Team Closing in on 80: Spend on Epic Flyers or Gear

[Greythan]

I already have a predisposition on this question due to my historical playstyle when I had my main at max level pre-expansion: gear.

My rationale was that I'm not a true "grinder" when it comes to anything other than leveling. At 70 I PvP'd and grouped with guild to do instances (I don't have the time to be a raider). I didn't grind faction, gold, etc.

So, with my mixed team I plan on spending a lot of time in instances. I really haven't had to perfect my playing while leveling, so my learning curve will probably be a bit steep. I also plan to play my toons in smaller groups or even solo some as well.

Thus, it seems that I should spend what I have (around 6k gold now) focused on gearing to get "heroic" enough for .... Heroics. Once I'm geared "enough", I'd then plan to stockpile for epic flyers and get my herbalist/miner a flyer first and then go from there.

Thoughts?

[emesis]

Classic conundrum. You need cash for gear, need to do dailies for cash, and you need to fly around alot to do dailies.

You can certainly earn some cash running heroics but not before you're geared and running them smoothly; even then it's nothing like the return per hour of running dailes.

I went with gear first - not a huge amount but enough to get my tankreasonably ready for heroics and the blue level 80 crafted gear sets on my dps toons. That was maybe 4K, it'll be cheaper nowadays.

You obviously need a whole lot more to purchase 5 epic flyers. I would just accept that you need to grind dailies and fly slowly for a couple of weeks. Especially if you haven't had epic flyers, or haven't used them recently, non-epic flyers don't seem that bad. It's only after you've used them that non-epics are quite so awful.

The other thing you'll want to do right away if not already done is complete all/most of the icecrown quests. Icecrown has the best dailes and until you zone in all the content, you will have follow breaking issues when you transition between "minizones".

[Hachoo]

I vote 1000% epic flyers first. Once you have epic flyers cash flows in retardedly fast. If you get gear first expect it to take damn near forever to get your epic flyers.

[pinotnoir]

I second the vote for epic flyers.

[Greythan]

Thanks for the feedback.

Question: If I plan to exclusively PvP, instance, and occassionally play the toons solo/<5 what do I need epic flyers for?

I've always wondered if the upgraded speed is necessary if I don't need to grind dailies. In other words I guess, do I need to plan on grinding gold (dailies) if I'm getting gear from PvP/heroics and the occassional PuG raid?

[Ogloo]

When i hit 80.. im not getting epic flyer.. no way. no use for me. because all my gear will come from BG's.. all of it.. and the slight enchant money and stuff will come from quests 1-80. and from guildies and stuff who do for free

[BobGnarly]

To start with, you won't need anywhere near 5k per toon in gear to start doing heroics smoothly, so there's a possibility you could do both.

Having said that, if it comes down to a choice, I'd personally choose gear. I'm not a big "fly around and do dailies for cash" person. I have enough to do the things I want, and what I want is to run instances/pvp/etc. You don't need epic flyers for that.

[Iceorbz]

You can get gear free, farm for it. (titansteel ect) and make your own, leather + eternals.

Save your money for epic flylers. You would never regret it

[HPB]

Raiding and pvp aren't free of course: potions and Flasks; enchants and gems need to be re-done every time you replace gear while raiding or pvping; scopes, armor kits and spell threads will need to be replaced sometimes as well, buff foods, water and repairs need to be paid for.

Even if you do your own enchants, flasks and gems, the costs of maintaining your toons may get to be a bit much if you don't have any source of income other than the little bit of gold you will get from the "occasional PuG raid". You don't have to do dailies though, you can do some farming instead. You may be able to 'cheat' your way into a little gold making by only getting the epic flying on your gathering toon(s). As a bonus, the extra mats you farm can be used to make some of your own raiding/pvp materials.

[Greythan]

Interesting array of comments.

I think I'm going to go with my initial thoughts which is to get geared "enough" to be able to get the easier of heroics on farm. (Again, I have to work up my playskill so figured out how much my inevitable "failing" is due to gear vs bad play will be a challenge for me. ;) ) I'll then stockpile 5k to get my main who's a herbalist/miner his epic flyer first and then work from there. I just don't have the playtime to be a do-daily's-daily guy.

[glo]

The problem with getting the flyers first is you get absolutely no benefit until all 5 have them so you are in crappy gear and have crappy mounts until you get the full 25k gold. You can start upgrading gear right away and see the benefit instantly.

My DK team still has regular flyers and it's rare situations I find myself wishing they had the epics. You use them to get to raids and do dailies, I don't even farm as doing dailies makes money faster so there isn't really much benefit to them.

[Hachoo]

To those saying who cares about grinding dailies, stop being so narrow minded. Epic flyers aren't just a tool to grind dailies. EVERYTHING you do will be faster with epic flyers. Getting TO the instance, getting to towns, getting to quest areas, to everything, will be much faster. It will save you so much time you have absolutely no idea. Even if you don't want to grind dailies, think about the below 2 scenarios:

#1 - You buy a bunch of gear, spend all your money getting geared up, and now you want to start running instances. Woops, you find some more gear you want to buy, or you start getting good gear drops from dungeons but need money for gems, enchants, whatever - you have no solid and fast means to get the money. Doing quests/dailies at all without epic flyers is excruciating.

#2 - You buy your epic flyers. You don't have much if any money left for gear. You decide you really want to buy some gear - you might not like dailies but in less than 1 1/2 hours a day you could be getting 1300-1500g just from doing a few quick ones in Icecrown. At this point its really your choice - even flying around on epic flyers mining titanium/saronite can be profitable.

Bottom line is, gear is just gear and can be gotten many different ways. Epic flyers are only available via money and if you don't have them you'll eventually wish you did. If I had to choose whether to give up all my epics (and all 5 of my guys are in full epics) or give up my epic flying skill, I'd give up my epics in a heartbeat.

[Iceorbz]

Raiding and pvp aren't free of course: potions and Flasks; enchants and gems need to be re-done every time you replace gear while raiding or pvping; scopes, armor kits and spell threads will need to be replaced sometimes as well, buff foods, water and repairs need to be paid for.

Even if you do your own enchants, flasks and gems, the costs of maintaining your toons may get to be a bit much if you don't have any source of income other than the little bit of gold you will get from the "occasional PuG raid". You don't have to do dailies though, you can do some farming instead. You may be able to 'cheat' your way into a little gold making by only getting the epic flying on your gathering toon(s). As a bonus, the extra mats you farm can be used to make some of your own raiding/pvp materials.I never waste money on consumables unless its progression. Epic flyers speed up *EVERYTHING* time is money, flying is time. Just save and spend nothing that you dont absolutely have to have. And the only thing you have to have is repairs and water. You can farm food, you can farm enchanting materials (earth and shadow eternals = a JC ring = disenchant for dust and cosmics).

[Greythan]

Hachoo, et al (the "pro" flyer crowd ;) ),

Obviously, I don't know what I'm missing. I've never had an epic flyer. I'm also wise enough to know that controlling speed in a MMRPG is key. Epic flyers will make travelling faster.

However, as a casual player (I play probably 2 to 3 hours a night) I shudder at the thought of mindlessly grinding dailies to generate another 20k gold so that I realize the full benefit of a five man team with epic flyers. It "feels" like I'd enjoy the ride more if I jumped straight into Heroics (i.e., my 2 to 3 hours would be primarily in an instance where you don't fly at all. ;) ) versus continuing the grind I've been on for six months now (birth of four of my five man team).

That said, I'm open to perspectives and that's why I asked this esteemed community its opinion!

[pinotnoir]

I have a 3rd team lvl 75 right now. At level 77 they will get epic flyers. Questing from 77-80 is made faster with epic mounts. I have two teams that will need to do daily quest so I can afford it. If you have never used an epic flyer there is no opinion on the matter. Everything is done faster once you get an epic flyer. They are worth the money. Gear can be crafted or purchased off the ah. Travel is a huge part of the game. If you wish to travel like a snail stick with slow birds. If you want to travel at high speed get the epics. I would suggest getting them at lvl 77 so you can quest very fast to 80. Not everyone can afford that but if you can its so so so so worth the money.

[Greythan]

Well, my team is 79.5 now. ('lock is already 80)

The fundamental point is what do I do when I hit 80: grind gold to buy flyers (and subsequently delay my starting in on heroics) or dive into heroics and bag the gold grind?

Remember, its not like my playtime can let me do both. Either I'm burning my 2-3 hours of playtime grinding dailies or heroics. 2-3 hours doesn't seem to allow time for both.

I'm leaning towards diving into heroics and facing the fact that my play style isn't aligned with a 20k gold grind. Epic flyers will either come when they come, or I'll have to make a conscious decision at some point to stop everything else and ONLY do dailies for 2-3 hours a day to try and grind the gold.

[blast3r]

If it were me I would go for the epic flyers but you don't just have to make one choice. Do dailies (preferably wintergrasp and/or bgs first) then do the others. Doing the wintergrasp will get you a couple of epics with the marks. Then you should be able to build up enough honor to get one more piece of gear fairly easy. At least then when you get your fliers you should have 3 to 4 epics which will help.

[Hachoo]

If you haven't even finished all your regular quests yet you can make even more than dailies by just finishing normal quests in storm peaks and ice crown. I made 25k gold just finishing my quests there when I hit 80 and it didn't even take that long, and that wasn't including dailies at all, and was after I bought my epic flyers.

[Feardis]

i think the big thing here is that he's said hes a casual player. 2-3 hours a night i dunno if thats alot, i was lucky to get 4-5 hours a week but anyway
in the end it doesnt matter what anyone else thinks is right
its what you are comfortable with
epic flyers are great, its just the grind to get them is sometimes too much for people at different levels of play

for some it is but a week or two, for other it can be months of grinding which ultimatly leads to them losing intrest. or going insane and eating bag after bag of cheezos

with the loss of a certain software in the game, now may be the time to start farming eternals and ore etc for sell on the AH
if prices start to rise
8o

[Siaea]

Lol, I still don't have my epic flyers 8|

I did dailies and each day I had enough to buy at least one epic for one my toons, and after a couple of weeks, each had pretty much all the BoE epics I could find at the time, including the titansteel maces (spell and melee). By then, I started trying my hand at heroics, and decided to do dailes some more for more gear, and right now I'm sitting on only about 2kg on my banker. Eventually, I'll get those flyers, but I'm not in a gigantic hurry, as trying dungeons is more fun.

[Redbeard]

Id do flyer over gear. I dont find it likely theyll introduce faster fliers but youll more than certainly upgrade your gear.

[Hachoo]

i think the big thing here is that he's said hes a casual player. 2-3 hours a night i dunno if thats alot, i was lucky to get 4-5 hours a week but anyway
in the end it doesnt matter what anyone else thinks is right
its what you are comfortable with
epic flyers are great, its just the grind to get them is sometimes too much for people at different levels of play

for some it is but a week or two, for other it can be months of grinding which ultimatly leads to them losing intrest. or going insane and eating bag after bag of cheezos

with the loss of a certain software in the game, now may be the time to start farming eternals and ore etc for sell on the AH
if prices start to rise
8oJust wanted to say that I'm strongly advocating the epic flyers and I'm also about as casual as you can get. I have a wife, a 2 year old daughter, a job that requires 50-80 hours of time a week, and I still went for epic flyers first. Doing all the quests in storm peaks/icecrown after hitting 80 took maybe 2 weeks of casual play (an hour sometimes two each night and then maybe 3-4 on the weekends - this is when I was playing a lot trying to save) and thats what made me 25k+. So basically 1 1/2 - 2 weeks to make over 25k gold playing casually, doing quests - most of what allowed me to do this so fast was having epic flyers.

Edit: As far as "prices" changing due to Glider no longer being around - I would go as far as to say this is utterly false. I doubt you will see a single change to the prices, at all. I have many reasons for this but I'd be willing to bet money that the difference will be negligible on most servers.

[heffner]

As long as you at least have cold weather flying I think it would be fine. A large chunk of dailies in Icecrown are near each other anyway. I can see how it would help more in other zones though.

Personally I bought the epic flyers. I went for gear on my solo toon back in BC.

[Kayley]

Buy 2 motorcycles. Never leave town, only way to go.

[Stormweasel]

I'm in exactly the same boat and currently questing another 10,000G across my 5 so that they have enough for epic flight skill and cold flying skills.

It's a simple choice for me, I know I want to get fliers on them eventually but I know that I will never get that goldsink down and out the way unless I get it done with first while I'm still enjoying the questing clear up.

With gear, every time you make a few hundred G it's a liltte boost, working towards 5000G on each toon seems like a bigger hurdle to clear.

[Gomotron]

When i hit 80.. im not getting epic flyer.. no way. no use for me. because all my gear will come from BG's.. all of it.. and the slight enchant money and stuff will come from quests 1-80. and from guildies and stuff who do for freeWhat is this BG gear of which you speak?

As far as I can tell, you can pick up epic helm and boots from WG, epic boots and belt from just plain honor (as well as a ring, neck, and back) but for all the other stuff, you'll be buying blue PvP gear, cheapest to get from arena.

Once you get all that stuff, your team will still be ill-equipped to play and do well in arenas, which means grinding heroics. And the PvP stuff from a lot of the BG vendors doesn't have near the defense to make it in heroics.

I am just curious, because this is what I have experienced first-hand and buying a few epic pieces from the auction hall has been my only choice to gear up to grind heroics (didn't want to tradeskill). What is your plan for gearing up with BG's?

[puppychow]

Once you get an epic flyer you will wonder how you ever played without one, its still one of the best things in wow in my opinion. No fat kid mounts for me!

[Redbeard]

I think about it this way.

In BC they gave us fliers / epic flyers. In WOTLK they deliberately slowed us down to ground mount speed in order to better pace us. Coupled with the fact that the game sometimes issues loading stuff at epic speed (not to mention some people's computers), I dont imagine well see much if any of a speed increase again.

Get your flyers, its a better investment.

[Gadzooks]

I would agree - get the flyers out of the way. I did'nt, and I regret it. Trust me, in Icecrown and Storm Peaks, they will come in VERY handy!

My 80's are taking an extended rest while I level a new team, but they will be getting back to grinding out their epic flyers when I go back to them.

[kadaan]

Throwing in another vote for epic flying.

Gear is always upgraded, there's not many feelings worse than spending $10k on gear to get a few lucky drops and replace it a week or two later. You will never replace epic flying.

[Bigfish]

Gear is always upgraded, there's not many feelings worse than spending $10k on gear to get a few lucky drops and replace it a week or two later.

Nothing quite like dropping 1000G on a Moonshroud Robe only to replace the thing less than 24 hours later from a drop in Naxx.

[elsegundo]

epic flying.

gear will come through rep and drops, as well as through emblems and shards.
to save gold, look around and see if you can get the mats and have someone make the item instead. some items cost more than the mats, some items dont. even tipping someone 100 gold to craft you 1 titansteel destroyer and 4 titansteall guardians and 4 titansteel shieldwalls can still save you moola if you get the mats yourself or through AH (or whatever gear you're trying to make).

do your research on the gear though. sometimes you might not need everything that's suggested at various websites. sometimes you just need a few things, enough to get your team going to get the better drops. double check the emblem vendor to make sure you dont buy anything you can get for cheap, like say the neck pieces for 25 emblems. 25 emblems are easy to get that spending 800-1000 gold (EACH) for the slight lesser crafted item would not be worth it and would make little sense. (kill 25 bosses, get 25 emblems for each char +2emblems for daily quest. as opposed to buying the thing for five chars, thats spending 5k gold, or one epic mount).

ok have fun and good luck!

[Duese]

While I don't share the enthusiasm that many of the other people in this thread have towards getting epic flyers first, I would look at it with a different thought process.

(Yes, I have a team with epic flyers and a team without epic flyers. I did dailies twice a day with them and the epic flyer team did get them done faster.)

It really comes down to playtime. If you have an excessive amount of playtime, then get the gear first. Honestly, it's not going to delay you much in the grand scheme of things. By excessive amount of playtime I mean that you do more than just log in and do dailies. Since you are doing other things than just dailies, you will need the gear for progression through that content.

If you may only log in on your team for dailies, then go for the epic flyers first because your use of playtime is more important and getting done with the dailies faster is going to be a necessity to start setting foot in dungeons and raids. You don't need the gear to complete dailies.

My 4xShaman team is at about lvl 73 and I have yet to buy flying skill for them at all. I'm looking at almost 29k gold for them if I go straight for epics flyers on them rather than just the ~9k I will be spending to get them up in the air. With that said, just completing the quests in Boring Tundra has netted me 5k gold. I have no doubt that I will be upwards of the 20k mark before I hit 80 with another roughly 10k at least coming after that without even factoring in dailies. Then again, I do more than just log in and do dailies.

[Biz]

Didn't leveling in Icecrown and Storm Peaks without epic flyers make you want to put holes in the wall with your face? I swear you have to fly at least halfway across the map for every quest!

[heyaz]

get the epic flyers.. you can make money so much faster in icecrown. if you spend it all on gear, it's unlikely you'll ever go back and get the epic flyers. at least it was like that with me.

[Xinxo]

I bought mine in TBC, but I had to get 2 other characters there Epic flyers and what not. I bought them there flyers, then bought my teams gear. If you have never used an epic flyer you are really missing out. Normally there is no need to use flight paths. As well, the money you can make using the flyers, you will make back the cost quickly.

[Memn]

I recomment gearing up your tank, then epic flyers, then gearing up your dps. And I'd also suggest you try to do a few dailies each day.... They will help counter the cost of repairs..

Don't buy anything super expensive until after you have your epic flyers... that 1000 gold epic WILL not have a greater impact over the blue quest reward item.

[HPB]

Gear is always upgraded, there's not many feelings worse than spending $10k on gear to get a few lucky drops and replace it a week or two later.

Nothing quite like dropping 1000G on a Moonshroud Robe only to replace the thing less than 24 hours later from a drop in Naxx.

But would you have even been considered for an invite to Naxx w/o some epics?

I am getting close to the 77 mark on my paladins (tank is 75 atm) and I did spend some farmed materials and gold to get a few decent blues on the team so that I can do instances. Fliers are great and I'm sure I'll be buying those next - but it's not as one-sided of an arguement as it is being made out to be.

[Greythan]

Great thread.

So, I'm officially waffling. Probably half way through Icecrown atm and my last 3 toons will hit 80 in the next session or two. Gold's pouring in through the handful of dailies I'm already rotating. (Loving dailies like the one from K2 using mines, the free the slaves/kill 20 Vyrn-whatever-they're-called from the Horde ship, and the easier of the two bombing missions (I send off all five toons at once!)). So, if the grind to 25k gold isn't a multi-month endeavor, I may just do it.

I had no perspective on gold intake at 80 (and really still don't, but at least a glimpse). So, the thought of following up my six month grind of getting my team to 80 with another long, immediate grind for gold was horrific. If the 25k gold accumulation turns out not to be that horrible (at about 7-8k now), I'll probably just bite the bullet and get the flyers.

[Diwa]

Just get 3 epic flyers and let your warlock summon the other two.

[Tonuss]

Nothing quite like dropping 1000G on a Moonshroud Robe only to replace the thing less than 24 hours later from a drop in Naxx.Yep. Gear gets replaced. Flying skill doesn't get upgraded nearly as often, and is always current. Particularly for a multiboxer, since you've got the wherewithal to farm for gear upgrades (be it via PvE or PvP) on your own. At least until you're done with heroics and ready for 10-man content.

[Souca]

Get the fliers. Even if you get them one at a time, you can do herbing and mining on the epic and then hop on a non epic mount to do dailies with the rest of the group. Not sure if you like any of the new mounts, but all the new flying mounts in Northrend require epic riding skill. At least if one character has it and you happen upon a Time Lost Protodrake you'll be able to use it.

- Souca -