WoW: Battle for Azeroth (8.3)

Finally got Mechagnomes, and am about 1 week or so away from getting pathfinder part 2, I am trying to decide what to do after getting ankoan to exalted. I don't really like raiding, nor the 8.3 grinds. I think I'll focus on visions of stormwind to get the appearance from there. Otherwise I think i'll probably go back to leveling alts.

I just resubbed for a month. I figure I'd work on vulpera rep to get the foxy allied race.
Seriously though, I just played around on the dressing room on wowhead and there is barely 2 sets that don't look outstanding on the vulpera. It is almost like the stuff was made for vulpera 10-15 years before they we even in the game let alone playable. Out of the 100+ things I looked at, there were 2 that were just plain horrible mostly because of the garish colors. (pea green, bright yellow and the like)

I guess they did a good job rigging the Goblins. But they're not cute enough so nobody noticed until they gave them fur and tails.

My tour of the Alliance story got turbo-charged by the XP buff. I was nearly level 104 before I'd had my fill of Draenor. By the time I've seen the faction-specific stuff in Stormheim I should be ready to head to Kul Tiras. At that point I kind of stop caring about leveling speed because I'm a want to see all the content anyway.

I am a little underwhelmed by the XP bonus. I had fun enough leveling my rogue for 118-120 to get to the mechagon content but it took about 4 hours with full rested xp. (do not underestimate the amount of time spent traveling too...) I really hope they do follow through on the 1-50 leveling taking 20 hours optimally.

Goblins are awesome to but I would not discount the differences the vulperan animal features add to the overall aesthetic. A lot of the helmets that look awkward are inherently more intimidating when shaped to fit the snout. The ears contribute to this too but that is shared by goblins and vulpera. And then there is the tail. Believe it or not, the tail frequently balances out the armor looks and helps add detail to pants that are only textured differently.

My "main" druid got from 81-86 with full rested xp but that took a few hours.

One very positive thing I can say is that many of the classes have a very satisfying rotation. They are among the best rotations I have ever had in an mmo.
Guardian druid is amazing in both survivability and killing speed from taking on 2-3 enemies at a time. She'd be my first complete 1-120 if I can muster the strength
DPS demon hunter (aoe or single target) is amazing as always and has gliding on top of it all. She is leap frogging up to gear score 400+ and working on voldunai rep.

Assassination and subtlety rogues have so much incredible stuff at their disposal

And I am relearning the frost mage. I'm only in the mid 20's but it is growing on me.

Got those alts leveled to 120?

No? Better hurry. The +100% XP buff expires Tuesday morning.

But for your new 120s (and any other toons, tbh), the XP buff will be replaced by a +100% buff to rep gains through May 18.

If you're like me and taking the slow boat toward exalted with Uldum Accord* and the Rajani*, light be praised. With the buff, I think I can make it by the mid/late May (instead of mid/late never).

* easily the two grindiest reps in a long while. I mean, I guess things would have gone faster if I was popping to do the dailies each day. But I'm just popping into the new zones 3x a week - for the major and two minor caches. It's slow going. After Tuesday, tho, not so much!

Hello? Can I post? Wierd...

Time to get all those allied races to fill my roster with alts, heh

I keep reading that the XP buff pales in comparison to the level squish leveling speed. (15-20 hours 1-50 without heirlooms) So I am going to hold off on leveling to level and just play characters I am having fun with whether I get to 120 by Tuesday or not.

Current reports on alpha say first 10 is 1 hour, second and third 10 are 2.5 hours each, fourth 10 is 3 hours, and the fifth 10 is 4 hours.

The current XP buff comes nowhere near this rate, especially in BFA but probably as far back as the 70's or 80's. In BFA, my rogue took probably 40-50 mins per level from 118-120. My 112 DK is struggling at a similar pace to get to 115. My 85 druid is having a blast in cataclysm but she is probably leveling every 35 minutes from 81-85.

So if in the pre-patch at worst you are leveling every 25 minutes, that is a huge difference. Plus, as much as I like the atmosphere of the BFA zones, and while they have the most advanced quest mechanics, I don't think it will be the go to for 10-50 once the prepatch hits. It won't be for me and I'd wager players might opt for the vanilla zones. Some of them like redridge, darskshore, hillsbrad, stone talon and the gnome/dwarf starting area have been revamped for high quest and monster density with similar advanced quest mechanics seen in Legion.

Another leveling option might be Draenor. It has decent quest density, doesn't have as much mazy and twisted path nested areas as Legion and BFA, and has world quests on top of quests. Also, flying is unlocked so now in case Blizzard persists in making you unlock flying for BFA and Legion.

Wrath and BC are too spread out and have a lot of back and forth. Cataclysm and Pandaria may suffer that as well where you really need flying but won't be high enough level to unlock it. (you will somehow have to manage leveling in those zones from 10-30 without flying)

Anyways, I cannot wait until I either get my hands on the alpha/beta or the pre-patch to test this out!

fangblackbone wrote:

Hello? Can I post?

Hello. yes you may?

Something I wrote it didn't like so it blocked my post. I had to spell out the level ranges rather than using too many math symbols I guess

Well yea but aren't we still looking and December and possibly into January February before that new leveling experience hits?

That far away? How long was BFA alpha before the prepatch or launch. I figure that is the window for how long we will have to wait.

I am hoping to get into the alpha/beta to tide me over... But if not I am hoping September at the latest or in my biggest pipe dream, July if the expansion gets released in August.

thrawn82 wrote:

Well yea but aren't we still looking and December and possibly into January February before that new leveling experience hits?

No idea. I know Blizzard has said "2020." Past expansions have been turned around in about 2 years, which puts the release date as August. But the 'rona is messing up everything so who knows? I haven't seen anything - just uninformed speculation, including everything I just typed after "Blizzard has said 2020."

Assuming late 2020, that's plenty of time to roll a bunch of new toons (DH, warrior, mage and druid are the four classes I haven't maxxed out) and grind out the Insane title.

Now that I've read the fine print of the rep buff, it applies only to BFA and Legion factions. For a hot second I was hoping I would have to pickpocket only half as many Ravenholt boxes as I thought ...

Well yea, but that was before the c word gave them a legitimate excuse to delay it, and the alpha is starting at least a month late

I hope this does get pushed back because between Cyberpunk, Vampire Bloodlines 2, Baldur's Gate 3 all looming there's no way I'm dedicating enough time to this if it's imminent.

Due to the popularity of the Winds of Wisdom 100% experience buff in Battle for Azeroth, we’re extending its benefit through to the release of the Shadowlands pre-patch!

Thank you Fang.

But damn, that Rep bonus is huge. I surely want to take advantage of that. Never got around to finishing the Emperor Shaohao grind.

Shadout wrote:
Due to the popularity of the Winds of Wisdom 100% experience buff in Battle for Azeroth, we’re extending its benefit through to the release of the Shadowlands pre-patch!

Thank you Fang.

But damn, that Rep bonus is huge. I surely want to take advantage of that. Never got around to finishing the Emperor Shaohao grind.

And this won't help, unfortunately. Only Legion and BFA before 8.3 are included.

Nice!

FWIW leveling to the mid 60's is very fun now with the current buff. So I may get a ton of alts to mid levels before the prepatch.

And of course voldunai rep will only get easier to get if I don't get it by Tuesday. (unlikely as I'm about 1k away from revered so another 20K rep to go after that)

zinckiwi wrote:
Shadout wrote:

But damn, that Rep bonus is huge. I surely want to take advantage of that. Never got around to finishing the Emperor Shaohao grind.

And this won't help, unfortunately. Only Legion and BFA before 8.3 are included.

Really. That sucks. Pretty sure I am exalted with all the reps it works for then. Seems like an unnecessary limit.
Hm, maybe the fishing reps in Legion...

Shadout wrote:
zinckiwi wrote:
Shadout wrote:

But damn, that Rep bonus is huge. I surely want to take advantage of that. Never got around to finishing the Emperor Shaohao grind.

And this won't help, unfortunately. Only Legion and BFA before 8.3 are included.

Really. That sucks. Pretty sure I am exalted with all the reps it works for then. Seems like an unnecessary limit.
Hm, maybe the fishing reps in Legion...

Sure, it's only BFA and Legion reps (which won't help my Insane grind) but it's a yuuuuuuuuuge money maker for a month if you're already exalted. Each emissary cache gives 3K rep (plus whatever you grind out on the quests at twice the going rate). Every time you turn over the odometer on the rep gives you ~200 gold for Legion and ~ 4K gold for BFA. Done over multiple characters (like I did w 7th Legion rep last night at 2K a pop), now you're talking the goblin language.

TL,DR: Do a lot of WQs, make a lot of gold.

Can I tell you that the shaman spec I am having the most fun with is the restoration/healer spec?
It lacks a lot of the offense skills of elemental but that isn't a bad thing as the simpler rotation is useful enough. Plus, you get all the complexity in the heals that I only use 2 of: the riptide heal over time and the healing tide totem if I am really getting beat on.

I think it will be a great boon to the shaman and its other specs once they get rid of maelstrom. It is a perfect example of problems with classes that end up being a jumbled mess because they don't have a strong core rotation. I'd compare it to "i before e, except after c or when it spells ay as in neighbor or weigh" (which has layered complexity) and something that is only exceptions without any founding rules.

I just don't get it. Blizzard really loves their double resource systems and then they pile on optional things like proc based skills and monkey with mishmashed charges and cooldowns. And then some of those are from talents which are either universal or spec specific.

One example is death coil, that should be a signature death knight ability from warcraft's history. It is very mediocre and the unholy spec has a talent that makes it free to cast and boosts damage. Except it still sucks and I only use it when it procs because its free and when I am out of runes or every other skill is on cooldown.

Another example is lava lash or burst. It is a core skill on the healing shaman spec. It is barely useful on the enhancement shaman when it procs for free. And it gets overshadowed by all the shock type spells on the elemental spec.

Other impressions include the priest which is pretty lackluster. Discipline is okay but very routine and could use a boost from some skills like mind flay becoming available to all specs. Shadow looks like it gets all the fun but shadow form and everything related to insanity and the void form has all flash and no substance. Void form would be awesome if it were more like the demon hunter's metamorphosis with the talent that casts a shorter morph after eyebeam. So it would be awesome if mindflay was on a 20 second cooldown and the talent proc'd void form for ~3 seconds at the tail end. Or something simpler would be to keep void form and insanity but make insanity fill up after 6 seconds and automatically trigger void form with something like life leech and/or adding stackable minor dot damage to skills.

Argh, its wow, I can't help the wall of text

Welp, as painful as it was, I did it! My draenai DK is 120.
It is only 65 levels compared to the 25 levels of my BE demon hunter which was my first 120.
My rogue that was boosted to 100 was the second 120 and my druid is almost 90. But I am counting 65 a greater feat since it was the last sloggy levels as compared to the first 90 on the druid.
Getting that druid to 120 will be masterful though...

And that vulpera rep grind is not getting any easier. I am about 17K away from fox fury frenzy alt mania (tm)

I'm just waiting patiently for the vulpera to come up as an emissary quest. we should really feel the bonus there. 150 each quest instead of 75 still feels like a long way to go for 21k points.

Yeah, for sure. It has been a while and it seems like the voldunai WQ's are spawning slowly or slower. That may be just because I am gobbling them up as fast as possible though.

I also just pre-ordered the expansion. I chose the base version because the added value of the other versions was largely moot. The 120 boost defeats my main reason for getting the expansion (to level alts as I see fit and get more high level horde alts). Plus, why would I pay $20 for that and then another $20 for a month of subscription that costs $15 at most?

Update: The new rep buff apparently doesn't apply to the Uldum Accord/Rajani reps. #@$^^!!

Enix wrote:

Update: The new rep buff apparently doesn't apply to the Uldum Accord/Rajani reps. #@$^^!!

Yeah. The buff is explicitly about unlocking allied races faster, and the Rajani and Uldum Accord reps are "current content" that don't have races locked behind them.

Read today that the rep requirement for allied races is gone when this xpac drops. Still need the storyline achievements though.

I'd really love to see void elves and highborne be demon hunters. They went a long way with allied races and pandarens becoming death knights...

fangblackbone wrote:

I'd really love to see void elves and highborne be demon hunters. They went a long way with allied races and pandarens becoming death knights...

All the Hearthstone commercials I've seen lately have a Murloc Demon Hunter in it.

I say open the class up to... oh... Pandaren, Goblins, and Dwarves. Just because that'd be hilarious.

I mean yeah, do the Nightborne and Void Elves too because that's easy. But also do the fat ones and the ugly short ones.

A fat demon hunter would be hilarious! Especially if you gave them itty bitty wings

fangblackbone wrote:

A fat demon hunter would be hilarious! Especially if you gave them itty bitty wings :)

one of my fav pictures from an old 3.5 monster book, different kinds of imps:

IMAGE(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/5/53/Imps_Fiend_Folio_3e.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20200306092603)

the one of the bottom def looks like a goblin demon hunter

Don't Dwarves have a "turn to stone for a bit" racial? Now I want Dwarf DH's to have the ability to activate that while gliding and plummet straight to the ground. Let 'em land with a cratering smash like Warriors do with Heroic Leap. No fall damage, obviously.