Cata is boring so far...

I got my highest team to 80 and haded off to hyjal all excited to try the new content. What i like is the quests have some story to them. Thats about all i like.

What i dont like:
Linear.
Cannot skip collection quests.
Zones seem devoid of people - is this because of phasing, where people may be there but we cant see each other due to being at different points in the quest chain?

I really really enjoy my highest team. Thats why its the highest one. I put it together at 60, just like all the others i have. The toons have great synergy and variety. But i had to force myself to get through all those collection quests. Sometimes they were so irritating i logged out before completing themx5 because i couldnt force myself to go on anymore at that time - that is not a good sign!! Then id have to force myself to pick it up again because i knew a painful collection quest was waiting.

I tried the first cata instance at 81 and got stomped by the first boss. His earthquake aoe would 1shot half my team, including the priest. I finished hyjal at 82. Deepholm is the next zone for me and the teams hearth is set to the starting spot. I may try the first cata dungeon again since i got like 10k more health on each toon just by going from 81-82.

So these be my questions three:

1. Are all the cata zones similar to hyjal in the way they progress (linear and full of get 10 thingy quests)?
2. Is phasing making the zone seem devoid of other people beyond the inn?
3. Are there nonprofession, nongathering dailies like those in grizzly hills wherein assuming i get so fed up with gathering and phasing i cant stand it anymore that i can just log into the team, do some dailies and switch to another team until the next day and get to 85 that way?

Yes, i know number three isnt the way to play the game in an ideal situation. I will probably end up playing through on my first team. But so far i find cata worse than wotlk in terms of leveling - at least there i could SKIP the gathering quests.

zones are empty because everyone has already leveled. People either hang out at either tol barad or stormwind/org.

And yes, i dislike the linear aspect of the quests too.

Once you accept the fact that you have to do all the quests, it's not too bad. It only took me like 2 days to get my mage team from 80 - 85.

With regards to the title, you haven't even reach endgame and you're judging the whole expansion, in my opinion there is more stuff to do than has ever been for a boxer at level cap.

Edit: I do see your point however, I was massively pissed at collection quests when levelling my pve druids team... getting ganked a lot didn't help either. Maybe the fact that the zones are empty is more of a blessing.

The amount of collection quests is annoying, I certainly agree, but it was really rough when you had to compete against everyone else at release. I imagine it would be far less annoying now with no competition.

There's nothing wrong with the title. Katsurahama thinks it's boring so far and a lot of people agreed with that assessment based on the 15 page thread that was running here. I was bored with the quests about halfway through Vahshir and by the time I got to Uldum I wanted to puke, or cry, or set someone on fire.

IMO, the dungeons weren't any better. It was way too much of a throwback to Vanillia where you spent weeks farming gear in Scholo so you could make start Blackrock. Only this time, you have to do it twice...once through the normal dungeons, then you get to do it again through heroics.

I actually liked Vashj'ir with the Druid team.
Aquatic Form is instant, and equivalent to the Sea Horse thing you get.
There was a better story in Vashj'ir then Hyjal.

The way the expansion is set up, you can basically skip a single zone.

The quests, with lots of collections, are linear.
You cannot skip much within a zone... there were a few.
Basically kill some stuff, get some stuff, kill a big bad guy in the area... send you on to help my friend.
Repeat.
Pretty crappy quest implementation.

But on the plus side, 80th to 85th is like two days of playing hard.
It is way faster than any five level spread of WotLK was (although that's 30% faster now).



You could do the Shadow Vault dailies too.
At 80th, they get you about a third of the way into 81st.
So three or four days... of one hour worth of dailies... should get you to 81st.
Beyond that, they would be painful to go to 82nd or 83rd, because of the steep experience per level curve.
But that's definitely an option.

You said the first boss in BRC oneshot you. You're supposed to kill the chains he spawns and run away. Now you can give it a try again :)

I did a zone until I leveled, moved onto next.. all the way to 85. Never finished the quests in a particular area except in in deepholm. I did some of hyjal then went and leveled in teh water area until i hit 81? and moved on. Seemed quicker and more interesting just to move on to next zones as soon as one could do them. (get quests) Linear was damn annoying at times. I remember a couple times i decided not to do a particular quest that was needed for the chain quest... and then wondering why i couldn't find anymore quests... eventually going back and doing that one and it opening up heaps more. /facepalm

I did the first instance a fair bit to level too until it was quicker just to do quests. Didn't have much luck finishing any other instances and didn't think the time spent to learn to do them in avg gear was worth it.

The zones were FULL of people when it drop'd. now there is no reason to go to these zones unless farming herbs\minerals.

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Originally Posted by Bollwerk

The amount of collection quests is annoying, I certainly agree, but it was really rough when you had to compete against everyone else at release. I imagine it would be far less annoying now with no competition.

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My experience 81-85 was the opposite: with a bajillion people running the quests, mob respawns were stupidly fast, so I could basically sit in one spot and kill as fast as I could loot. I'm exaggerating slightly for emphasis but not much. As an example, I capped my skinning sitting at that sunken boat in Vash'jir where all the snakes spawned. I couldn't skin them fast enough to keep the floating bodies clear.

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Originally Posted by Kicksome

Once you accept the fact that you have to do all the quests, it's not too bad. It only took me like 2 days to get my mage team from 80 - 85.

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True story. What i did with my chars and teams is:
80->82 in Hyjal. Once you did all the quest there you have 1/4 exp of level 83.
Skip Vasj'Jir water zone (i hate it)
82-83.75% Deepholme
83.75%->84 Uldum (quests suck here, just do the easy ones untill you get level 84.
84-85 Go to Highland 84-85 zone as soon as you level up and do all the quests here. Most collection quests here drop for the whole party, and you have a nice deck of level 84 greens/blues once you get 85. I also found an epic robe that sold for 8.5k here last time i leveled my 4 dk's.

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Originally Posted by Negativ1337

True story. What i did with my chars and teams is:
80->82 in Hyjal. Once you did all the quest there you have 1/4 exp of level 83.
Skip Vasj'Jir water zone (i hate it)
82-83.75% Deepholme
83.75%->84 Uldum (quests suck here, just do the easy ones untill you get level 84.
84-85 Go to Highland 84-85 zone as soon as you level up and do all the quests here. Most collection quests here drop for the whole party, and you have a nice deck of level 84 greens/blues once you get 85. I also found an epic robe that sold for 8.5k here last time i leveled my 4 dk's.

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I actually skipped Vasj'Jir too - on all 3 of the groups I leveled up. Although I did go back and get the seahorse at level 85.

My druids, with instant Aquatic Form, did Vashj'ir.
The story is good, and it wasn't a pain for them.

My mixed team, for heroics...
Did not like Vashj'ir, and left it less than a third done for Hyjal.
Of course they've not started Hyjal, as the DK's leveled second.

It's true that Vah'jir quests are more interesting but I found myself so uncomfortable with that aquatic environment that I quickly moved to Hyjal :p

About phasing, it can really be annoying at times, I've even seen quests were each toon was in her/his own phase, for example killing the same elite mob at the same time. Sometimes only one of them would get the credit in the end so I had to repeat the quest again. This mostly happened in Uldum and twilight highland. What encouraged me to continue questing even after I reached max level were these appealing reputation and blue quests rewards.

Dunno about Twilight highlands, its good xp and all, but those collectorquests made me whant to kill my self when i was leveling my shamans :P

Also a question, atm im leveling my Dk team and will be gone for a week when i hit 81-82 so when i get home i will have pritty much full rested to 85. What approace should i take to leveling then? Just keep normal questing or is instances / grindspot better?

Thoughts?

I had no rested at all.
And was 80th.

Did Vashj'ir with the Druids.
Ended up 81.92, so almost 82nd.
That was a single session of play, no stopping.

If you have any amount of rested...
Either of Hyjal/Vashj'ir will get you to 82nd.
Deepholme will get you to 83rd, unless you do the other 80-82 zone.
Uldum will get you to 84th (or almost 85th, if you did both 80-82 zones).
Twilight will ding you to 85th at some point.

If you have any PvP aspirations...
Consider capping your honor, I believe that's 5,000 honor.
Before 85th.
That will get you a few pieces of the PvP gear.
Being 5x 83's or 84's, will let you dominate the bracket.
A fresh set of 85's, is more than decent because of having five.
But leveling in the PvP is a break and change of pace; and leaves you more quests to do a max level for gold too.

Yeh gues so, does my rested XP effect the XP gain i get inside Bgs? And its 4000 honor thats the cap afaik.

I didnt mind levelling in cata on my main Hunter, but I dont box that toon, its a pure raid toon, we got to 9/12 fast and booted out a troublesomeo druid we took into our guild, and his mates left with him which was a good thing but being on a smaller pop realm, recruiting any form of skilled raiders isnt easy so only part time raiding and pisses me off to no end, as I refuse to leave my lvl 11 guild my fiance and I working hard on atm. so wish blzz would allow us to transfer our guilds with the perks etc.

Agree i loathe gathering quests as boxing my 5 team through cata, its a pain, and you cannot skip most quests and need to do alot of damn deepholm too get the enchants /sigh

dungeon spamming has helped to get away from some questing.
I skipped water zone, cannot stand it.

My team is nearly lvl 83 actually priest is 83, 4 mages are 81 and 82, the lvl varies because alot of the time I am using 3 mages and a priest in a dingeon and 1 misses out lol.

Still have some RAF left and slowly deciding on the 2nd team but its not something i am to keen on to go through outlands, northrend again and then cata.

But burning raf too make x amount of toons is the plan as they can slowly level there after and I would deeply regret it later on if I didnt use RAF 1-60 advantage.


Cata is more interesting to me then wotlk ever was...

I BGed alot through 71-80, was awesome with 4 arc mages at lvl 77 with full cata greens... loads hps, mass dmg x 4 was GG so easily in WSG only just hit 80 the other day.

Definitely worth keep cata greens 77-79 if u plan too lvl in a BG weekend on a new team too plan ahead, or sell them, on my realm they go for 160-260g each lol

Vashj'ir is NOT THAT BAD!

It takes few minutes to adapt to water world, but after that it really isn't that bad. If your tank doesn't have revered @ Earthen Ring, you really should consider doing the quests.

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Originally Posted by Nolife

Vashj'ir is NOT THAT BAD!

It takes few minutes to adapt to water world, but after that it really isn't that bad. If your tank doesn't have revered @ Earthen Ring, you really should consider doing the quests.

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It's personal preference. I didn't find it too terrible the first trip through but I'll be damned if I ever go back.

I did Vashj'ir on my pally solo, and just that was enough to deter me from taking my shammy team anywhere near it.

I leveled a lot in eots during it's CTA weekend. with full wrathful I absolutley dominated people in their cata greens. Easily 90% win ratio and quick 3 base cap games, 10 mins average.

Basically I did 80-82 hyjal, spent the next 2 levels bging and in deepholm. 84-85 some quests in twilight highlands and bging.

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Originally Posted by Nolife

Vashj'ir is NOT THAT BAD!
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Nope, it is worse. If only I could get the five hours of my life back from questing in there before I gave up and went to Deepholm.

I just finished the quest chain in deepholm on my 4 team, so I can get access to the tabard for the enchant, it wasnt as bad as I thought, first time was alright because it was new, 2nd time was painful because I just wanted to get it over with, this time went faster probably cause of the x4 doing it lol and actually wasnt as bad as I thought it will be... Now im in Uldum to hit 84 so I can do that stupid pre-quest to open twilight highlands and finish there too 85.

I have some good friends in the no.1 guild on my realm who are upto 5/12 heroic mode and have alot of valor they have no use for anymore too sell me cheap BOE boots for my toons, so thats a bonus :)

Infact we raid my fiance, my daughter and myself with 1-2 of their members on tehir alts and us on mains, we didnt want too join their guild so some of them double raid with us and rest we pug fill which last week didnt go so well, damn it :(

Good thing was removing the need to discover the dungeon before you can queue for it.

Im in deepholm now. 82 is going much slower than 80 and 81. There arent too many painful collection quests so far but there is a lot of flying back and forth which eats up a lot of time, it seems. Im using the Zygor guide so im definitely not being inefficient.

There was some collection quest that required things whih dropped from gray blobs. I know i easily killed over a hundred of the things. They were spread out and had a drop rate under 20%. i finally used my demon lock to run around tagging them with dots and then hellfired packs of them down. It was taking forever killing them one at a time and they were too far apart for the paladin to grab more than two at a time. That quest sucked but otherwise it hasnt been too bad in deepholm. Just relatively slow.

I've come into Cata quite late, just finished Vashj'ir on my toons an am now working my way through Hyjal, but overall I'm enjoying it so far.

Vashj'ir really forces you to think in 3 dimensions as there is lot more vertical movement, whereas Hyjal is similar to the WoW we all know, i.e ground based questing.

The storyline in Vashj'ir was interesting (i quite liked the visions of the past quests), but a bit slow in parts, and sometimes repetitive (oh look, another cave!). I think a better idea would have been to have the submarine as a base of operations in the zone, similar to the flying ships in Icecrown...

Compared to Hyjal where you are shown Ragnoros straight out of the gate, which kind of lends a sense of urgency to questing in the zone, and it just kind of feels...well, more epic.

The collection quests have been ok for me so far, the only one I really hated was one in Hyjal where you had to click on very small, fast moving animals - 10 for each toon. Pretty sure I came away from that one with a bad case of RSI. :p

Just my 0.02 worth.

Cheers,
S.

You can use IWT on the scurrying squirrels in hyjal and anywhere between 2-4 of the five toons will be able to loot the same one.