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

[pffh]

I think MMO's would be rather different, and we would have to come up with better terms than "WoW clone" for new MMO's. It'd be much better, storywise at least, than WoW. Not sure how the faction split would work. Alliance would dominate Lich King, Horde the Burning Crusade. Cataclysm has too much stuff, and vanilla has the books to give us the canon raid /Varian doing everything.

Without WoW you wouldn't have the Horde or the Alliance that we have now. Night elves and undead would probably still be their own factions which would change how the story plays out. We would probably also see at least one new faction (Trolls or High/Blood elves would be my guess. Possibly a forsaken/blood elf faction).

[Antonok]

Huh. Created a new char on Area 52 just so I could have a high pop realm to play on and it become locked right after.

[Traab]

Without WoW you wouldn't have the Horde or the Alliance that we have now. Night elves and undead would probably still be their own factions which would change how the story plays out. We would probably also see at least one new faction (Trolls or High/Blood elves would be my guess. Possibly a forsaken/blood elf faction).

You could have them that way you know. Like I said, they could have taken this entire storyline and condensed it into a proper rts campaign. Well, into a half dozen proper rts games at least. :p While the extra raid dungeons and such that get added on afterwards might be left out as they are kind of secondary to the overall story, the main focus of each one would be there. Illidan and the black temple for outland, icecrown citadel and arthas for wotlk, deathwing for cata, and whoever the hell the final boss is for pandaria, im honestly not sure on the storyline for this one. The hardest part would be balancing out the storyline with the different factions, and I am still a fan of the different storylines continued on for each "expansion"

Basically, if you play the pandaria rts as the horde, then the storyline you are working with is one where the horde has been victorious all along. If you played as the lich king, (Playing as the bad guy is always a fun choice) you get to run through a world where the undead rule. Imagine how having the Lich kings troops landing on pandaria would have effected things? And I really think having three different storylines would add a lot of interest to replaying the game just to see how each faction handles each game.

[Mutant Sheep]

... I think giving an Undead Campaign for each game would be awesome, but I'd prefer there be canon endings for each game, rather than them writing three+ divergent timelines. The Forsaken nit being in the Horde definitely adds something, but smething I'm wondering is the Draniae. How hilariously Good would they be without some Faction Enforced Violence?

There is alot more Horde lore and things to do in Outland than Alliance, and vice versa for Northrend. Outlandwise, there's Windrunner and the humans left there (Trollbane would be sweet), but for the Horde there's all the orcs and ogres, and dragon-enslaving Fel Orcs. Illidan is really an Elf problem though. The Night Elves have their problem with him, the Blood Elves have Kael'thas, but neither one of those would need to be bound to one of two factions.

Northrend, there is Malygos and the dragonflights, and Arthas' whole "evil world conquest" is enough of a reason for the Horde to try and take him down, but the Taunka are the only distraction I can think of outside of Zul' Farrak that can give the Horde some deviance from "lets go in and kill Arthas". Alliance/humans have a stronger case for "let's go in and kill Arthas" and could focus on it much better, and more lore to screw around with anyways. I can't imagine how amazing the Wrathgate might be though.

I think the possible wild card races give alot of ways to homogenous the campaigns, something I hope is avoided as much as possible while preserving the "beat Kel'Thuzad/Arthas" final boss drama.

[Traab]

Well the alliance would have to deal with the fel orcs in hellfire, the naga threat in zangamarsh, and over it all, illidan trying to rule everything. And if factions are setup like in WoW the night elves are a part of their side anyways.

As for Northrend, even in WoW lore, while theoretically both sides are willing to work together, in practice it isnt working out that well. So there would be skirmishes between factions as well as with the undead. Worst case, they make up some crap for the earlier zones, like trying to make alliances with various factions that may or may not be in the game currently, or in general solving the problems found in each zone. Grizzly hills has its worgen issues, dragonwastes has its problems with the dragon shrines, especially the black dragonflight and the frostwyrms, borean tundra and oh god, whats the other starting area again? Anyways, those two zones could either be one per faction, or be used for campaigns to establish the beachhead of your force against the other sides. Point being, there is plenty to do in all the early zones, and the later ones involve the undead.

[Psyren]

So, my DK is puttering around Pandaria and has hit 88 (that new Soul Reaper move is neat!), but I'm having such a hard time playing him these days.

Because I'm having so. much. fun. with. monk.

I tricked my Undead Monk tricked out in every heirloom I could get my hands on, breezing through dungeons - got him to level 48 in three days. And he is so much fun to tank on. I never wanted an undead tank before because I liked my tanks to be beefy... but being slim fits him so well, as he shuffles and weaves around the battlefield. I'm headfluffing the brewmaster stuff as a special (and flammable, naturally) Forsaken toxin he coats his hands in and drops vials of during fights.

soooooo...are there potions which give slow fall for a decent duration?
or an item w/ slow fall?

I would just farm with a DK/Pally and get their respective falling glyphs. The DK one has no cooldown so that's probably your best bet.

[Lord Raziere]

I have a problem.

namely, I have a 90 orc mage, but I don't feel like her being an orc mage anymore, I want her to instead be blood elf.

but I don't want to pay for race change, while at the same time I don't want to go through the whole leveling process all over again. it just seems that I invested too much to start all as a level 1 mage, but I question if $25 is really worth it compared to just leveling all over again, mostly because say if I deleted my orc mage made the blood elf mage and leveled them up to 90 in a month- I'd have effectively only spent $15 for the same level of change.

so…can anyone help me? which is more worth it- paying for a race change or leveling up all over again?

[Krazzman]

so…can anyone help me? which is more worth it- paying for a race change or leveling up all over again?

Depends entirely on your income situation and your motivation to do this.

For me... I would pay for the race change since I don't feel like leveling another priest (I currently have only 1 char on max level anyway). I just don't have the time since I'm raiding with my Shadow currently I couldn't afford deleting him anyway. And furthermore: Trolls are awesome.

So if you are raiding with your char: Racechange.
If it is a twink and you have time anyway and you think this will be fun: leveling.

[Lord Raziere]

well….

-I don't really want to level up the same class all over again.

-my mage kinda has tailoring leveled up really high and I want to skill her up higher so as to get more carpets…. so I'd have to skill up all over again to.

-to me it'd just seem an enormous waste to try and level up a mage all over again when I've already invested so much time and effort into the current one.

- the mage was supposed to originally be my "pvp alt" because my warlock wasn't doing very well in pvp, but at this point I'm much better at raiding and pvping on my warlock by now, and my warlock by now is closer to consistent raiding than the mage is. :\ the mage is now sorta supposed to be the "BOA acquirement alt" but that will soon dry up once last of the rogue BOA's are gotten and the druid BOA's are gotten as well. I honestly don't know what to do with my mage…aside from tailoring...

[Traab]

It sounds to me like you dont even want to play your mage much at all, so I dont see what a race change would do for you. It seems a waste of money to make a mostly cosmetic change to your character when you dont seem to have much interest in it either way. If it was me I would just level up an alt, but then, I am constantly deleting alts so I can make new ones as I am at the 50 char limit in game. So clearly, I am a bit biased towards rerolling. :p

[otakuryoga]

I would just farm with a DK/Pally and get their respective falling glyphs. The DK one has no cooldown so that's probably your best bet.

yeah...Dk aint an option as i am a pally
and slow fall being tied to "avatar state" doesn't make it through the final fight with his knockbacks

[The Glyphstone]

So I'm having serious DPS issues on my Affliction lock, and I'm not sure what is wrong. According to Simcraft, my median DPS should be around 60K in current gear/spec/talents, but even on a literal turret-fight like Sha of Fear, I was pulling 43-44K in LFR. I'm not Flasking or potion-popping, but that's the only buff I'm missing, and a 20K drop for lack of a flask seems too severe.

[Karoht]

@MC and Knockback
I'm really confused by this. The only people to ever knock me back in there are Geddon and Rags. Maybe Garr. The trash is doing that to you? Bizarre. Put your back to a wall and kill them. Also, the fall damage should only deal 50% of your max health as damage, maybe 75% (having your back to a wall should mean you don't go as high, so less fall damage as well), so you should be able to heal through it. You're a Paladin? Yeah, instant cast self-heals are your thing. Heal in mid-air to ensure you have enough health, heal when you touch the ground, proceed to kill more dudes.


In other news, I've had some excellent luck over the weekend with more rare spawns and treasures. Now that everyone is farming the Zandalari spawns, all the other stuff seems to be either spawning faster, or not being killed as often. I managed to take 3 more off my list this morning, and got two Zandalari spawns.

As far as travelling around Pandaria, I've found that moving North/South takes signifigantly longer than East/West. Jade Forest to Dread Wastes is actually a pretty short flight. Krasaraang to Kun-Lai? Yikes, that is dreadfully long.

@Area 52 Population
Pay it no mind. We are high pop, we aren't full. It tends to say full or locked, and 5 minutes later everything is fine. We've had a lot of high end guilds start transfering onto our server, so the race for server first should be interesting. I'd love to see Refined get some competition for a change.

[Lord Raziere]

It sounds to me like you dont even want to play your mage much at all, so I dont see what a race change would do for you. It seems a waste of money to make a mostly cosmetic change to your character when you dont seem to have much interest in it either way. If it was me I would just level up an alt, but then, I am constantly deleting alts so I can make new ones as I am at the 50 char limit in game. So clearly, I am a bit biased towards rerolling. :p

well to be honest, a warlock IS my main, and the mage is the class I tried immediately after. and overall my impression is that mage is a warlock but in hard mode: no pet, no survivability, here have more blasting and actual CC and mobility + escape. I've tried all three specs and I dunno, I guess I don't like how easily killed the mage is and how long it takes to kill things with a supposedly high damage class, but I do like teleporting across the world and blink….

maybe priest would be better?

[otakuryoga]

@MC and Knockback
I'm really confused by this. The only people to ever knock me back in there are Geddon and Rags. Maybe Garr. The trash is doing that to you? Bizarre. Put your back to a wall and kill them. Also, the fall damage should only deal 50% of your max health as damage, maybe 75% (having your back to a wall should mean you don't go as high, so less fall damage as well), so you should be able to heal through it. You're a Paladin? Yeah, instant cast self-heals are your thing. Heal in mid-air to ensure you have enough health, heal when you touch the ground, proceed to kill more dudes.

yeah..2-3 trash at once = not enough swings to generate holy power to make a good heal

larger groups = i got bounced around to death before i could generate enough holy power to matter

even so..it would take 4 strength 5 3holy power WoG to cover the 150+k of one knockback

[Karoht]

yeah..2-3 trash at once = not enough swings to generate holy power to make a good heal
larger groups = i got bounced around to death before i could generate enough holy power to matter
even so..it would take 4 strength 5 3holy power WoG to cover the 150+k of one knockback

Plan B
Pull carefully.

Again, I'm very confused about the trash doing this. I don't remember trash bouncing people around at 70, 80, 85, or now at 90. And I've farmed out the rep off and on at just about all of those levels.

My guess is that it is a specific member of the trash pack doing the knockup/knockback. The big bad magma giants are probably the culprits. Burn them down first. Again, try with your back to the wall.

[Traab]

well to be honest, a warlock IS my main, and the mage is the class I tried immediately after. and overall my impression is that mage is a warlock but in hard mode: no pet, no survivability, here have more blasting and actual CC and mobility + escape. I've tried all three specs and I dunno, I guess I don't like how easily killed the mage is and how long it takes to kill things with a supposedly high damage class, but I do like teleporting across the world and blink….

maybe priest would be better?

Yeah I feel the mage class got shafted on the most in the jump to pandaria. Most other classes, tripling mob hp doesnt mean that much, just a longer wait till it falls over dead. But a mage kind of relies on being able to blast things in a few hits imo. Yes we have survivability skills like frost novas, that damage absorb shield, etc, but it just seems like more of a hit to them than to say, a dk. Keep in mind in talking solo leveling, not dungeons, raids, pvp, etc.

Oh, on an unrelated note, my hunter is 87 now and doing 85k crits on aimed shot unbuffed, woohoo! Heh, no more one shots, but taking away half their hp in the opening round works for me. Its enough to be highly useful, not enough to be overpowering. Basically, its where I think aimed shot should be from 10-90 on regular mobs.

[Zherog]

I ran my first instances of the expansion over the weekend. Without too much detail, I was pretty burned out on running randoms and took a long break from them this expansion. Over the weekend, I decided to hop in; while my gear score is high enough for heroics, I went with normal mode just to get my feet wet.

First instance was (eventually) mogu-shan palace. I say eventually, because the "your group is ready" box popped up five times before everybody accepted. The first three times, the tank declined; the fourth, the healer declined; finally on the fifth, I got in. My DPS was higher than during dailies - not too surprising, I guess, since I get to hammer away at my rotation for a few turns and dot multiple mobs at once. My DPS during dailies is around 23K; in the instance, I was between 29 and 31k - tops for the group. So that felt pretty good, and the group was solid, too. That's also a nice switch - more often than not, I have at least one jerk in the random groups.

Things went well enough that I queued for another. Got Stormstout Brewery - and on the first try, too. Things went OK there; my DPS was lower, but I didn't reset between bosses and the room with all the alementals lowered my DPS, since I didn't really get a chance to fire up my rotation. The final boss had a bit of trouble, but nobody died. Final DPS was 26K, good for 2nd place.

So all told, overall not too bad. Maybe I'll hop into a few more.

[Karoht]

I spoke to another hunter about that. Here was her response:
"Why would you level as Marks anyway? So boring. Beastmaster is best leveling experience. Good teamwork with pet."
Yes, she has an accent. A thick one. But you get the point.

[Traab]

I spoke to another hunter about that. Here was her response:
"Why would you level as Marks anyway? So boring. Beastmaster is best leveling experience. Good teamwork with pet."
Yes, she has an accent. A thick one. But you get the point.

Meh, I tried beast mastery, but found stuff in azeroth at least was dying almost as fast to arcane shot spam. The hunter class just isnt as much fun for me as it used to be. But like I said, at least now that I am in pandaria there is an actual fight instead of boom/loot. It makes things more fun.

[Seerow]

You think that MM is boom/loot at low levels, try leveling a prot warrior right now before it gets nerfed.

In the patch Shield Slam and Revenge got a 150% damage buff, to compensate a scaling nerf to bring prot damage down at high vengeance levels in raids. Turns out the scaling nerf hit a little too hard, so they hotfixed in another shield slam buff and a deep wounds buff as well. The result? Shield Slam hitting for 5-7k pre-level 60.

I'm really tempted to go start up another warrior just to take advantage of this. Might even try leveling up in PVP, because going around one shotting geared players sounds like fun.

[Karoht]

Leveling a character from 1-90 is a fast way to level up a new guild.
Also, there is a guy advertising on the forums, if you want a free mount you start a level 1 character, you pm him, you get exalted with his guild (will take you to level 20 roughly) boom, you qualify for mount, you buy mount, all your characters have the mount/s

[Psyren]

Any monks out there experienced with fistweaving (melee healing) and have tips to share? I sent my casty heirlooms over to my monk and so far I'm doing well at it, but I think I could be better. I'm in the level 50 doldrums as far as dungeons go, lots of BRD and little else, so some of Noxxic's advice e.g. Mana Tea procs don't apply just yet.

Brewmaster tanking I think I've got covered, though I still panic if I get to low life with Guard/FB on cooldown and forget all about Desperate Measures.

yeah...Dk aint an option as i am a pally
and slow fall being tied to "avatar state" doesn't make it through the final fight with his knockbacks

Why isn't DK an option? They're VERY fast to level up seeing as they start the game at 55, and they're a blast to play. I used mine to farm Knothide Leather in Karazhan, then somewhere along the way he became my main.

[otakuryoga]

i just am not an alt making type person

i did a gob and panda just to see their starting areas..havent touched em otherwise

--------------

anyone know a good spot to farm wildfowl breasts for pandaria cooking?
don't suppose there is a wildlife equivalent to the fisherman just east of halfhill that directs you to crazy spawning fish?

[Antonok]

Any monks out there experienced with fistweaving (melee healing) and have tips to share? I sent my casty heirlooms over to my monk and so far I'm doing well at it, but I think I could be better. I'm in the level 50 doldrums as far as dungeons go, lots of BRD and little else, so some of Noxxic's advice e.g. Mana Tea procs don't apply just yet.

Brewmaster tanking I think I've got covered, though I still panic if I get to low life with Guard/FB on cooldown and forget all about Desperate Measures.

For the fistweaving, my advice is to get either healbot or make some mouseover macros that way you can tab target through enemies while just being able to click heal your party.

As for brewmaster, if you aren't, try to put expel harm and chi burst/wave/zen sphere into your regular rotation. Also, don't forget Healing Sphere if you have it. That thing has saved me more times then I can count as I tend to forget about desperate measures too lol.

[Psyren]

anyone know a good spot to farm wildfowl breasts for pandaria cooking?

WoW-Professions suggests Glade Sprinters near Halfhill.

For the fistweaving, my advice is to get either healbot or make some mouseover macros that way you can tab target through enemies while just being able to click heal your party.

As for brewmaster, if you aren't, try to put expel harm and chi burst/wave/zen sphere into your regular rotation. Also, don't forget Healing Sphere if you have it. That thing has saved me more times then I can count as I tend to forget about desperate measures too lol.

Hmm, I'll try healbot. So far I haven't had to do a lot of group healing but I gather that the monk group heal style will need this sort of thing a lot. (i.e. I have to get renewing mists onto everybody quickly, then Uplift.)

I think I'm going to get a lot better at slipping EH in my rotation once I hit BC+ content. Right now it just causes a lot of overhealing when I could be jabbing or hazing instead. Chi Wave I've been using more as a panic button, and it heals quite a lot when I'm the only one getting beat down; I'll try and make it more regular.

[Karoht]

Megaera, the Hydra.
We were working on that last night. Findings.
You have to kill 7 heads. The advice is to kill Blue as late as possible, or not at all.
Green-Red-Green-Red-BLUE-Green-Red-Green-Red-DEAD
Between each is a stack up and heal your face off phase. Also known as Rampage phase. You want a set order for your raid cooldowns, and people should be utilizing personal CD's at this time. You can heal through the first one with no cooldowns just fine, and save Bloodlust for the last phase.

This fight is. IN. TENSE.
The pace at which damage is incoming constantly increases. The pressure just gets nutty. Every time you kill a head, things just get faster and faster. It is very easy mechanically, but it will very much test your output and reaction time. DPS is all single target, burst damage is okay for those last little spurts. Healing needs to be sustained or you will run out in a hurry. Burst healing is okay but MUST be minimized. Mana cooldowns will need to be timed with near surgical precision. There is no Berserk timer, just constantly increasing pressure which you will either adapt to or die.

I see this fight being a royal pain in the arse in LFR when it releases.

On heroic, there is another type of head, it's arcane based. Dungeon Journal makes it sound particularly nasty.

[Traab]

Ugh, I am so tired of dealing with auction house prices that are batspit insane. My paladin hasnt been able to find an item for less than 75 gold since level 40. And even that was a fluke as 95% of the gear is 250-3k gold per slot! Seriously people? Blah blah blah of the wolf for 1200 gold at level 50? I hate you all. I never should have started playing my paladin on this server. Ever since I started playing him again I have found myself helplessly swamped in every zone as a half dozen people my level, and quite often 2-3 people level frigging 90 decide they absolutely have to be working on the same quests as me. I log out for awhile and come back to an entirely new crowd of people doing the exact same thing. I am an alt leveler, I love doing it, its fun. But now this server is draining the love for it out of me by flooding me with 8 guys from other servers making every quest take 4x longer than it ever should.

[Psyren]

Ugh, I am so tired of dealing with auction house prices that are batspit insane. My paladin hasnt been able to find an item for less than 75 gold since level 40. And even that was a fluke as 95% of the gear is 250-3k gold per slot! Seriously people? Blah blah blah of the wolf for 1200 gold at level 50? I hate you all. I never should have started playing my paladin on this server. Ever since I started playing him again I have found myself helplessly swamped in every zone as a half dozen people my level, and quite often 2-3 people level frigging 90 decide they absolutely have to be working on the same quests as me. I log out for awhile and come back to an entirely new crowd of people doing the exact same thing. I am an alt leveler, I love doing it, its fun. But now this server is draining the love for it out of me by flooding me with 8 guys from other servers making every quest take 4x longer than it ever should.

Though it can occasionally be a pain while questing/farming, I'd say a crowded server is way more fun than a dead one.

Anyway, your best bet is to download Atlasloot, look up the mats needed to make whatever gear you want, get those mats yourself and find a crafter (preferably in your guild) willing to make the desired item for you.

[Antonok]

~snip~

I feel your pain on the item prices.

Problem is, when tranmogging hit, auction vultures started buying up all the greens and pricing them higher because people would buy them for the look. This in turn caused the new people to see the prices and price their stuff at the same price. Heirlooms haven't helped any since they almost completely negate the need for leveling gear.

Now my lowly level 19 priest may never get leveled just because I don't feel like grinding out for a set of cloth heirlooms and like bloody hell I'm spending 10k every 10 levels to upgrade 2 or 3 pieces that the RNG gods have decided I'm not going to get out of dungeons.