MoP-ing up after the Cataclysm: Updated WoW General Discussion 8/22/12

The Game Room
221

Erg. Maybe I should have learned my lesson about trying to play a mage solo at the beginning of an expansion - my draenei mage’s multitude of deaths at the beginning of Cata, caused by the super-fast-respawning mobs (i.e. the respawn rate was adjusted to compensate for the sheer number of players in the same area), left me so frustrated that I almost completely lost interest in the character.

Nevertheless, I decided to roll a pandaren mage (on Cairne, my Horde server - class chosen largely because I didn’t already have a mage there). She’s level 11 now, and completely stuck. Though I’m not certain if my problem is because of fast respawns this time; the mob mechanic I’m seeing almost appears to be deliberate. Basically, my mage is stuck standing next to Makael Bay because she simply cannot get past those Darkened Horror/Darkened Terror mobs.

Here’s what’s happening: I pick one of them as a target after determining that there are none of his friends nearby. As soon as my first spell hits him, he starts running toward me … and then two or three more of them, who were nowhere near the first mob when I attacked, also aggro on me. Sometimes a couple of them appear from behind me, where there were no mobs when I started the attack. It’s almost as if the original target is summoning the others. So I end up with 2-4 of them all over me, I can’t kill them fast enough, and if I use Frost Nova in my attempt to get away it inevitably also hits one or two nearby pangolin (yellow/neutral beasts) and now I’ve got them coming after me too.

I gave up after my fifth death and decided to just leave the character and come back to her in a couple weeks when things have calmed down, in the event that this is simply a fast-respawn problem.

222

Oh man. When Cata came out I still had no idea WTF I was doing at endgame, so the fast respawns kicked my ass on my 80. I was so horrible. But this time around I was properly endgame raid geared and knew what I was doing and it’s been totally different. I’m steamrolling everything in the Jade Forest and laugh in the face of the respawn rates.

I also tamed a porcupine! This pleases kitty.

223

Is the problem that there aren’t enough fellow players in your area? You leave the area at 11.

I’d happily roll a helpful toon to get you through this.

224

Awww…poor Ji.

So, has anyone else done the “follow the faction leader around while he tells you that the other side is your eternal enemy now” thing spamming /rude the whole time? God, I can’t really stand either one of them. I’m a universal peace hippy carebear. Now shut up, King/Chief Warmongers…

225

No. I do find it amusing that all I had to do was pummel the King while he didn’t fight back, but my horde monk had to take on three elites simultaneously while idiot leader sat it out.

226

For all of you who are Pokewowing, there’s a new add-on that will let you know on mouseover whether you have that particular pet or not. It’s called CombatPetCount.

227

Useful, thanks.

Finished up Jade Forest over the weekend and man what a zone, maybe the best ever? Yes it is large but the story is compelling, it has cinematics without over using them, new quest ideas (sniper!) and it looks amazing.

228

I’ve been away for a mere year and my alchemist is currently sitting pretty letting her blue bar grow, but a couple of years back the specialization requirement changed to “you choose it from your trainer”. If there haven’t been further changes, no you don’t need to be 600, no quest involved, but IIRC you need to be midway through skilling up (my brain is coming up with 225 skill, but don’t trust it - it’s been fried by too many hours in front of a computer). IOW and again assuming that change is the one I do remember, you’ll be able to choose your spec from your trainer eventually.
Tonight’s plans include leveling 90 with my DPS-main, then trotting out the microtank - who’s already almost at 600 BS skill, having kitted herself and her two plated siblings quite nicely (for someone who hasn’t set foot in Pandaria yet). Found a nice guild for The Three Mains (DPS, Healer and Tank). I’m liking the new “random enchantment stuff” from both BS and JC: at least with a stable the size of mine, leveling those two skills meant gifts for anybody but the DPS-main (who was busy sending ghost iron to the other two and leveling her own engineering).

229

I rolled another pandaren last night, a warrior this time. Just for fun I started repeatedly clicking on Jojo Ironbrow to see what funny things he had to say. And I noticed something. I’m probably wrong, but I would almost swear that Blizz got Jackie Chan to voice Jojo.

I’ve been on a Jackie Chan movie-watching binge lately, so I’ve become familiar with his voice, and many of Jojo’s speech inflections sound remarkably like Jackie.

230

As I lamented online yesterday in the BDL guild chat, I may have broken my Pandarian monk.

A couple of days ago I’d turned in a quest at Old Man Liang on his hilltop, but absolutely had to log out to do grownup stuff. So rather than clicking on him again to get the quest he was offering, I just hit “exit game”, and chose “exit immediately”.

Logged back in on the monk last night, and…no Old Man Liang. No other quests in my quest log either. Bother.

If I run down the hill he’s supposed to be sitting on, his exclamation point reappears when I reach the bottom. If I move far enough away from the hill, I can even see him sitting there. But if I run back up the hill, he and his exclamation point disappear shortly before I reach the top.

Tried logging out when he was ‘visible’, to see if that would reset anything, with no luck. Ditto with exiting the game completely when he was visible. Figuring that I tripped some sort of phasing bug, I submitted a ticket to Blizzard, but currently there’s a 3-day waiting period for help tickets.

A couple of folks suggested that I just reroll the character, since he was only level 6. I may do that this evening, if I get on and there’s still no questgiver or help waiting.

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The other option is to wait for someone else to come along and ask them to share the quest with you.

232

I complained earlier (and somewhat bitterly) about what can happen when that particular quest bugs out.

I’m not keen on “vehicle”-type quests, or especially the oddball point-of-view quests, simply because I distrust their reliability. Of all the quests that can fail, this class of quests with weird phasing/location/viewpoint mechanics are IMHO the worst.

And frankly, I’m annoyed I couldn’t do the sniping myself. That is what my character is best at. (MM Hunter with “Sniper” in the name, for crying out loud).

But the zone is lovely and a lot of fun. Now that the madding crowd has moved on, it’s actually fun, and my shaman mining alt has had a good time picking up Ghost Iron like crazy. (A blacksmith, a JC, and two engineers to support!)

Observations: until picking up all the greens from the initial quests (and also the engineering/repair vendor who sells 374 greens), my shaman was taking a beating. Fights were going too long. After gearing up, that problem went away. However, I’m still trying to get a feel for totem mechanics. I miss the ol’ fire-and-forget totem system. Now it’s just another offensive/defensive cd system.

My shadow priest never had it hard. With just the MoP mechanics changes, his DPS went up pretty much for free. And when he grouped with an affliction warlock… it was just unfair. It looks like there’s still some kind of synergy, although I can’t figure out where it was.

My hunter main never got challenged. At one point, had to switch pet from ferocity to tenacity (look, a tank cat!) but since this guy was low-end raid and endgame heroic 5 geared, stuff died plenty quick. Still haven’t replaced 100% of his original gear yet.

Good xpac so far. My lvl 26 baby brewmaster monk is fun, but I’m still learning the tankish mechanics. (Never really played a tank before, and this class’ tanking mechanics are kind of confusing to me. Mostly the wide assortment of mitigation, self-heal, and damage/threat CDs available. (Maybe that’s just tanking in general.) Plus managing both chi and energy. That part’s a lot like rogues, though. I just need practice.)

233

It’s not that bad once you get used to it, though I need practice too. The hardest part of Brew tanking, I find, is that we lack a really reliable way to get groups with multiple ranged enemies into a “pack”. I was in Dead Strat (does anybody call it that anymore? “Service Entrance Strat”) and half of the fights were me chain pulling half the room (intentionally) while running around in circles silencing mages and using my ONE “force this thing to move” ability while it was off cooldown. I think I might have given the healer an anyuerism with those pulls, but he was named Fukthejaps (hi! reported!) and ninja’d my +agi/+stam staff so screw him.

The main problem with Monk is that since we have to ramp up to our damage mitigation and negation (with chi), we take on damage pretty quickly at the beginning. Most guides recommend waiting until you have 3-stacks of Tiger Palm before popping guard (disclaimer: only applies after level 34 when you get your passive) to maximize its utility, but I’ve found you sometimes just HAVE to pop guard early.

Generally, though, there’s a stable rotation after 34 or so. Keg Smash/Drunken Haze (keep it up at all costs, since it generates threat) -> Keep Shuffle up (Blackout Kick) -> Keep Fire Breath Up -> Guard (if you can) Spinning Crane Kick like mad until Keg Smash is off cooldown.

For single target, nix the Fire Breath and just keep on Blackout Kick and use Jab instead of spinning crane kick. For both of the rotations use Tiger’s Palm as filler, and use guard as soon as it starts glowing on your bar.

Most guides say not to use Path of Blossoms (you won’t get that until 64-ish), but I’m thinking of maybe using it. It takes a good amount of energy, but you effectively get 3 free sources of damage while doing other moves. The energy tradeoff might not be worth it, but I could see it being useful for group pulls.

In general though, spend your chi the second you get 2 of it, spend energy the second you get enough (unless Keg Smash is aaaalmost off CD, on the order of 2 seconds or so. in which case you might as well wait), and use Tiger Palm when you can’t do either. You’ll eventually learn nuance and when to use cooldowns (Fortifying Brew etc), but overall it’s fairly simple.

234

I’m really enjoying mistweaving so far. Definitely made the right choice to change mains from priest to monk! Heroics are quite doable, as long as the tank gives me time to drink. They are definitely easier than cata heroics were at the beginning of that expansion. I think having challenge modes gave the dungeon designers room to scale heroics closer to entry-level. And I only have 5 blues, plus the epic brewfest trinket. Everything else I’m wearing is green. But I’m focusing on a very spirit-heavy set, and have forsaken a few blues because they didn’t have spirit as a baseline stat. No issues in the heroics I’ve done thus far, so it’s working.

I’m not more than a couple nights away from being raid-ready. Except I’m the only 90 in my guild. So I’m stuck pugging heroics all day and having my upgrades taken by dps casters and tanks rolling for their off-offspec. Sigh.

Also, I powerleveled my monk’s JC and BS in one day and am now broke, but it was worth it. The extra sockets + JC-only gems give me an extra 960 spirit! And my miner alt is picking up ghost iron ore by the dozen in Jade Forest, which my monk prospects and sells anything that isn’t needed for discovery/my own personal gem stash. Hopefully I’ll make that gold back soon. Also, the new ring and necklace patterns are pretty cool. They’re moderately cost-prohibitive, but really not terrible. Serpent’s Eyes are the hardest part, but those can be bought with harmonies or made from “sparkling shards” after prospecting any Pandarian ore.

235

Another great night as I started my farm, I am convinced this will make me good gold somehow, and I got asked to be a guild officer. Very happy indeed on both counts.

A good change to the JP gear made by Blizzard early:

[QUOTE=Bashoik]

We’ve just applied a hotfix that removes the faction requirements for Justice gear.

Shado-Pan and August Celestial factions will no longer require Golden Lotus faction to purchase this gear. This will allow players who have reached level 90 to have additional sources of item level (ilevel) 450 gear to progress into the Dungeon Finder Heroic dungeons more readily.

Players who are looking to purchase this gear should seek out the following vendors:

Townlong Steppes:
Shadow-Pan - Rushin the Fox in Shado-Pan Garrison
All - Lo Pin in Niuzao Temple
Vale of Eternal Blossoms:
August Celestials - Sage Lotusbloom or Sage Whiteheart in the Horde and Alliance Shrines
Golden Lotus - Jaluu the Generous in front of Mogu’shan Palace

Dread Wastes:
Klaxxi - Ambersmith Zikk in Klaxxivess
[/QUOTE]

236

Congratulations on the officer position!

I managed to start my farm a few nights ago and am up to the point of having 8 slots available. I’ve also spent several hours flying around the Heartland area looking for piles of dirt, since they contain items to increase one’s favor with the individual members of the Tillers. Currently, I’ve got Best Friend with Ella and the Tillers quartermaster (can’t remember her name), and I’m about 3-4k rep away from Best Friend with two others (including the prediction dude, so I get predictions on what to plant for free). I’m having a blast farming (and just wish I could do more of it)!

I’m also enjoying the dailies so far. While a couple of them have repeated for multiple days in a row (mostly the Tillers dailies), they seem to be varying a decent amount. I’m about a third of the way to revered with the Klaxxi, but sadly have a long long way to go for Order of the Flying Serpent, August Celestials, Shado-pan, and Golden Lotus. I like how the dailies present a tiny bit more of a challenge than past dailies: ie, you’ll get a quest to kill a mob with 1.2 million HP and that mob will usually have one or two “raid awareness” things to do in order to not end the fight grasping for health–on my Shaman, I’m frequently using his interrupt AND purge.

Is it just me, or did they make levelling your professions to 600 super easy this time? I haven’t even moved my Enchanter/Leatherworker out of Orgrimmar yet (he’s about 5th down the list of alts to get to 90) and he’s already hit 600 Enchanting from just the crafted materials from the alts I’m actively working on and BoEs I’ve been sending his way. Likewise, my Tailor has 16 points to go. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy I don’t have to spend a huge amount of mats to get to 600, but it just feels weird.

237

I ended up going back and formulating a cunning plan. Instead of trying to cut straight across the mob-infested area, I studied my map and then made a big loop North and then East around the area, then swam down the middle of the river to where I needed to be.

238

Thanks and yes levelling professions seem much easier, I bought way too much cloth to level tailoring to 600 as the last trainer recipes are yellow and I thought the RNG would not be kind.

As for cooking do you know you can get from 1 to 525 really easily now? Level cooking from one to Zen with Sungshin Ironpaw

239

Sadly, while 1 to 525 is easy, 525 to 600 is hella expensive unless you’ve maxed fishing (at least for Int classes) or burn through your Ironpaw tokens. I’m gonna have to accelerate my one toon’s levelling progress since he’s my highest fisherman (515, I think…). I’m also curious just how the DMF quest is gonna affect cooking skill now. 5 points in all schools you’ve studied? Your highest school only? One school but you get to pick?

240

I only started the cooking grind last night for the Way of the Pot, my only high level farmer is on another server too :frowning:

Good point regarding DMF, we will find out in 5 days I guess.