Random Question Thread

[Boyiee]

Fresh 80 warlock: Destro? 3/13/55

[Thuronn]

dungeon finder. leave those areas open so you can quest there while everyone mobs cata new zones. :D Grizzly/ZD are both pretty quick and easy questing zones. Unsure about the other 3.

You can have your 20k quests, I want those juicy 40k+ quests. NOMNOMNOM

[fantasticdan]

And leveling in wotlk areas during cata is a terrible idea. Doing that didnt work for vanilla zones when tbc came out, and it didn't work in tbc zones when woltk came out. It's always best to hit max old world level (60, 70, 80) before going to new areas, and then transferring straight to the new areas.

In what possible way is leveling 58-60 in vanilla, or 68-70 in bc zones better than just jumping to the next expansion at 58/68?

[Correction]

Having your level 70 talents/skills (as well as a cold-weather tome) all trained up before hitting northrend is useful. Not as important in outland now that you have those portals and have the shat FP off the bat.

[fantasticdan]

Cold weather tome is 68, not that it matters since you could just have it in your inventory anyway. It's a lot faster leveling in northrend (or tbc at 58 ); the quests are shorter, give a lot more exp, the progression/hubs are better designed, and it's not like you're going to run out of them. I just don't see the point of not making the jump asap. It's not like borean/howling fjord mobs are really harder than SMV or whatever mobs, with 15 minutes of northrend gear they're probably easier.

[Boyiee]

There is a jump in difficulty of the mobs, hp/ap etc. It's almost always killing green mobs in zones a level or more below you. Depending on the class, it can vary even more difficulty wise. A pet class like warlock where you dot everything you can, lower zones trumps jumping to outland/northrend by a large margin. Not to mention, it leads to better leveling later on. Green mobs, soloing all the elite quests, and dinging 80 all Dragonblight? Fjord>BT>Dragonblight done.

I've done both and have 7 80's now, I agree with it as well as pretty much every leveling guide out there.

[Correction]

Hey you asked for one way in which hitting northrend at 70 instead of 68 is better, not ten. Not skipping out on level 70 abilities/not having to run all the way back to Stormwind or Org is one such way. Didn't ask for a lecture on the benefits of jumping over early.

And unless they change it before retail, Cata's level 80 zones are actually going to be minimum level 80, what with how hard the mobs hit and how much HP they have. Good luck downing those at 78 in greens/blues. Overall the argument is a wash if you're already being fed by a level 80's heirlooms/money/craftables, choose the style you prefer. Most of my toons hit 60 before they even touched plaguelands, 70 in Terokkar and 80 in Grizzly, without jumping to expansion zones at 58/68

[Boyiee]

Yeah I haven't touched plaguelands or even nagrand in so long. Only doing dungeons when rested and/or there are quests inside them. Works out great. Nothing is better to me than avoiding Zul Drak, I hate that zone. And most characters ding 80 in GH or before it, getting those last 2 levels in outland is HUGE.

[Wintermute]

So I recently re-installed and now whenever I move my mouse my framerate drops to about 10fps.

All the "fixes" I can find is basically disabling the Hardware Mouse option wither in-game or by manually editing the WTF.config which doesn't help at all. Anyone come across this before?

EDIT: Disregard. Turns out it was some old video driver files that had been lurking about. That's what I get for not doing a proper uninstall before I upgrade them.

[Wintermute]

Before I jump back into dungeons and such, is Arcane still a good choice for Mages for Heroics and such?

DPS rotation still stack AB to 4 > AM?

[Boyiee]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/689924-Mage-PvE-FAQ

[Wintermute]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/689924-Mage-PvE-FAQ

Very nice. Should cover any other stupid questions I'd likely have made too, thanks.

[Boyiee]

Thats why I gave you the link in all honesty, but I wouldn't have worded it as stupid questions lol.

I don't know the rotation, but that's up-to-date enough to have the right one as well as almost everything else you need. There is only a few outdated pieces of information on there as well, like BiS list I'm sure, but the rest should be really solid.

[fantasticdan]

There is a jump in difficulty of the mobs, hp/ap etc. It's almost always killing green mobs in zones a level or more below you. Depending on the class, it can vary even more difficulty wise. A pet class like warlock where you dot everything you can, lower zones trumps jumping to outland/northrend by a large margin. Not to mention, it leads to better leveling later on. Green mobs, soloing all the elite quests, and dinging 80 all Dragonblight? Fjord>BT>Dragonblight done.

I've done both and have 7 80's now, I agree with it as well as pretty much every leveling guide out there.

Wut? If you can kill same level mobs in 2 instant dot casts, what is the point of going lower? I guess significantly lower exp per cast/kill/quest is some kind of advantage. You don't need to be in underlevel zones to solo group quests (as lock/dk/hunter/pally/etc) as you go either, unless maybe you're pressing your keys with drool, which probably isn't a far cry from the truth.

Not skipping out on level 70 abilities/not having to run all the way back to Stormwind or Org is one such way. Didn't ask for a lecture on the benefits of jumping over early.

If you're going to back to the trainer at 70 either way, what does it matter where you hearth from?

[Correction]

If you're going to back to the trainer at 70 either way, what does it matter where you hearth from?

Maybe I wasn't clear enough. The run from Shattrath -> trainer when you ding 70 in Outland is trivial with a hearth in Shattrath, because what comes next is you dump your bags and wait for a boat to Northrend to continue straight away. The run -> wait for a boat -> fly back to wherever you were questing in Northrend is not, regardless of if your hearth is in SW/Org or your favorite Northrend Inn when you ding 70 in Northrend. If you were hearthed in Dalaran at 68, congratulations you're under the 'being fed by an existing 80' group where I'm sure I said it didn't matter whether you jumped to an expansion zone early or not.

It's not gamebreaking, but it's enough of an advantage that it's how I choose to level my alts. I've just found it more efficient for them to minimize the time spent travelling for important class ability thresholds like level 60 and 70.

[Boyiee]

Wut? If you can kill same level mobs in 2 instant dot casts, what is the point of going lower?

You can't, number one. Over 400 spell power at 60, which is a hefty amount, and mobs took more than this. This was with me being 60 as well in hellfire, you are really underestimating the jump in hp/difficulty of expansion areas.

I guess significantly lower exp per cast/kill/quest is some kind of advantage.

Significantly lower? Hardly. And grinding on green mobs is amazing xp/hour. Look you can beat a dead horse all day, but it remains to be seen from you hard evidence other than rambling and opinion on what you think is faster. Sure, my information isn't "hard evidence" either except for referring to leveling guides and people that can get 80 in 3-4days /played... my warlock was 5 days btw... How many 80's do you have? I'm at 7 and have tried both ways, and this one has been leaps and bounds faster to me, and even if it wasn't that much faster, the privilege of being 80 in dragonblight after having only touched 3 zones is incredible. Like I said, guess all the major leveling guides are wrong.

You can get more quests in per hour, more mob kills in per hour, and it all turns out to be more xp per hour.

edit: here, this is from jame's blog

Spoiler: show

I get that question a lot, everyday. So I will answer it here once and for all.

The answer is a clear no, going to Northrend at level 68 is a not a good idea, you are not doing yourself a favor. There are many reasons why it is so:

Level requirements on quests in Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord. There are many quests with level 69+, 70+ and even 71+ already in Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord. If you go there at 68, many of them won't be up for you and you'll have to go back to those zones later, which is a waste of time. That means more running around to the same spots where you could have done everything in one run.

Fighting mobs higher than you is not efficient. You'll have to fight level 71 mobs at level 68. Sure that's not a big deal, but fighting orange mobs isn't very efficient. They die slower and do more damage to you.

Level requirements on quests in Dragonblight and further zones. There are already level 72+ and even a level 74+ requirement quest in Dragonblight. If you start Northrend at level 68, there's no way you'll hit 74 in Dragonblight, even if you complete both BT and HF. (unless you play with rested xp all the time and do instances I guess)

You'll miss about 2K gold worth of quest. If you skip half of Outland and go straight to Northrend, here is what will happen once you hit level 80: all those Outland quests you skipped will be grey to you. That means no extra level cap gold if you go back to do them. Because if you're an achiever, you WILL go back to do them, for the reputation, the gold, the lore and the zone achievements, right? So why not do them while they are still giving you their full XP reward? If you do them before 70, while they are still yellow or green to you, you'll get the full exp reward from those quests, and you will ding 80 in Northrend much earlier, with several northrend zones left to do. And that means tons of gold from questing at level 80. (And I will release guides for each zone in Northrend). If you do it my way, you'll probably end up 2k or 3k gold richer once you're done with all the quests.

Difficult group quests. There are some difficult group quests in Northrend, being two level ahead will make it much easier (you'll be able to solo or duo some of them, which you could never dream of accomplishing if you'd go there 2 levels lower). For example in Dragonblight, there are about 8 group quests which really are difficult. You can't solo them, and duo'ing them is also very difficult depending on your class mix. If you go there with 2 level 74/75, you'll probably pull it off. If you go there with 2 level 71/72, you'll probably fail and have to look for more.

Gear upgrades don't make enough of a difference. The gear upgrades from Northrend quests are nice, but honestly, there isn't much of a gap between green quest rewards you get from Nagrand, Netherstorm and BEM and what you get in BT/HF. It's not enough of a difference to make it worthwhile going there so early and sacrificing all the above, really. I speak from experience, I have tried both methods.

I went there at 68. I've tried going there with my level 68 Rogue in quest greens (horde side), and then I went there with my other rogue, level 70, in quest greens (alliance side). The difference was really noticeable. It was much easier and efficient with the level 70, not to mention it allowed me to include every quests in circuits, without having to go back and worry about level requirements.

Overcrowding. Have I mentioned that Northrend is also quite overcrowded at the moment, which slows you down when questing? Try finishing Outland before Northrend, you'll love it. The outland zones are almost empty, you'll have no competition on the quest objectives and you'll have a great time.

And finally, there's something I need to clarify, because I get this from dozens of players a week.

There is a HUGE and WIDELY spread misconception among players:

They think that being higher level than the zone's average quest level is bad. They also think that doing green quests or killing green mobs is bad.

This couldn't be further from the truth. It's exactly the opposite! Green mobs die much faster, do much less damage to you and give about 90% as much XP as a yellow mob.

This is even more true for quests! Green quests give 100% as much XP as yellow quests, but are much easier to complete.

Do yourself a favor and listen to my advice: Do NOT skip zones unless you are so far above that the quests are grey to you. As long as it's green, it's great! Don't skip content!

Listen to me and you will level faster and easier. And once you hit level 80, you will be richer, have more reputation and achievements.

All it takes is a little self-discipline, resist the urge to go to Northrend asap, and in the end you'll reap the rewards.

[The Stig]

Agreed 100% of the above.

My 2 RL friends who been playing the game with several 80s actually raged at me for not going to HP at 58, and North at 68. I eventually gave in to their rage at 63 and headed to HP, and reached 71 in Outlands before again giving in to their rage again at 71.

I insisted that the quests were very easy and required little to no effort, I mean, I can even pleasure myself while questing on a seperate screen, literally. But they won't listen.

When I started DK, Summerfest was also on. So combined with the daily/summerfest quests, and resuming in the Plaguelands from the quests I did not do on my Paladin at 55 (I converted straight to DK at 55 and left my Paladin there), I managed to hit 63. However during all this I was subjected to their constant nagging for me to go to Outlands/Northend.

I know and am aware I can do them earlier, but the thing was I didn't want to come home to pay full attention at keeping myself alive when fighting mobs. So with being a few levels higher, this allowed me to do more riskier things like handle links, and also reduce downtime overall as I mindlessly go around questing while watching TV/chatting on phone/youtube/browsing.



RANDOM QUESTION -- needs answer within 12 hours!

I need to find a good spot to take a photo of me sitting on my red proto drake (on second thought the drake is kinda ugly but it's large!) probably with my pet out, and the camera facing me and with nice scenary in the background, to impress someone who's perception of what I am playing is "mario".

Where to go ? :D

All I can think of is Sholala Bazin (sorry can't spell) but if there's a spot in Outlands too I'll gladly take it. I refuse Grizzly Hills, I hate that place. Dragonblight, H.Ford and Borean Tunder are also ugly, kinda, but if someone can tell me roughly where to stand I'll go try it out too

[Meph]

I need to find a good spot to take a photo of me sitting on my red proto drake (on second thought the drake is kinda ugly but it's large!) probably with my pet out, and the camera facing me and with nice scenary in the background, to impress someone who's perception of what I am playing is "mario".

pet goes away when you jump on mount. location, I would say somewhere close to ICC. preferably flying infront of Corprethar (those blue flames with the giant skels infront are pretty wicked)

[The Stig]

ICC does look nice there, I know where you mean.

However I want to apologise quickly, I forgot to mention this is for someone of the other gender (a girl) haha :D -- something more friendly and lushy looking would be preferred!

Which was why I thought Sholsar Basin initially. The question was brought up to me today at work and I've not been there for a while now, so wanted to plan in advance.

[Norellicus]

You could probably get some good scenic landscape from Crystalsong Forest tbh