The Queue: Progression
by Alex Ziebart 
Mar 18th 2009 at 3:00PM
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.I would have had this written and posted earlier in the day, but I was too busy refreshing the official World of Warcraft site and praying for more news regarding the WoW Mountain Dew. I guess when they say they'll have more information in the 'coming months' they don't mean 'tomorrow afternoon.' Disappointing, really.
Taylor asked...
"I am just getting back into WoW now that I have a bit of free time. I am trying to get to 80 on a relatively new character of mine. I am around 50 right now and I am wondering how end game will work when I eventually get there? There are heroics and raids and all these things I hear about, but I just don't understand the progression yet. Mainly, I am worried that once Ulduar launches, I will be woefully behind without gear from Naxx. I know the whole "gear doesn't matter" argument, but I can't be in quest blues/greens and keeping up in a raid."
Alright, once you hit 80, your only progression concern right off the bat is normal dungeons and Heroic dungeons. Be your own judge of your gear, and decide when you're ready to hit Heroics. You don't need to be incredibly well geared for them anymore, but you don't want to be in all greens, either. I have quite a bit of gold in my pockets, so upon hitting 80 I just went to the Auction House and people with various tradeskills and commissioned some gear from them. My Protection Paladin was successfully tanking Heroics purely in BOEs about two days after hitting level 80 thanks to Tempered Saronite and Titansteel. If you're DPS, you even have more leeway than that. Just judge for yourself.
Once you've geared yourself up from Heroics, you can start raids. You have two options here. If you like keeping things small, you can do the raids on 10-man. If you like bigger raids, you can do them on 25. There are two versions of each raid zone, and you decide which you want to do. Heck, if you like raiding a whole lot, you can do them on 10 and 25, their lockouts are on a different timer.
There are also 'hard modes' of certain encounters. All that means is you do the fight in a different way, and it yields better rewards. For example, Sartharion is a Black Dragon boss underneath Wyrmrest Keep. If you kill all of the mini-bosses scattered throughout his zone, you can then fight him all by his lonesome and it's a very easy fight. If you do not kill the mini-bosses, they'll join him when you fight him and it's a much more difficult encounter. That's the hard mode. If you beat him on that hard mode, you get better loot.
As for Ulduar, no, you don't want to go in there in greens. You'll want Heroics and Naxxramas gear. I definitely believe people will still be running Naxxramas once Ulduar hits. There won't be as many groups as there are right now, but there will still be groups. If you have difficulty finding one... make one! Bug your friends, hit the realm forums to recruit, or whatever you need to do. WoW is a game where taking the initiative really pays off. Once you've done Naxxramas a few times, you'll be ready to hit Ulduar.
Ian R asked...
"Do you have to beat the old Vault of Archavon to get to the new one?"
Adam fielded this question yesterday... but I have a better answer, so poopoo on him!
All that they did is add a new hallway onto the existing Vault of Archavon. You do not need to kill Archavon to get to the new guy, you just take a right turn before you reach him. It's possible there's some summoning or unlocking process, but given the mechanics of Wintergrasp, I really doubt that. Making it a long process when you need to rush through it while you hold the zone would be... unwise.
Thrush asked...
"Dual spec question... is there a cooldown after you switch spec? If not, will dual spec become a quick 10 sec method for restoring full mana and health? Just switch and switch back."
There is no cooldown, but it most certainly will not be a quick method for restoring mana and health. Switching your spec drains your entire mana pool, so unless you like running around at 0 mana, you won't be switching specs for that purpose.
Norm asked...
"I remember back before 3.0, no matter how much +hit rating you had, you'd always have a 1% chance to miss an attack or spell when you're hit capped. I heard they got rid of this and you can now hit 100% the time instead of 99%. Is this true?"
Yes.
Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column! Leave your questions in the comments and we'll do our best to answer 'em!Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Adam Holisky Mar 18th 2009 2:38PM
I voted for Sacco! :-p
http://www.wowinsider.com/2009/03/05/the-queue-ziebart-vs-sacco/
Alex Ziebart Mar 18th 2009 2:46PM
I voted for YOUR MOM.
nasgul Mar 18th 2009 3:12PM
He did, I was there.
agadez Mar 18th 2009 3:20PM
make that three present.
Matthew Rossi Mar 18th 2009 5:31PM
Chuck Norris, Rambo and myself voted for me.
What, you say I wasn't an option? Do I have to have Charles (he likes Charles) roundhouse kick your poll?
Ailian Mar 18th 2009 7:04PM
No offense but Bruce Lee voted for Sacco.
And Bruce Lee > Chuck Norris.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqzQ2qrtBeg
Heh. =]
Naix Mar 18th 2009 3:08PM
"I am wondering how end game will work when I eventually get there? "
AOE the piss out of everything you see. Wonder where all the warlocks went too and why there is 5 death knights to every 1 character.
Caz Mar 18th 2009 3:11PM
You've got the answer within your answer. All the missing warlocks are playing Death Knights. At least it seems to me to be the same annoying personality types....
/shrug
Sedition Mar 18th 2009 3:23PM
Left my Warlock at 70 and leveled a DK as soon as WoTLK was installed on my machine. Never looked back.
Yeng Mar 18th 2009 3:36PM
What annoying personality type is that?
Caz Mar 18th 2009 3:52PM
LOL. The cocky overconfident type .
The type that always bites off more than they can chew.
The type whose pet constantly pulls aggro when the group isn't ready
I mean that in the nicest way. I miss my guild's warlocks we haven't had any since Lich King went live...cause they play DKs.
Yeng Mar 18th 2009 4:02PM
Well, being a warlock lets see if I fit into this umbrella generalization.
Cocky - perhaps, but in a joking manner
Overconfident - Confident, but not overly so
Biting off more than they can chew - No more than any other character class does occasionally.
Pet pulling aggro - Never. Especially before WOTLK (we all sacced our pets) and according to you, we're all DKs now so we certainly aren't pulling aggro with pets now. Though my main is still a warlock and I generally use my imp who stands by my side and is phased most of the time, so no aggro pulling there.
Well, that generalization is out the window. But I do know the group of people you are referring to, and the thing is, they aren't all warlocks and dks. They are playing all the different classes. You never know when you'll run into one.
Caz Mar 18th 2009 4:16PM
I was making a joke... But my experience with warlocks has been vastly different that how you describe yourself. Their pets always seemed to screw things up for my guild in Kara and every other instance they were in. It seems like the warlocks I've grouped with secretly wanted to be tanks since they like pulling aggro (then claiming it was an accident)...and now they are - tanks who play like warlocks.
But hey it's all for fun. And you're right - a lot of them are hunters too. *snicker*
Yeng Mar 18th 2009 4:24PM
Seriously? Well I have just one word for such warlocks, 'incompetent' . I'm in a raiding guild and they surely wouldn't continue to run with someone that did that, aside from the occasional fluke that happens to everyone at one time or another, but not if you made a habit of it.
Mizzle Mar 18th 2009 5:15PM
I wonder how much of it is a psychological thing: Warlocks are supposed to be inherently "evil", so we put more emphasis on it when they act like asshats. Personally I've grouped with many different classes of asses, so it's harder for me to believe that it's just Warlocks.
Avrsion Mar 20th 2009 8:26AM
Did exactly the same as Sedition.
Logged on it once to take off it's gold then moved servers.
Now i've just got a emo 70 warlock all alone.
Teaspoon Mar 18th 2009 7:05PM
Warlocks? Really?
Most of the bad DKs I know used to be bad rogues.
leprakahn Mar 18th 2009 3:11PM
I have a question about the PTR and the Argent Tournament.
Is there not very much news of the tourney on the PTR or is it just vastly overshadowed by Uldaur?
News about Uldaur appears here daily, and rightly so, but it’s been almost a month since anything new came up on the Argent Tournament.
I’d love to see more on the gear, pets, and other items that are available from the tournament, as well as what kind of quests are involved with it.
Jay in Oregon Mar 18th 2009 4:19PM
I've been doing the Argent Tournament dailies up until a few days ago; I'm a champion of both Gnomeregan and Ironforge, but a bug is preventing me from trying for champion of a third race, so I've taken a few days off. (Also, I'm not in a big hurry to amass a pile of Champion's Seals to buy gear that I can't keep.)
The artwork and models have been improving with each build, and the basic mounted combat mechanics have stabilized. New quests have popped up on every build (and some have been fixed with later builds).
Mounted combat is straightforward. You have 4 in-combat abilities and 2 non-combat abilities; they appears to be no difference in mount abilities, which makes it easy to balance.
You have a basic melee attack that deals damage, and a Defense ability that puts up a 60-second buff that reduces damage taken by 30%; this stacks up to 3 times. You also have Shield Breaker (a ranged attack that deals damage and strips off a charge of Defense) and Charge (a melee attack where you charge you opponent, do damage, and strip off a charge of Defense). The non-combat abilities are a full heal for your mount that can only be used outside of combat to refresh your mount between duels, and an ability that allows you to challenge another player to a duel.
The basic strategy so far is to keep Defense maxed whenever possible; Defense has a cooldown, so try to time refreshes for right after receiving a Charge or Shield Breaker. Try to get far enough away that you can use Charge or Shield Breaker to strip off defense charges to increase the damage you do. Once you get a demonstrable lead in health over your opponent, stay close enough that they can't pull away to strip off Defense charges and you'll win. (This doesn't work with all NPCs, but I'm not going to go into detail because I assume the specific strategies are going to change with tuning. It's easy to figure out which opponents are easier to beat right now, though.)
The difficulty level of the NPC opponents has varied between builds from 2-shot insta-kill to almost impossible to defeat solo; but I have not attempted player vs player combat yet. Some opponents have patterns which make them easy to defeat, which others are (IMO) overtuned and cannot be defeated solo. Other players can attack your NPC opponent once a duel has started, which frustrates me greatly when I'm trying to learn a fight and someone starts pegging away at my opponent with Shield Breaker.
A blue poster has said that he would call for more focused testing of the Argent Tournament with a later build of 3.1; maybe the build that's being dropped tonight?
037 Mar 18th 2009 3:10PM
I have never ghetto hearthed, but it never impacted me when others did.
Now that you can queue for battlegrounds from anywhere, are we looking at the new ghetto hearth? However, this one could directly impact the game of others by leaving battlegrounds half full.