[WoW] Thinking on coming back, how much has it changed?

[Draegan]

I chuckled at Dungeons and Douchebags.

[Grumpy Old Fart]

Originally Posted by Wilfan

It's perfectly fine in WoW (always was), just don't even try to run instances if you don't have a set group of friends.

This man is very wise. Whatever you do, do not under any circumstances fall prey to joining a pick-up group in World of Warcraft, even if the recruiter on LFG channel sounds reasonably intelligent and can spell really hard words like "you" and "are".

If you do not follow this advice, you are sure to not only lose all faith in humanity and the education system, you will also fly into a berserker rage, hearthstone out of the instance less than half-way through, Exit Game, log into your WoW account, cancel it, type "YES. FUCK YOU, PEON!" in the "Are you sure you want to make the fucking Peon cry?" box, then un-install WoW and snap the CDs.

At least, 100% of the people I know in North Dakota that play WoW had that experience. Just avoid the horror of WoW PuGs. Please. Your FoH forum friends love you and wouldn't want you to go through the above torment.

[Rezz]

Ironically, pugs aren't that bad, you just have to follow a couple simple rules:

If the player's name is something like Ricehealerk or something equally retarded, they suck balls, don't join the group.

If you join and the tank is wearing PVP gear, leave the group.

On the same note, if you join a group and the first thing you notice is there's 4 shaman dual wielding axes, leave the group.

The good side however, is that it's starting to get to the point where guild name actually means something in a game again. If the guy is tagged with your local uberguild's name, then it's probably safe to assume that at least one player isn't a complete retardouchebag. That puts the odds almost above 5% for a decent group.

[Fammaden]

Yeah, you just need to have some ground rules. Group composition obviously, and if you can help it make sure you know and trust in the quality of the tank and healer if you aren't one or the other. I would probably say don't even bother full pugging heroics though. I tried to join a pug heroic a little while ago thinking that it would go ok with dailies and the age of the expansion at this point. We ended up getting a rogue who somehow managed to be wearing mostly tank stat leather and no fucking lie had the MP5 enchant on his chest. I left that group before the first boss.

[Twobit Whore]

Few weeks ago I pugged a shitload of heroics and every single one was nearly flawless. I used to have some preconcieved notions about them being horrible but as long as the tank/healer are from a resident guild that you know to be halfway progressed (i.e. not a trade chat 'working on SSC/TK' recruitment guild) then you are good to go. The rest of the roles are pretty trivial.

[Esmo]

Originally Posted by Wilfan

In the raid game, Ele shamans have similar stigma as moonkins and ret paladins and fit somewhere between them in actual performance.

Our ele shaman does more dps than either a ret paladin or a moonkin (we raid with the former not with the latter) and enables more dps from the other casters in his group.

Brut kill this past week:
Ele Shaman dps - over 1600
Mage 1 - over 1900
Mage 2 - over 1900
Mage 3 - just under 1900

None of those three mages have optimal gear top to bottom by any stretch. The combined utility and dps of the ele shaman should not be written off or passively understated.
Both ele and enh are dps enablers and are excellent in those roles. Resto is an amazing raid healing spec (but we all know that).

As was said earlier - 5 shaman (3/1/1) in every raid is optimal for nearly every encounter right now.

[Duppin]

So, this might sound really stupid, but if I want to buy WoW online, can I buy the base game plus TBC somewhere for digital download?

I tried to get the "battle chest" package but it looked like that was only if you wanted to get it shipped to you, not for download.

I suppose I could just get off my lazy ass and go buy it.

[Fammaden]

If I had somehow managed perfect foresight I would have leveled my horde shaman from the get go and been indispensable to raid guilds in any spec rather than going with the dwarf holy pal that I am recently severely burnt out on. So now I'm very casually leveling my shaman who is the last of my level 60's that I didn't max out and hoping I can somehow use one of them as a FotM class come WotLK. I have a hard time believing that it will still be chain healing by then, but I don't know if anyone can really predict accurately what else might become such a staple crutch in PvE. The horde/alliance thing just gets increasingly annoying too, just limits people when I think alts/multiple characters should serve to diversify your options better, especially with gear resets putting you on somewhat equal ground for expansions.

[Felonius]

i'm just waiting for belf warriors baby

[Wilfan]

Originally Posted by Esmo

Our ele shaman does more dps than either a ret paladin or a moonkin (we raid with the former not with the latter) and enables more dps from the other casters in his group.

Brut kill this past week:
Ele Shaman dps - over 1600

1600 DPS is something ret paladin should be able to put out on Brutallus, if he's in decent gear and melee group. His raidwide DPS increase will also be bigger than shaman's (disregarding heroism, which is silly overpowered on short DPS checks).

But as you noticed on your mages, class difference is often less than difference between players and gear level.

[Cuppycake]

Originally Posted by Duppin

So, this might sound really stupid, but if I want to buy WoW online, can I buy the base game plus TBC somewhere for digital download?

I don't think there is a package deal available online. I think you have to buy the WoW classic from something like Direct2Drive and then you can pay Blizzard another $29.99 to upgrade it to TBC by entering a key into your account that will patch all the Burning Crusade content.

[Esmo]

Originally Posted by Wilfan

1600 DPS is something ret paladin should be able to put out on Brutallus, if he's in decent gear and melee group. His raidwide DPS increase will also be bigger than shaman's (disregarding heroism, which is silly overpowered on short DPS checks).

But as you noticed on your mages, class difference is often less than difference between players and gear level.

Most definitely and the reduced dps was probably a result of getting burned a couple times last week (bubble the first, moving for the second = loss of a little dps time).

This week had the ele shaman over 1700; the ret pally over 1600 and the mages rocked out at 2200+, 2000+ and 1900+

He still enraged on us but it was at 1% and he died seconds after.

[Aria]

I resubbed last month.. logged on once or twice. Now un-subbing. How boring.

[Northerner]

Originally Posted by Wilfan

His raidwide DPS increase will also be bigger than shaman's (disregarding heroism, which is silly overpowered on short DPS checks).

I understand the need to have a disclaimer but the fact remains that bloodlust does exist and yeah, it's incredibly powerful. Just be glad that Brute is tuned to six minutes though, on anything shorter multiple bloodlusts for dps groups would be absolutely mandated.

[Duppin]

Originally Posted by Cuppycake

I don't think there is a package deal available online. I think you have to buy the WoW classic from something like Direct2Drive and then you can pay Blizzard another $29.99 to upgrade it to TBC by entering a key into your account that will patch all the Burning Crusade content.

That's stupid as hell.

If I decide to give this another try (waffling between WoW, Vanguard, or nothing at all as I've been doing) I'll just buy the retail boxes.