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Yeah, I feel like I've constantly got something to do now rather than hitting pauses in my rotation, plus I have Volley now where I really didn't have much AoE in the past.... and I've got a kill shot that gets activated when the target drops far enough.
I won't play retail anymore, but I've been fucking around on the Classic reboot for the last year. 60 Shaman, 60 Mage, 60 Hunter, 60 Priest so far. Naxx Dec 3.
I won't play retail anymore, but I've been fucking around on the Classic reboot for the last year. 60 Shaman, 60 Mage, 60 Hunter, 60 Priest so far. Naxx Dec 3.
I won't play retail anymore, but I've been fucking around on the Classic reboot for the last year. 60 Shaman, 60 Mage, 60 Hunter, 60 Priest so far. Naxx Dec 3.
Good lord, you've been busy. I feel the opposite-- classic is so slow that it makes me feel like biting a wall. Naxx seems like outside of nostalgia it'll just be a massive let-down for experienced players, especially if they didn't experience it back in life. Based on Mythic content difficulty, Naxx isn't comparatively challenging outside of possibly 4 Horseman and Sapphiron. The prospect of a BC classic is a little bit intriguing, though.
Good lord, you've been busy. I feel the opposite-- classic is so slow that it makes me feel like biting a wall. Naxx seems like outside of nostalgia it'll just be a massive let-down for experienced players, especially if they didn't experience it back in life. Based on Mythic content difficulty, Naxx isn't comparatively challenging outside of possibly 4 Horseman and Sapphiron. The prospect of a BC classic is a little bit intriguing, though.
Nostalgia is really it for me. I sold my account right before BC with Atiesh and all Naxx/AQ gear in tow back in the day. A bit after Classic came out this time around, I spent 6 months in a very remote place for work. Nowhere to go/nothing to do so it was a good time to get heavy into WoW. These days I mostly log on to raid Mondays (we clear everything in one night) and that's it. I pick it up more when new content is released but after a few weeks I go back to 1 day a week.
I was hearing those rumors of BC classic... I wonder what that will look like.
I really didn't do much except solo game in BC, and I think that was around the time I left -- I remember ditching some of my characters in Nagrand when I canceled. So I missed doing anything in Black Temple and I think Lich King and Cataclysm.
I know the Naxx stuff only from solo xmog runs, I have no idea what it was like as current content. 4 horsemen was kind of funny. At that point I couldn't die, I just remembered trying to kill all of them in 15 secs (while they were scattering to the winds) to grab the achievement.
I was hearing those rumors of BC classic... I wonder what that will look like.
I really didn't do much except solo game in BC, and I think that was around the time I left -- I remember ditching some of my characters in Nagrand when I canceled. So I missed doing anything in Black Temple and I think Lich King and Cataclysm.
I know the Naxx stuff only from solo xmog runs, I have no idea what it was like as current content. 4 horsemen was kind of funny. At that point I couldn't die, I just remembered trying to kill all of them in 15 secs (while they were scattering to the winds) to grab the achievement.
You missed the best two expansions in Burning Crusade and Wrath Of The Lich King. BC raiding was fun, but had quite a noticable ramp-up in terms of raiding difficulty. The change from 40 to 25 raids was huge, but necessary. SSC and TK were literally guild killers for mediocre players due to how coordinated your raid needed to be to finish Lady Vash and Kael'thas(this fight had like 5 phases, lol) bossfights. BT was fun as well. I still remember the first time we killed Illidan and how exciting that was after wiping for several weeks. Lich King was fun more for the enhanced storylines -- occasionally, even on random quests, the Lich King would pop up and spook you with his creepy, echoey voice. The raids in Lich King weren't as hard, but this expansion introduced "hard modes", which set the stage for Mythic content. Hard Mode (0-light) Yogg-Saron was thought to be mathematically impossible until a guild from China finally killed him. Heroic Lich King ate your soul for breakfast and was like soul-crushingly difficult before the nerf.
I never, ever in a million years thought I'd play a dwarf, but I'm digging it. As of right now this will probably be my main for Shadowlands. I'm level 34 right now, using the 16th anniversary experience buff to boost him. I'm thinking Hunter/Resto Shaman as my main two characters.
Some guy (the one who has the 50+ warriors at max level and does speed leveling) just leveled an iron dwarf death knight in 3:40 hours or something. it's like a new record. Insane.
I am working on my Vulpera shaman, I just hit 42 last night.
What sucks with leveling is that I think the fastest zones are Draenor (which I personally just hate, sorry) and Pandaria (primarily the Jade Forest, which I like but am sick of leveling through).
[I think personally the WORST leveling experience would be Cataclysm, unless you have never done the questlines and would like to see them. It's 4-5 different zones, some of them messy and inconvenient. I finally did Hyjal back in August-September just to get to Molten Front and get some mounts/toys there, including the Flametouched Hippogryph which is nice. But it got old fast. I also did the opening of Vashjir a few weeks ago because one of the flight hubs wasn't open but I needed it to get candy for Hallows Eve, to get an achivement.]
I've been leveling my shaman now in the north and south barrens just for something different. I think it is taking a bit longer but it's quests I haven't really often done and probably not for many years, so ... it's kind of nice.
After I finish this, I will cut over to Alliance for a bit. I have my L32 void elf priest and then a level 10 death knight (I'll run Frost this time) to level.
My roommate fired up retail for the level squish. Watching how fast the dings happen is laughable. Levelling really is just a formality at this point. They might as well just give people 60's and make it a raiding game.
I watched for awhile and I know it's free to fire up right now... But I just can't. Seems like half my guild is quitting until BC Classic after we clear Naxx, though. Maybe I'll finally have a hiatus from WoW.
Okay, I will just comment a little on the 16th Anniversary thing as well as the "pre-event" scourge attack that will both go away once SL goes live on November 23, in case people are interested.
The 16th anniversary thing is mostly a waste of time, although you can get 150 TW coins by kill a few old dragons if you want them. Also, you will get mail with a buff of 16% XP and rep, if you click on it, until Nov 23. Then again, you were getting double xp/rep in newer zones for months now, so... big deal.
For the pre-event: There was supposed to be a zombie infection, which I have not yet seen happen. Maybe this will happen on tuesday for the final week.
You can do a very simple questline around your capitol city to activate the Icecrown questline and Nathanos World Boss (it takes about 10 minutes, 15 max).
Nathanos is up in Eastern Plaguelands. This is pretty easy for Horde to reach by taking the orgrimmar gate to the Undead City and just flying 3 minutes over. For Alliance, it's harder -- you can either take a flight path from Stormwind up to Eastern, which will take you 9-10 minutes. Alternately, if you are a paladin and did the Dalaran class base quests, you can just go to Dalaran, enter the pally base, then leave by the front door and fly west across EP. Alternately, Arathi Highland gate is currently open in Boralus and you can use to go to Arathi, then just fly up to EP. It will take you 3 minutes from there; I'm not sure how long that gate will be active.
The Nathan fight drops a 115 weapon, at least this week -- I did it on 7-8 toons and got a weapon on each. (The only messed up bit is I got a 1H sword on my Fury Warrior... don't ask me what that was about.) But this is a good deal if you have a newer toon or alt and want a high-level weapon to start SL with. At this point, unless you are doing high-level BFA raiding, you can only get a 115 by working your way up through the weekly 500 Conquest quest (if you are high enough level), doing Warfront Heroic Darkshore... or doing this world boss.
Fight mechanics:
The fight itself is pretty basic but can still kill a lot of players. Periodically he will shoot 3 people with venom-tipped arrows (you will see the activation time on his bar, it takes about 3-5 secs to fire) -- a green circle will surround you when this happens if you were selected. If this happens to you, GTF off of the hill he is standing on because it drops poison/disease on the ground and you don't want to drop it where melee DPS is fighting him -- you want it to drop away from the hill and you can then come back. I think most player deaths in this Boss come from people not bothering to run the poison pool away from the boss before it drops, and everyone ends up standing in it and then you either die, pop a CD, or have to run back for 5-10 seconds before coming back in.
his other big attack is basically a hunter volley. he'll typically target the pack around him sometimes, other times the ranged DPS crowd. So just be aware that once the hailstorm of arrows starts coming down (you have a second to realize it), get out of the area quickly or you WILL die over a few seconds time. You just need to reposition while not running through any acid pools.
That is about the entire fight, and when it's done, you'll get a cut-scene to advance the story and also see the victory of Ally Druid Revenge Bitches from hell. it's worth watching once. It will proc right before he dies. If you were not standing in an acid pool, you will be okay watching the full 90-120 second clip and don't need to click out; the weapons are also dropped right in your bag, so you won't need to loot his body.
As far the Icecrown stuff -- after activating the dailies (you just do a quick 2-3 quests that will take 10 minutes or so), you will open up more quests plus a vendor that will sell all the pieces to an armor set, along with a battle pet. You get the temporary currency to buy these things by trading in sourcestones you got from killing things and/or by doing the dailies. The prices are pretty cheap. The items are only iLvl 100. They are pointless for your BFA mains who will probably be geared with 115's by now or already have 100's. However, for your alts, this is pretty great -- I came in with a Blood DK at iLvl 70 or so, and you can gear-prep for SL by just grabbing all the armor pieces you can. IOW, view this as a way to gear alts you might want to use in SL.
The other notable thing about Icecrown is that there are 20 bosses (taken from past expansions, mostly WotLK) that appear at predefined spots and predefined orders across Icecrown. They are on a 20 minute spawn timer; every 20 minutes the next one spawns. To get through the cycle takes around six and a half hours. They seem to spawn a minute and a half past the regular 20-minute clock interval -- for example, at 6:01:30, 6:21:30, and 6:41:30 (for the 6:00 hour, and similar for every other hour.) So for example, one would appear at 6:01:30 so that it is visible on the map; it "gathers power" at 6:02:30, giving you time to prep; and turns Red at around 6:03:20-30 or so... at which point you can actually attack it. this gives approximate 2 mins from when the message appears and the icon appears on the map for you to reach the location. [Note: I'm going by my WoW clock setting. So I think the 6:01:30 (etc) time is accurate, but it's best just to make sure you are synced up.)
Because the rotation is so consistent, there's an ongoing list of the 20 bosses on WowHead, and when they will spawn, in case you are unsure.
There is a Handy Notes add-on that you can install, showing all the bosses on your map and the order of spawn (with arrows) as well as the major 2-3 things they drop. Most drops are a variety of old-WotLK gear, if you missed it for xmog, at iLevel 100. Two items of note are the Reins of the Blue Protodrake (coming from Skaldi, who also drops the same thing as a dungeon boss -- but now you can do it during the week any time Skaldi is up in Icecrown) and a Papa's Mint Condition 34-slot bag from Bronjahm. Everyone is farming the bag (every 6.5 hours or so, lol), so... be prepared for a large group. The drops are at the mercy of RNG, unfortunately. I did Bronjahm four times (on different characters) and got the bag twice. Some other players bitch in chat they got 1 drop out of 6-7 attempts. Anyway, good luck. It's very common to see everyone just flying to the next boss and sitting there for 20 minutes waiting for it to spawn (or logging out, then logging back in later).
Corrections to the above, partly due to a hotfix today.
1. The bosses all spawn 10 minutes apart now, WowHead is using the new correct times.
2. As an example of the actual spawn moment -- for the 6:00pm boss (for example), the boss appears exactly at 6:01:45 pm and becomes killable exactly at 6:03:45. This is a slight change from before; it's a bit later than it was. To carry the example through, the other bosses in that hour would become killable at 6:13:45, 6:23:45, 6:33:45 and so on.
3. Boss drops are actually at iLvl 110. However, the vendor iLvl was still 100 when I last checked.
4. Alliance can also port to Ironforge from Boralus and fly from there to reach Nathanos raid. (Unfortunately, it's the best I know of, the Arathi highland portal closed when the Darkshore raid expired.)
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This is sad. I have gotten the bag drop on 1st (or once on 2nd) farm try on all my Horde toons I tried with, and meanwhile on my alliance panda shammy I failed 5 times in a row. I gave up, and took my new level 50 priest in and got it on the first try.
Jinjun has now failed to get the bag drop seven times.
Sorry, Jinjun -- the gods have obviously cursed you.
I will focus my efforts on other characters.
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Did anyone get turned into a zombie yet?
I've only had it happen once, and it was really weird.
I was doing the Nathanos WB in Eastern plaguelands on my ally pally.
We killed the boss in WM off, and I had close to a full health bar, and I immediately kicked out of the cutscene...
... and when my screen reappeared, I was now a zombie, and I was now in the aftermath of a raid fight where everyone was marked as hostile (it might have still been the same raid group, it's just now I was a zombie so only other zombies are not hostile), and I had a 5-power menu bar. So I started attacking people.
Most people seemed confused and were either trying to leave or getting eaten by zombies, since others had turned as well.
When it looked like I would die, I blew myself up to infect everyone as much as i could. Cuz I'm awful.
THen I rezzed as myself again.
But I have no idea why it made me a zombie THEN. Like, I hadn't been bitten or anything, and it happened right after that cut scene. Weird.
I got almost all the xmog items off the bosses in Icecrown (I think I am only missing two leathers and a mail gear item), and I also managed to snag a 34-slot bag on 9 of my characters (which is decent in terms of drop, I guess). I also got my Windwalker monk up to level 50 (after being halfway leveled for some years) and now geared via Icecrown aside from rings and trinkets.
I always level my Horde Ret Pally main, but I am thinking maybe I will do a shaman and my monk and maybe the hunter -- I have ended up really enjoying playing the monk, and I like that shaman and monk are fairly uncommon in the surveys compared to other classes.
I also decided to finally work on a Mage (as part of learning the play styles). Unfortunately the Wow 16th anniversary buff is gone today, but I have a level 16 Fire Mage at the moment. It's one of those classes I just didn't care much for, along with Warlock. I have tried playing a warlock before, but I had used my free class level on it -- so I found the play confounding. Maybe I really need to start one from ground level to learn it a bit at a time, but I just don't really like it that much.
I don't I will play tomorrow on opening SL day. It should go live in mid-afternoon but I am sure the server load will be crazy, and after farming so much this week + needing to clean my house for Thanksgiving later in the week, I will end up taking a break. I'd rather get input from folks who leap into the content, so I can play more efficiently. So I'll let everyone else get the early stuff out of the way, then come in.
The new Icy Veins DPS raid tiers have Shadow Priest and Marksman Hunter as the two S-Tier raid classes. I am not surprised. I am not sure about open world content, but if you're just standing there with others tanking and pouring out massive DPS, I've been playing both and they rock right now in open world. (It looks like Subtlety Rogue is the top rogue class, and both Warrior specs are having real trouble keeping up in a raid. I also don't enjoy playing DH much anymore. It feels really reined in.)
I was laughing yesterday during the Zulduzar assault, for the CTA pvp quest -- I had my hunter land, track a ret pally who had more than half his health bar -- and after the 4-second aim, I hit him with the PvP sniper shot, the class kill shot, and an azerite blast one right after the other and dropped him to the ground, BOOM. He probably did not know what hit him. But it sure did make me feel good. Marksman has a viable toolkit now, esp with Volley tossed in.
Another great ad lib someone tossed out when Professor Putricide spawned yesterday: "Great news, everybody! Social distancing is now mandatory!" (I guess only those of you who did innumerable ICC runs will laugh at that... you have to imagine it in his voice.)
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I ended up getting all the available xmog drops from the Icecrown bosses. (I even had another blue proto-drake reins drop from Skadi, which sucked because so many other people wanted it but I already had it.) None of the loot was tradable even if you were in a raid group.
The prepatch ended at 5pm EST.
I noticed Stormwind was not giving me issues at 4:30pm, but trying to port into Orgrimmar was getting me booted about 50% of the time. This was the state of things in terms of crowding, it felt thicker than the visual:
I started reading a bit and see I don't actually need to choose a Covenant until level 60 I think, so that's good. I was considering Fey as far mechanics go for my Ret Pally but I'm not sure it fits my character concept. My ally windwalker monk will probably be Netherlords all the way, though.
EDIT: haha, now I am noticing that Kevswitch is in the middle there -- I know that guy, he's in the guild my DH is in and we helped each other complete "The Hallowed" achievement for Halloween this year. All of his characters start with "Kev" in the name.
I did end up spending an hour playing SL last night -- enough to get through the introductory Maw questline, establish my new base, and start the Bastion locale. I was curious to see how they handled the rollout, after every other rollout being either somewhat disastrous or at least involving 1-3 hours of lockout.
Put together a new look to run the expac. Went with the shiny and golden/off-metal look:
I was in Orgrimmar when the expac went active. THe most trouble I had was finding the gate to click on, because so many people were in the city and blocking my view of things. But once I clicked into the gate, it pretty much took me straight into a solo instance where the gate gets opened in Icecrown, and then once you reappear in the Maw, you can see other players but I suspect it is limited instance... It all felt like being in a Scenario/Instance but without announcing you were in a scenario with stages -- it just felt like open world but with more manageable resources and levels of other players.
Icecrown -- the portal is opened!
I was impressed, the Maw felt kind of eerie, and you are reconnecting with some of the other heroes, and it lays the groundwork for what the expac is about.
The new base of operations forces you to explore so that you know where all the pieces are. Horde and Alliance are together. By the time you are done with that area, your gates back to old content are active again and you know where all the profession trainers and other resources are, and your gate gets opened to Bastion.
It actually feels like a whole new world. Kind of like how the Titans blended fantasy and scifi -- well, this is completely away from the familiar into fantasy-scifi and a new setting, visually. Everythings looks clean and new and like its own thing, but it's WoW. Also the first ten minutes into Bastion, it reminds me of a Greecian art style (with the wide open landscapes as well). Frankly, SL does not feel cluttered or bogged down, it feels pretty "clean."
As far as play mechanics? It was a bummer seeing all the azerite abilities vanish -- they're inactive now, just like Corruption is. I assume this would persist even going back to old world content, but I did not do that yet. It's just the excuse was that you're in a different realm, so you no longer have an azerite connection -- so what if you go back to real world? I was on Saelki, my ret pally, and play felt pretty reasonable combat-wise; the Maw content could damage me a bit but in no serious way, and I felt effective.
Anyway, overall -- Have to say (1) congrats Blizzard for having the expac release without a server reboot and then for managing the shards/resources in a way that didn't crash the content. I had literally no issues staying on the server or playing through the first hour, compared to the craziness of past releases. and (2) making the whole thing feel new and interesting again, as well as "cleaner" in some ways. Kind of the distance between Dragon Age 1 and Dragon Age 2, but not nearly as horrible as DA2 not feeling like a DA game and not like how DA3 felt like a better return to DA1 but feeling too different in some ways. This still feels like WoW but fresher.
But I'll probably be out of this until at least Saturday now.
I actually completely forgot the expansion had come out. I just happened to log on to do some dungeons on my Rogue and noticed I had a new quest alert upon logging in. I kinda burned myself out getting ready for the expansion before the expansion actually came out, lol. I halfheartedly played a bit through the Maw quests on my hunter last night, almost hitting 51. Also, it took me exactly 3 hours but I unlocked the void elf and lightforged Draenai allied raced. I may go back and do some of the other ones but that depends on how much effort I feel like putting in at the time.
It is kind of like, "Okay, it's out there now" so I feel no need to rush anything anymore. lol.
I did get all the Allieds unlocked, but I did play all of BfA. Some of them I had to look up specifics on Wowhead, to figure out what I forgot to do.... all my rep had already been in place.
I was looking at unlocking the heritage armor with my future leveling; so far I only have Belf, HM Tauren, Nightborne, Vulpera, and Velf. So far it's nothing to write home about, although Vulpera has a nice rucksack bag instead of a cloak. (I am fond of the backpack from Horrific Visions I unlocked in lieu of a cloak too. I wish they gave more backpack options in lieu of cloaks / similar, and maybe some basic pants/similar for mail and plate classes, since leather and cloth has options for "street clothes" but the others don't.)
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I've actually been quite impressed with the Shadowlands story thus far. I really like the way zone questing is like a continuous story line where you're directly apart of the story with the NPCs, versus the old way if you independently traveling zone to zone with no real context for what brought you there and seeming very disconnected from the main focus of the expansion storyline.
I took one Horde (pally) and one Ally (monk) through Maw to open portal to Bastion. I'll probably complete Chapter One of them, but my lesser alts will choose the Threads of Fate leveling method.
