WoW XIX: This is my Artifact. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

[Requizen]

As a Prot Warrior, most of the time, seeing an elite opponent just means it will take a long time to kill. When that's not the case, and you've clearly bitten off more than you can chew.... Heroic Leap is a great help in getting out of trouble.

On non-tank characters, elites seem more like death sentences. Granted I don't know those classes as well, so maybe I'm just not doing things right.

I've not had a single problem doing Elites or WQ Elites as Beast Mastery. Revive is super fast to cast and costs nothing, and between Aspect of the Turtle and Endurance I don't feel any threat of dying myself. But that's always been a strong point of Hunters.

[Icewraith]

I've not had a single problem doing Elites or WQ Elites as Beast Mastery. Revive is super fast to cast and costs nothing, and between Aspect of the Turtle and Endurance I don't feel any threat of dying myself. But that's always been a strong point of Hunters.

D'oh. Non tank non tanking pet classes, I should have said.

[MCerberus]

So I decided to resub and check out Legion do decompress after project support at work.
Didn't take long to run into "you should have read the books lol" in the form of the pillars. Those they just, kinda say are a thing and it's of supreme importance because reasons.

But that's not here or there.
I picked ele. It's in a bad place at level 100 it seems. Also where did all my buttons go?

[The Glyphstone]

Nope. The Pillars of Creation aren't mentioned in any of the books either. They're entirely new lore invented for Legion, at best you got a little info about them from the Legion pre-patch quests (and not much).

Elemental is in kind of a bad spot right now, yeah.

[MCerberus]

Nope. The Pillars of Creation aren't mentioned in any of the books either. They're entirely new lore invented for Legion, at best you got a little info about them from the Legion pre-patch quests (and not much).

Elemental is in kind of a bad spot right now, yeah.

It's kind of offputting though. The weapon quests had a lot of backfill in case you missed, in my case MoP. Then you get back and the NPC says that you can finally go get the pillars.

"Okay that's great, what are they and why must I get them?"
-"You can leave now"

[The Glyphstone]

Honestly, you learn more about the respective Pillars in their actual zones. It's enough to know that they are powerful Titan artifacts, and collecting them all is necessary to close the giant Legion portal and save the world.

[Icewraith]

On a side note, thanks to world quests and a couple generous Heroic dungeons I'll be skipping most Heroic dungeons and going straight to Mythic.

At least when I'm with our DH buddy who was pulling 130K in Maw. Holy crap. Or unholy crap, as the case may be.

Only downside is a lot of the gear I'm getting has less haste on it than what it's replacing. I want all of the haste. And all of the Shatter the Bones Relics.

[turbo164]

It's kind of offputting though. The weapon quests had a lot of backfill in case you missed, in my case MoP. Then you get back and the NPC says that you can finally go get the pillars.

"Okay that's great, what are they and why must I get them?"
-"You can leave now"

There's a little more on the Hammer here:

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ne...untain-divided

(the others are pretty cool too!)

[Androgeus]

On Pillars of Creation, I think you can still do the quest where we learn about them. Think you pick it up in The Violet Citidel.

In other complaints, just did Doomhammer quest and the whole thing just seemed pointless with parts unexplained (e.g. Where did the lava Doomhammer come from?)

[GungHo]

On Pillars of Creation, I think you can still do the quest where we learn about them. Think you pick it up in The Violet Citidel.

Seriously, guys... It's an adventure hook. The DM mentioned it offhandedly a few sessions ago and now he's decided to do something with it. It doesn't matter that we weren't paying attention. He was.

[Androgeus]

Seriously, guys... It's an adventure hook. The DM mentioned it offhandedly a few sessions ago and now he's decided to do something with it. It doesn't matter that we weren't paying attention. He was.

I mean it was more the DM sent us to go get some information, which we got but no one actually bothered to see what it was. At least it was better than that entire session where he had some Npcs talk to some ghost and then ended the session

[Selpharia]

So I've recently started playing, since a few other friends who, unlike me, had played for a while in previous expansions, we're coming back for Legion. I used the character boost to start a level 100 resto/balance Druid. So far, it's been...pretty overwhelming.

I've tried to read guides to learn what I'm supposed to be doing, but I feel like I'm leveling way too slowly and am struggling to grasp the fast-clicking pace of combat (I have a hand issue that makes using hot keys difficult), as well as the incredible number of abilities that I have to choose from and use. I don't really grok all the stats and gear I'm collecting, so it's hard to get a sense of a goal for my character build. I don't know whether it's me or the game, but I feel really weak, since it seems to take forever to finish off enemies and travel is agonizingly slow. Add the random bankers who seem to swarm around every quest giver and it's all incredibly frustrating. I mean, some of it could be that the last MMO I played was City of Heroes, where I could routinely clear many enemies at once instead of fighting them in ones and twos, and travel was much faster and safer.

So, I guess my question is if anyone has any suggestions for getting started and for diminishing what so far feels like a lot of tedium and incomprehensible piles of slowly increasing numbers? I've enjoyed my first artifact quest and the Aszuna quests, because they give me a sense of place in the world, but I feel like the game is getting in the way more than adding to that enjoyment.

[turbo164]

Seriously, guys... It's an adventure hook. The DM mentioned it offhandedly a few sessions ago and now he's decided to do something with it. It doesn't matter that we weren't paying attention. He was.

Luckily my meeting was a skype call and I could mute my line when I read thix

Hmm, now I'm picturing a DM of the Rings/Darths and Droids style comic for WoW...

[Spore]

Where did the lava Doomhammer come from?)

Well, it's in the name, isn't it? Therazane's somethingorother. But to be honest I would have switched up the Shaman's weapons. Elemental gets the Doomhammer along with some curio for the offhand or twohanded. Enhancement get the Fists of Ra'den (or even better, the Fists of the Heavens since I cannot fathom how a weapon from the elemental plane of AIR gets into the hands of a monk) and Restoration get an actual Staff instead of a Wand plus Shield (but I guess the PvP fraction would have whined if they didn't have the extra armor from a shield).

[Icewraith]

Lesson learned:

When you complete your class hall questline and unlock your third relic slot, check your world quests BEFORE equipping the relic you get from the quest that unlocks the relic slot.

It may just happen to be that a world quest is currently offering you a higher level version of the same type of relic (i.e. Fire) with a bonus to a better skill, and you have an off-spec artifact that uses that type of relic (Fire) that the relic you just got would still be a tremendous upgrade for.

Events may also transpire such that the World Quest relic drops Titanforged, and now it's so much better than your old relic (that you just got) you really can't not socket it in your primary artifact.

[MCerberus]

I mean it was more the DM sent us to go get some information, which we got but no one actually bothered to see what it was. At least it was better than that entire session where he had some Npcs talk to some ghost and then ended the session

I just realized something.
DMPCs
What happened when he got bored of Thrall? Khadgar.

And it gets creepy if you think of Aggra as a crush (end of Dragonsoul)

[Psyren]

I had a general question regarding difficulty. It's pretty clear to me, now that they have this class identity thing more or less down, that certain classes have more complicated rotations and harder-to-use abilities than others. For example, tanking on a Prot Warrior or Prot Paladin is a far more forgiving (even soothing) experience than doing the same on a VDH or Brewmaster; similarly, healing well on a Disc Priest or Holy Paladin is much more challenging than doing the same on a Holy Priest or Resto Druid. Also similarly, DPS specs like Arcane Mage and Shadow Priest have much higher skill ceilings than, say, BM Hunter and Fire Mage, at least they seem that way to me.

I see the ideal (and possibly targeted) state for specs in Legion as being similar to loadouts in Overwatch or Diablo - they're all meant to be relatively balanced with one another (meaning that if you have X gear and understand Y rotation, you can win at Z content once you learn your role in it), but depending on one's playstyle and appetite for that kind of complexity, different people are going to have better results with some kits than others. The more complex ones can potentially reward you by bringing extra utility, but the simpler ones forgive you for making mistakes more readily with an abundance of powerful cooldowns and a focus on passive vs. active mitigation or procs.

My question therefore is - shouldn't Blizzard make some kind of effort to call that out to people? Especially folks jumping in for the first time, or after a long hiatus. "Hey," it might say, "I saw you going for that Brewmaster Monk - now, they absolutely can tank at endgame, but with only one real cooldown (two if you include your artifact), you'd better know the fights fairly well already, plan to play with closer friends, or be a pretty quick study!" I think something as simple as a difficulty star rating (1-3) next to each spec on the character select screen, similar to Overwatch, would be ideal. I'd know right off that the spec I'm about to sink hundreds of hours into will require me to be thinking several steps further ahead than I would on this other spec that fills more or less the same niche.

Am I mistaken in thinking some kits are harder to master than others? If not and that's the case, do you think such a difficulty callout might have merit?

[Icewraith]

So I've recently started playing, since a few other friends who, unlike me, had played for a while in previous expansions, we're coming back for Legion. I used the character boost to start a level 100 resto/balance Druid. So far, it's been...pretty overwhelming.

I've tried to read guides to learn what I'm supposed to be doing, but I feel like I'm leveling way too slowly and am struggling to grasp the fast-clicking pace of combat (I have a hand issue that makes using hot keys difficult), as well as the incredible number of abilities that I have to choose from and use. I don't really grok all the stats and gear I'm collecting, so it's hard to get a sense of a goal for my character build. I don't know whether it's me or the game, but I feel really weak, since it seems to take forever to finish off enemies and travel is agonizingly slow. Add the random bankers who seem to swarm around every quest giver and it's all incredibly frustrating. I mean, some of it could be that the last MMO I played was City of Heroes, where I could routinely clear many enemies at once instead of fighting them in ones and twos, and travel was much faster and safer.

So, I guess my question is if anyone has any suggestions for getting started and for diminishing what so far feels like a lot of tedium and incomprehensible piles of slowly increasing numbers? I've enjoyed my first artifact quest and the Aszuna quests, because they give me a sense of place in the world, but I feel like the game is getting in the way more than adding to that enjoyment.

I'd say keep questing, and make sure you're keeping your gear fairly up to date (if things are taking a really long time to die, you may have significant gear upgrades sitting in your bags). Don't hoard your artifact power, it's useless if it's just sitting in your bags. There will always be more later.

I missed the bit where you said what spec you were originally, and now that I see you're playing druid I think I understand a bit more what you're talking about. If you want to clear large amounts of mobs and be really (really!) durable, consider trying out Guardian. Also, druids have some really complicated talents that play to the strengths of the other specs. The cat talent for passive run speed or the resto talent for passive healing might make a difference in your questing speed. Also when mobs get low on health, swtch over to your faster casting spells. If something is at 1% health, there's no need to slog through another Lunar Flare and overkill it by a huge chunk when you could just Moonfire it and move on. Conversely, when aggroing single targets, Lunar Flare->Starsurge is as frontloaded as it gets.

Gearwise, there's only a few stats, and while leveling you basically want more of all of them- Intellect makes you hit harder, haste makes you cast faster, crit makes you crit more often, mastery makes some of your spec-specific stuff hit harder or work better or more often, and versatility makes you hit a little bit harder and take a little less damage. Oh, and Stamina gives you more health. Leech, sockets, and warforged/titanforged show up randomly as a little bonus on gear. Between two roughly equal pieces of gear the presence of one of those will probably break an apparent tie, but otherwise they're not worth worrying about too much. Especially sockets- you're still leveling, and it's early in the expansion, so gear tends to get replaced pretty quick.

[Spore]

Am I mistaken in thinking some kits are harder to master than others? If not and that's the case, do you think such a difficulty callout might have merit?

You are not. And Legion has overdone this in my eyes. Compare a Marksmanship Hunter (3 Buttons, THREE BUTTONS!) with a well played Fire Mage (and they're not even the hardest DPS out there). It is MENTAL. Shadows play to their hearts content and still get outDPSed by Havoc Demon Hunters using their 4 skills (to be a little fair, the hardest part of Havoc DH is staying out of the fire due to your fighting style).

[MCerberus]

You are not. And Legion has overdone this in my eyes. Compare a Marksmanship Hunter (3 Buttons, THREE BUTTONS!) with a well played Fire Mage (and they're not even the hardest DPS out there). It is MENTAL. Shadows play to their hearts content and still get outDPSed by Havoc Demon Hunters using their 4 skills (to be a little fair, the hardest part of Havoc DH is staying out of the fire due to your fighting style).

*gets out cane*
in my day having 3 buttons made hunters the most complex dps rotation in the game. And we DPS'd uphill both ways... and still did less damage than rogues... and were stuck with gimmick mechanics in order to be relevant.

[Requizen]

Back when I first started Hunters could play with a mouse scroll wheel for their entire rotation.

[MCerberus]

Back when I first started Hunters could play with a mouse scroll wheel for their entire rotation.

One button BM. A dark time indeed

[Spore]

*gets out cane*
in my day having 3 buttons made hunters the most complex dps rotation in the game. And we DPS'd uphill both ways... and still did less damage than rogues... and were stuck with gimmick mechanics in order to be relevant.

Back when I first started Hunters could play with a mouse scroll wheel for their entire rotation.

This might have been the case but WoW has evolved since then. And I feel it has devolved a bit now. I am very okay with BM right now even though it is just 5 abilities and a longer cooldown. You can still micro your pets, you can play around with three pet specs (for soloing) and you still do an effortless good damage. But MM is beyond simplistic which I would be okay with if it weren't the insanest rofltastic damage i have ever seen.

If you want insane damage you should at least have the complexity of a rogue. They are by far not hard to learn but require positioning, a certain feel for the class.

[Requizen]

The complexity in MM comes from not pulling the entire dungeon when you do your rotation.

But seriously, hearing other Hunters tell me that BM has a braindead rotation and tout MM as "engaging" makes me laugh.

[Draken]

Consider, for a moment, Frost mage.

The idea behind our spec is simple, build up Fingers of Frost, and then dump them during a high-damage window provided by Rune of Power, (cursed be this talent that is warping our whole class around it). Sounds simple enough.

Optimal Frost mage play involves building the initial set of FoF charges while building up a considerable number of Bone Chilling stacks (goes up to 12) and then maintaining them in spite of their 8 second duration, through our 10 second damage window in RoP, which must then be contained within the 12 second duration of Frost Bomb. For further optimal damage, after unloading the first three charges, you must find the proper timing to:
1-cast frostbolt or frozen orb to keep your Bone Chilling up;
2-keep Frozen bomb up;
3.1-use Water Jet to refill on FoF;
3.2-use Ebonbolt to refill on FoF;
3.3-use Frozen Touch to refill on FoF;
Also, try your best to not clip FoF charges between frostbolt, frozen orb and your elemental randomly generating the things.

Also, use Flurry ideally when you have no FoF charges and froth in those not rare situations where you pop out Flurry and suddenly a more or less wasted FoF charge randomly appears.

Imagine having to manage this puzzle every 40-60 seconds when the cooldowns align in addition to fight mechanics. It is insane and I don't have it completely down yet.

And then I have Glacial Spike for some ungodly reason, 100% chance I will change it for Thermal Void for proper raiding.

Bluh. My spec has some buffs on the PTR, but what it doesn't have that I really want is 4 extra seconds on Bone Chilling.

Not even going to talk about Chain Reaction, that thing is impossible to work with. Six seconds duration. Triggered by frostbolt crits. Argh.

[Delusion]

I was just trying out frost mage on the class trial. Was really fun. I usually avoid pet classes like plaque but water ele didn't really bother me because its ranged. (Thought about lonely winter, but The Ray of Frost was too hilarious not to use.

And just when I thought I had settled on boosting a resto druid. Back to drawing board it seems.

[MCerberus]

Decided to start the expansion over with my frost DK.
Spec wasn't changed all that much with the great button removal. Core mechanic of proc whack-a-mole intact.
Lost a ton of survivability and utility though, makes me sad.
Much more lore in the class hall quests. Get the feeling Mograine is setting up to stab me in the back though.

[Spore]

I was just trying out frost mage on the class trial. Was really fun. I usually avoid pet classes like plaque but water ele didn't really bother me because its ranged. (Thought about lonely winter, but The Ray of Frost was too hilarious not to use.

And just when I thought I had settled on boosting a resto druid. Back to drawing board it seems.

It is maybe not the best time to roll a Frost Mage right now. Fire Mage dwarfs everything to the point where the class hall is full with 98% of Fire Mages. Dem balls...

Lost a ton of survivability and utility though, makes me sad.

Noticed that, too. But this just makes Dark Succor procs all the more appealing. You basically get a beefed up Victory Rush.

[MCerberus]

Noticed that, too. But this just makes Dark Succor procs all the more appealing. You basically get a beefed up Victory Rush.

I think the frost artifact "boss fight" was meant to teach that. "oh no, look at these annoying ice spikes littered everywhere that will hurt you if you step on them. I hope nobody has uses frost scythe on them to get free healing procs *wink*"

[Spore]

I think the frost artifact "boss fight" was meant to teach that. "oh no, look at these annoying ice spikes littered everywhere that will hurt you if you step on them. I hope nobody has uses frost scythe on them to get free healing procs *wink*"

I used Blood spec on that fight. It took about 7 minutes because the Lichking healed himself up to full.