Do you mine or herb at all? There are plenty of nodes you can't get to without first killing a nearby mob. I sort of wish they'd take XP away from all nodes again, especially since it eats rested XP. That bugged me for some reason.

The XP you gain from Mining/Herbing is a reimbursement, of sorts, for the time it takes to travel out of your way. Skinning, however, is always right in line with where you'd be anyway.

Maybe thats why I never noticed the lack of xp for herbalism.. since for the most part (unless actively farming only) you've got to slice through some mobs to get to the herbs. But in outland and northrend (and eventually when I'm finished with Cata zones and I'm just passing through for the herbs), the ability to pop into flight form and herb away without having to interact with any of the mobs is nice. I mean there were times when the ONE thing in the way would keep interrupting me, even when I flew up out of range, it'd be on me the second I touched down again, the I killed more out of annoyance. :)

Well, I play a hunter, so I haven't had to kill a mob to get to a node in quite a while, but I understand your point.

MY point is that while, yeah, SOMETIMES you have to kill a thing to get to your node, the entire point of skinning is killing the thing first. Like the author said, if skinning granted XP, picking up skinning would be like a bonus heirloom.

And why does it matter how your rested XP is used? It's a predetermined amount of bonus EXP, not a bonus with a certain amount of charges (like Clearcasting or Lock and Load). None of it is wasted, as long as you dump it all before you hit 85. Faster is faster is faster.

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danawhitaker Dec 22nd 2010 11:09AM

Do you mine or herb at all? There are plenty of nodes you can't get to without first killing a nearby mob. I sort of wish they'd take XP away from all nodes again, especially since it eats rested XP. That bugged me for some reason.
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I find that as the exception rather than the rule. The vast majority of herb gathering I'm doing right now involves no aggro. Of course, my main herbalist right now is a druid. So when aggro is involved, he just leads the guard away from the node in question and then swoops back in to pick it up while the mob is busy running back to catch up (I had someone try to take advantage of my tactic once and snipe my herb - I quickly broke aggro and let the mob path back to them and while they dealt with the mob, I snatched my flower and was on my way).

Well that's nice, not all classes have the luxury of being a druid and doing that. I've not encountered one node in Tol Barad yet that wasn't guarded by something, except for one I got underwater today. The argument about getting XP for having to travel out of the way seems weak to me too. On my skinner, if I'm farming leather, those mobs have to be farmed just as I'd have to farm herbs or ore - I have to go kill something I wouldn't be killing in order to get . Sure, they're just there if you're questing and simply leveling up your skill as you go. But the same could be said for herbs and ore that you encounter too. Sure, if stuff is lower level, and you're mining/herbing, you won't aggro it - but you also likely don't need the XP at that point either.

Also, for people who are slightly over the level cap for outlands or old world, killing the mob isn't worth nearly as much as the herb and ore nodes are with the recent changes to XP once you hit the level cap for a given expansion's content. Last night, I got 1600xp for mining adamantite at level 72. If I'd gone and killed something on my level 72 skinner, I'd have been lucky to get 100xp for the same class of materials.

@Dana: Why does it bother you that gathering nodes are affected by rested xp? It's not like they use it up without giving you a bonus. If you have rested, they give twice as much xp as if you didn't have rested.
That's like saying it would bother you if quests were affected by rested xp. Rested xp is there to be used! It's worthless if it's not used.

@Dana

It doesn't eat rested XP it gives you DOUBLE the xp you would normally get. Last time I checked it gives as much as more as the highest level mobs. So not sure what the dif is if you kill something or loot a node. You get the bonus XP.