Leveling in 7.3.5

[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.

[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]

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

[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

[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

[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.

[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.

[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.