1681

I’ve hit 88 on my hunter and am not really enjoying MoP at all, don’t like the setting at all.

I have got my frostsabre mount, dark phoenix and brown dragon (heroic strat solo) and hit exalted with my new guild but Pandaria seems a real let down.

Am enjoying the pet battles.

Pandaria all seems slick and easy but seems to lack something, it’s a bit like a-b-c-d while I hold your hand but even easier than ever. Haven’t died, never come close to dying or worrying about dying. As a casual player it seems a bit sedate and easy even for me.

Beast Master with a spirit pet seems simplicity it’s self. Probably not going to last much past the first month or 2. Path of Exile has me hooked and it’s free.

1682

I’ve been doing the Dominance Offensive dailies recently and have found it is entirely possible to die repeatedly.

The main philosophy behind Pandaria is that, with Cataclysm, WoW didn’t demand that you played very much to keep up and get things done. as a result, people didn’t play as much and a lot of people left. They are actively trying now to provide more stuff to encourage/require more play time.

1683

Highlights for 5.2:

upgrades to items using valor going away
elder charms only being used for rolls on 5.0x items
new tier of mogu charms to roll on new 5.2 raid content
increased chance of the fish needed to rep up for nat pagle
new raid gear is ilevel 500something

1684

LFR weapons will be ilvl504 and won’t be upgradable. They won’t be better than a Normal Sha weapon 2/2, but likely will be better than the LFR Sha-touched 2/2, even with the +500 gem in place.

1685

And I think I’m finally out. a year of six nights a week raiding, pre-mists, and too many dailies weighing on me has finally broken my addiction to the game. I don’t dislike WoW, but I think it’s time to see other games. :)

1686

Sounds like 5.2 is hitting in a week or two. I’m feeling pretty meh about WoW right now. traffic on my server has really fallen off in the past month or so.

1687

Agreed that things feel pretty stale right now. On the other hand, there are a lot of other games in the backlog . . .

1688

I’ve greatly enjoyed Mists so far, but I’m out of my every day play time too. I’m just waiting for 5.2 to hit and I’ll jump back in and see the new content.

1689

Just hit Exalted w/ Tillers and (a day later) got all the votes to let Yoon join, so yay!

I’m pretty sure that I got the mail from Yoon about being Tillers when I hit Exalted, before I finished the final quest. I wonder if the original setup was meant to have those two reversed, and the added-later Rep Booster Token lets you hit Exalted before finishing.

Next, making friends and training my Cloud Serpent.

1690

Don’t forget to buy your plow.

1691

That’s the thing that opens up after the mossy stone is removed, right? I was still in the timer for Haohan to do that when I logged, so I’ll grab it tonight.

1692

Ya, that’s it. You buy it off of Tina or Gina (the repair person) in the market. she’s the one who sells the sprinklers and pest repellers. The plow will greatly reduce your time on the farm.

Tina and Gina remind me of Bella and Bursella from George of the Jungle. I keep thinking they should stay in step.

On a totally unrelated note, my lock has had a lot of trouble with low DPS in this XPAC. Having read some forums I knew it was me and not the class, so watched a couple vids. Last night I was in the raid finder fighting the dragon with the sunbeam, and my DPS was looking good. My Recount showed me a #7, then #5, then #3…

And then a constant knocking at my back door. My wife had forgotten her keys, and was standing in 30-degree weather with 30 mph winds eating at her.

I still briefly hesitated before I went. But only briefly.

1693

For you inveterate farmers, may I present Farmhand a wonderful UI addon - when you are on your farm, it adds buttons to the screen for each of your tools, as well as any seeds you have in inventory (also present when at the seed merchant). It can also automatically ditch your tools when you leave, if you like.

It doesn’t seem like much but its so amazingly handy I miss it when I’m on a computer that doesn’t have it.

I think UI customization remains WoW’s greatest strength. Probably also a curse, considering how much you can automate.

1694

Would you mind either sending me or posting links to the videos that you looked at? I’m not raiding yet (only 89), but all that I’ve really found so far is a fairly decent overview for (affliction) warlocks at Icy Veins. If there’s some detailed stuff out there, I’d like to look it over before I start running heroics and LFR.

1695

I just typed in “Affliction warlock guide” on YouTube and got pages of examples. One I liked best, though, was by a guy named “Evrelia.” His accent is British and a tad muffled, but he was practical and understandable. I’d search on him, as a recommendation.

For an addon, Affdot is the new cool kid on the block. It easily shows you when your dots go below half so you know when you can usefully refresh them. I was losing a lot of DPS because I would keep my Maelific Grasp going until haunt and unstable affliction burned off. Now I refresh them before they expire, for instance.

1696

I’d like this as well. I’ve done a ton of LFR as an Affliction Lock but I’m not happy with my DPS – I must be missing something huge.

1697

Honestly, I’ve found that while technically “low”, destruction is both easy to play and has huge burst potential. Going into heroic and even LFR boss fights with 4 embers == I top the meters, pretty much.

1698

Background: I am a way former hardcore raider, quit the game after tbc, friend convinced me to start up so i did scroll of restoration on a new warlock and recently got it to 90.

Destruction is indeed truly horrible. Once you reach 90 and get even a few blues as affliction or demonology, you will be competitive with a destruction warlock in near full LFR purples most of the time, something is kind of sad.

I routinely do significantly more damage than destruction warlocks with WAY WAY WAY better gear as affliction and did the same with demonology before.

Icy Veins is very good.

I leveled as demonology and recently went affliction after being 90 a while. Affliction does indeed do higher sustained dps, as every experienced warlock in existence says. Demonology is still viable in a raiding environment though. It does less damage, but not THAT much less and it is better for aoe (in my opinion).

Sadly some of the boss fights seem like they would be anti pet. I’m not sure how a pet would react to that one that drops the floor out. I suppose you would have to micro your pet. There are also a bunch of situations where people jump down places to take shortcuts. As affliction you have no pet, so that is fine, but as demonology i’d have to unsummon my pet (so he doesn’t agro the entire instance) and then resummon him which was a real pain.

Affliction is pretty horrible at soloing until you get some gear though. Compared to Demonology at least.

What exactly were you looking for that icy veins didn’t give you?

Noxxic is also very good.

I’d suggest getting the Pawn addon, inputting stat values from your favorite site and letting it tell you what is best for you as far as equipment goes. Although my friend always tells me to push the need button any time it is available and then decide later.

If you do go affliction, i found affDots invaluable. It will quickly tell you whether it is worth recasting your dots which can be a little more complicated than you think due to buffs and the stacking of time due to that level 90 perk i cannot think of the name for.

ForteXorcist is also pretty nice as an overall warlock helper.

1699

I must say after reaching 90, it solidified my opinion that i don’t like this expansion.

Lore aside, i don’t like how instances feel worthless. In TBC i felt like i had a reason to do that for both leveling and for after i hit max level. In panda i did the quests in instances but after that it didn’t feel worth it. At max level, i haven’t really felt any desire to do them more than a minor amount. I got enough gear to get in to the bottom raids and never really looked back.

Panda is all about doing hundreds of dailies which is NOT as fun as doing an instance to me. Doing dailies and rep grinding. Speaking of which i guess i should get to that grind now.

Part of this is how quickly you outgrow the tokens from heroics.

1700

Destruction /really/ isn’t that bad. It’s far, far easier to play than affliction, so real-world DPS is far less off than you might think. It’s also a lot stronger in 2-target and many-target situations - except for Patchwerk style fights…and again, in shorter fights (heroic and LFG), you can burst to silly damage levels (“pull stuff off the tank” level in heroics, frequently!)

(Demonology is like 1200DPS ahead of destro in Simc, and it has lower secondary stat scaling factors - I’d be shocked if it didn’t fall behind in T15!)

There’s also the minor fact that Destro has some stupidly good self-healing capacities. Which kinda tends to matter in LFG. (It’s also why it’s worth losing a few hundred DPS to sacc your pet, lose the need to micro that and get another defensive CD from saccing a VW)