Leveling in 7.3.5

[Pocahuntess]

Sooo...Ragefire Chasm took me nearly 45 mins to do at level 10 with my trinity team. I wiped twice, once on Slagmaw and once on Gordoth. Mob pack tooks over 5x the amount of time to kill than they did before and my priest continued to get low on mana! I expected it to take longer but geesh!

To top it off, the dungeon xp was nerfed to the ground! I went in at almost 11...finished at 11.5! :mad:

I normally run Ragefire from 10-15 and then start LFD (about 4 clears).
This was the 11th team I had done this leveling strategy with and the others all smoked through with ease. I would gain about a level and a half even without RAF.

Seems leveling through dungeons is discouraged and I'm curious what it will be like for guys who just started with RAF and LFD / boosting methods.

[MiRai]

Sooo...Ragefire Chasm took me nearly 45 mins to do at level 10 with my trinity team. I wiped twice, once on Slagmaw and once on Gordoth. Mob pack tooks over 5x the amount of time to kill than they did before and my priest continued to get low on mana! I expected it to take longer but geesh!

To top it off, the dungeon xp was nerfed to the ground! I went in at almost 11...finished at 11.5! :mad:

I normally run Ragefire from 10-15 and then start LFD (about 4 clears).
This was the 11th team I had done this leveling strategy with and the others all smoked through with ease. I would gain about a level and a half even without RAF.
There is a thread on the WoW forum where people are complaining that it takes way too long to get through a dungeon, similar to what you say. I mean... there's quite a difference between killing a pack in 5-10 seconds, and then it taking 6-12 times as long. So, it almost seems like it's a bit over-tuned, and I doubt the massive casual crowd in WoW today will stand for that.


Seems leveling through dungeons is discouraged and I'm curious what it will be like for guys who just started with RAF and LFD / boosting methods.
I'd love to tell you, but three out of five of my accounts are currently hit with the "character not found" bug. =\

[Pocahuntess]

....

I'd love to tell you, but three out of five of my accounts are currently hit with the "character not found" bug. =\

That's a bummer! I was looking forward to your feedback. Been following your youtube videos (ToneCre8).
The gold looted has increased a lot...I'm getting 4-6 gold per toon per boss at level 10!

[MiRai]

I finally got in with my team and ran Temple of the Jade Serpent at level 80. I recorded a video and it should be available sometime tomorrow, if not Wednesday, but here is my initial experience.

Difficulty:
As everyone has said so far, mobs definitely take more time to kill, but I don't think they do much more damage (no idea if that was even buffed). If I had to estimate, and I do because I don't have hard numbers from before 7.3.5 for TotJS, I'd say that each boss took, at least, 5x longer to kill.

Reward:
I hit level 80 last night with this 5-man team, so my characters couldn't have had more than 1-5% of experience before starting the dungeon. After completing the dungeon, I only had 74% of level 80, and after turning in both of the quests in TotJS, I still only had ~94% of level 80. So, I didn't even gain one level, with the 300% RaF benefits. At this time, I do not envy anyone leveling without RaF.

Another quick example from WaDaFruCK in the ISBoxer Discord:

Abominations in Stratholme (Live) had 110,000 health, and he was doing 700 damage per character. So, 110K HP / 3,500 Damage (all 5 characters) would take 31 spell casts, per character, to kill the thing.

As others have been discussing, this scaling feels unnecessarily over-tuned.

[JohnGabriel]

I am still hoping that questing is better. But its starting to look less like they wanted to improve questing and more like its just for the grind.

[Peri Helion]

I'm curious how boosting 4 low levels with a 110 character through dungeons is after 7.3.5. Anyone have any experience/observations they could share?

[Peri Helion]

Ran a test.

Just a few days before patch I ran Deadmines with an 80 Level Prot Pally in green 232 gear (old boosted character from Cataclysm or something), and a level 13 Priest

Parked the priest at the entrance, ran the whole instance in very quick time (all mobs one shots, Bosses down in maybe two/three)

I didn't record time or XP, but the level 13 priest went up to 14 at the end (no RAF bonus, no Heirlooms).

Just ran it again, same two characters. All trash died just as quickly, despite being 60th level now. The elites took two-three hits to go down. Some even lasted long enough to use specials on me (pulled whole room of lumbering oafs and one picked me up to smash me)

Bosses took about 10-15 seconds to kill (disclaimer - I have never played a Paladin and can't swear my rotation was optimal).

Then when I got to the ship the Defias Squallshapers took about 15-30 seconds each to kill (I am not sure but I think they had a self heal or damage mitigation ability). They were longer than the bosses.

Last, Ripsnarl lasted long enough to transform and call up a mist, and cookie lasted long enough to get in his pot (pre-patch both died before those could happen)

I have no quantifiable data to compare the two, but it seems to take about 3-6 times longer to clear. The low level got 5600 for completing (which I believe is what she got pre-patcH).

None of the mobs was higher than level 61. I can only infer that while low level content scales, it does not scale beyond its "release limit"? I.e. Vanilla is 60, BC 70, etc. can anyone confirm that?

[JohnGabriel]

Most of this seems more of an issue to the solo player after xmogs and wont bother boxers so much.

If you're running 5 you wont really notice if something takes 3 to 6 times longer to kill, still basically a one-shot. And as for boosting, Peri was level 80 fighting level 61 elite mobs and sounds like the difficulty is adjusted correctly. If at 110 fighting 61 you would probably (hopefully) be back to one-shotting.

Been reading so many doom posts on the bliz forums but I think if they just increase the experience in the dungeons to make the extra work worthwhile, or allowed the dungeon quests every run. Then it wouldn't matter if you leveled by dungeons or leveled questing, either would work.

[MiRai]

Copy/Paste from the Automata thread.

Here is my first dungeon run and my initial impression of level scaling in patch 7.3.5. Hopefully I can get a lot more done tonight and tomorrow to give a more detailed response.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HtfQPH6Aik

[Pocahuntess]

... I think if they just increase the experience in the dungeons to make the extra work worthwhile, or allowed the dungeon quests every run. Then it wouldn't matter if you leveled by dungeons or leveled questing, either would work.

This is exactly the issue. Asking players to do more for less shouldn't be expected to go over well. But I fear that all the other 'sky is falling posts' are missing the point thus this may not be addressed at all.

Like MiRai says in his latest video- Happiness may lie somewhere in the middle and hopefully Blizzard approaches that. (Well I paraphrased a lot!:D)

Once my team hit 15, it wasn't so lengthy. Still, the amount of time per xp gain just isn't worth it to spam LFD currently.

[Tin]

Did not have the time to test it my self - Scaling Issues - Dungeon Heroic Mobs Have Less HP Than Normal Version

http://www.wowhead.com/news=280758/scaling-issues-dungeon-heroic-mobs-have-less-hp-than-normal-version

[MiRai]

Okay, so I took my level 15 team into LFD, played for ~7.5 hours, and here are some additional thoughts/details.

I'm currently sitting at level 36.5 with 10.5 hours of /played. The first 60-70 minutes were spent pre-7.3.5 getting to level 15, and another ~90 minutes tonight were spent AFK'ing. So, in ~7.5 hours I got 21 levels, and that's with both full heirlooms (minus rings) and 300% RaF experience included. To help put this into perspective, the third team that I ran from level 1-90 took me ~20 hours total.

At level 15, the first dungeon I got was RFC, and I was expecting a long run like Pocahuntess had, but it was pretty quick and painless. I accidentally pulled a pack of enemies with Slagmaw (who already did quite a bit of damage to my melee-heavy team), which resulted in a wipe, but other than that there weren't any issues. Overall, RFC took me ~20 minutes.

I can only remember two other issues: 1) The Aku'mai fight at the end of Blackfathom Deeps was down to the absolute wire (was about to be a wipe), and 2) Roogug in Razorfen Kraul (boss who Bloodlusts and does non-stop damage) caused me to wipe once (almost twice).

Overall, dungeon runtime has certainly increased, and dungeons that were already a bit begrudgingly long (*cough*WailingCaverns*cough*) have become quite the snoozefest.

There's no doubt that my melee-heavy composition is quite unforgiving when it comes to, I would guess, a majority of boss mechanics, but, even with a team of ranged, if you aren't too familiar with multiboxing or these mechanics, I think some of these runs might be painful. i was mostly familiar with boss mechanics and what to expect, and, thankfully, enemy damage was not increased, so I just had to make sure I wasn't standing in things and my healing was on point.

I would also say that the amount of experience, or lack thereof, especially with the increased XP requirement from 1-60, and especially with RaF, things can feel quite unrewarding. I have no idea how dungeons compare to outside world questing at this point, but when you get 1-2 levels after a 20-30 minute dungeon, with 300% increased RaF benefits, one has to wonder how long it would take if you were running without it.

I'll do more leveling tomorrow, but I think the increased healthpools and increased runtimes would be acceptable if Blizzard reverted the nerf to heirlooms, and increased the experience given in dungeons.

[JohnGabriel]

Possible hot fix incoming for raids. Will not effect dungeons or questing.


As many players have noticed, changes to how creature health is determined in Patch 7.3.5 had a meaningful impact on some older raid content. This has been particularly noticeable in Warlords of Draenor and Mists of Pandaria raids. We’ve been discussing this topic constantly since the first threads popped up after the patch.

We want to be clear: our intention was never to greatly increase the difficulty of soloing old raid content for transmog or mount runs, but a side effect of the creature health tuning we did for leveling players. We’re currently working on a fix that will significantly reduce the health of Warlords and Mists raid bosses.


Thank you for all of your feedback and discussion on this issue. We’re sorry for the frustration, and we’re working to have you all back in there beating down those old raid bosses as soon as possible (hopefully before the weekend).

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20760926709

[JohnGabriel]

Did not have the time to test it my self - Scaling Issues - Dungeon Heroic Mobs Have Less HP Than Normal Version


This is only sortof true. Its Cata dungeons only, and yes they have more health but mobs in Normal are level 90 and mobs in heroic are 85.

As to why they did that, It makes no sense to me.

[Pallarfo]

Yesterday I did a short session on my level 91 hunters (dinged 90 2 days ago). So I am in WoD Shadowmoon Valley now. Gear is standard heirloom stuff. I was surprised at how long it took to kill some questmobs with the 5 of them. Some silver rare bosses even took longer, even with the help of some other unknown players! Oneshotting everything is fun, but this is no fun. Cant imagine how long some stuff will take with a single character.
Gametime expires in 6 days, so maybe it's time to do something else for a while :)

[Ughmahedhurtz]

This is only sortof true. Its Cata dungeons only, and yes they have more health but mobs in Normal are level 90 and mobs in heroic are 85.

As to why they did that, It makes no sense to me.Perhaps to mess with bots or gold farmers? I have no evidence for the claim but I can't think of anything else that makes logical sense from a "why would you make this significantly harder" angle.

[Tin]

The Mana-Tombs

First time - 4 hunters lv. 62 - Instance Quest open - range 64-66 - Full run 11 min.
Patch 7.3.5 - 4 hunters lv. 66 - range 65-67 - Full run 29 min.

Pandemonius - lv. 66 HP 65430 - Patch 7.3.5 Lv. 67 HP 278561
Tavarok - lv. 66 HP 81788 - Patch 7.3.5 Lv. 67 HP 348201
Nexus-Prince Shaffar - lv. 66 HP 98145 - Patch 7.3.5 Lv. 67 HP 417841


https://youtu.be/q1TwZTjCw4Y

[Pocahuntess]

..
At level 15, the first dungeon I got was RFC, and I was expecting a long run like Pocahuntess had, but it was pretty quick and painless. ...


Yes, as I indicated, I did start at level 10. Once I hit 15 it was as you experienced. Prior to 7.3.5, my level 10s would stomp the place.

It was the last group I needed to get to 15, so...



..
I have no idea how dungeons compare to outside world questing at this point, but when you get 1-2 levels after a 20-30 minute dungeon, with 300% increased RaF benefits, one has to wonder how long it would take if you were running without it. ..

I decided to check some questing and found that dungeon completion gives about the equivalent of 4 quest turn ins. That's without RAF.

[JohnGabriel]

Perhaps to mess with bots or gold farmers? I have no evidence for the claim but I can't think of anything else that makes logical sense from a "why would you make this significantly harder" angle.

Looking in the dungeon journal I see heroic drops ilvl 116 and normal drops ilvl 161. If I was confused before I am more so now.

On another note, there is another 8 hour maintenance Friday. Its not likely they will roll back the patch, but they might roll back the patch.

[Boostab]

I am boosting 3 now at level 81 getting them to 90 to catch up to my other 2 Dks its seems to take 5 dungeons runs per level. They are level 83 and what is seems now its 4 runs to level 84, this was last night the over all xp is not bad its like 80k and the gold is about 8 to 10 per boss and 35 for completion.

[MiRai]

I'm now at ~12.5 hours of actual played, and I'm sitting at level 47. I can tell you that dungeons are slow and unrewarding at this level. Again, for anyone tuning in without reading prior posts, I'm in heirlooms and have active RaF benefits.

My last run of the night was Stratholme (live), and that was a full 48-minute run with three wipes (two due to runaways pulling extra stuff and just not being able to heal through it). In the end, I did get 2.7 levels out of it, but one full level was due to the quest turn-ins, so if I ended up with the dungeon again, I'd only get ~1.7 levels for 48 minutes of runtime.

Can't wait to see how long BRD or LBRS take to run. /s


The Mana-Tombs

First time - 4 hunters lv. 62 - Instance Quest open - range 64-66 - Full run 11 min.
Patch 7.3.5 - 4 hunters lv. 66 - range 65-67 - Full run 29 min.

Pandemonius - lv. 66 HP 65430 - Patch 7.3.5 Lv. 67 HP 278561
Tavarok - lv. 66 HP 81788 - Patch 7.3.5 Lv. 67 HP 348201
Nexus-Prince Shaffar - lv. 66 HP 98145 - Patch 7.3.5 Lv. 67 HP 417841
That's over... 400%, no? MMO-C shows (https://www.mmo-champion.com/content/7329-Patch-7-3-5-Live-this-Week) that healthpools shouldn't have gone up more than ~300%, at most. Unless, outside world NPCs and in-dungeon NPCs are two different types of NPCs, and we don't have all of the data. /shrug


Yes, as I indicated, I did start at level 10. Once I hit 15 it was as you experienced. Prior to 7.3.5, my level 10s would stomp the place.

It was the last group I needed to get to 15, so...
I figured I would have a similar experience at level 15 because of scaling, but when I didn't I felt the need to report back.


Looking in the dungeon journal I see heroic drops ilvl 116 and normal drops ilvl 161. If I was confused before I am more so now.

On another note, there is another 8 hour maintenance Friday. Its not likely they will roll back the patch, but they might roll back the patch.
Rumor on the internet is that they have to re-deploy almost the entire patch because of things that are messed up with the 7.3.5 databases (https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/218254212641849345/403664902801063946/Screenshot_20180118-144219.png).

[Sservis]

Perhaps to mess with bots or gold farmers? I have no evidence for the claim but I can't think of anything else that makes logical sense from a "why would you make this significantly harder" angle.

Bad Math. Ignoring the TBC/MoP different mob levels issue, it seems like the lower dungeons that scale to X and then scale to max (for level range) are giving slightly different results than the directly scale to max of heroics. This could either be because they're scaling into the next expansion (82 for MoP might not equal 82 for Wrath) or because the scaling from X to max isn't the same as the initial scaling to max.

[Kojiiko]

Perhaps to mess with bots or gold farmers? I have no evidence for the claim but I can't think of anything else that makes logical sense from a "why would you make this significantly harder" angle.


Blizzard trying to to push the 100 booster? Harder to level. Fed up on how long it take to level up. Getting pissy with the grind. Ppl are willing to fork out more for the booster? If so. That’s a sly way to go about it

[Pocahuntess]

Blizzard trying to to push the 100 booster? Harder to level. Fed up on how long it take to level up. Getting pissy with the grind. Ppl are willing to fork out more for the booster? If so. That’s a sly way to go about it

I don't know about that. I think people will just unsub as I have done. Maybe in BFA that will apply but that's a year off I guess. They'll instead lose a lot of subscription revenue between now and then.

[SDBoxer]

This change has pretty much wrecked my playstyle.

I played from launch until late 2008, and hadn’t played since. I 5-boxed back in 2008, and got my team up to the current level limit (80?). I quit when I hit a wall with current (at the time) content which I couldn’t finish. I could no longer progress in any meaningful way at that time, so I lost interest and quit playing. My biggest complaint about the game back then was that I couldn’t prevent out-leveling the content I was playing before I got everything I wanted from it.

I reactivated my accounts in December 2017. Because there’s so much content I’ve missed, I wanted to start from scratch. I created a holy trinity team (prot paladin, holy priest, 3 BM hunters) and have been using the level lock feature to move slowly through dungeons as they opened up in instance finder. I do overland quests to enjoy the story line and atmosphere (that’s probably still viable; I haven’t tried open world mobs since the patch) and would lock my level once a new instance was available. I’d play through that instance over and over until I’d mastered it and had gotten every blue drop that was an upgrade for one of my characters.

It was slow going; sometimes I’d run an instance dozens of times to get everything I wanted. But I was having fun, and was keeping my team equipped with very good gear. I could clear every dungeon without too much trouble, even though I’m not terribly skilled. I would still wipe on occasion, or lose a character (most often my tank) – but I had a realistic expectation to finish an instance without too much teeth gnashing. And I knew I wouldn’t outlevel that instance until I’d gotten the drops I was after. Every blue drop had the chance to be relevant, every single time. Unless it was a duplicate – which of course happened a lot – it was a meaningful upgrade. Back in 2008, by the time I’d run an instance more than a couple times, I had out-leveled every drop in that instance.

Last night, I logged in and went to the third and final section of Dire Maul. I am level 42, so I have access to the ogre section. It was incredibly tough. Mobs were probably taking around 5 times as long to kill, and bosses were at least that long. I lost pets multiple times per boss fight (my DPS macro auto-rezzes them if they die and heals them if they’re still alive; I think I stole it from one of DavidtheMage’s posts) and my paladin hovered on the edge of death with every boss fight. I had multiple team wipes, even though I know the mechanics. It simple took me too long to kill bosses or large pulls, and I couldn’t heal through the damage I was taking.

Some bosses I can’t kill because of mechanics that are designed to kick in if you take too long. An example is the second boss in Scarlet Halls. If you don’t kill him in about 45 seconds or so, he turns into a whirlwind and wipes my whole team.

What really chafes me the most is that the whole world (as near as I can tell) is going to scale with me every single level until I hit current content. I can clear Dire Maul at 42, and get some blue drops. When I level to 43, Dire Maul will be just as hard (or perhaps harder relative to my team) than it was at level 42. If I can’t clear Scarlet Halls at 42, and if I gain a couple levels and come back at 44, it will be even harder than at 42.

I have to assume that the scaling logic is based on character level and uses a baseline equipment expectation. If I can’t clear an instance at 42, and level to 44 without upgrading every gear slot accordingly, that instance will be even harder at 44 than it was at 42. It looks to me like content that I can’t clear immediately after it opens up will just get harder as I level – and will likely outpace my team as I level. In other words, the gap between the instance difficulty and my team’s gear and capabilities will widen as I level. I don’t see how it can narrow; that would imply that the scaling is somehow based on the equivalent of green drops. These instances are extremely difficult for me with near-ideal blue BoP items; I can’t imagine clearing one with green items or blue quest rewards.

I intentionally stayed away from heirloom items, because they eliminate the fun of playing dungeons for the drops. It's not much fun for me to clear an instance if every drop is worse than the heirloom items I’m already wearing. No instance from level 1 to 100 would ever offer an upgrade; it would only be when I reach very high levels and very current content that instances would start dropping upgrades. I have no desire to play that way; lower-level instances that I can finish are the only reason I 5-box.

With this new patch, there’s no sense of real progression. Every instance in dungeon finder is yellow, and will apparently stay yellow. Once I unlock BC, all those dungeons will be yellow and stay yellow. They will apparently only get easier when I completely outlevel them and their rewards are completely meaningless to me – e.g. when I’m level 75 perhaps Deadmines will have only scaled to level 60. But when I’m level 59, Deadmines will be a level 59 version that will be tougher relative to my team than the level 15 version or the level 42 version. If I don’t maintain optimal gear every single level, I will fall further behind with each level I gain.

Every time I level, I ought to run Scarlet Halls just to the first boss, which can drop a crossbow that will be slightly better than the prior-level version. The smart (but horribly boring) thing to do would be to run that instance every single level until I get three crossbow drops for my hunters. When I hit level 43, I should run that boss again until I get three level-43 crossbows. Once I unlock and level to 44, I should do the exact same thing – because the level 44 version of that crossbow will be a tiny bit better than the level 43 version I have, and the level 42 version I had before that. When I hit level 58, I should do the same thing. If I don’t, the level-scaled versions of every instance open to me will be too difficult for me to complete – because the scaling logic has to take gear level into account somehow.

In short, I should run the quickest instance to get plate drops, cloth drops, and mail drops for every slot on every character of my team every single level I gain. I will never get to a point where it doesn’t make sense to run the first boss of Scarlet Halls again, or the first boss of Maraudon, or whatever instance has an easily-reached initial boss that will always drop a leveled version of an item that will help one of my characters. But those instances will always be just as hard (or harder) than they were the first time I ran them. I will never get stronger than any single part of the entire world. And I don’t see how it will ever make sense to run something other than Scarlet Halls if I need a bow, or the first ogre guard boss in Dire Maul if I need a gun. Those bosses will always drop a leveled version of those items every single level I gain. The only difference in drops between Deadmines and Stratholme will be cosmetic – so why run the harder, longer instances when the shorter ones will drop identical leveled gear every single level?

The game world will open up new opportunities as I level, but Deadmines will be just as hard (in terms of mob and boss level) and just as rewarding (in terms of leveled items) as that new instance I can finally run for the first time ever.

From reading the forums, there are an awful lot of people who love this new patch – so I’m not very optimistic it will get reversed or even reduced in magnitude other than the few raids they apparently amped up by mistake. I am very bummed, because I was having a blast before this patch.

[Peri Helion]

Based on the information in this thread, and dorksied’s RAF guide (https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/54257-RAF-Boosting-Guide-7-3-5) for 7.3.5, I will definitely be boosting and have scrapped any idea of running a couple of Trinity teams.

[SDBoxer]

I just tried running Blackfathom Depths with my level 43 team. I'm going to say Bathiel is now impossible for me to beat. I can't even come close to doing enough damage to him before his healing phases. This is a joke. I already unsubscribed all five accounts, but I don't even feel like playing out the string.

[Pocahuntess]

I feel you SDBoxer. I found the most efficient thing for me to do was to spam Stockades over and over again because I could complete that faster than I could do the equivalent amount of quests. It's a very short dungeon. It did get quite boring very quickly though!

I unsubscribed because, like you, I don't think much is going to be changed about this patch and I don't much like the direction it's headed. Bummer.

[Darth0]

I feel you SDBoxer. I found the most efficient thing for me to do was to spam Stockades over and over again because I could complete that faster than I could do the equivalent amount of quests. It's a very short dungeon. It did get quite boring very quickly though!

I unsubscribed because, like you, I don't think much is going to be changed about this patch and I don't much like the direction it's headed. Bummer.

I've been levelling teams on Mal'Ganis (with hopes to join the other multiboxers there) and I have also been rerunning the shorter dungeons. I find it the best way to maximize my short playing time in the evenings.

While saying that, I do miss the old way of blowing through content, so that's a bummer; but I'll just suffer through it because I still need my teams to reach the goal I set out for myself. I will still keep my accounts though; because while inconvenient, I still love this game too much to quit.

I am also done with the Legion content for now. I need a break from that. lol :)

[Ughmahedhurtz]

From reading the forums, there are an awful lot of people who love this new patch – so I’m not very optimistic it will get reversed or even reduced in magnitude other than the few raids they apparently amped up by mistake. I am very bummed, because I was having a blast before this patch.
The more I think about this, the less I like the idea as it means enjoying low-stress content exploration and at-level transmog runs just isn't feasible. I haven't stepped foot in a 5-man since this change; the last time I was doing that was my 5-priest group. I'll have to try that again and see if it's even doable anymore.

[edit] Have you tried heirlooms to see how it impacts things?

[SDBoxer]

No, I don't have any heirlooms. That's partly what baffles me about this patch. I don't see how anyone can finish these dungeons without heirlooms now. My team is in BoP blues - most within a level or two of my character level - and I cannot put out enough damage to kill bosses with a timer mechanic. There is a boss in Blackfathom Depths - Bathiel. I can't even come close to beating that boss. His self-heal phases come way too quickly for me to burn him down. I wiped on him until my gear broke, and never got him down to more than maybe 50%. I'm running a protection paladin, holy priest, and 3 BM hunters. Every gear slot is a BoP blue, as I've been level-locking and running instances until I got the drops I was after. Now, with this patch, I can't do anything.

I would honestly love to see a video of a group finishing that fight in greens. I don't think it's possible - but maybe I just suck that much.

[SDBoxer]

I can imagine higher-level characters may have it easier - possibly - just because they have more tools at their disposal. But I have no heirlooms (I have maybe 1500 gold total across 5 accounts) and am only level 43. And these instances are freaking brutal - and I can't just gain a level or two and then come back. If I do, they'll have scaled up and will be even harder than they were before. I don't see how new players can do these without being carried by someone else.

Any boss with a timer mechanic is almost unbeatable for me now - because I can't pump out enough damage with only 3 DPS.

[Pocahuntess]

I can imagine higher-level characters may have it easier - possibly - just because they have more tools at their disposal. But I have no heirlooms (I have maybe 1500 gold total across 5 accounts) and am only level 43. And these instances are freaking brutal - and I can't just gain a level or two and then come back. If I do, they'll have scaled up and will be even harder than they were before. I don't see how new players can do these without being carried by someone else.

Any boss with a timer mechanic is almost unbeatable for me now - because I can't pump out enough damage with only 3 DPS.


Why don't you just quest? Do you not like it?

If it's just the difficulty you're having with said boss, well that's part of the fun boxing!

[Boostab]

OK update now its 4 runs per dungeon they are now 86, I am just running Temple of the jade Serpent over and over ;D I also have all Heirlooms but the ring and no rested xp .


(Boosting 3 Dk's with a level 110 Dk )

[MiRai]

Another update without a /played (because I'm too lazy to log back in), but it's safe to assume that it was several hours for only 10 more levels. I would guess that I'm nearing the 20-hour /played mark, and I just hit level 57 earlier today.

I'll just mention a few things (in what has become a wall of text), some in response to other posts (no quotes)...

I forgot about the Bathiel fight in BFD, and next to Aku'mai (the final boss), he was sorta tough. Once I realized that the elementals were healing him, I was just running around blowing them up as I tried to heal my team. It was certainly hectic, but do-able with my comp/setup.

As for Dire Maul, I have been lucky enough to have completed all three of them, at this point.

Warpwood Quarter
Definitely the easiest wing, but none-the-less, slow and boring. The final boss (Alzzin) can do a bit of damage when he is in his wolf form, but other than that, it was just a tiring trek through long and empty passageways. The first pass through here is tolerable due to the 5 quests that are available.

Capital Gardens
In this wing of DM, I always felt that the final boss, Prince Tortheldrin, was one ofthe most difficult because he had a killer knockback and could hit like a truck, but now that boss fights take upwards of 90 seconds, I would say that he is now the easiest boss in there because he doesn't have any difficult mechanics.

Iliyana Ravenoak - She hit like a truck before these changes, and she still hits like a truck. She took me three attempts to get down, and I wasn't even sure I was going to be able to do it.

Tendris Warpwood - He has a terrible AoE that hits everyone in melee range. Almost wiped, but survived. Also, you'll want to clear out the big trees before fighting him, since they all come running in after he dies, and you probably won't survive all of that.

Immol'thar - Not really a fun encounter since it relies heavily on RNG. He randomly picks someone in your party to teleport into the air and have them fall. When I killed him, it was only because my healer had not gotten hit with the teleport throughout that entire fight.

Gordok Commons
Captain Kromcrush - FML, this guy was already a very difficult fight before any scaling, and now... There's no doubt that a party will need to be on point to kill this guy. He hits hard, has an AoE fear (I'm 4/5 melee), and calls in two Gordok Reavers to help him. The Reavers have Sunder Armor, which, at this level, drops your armor to zero, and they can do a mortal strike. I would say that CC is necessary, but I only have a single Hex on my Shaman. I almost got him down on my second attempt (38%?), but it was nothing short of wildly flailing around and luck that got me that far.

Luckily, there's a quest in there for an ogre suit that will allow you to bypass him, but if you do that then you do not get the dungeon completion experience at the end because you haven't "killed" that boss, and it shows as incomplete.

The final boss(es), King Gordok and his trusty sidekick Cho'Rush the Observer, were also fairly tough, but only because it seems that these guys do more damage at times than one can realistically heal through with a single healer spamming non-stop heals. If I wasn't a Paladin with a bubble, I'd have a lot more difficulty with some of these encounters.


After probably 2 hours of wrist-slitting Dire Maul dungeons, I got Zul'Farrak, which was a very pleasant experience. It was pretty much the complete opposite of any Dire Maul dungeon, and I was pulling non-stop from start to finish. Pulls obviously weren't as big as pre-7.3.5, but I was definitely pulling much more than I had in probably any previous dungeon up to this point.

The pleasantness of ZF was short-lived, however, as I was treated with Blackrock Depths: Detention Block afterwards. It wasn't as bad as DM, but the first boss, Interrogator Gerstahn, wiped me several times before I got smart and pulled her back into the first wide open room of that small area. She has an AoE fear that she's not afraid to use... repeatedly.

Then, before it was time to eat dinner and relax, I got Sunken Temple. In all honesty, it wasn't too bad outside of Jammal'an the Prophet, who was an absolute nightmare. Perhaps I just don't have a good strategy, or my 4/5 melee-heavy comp is terrible for this fight, but his mind control is absolutely fatal if you find yourself stuck in the grasp of his Earthgrab Totem. This is a fight where I was luckily able to pull it off after two attempts with the tank and healer still alive at the end, and one DPS hanging on by a thread. This was also one of the fights where I was able to use 2-minute cooldowns a second time after blowing them near the start... Not an exciting fight.


Tomorrow, I'm sure I'll be greeted with BRD: Upper City, LBRS, and perhaps something else before finally being able to move into TBC/Wrath content, although I expect to stick mostly to TBC since those dungeons are, on average, smaller and quicker, but it does depend on how unforgiving the mechanics may be. We'll see. :)

[Pocahuntess]

..Then, before it was time to eat dinner and relax...

Lol! I thought playing wow was relaxing? Thanks for the detailed write up!

[JohnGabriel]

Another update without a /played (because I'm too lazy to log back in), but it's safe to assume that it was several hours for only 10 more levels. I would guess that I'm nearing the 20-hour /played mark, and I just hit level 57 earlier today.

If you still have a team below 60, how about a video request?

Hogger. If he scales up he should put up a good fight.

[MiRai]

If you still have a team below 60, how about a video request?

Hogger. If he scales up he should put up a good fight.
I've been recording a few of the dungeons as I've been leveling, but some were cut short because of repeated wipes or because I thought they'd be long and boring runs (e.g. 40+ minutes of Stratholme live). I also didn't want to sift through a bunch of videos just to find some of the better content, and I also didn't want to saturate any upcoming video(s) with just pre-60 dungeons. I was hoping to get to TBC content today, but I didn't get a chance to play at all because I was working on something. Tomorrow, I should definitely reach TBC content and begin recording more.

[Fat Tire]

This whole change just to time gate unlocking allied races. Player base is currently guinea pigs while they test out leveling frustration in preparation for bfa.

[Pocahuntess]

This whole change just to time gate unlocking allied races. Player base is currently guinea pigs while they test out leveling frustration in preparation for bfa.

This is a very good point! For some reason, I'm not at all excited about allied races as most people seem to be.

[JohnGabriel]

This whole change just to time gate unlocking allied races. Player base is currently guinea pigs while they test out leveling frustration in preparation for bfa.

I had high hopes for this because leveling is really really boring, but it didn't work out like they were implying it would. The goal seemed to be increase the time played metric first and worry about fun second.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Any boss with a timer mechanic is almost unbeatable for me now - because I can't pump out enough damage with only 3 DPS.Then how would normal leveling queues beat those? Seems like it would be obvious to blizzard as almost nobody would be completing dungeons anymore.

[bgarisn]

Player base is currently guinea pigs while they test out leveling frustration in preparation for bfa.

The player base is always the guinea pigs... every expansion has proven so, be it the phasing mechanic all the way up to the world scaling. I don't understand why players (not saying you per se) are surprised by this. How else are they going to know if an idea is good or not without trying it out en masse?

I, personally, am interested to see how this mechanic plays out with a leveling team. The biggest gripe I've hear out of people (not just multi-boxers) is that they can't blow stuff up like they used to. This makes me very happy because people would ignore mechanics and just nuke, which is stupid. Now people have to actually learn and execute the mechanics of a fight, which for me translates into more challenging puzzles to solve as my multi-boxing team goes.

The other thing that I think will happen is that the dungeons will be tuned so that people will be able to level by doing just them again, but I feel that they needed to see what that would take compared to questing. If dungeoning is the most efficient way to level, even casual players can understand that and will do that because "it's what you are supposed to do". I imagine that they will be gathering data so that if you want to level by questing you can do that or if you want to level by dungeoning, you can do that or if you want to do both, you can do that and the time it takes to progress from level to level remains about the same. They built this giant world for us to explore and play in.

Introducing the level scaling has made more of the content last longer, which translates to you, the player, having even more stuff to potentially do and explore. A lot of people think this game is about gear. They are wrong. This game is about stories and experiences with friends and overcoming challenges together as a team (whether you're a part of one or running the whole thing).

Anyway, that's my 2c. See you in game!

[Fat Tire]

The player base is always the guinea pigs... every expansion has proven so, be it the phasing mechanic all the way up to the world scaling. I don't understand why players (not saying you per se) are surprised by this. How else are they going to know if an idea is good or not without trying it out en masse?

I, personally, am interested to see how this mechanic plays out with a leveling team. The biggest gripe I've hear out of people (not just multi-boxers) is that they can't blow stuff up like they used to. This makes me very happy because people would ignore mechanics and just nuke, which is stupid. Now people have to actually learn and execute the mechanics of a fight, which for me translates into more challenging puzzles to solve as my multi-boxing team goes.

The other thing that I think will happen is that the dungeons will be tuned so that people will be able to level by doing just them again, but I feel that they needed to see what that would take compared to questing. If dungeoning is the most efficient way to level, even casual players can understand that and will do that because "it's what you are supposed to do". I imagine that they will be gathering data so that if you want to level by questing you can do that or if you want to level by dungeoning, you can do that or if you want to do both, you can do that and the time it takes to progress from level to level remains about the same. They built this giant world for us to explore and play in.

Introducing the level scaling has made more of the content last longer, which translates to you, the player, having even more stuff to potentially do and explore. A lot of people think this game is about gear. They are wrong. This game is about stories and experiences with friends and overcoming challenges together as a team (whether you're a part of one or running the whole thing).

Anyway, that's my 2c. See you in game!


Well don't you sound like a blizzard representative.

You should quote the entire statement of mine before rebutting since they corroborate. Only reason for this change is to time gate unlocking of allied races. How much time is being tested out now.

People have leveled the same way for like 10 fucking years. All blizzard has done is taking the tedious task of leveling and made it abhorrent. This game is about how I choose to play it and how I choose to have experiences. Anyway, I dont want to dissect your opinion, because everyone is in entitled to theirs, but your opinion is wrong.

[bgarisn]

@FatTire,

I'm sorry I should have broken up my post with a hrule or something. I did not mean to upset or disrespect or anything. I was just commenting on why I thought they were using the player base to test out the 'leveling frustrations' is all. I am sorry if I offended you.

The rest of the post was merely my thoughts on the Leveling in 7.3.5 that was all. Sorry if I sounded like a Blizz fan boy to you. I like their games. I just thought we were discussing 7.3.5.

Sorry again. :-\

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Introducing the level scaling has made more of the content last longer, which translates to you, the player, having even more stuff to potentially do and explore. A lot of people think this game is about gear. They are wrong. This game is about stories and experiences with friends and overcoming challenges together as a team (whether you're a part of one or running the whole thing).
Well, that would be fine if scaling were just a bit longer rather than "no change for the first 60 levels." Some of us liked taking non-standard teams through dungeons after they were easier due to out-leveling them (unless we had full heirlooms which can't be assumed to apply to most of the population I would think). This change basically makes any run people would have previously done through those leveling dungeons (outside of quest completion) undesirable. The only possible positive is that if this means almost anybody can queue for any dungeon at any level then you might have more potential people in the queue. I still think that will be more than offset by people who just forego dungeons completely in favor of just questing or paying people to speed-run them through instances with 110s.

[Fat Tire]

@FatTire,

I'm sorry I should have broken up my post with a hrule or something. I did not mean to upset or disrespect or anything. I was just commenting on why I thought they were using the player base to test out the 'leveling frustrations' is all. I am sorry if I offended you.

The rest of the post was merely my thoughts on the Leveling in 7.3.5 that was all. Sorry if I sounded like a Blizz fan boy to you. I like their games. I just thought we were discussing 7.3.5.

Sorry again. :-\

Wow, the high road. No need to apologize and certainly no need to do it five times in one post. I just disagreed. Your post didnt sound like a fanboy, it read like a blizz dev blue post. I like their games too, I like my time even more so and I dont like seeing it wasted on time gated content.

I once submitted to blizzard that they start all players even new players off at the highest level of the lastest expansion. Using the huge world that is underused to tell the story that way or dynamic content, instead of a leveling experience that has forced alot of us into boosts. They are sorta of beginning to do some of that with the scalability of zones. They are just stuck on this 1-100 leveling bullshit. I can go 1-60 killing boars in westfall and 60-80 killing boars in Hellfire, in fact you can level 1-100 just killing boars in their respective zones. The only thing needed is time.

Most players see leveling as a means to an end. I would do stranglethorn vale at 100 instead of level 30, same story and same quests just scaled, if only they just remove a majority of the tedious time gated experience bullshit. My time is better spent avoiding stv as is at 30. Scale all the zones 100-110 or 110-120 in bfa, they could even remove character level in that case or use another metric. It would keep the entire game world current. I might be rambling or way off base.

[Ritley]

Light at the end of the tunnel perhaps in regards to the changes in 7.3.5 as it pertains to leveling through WoD. I ran a warlock from 90-98 last night with my 110 DK main (just one as I only had one boosted to 90 from an old RaF account) and there were some interesting things going on.

It took me 3.5 hours to get from 90-98 doing a handful of quests in Frostfire Ridge and then doing only bonus objectives while grabbing treasures and resource caches I saw along the way. This was with no rested and no other pot/boosts.

1. Mobs and quests scale but treasures/garrison resource caches/bonus objectives do not. This means if you, for instance, go to Nagrand before level 98 you will not be able to loot any treasures or resource caches and no bonus objective areas will be available to you.
2. Experience from bonus objectives that you can get is slightly better throughout the entirety of WoD because you never outlevel the area you are and so you get more experience from the actual mob kills in each area. Gorgrond quests also give better exp because no matter what level you are when you turn them in they are scaled appropriately (or so it seemed).
3. Mobs scale to 100 for the level 110 character in your group. This is the interesting bit because level 100 mobs are still green to a 110 and so the lowbie characters being rushed get full experience for kills. This was a significant bonus as far as I could tell because some rare named/quest mobs were giving between 5k and 16k experience per kill. I'd imagine that this would enhance dungeon experience in WoD substantially though I did not test that.

Anyway just figured I'd share because WoD was always the most dreaded portion of the leveling experience for me with my teams because of the lack of dungeon quests and also the issues that come with having to visit your instanced garrisons but these changes seemed to make the whole process much better in that particular expansion.

[Tin]

Did get my 81 team to Nagrand (WOD)(fire place timeless Isle) - and mix them up with 2 lv 110 and just killing Tamed Clefthoof, need the Sumptuous Fur amyway for bags. they have almost instans respawn - 1 lv. around 35 min - with a lv. 110 the mobs are 99/102 - just park them at Telaari station, and they get rested xp.

[Kojiiko]

Did get my 81 team to Nagrand (WOD)(fire place timeless Isle) - and mix them up with 2 lv 110 and just killing Tamed Clefthoof, need the Sumptuous Fur amyway for bags. they have almost instans respawn - 1 lv. around 35 min - with a lv. 110 the mobs are 99/102 - just park them at Telaari station, and they get rested xp.


I like that idea cheers ;)

Also in Hellfire ramparts I took my 4 locks and my 110 druid into the instance and were getting half a level per run, so I guess they only nerfed the low instances or this will get nerfed soon?

U should take the advantage of this my locks are now 73 and I will contiune to run Hellfire ramparts till im 80

[JohnGabriel]

In todays patch they removed the legacy buff from old raids.

I am not sure if that effects everyone or just max level toons, but it will be slowed down significantly.

[Tin]

Some very good info about boost/powerleveling:

https://www.reddit.com/r/woweconomy/comments/7uki5q/since_my_first_post_about_dungeon_powerleveling/

[Sservis]

Some very good info about boost/powerleveling:

https://www.reddit.com/r/woweconomy/comments/7uki5q/since_my_first_post_about_dungeon_powerleveling/

That poster doesn't understand efficiency. I say that mostly because it's posted in /r/woweconomy, but the earn rate at the suggested prices is atrocious. Even if we assume you do 10 runs in 30 minutes, at 500 per run, that's only 10,000 g/hr (which is quite a pitiful rate, hardly lucrative as described).

Although it did prompt the thought that they may have changed the group XP split formula. Specifically the character share portion of the formula due to scaling, although they might have adjusted more too. Data is scarce. The below is a digression on how things have historically worked.

Historically going for 2 to 3 equal level members is a 22.22% drop in XP and from 2 to 4 is a 35% drop. These are close to the suggested 25% and 40% rates.

However, the poster is wrong about going to 5, as that's only a 44% drop (from 2). It's not that big of an impact (versus -35% at 4). Total xp earned across all characters goes up though, so you're better off boosting with a full group than doing individual boosts. The table below summarizes the historical situation for equal level groups. It may no longer be the case. Also, adjusting for booster level makes the below only an approximation. It's roughly accurate and the general trend is a high level booster makes adding more have less of an impact than it does in an equal level group. (relative XP for all is down, but impact is more pronounced in smaller groups)



Size
Factor
Relative XP
Total XP
Relative value


1
1.000
100.0




2
1.000
50.0
50.0
44.6


3
1.166
38.9
77.7
69.4


4
1.300
32.5
97.5
87.1


5
1.400
28.0
112.0
100.0



Source: https://wow.gamepedia.com/Mob_experience#Group_Experience for the factors

Note: Yes, if charging people for this and they care about their time (not doing own accounts/Netflix and chill/account sharing/whatever where they don't care), then there is more value in doing only 1 boostee at a time. However 500g/dungeon is well off what should be charged as the opportunity cost for the booster is just too high.

Historically the split formula is also based on relative levels (character share being related to level / total party levels rather than 1 / party size). This should be changed with scaling (not sure if it has) since at level content should be 100%. A 60 and a 79 in a scaled instance are contributing equally, at least that's the theory.

[MiRai]

I now have first-hand experience, in dungeons, with a melee-heavy mixed-class team (PLD/SHM/WAR/WAR/PRI) from levels 15 through 90, since 7.3.5 was released. I began to run into issues with a few of the TBC dungeons in the 60-80 range, but most definitely hit a wall with the Cataclysm dungeons in the 80-90 range. The increased healthpools of elites in dungeons ensure that every trash encounter lasts between 20-40 seconds, and every boss fight lasts between 1-4 minutes. Times and are dependent on class composition, DPS output, and overall multiboxing skill, and therefore may vary greatly.

Non-Heroic Leveling Dungeon List (60-90):


Hellfire Ramparts—Complete
Blood Furnace—Complete
Mana-Tombs—Complete (Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d6u9vYQ4Uw))
Auchenai Crypts—Failed

​Shirrak the Dead Watcher (https://wow.gamepedia.com/Shirrak_the_Dead_Watcher) —highly unforgiving melee-range bite does a lot of damage.


Sethekk Halls—Complete (Video Soon)
The Steamvault—Complete
Shattered Halls—Complete (Video Soon)
Arcatraz—Failed

Zereketh the Unbound (https://wow.gamepedia.com/Zereketh_the_Unbound) —pools on the ground ate me alive; did not give a second attempt.


Magister's Terrace—Failed (Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HINC3TBiQjg))

Kael'thas Sunstrider (https://wow.gamepedia.com/Kael%27thas_Sunstrider_(Magisters%27_Terrace_tacti cs)) —continuous unforgiving melee-range damage while fighting the Phoenix add (which has a ton of health), including the burst damage upon its death, but the Gravity Lapse ability does not properly cause your character to float, and will, sometimes repeatedly, drop you on the floor for additional fall damage (likely a bug).


​Utgarde Keep—Complete

​Notes: Did not attempt any other Wrath dungeons, as I felt they are longer, and more spread out, than most other TBC dungeons.


Blackrock Caverns—Failed

​The trash hits incredibly hard, and I wiped to a four-caster pack of Twilight Zealots without killing a single one of them, but after failing on the second boss, twice (with Bloodlust), I decided that this place was no longer worth my time.


Throne of the Tides—Go fuck yourself

I didn't actually attempt this dungeon, but I thought I'd share my feelings about it.


Halls of Origination—Complete

Not worth the time required to simply move through the dungeon. It's gigantic, and has maybe ten total trash packs. The main objective bosses did not pose much of a problem, but the bonus bosses, the reason I thought this place might be attractive, are very, very difficult.


Lost City of the Tol'vir—Complete

​This dungeon becomes available at level 84, and it is the sole dungeon I run repeatedly from 84-90. The trash isn't all that difficult, the bosses aren't all that difficult, and you can mount.



Now, anywhere that I failed, a ranged team could've probably succeeded, simply because when my melee team was taking massive damage there was just no way that I could heal through it. I also found that doing TBC heroics from levels 72-75 proved to be amazing for filling in the blanks when LFD chose to give me a shitty dungeon. After level 72/73, the heirlooms I was wearing scaled nicely, and allowed me to cut through heroics at a nice quick pace—it felt just like pre-7.3.5 dungeons because they don't scale. Unfortunately, you can only do each heroic once, per day.

Since the scaling update that 7.3.5 brought, every dungeon in the 60-90 range, feels, at the very minimum, like a heroic, if not harder than their heroic counterparts when the dungeons were actually relevant. Needless to say, several dungeons in this level range required that I was paying 140% attention to mechanics or I would wipe, but that wasn't always the case. Some boss mechanics did little to no damage, where as others would do immense amounts of damage, and sometimes trash was more dangerous than a boss—there was no rhyme or reason to this, just frustration.

For anyone simply looking to level, the dungeons beyond level 60 are now very difficult. If you want the challenge, then it's certainly present, but if you're just looking to get to the top level so that you can begin the grind for the expansion you've paid to play, then dungeons are not going to get you there quickly... not by a long shot.

Personally, I did enjoy some of the challenges that these changes brought, but the reward for doing them, even after the latest buff to dungeon experience, is still practically non-existent—unless the only reward you're looking for is self gratitude for doing something difficult. Although, to be fair, I'm sure Mythic+ dungeons are going to present a very similar challenge, provide a very similar dopamine rush for completing them, and, at the same time, give you the chance to be rewarded with something both useful and relevant.

[Ritley]

Lost City should be available at level 83 if you head to it directly. 84 if you are using the LFD tool.

[luxlunae]

Thanks for your thoughts mirai. I'm surprised there wasn't more sethekk rage. I can never remember which are the fear bomb jerks and always wipe in there. I was also amused by the go fuck yourself for throne of tides. Felt that way when it came out, feel that way now!

[SDBoxer]

I would really like to know why Blizzard thought it was a good idea to make obsolete (to most people) dungeons so difficult that many people can't even finish them. I don't have heirlooms; I have the gear that drops for me. It is really hard for me to imagine lots of pickup groups doing these now, or there would be more people complaining about the difficulty. Do you think these 60+ dungeons are even doable for a group in greens and quest blues? Or are they tuned for the assumption that everyone is running twinks in full heirlooms? Or did they just do this so people can't level in dungeons anymore, and are tempted to buy the level boosts?

I cannot fathom why they thought it made sense to make this game so unforgiving for a new player - or, like me, one returning after a 10-year absence.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I would really like to know why Blizzard thought it was a good idea to make obsolete (to most people) dungeons so difficult that many people can't even finish them. I don't have heirlooms; I have the gear that drops for me. It is really hard for me to imagine lots of pickup groups doing these now, or there would be more people complaining about the difficulty. Do you think these 60+ dungeons are even doable for a group in greens and quest blues? Or are they tuned for the assumption that everyone is running twinks in full heirlooms? Or did they just do this so people can't level in dungeons anymore, and are tempted to buy the level boosts?

I cannot fathom why they thought it made sense to make this game so unforgiving for a new player - or, like me, one returning after a 10-year absence.
I'm sure they thought it was a good idea at the time.

[Jabberie]

Because a large part of the player base were in tears over how easy it was and had become an absolute joke tbf.

I'm holding off leveling lower teams right now with the hope there is another pass to come that will reduce the time to kill. I'd be happy to see a 30% reduction in that and I think they would be just right.

Their initial fix for the boosting problem is not so bad though. The end bonus from random LFD is a good chunk but doesn't make up for the time required (when boxing).

I've ran a couple 2 mans last week and they go pretty well as long as the tank doesn't go ape and the healer knows what a heal is. My 5 man box was just creaking under the weight of the trash in most instances.

Timewalking data will help them as well as the same affect is happening there.

[Peri Helion]

Does anyone have any good suggestions for quest leveling 60-80? i currently have two RAFd accounts - grandfathered bonus, with 5 more weeks to go. I have run 4 teams of 2 up to 60 relatively easily through questing (but I would not have wanted to do it without old-RAF).

My goal is to ding 90 on these four duos - grant the levels to make a "5th" for each, and then when/if I pull the trigger on 3 other accounts just transfer them over to get a couple of 5 man teams for LFD from 90-110.

Thanks in advance.

[MiRai]

Do you think these 60+ dungeons are even doable for a group in greens and quest blues? Or are they tuned for the assumption that everyone is running twinks in full heirlooms?
There were several dungeons that I couldn't complete (listed in my prior post (https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/54256-Leveling-in-7-3-5?p=413583&viewfull=1#post413583)) with a 4/5 melee team in heirlooms (+ enchants), but I'm doing one final pass of the dungeons with two different teams (https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/54340-Dungeon-Tactics-Video-Series) to see if I can do them all (as well as record and present what I've done). I fear that, even if I can, some of these dungeons are going to require a lot of work to complete, and like you said, they will be incredibly unforgiving to any new player.


Or did they just do this so people can't level in dungeons anymore, and are tempted to buy the level boosts?
That's what it felt like to begin with, but then they increased the experience rewarded for dungeons, which somewhat nullified that thought, although I'm not exactly sure what they increased experience for (mob, boss, main objective, bonus objective, LFD bonus, etc.).


Because a large part of the player base were in tears over how easy it was and had become an absolute joke tbf.
I completely understood this statement from those who didn't like it, and, on a scale from 1 to 10, pre-7.3.5 dungeons were maybe at a 2 or 3. Unfortunately, now more than some of them are 8 or 9, and sometimes the trash is more lethal than some of the bosses found in the same dungeon. It all feels awkward and unbalanced, and while the dungeons feel as if they're relevant, the reward for completing them is certainly not, and I wish Blizzard would do a second pass on these health numbers rather than just sit in silence as if the first percentage they chose was 100% correct.

Honestly, I feel bad for anyone (solo players and multiboxers alike) without heirlooms (or any appropriate-level rare/epic gear) at this point, because fights are much longer than before and high DPS is desired more than ever, and I could easily see those players being kicked more often for not "pulling their weight" in the party.

[DualZilla]

As for what increased exp wise I think it was just the bonus experience for queuing randoms as that is all I noticed increase after they slashed exp to 1/10 (10%) when a character is in the group that has outleveled the current content

Dungeons get tricky exp wise if not using the random queue...basically if anyone in the group...when entering a dungeon by foot is outside the new level ranges...the penalty kicks in...

so 15-60, 61-79, 80-89, 90-100 groupings are now subject to penalty exp gain....even if the mobs are still green to say a 65 and everyone else is 59 on the 15-60 dungeons...everyone gets penalized

Exp tapers off quickly too each level over max even if the group is all the same level...so max exp may be at lvl 60 and by 61 -65 it drops by 20% each level(not sure exact % offhand but it was quickly not worth the time)

Dungeons were probably too easy before but ahead of forcing everyone to level grind for Heritage Transmog on the new races and the Vanilla servers planned...they went overboard making stuff harder

98-110 goes much faster in legion just doing the 6 Invasions quests every so often grouped with a 110

90-98 went decently in draenor doing rares and chests/treasures as opposed to dungeons on Frostfire and Gorgrond

Some old dungeons feel tougher than legion Mythic now at the correct level (110 mythic + still tougher due to some affixes and bugs) ... even in all heirlooms

Ghostlands still are fastest exp questing in 1-60 but last for only 5-10 levels worth of exp

[Pocahuntess]

It looks like the completion XP, for Ramparts at least, has had a stealth nerf. I'm only getting a fraction of what I was getting last week when I did some grinding with it using LFD.

[Peri Helion]

Confirmed - it looks like based on the stickied thread in General Discussion on the Bliz forums stealth nerf hit Tuesday. I would guess that Stockades and Ramparts had bonus completion xp cut to 20% (i.e reduced by 80%) based on my runs through them. You will get about a 1/6th of a level for a complete run now.

Just for laughs I boosted two grandfathered RAF monks in full heirlooms and enlightenment through stockades and only got about 75% of a level. Two non RAF, non monk, Heirloom guys who were also boosted through stockades only got about 17%.

And the beat”down” goes on!

[SDBoxer]

Prior to this change, people who found the dungeons or overland zones too easy had an option. They could lock their level and run dungeons that were red to them. They could lock their level and run higher level zones full of monsters that were red to them. They had choices.

So did people like me – who play a self-found style without heirlooms, who only play solo or with a friend or two, or who are simply less skilled or have poorer reflexes. If a dungeon was too hard, we could wait a level or two and try again later. We could run dungeons that were green or even grey to us if we wanted to. We had choices.

Now, no one has any choices. Every dungeon you run will be your level, and will be full of mobs your level, but with massive HP pools. If a dungeon is too hard for you to complete, there’s nothing you can do about it. If you gain a few levels, so will that dungeon – and the mobs will be even harder when you return. And if your gear didn’t improve as you leveled, you’ll be even further behind than before.

These changes took away choice – and I don’t understand why Blizzard thought that was a winning idea.

[Ritley]

I think scaling is a great idea. The way it was implemented is what stinks. You no longer out level a questing area before you're even halfway through it and are forced to travel (slowly before you hit 70 might I add) somewhere else which is a very nice and welcome change. The added difficulty in dungeons is... a headscratcher.

You can still out level dungeons and go back to them when they are green/grey it just takes longer to do so now. Dungeon running, even as a solo character queuing with the LFD tool, is painful. If you're lucky enough to get into a group of all heirloomed up toons it can be tolerable but it's still slow even then. Running a full team yourself is quite the chore in most dungeons. Trying to do them without heirlooms has got to be mind numbing and incredibly over-tuned. 1-60 is a tedious slog at best these days.

[Peri Helion]

Watched the Developer Q&A - next to last question was about leveling alts, and if BfA would be more alt friendly.

I was happy they actually took the question, and do agree with much of what he said - Legion and BfA are alt friendly (specifically around account wide unlocks). And his sentiment was that if you are leveling an alt because you have reached a plateau on your main, they dont want to make leveling an alt too easy otherwise you are right back in the same position again.

And he said - and I quote "if you are looking to level your 17th alt I dont really care". Poor choice of words as it denigrates a specific category of players that tend to have greater game longevity - the "completionist" type players that wants to try everything.

I posted on the WoW forums https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20761928053

Just wanted to share with this community if you didnt see the Q&A

[Jabberie]

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/239064071?t=01h10m07s

The actual quote is a little different I have to say......

If the main thing that you are looking for is, I'm just looking for a 17th alt that I can use to farm the horseman mount, that's less of what we're trying to prioritize or facilitate when it comes to alt friendliness. So understandable if THAT part of it can feel worse but..... sorry.

[Ritley]

I think the sentiment is the same either way.

Why does it matter what # alt it is? And why does it matter what I want to use the alt for? Why does that have any bearing on how they approach how alts level and catch up?

If it sucks, it sucks. Doesn't matter if it's the third time through or thirteenth.

They made it better for Legion specifically over time (it was horrendous at first with AK and legendaries), but they made it worse for... the entire rest of the game.

[Jabberie]

I don't believe the sentiment is the same at all. While there is lots of ways to play the game, I guess this is confirmation that at least this type is not going to be made easy. I would imagine the reason is the same as every weekly cap to currency or time gate to a profession, or anything that slows you down, to stop it becoming "mandatory".

[JohnGabriel]

The people who pay with tokens generally do so with an army of alts just doing order hall missions. But they don't mention anything about that, just about using multiple alts to farm mounts.

Maybe they care nothing about money and only time-played.

[Pocahuntess]

The people who pay with tokens generally do so with an army of alts just doing order hall missions. But they don't mention anything about that, just about using multiple alts to farm mounts.

Maybe they care nothing about money and only time-played.

They tend to never mention the thing that they are actually targeting. Like the removal of /follow in BGs for instance.

[omegared]

Thanks for your thoughts mirai. I'm surprised there wasn't more sethekk rage. I can never remember which are the fear bomb jerks and always wipe in there. I was also amused by the go fuck yourself for throne of tides. Felt that way when it came out, feel that way now!

Sethekk is terrible and from now on my "go fuck yourself" dungeon. Tried it here if you want to laugh :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPtfxs9VkUY

[Pocahuntess]

Sethekk is terrible and from now on my "go fuck yourself" dungeon. Tried it here if you want to laugh :)


Looks like you have some tweaking to do with your setup. Your heal setup needs work and your toons seem to not be following when you need them to.

I giggled! :p

[Jabberie]

Game Mechanics are so hot right now. :)

[omegared]

Looks like you have some tweaking to do with your setup. Your heal setup needs work and your toons seem to not be following when you need them to.

I giggled! :p

Glad you enjoyed watching :)

My healing is working ok for the most. Could be improved though i agree. But in this dungeon its not very good with all the fears and hexes :p

My movement is terrible, but i dont know how to fix this. My chars stop following me once they are in combat and only follow when i use interact with target.
I dont have these problems with my melee teams.