I took my orc rogue to Draenor last night and got him all set up. Frostfire Ridge looks pretty cool.
I have three Alliance toons with garrisons now — paladin, priest, and warrior — and I’ve run into a couple snags:
• I’m drawing a blank on where to purchase building plans. I know some plans come from drops or quest rewards, but in the beta ISTR a vendor selling plans for the basic buildings. Maybe the vendor was just a beta thing?
• My paladin very quickly got the quest to fly to Stormshield/Ashran. Neither my priest nor my warrior has been offered the quest. I’m not sure what I’m missing there.
Well, by the time I got home from work I’d gotten a reply from Blizzard on the anniversary thing and had both my achievement and my corgi. From listening to Trade Chat apparently I wasn’t the only one with the problem but they got it sorted out.
Picked up the expansion - literally. My spouse and I like all the physical objects that come with a physical collector’s edition. Also, we now have the entire game on four disks which will make reloading it in the future, should that be needed, a little less of a hassle.
Initially, after loading the expansion we still weren’t upgraded and stuck at level 90 in MoP. I tried to put in a ticket and got a message that the customer service servers were down for maintenance! Mucked around for a bit in Panderia, then changed realms… and suddenly we had the expansion up and running. Yay.
And then it was my bedtime… because I’m working today. So the spouse wound up exploring Draenor before I did. Then, when I woke up he starts asking me all these questions about what’s going on. Honey, YOU are ahead of ME this time! I don’t know - go explore! Then we had a good laugh over that.
Spent a little time this morning in Draenor and now have my garrison and a barracks for it. The rest will have to wait for later. Unfortunately, since I work retail and its Black Friday week I’m going to be at work more than at home for a bit.
Your blueprint vendor in Alliance garrisons is right beside your architect in your town hall. For Horde, I know there is one but I’m blanking on whether it’s at the same spot.
That’s what I thought. There is a vendor standing right there, but her goods are all of the “General Goods” variety. Simple Wood and all that (anybody noticed the “Complicated Wood” yet?)
Ah, I hadn’t thought of that. I’m remembering it as a garrison after the first garrison expansion (after you upgrade your town hall to lvl 2). That’s when the architect moves into the town hall and the blueprint vendor appears.
I’m having a terrible time passing the Proving Grounds quests for my sub rogue.
I was anxious to get my iLvl high enough for heroics, so I went and got some PVP gear by running battlegrounds. Do you guys think the PVP gear is keeping me from winning the Proving Grounds?
Made it to Nagrand tonight, and I chose the building that gives me access to to a siege vehicle/tank. Didn’t do much with it beyond terrorizing innocent wildlife for a couple of the outpost quests, but it’s a fun thing to have.
Aaand I found the problem. My garrison was only level 1 when I posted before. Now I’ve upgraded my town hall, and there’s that blueprint vendor. So I’ve built an Inn, an Alchemy Lab, and an Enchanter’s Study.
Sunday was the first day I’ve been able to just sit down and play WoD for an extended period. I finished the Shadowmoon storylines (though not the quests at that night elf base, yet) and one of the Bonus Objectives (Burial Grounds). Killed several rares, but all of the wrong ones, apparently, because none of them dropped anything useful to a ret pally.
I’m not sure how I feel about ending quest storylines with solo scenarios. While the concept is better, I think, than ending storylines in 5-man dungeons (at least from my perspective of having never gotten to see the ends of the stories in Outland until I went back and soloed all the 5-mans at level 85). After the Defense of Karabor scenario, where I found the two main bosses very difficult on my iLvl ~530 paladin, I’m concerned about getting through these scenarios with other classes that I don’t play as well, or are less mobile or more squishy. Both of those fights required a lot of movement to stay out of stuff, and given Blizzard’s philosophy that casters should fight like immobile “turrets”, I see little hope of getting my mage past them. She’s the most-poorly-geared of all my 90+ toons, and CC isn’t much help when that CC is immediately broken by her next attack. My spriest might fare better; she’s one of my best-geared toons, and she can at least DoT the mobs up while she runs around. And her CC, Void Tendrils, doesn’t break with damage. This is one of the few things where I disagree with Blizzard: It seems they want to balance all of the classes/specs around group play, and don’t consider how it affects solo play.
I mentioned I have an Alliance alt on a non-PvP server for stuff I don’t want PvP interfering with, like pet battles. Well, that toon was originally my son’s, and he’s come back into the game to try out the new xpac, so I’ve given him back the toon.
Generally, he survives the fights a way a mage is supposed to survive: kill things before they can kill you. But it’s harder now than it was in MoP. For example, losing the glyphed heal from Rune of Power. I guess maybe a fire or frost mage may be more mobile, but this toon is arcane, by choice. And it does amazing damage output if it can just stand still.
I watched him die four times on the Defense of Karabor. You get a 30-second rez wave, kind of like Timeless isle, at the temple at the top of the stairs, but that’s still a lot of dying. Your observations about squishy immobile toons being doomed in that fight are spot-on. If there’s a way a stand-still clothie is supposed to win that without zerging, I can’t imagine it. I’d criticize Blizz for poor quest design, but that would be redundant. They’ve gotten better in a lot of ways in this expansion, but they still have trouble balancing between “yawn-inducing easy” and “rage-quit difficult”.
And Shadowmoon Valley is lovely. The Horde start zone is austere and harsh, which I suppose some people find appealing. If you like Iceland for its scenery, you’ll LOVE Frostfire Ridge. :dubious:
Yes, once you get your town hall both of them are in it for Horde, too.
I like winter in real life (up to a point) and find the austere and harsh environment of Frostfire right in keeping with being part of the Horde and all the other adventuring my toons do.
(I will at some point take my Alliance 90 alt in to Draenor and find out about this Shadowmoon place, but not right now).
However, the arctic/tundra qualify of Frostfire does make starting a lumbermill a real bitch. I had to go to Gorgrond to get my initial timber because there just don’t seem to be any suitable trees in Frostfire.
Anyone completed the MC raid for the mount yet? I’ve tried a few times, but the LFR groups aren’t geared yet and still full of noobiots who have no clue what a real raid was like. I have yet to see and LFR kill Mag, let alone make it to Rag.
Hopefully people will get clued in fast; we’ve only got another 6 weeks to get that mount!
I’m guessing people geared for LFR by running heroics 5s, and geared up for that by finishing quests to the end zones?
What are the “end zones” for a 100? I haven’t played enough to get all the way through Nagrand, for instance. Last I looked, I can’t even queue for heroics.
The only good piece of gear I have is my engineered rifle (iLvl 630). Can’t even afford a scope for it yet. Maybe it pulled me up so I can queue heroics? I haven’t checked since I made the gun.
Predominately, at end game, you have a couple of major areas. The first are the daily apexis crystal quest zones (Shattrath city in Tela…Telna…hell with it, I can’t remember the name…the area formerly known as Terrokar, and Skettis in Spires of Arak to name the two areas I’ve been sent to so far), then you have a Timeless Isle type area in Nagrand with a bunch of level 100+ mobs, including the only rares in game to actually be all that challenging (the leveling ones aren’t), to grind in group, and finally you have the world PVP area in Ashran.
To queue for heroics, you need an ilevel of 610 (615 for the Molten Core LFR), and you have to achieve at least silver in the proving grounds for your role. Don’t forget to run a regular Skyreach dungeon while on the starting legendary quest for Khadgar, as that nets you an ilevel 640 ring.
Gear shouldn’t matter since the mob health in the PG scale with your item level. I think there is some minimum level they won’t go below, so it might be an issue if your gear is really awful.
It’s really hard to give you any advice with so little information, I did it the moment I dinged 100 as Assassination and the only difficulty I had was staying awake while waiting for the next wave to spawn.
So, what exactly goes wrong?
And what rotation are you using?
Are you multi-rupturing? Putting a 5 cp rupture on one target then switching to another and so on?
For gearing purposes? There are craftables obviously, but for the gear needed to get into heroics you can start by clearing Nagrand, preferably with a Dwarven Bunker/Warmill, if you’re lucky with upgraded quest rewards you can get a few 620ish items there. After that you can run the few normal level 100 dungeons there is, which drop 615 loot.
In addition to the two areas mentioned, there’s also Socrethar’s Rise and Darktide Roost in Shadowmoon Valley, the Pit area in Gorgrond, and an Ogre area (can’t remember the name) in Northern Nagrand. I haven’t even touched Frostfire Ridge yet, so I have no clue if it also has a couple of areas with level 100 mobs.
My mage is 99.76 at the moment. The scenarios are challenging (for me) but doable as frost, with Mirror Image as a pocket tank, sorta. The gear will come…think I started replacing my LFR gear from MoP with quest rewards around lvl94ish. I gave up trying to quest as arcane. Not enough survivability.
If you have the Lunarfall Inn for your garrison, you get daily quests for level appropriate dungeons that reward a decent piece of gear. Loot drops were vendor fodder in the first dungeon, but the second one begins to drop upgrades, and the third one drops ilvl600 gear. LFG dungeons use personal loot now, and you’re guaranteed to get an item of the final boss.
For you two-handed sword swinging types, I found an epic blade just sticking in the ground in one of the birdman areas. Soulbound on pickup, so vendor fodder for me, but looked nice for those that use such things. It was near a rare, in an area that was burning…sorry, don;t remember more specifics.
Thought I’d found anouther one in Nagrand today, but when I clicked it an undead blademaster mob took it personally and attacked me. Killed him, but don’t think I got to keep the blade.
There are some lvl 100 elite mobs patrolling around the lvl 90 questing areas there (ask me how I know). And a HandyNotes addon plugin shows me that there are a bunch of lvl 100+ rares in northern Frostfire.
Yup, Fire has the same problem. I don’t know what Blizz is thnking. It’s as if, since Cataclysm, they’re trying to force every mage into Frost spec (“You can be Jaina!”). And I’m not playing that game. I picked Fire because I wanted to blow the everloving f*ck out of things (one reason I’m enjoying my destro warlock). And I could do that back in WotLK, when I rolled my mage. Sure, I was running a lot of Wrath heroics with groups, but I could solo effectively as well. I’d stand toe-to-toe with mobs and blow the hell out of them.
And I finally started to feel like I was doing that again toward the end of MoP. Then 6.0 dropped, and in one of the patches they gave Fire an across-the-board 20% damage-reduction nerf. Dammit, that may be fine in a dungeon, but it absolutely sucks in solo play. I can’t “kite” mobs when I have to plant myself in one spot while casting, CC is useless when it breaks with my very next attack and I have to wait 60 seconds before I can CC again, and running around in circles just makes things worse because I end up aggroing every other mob in the vicinity.
Actually, I’m kind of pissed. I swapped the Inn for a Lumbermill (on the advice of something I read on either WoW Insider or the offificial forums), and then got to Gorgrond and discovered I could have built a lumber mill there.
On another note, I’ve submitted a help ticket on my draenei warrior. Via some glitch, Lt. Thorn never offered him the quest to fly to Stormshield. All of my other Alliance characters were offered that quest immediately after rescuing Qiana Moonshadow and sending her on her first follower mission. My warrior … not. So he’s kind of just hanging around his garrison right now.