World of Warcraft XIV: Fish Felreed, and the Reed Pond fish

[Karoht]

I doubt it. Blizzard is scared to death it will kill hardcore raiding, particularly the race for server firsts.

It wouldn't affect the guys at the top much, but the guilds who measure themselves by server progression only (rather than US or World ranking) it would probably affect, I agree. It wouldn't cripple the big race, but it would completely hamstring the 'smaller' races, as it were.
Yeah, your right, CRG probably won't be a thing, come to think of it.

None the less, I'm always surprised at the number of people who want to play with their friends and never think to actually use the friendslist tools to do so. Odd is all.

[mistformsquirrl]

Thanks everyone; I think I'm going to give it a try! < ._.> Gonna go Warrior again at first, just to see how they changed mah old favorite and see some of the new stuff they added at low levels.

[Karoht]

Arms Warrior is really solid to level as. Victory Rush = Self healing, you get mortal strike at level 10, it's all good. Have fun.
karoht@area 52 US horde

[Togath]

Arms Warrior is really solid to level as. Victory Rush = Self healing, you get mortal strike at level 10, it's all good. Have fun.
karoht@area 52 US horde

Prot may be slightly better, since shield slam can one shot most thigns until outlands, at which point you cna use shield slam+revenge to two shot things.
edit: then again, my warrior was in heirloom helm, chest, legs, weapon, and cape, so it might be slightly different using quest gear.

[Traab]

Prot may be slightly better, since shield slam can one shot most thigns until outlands, at which point you cna use shield slam+revenge to two shot things.
edit: then again, my warrior was in heirloom helm, chest, legs, weapon, and cape, so it might be slightly different using quest gear.

I never tried prot too be honest, but I do know victory rush allowed me to run into large crowds of mobs and end the battle at full health. Charge, victory rush, mortal strike, heroic strike, dead, rush, mortal strike, etc etc etc. Depending on crits the heroic strike might not be needed. But my warrior is only in early outlands atm. Im currently leveling up other alts.

[Seerow]

I never tried prot too be honest, but I do know victory rush allowed me to run into large crowds of mobs and end the battle at full health. Charge, victory rush, mortal strike, heroic strike, dead, rush, mortal strike, etc etc etc. Depending on crits the heroic strike might not be needed. But my warrior is only in early outlands atm. Im currently leveling up other alts.

I can confirm that Prot is much better from 1-50 or so. In 5.2 Arms will likely be at least passable, since TFB will be gained at level 20 instead of like level 40 or whatever absurd place they put it at, giving a reliable low cost attack to use much earlier on. Once you hit outland content and beyond though, DPS specs and dps gear scaling starts to really kick in, and you see a noticeable difference in how fast mobs die as Arms vs Prot, so around that point going Arms is better up til you level cap. (Fury is better once you level capped and ready to raid, it simply scales better with gear, but Arms has a much higher baseline, letting you wreck face in bad gear. Which is a large part of why Arms damage is so awesome in PVP, since the ilvls are lower there)


But to get an idea of why low level prot is better, imagine everything you're already doing as Arms, but Thunderclap has no rage cost, you are taking about probably about 30% less physical damage due to higher armor, and another 25% less damage thanks to Defensive Stance, you get Revenge early on which grants you rage and hits up to 3 targets, Shield Bash similarly grants rage and deals pretty impressive damage, especially at low levels, and you still have access to victory rush.

When I leveled my second warrior at the start of cata, I had a lot of fun just kiting mobs with Thunderclap+Blood and Thunder, letting them die while chasing me, while I was zipping around grabbing more enemies for when my next thunderclap cooldown was up.

[Tanuki Tales]

Prot Warriors also get Victory Rush, by the by.

[Krazzman]

If you can, I would probably give Death Knight a first look at.

The Starting Zone for Death Knights are awesome. You run around get to slaughter Scarlet Crusade Members, having the Lichking whispering into your ear/speaking to your mind of cool things like Slaughter, Merciless killing, death, destruction and so on. For me this is the point where I say Death Knights have the most awesome starting zone. You get cool quests, a cool armor set that just looks awesome on a Troll.

I just started a DK again (have 2 on 85, one on 80 on 3 other server than the one I play atm). He is 62 right now and thanks to dual specc he can switch between Blood (Tank) and Frost (DD). Dual Specc now costs only 10 gold. As such you probably have one quite fast.

EDIT:
As you probably have missed, 6 years ago. There is a new talent system that basically dumbed down everything. You don't need class trainers anymore except for: Gimme Dualspecc and changing your chosen specc.

You now level till 10. YOu get the chance to choose between 3 (or for the druid 4) speccs. On level 15 you get your first Talentpoint, further points will be gained on certain levels (15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90). With each of those points you can choose between 3 new skills that are either an upgrade to an already existing ability, a new ability or a passive skill (or a combination of that). From level 10 on you can go into Battlegrounds. Which I would advice against since it's pretty harsh... there are people that level a twink till level 10, equip heirlooms (self-upgrading weapons and armor, depending on level) and play till they had their share of fun, and repeat it with the next char, deleting the other. From level 15 on you can use the Dungeonbrowser tool.
Furthermore from level 25(? not sure about that) you can use glyphs. Glyphs give you certain perks for skills and abilities, they are divided into minor and major. A minor glyph would be a cosmetic or convenient change. A major for example the Deathknight can equip one that let's him use his Deathstrike ability for free after killing an enemy that would've gained him honor or exp.

Hope this helps as another general overview.

[Traab]

The only real downside to deathknights is, if you want to do a gathering tradeskill, you will waste some significant time leveling it up to outland standards. That really sucks. But on the other hand, you dont really NEED a lot of money from selling stacks of whatever, because cash practically rains from the sky, and quest rewards are plenty kickass enough to keep you slaughtering. I have a dk in lich king, and he was 72 close to 73 with no cash because I had transferred it all away to other alts. I just hit 74 and already have about 600 gold just from quest rewards and selling vendor trash.

One tidbit I havent seen mentioned. Flying. You can now get a 150% flying speed mount at level 60 instead of having to wait for 68. (I dont recall if they would have made that change before you left, but I dont think so) You can also fly in wotlk as soon as you get to dalaran pretty much. You used to have to wait till 77 I think to buy cold weather flying. Its been awhile, im not sure.

[mistformsquirrl]

@Krazzman - very helpful indeed! Death knight is high on my list, but I admit, I don't like the 'start at 55' thing, so I plan to get to level 55 naturally, then try it out (if I can make myself wait that long... we'll see lol)

@Traab - Hehe, back in mah day we didn't have no fancy flying mounts! Also couldn't get regular mounts till 40.

So far I've started up as a Blood Elf warrior.

Only gripe so far is I don't like that all my moves use the same animation... they were like that way back when, but I'd realllllly hoped that over the past several years they'd have added some more. Does that change later? Or should I just get used to spinning around in the exact same pattern a lot? >.>

[Traab]

About the moves, Id like to say they change, but I honestly dont pay enough attention to notice, ive played for so long that its all a blur. As for the mounts, lol, yeah I remember that. Now you get the first mount at 20, the epic mount at 40, and its cheaper than that girl with the sign in the LICD comic. No scrounging for days farming 900 gold for epic land mounts. And you missed the best part. The flying mounts, when first added, I think the first was 60% flight speed and you couldnt get it till 68. And it cost like 800 gold. (The cost wasnt a huge deal even then really)

Eventually they changed it. You can get a flying mount at 60 for like 250 gold I think? Pocket change really, and its 150% flight speed, so its faster in the air than your epic ground mount is on the ground. The 280% and 310% speed are about the same, 4500 gold I believe, but honestly, a bit of effort, and decent prices for tradeskill items on your server and its easy to get. My mother was a skinner/miner. She had 7500 gold by the time she reached northrend. But me with the same skills on a different server had less than half that much, so ymmv.

The dk thing, Unless they changed it, the way it worked was, you start out with a basic skill set of like, 3-4 buttons, and as you level through the starter zone you unlock more, so its not like you started off with 4 action bars full of skills to figure out. You start off with the most basic abilities of the class, then you level up and unlock 1-2 more, then after you master them you level up and unlock a few more, etc etc etc. With the old talent trees you even got talent points as rewards for beating quests which I thought was pretty cool. So you didnt have to assign 30 skills right off the bat or whatever it was. It is really an effective tutorial starting area.

But I honestly would have suggested starting from level 1 anyways. So much has changed you might as well, and all the old world zones are brand spanking new to you so you wont even get bored going from 1-60.

[Seerow]

Only gripe so far is I don't like that all my moves use the same animation... they were like that way back when, but I'd realllllly hoped that over the past several years they'd have added some more. Does that change later? Or should I just get used to spinning around in the exact same pattern a lot? >.>

Warriors and Rogues have the most boring animations in the game. From what I understand most other classes have more variety and flashier animations.

That said, Thunderclap looks really cool with the minor glyph. Same with Charge with the glyph. The AoE tier includes Bladestorm, Shockwave, and Dragon's Roar, all of which have a unique animation which are pretty cool.

[Karoht]

Work on new wireframes and models is currently underway. With new wireframes comes enhanced motion capability, IE attack animations and the like.
There have been hints at what the new models might be like. They Wyvern/Gryphon from the Dominance Offensive/Operation Shield Wall give us some clues. Also there is a female boss in the upcoming raid who happens to be a troll. Lets just say it is a signifigant upgrade over the current female troll model. Also, Vol'Jin received a similar upgrade and looks much better as well. Chances are good we will see more and more upgraded models as NPCs and such before we see them as player characters, leading up to the implimentation of the new models.
I was able to get my contact at Blizzard to comment on it, he didn't really share anything that wasn't already common knowledge from other Blizzard sources. Supposedly Humans, Dwarves, Orcs, and Trolls are getting the first pass (he says that the new Dwarves look excellent), and I have it on good authority that Tauren, Draenai and all Elves will be second. It is interesting to note that Undead and Elves share more in common with their wireframes and animations than Undead and Humans do. Goblins and Worgen are unlikely to change as they are relatively new models but will probably get new animations.
5.3 will probably feature the new models in the code on the PTR, might even be done in time for 5.3 or 5.4

[mistformsquirrl]

Ah, that is good news then! < ._.>m

[Aidan305]

I am sad that, as a Tauren player, I shall have to wait for second pass. Though Tauren are still awesome anyway. Even the babies look cute.

[otakuryoga]

so.... a family member may be dragging me back into this

though it would be as horde instead of alliance where my pally is and diff server natch since she was talked into the game through a friend on pirates of carribbean

questions:
1) how do you get heirlooms? my pally was max lvl in cata but i never bothered with them as i am not a multi toon kind of person
1a) can i get heirlooms for cross faction/server toon?

2) am i able to access my gold hoard on pally from across server/faction?

3) i know they improved dungeon wait times with cross server grouping... how is it for DPS types now? (as a prot pally i never had a wait longer than 2 seconds 8p)

[Karoht]

@Heirlooms
You earn them by purchasing them with Justice or Valor points, or Marks of the Crusade (I forget the name but it's something like that) up in Icecrown at the Argent Tournament grounds.

Can you trade them cross server/faction? No. Not unless you take your Alliance Paladin, pick up some of the heirlooms, and then faction/server transfer.


DPS wait times with LFD? Longest I've seen is 10 minutes, and that is 10 minutes where you can do other things if needed, like dailies or using the Auction House or something. LFR? It is very short. 5-10 minutes at max. Scenarios have an even shorter wait time, because it just picks any three people and goes. Roles are irrelevant to Scenarios, as they are designed to be completed by any 3 players, regardless of role.


@Tauren Models
In since Vanilla Beta. My Tauren Druid Karoht is my first character. I love Tauren as is, but if they manage to improve on them I will be thrilled.
And Tauren babies is best babies.

[Seerow]

DPS wait times with LFD? Longest I've seen is 10 minutes, and that is 10 minutes where you can do other things if needed, like dailies or using the Auction House or something. LFR? It is very short. 5-10 minutes at max.

I'm calling BS. 10-11 minutes is the minimum LFD time I've seen as a DPS. Frequently 15-30 minutes. LFR times I've seen as low as 5-10 minutes for MSV early in the week, but LFR for HoF/ToES, or later in the week (ie weekends) I regularly see queues between 45 minutes and an hour.

The queues you're describing sound more like Healer queues (wait times in both LFD and LFR usually under 5 minutes, occasionally stretching as long as 10 minutes), not DPS.

[Karoht]

I'm calling BS. 10-11 minutes is the minimum LFD time I've seen as a DPS. Frequently 15-30 minutes. LFR times I've seen as low as 5-10 minutes for MSV early in the week, but LFR for HoF/ToES, or later in the week (ie weekends) I regularly see queues between 45 minutes and an hour.

The queues you're describing sound more like Healer queues (wait times in both LFD and LFR usually under 5 minutes, occasionally stretching as long as 10 minutes), not DPS.

My fiance is an Arms Warrior. I'm looking at her queue times without me in group. She tends to hit dungeons 3 days a week without me. Tues, Thurs, and Friday, between the hours of 1800 and 2200 mountain standard time, which is two hours ahead of our server clock. She's usually just able to get her crops replanted and the queue pops.

What time of day are you playing that you're getting 45 minute queues?

[Seerow]

My fiance is an Arms Warrior. I'm looking at her queue times without me in group. She tends to hit dungeons 3 days a week without me. Tues, Thurs, and Friday, between the hours of 1800 and 2200 mountain standard time, which is two hours ahead of our server clock. She's usually just able to get her crops replanted and the queue pops.

What time of day are you playing that you're getting 45 minute queues?

45 minute queues are for LFR HoF/ToES, usually anytime over the weekend. I'll probably be running again later in the week, I'll take screenshots.

Random Heroics are entirely random for queues. It just depends on pure luck and how many tanks are out there at a given time. But saying 10 minutes is the long end is laughable, because I see 15-30 minutes at least half the time I queue as DPS.

[Zherog]

Doesn't the LFG tool make an effort to mix and match ranged and melee DPS? If I'm remembering correctly, perhaps that makes a difference for some people.

[Seerow]

For what it's worth, I just got on to do MSV1 on my Ret Paladin, typically the shortest queue of the week because most people can do MSV. It's wednesday and 4 in the afternoon, and my queue time is 15 minutes. E: Just jumped up to 20 mins

'5-10 minutes tops' is crap.

[Karoht]

For what it's worth, I just got on to do MSV1 on my Ret Paladin, typically the shortest queue of the week because most people can do MSV. It's wednesday and 4 in the afternoon, and my queue time is 15 minutes. E: Just jumped up to 20 mins

'5-10 minutes tops' is crap.

Wow. You have poor luck. Also poor timing methinks. Kids aren't even home from school yet, and that's if you go two or three time zones over from me. When they all come home and get on (which is closer to when my fiance plays), odds are your queue will be shorter.

For this time of day when hardly anyone is anywhere near a computer to play WoW? Yeah, sure, 5-10 minutes is unlikely.

[Seerow]

Wow. You have poor luck. Also poor timing methinks. Kids aren't even home from school yet, and that's if you go two or three time zones over from me. When they all come home and get on (which is closer to when my fiance plays), odds are your queue will be shorter.

For this time of day when hardly anyone is anywhere near a computer to play WoW? Yeah, sure, 5-10 minutes is unlikely.

That was actually one of the shorter queues I've gotten. Like I said, I've seen upwards of 45 minutes, and see people complaining on the WoW forums of hour+ queues regularly.

5-10 minute LFR queues with a lone DPS may happen, but it's not the norm by any means.

Edit: Just checked, Terrace Queue right now is 58 minutes. Gonna wait on my healer buddy to do that one.

Edit2: Fixed my edit to put my statements in the correct order. Makes much more sense this way.

[Karoht]

Moral of the story folks?
Make friends. Preferably with a healer or tank.
Queue together.

[otakuryoga]

or BE the tank 8p

[AttilaTheGeek]

One of the big reasons I quit was because I was a mage who hated questing and I would never, ever see a queue below 20 minutes. It made me realize that I couldn't level a hunter, rogue, or warlock without going insane. Of course, that was like four months ago, but still.

[otakuryoga]

yeah i used to get thanked profusely by the DPS when i would queue up a dungeon...stories of 45-90 min waits

this was before the cross server grouping though..before the bonus loot thing even

guess it isnt QUITE so bad now though

[Seerow]

yeah i used to get thanked profusely by the DPS when i would queue up a dungeon...stories of 45-90 min waits

this was before the cross server grouping though..before the bonus loot thing even

guess it isnt QUITE so bad now though

Uh LFD would bring groups together cross server from the day it was first launched back in Wrath.

[Aidan305]

That was actually one of the shorter queues I've gotten. Like I said, I've seen upwards of 45 minutes, and see people complaining on the WoW forums of hour+ queues regularly.

When I see people making these complaints, I remember back to the days before LFR and FLG. Then I laugh.