The Shattering / Cataclysm

[RobRoy]

i started again with a troll druid. 78 tonight. The new content is awesome but it becomes a real slog (if wow is ever a slog) when you hit outland then northrend. looking forward to some nice new content again come 80

[Number45]

Yeah, I have to say I'm not really looking forward to 58-80 at all.

[abigsmurf]

I'm level 70 at the moment. Outland was utterly painful to level through, boring quests and zones. I ended up doing most of the levelling in battlegrounds.

[abigsmurf]

I've just read that they've removed a large portion of the wrathgate quest chain from the game.

What the hell? That was one of the most awesome parts of WOTLK

[RobRoy]

Yeh the bit where you take back undercity is gone. Kinda makes sense since thrall is no longer the warchief

[Number45]

Makes me sad that I'll never see that content. Don't understand why they can't use phasing - it's used heavily everywhere else in the game now.

[eastyy]

might get into wow again next year but wanted to know whats the cheapest way to get wow and all the expansions ? ideally with as little downloading as possible (can the patches and stuff be got on disc?) as would probably eat all my Gb allowance

and whats the monthly subscription ? cheers

[abigsmurf]

You've no choice but the patching really.

I believe the current cheapest option is to buy classic + TBC + WOTLK digitally and to buy Cataclysm from a shop. Think the subscription is £9 a month but I can't remember for sure.

[RobRoy]

Yeh i think you can get Vanilla + Burning Crusade and Wrath for £16 digitally. Then youd have to buy Cataclysm. It is £8.99 a month but can go cheaper if you buy in bulk

[dataDave]

I'm quitting again after realising just how hard it is to either find a good arena team, or train one up from scratch.

And because I don't have a Gladiator title to throw around I can just waltz my way into an already established team.

Rated BGs, my most anticipated feature, is a complete waste of my steam considering no one can ever be arsed.

If this game had the FFXI community it'd be crack.

[SUMIRE]

It might improve later, the expansion has only been out a few weeks I think.

[abigsmurf]

I'm hearing reports that the heroic dungeons are stupidly difficult at the moment.

The theory is that they've designed them to force the use of crowd control but from what I've heard they've pretty much just added an extra 1 or 2 mobs every pull rather than do a real adjustment of the difficulty and that the healing hasn't scaled properly with the insane HP increases.

[dataDave]

I'm hearing reports that the heroic dungeons are stupidly difficult at the moment.

The theory is that they've designed them to force the use of crowd control but from what I've heard they've pretty much just added an extra 1 or 2 mobs every pull rather than do a real adjustment of the difficulty and that the healing hasn't scaled properly with the insane HP increases.

I'd played and completed a few - there are particular mobs which require certain CC and everything needs marking up and designating like in a raid - but nothing like Magister's Terrace where I had to enslave demons and use them against their masters. Heroics are no longer tank+spank affairs which is nice, however I don't have time for PvE.

This is what heroics need in order to brazen early raiders. I stepped out of PvE last year due to other people not having a clue, not realising they have to move out of fire/crosshairs etc. Maybe this will give new players some learning experience.

And healing didn't seem crap to me, maybe it requires more than just spamming one button now.

Saying all that, give it a few weeks and they'll be dumbed down.

[Silvergun X]

I'd played and completed a few - there are particular mobs which require certain CC and everything needs marking up and designating like in a raid - but nothing like Magister's Terrace where I had to enslave demons and use them against their masters. Heroics are no longer tank+spank affairs which is nice, however I don't have time for PvE.

This is what heroics need in order to brazen early raiders. I stepped out of PvE last year due to other people not having a clue, not realising they have to move out of fire/crosshairs etc. Maybe this will give new players some learning experience.

And healing didn't seem crap to me, maybe it requires more than just spamming one button now.

Saying all that, give it a few weeks and they'll be dumbed down.

Healing isn't crap at all now. Healing requires a completely different trail of thought than in WotLK heroics.

My main is a Holy Priest and I pretty much started raiding at TotC so I missed out on classic, burning crusade, and WotLK stuff like Naxx and Ulduar.

I could sleep heal through heroics and even raid healing wasn't that terribly difficult through ICC due to the whole 'infinite mana' thing going on where you can just regenerate mana faster than you were using it while spamming flash heal.

Yeah, that's completely different. You'll run your mana pool down in about 20 - 30 seconds playing the same way now. However it HAS gotten a lot more fun to play. I'm dreading raiding now though...

I end up using Chakra, then Renew, then Heal. The stance it puts you in gives you 10% additional crit to direct healing spells, and healing the target resets the duration of renew while adding time onto your Chakra state.

Spirit is ridiculously important as a healer now. More so than it used to be. I've got mine stacked now so repeat casting Heal only drains a very, very small amount of mana due to combat regen, and keeps renew constantly alive on the targets, so all you need to worry about is juggling renew timers. If your tank's taking a ridiculously huge amount of damage then you do Flash Heal -> Flash Heal -> Greater Heal (reduced casting time due to Serendipity talent) then continue with the renew juggling.

End result is finishing a heroic boss while still having 50% of your mana left and all your cooldowns still in place.

Great fun and a totally different style of play.

[dataDave]

Sounds like healing during the early days of BC. BC raiding was the nads, as was the PvP.

You've really seen the worst part of the game starting with WotLK, mate. Urgh... I wish I was back home, you could spec discipline, grab a Rogue and we try some 3v3. I actually fancy Affliction now considering everyone and their dog is Destruction thesedays. :/