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

[Fammaden]

Originally Posted by Gilgamel

Made my warrior. May I just say the game is still fucking full of people, and 98.2% of them are still retarded.

Honestly though, when you get to max level there are tons of people who have at least learned the basics of proper grouping and gearing. I find PUG's aren't all that bad *most* of the time these days. When they are bad they are REALLY bad though.

[Cad]

Originally Posted by Fammaden

Honestly though, when you get to max level there are tons of people who have at least learned the basics of proper grouping and gearing. I find PUG's aren't all that bad *most* of the time these days. When they are bad they are REALLY bad though.

Yea I dunno. I joined a PuG gruuls just for laughs since I figured even if it sucks it can't take that long.....

2 different hunters pulled maulgar while we were buffing/setting up and nobody was ready... 2 different times.

another time the healer who was supposed to be healing the mage tank "my brother just punched me in the nose and I ran to grab a kleenex" and the 4th time, the healer on the maulgar tank got death coiled when the warlock got loose, and the secondary healer couldn't keep up. How, I have no idea. After the 5th wipe, only 1 of which pulls lasted more than 10 seconds, I left.

Pugs can be that bad. Really.

[c8fe]

Originally Posted by Lejina Bloodbath

There's a fairly rough start gear wise with paladins though. Warriors are uncrushable right out of the box in greens (not that this make them super awesome or anything, but they are definitly naturally sturdier). To become uncrushable, a paladin needs karazhan gears or to focus avoidance like a fiend with his blues, and he's way too flimsy to AE tank anything in heroics until he gets some decent raid/badge gear.

Once you have the gear heroics are easy mode. With my current 20khp I pretty much just plow through heroics and hope my healer doesn't fall behind. When I just got lvl 70, that was quite a different matter, I had to mark everything and use CCs and shit or else I was a goner and/or was risking a nervous breakdown for my healer.

I would agree with what you were saying if this was last year when kara gear was bleeding edge for most ppl. With the current massive amount of welfare equipment in the game that makes T4-5 stuff look average, starting off as a prot pally is easy as hell. To validate this statement, this is a link to my prot pally who I restored on July 13th with only a Helm, 2 rings, and libram that were soulbound to my char.


The World of Warcraft Armory




In 2 weeks I've basically geared myself up to being able to tank most anything all the way up the BT from being completely naked. If the RNG favored me more and dropped the last few items I needed I would definately be able to MT those places. I knew quite a few people when I came back, but they all recruited me to join their T6 guilds which was a bit to hardcore for me so I really had no help other then from friends I made upon returning. With dailies and badge gear it shouldn't be to hard to break into heroics within 3 days in my personal opinion. It would have been even easier for me if I was able to use quest rewards to help gear up, but with how badly heroics have been nerfed since the last time I played I think I did heroic slave pens the first time with something like 10 or 11k hp. I do agree with your problem of becoming uncrushable though. I logged out with a few items switched, but it took me up until a few days ago to manage to finally hit the breakpoint which can be extremely challenging for a pally. Thankfully though, most paladin roles in raids entail offtanking or speed trash killing. I was capable of maintanking bosses and things if my spec favored the encounter, but uncrushability isn't completely required for a prot pally to raid. Our talent is trash killing, AE tanking, and speed running heroics. Have the bear or warrior MT the boss until your uncrushable because they have the advantage in alot of regards for those encounters.

[Fammaden]

Originally Posted by Cad

Yea I dunno. I joined a PuG gruuls just for laughs since I figured even if it sucks it can't take that long.....

2 different hunters pulled maulgar while we were buffing/setting up and nobody was ready... 2 different times.

another time the healer who was supposed to be healing the mage tank "my brother just punched me in the nose and I ran to grab a kleenex" and the 4th time, the healer on the maulgar tank got death coiled when the warlock got loose, and the secondary healer couldn't keep up. How, I have no idea. After the 5th wipe, only 1 of which pulls lasted more than 10 seconds, I left.

Pugs can be that bad. Really.

I was talking about 5 mans, not raids. Only raid I really consider a potentially good idea to PUG is Kara.

[nu_11]

Originally Posted by c8fe

The World of Warcraft Armory

In 2 weeks I've basically geared myself up to being able to tank most anything all the way up the BT from being completely naked. If the RNG favored me more and dropped the last few items I needed I would definately be able to MT those places. I knew quite a few people when I came back, but they all recruited me to join their T6 guilds which was a bit to hardcore for me so I really had no help other then from friends I made upon returning. With dailies and badge gear it shouldn't be to hard to break into heroics within 3 days in my personal opinion. It would have been even easier for me if I was able to use quest rewards to help gear up, but with how badly heroics have been nerfed since the last time I played I think I did heroic slave pens the first time with something like 10 or 11k hp. I do agree with your problem of becoming uncrushable though. I logged out with a few items switched, but it took me up until a few days ago to manage to finally hit the breakpoint which can be extremely challenging for a pally. Thankfully though, most paladin roles in raids entail offtanking or speed trash killing. I was capable of maintanking bosses and things if my spec favored the encounter, but uncrushability isn't completely required for a prot pally to raid. Our talent is trash killing, AE tanking, and speed running heroics. Have the bear or warrior MT the boss until your uncrushable because they have the advantage in alot of regards for those encounters.

Hm... I wouldn't say you're fit to tank BT or MH. TK would be pushing it, considering you have like 3 blues, 2 PvP epics (not the shield which would be okay), and like 3 meh epics.

You go on to state that you can get into Heroics using badge gear.... but where do you get badges to buy badge gear? FROM HEROICS. In Karazhan you can get 40 badges in 2 weeks, but badge gear costs like 75 badges per piece.

I'll give you 4 days to get a decent blue/epic set to tank heroics. So you have 10 days left for 2 weeks. You can tank 4 heroics a day for like 16 badges. 16 x 10 = 160 + 40. Total is 200 badges which buys you... 2 pieces of badge gear, nearly 3. Doing the dailies might net you that 3rd piece. Three is not nearly enough to get close to BT, but you can probably start tanking heroic MgT for some shot at the epics. You need a capable group and to get VERY lucky to get the drops.

Two pretty HEAVY weeks is not enough to gear someone up for BT. If you continue at that rate, I'd guess most people would be burnt out by the time they reach BT level.

[Simas]

Yeah pugs will still surprise you with their shittyness. H daily was MGT today. At first i thought H mgt would be better than mgt cuz the people at least had to get through mgt once. Not so much.

Our prot war tank was higher on the dps meters than our mage. We managed to get to priestess that way then wiped a number of times. A couple of those wipes came from the tank/mage pulling on distract and not sap.

Also had a pug reg BM run where almost everyone was wearing s2 loot and a mix of badge gear. With a warlock, hunter and pally tank. Thought itd be easy, almost perfect group. Never made it past the 2nd boss. Lock wouldnt aoe after being asked and never cast CoD once.

Had a prot pally get upset when our pug removed him from our H UB before we started. He had 10k hp, 4 or 5 open gem slots and his sword was enchanted with crusader. (no spell dmg gear at all really).

It seems like most people can handle sheep, sap or trap and hitting the right target. After that though its a crap shoot. Concepts like burst, aoe, los pull, avoid parry/cleave, get out of the fire, what stats matter for your class/spec and damage rotations are often above the pugs I happen to group with.

[Sharmai]

Originally Posted by nu_11

Stuff...

Dude see that's the issue I'm talking about. Hes well geared and fine to tank BT and MH it just largely depends on how much he has to compensate gear wise for the 24 other idiots he will be dragging around. A group of 24 other skilled players and he may as well be over-geared for all the difficulty the instances will provide him.


We so often expect to be in groups that completely suck balls that we have to overgear instances before we even do them. Whats scarier is that, that's how it has to be atm.

[Sharmai]

Originally Posted by spronk

Paladin gear at 70

What was your paladin gear at 70 do you remember? The crafted blues and easy to get stuff I mean? Was it mostly pvp gear?

[c8fe]

Originally Posted by nu_11

Hm... I wouldn't say you're fit to tank BT or MH. TK would be pushing it, considering you have like 3 blues, 2 PvP epics (not the shield which would be okay), and like 3 meh epics.

You go on to state that you can get into Heroics using badge gear.... but where do you get badges to buy badge gear? FROM HEROICS. In Karazhan you can get 40 badges in 2 weeks, but badge gear costs like 75 badges per piece.

I'll give you 4 days to get a decent blue/epic set to tank heroics. So you have 10 days left for 2 weeks. You can tank 4 heroics a day for like 16 badges. 16 x 10 = 160 + 40. Total is 200 badges which buys you... 2 pieces of badge gear, nearly 3. Doing the dailies might net you that 3rd piece. Three is not nearly enough to get close to BT, but you can probably start tanking heroic MgT for some shot at the epics. You need a capable group and to get VERY lucky to get the drops.

Two pretty HEAVY weeks is not enough to gear someone up for BT. If you continue at that rate, I'd guess most people would be burnt out by the time they reach BT level.

Ya I should have emphasized the fact that I was going at it hardcore. The only reason I'm not at the point of being able to tank BT etc is because the RNG has not favored me at all in places like ZA and a few kara drops and I really can't enter another heroic without wanting to slit my wrists. Ironically though, like you said after two weeks of playing I'm also basically burned out of the game and have decided not to resub after this month haha.


I would definately say a person could be BT ready in two weeks, but it would take some lucky drops combined with alot of help from people carrying them through 25 mans which I currently don't have the drive to learn. In my personal opinion, if that opportunity wasn't available a person could feasibly be capable of doing BT in aproximately a month going hardcore with no outside help aside from friends made in the game. I've hosted pug ZA's that have been decent runs and badge gear is on par with T5 based on what I've seen. I was averaging aproximately 100 badges per week going at it hardcore, which in a month would fill my chest-75, boots-75, legs-100, bracers-35, helm-50, libram-10 and any other slot you could fill with extras. This leaves a few relatively simple kara/za drops from early content and the trinkets which are commendation and moroes pocket watch. All I'm really trying to emphasize by this post though is that gearing up at this point in the game is far from challenging, I'de almost consider it easy as long as you have the drive. I will agree with you though, even with perfect drops I don't see it possible being able to enter Bt/hyjal/sunwell within two weeks unless you have a guild carry you through content that is at that tier inorder to gear you up with the equipment quickly.

[Miele]

Originally Posted by Simas

Yeah pugs will still surprise you with their shittyness. H daily was MGT today. At first i thought H mgt would be better than mgt cuz the people at least had to get through mgt once. Not so much.

Our prot war tank was higher on the dps meters than our mage. We managed to get to priestess that way then wiped a number of times. A couple of those wipes came from the tank/mage pulling on distract and not sap.

Also had a pug reg BM run where almost everyone was wearing s2 loot and a mix of badge gear. With a warlock, hunter and pally tank. Thought itd be easy, almost perfect group. Never made it past the 2nd boss. Lock wouldnt aoe after being asked and never cast CoD once.

Had a prot pally get upset when our pug removed him from our H UB before we started. He had 10k hp, 4 or 5 open gem slots and his sword was enchanted with crusader. (no spell dmg gear at all really).

It seems like most people can handle sheep, sap or trap and hitting the right target. After that though its a crap shoot. Concepts like burst, aoe, los pull, avoid parry/cleave, get out of the fire, what stats matter for your class/spec and damage rotations are often above the pugs I happen to group with.

Then people ask me why I do not pug anymore.
I think that this has been a feature of all games where there was not an entry barrier to the zone, a barrier where being dragged through was not happening (at least for a while).

If you force people to do something that will improve them, you'll have a better chance of having decent players after. It doesn't have to be tedious or "just a grind", but access quests ala " EQ1 Plane of Justice trials" were already a start: 1 fight where a minimum of skill and gear is required, if you don't qualify, work on it.

To be honest, in my guild, I accept friends that have less than stellar playing skills, because after all one or two performing subpar don't impact our progression that much (well, we're casual for real, so it's not like anything close to a serious progression is required) and because friends come first.
They listen to advices at least and keep improving and for me that's enough.

In pugs, must be my luck, I always find total idiots, shamans that don't cast a single totem (cause it's boring dude!), hunters that do not have traps hotkeyed and don't use anything but serpent sting, warriors tanking with 2 hand weapons (in green+blues), paladins who never cleanse, name it, it's probably happened to me at least once etc.
We're talking class baseline skills here, not some amazing task they failed to perform.

What saddens me is that Blizzard is slowly catering towards these people, at least outside of raids. I guess grouping has to be idiot proof.

[spronk]

Originally Posted by Sharmai

What was your paladin gear at 70 do you remember? The crafted blues and easy to get stuff I mean? Was it mostly pvp gear?

bracers of green fortress, awesome tank bracers, costs ~100-400g (if your a miner its cheap)
felsteel set (2-3 pcs)
s2 hammer+shield (replace with shatar exalted shield when possible)
timewarden legs (2-3 runs of BM as prot or holy)
andormus ring (quest i think?), I never picked a kara ring and was revered (holy runs) so got that as a nice 2nd
s3 vind boots
aldor belt (very good blue)
helm of righteousness (drops from last boss in reg shat halls)
revered neck from CE
furies trinket1
some shitty trinket2 (dabril i think, I'm gonna run heroic MgT to replace it)

google for protadin pre-raiding tank gear, there are a couple sites that will give a full set of gear you can get without stepping into a raid or heroic. its also trivial to respec holy w/ the s2 welfare holy gear and pug raid kara/gruul/mag and pick up some T4. You can easily hit 1500 holy with all solo effort, and that'll be enough to get you in badge kara runs where you can pick up a ton of gear in a 2-3 runs.

re: pugs, imo it depends a lot on your server. On both PVP servers I've played I have found the retardation level very low, in fact I end up pugging a lot of times with people in full s4/T5/T6/etc. My friend on a RP server though has similar experiences to you, just really bad players. I tell him to always start groups himself and armory people before invites. Playing as a tank, healer, or mage gives you a lot more flexibility in group accepts than other classes too, imo, since tons of groups always want these 3.

Had a marathon grind session this weekend, ~5 hours each day, my 4 shamans are now level 32 after nearly 22 hours of /played over 6 days realtime. Getting real sick of SFK and SM, lol. We'll see how the ST grind goes, if it goes well I could be hitting 60 on them by middle of this week.

[Lowk]

Originally Posted by Gilgamel

Made my warrior. May I just say the game is still fucking full of people, and 98.2% of them are still retarded.

What server did you end up rolling on and what classes are your friends playing?

[Sharmai]

I'm having a hard time deciding which character I want to start off with first in wotlk. I thought about doing a druid since he can spec feral and tank but tanking more then 3 mobs is just a pain in the ass with PuG's. Besides tanking gear is mostly useless later on unless I actually want to continue tanking forever. Oh and when some DK's get up to level that's all your going to see tanking initially in PuG's for just the WOW factor.

A Mage can spec frost and be great DPS and since they have CC they will always be needed. The only sucky part about a mage is none of their new talents or trees look impressive. I mean some of the new upgrades like frostfire bolt and more shatter combos seem ok but it seems like more min/maxing instead of thinking outside of the box.. bleh...

Shaman is the class I love the most but is largely useless in PuGs since they have no CC. Hex is a lvl 80 spell in a 30 second cd so its useless from 70-80 where I would need it most to be valuable to get into groups.... Sigh..

Hunter is the class i'm leaning towards since they have CC and what looks like some new group buffs. They are the best soloer's so leveling should be fast. I think i just have always felt hunters were one of the last classes to be chosen for instances....

[TheYanger]

Originally Posted by Needless

I judge so strongly on somebodys tanking ability now that if somebody cannot keep up with my pace, or keeping agro/picking up adds that i just get pissed off or fed up with them extremely quickly.

So let me get this straight, you PLAY a warrior, then act like the exact kind of retarded dps on your alts that are the precise kind of player that makes warrior tanks pissed off with the tanking mechanics in a five man and NOT want to tank it?
And yes, I have a warrior alt, and yes I'm damn fucking good at tanking. I would kick you out of the group if you pulled that shit.

Also, pugs as stated are highly server dependent, on a high pop old school server you're probably able to get some seriously good pugs. There's on guy on my server who can be a royal ass, but he manages to put together Gruul and Magtheridon pugs three times a week on his characters and I don't think we've wiped more than once or twice total in the past couple months doing it. Not the 'call it a pug but it's an invitation only list' type thing either, true pugs. You just need to find people that can really get to the core of what puggers need to do on a given fight and focus only on that.

We regularly have pug SSC, pug TK (Even through Kael'thas), pug Gruul Pug Mag pug Sunwell trash, etc. Great way to gear up alts.

[The Ancient]

Originally Posted by Sharmai

Shaman is the class I love the most but is largely useless in PuGs since they have no CC. Hex is a lvl 80 spell in a 30 second cd so its useless from 70-80 where I would need it most to be valuable to get into groups.... Sigh..

I don't remember the 60-70s really needing CC. Shamans with their totem buffs and wipe recovery were always valuable for me in 5 mans.

Originally Posted by TheYanger

We regularly have pug SSC, pug TK (Even through Kael'thas), pug Gruul Pug Mag pug Sunwell trash, etc. Great way to gear up alts.

People are pugging Kael? Jesus, he must be heavily nerfed.