 3 pet slots open and I managed to get my Mini Thor up to lvl 5.  It was disheartening to have him killed by a bunny, though. Heartbreak  I can see more than a few people doing pet battles almost exclusively.
Lightstalker
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Reply #12 on: September 27, 2012, 02:09:44 PM

Pet Battles are surprisingly "one more turn" sticky.

The video optimizations are pants though.  Everything they've done to pretty up the game comes at a huge cost and video card fan at 100% is a full time experience while WoW is running now.  I'm pushing 2560x1600 so this isn't the resolution the game was designed for, but I can't find enough stuff to turn off to keep the load lower on the card and worry for its longevity.  It is kinda silly to have a high end setup and end up degrading the video experience because they worked so hard to enhance it.
Trippy
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Reply #13 on: September 27, 2012, 02:17:55 PM

What's your GPU? It runs silky smooth on my GTX 670 at Ultra settings at 1080p.
Lightstalker
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Reply #14 on: September 27, 2012, 02:47:06 PM

Radeon HD 6970. 

I could bump it down to 1080p and concede that I'll only get max resolution with relatively recent games, but my new monitor is so purty.
Mithas
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Reply #15 on: September 27, 2012, 07:13:42 PM

One thing I found pretty cool was during a quest to visit some shrines in Jade Forest. In one of the fountains I noticed something glowing. Clicking on it yielded a gray item called Lucky Pandaren Coin worth 95g. A nice bonus and a nice touch IMO. The world feels more alive and lived in than Cata zones.
SurfD
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Reply #16 on: September 27, 2012, 10:55:05 PM

One thing I found pretty cool was during a quest to visit some shrines in Jade Forest. In one of the fountains I noticed something glowing. Clicking on it yielded a gray item called Lucky Pandaren Coin worth 95g. A nice bonus and a nice touch IMO. The world feels more alive and lived in than Cata zones.
Ooo, I must have missed that one, but I found a grey Saurok Tablet in a cave later on that vendored for 100g.  Appearently the item is visible to everybody, but only lootable once per character (i watched 2 other people loot the thing while i was in the cave killing lizard men.)

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Simond
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Reply #17 on: September 28, 2012, 02:32:33 AM

Oh, there's more than that: http://www.wowhead.com/news=206309/mists-of-pandaria-rare-spawns-lost-and-found-preview
Quote
We covered the rare spawns of Pandaria a few weeks ago, and thought it was cool how they dropped a bunch of unique vanity items like Mr. Smite's Brass Compass. We thought Blizzard really outdid themselves by returning to some of the detailed insanity of vanilla with quirky rare spawns.

Well, there's more.

For the Lost and Found Exploration achievement series, you'll loot rare items that are just lying around Pandaria--pulling them out of trees, opening boxes, exploring caves. It's like hunting for a rare spawns' loot, except the NPC step has been cut out! As for what you'll find:

    BoA rare weapons--some with unique models for transmog.
    Fun recipes including Four Senses Brew that gives the illusion that your character is wearing a red Cursed Vision of Sargeras (casters rejoice!)
    Vendor trash like Ancient Pandaren Woodcutter with joking flavor text.
    Useful profession perks like Ancient Pandaren Fishing Lure.
    BoP rares, usually looted from a chest.
    Items are still being added--there were several in the most recent patch--so right now not every object listed below has a location or matching item.
    Thanks to all the Wowhead users who contributed by finding some of the items, uploading screenshots, or giving locations!

While there are a few items out there in the world that players fight over currently like Arena Master, we haven't seen anything this extensive before. Rare hunting is shaping up to be a lot of fun!

Also: http://www.wowhead.com/guide=1021/mop-all-exploration-achievements-and-maps-with-location-of-rare-mobs#sorted-by-zone-jade-forest
Quote
This is a guide to all the (meta) achievements of the Exploration of Mists of Pandaria. This guide will show you where to go for each meta achievement. It currently shows all the meta achievements found on the beta and will be updated when needed as Mists of Pandaria goes live. I have taken the comments from the achievements and put them together in a conveniently arranged order. What not is included is the actual exploring of all the regions of the maps, as this is quite simple to achieve. This guide is purely focused on the "object finding" achievements.

So some of the stuff I wanted Blizzard to steal from GW2? They've already done itawesome, for real
« Last Edit: September 28, 2012, 02:35:10 AM by Simond »

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Miasma
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Reply #18 on: September 28, 2012, 05:24:19 AM

Anyone wasting precious cloth on first aid can DIAF. *tailorrage*
Stuff is dirt cheap right now, not what I expected.  I had been expecting an embercloth situation where it was as expensive as ore or herbs but nope, almost everything we're fighting is humanoid so the market is flooded.  I used mine on first aid which they also made easier, think I used less than 100 to get to 600.

That hidden stuff explains where I keep getting these high gold gray items.

While ore and herbs are as usual absurdly expensive right now I think they might crash hard once more people open up the vale hub.  If you want to save/make some money you can buy things like 20 ghost iron bars or 20 herbs for one Spirit of Harmony there.
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Reply #19 on: September 28, 2012, 05:58:37 AM

So chests are back?
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Reply #20 on: September 28, 2012, 06:05:59 AM

Anyone wasting precious cloth on first aid can DIAF. *tailorrage*
Stuff is dirt cheap right now, not what I expected.  I had been expecting an embercloth situation where it was as expensive as ore or herbs but nope, almost everything we're fighting is humanoid so the market is flooded.  I used mine on first aid which they also made easier, think I used less than 100 to get to 600.

That hidden stuff explains where I keep getting these high gold gray items.

While ore and herbs are as usual absurdly expensive right now I think they might crash hard once more people open up the vale hub.  If you want to save/make some money you can buy things like 20 ghost iron bars or 20 herbs for one Spirit of Harmony there.

Cloth is beyond dirt cheap.  It's approaching vendor-pricing levels already on the AH - something you never used to see until mid-expansion.   There were stacks of 10 and 20 up for 20 gold on my server last night.

Ghost Iron is selling well for some ridiculous reason.   I'm almost maxed on Engineering (I need more motes to advance and they aren't dropping, damnit!)  and nodes are still everywhere so I'm selling what I find.  I sold a few stacks of 20 for 400 gold each yesterday, only 2% below market average, and it was snapped-up within 5 minutes of listing.   

Trillium isn't moving at all, though.  First night it was listing for 3,000 each at the low price, but none of mine sold at that level. (Got some off a rare mob)  Yesterday it was down to 300 a unit for black and 600 for white on the low end.  I still don't expect it to sell after I listed it again.

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Mithas
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Reply #21 on: September 28, 2012, 06:21:30 AM

I've noticed the same. Everything is selling quickly, but not at outrageous prices. When Cataclysm launched I made a killing off low level mats with people leveling worgen and goblins. I stocked up again this time expecting the same, but everything is very low.
« Last Edit: September 28, 2012, 06:24:07 AM by Mithas »
cmlancas
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Reply #22 on: September 28, 2012, 06:23:29 AM

Herbs as of last night were around 300g/stack on my server.  I don't understand this, considering it takes all of five minutes to gather a stack of herbs.

Common sense tells me herbing shouldn't amount to 6,000 gold/hour.

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Reply #23 on: September 28, 2012, 06:38:32 AM

All I can figure is it's gold farming auction house bots getting raped because they're using data models from previous expansions.  Which is ok with me, really.

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Rendakor
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Reply #24 on: September 28, 2012, 08:13:28 AM

Some people are buying mats if they're like me, with two crafting/no gathering professions (BS/Inscrip) because gathering professions have shitty buffs for raiding. My gatherers are my alts, and they're not getting leveled yet so I don't mind dropping a few hundred gold a stack on ore since I've got plenty of gold.

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Reply #25 on: September 28, 2012, 10:47:55 AM

Ghost Iron is selling well for some ridiculous reason.   I'm almost maxed on Engineering (I need more motes to advance and they aren't dropping, damnit!)  and nodes are still everywhere so I'm selling what I find.  I sold a few stacks of 20 for 400 gold each yesterday, only 2% below market average, and it was snapped-up within 5 minutes of listing.

Ghost Iron is down to 150g/stack on my server. All of the crafting professions seem much easier to max this time around.
Setanta
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Reply #26 on: September 28, 2012, 03:21:42 PM

I deliberately took my rogue inscriber out first - I hit 575 inscription before I hit level 86. Big props to Blizzard for this.

I don't feel the need to rush to cap any more so I log for a bit then leave and play something else. This is a good thing.

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Mithas
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Reply #27 on: September 28, 2012, 03:30:46 PM

Ghost Iron is selling well for some ridiculous reason.   I'm almost maxed on Engineering (I need more motes to advance and they aren't dropping, damnit!)  and nodes are still everywhere so I'm selling what I find.  I sold a few stacks of 20 for 400 gold each yesterday, only 2% below market average, and it was snapped-up within 5 minutes of listing.

Ghost Iron is down to 150g/stack on my server. All of the crafting professions seem much easier to max this time around.

I am swimming in Ghost Iron. I don't feel like I'm having any competition for nodes. There just must be a lot more than in the past.
SurfD
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Reply #28 on: September 28, 2012, 03:57:18 PM

I think the abundance of herb / mining nodes probably has something to do with the tweaks they made to resource / rare spawn spawn rates being affected by the number of people in  the zones.   Massive numbers of people in zones = much faster respawn times on nodes / rares.

I am a herbalist on my druid, and you practically cant move more then 100 yards in any direction without tripping over a bushel of herbs on my server.

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Reply #29 on: September 28, 2012, 07:19:52 PM

I took Engineering from 525 to 579 tonight.
I burned through a pretty hefty stack of ghost iron, and still have a bunch left.
Of course, since this is Engineering, you can't do it without other mats.

I started off with Mirror Scopes, which each take 2 lapis lazuli gems. Bought those off the AH, pretty affordable.

Then I switched to Tinker's Kits, which may or may not be more cost effective than buying them off the vendor, but as long as they stayed orange I was fine with crafting them. They take 2 cloth per craft.

And then, I crafted 3 of the Ghost Iron Dragonlings. 5 skillups each, 12 cloth each. I made one for myself, and got my guildmates to donate cloth in exchange for the other two.
I would have made more, but only had two takers, and then the recipe turned yellow.

All of my orange recipes want trillium or spirit(s) of harmony, or both, so I'm pausing here for a while.


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Miasma
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Reply #30 on: September 28, 2012, 11:14:40 PM

You can make thermal anvils up to 595, takes about 300 bars though so pricey.

http://www.wow-professions.com/wowguides/wow-engineering-guide.html#500
Simond
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Reply #31 on: September 29, 2012, 10:15:33 AM

When you roll up a pandaran, after you...um. I'd better err on the side of caution, I suppose.

When you've

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luckton
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Reply #32 on: September 30, 2012, 01:31:04 PM

Dinged lvl 90 with my DK yesterday.

- Got Pandaria Loremaster
- Got Pandaria flying
- Got my daily groove in full gear.
- Got Pandaria Explorer

Still having a good time, and it's getting better and better.  Haven't done anything with scenarios yet, but I plan on knocking that out tonight to get myself a nice 450 two-hander for entry-level heroic tanking.  Not that I couldn't do heroic now; apparently I'm eligible with just the quest greens and blues I've got (all between ilvl 430 and 450), along with 450 neck and rings from my own Jewelcrafting, the dodge trinket from updated Brewfest, and the Engineer drake trinket.  Still, I wanna do some more world stuff and what not before I go full-bore heroics.  All of the valor and justice points in the world won't amount to a hill of beans without proper faction standings.

Speaking of that engineer drake trinket, everyone of you guys need one.  It's dirt cheap to make, anyone can equip it, and you can customize the three cogs to your liking (for example, I went with +600 Hit, Expertise, and Mastery, which works for both my tank and DPS specs).  I can't imagine anyone NOT using one of these until the next tiers come out with larger rating boosts that would make up what that drake can do.

As far as factions go, right at 90 I'm working on Klaxxi, Tillers, Anglers, Golden Lotus, and Serpent Riders.  Shado-Pan and August Celestials won't even give you the time of day until you get Revered with Golden Lotus.  Also, the second you hit 90, go talk to Wrathion and pick up his quests so you can start farming his faction.  It only raises from killing lvl 90 end-game mobs out in the world, a la Hydraxian Waterlord-elemental farming style.  However, if you're a bastard Rogue who has a completed set of Fangs, you can bypass a lot of his crap.

Klaxxi are  awesome, for real.  Reminds me of Ebon Blade dailies from Wrath.  You do random stuff in the zone each day, but the kicker is that each of the paragons can grant you one of two stackable zone-wide buffs (Easter Egg: all of the buffs are rock/metal song names).  Right now I'm sporting a buff that stacks a run-speed buff on mob kill, and another that stacks a blade-turning buff everytime an attack against me gets dodged, parried, absorbed, resisted, redirected, blocked, or missed.  At 10 stacks, it does a point-blank AoE nuke plus 5 second stun.  As a tank, this happens A LOT  DRILLING AND MANLINESS

Tillers are alright.  I think things will ramp up more once I break into Honored with them tomorrow and get more farm space, which will let me farm more stuff, which will let me cook more stuff, which will let me gift more stuff + benefit myself.  The dailies so far are pretty standard.  Keep an eye out in the world for Un'goro style dirt mounds.  They contain rare gifts that the Tillers like for personal rep.

Anglers really are the MoP version of Kalu'ak.  There's even a walrus dude there that gives dailies  awesome, for real.  Each one not only gives you rep, but Fishing skill too, but just like Kalu'ak, there's only three dailies.  Fortunately they're all in one zone, and they reward rep decently.

Golden Lotus is Molten Front Lite.  You're not 'building' anything, but you start each day at one spot, and then randomly get sent someone in the Vale after completing a set of dailies.  At the end of series, you face a big elite and get rewarded with a prize bag that may have crafting recipes in it.  Storyline progresses as you rep up.

Flying Serpent is the new Netherwing and Winterspring Frostsabers combined, complete with racing and randomly planted serpent eggs to collect for rep and raising your own serpent from baby to full grown as you go from Friendly to Exalted rep.  If you've done either of those factions, you've already done Flying Serpent, with one surprise being that there are four bonus dailies that can be done for extra rep.  These dailies require your own secondary crafting skills (Arch, First Aid, Cooking, and Fishing) AND your own mats/work from those as well (the First Aid quest had me bandaging up serpents with my own bandages, not quest provided ones.  Same with Cooking; my own fish, not a quest fish.  The Arch and Fishing ones just require you to work wherever you can do those things and the quest items will be looted up with your surveying/catches).

"Those lights, combined with the polygamous Nazi mushrooms, will mess you up."

"Tuning me out doesn't magically change the design or implementation of said design. Though, that'd be neat if it did." -schild
Zetor
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3269


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Reply #33 on: September 30, 2012, 01:50:31 PM

I hit 90 2 hours ago, my take:

- Quests are surprisingly enjoyable. Will have to see if it'll be fun a second time as well - this was a weak point of cata's super-linear questing imo. MOP is a bit more loose, but you're still expected to follow a certain path.
- I ended up 100%-ing jade forest, valley of the four winds, krasarang wilds, and kun-lai summit. I dinged 90 about 2/3 of the way through the (non-repeatable) quests of the dread wastes, ended up skipping townlong stepps completely, but pretty much had to do everything else. With rest xp and/or heirlooms, this MAY be a bit more forgiving.
- Dungeons are fun, but with only 4 of them available during levelling (2 of those only after 87), levelling via dungeons isn't going to be as viable as it was in cata (or when levelling through previous expansion content).
- WTF have they done to jp/vp stuff and why? Apparently you need to repgrind your way (through daily quests only, apparently) to be able to even buy anything. And then you need to do it on alts all over again. I will just end up not bothering because a] grinding daily quests can die in a fire b] the gear isn't really good anyway (though they may just put better gear there as later tiers roll out)
- Insert a half-page semi-coherent rant about daily quests and rep grinds here, because the previous bullet point wasn't enough.
- Scenarios are fun! Some of those HP pools take for-freakin-ever to whittle down though (with an ungeared group - or with a healer, since that basically removes 1 dps from the equation). Really recommend doing the arena scenario for a weapon asap.
- I was able to queue for heroics after hitting 90 and doing two scenarios. However, I got lucky in that I got the two mail drops from the mogu dungeon that were i450, and that + the arena weapon + a blue ring I got from a scenario reward chest + green/blue quest rewards from the dread wastes put me squarely at 440 ilevel.
- Heroics aren't difficult at all, Coren is though  awesome, for real (need to have a lowbie stand next to the second brewmaiden so they get barreled instead of the tank)

Azazel
Contributor
Posts: 7735


Reply #34 on: September 30, 2012, 06:50:41 PM

As far as factions go, right at 90 I'm working on Klaxxi, Tillers, Anglers, Golden Lotus, and Serpent Riders.  Shado-Pan and August Celestials won't even give you the time of day until you get Revered with Golden Lotus.  Also, the second you hit 90, go talk to Wrathion and pick up his quests so you can start farming his faction.  It only raises from killing lvl 90 end-game mobs out in the world, a la Hydraxian Waterlord-elemental farming style.  However, if you're a bastard Rogue who has a completed set of Fangs, you can bypass a lot of his crap.

I gotta say, the fact that the post-quest game at 90 seems to be daily-grind-a-go-go makes me think it might be time for another 12-month break once my existing sub expires. I'm unlikely to have enough time to play in order to grind enough dailies, and frankly, I'm a bit over the daily-grind as a substitute for actual gameplay. If I come back after a year, I'll be interested in the game again, and all the blue shit will be replaced by faceroll heroic stuff, and hopefully they will have changed back from levelling up of pants back to real loot for VP/JP.

http://azazelx.wordpress.com/ - My Miniatures and Hobby Blog.
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