World of Warcraft XVII: Warlords Gone Wild

[Astrella]

Huh, so the character viewer on the wow forums / site lets you set up auctions and everything too? That's really handy.

[The_Jackal]

Stuff

My experience is that you whiff timers when DPS whiff mechanics and get themselves killed, not due to straight up lack of DPS. What my guild is CURRENTLY struggling against is DPS getting crushed into paste in Heroic Butcher's 30% health freakout. So my durability is adequate, and my damage output is mostly irrelevant. I suspect our DPS to healer ratio isn't quite where we need it to be.

Huh, so the character viewer on the wow forums / site lets you set up auctions and everything too? That's really handy.

Wow, I had NO idea.

[Sylthia]

Huh, so the character viewer on the wow forums / site lets you set up auctions and everything too? That's really handy.

That's cool, but what we really need is the ability to do Garrison mission/work orders from there.

[The_Jackal]

That's cool, but what we really need is the ability to do Garrison mission/work orders from there.

While they're doing that, they could just remove all the mechanics hijacked from browser games, give them back to farmville, and focus development work on content that's actually intrinsically fun, instead of 'put this button to collect gold'.

[Icewraith]

My experience is that you whiff timers when DPS whiff mechanics and get themselves killed, not due to straight up lack of DPS. What my guild is CURRENTLY struggling against is DPS getting crushed into paste in Heroic Butcher's 30% health freakout. So my durability is adequate, and my damage output is mostly irrelevant. I suspect our DPS to healer ratio isn't quite where we need it to be.



Wow, I had NO idea.

Ah, see, in the early going on heroic butcher we were dealing with ~2% wipes with no deaths until sub-10%. Stronger DPS also gets you through the burn phase faster (remember to save hero/lust until after his first leap in the 30% vicinity, and cooldown pots), so it's less stress on the healers. Butcher is actually a good fight for tank dps, even though you're focusing on survivability to avoid getting cleave stacks, because the boss is beating on you the entire time even though you're taunt swapping. So you're getting your enrages from blocking and your revenge resets instead of something like blood mirror where you just absorb damage. Generally speaking Blizzard has been a lot better about that sort of thing, but in most fights (Kargath, Bracken, Ko'ragh and Imperator in HM alone) there are large swaths of the fight where one of the tanks isn't being swung on, which I hate.

If your soak groups are dying on heroic butcher you should probably try adding extra people to each side, if you haven't already. 5+1 hunter each side or 6/5+2 hunters works well for us, in a fairly large group (We've done up to 7/7 before in a near max size group IIRC). Otherwise it's probably the healers.

Healers I've discovered 2 for group 1, and 1 for each group with at least 3 people afterwards seems to work. So 3 for a 10-12 man group, 4 for 13-17, 5 for 18-22, 6 for 23-27, 7 for 28+. With a bit of wiggle room either way at the edges if you've got particularly strong or weak heals.

Most fights are tuned with an enrage mechanic that requires a certain average raid dps to accomplish. Any extra dps beyond that, from the actual dps or from the tanks, decreases the fight time by the same amount. Increasing your damage output by 3k is just as valuable as a dps going up by 3k in this regard, and often more so since there are a number of raid mechanics like Sha of Fear, Blastfuse, and p1 Tectus where the dps are constantly focusing adds, but the encounter doesn't end/progress until the boss dies. There's also fights like Ko'ragh, where a good chunk of your raid isn't actually damaging the boss most of the time, just ablating his magic damage shield. Additionally, any fight with multiple persistent stackable targets, like Hans/Frans in BRF, increases the value of tank dps, especially prot warrior dps with Revenge and Glyph of Cleave.

So your damage output should be far from irrelevant. If you're only doing half the damage of your DPS you're still an extra half a player on the field.

[007_ctrl_room]

That's cool, but what we really need is the ability to do Garrison mission/work orders from there.

THIS (ten characters)

[Delusion]

Got my first mythic brf cache yesterday and I got a trinket from blackhand! Making my spirit over 2k The trinket I replaced was 30 item levels lower.

We have also killed heroic Iron Maidens and are making slooooooooow progress on Blast furnace. We have about 18 wipes and are just getting to the second phase properly.

[ryuplaneswalker]

While they're doing that, they could just remove all the mechanics hijacked from browser games, give them back to farmville, and focus development work on content that's actually intrinsically fun, instead of 'put this button to collect gold'.

Personally, let me have the Follower missions, the Salvage yard and the Panderan farm and I will be happy.

And mind you most of the Garrison stuff is profession related which is "Push this button to collect gold" anyways, this is just cutting out all that crap about "have 2 alts leveled just to harvest Ore/Herbs/Leather on or get to pay out the freaking nose"

There was nothing ever intrinsically fun about professions, and no Engineering being overpowered was not fun.

[GungHo]

While they're doing that, they could just remove all the mechanics hijacked from browser games, give them back to farmville, and focus development work on content that's actually intrinsically fun, instead of 'put this button to collect gold'.

Even the Netherwing rep grind was more entertaining than this stuff, and at least that gave me something cool as a payoff.

[The_Jackal]

Ah, see, in the early going on heroic butcher we were dealing with ~2% wipes with no deaths until sub-10%. Stronger DPS also gets you through the burn phase faster (remember to save hero/lust until after his first leap in the 30% vicinity, and cooldown pots), so it's less stress on the healers. Butcher is actually a good fight for tank dps, even though you're focusing on survivability to avoid getting cleave stacks, because the boss is beating on you the entire time even though you're taunt swapping. So you're getting your enrages from blocking and your revenge resets instead of something like blood mirror where you just absorb damage. Generally speaking Blizzard has been a lot better about that sort of thing, but in most fights (Kargath, Bracken, Ko'ragh and Imperator in HM alone) there are large swaths of the fight where one of the tanks isn't being swung on, which I hate.

Yes, we do all those things. We lust at after the bounding cleave sub 30%, so we don't lose too much DPS from being knocked around. As I said, I don't think DPS is the issue in that last 30%, it's that our healers are overwhelmed, or our DPS are whiffing their dance steps. I suspect it's mostly the former, I'm even having points prior to the 30% threshold where I'm having to pop big cooldowns (shield wall and last stand) to keep from toppling over.

If your soak groups are dying on heroic butcher you should probably try adding extra people to each side, if you haven't already. 5+1 hunter each side or 6/5+2 hunters works well for us, in a fairly large group (We've done up to 7/7 before in a near max size group IIRC). Otherwise it's probably the healers.

I think the issue we're having the last few tries is that we don't have enough to re-arrange. 4 on each side and 4 in back, plus 2 tanks, moving anyone presents problems. Drop 2 from the healer pack, and bounding cleave eats whoever is left for lunch.

Healers I've discovered 2 for group 1, and 1 for each group with at least 3 people afterwards seems to work. So 3 for a 10-12 man group, 4 for 13-17, 5 for 18-22, 6 for 23-27, 7 for 28+. With a bit of wiggle room either way at the edges if you've got particularly strong or weak heals.

Yeah, IIRC, we had 14 last week, so we SHOULD have had enough throughput, but that evidently didn't keep us from wiping repeatedly.

Most fights are tuned with an enrage mechanic that requires a certain average raid dps to accomplish. Any extra dps beyond that, from the actual dps or from the tanks, decreases the fight time by the same amount. Increasing your damage output by 3k is just as valuable as a dps going up by 3k in this regard, and often more so since there are a number of raid mechanics like Sha of Fear, Blastfuse, and p1 Tectus where the dps are constantly focusing adds, but the encounter doesn't end/progress until the boss dies. There's also fights like Ko'ragh, where a good chunk of your raid isn't actually damaging the boss most of the time, just ablating his magic damage shield. Additionally, any fight with multiple persistent stackable targets, like Hans/Frans in BRF, increases the value of tank dps, especially prot warrior dps with Revenge and Glyph of Cleave.

If I thought Ravager would increase my DPS by 3k, I'd jump on it in a heartbeat. But I think we both know it won't.

So your damage output should be far from irrelevant. If you're only doing half the damage of your DPS you're still an extra half a player on the field.

For all but a few top performers, I'm doing comparable damage to most of my DPSers. On most fights I'm between 14 and 16k, the outcome really depending on how much cleave I can sneak in. Here is a normal butcher fight from a month ago (I'm Ozryk, my co-tank is Karvass), my gear has gotten better in the intervening month. I'll try and make sure my Mr. Robot plugin is working tonight and Saturday, and have more up-to-date stats. But even here, you can see I'm mid-pack in our DPS, as the tank, on a single-target fight. So I stand by my assertion that my damage is more than sufficient.

[The_Jackal]

Even the Netherwing rep grind was more entertaining than this stuff, and at least that gave me something cool as a payoff.

Agreed. I have a post on the WoW general forum which summarizes my thoughts on the issue. Nobody seems to have replied to it. Meh.

[ryuplaneswalker]

Agreed. I have a post on the WoW general forum which summarizes my thoughts on the issue. Nobody seems to have replied to it. Meh.

Again, because nothing Garrisons have done outside follower missions is new, the "Farmville" stuff is the exact same as professions were before, except instead of flying around Northrend farming the mats one an alt, you are doing it in a mine/garden on all your alts.

[Sylthia]

Again, because nothing Garrisons have done outside follower missions is new, the "Farmville" stuff is the exact same as professions were before, except instead of flying around Northrend farming the mats one an alt, you are doing it in a mine/garden on all your alts.

Since we can't fly, gathering mats would be a nightmare without Garrisons.

[Seerow]

Since we can't fly, gathering mats would be a nightmare without Garrisons.

True story, during the first couple days of the expansion I tried to go mining on my alt, thinking the garrison mine wouldn't produce enough to keep work orders going (lol yeah. I know. Well when you have just a level 1 mine, things look much bleaker than once everything is upgraded), it was awful. Like literally spent an hour and managed to pick up about half a stack of ore.

There is nothing more 'intrinsically rewarding' about going all over the continent hunting for mats than it is to go to your garrison for them. The only difference is a significant decrease in time invested to get the extrinsic reward. This makes the extrinsic reward seem less valuable as more people get it more easily, but it doesn't make the old way any more fun. It's just all part of the grind that has been the backbone of MMOs since day one.

[The_Jackal]

Again, because nothing Garrisons have done outside follower missions is new, the "Farmville" stuff is the exact same as professions were before, except instead of flying around Northrend farming the mats one an alt, you are doing it in a mine/garden on all your alts.

You mean, while flying in between stuff I was already doing, you know, like playing the GAME, I would occasionally alight and dig up some rocks, is that what you meant? If you really were using gathering professions as your money-making mechanism, you were in trouble, because all the gold was in turning the rocks into gear, not digging the rocks up in the first place. With Argent Tournament, Oracles and Frenzyheart, the Sons of Hodir and other sundry quest hubs to hit for the reputation rewards, there was plenty of reasons to fly around in the world, and stopping to pick up the odd saronite or cobalt node was just another method of bolstering my income for little effort.

If I farmed for anything in WoW, it was elemental drops from Wintergrasp, but even that wasn't the best way to spend your time, if your aims were purely economic. No, the best way to make gold was to get in some dungeons, where you could get shards and frozen orbs for your trouble. All you needed was one non-jerkbag enchanter in the party, and you were set. Now I can't IMAGINE setting foot in a heroic for the money, what on earth would be the point?

True story, during the first couple days of the expansion I tried to go mining on my alt, thinking the garrison mine wouldn't produce enough to keep work orders going (lol yeah. I know. Well when you have just a level 1 mine, things look much bleaker than once everything is upgraded), it was awful. Like literally spent an hour and managed to pick up about half a stack of ore.

There is nothing more 'intrinsically rewarding' about going all over the continent hunting for mats than it is to go to your garrison for them. The only difference is a significant decrease in time invested to get the extrinsic reward. This makes the extrinsic reward seem less valuable as more people get it more easily, but it doesn't make the old way any more fun. It's just all part of the grind that has been the backbone of MMOs since day one.

I can see you didn't actually read the wikipedia article I posted. The intrinsic rewards aren't tangible, they're the reasons you actually play the game to begin with: It's FUN. And my point is that earlier expansions did a better job of coordinating extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. In other words, you were encouraged to go out, get in a group, and actually PLAY. Going flying in circles looking for rocks? That's just as tedious a chore as what we have now, there's no denying it, maybe more. But doing that isn't on the developers, that's on YOU. You CHOSE to just circle around like vultures looking for a fresh corpse, instead of doing something FUN and the tragic part is, it wasn't even a very profitable way to spend your time, compared to the methods I just described.

[Seerow]

I can see you didn't actually read the wikipedia article I posted. The intrinsic rewards aren't tangible, they're the reasons you actually play the game to begin with: It's FUN. And my point is that earlier expansions did a better job of coordinating extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. In other words, you were encouraged to go out, get in a group, and actually PLAY. Going flying in circles looking for rocks? That's just as tedious a chore as what we have now, there's no denying it, maybe more. But doing that isn't on the developers, that's on YOU. You CHOSE to just circle around like vultures looking for a fresh corpse, instead of doing something FUN and the tragic part is, it wasn't even a very profitable way to spend your time, compared to the methods I just described.

But if my main goal was to get the resources I need for crafting, what good does grouping up with friends and going out into the world do? It doesn't.

With the Garrisons I can spend 5 minutes, run through my mine, get my ore for the day, and then proceed to go out and do fun things with my friends. Before I would have to go out and spend a bunch of time looking for ore, then group up with friends to do things.

Of course I could skip the mining phase altogether, group up with friends, and use the gold earned while playing with them to go buy ore. But you can still do that now. Nothing says you HAVE to go clear out your mine, and ore on the AH is cheaper than ever thanks to all of the people who do.


So I still don't see what it is about the way the Garrison handles resources that actually takes away from extrinsic rewards, except that some people feel compelled to do things they don't like, even when the reward is minimal. Which sounds like a personal issue.

[The_Jackal]

But if my main goal was to get the resources I need for crafting, what good does grouping up with friends and going out into the world do? It doesn't.

With the Garrisons I can spend 5 minutes, run through my mine, get my ore for the day, and then proceed to go out and do fun things with my friends. Before I would have to go out and spend a bunch of time looking for ore, then group up with friends to do things.

Of course I could skip the mining phase altogether, group up with friends, and use the gold earned while playing with them to go buy ore. But you can still do that now. Nothing says you HAVE to go clear out your mine, and ore on the AH is cheaper than ever thanks to all of the people who do.

So I still don't see what it is about the way the Garrison handles resources that actually takes away from extrinsic rewards, except that some people feel compelled to do things they don't like, even when the reward is minimal. Which sounds like a personal issue.

Takes away from intrinsic rewards. The rewards of maintaining your garrison aren't minimal, they're literally the only reliable way to produce anything of value in the WoD economy. Sure, you could bash mobs for whatever pitiful drop rate of primal spirits I might hope to get, but we both know that's a gigantic waste of time compared to doing my daily garrison chores. And I'm not sure what incredibly profitable group gold-farming activity you've got going on in WoD, because I haven't found anything like as profitable as logging in to poke my garrison chores, then logging off until raid day.

[Sylthia]

I was thinking about the need for a higher follower cap. I thought of a few ways they could do it.

20 is the baseline, plus another 5 for the Barracks.

As your Garrison gets bigger, your follower cap could increase. It's odd that a level 1 and level 3 Garrison have the same cap. So maybe +5 for each upgrade.

We could also get a higher follower cap for the Garrison campaign. As it sits now, our reward is a follower when we're already over capped. Maybe +5 at three different points in the campaign, for a total of +15.

That would bring us to a max cap of 50. We still have a lot of Xpac to go, so I'm sure it could and should go higher. I hate having to deactivate all my new friends.

[The_Jackal]

I was thinking about the need for a higher follower cap. I thought of a few ways they could do it.

20 is the baseline, plus another 5 for the Barracks.

As your Garrison gets bigger, your follower cap could increase. It's odd that a level 1 and level 3 Garrison have the same cap. So maybe +5 for each upgrade.

We could also get a higher follower cap for the Garrison campaign. As it sits now, our reward is a follower when we're already over capped. Maybe +5 at three different points in the campaign, for a total of +15.

That would bring us to a max cap of 50. We still have a lot of Xpac to go, so I'm sure it could and should go higher. I hate having to deactivate all my new friends.

What's the point? Once you've maxed out your followers (not hard), the only thing to send your followers on is resource missions (Garrison Resources or Gold, and the occasional other doodad). You can easily clean out your allotment of garrison missions with the base 20 followers.

[Sylthia]

What's the point? Once you've maxed out your followers (not hard), the only thing to send your followers on is resource missions (Garrison Resources or Gold, and the occasional other doodad). You can easily clean out your allotment of garrison missions with the base 20 followers.

It gives a sense of progression, you can make a decent pet battle team with only a handful of pets, but you can have hundreds at your disposable if you so wish. We even have an achievement for 40 followers, so why such a low cap?

It's sort of like Fire Emblem, you can beat the game with only a dozen units or so, or even solo it in some games, but the completionist in us wants to recruit every possible ally and have a whole army at our disposal

[Draconi Redfir]

Plus most every follower you get outside the tavern has at least one quest behind them, something you get invested in and attatched too, Hell i cheered when i saw Ahm show up at my door as a ghost because i felt so happy returning his family heirloom to him out in Talador. You get to know them enough to grow attatched, and them talking to you when you walk by only enforces it. It's a huge shame when you need to de-activate them and remove them from your garrison entirely in order to level up new followers. if nothing else i'd like to still see my deactivated followers walking about.

Edit: annother thing that would boost our attatchment to them? if they took a more active role in defending the garrison from invasions. Just a few more troops on the battlefeild to earn you a few extra points if you bother to stave off the invasion until after everyone/a majority of them get home. Even if it's only a random five of them that get out there and help out it'd be nice to see them fighting the good fight. as it is now they all kinda just huddle around in the fishing area trying to look menicing without doing much.

[GungHo]

What's the point? Once you've maxed out your followers (not hard), the only thing to send your followers on is resource missions (Garrison Resources or Gold, and the occasional other doodad). You can easily clean out your allotment of garrison missions with the base 20 followers.

Yeah, I've noticed no real effect from having the additional 5 guys from the level 3 bunker beyond having more people to spend war mill work orders/salvage on. If they all had special mission abilities or something like that, it might be worth it, but most of it is stuff like "goblin buddy" or "forest master" or something inane like that.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

So...question for the playground.

Draenor seems to have a lot of moving parts, what with Garrisons, BoP crafting materials, savage blood, raids, and so forth.

I currently have an 86 Monk and a 97 Hunter, and the Hunter's going to hit 100 pretty any day now. But I have basically no idea what I should be looking for as far as fun end-game stuff to do: never hit level cap in an active expansion before, save very briefly in Cataclysm, where I was still experimenting with other classes as alts.

I do enjoy dungeons, and would probably enjoy raiding...but I imagine raid mechanics get more and more complicated as new level caps come around, and I've only ever done one raid, and that was years ago. I also probably need better items (item level is currently 572 or something like that), but I'm also not sure how to best go about improving that...especially since Draenor dungeon drops seems MUCH less frequent -- only a few gold and an item or two per dungeon, which I find really odd.

Thoughts? Advice? Recommendations for someone about to get a little lost among the end-game options?

[Talesin]

But I have basically no idea what I should be looking for as far as fun end-game stuff to do:

Thoughts? Advice? Recommendations for someone about to get a little lost among the end-game options?

Apologies for the length, but as you stated WoW is a big game.

TL;DR

• Garrisons can be a lot of fun, get a garrison add on (can't remember the name of the good one off hand, sorry!)
• Raids are a load of fun and are only complicated because you're unfamiliar with it. Read a few guides/watch some videos before you go in.
• I'm not sure doing things 'optimally' is ever the most fun, so bumbling around working out what things are is still a good bet for your first few weeks.
• Read up on the Legendary Ring questline, it provides a good progression from heroics to raids and nets you a great item to boot.
• Get in a guild for social purposes/raiding. Many players say the thing they miss most about the game is their old awesome guilds.

I've spoilered the main part of the post just because it's long and might be a bit overwhelming.

Spoiler: Large amount of text

Show

Basically it depends what you enjoy. I quite enjoyed upgrading my garrisons for the first few weeks as a bit of a side minigame while I was gearing up for raids. I would keep doing missions because they give you some nice perks, as well as gear and gold. I'm sure someone else can give you some great advice on what buildings to have but I would ensure you have a Salvage Yard at the very minimum and get that to max level asap.

The Gladiator Sanctum is also great if you want to gear yourself quickly and can get into Ashran to pick up bones. Google the Gladiator sanctum as there are some great guides on the regular wow sites about how to use it (can't link as i'm at work). I appreciate i'm adding to the complications a little bit with suggesting these things but I don't think there is a 'wrong' way to enjoy WoW's end game.


I would continue questing until you hit level 100 and then look at your item level. You need 610 to get in to heroics (at least I think it's 610) and this should be easily achievable with leveling items and maybe a few purchased from the auction house if you have a bit of gold. You also need to hit silver in the proving grounds, talk to the guy behind the garrison missions table to access it, in the given role you want to play. Luckily hunter only has 1 role, DPS, so you should be able to do that quite easily.

Completing bronze mode proving grounds will grant you a weapon so your damage won't be too bad (compared to freshly geared level 100s). Heroic dungeons will net you some good gear upgrades to get you into looking for raid. As a DPS I wouldn't worry too much about failing in heroics.

Don't stand in the fire, follow the other DPS if they are moving and just dps the targets that others are damaging. You can look through the tactics in the dungeon journal beforehand but at this stage you're more than likely going to be carried through by some vastly overgeared tank/healer/dps.

Looking for raid (LFR) is criminally easy and is a great way to get in to raiding. Wipes tend to be because the group doesn't understand what they are doing but are few and far between in my experience. I would look up the tactics beforehand (wowhead is great for this and there are plenty of youtube channels to look at) just because it's a lot more fun to actually participate in the fights than to stand there dead because you weren't aware of some mechanic or such.

I wouldn't say raiding gets 'harder' the further you get in in terms of raw tactics, though certainly early bosses are easier in order to ease you in to raiding, but they do push you a little harder. However I think that's where the fun comes in to the game and you'll quickly find yourself able to keep up.

Getting into a guild will help as you'll be able to run through some dungeons/raids as part of a guild group. I'm sure there are some people on here who can help you with that. I'm from the UK and from what I see around the forum I believe you're from the US so I can't help you there sadly.

Overall I wouldn't worry too much about savage blood farming or optimising your stats unless you really enjoy looking into the detailed aspect of the game. There is more than enough to do with PvE/PvP but trying out everything is a good way to start.

[Seerow]

Raids are a load of fun and are only complicated because you're unfamiliar with it. Read a few guides/watch some videos before you go in.

Or instead of this just jump right into LFR. They're easy, give you a chance to play while checking out the mechanics for the first time, and don't involve wasting tons of time watching a video for every boss. Yes LFR is to real raiding as having some lettuce on stale bread is to having a good sandwich, but it's a good place for someone who has literally no idea what they are doing.

[The_Jackal]

So...question for the playground.

Draenor seems to have a lot of moving parts, what with Garrisons, BoP crafting materials, savage blood, raids, and so forth.

I currently have an 86 Monk and a 97 Hunter, and the Hunter's going to hit 100 pretty any day now. But I have basically no idea what I should be looking for as far as fun end-game stuff to do: never hit level cap in an active expansion before, save very briefly in Cataclysm, where I was still experimenting with other classes as alts.

I do enjoy dungeons, and would probably enjoy raiding...but I imagine raid mechanics get more and more complicated as new level caps come around, and I've only ever done one raid, and that was years ago. I also probably need better items (item level is currently 572 or something like that), but I'm also not sure how to best go about improving that...especially since Draenor dungeon drops seems MUCH less frequent -- only a few gold and an item or two per dungeon, which I find really odd.

Thoughts? Advice? Recommendations for someone about to get a little lost among the end-game options?

Get to 100. Upgrade your garrison and install a Bunker/War Mill. This will increase the chance that your quest rewards and world loot (ground-spawn) will be upgraded when you receive it. Then clear out all your Nagrand quests. Install Handy Notes. Loot ground-spawn items in Nagrand. Do Skyreach to obtain your epic ring from Khadgar. Go to the Proving Grounds to get the silver DPS medal. You'll get a half-decent weapon if you don't have better already, and will unlock heroic dungeons. From there, start queueing for heroics to complete the second phase of your epic ring quest. This will also require that you do your Apexis daily quests every day, don't overlook this.

At that point, you'll basically be well-geared enough to start raiding in LFR without being a total liability, if you're not in a guild that's got normal progression going in Highmaul.

Or instead of this just jump right into LFR. They're easy, give you a chance to play while checking out the mechanics for the first time, and don't involve wasting tons of time watching a video for every boss. Yes LFR is to real raiding as having some lettuce on stale bread is to having a good sandwich, but it's a good place for someone who has literally no idea what they are doing.

Do yourself and your team a favor and read up on the fights before you hit LFR. Wowhead has excellent guides that will tell you want you need to know. Queue for a wing, read the article, and by the time the queue pops, you'll be able to see it in action.

Garrisons can be a lot of fun, get a garrison add on (can't remember the name of the good one off hand, sorry!)

Master Plan. Though I would dispute that Garrisons are more like an exercise in browser-game tedium. They are, however, profitable.

[Icewraith]

Yeah, I've noticed no real effect from having the additional 5 guys from the level 3 bunker beyond having more people to spend war mill work orders/salvage on. If they all had special mission abilities or something like that, it might be worth it, but most of it is stuff like "goblin buddy" or "forest master" or something inane like that.

The racial bonuses are actually quite important. Once you get Highmaul and Blackrock raid missions, it's unlikely that you have followers with the perfect setup for all of the missions (and impossible for Blackrock missions since those have seven ability requirements for three followers). You need a minimum of four scavenger followers to cover all possible mission combinations there and increase your garrison resource yield, minimum five followers (really six) with treasure hunter if you want increased gold rewards, 3-5 followers on work order duty, plus followers that grant bonus XP or have Epic Mount can be incredibly useful.

Trying to reroll traits and abilities on a follower (Double Edit: For 1K garrison resources you can buy an item to reroll all the abilities or traits on a follower!) can be incredibly frustrating, but thanks to the inn you get a new chance each week at a particular race/ability/trait combination you want. If you get enough followers, some of them will end up rolling two or three good traits.

So if you happen to have a lot of followers of a particular race, and a lot of other followers that favor that race, it's like having followers with three or even four abilities, one or two of which always apply no matter what the mission actually is. I have a Night Elf follower with Child of the Moon and Epic Mount, and a bunch of other night elf followers. Therefore I'm able to much more reliably hit 660 and 675 ilevel missions even though I may only have followers with 2 of the 4 abilities listed.

The slayer and environmental traits are pretty worthless though-when they apply, great, but they usually don't. But the racial traits, you can get those to come up all the time with a bit of luck.

Edit: For instance, I have a Blook with the <8hour mission bonus, Dagg with Humanist, and Tormokk with Humanist. I have a Human with the <8hour mission bonus and Ogre Buddy, and abilities that don't overlap with any of the three Ogres. Followers with three racial traits are also super valuable.

[Leon]

My Paladin has all the luck ~ 3 Treasure Hunting Followers now and neither the Mage or the Shaman have any

[ryuplaneswalker]

You mean, while flying in between stuff I was already doing, you know, like playing the GAME, I would occasionally alight and dig up some rocks, is that what you meant? If you really were using gathering professions as your money-making mechanism, you were in trouble, because all the gold was in turning the rocks into gear, not digging the rocks up in the first place. With Argent Tournament, Oracles and Frenzyheart, the Sons of Hodir and other sundry quest hubs to hit for the reputation rewards, there was plenty of reasons to fly around in the world, and stopping to pick up the odd saronite or cobalt node was just another method of bolstering my income for little effort.

Except if you wanted to produce anything of real value, Current Equipment, the few mounts to sell and the like you actually needed to farm things, I even had to do it in Mists before I got enough alts to have enough ranches to cover the daily cooldown costs, and to make a 685 item level you would need 13,000 Truesteel ore, for one item.

To outfit ones self for raiding that would be 39,000 ore alone, on a character I had to make specifically to mine ore since when my main character was created Professions had benefits and Mining's was of zero use to 2/3 of the specs that exist, and is only useful to the last one under certain circumstances, and yes those 685 Items actually are that important this time around, since the 3 slots they resided in were 3 slots in which gear that is itemized for me outright does not exist.

and mind you this is the first expansion I have ever bothered with crafted gear with the exception of Haunted Steel boots in Throne of Thunder, because they had 2 sockets and the Plate DPS.

Mind you none of this adds into the JC work I actually make money off of since Gems in WOD are quite lucrative, since the smallest amount I can sell Greater Gems on my server for almost 3K, heck if I were to spend the four or five hours doing the mining in Panderia, I could easily sell something for 30K, now instead of having to derp around on an alt for hours and hours straight I spend about an hour gathering up my mines and my herbs every day on my alts and save up for those crafted items.

[The_Jackal]

Except if you wanted to produce anything of real value, Current Equipment, the few mounts to sell and the like you actually needed to farm things, I even had to do it in Mists before I got enough alts to have enough ranches to cover the daily cooldown costs, and to make a 685 item level you would need 13,000 Truesteel ore, for one item.

NOW you do, because the current crafting paradigm is totally ludicrous. But that gigantic resource sinkhole was CREATED to swallow up the results of the colossal resource stipend created by the addition of Sunsong Ranch/Lunarfall/Frostwall. And, as I already pointed out, straight up farming junk by flying around was the least effective method of getting resources you could have chosen, so if you were doing that, you did it because you preferred it to the alternatives.

To outfit ones self for raiding that would be 39,000 ore alone, on a character I had to make specifically to mine ore since when my main character was created Professions had benefits and Mining's was of zero use to 2/3 of the specs that exist, and is only useful to the last one under certain circumstances, and yes those 685 Items actually are that important this time around, since the 3 slots they resided in were 3 slots in which gear that is itemized for me outright does not exist.

You don't need to get max-level crafted items to 'outfit for raiding', you only need 3 640 pieces and step into Normal or LFR Highmaul.

Mind you none of this adds into the JC work I actually make money off of since Gems in WOD are quite lucrative, since the smallest amount I can sell Greater Gems on my server for almost 3K, heck if I were to spend the four or five hours doing the mining in Panderia, I could easily sell something for 30K, now instead of having to derp around on an alt for hours and hours straight I spend about an hour gathering up my mines and my herbs every day on my alts and save up for those crafted items.

If that's your definition of fun, more power to you. Me, I think it's a poor design choice that leads inexorably to drudgery. You can't say 'just don't do it', because the resource costs, gold sinks, and other sundry economic factors are account for the notion that you're grabbing your daily allotment of garrison tedium.