Yay Wold of Warcraft!!

[ScytheRexx]

Thanks Sytherexx. I played for about an hour and a half last night. I had forgotten some things, but mostly I noticed the UI has changed a lot in the last year. I made a new character just to reorient. Now there seems to be tips for newbies. Also, they seemed to have dumbed down the starting human quests. In particular, it seems like the Defias gang is no longer aggro, which makes those quests a little lamer than they already were. I do like the new quest management elements to the UI.

Yes they did make the early quests a lot easier. It was part of an initiative to capture lowbies, since they learned many new players were leaving before they even reached level 10. I have yet to experience how easy, since I have not played a lowbie in ages.

I want to get back to my highest character, but the talents were all reset. Is it still 1000G to dual spec? I want to try restoration, but it's just so much easier to solo as enhancement.

Yes, Duel Spec is still 1000g. I admit I wish they just lowered the price, since I think allowing people to quest and run dungeons learning multiple roles would be better then locking them to a single one, but Blizzard disagrees. hwell:

If you want a lesson in getting your rear ganked every five minutes, you can join me on my server.

 

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I went looking for advice on Resto Shamans (Shamen?) and I remembered one thing I hated about the WoW community was this "There's only one way to do things" attitude. Forums and blogs are full of comments like "u suck that's no way to play shammie" or something. For instance, I see all this advice about enhancement shamans that says you shouldn't be casting if you're enhancement. What? Why? What's the point of being a shaman if you're not? I know--mana is low and all that, but please. Let loose with some lightning a couple of times, and your dude's almost dead by the time he gets to you. Then slice and dice and shock the casters. Works for me with little mana downtime. I'm not sure what people are talking about. Mana regen is so fast that by the time you're on to the next clump, you're back up to good levels. Sometimes with the advice I see, I wonder if people are playing the same game.

Then you get the theorycraft crowd which totally sucks all the fun out of the game by backengineering the math. I mean the whole point of RP was to hide that, right?

 

[ScytheRexx]

Sometimes with the advice I see, I wonder if people are playing the same game.

Then you get the theorycraft crowd which totally sucks all the fun out of the game by backengineering the math. I mean the whole point of RP was to hide that, right?

I know how you feel. The issue is that most guides are not created for the newbie to just play, but are designed for the people at level-cap that want to raid the hardest content and need to squeeze as much out of their numbers as possible to make the fights as smooth as possible. You are fine just casting spells as enhancement while leveling, or doing dungeons, but once you enter the 10/25 man raids, the whole game shifts a bit in outlook and can get a bit serious. This also applies a bit to PVP.

This is one of the reasons that I have stopped raiding for the time being. With Cataclysm coming soon I just don't feel like I am going to need to worry about all the shiny gear, and the gear gap in the end game has increased so much that some people are a little more anal about taking you unless you are up to "Gearscore" standards, an addon I despise. I just find it more fun to log on, run a heroic or level a new character with friends.

There is not much advice I can give, that is just part of the community and I can't really stop them from taking the game so seriously. All I can say is find a good guild, and play how YOU feel like it, you don't really need a guide unless you are trying to power through with everything optimal at all times, and you don't really have to think about that till you reach the cap.

 

[CynicismKills]

They're describing the way you need to play to pump out competitive DPS in a raid setting. You don't have to play that way if you don't plan to raid. If you do, however, you won't get a spot with a decent raid guild unless you're playing to the class' fullest potential.

 

[SpecialKO]

Agreed with scythe.

Stay the hell away from the theorycrafting crowd while you're leveling/exploring because it will only marginally help you, and it takes forever to parse through their stuff.

The nice thing about enhancement shammies is that, as you're leveling/exploring, there's very little in the way of "bad" gear because shammies can get attack power bonuses from almost every stat you're likely to see on an item. So whether it's healing/spelldmg/melee leather/mail, it really doesn't matter for a long time.

Leveling as resto, you'll want to stick a little more closely to healing/spelldmg gear just because a huge mana pool and big spell hits make resto practically unkillable while soloing, but again, you don't need to be super fussy about it at all.

 

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They're describing the way you need to play to pump out competitive DPS in a raid setting. You don't have to play that way if you don't plan to raid. If you do, however, you won't get a spot with a decent raid guild unless you're playing to the class' fullest potential.

See, I have a problem with that. What's the point of me? Might as well replace me with a robot of some sort that just hits the sequence of keys in the predetermined "fullest potential" order. I mean, I may get more dps out in my way than in the recipe way. In fact, that's how I developed my way in the first place. If that really is the attitude, I probably won't care much for raiding anyway. Reminds me of playground teams where they just picked people to fill out the team, but then the "leaders" played the way they wanted directing the others to do very specific thing.

 

[SpecialKO]

They're describing the way you need to play to pump out competitive DPS in a raid setting. You don't have to play that way if you don't plan to raid. If you do, however, you won't get a spot with a decent raid guild unless you're playing to the class' fullest potential.

See, I have a problem with that. What's the point of me? Might as well replace me with a robot of some sort that just hits the sequence of keys in the predetermined "fullest potential" order. I mean, I may get more dps out in my way than in the recipe way. In fact, that's how I developed my way in the first place. If that really is the attitude, I probably won't care much for raiding anyway. Reminds me of playground teams where they just picked people to fill out the team, but then the "leaders" played the way they wanted directing the others to do very specific thing.[/QUOTE]

It depends on who you play with. My guildies (many of whom are RL friends) really don't give a shit how you do anything on a raid as long as you do it well.

Also, the best players would tell you that fixed key rotations aren't actually the best way to play, anyways. Too inflexible