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

[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.