Opinions after a month

[Warlock]

What does everything think of the expansion now that you've had a little time to experience it?

I've been playing my Tauren Druid Kayvee and am about to complete my last instance quest. I'm a little torn between moving on to the heroics or going back to one of my other characters. Overall, I'm very happy with the expansion so far but am a little uneasy about what is to come.

Things I've liked:
- Broad acceptance of the value my character brings to a group (not just "we have a resser so you can come heal")
- Lots of new instances which are generally well done
- Decent quest variety
- Absence of excessive travel quests
- Meeting many new players (vastly reduced guild cliques while levelling)
- Lack of PVP gear gap.

Things that I think could need work:
- Tradeskills - just not enough reason to take these or spend the effort farming mats to make items that no-one wants just to get the skill up. Could use more recipes with random stats in particular.
- Druid itemisation. Several quest reward greens need their item budget checked since they're far to strong for the difficulty of obtaining them. On the other hand, having set items we'd actually want would be a plus.
- Druid class power (presumes the current poor itemisation isn't intended as the balancing factor). I feel Bear threat and survivability are fine, Bear and Cat damage are a bit high. Healing is fine, but Tree of Life needs a non-combat res (with 41 points in the tree they shouldn't need to bring another healing class just for the res). No experience with Moonkin.

Things that aren't a problem now but that I think will be in future:
- Less opportunity to meet new people as raid schedules return.
- Return of the gear gap. Current itemisation includes a 25 level gap (Heroic 95 to Tier 5 120). Black Temple with Tier 6 will be the next major release.
- Gold inflation. I have 10k gold already and haven't even been really trying for it.

[MongoJerry]

Healing is fine, but Tree of Life needs a non-combat res (with 41 points in the tree they shouldn't need to bring another healing class just for the res).

New 41-point druid talent: Replaces your druid with a priest!


(This joke is based off this humorous proposed priest talent tree revision: http://talents.unleashedgaming.net/?p=vt&i=3434 A 41-point shadow talent is called "Improved Shadow Form" whose description is "Your character is replaced with a warlock.")

[Malakar]

I enjoyed questing in all the zones. There was a good variance of atmosphere.


I don't think gold inflation is really all that much. The vendor trash drops from mobs are only worth about 2x as much as level 60. I think most of the gold influx is due to quests, which are limited. Farming for my epic flying mount was much more time consuming than getting my epic land mount at 60. Of course that's partially due to the fact that I made 50g per hour on devilsaurs.


Something really needs to be done about warlock pets now with flying mounts. Especially with an epic flying mount, since they are still capped at 200% run speed, which makes them disappear anytime you travel even if you fly near the ground.

While the proximity refresh rate (the pulses for new objects around you) was bad enough with epic land mounts, it's really horrible with an epic flying mount. It's about time this got increased a good bit.

Flying mounts can introduce some annoying griefing ability for world bosses such as Kazzak.


Karazhan is beautiful, huge, and designed pretty well. The upgrades are pretty minute though, and the amount of trash pulls is high.

Gruul on the other hand, needs some tweaking. We killed him last week; after you learn to spread out, the fight basically boils down to popping max consumables and beating your head against a wall until you get decent luck.


A good game, and a good expansion. I think back to D2 LoD and cringe.

[Arethor]

Flying mounts can introduce some annoying griefing ability for world bosses such as Kazzak.
Karazhan is beautiful, huge, and designed pretty well. The upgrades are pretty minute though, and the amount of trash pulls is high.

Gruul on the other hand, needs some tweaking. We killed him last week; after you learn to spread out, the fight basically boils down to popping max consumables and beating your head against a wall until you get decent luck.

I can defintely relate to all the above. Our last Kazzak kill the only 3 deaths were 3 random horde that decided they wanted to sit on their flying mount above our raid. Granted we still took him down, but having him heal due to griefing is always going to be an annoyance.

I really like Karazhan... except... there's only really 2 pieces of gear in the entire instance that I have any interest in. Most of the loot is sidegrades to crafted gear and level 70 blues from instances or heroics. The trash can also be quite annoyingly long. Learning Shade of Aran could make anyway cry as you only get 30 min. of attempts before you have to clear about an hours worth of trash all over again. (Run backs are around 5 min. or so and wipe recovery isn't possible, so you basically get 3 or 4 solid attempts)
The bosses however are quite fun. There's a bit of variety even to make boss fights less boring. Moroes reminds me of the BRD arena fight for the Tier 0.5 quest. You get a group of bosses selected from a pool that changes week to week. You get one of 3 possible events in the opera house. Other fun fights include Nethersprite and the Chess event (although it's near impossible to lose the chess event.)

Gruul..... well... I don't know what to say other than right now it's quite ridiculous. Things can be going extremely well and then a random toss on Ground Slam can completely ruin the run and cause a wipe. Our best so far is 22% so hopefully this week he's going down. It's bad enough that you have to use every consumable imaginable (the original reason for my Raiding Consumables post research) but to have to waste those pots on multiple runs because of luck just seems a bit unrefined. Granted there are ways to minimize a chance for something bad to happen, but there's still always that chance there.

In terms of leveling, I think it's quite easy and fun. A nice breath of fresh air. I've leveled my warlock to 70, my warrior to 67 and my pally to 64. The best part is because there are so many new quests you can actually end up hitting 70 without completing a large portion of them, allowing you to make money for your mount and give you other things to do instead of just constant instance grinding once you hit 70. It also allows you to do quests on alts that you may not have even done on your main character.