This time we went deeper than before: the bosses were lvl 24, we were lvl 20. One of the quests were not even available for us at lvl 20, we were so below instance level. Granted, on lvl 20, our damage increase was huge compared to 19, without serious gear changes. You could read about mine.
The jump for my GF's hunter was larger. She got dual wield and aspect of the viper. I don't know if other hunters do that on raids, but she figured out something for herself, back when she was raiding: Viper regenerates mana based on attacks and maximum mana. So she uses macro:
/equipslot 16 casterdagger
/equipslot 17 casterdagger2
/cast Aspect of the Viper
"Casterdagger" is a high intellect weapon with +30 int enchant. On low level this has huge effect, as two weapons with +22 intellect practically double her mana pool, therefore give a +100% bonus on the passive mana regen effect.
She also made a macro for tanking an extra monster.
/equip bigaxe
/cast Aspect of the monkey
The main problem for us was low hit, especially on Mezzlos. We had to watch the aggro meter as a missed Torment means a 4 lvl higher boss on us. Yet we made it without wipe, so I assume we can go for larger level difference. The bosses also hit much harder, so I had to cast health funnel more.
The quest boss, Kelris casts sleep and shadowbolts, so it was a bit chaotic, more kited than tanked, but downed
Like all tank&spank bosses, Aku'mai was a no-brainer, though he wasn't a pushover, as I had to heal more than DPS:
I don't really know how is it possible. Were these instances always so easy? I remember our noobish adventures two years ago and they were not so easy. Granted we can use all abilities now. We have better gear. However I think majority of the difference was done by subsequent buffing of the player characters and nerfing the monsters. Maybe it was intentional to support group play. I mean the fastest way to level is without doubt chain-instancing, doing only instance quests. With all the XP bounses you can get to 60 by doing the instances one by one.
Note: I'll be busy with the blue raiding, so no more soloes for the time being.
The jump for my GF's hunter was larger. She got dual wield and aspect of the viper. I don't know if other hunters do that on raids, but she figured out something for herself, back when she was raiding: Viper regenerates mana based on attacks and maximum mana. So she uses macro:
/equipslot 16 casterdagger
/equipslot 17 casterdagger2
/cast Aspect of the Viper
"Casterdagger" is a high intellect weapon with +30 int enchant. On low level this has huge effect, as two weapons with +22 intellect practically double her mana pool, therefore give a +100% bonus on the passive mana regen effect.
She also made a macro for tanking an extra monster.
/equip bigaxe
/cast Aspect of the monkey
The main problem for us was low hit, especially on Mezzlos. We had to watch the aggro meter as a missed Torment means a 4 lvl higher boss on us. Yet we made it without wipe, so I assume we can go for larger level difference. The bosses also hit much harder, so I had to cast health funnel more.
The quest boss, Kelris casts sleep and shadowbolts, so it was a bit chaotic, more kited than tanked, but downed
Like all tank&spank bosses, Aku'mai was a no-brainer, though he wasn't a pushover, as I had to heal more than DPS:
I don't really know how is it possible. Were these instances always so easy? I remember our noobish adventures two years ago and they were not so easy. Granted we can use all abilities now. We have better gear. However I think majority of the difference was done by subsequent buffing of the player characters and nerfing the monsters. Maybe it was intentional to support group play. I mean the fastest way to level is without doubt chain-instancing, doing only instance quests. With all the XP bounses you can get to 60 by doing the instances one by one.
Note: I'll be busy with the blue raiding, so no more soloes for the time being.
36 comments:
I don't really know how is it possible. Were these instances always so easy?
Well, there was the 30% nerf in the pre-Wrath patch, but I don't know whether it applied only to raid bosses or not. At the same time, Blizzard also rebalanced hybrids to be at the same level as "pure" classes when they were appropriately specced. That change could have extended to warlock and hunter pets, making the knowledgeable hunter-warlock combo be an equivalent of four average newbie players who are still learning how to play their classes. It all adds up. Back when I was playing my warlock alt, I remember being amazed at being able to survive situations that would have meant certain death to many of my first characters.
A few things make this look easier:
Class: With a warlock or hunter it's easier to solo anything then for example a warrior or rogue.
Skill: You have probably learned a lot about your class. If I look at my own first characters they still make me laugh sometimes about the stupid things I did. Shadow dmg on a holy priest? I did it. You know what spells to use and you know that you should watch your aggro. You even use addons now to manage stuff you may not even have know about back then.
Retards: From what I remember low level instances always went wrong because there were retards who didn't understand what they were doing. (healer OOM, someone pulls and screams for heals while everyone was already low) If you are with two skilled players you don't have problems with that. You know you're on some challenge and you take the time for it, something that retards will never do.
Not to mention the subsequent huge buffs to talent trees brought by TBC and Wotlk.
Remember when you had to spend 5 points in the Affliction tree just to have Corruption instant. If you dont, maybe its a good idea to check out the original talent trees and see how far we are now in comparison with say, vanilla
Very smart hunter macros! Kiss!
Were these instances always so easy?
As already posted by Hirvox; something about a 30% nerf.
Gear: First time you did this, you would not have been wearing the gear you did, you would be mostly in greens. No +15 agility enchants for your hunter (x2) and no +15 SP enchants or heriloom gear.
Yes it takes some skill and experience to down a boss like this at your level. But you are both twinks.
If you want to make a point about how skillful you are, why do you not attempt these in the worst gear possible? In grey, or starting gear. By twinking yourselves out like you have, you are just confirming what you often deny, that gear has anything to do with it...
Were these instances always so easy?
I don't think the lower-level instances have been nerfed massively, it's probably a mix of having more experience and characters being more powerful. The first time you went into an instance in WoW, you probably didn't even have a single blue yet, so your output and survivability were much lower, plus you didn't really know what was happening. Also, changed talent trees and new abilities make a big difference. Corruption's cast time was already mentioned, but I also remember what it was like to level a hunter before aspect of the viper even existed. I spent most of my time auto-shooting simply because using my specials meant having to sit down and drink after every other mob, which cost more time than simply killing them a bit more slowly.
Yes, low level characters WERE buffed. Anyone remembers when aspect of the viper and water shield were level 62?
The gear was buffed as well, I haven't played in vanilla, but my friend who did swears Deadmines did not drop blues, and most items had odd, half-wasted stats.
Also no one had +30 spellpower enchant from level one on, these enchants were end-game, required AQ drops or exalted reputations and were out of scope of a lowbie.
You may not believe these matter, but I remember when some seasonal event gave +20 spellpower or so cookies (ones that expire in few days) and suddenly my level 20 Priest became a killing machine!
And yes, low level PUGs usually suffer from impatient jerks who will pull this room and two next, train the mobs yelling "FFS HEAL!!!" and wipe the group.
You have patience and self-awareness, and you don't invite M&S to the group.
Yes, patience is a virtue, so /salute to you.
The point in merely that one would expect a twinked out character to have a much easier time of it in low level dungeons. They are designed for 5 at level newbies with appropriate class balance to be able to finish if they are not complete idiots.
That means no omen, no recount, limited or no macro usage beyond keybinding often used abilities, moderate class understanding, no high-end kiting skills, no BoA gear, or bought blues.
On knowledge -- remember how long it takes to level to 20 if you don't stop your xp. We're talking about people with maybe 30-40 hours of play experience total.
Early dungeons *should* be remarkably easy for groups of good players rerolling alts.
The suprising thing is how many people with mains can't finish a freaking deadmines because they can't be bothered to stop and think, and do things that are far worse than pulling too little dps or having a stupid rotation, because it's loldeadmineslol.
It's easier to carry people at 80 (assuming you aren't in hard modes or uld+ content).
@Gnome: "no bought blues"? Why there are BoE blues in the game if they are not meant to be bought and used?
Omen is not needed as a simple threat meter is now part of the UI. (granted it's a new change)
I understand that early dungeons should be easy. But HOW easy? I mean if we define 100% as "5 in level players must fully know their characters, have perfect gear and make no mistakes", then how much is "easy"?
We were 2 and 4 levels deeper. That's 30% at best. And it was rather long than hard. How low is the barn fence?
I believe that three things make this easier than in vanilla which I remember to be far harder:
1. Twink Gear. +2 spell power here, +12 here, +30 here... it's a hell of a difference. My shadowbolts double in damage with twink spell power at level 30. At level 20 they were almost 3x normal damage.
2. Glyphs
3. New talents and spec arrangements - this is the biggest thing that helps because you have abilities that no one else had at this level. Your hunter should be oom and worthless as well as your corruption taking 5 talent points. Let's not even begin about pet talent trees/customization/abilities which are awesome now.
There that's a very fair list I believe. These are why people are saying well that's cool you did that and I'm gonna let you finish BUT...
The barn fence is more like a step. I've been levelling alts in the low instances and finding them far easier than I remembered.
I've been tanking instances on my 30-something warrior and the main complaint I get from healers is that they're bored and want me to pull more than one group at a time.
I did a 3 man BRD the other day on my resto shammy. One person left and another DC'd after the arena so the 3 of us continued on. 52 shammy, 51 lock and 54 prot pala and we cleared the whole instance. On the last bosses most of the locks spells were being resisted, the pala used judgement of wisdom and we all melee'd and slowly wore them down. There's no way we could have done that in vanilla wow.
Chain instancing is far from fast...
If you know quests(area's) or using a leveling guide you will level faster (20-30%). As an examaple i did Ramparts in 60-62 braket (in BOAs, only /played not afking) and i did it in 4 hour/lvl, while questing(Hellfire,solo) got me in 3 hour/lvl.
Although i must say that with random dungeon system you almost dont loose time for assembling a group, so you even can do instances like Maraudon (yeah just did it on my warr; i havnt been there for 3 years -_-)
It's not surprising. If instances weren't 're-calibrated' the way solo outdoors leveling was, then no one would do instances at low levels. As it is, on many servers I bet that you're unlikely to get a full instance group before you reach Outland, and possibly not until Northrend.
Blizzard is keen on making leveling faster and faster as they raise the level cap. I'm curious how they'll adjust the old dungeons when Cataclysm rolls around. Will they make them tougher on the assumption that more players will re-roll to see the changes to the old world? Will they make them easier in order to continue the pattern of making leveling faster as more levels are added?
I think the Gevlon's purpose of soloing or duoling is to prove you can get challenge or fun in the old content, using all the tools the game makes available (boa, boe, bou, etc.), by creating your own challenge.
It's different from his purpose of making an undergeared raid: there, he wants to prove it's the skill and not the gear what really makes the difference in raid content.
Two different forms of game, two different purposes.
@Markco: get back to your goldselling business and leave the game to who can play it.
Mobs and bosses were nerfed, talents, glyphs, and abilities were improved.
I started three manning instances with the wife and a friend in pre-BC. Burning Crusader brought a lot of changes but did not change the difficulty level significantly in my opionion.
WoW 3.0 changed all that. Azeroth and Burning Crusade dungeons became much easier to 3-man.
One feature missing from the LFG tool is the ability to choose your maximum party size. I ran a few Azeroth and Burning Crusade dungeons with full groups and frankly, they were trivial and boring.
Gevlon I'm a gladiator, you're a tool. You asked why it was so easy to beat low level instances and I told you.
Markco: you fell for "gevion" the troll. I usually hate such annoying beings but now he made me honestly laugh!
"I don't really know how is it possible. Were these instances always so easy?"
I answered your question and you seemed to not like it. It's not really trolling if you call it out and want credit for it later.
Calling me a gold seller when I clearly sell a gold guide looked pretty M&S to me as well.
We can discuss trolling semantics later I guess. You got me Gevlon, oh boy did you get me good.
Excuse me while I cash the check from all the publicity you gave me a few weeks ago.
@Marko I don;t know why you even try. Gevlon lives in a Yurtle the Turtle world where he is king and master of all he sees.
Never mind that soloing an instance that has nothing of relevance in it is useless. Never mind that he ignores the facts people put in front of him. And never mind that he cannot achieve anything without paying for it. In his mind he is lord of us all and we are "socials" despite his little thing he has going here that is about the equal of getting all the non-combat pets in the game.
Oh and the BOE blues thing. When you were level 24 how much gold did you have? The first time through? The vast majority of people could not afford those BOE blues and enchants. So you were probably far less geared than you think. If you want to do a real experiment start a character from 1 and buy nothing. Go try and solo this stuff with just what you get from quests and what you can afford. No gold from your main, no playing the AH. Just what you get as part of leveling.
I feel like all the content pre-80 is just more fun doing with less then required persons, one thing the dungeon-finder isn't really helpful for unfortunately. It is not possible to search for a 2-man or 3-man group, you have to wait for a full group to start. Just a small disliking for my part since I love to do dungeons with just a few people. Much respect for pulling this off, some might say it is 'easy' but I disagree, do it with proof of even worse level/gear and then you can say it is easy. Never just assume something is easy because someone made it look easy.
Keep up the good work!
Greetings Boukev of Ctrl Alt Exile.
Oh that's awesome they are too different people. I laughed so hard when I clicked the blogger information for 'gevion.'
I'm going to buy that guy a beer first chance I get :D
@Markco
That was not Gevlon who flamed you but rather someone impersonating him. Click on the profile link to see that it is a different profile.
The level of difficulty one experiences in a dungeon is very relative to the player's experience with the game and the dungeon. On my first character in vanilla WoW, deadmines was quite hard to do in a PuG. Two alts later in an experienced guild group it was a breeze even though the actual content did not change.
Heck, I soloed most of Gnomeragan on my hunter a couple months after release and he was only about 5-6 levels higher than what the instance level is.
I guess I really dont understand what these posts are proving. I thought the early dungeons are for new players who are learning their characters to learn to group with other types of class and learn how to play as a team. Oh dear, that sounds social. Whatever was Blizzard thinking.
Once you've played this game a while, you should have the knowledge and skills to master the early level instances.
I would be more suprised if you didnt completed them rather than impressed you did.
Confused and bemused on the internet
@Markco: We already know that you think you're amazing because you're a Gladiator. You don't have to keep telling us. Given how low Arena participation is compared to the number of people playing the game, I'm guessing the majority of the people here just don't care. Good list, though.
@Gevlon: As an 80 hunter, I can tell you I don't have special caster weapons for Viper, and I'm guessing most other hunters don't either. Intellect enchants would account for proportionally less of your mana pool than at 20, and I haven't seen any hunter melee weapons that have Int on them at 80. You'd have to use caster weapons to give your mana pool a serious boost, but then your damage goes down, so you've boosted your passive regen at the expense of your active regen. I don't know whether the passive boost would be greater than the active loss. If it is, then you're going to spend less time in Viper, but your damage will be even lower while you're in it, so it's probably a wash. At 20, though, it sounds like a great idea.
Few things that nobody mentioned... the last few bosses in BFD used to be a higher level. The hydra was 28 or 29 I believe and the guy before was 27.
I don't remember at what point it was exactly but blizzard reduced the levels of the bosses in bfd and uldaman to match the beginning of the instance. So bfd used to be from lvl 21 to 29 and uld was 37 to 50. They streamlined these making it much easier to run through.
Yes the 30% nerf has something to do with it as well as more powerful talents. Also aspect of the viper wasn't available at that low of a level and I don't think voidwalkers had the scaling that they do now.
The biggest difference with nastalgia though is that the bosses were a higher level. I soloed it on my first character at level 30 about 2 months after BC came out. The hydra boss hit brutally hard back then.
Gev, looks like you have to delete every post I make? Can’t answer the valid questions I have concerning your posts and can’t take the criticism looks like huh?
Cliffs:
Hunter = Noob lvling, ANY half brained retard can solo stuff 4-5 levels ahead of them with a Hunter, let alone a Twinked hunter and lock.
Contadicting = Claiming gear=nothing, trying to prove that point with your "WoTLK in Blues" experment, then needing a twinked out toon to solo/dou instances. for a "challenge"
So since you claim blues are just as good as your BoA gear (even made a post about it) then do it in lvling greens? or just lose the BoA gear.. Its just gear anyways, something for the socials to show off correct?
@Naysayers: BFD definitely cannot be done on lvl 1. So there is a point (maybe 5 lvl below the instance? Maybe 6) where it's real challenge. Claiming that I'm too high is legitimate. Claiming that it at all not challenging is stupid.
@Strutt: it seems like you really mean what you say. Sorry for thinking that one can say such nonsense only for on-purpose trolling. So the answer.
I've never claimed that gear is not needed. That would be stupid. I couldn't heal Ulduar naked (0 spellpower). I healed it with 1600, while my epic gear was 2200 back then.
I claim that you can easily collect enough gear, farming instances, raids for it is pointless (unless you actually love running 4 ToC/week). At low level my gear belonged to "easily gainable". I just went to the AH and bought this stuff. It's NOT BiS twink gear, go check a twink forum. It's definitely better gear that a random noob has. But not because I farmed WC 10 times, but because I simply WoWheaded up where can I get nice quest rewards and crafted stuff.
@Gev,
Could you highleight the area where I said Gear isn't needed? i think I might have missed that, At a low level you cant get BoA gear can you? Also explain where a fresh lvl 24 (not an alt) is going to get the gold for this BoE, and crafted gear? Along with the enchants?
@Strutt: "Also explain where a fresh lvl 24 (not an alt) is going to get the gold for this BoE, and crafted gear?" Are you really not trolling? Are you really asking this?
Let me help you: Auction House. There are even lvl 1s with goldcap.
Your successful low-level dungeon runs show that the early game becomes easy when you're sophisticated enough about the way the game works.
These dungeons are here to teach beginners the basics of mmo group mechanics such as: I'm not safe running ahead of the buckler-wearing warrior if I'm the one with the lovely caster dress; some spell rotations are great, some others are weak; a basic strategy is often enough to beat an encounter (such as focus the add, then the boss), but we'll wipe if we have no strategy at all; ...
For me they're not too easy, they're just not designed as a challenge for experienced groups. They're a tutorial: we can try our buttons (without much penalties if we press the wrong one sometimes), but we'll fail if we cannot work together.
Of course we don't really need this tutorial any more after a few years playing wow... You've found a way to have fun on this part of the content, and to use it to improve your solo skill as well.
About your question, I don't think the main point is on the content being nerfed, but rather on the skill of the long term players getting higher.
I wonder which is the first place that you won't be able to solo/duo without spending too much time or out-levelling it. Possibly Uldaman ?
@Gevlon
Level 1s at gold cap with that being their first and only character and who did not receive gold from a higher level character?
Gevlon, the instances were nerfed sometime ago, along with the loot boosted. Deadmines droppes blues now, almost every <lvl 50 drops appropriate blues now where they used to drop sucky greens with agility,spirit and stamina. They definitely got easier compared to 5 years ago. That said, it doesn't diminish the feat of soloing them. Just that 5 years ago, soloing them on this level would prob be impossible if only because of the lack of glyphs, approporiate blue gear etc.
regards
V
@Nielas:
"@Gevlon
Level 1s at gold cap with that being their first and only character and who did not receive gold from a higher level character?"
I don't know whether anyone has specifically hit the cap this way, but it's definitely possible.
Gnome of Zurich earned 99% of his gold by doing things a lvl 1 can do (of course, after I had a 70/80 with maxed professions, I would use them rather than trade to get things done).
I had 50k gold on my bankalt in burning crusade before my main character hit level 70.
I've even demonstrated to myself that it wasn't a fluke by starting a level 1 from scratch on 2 other servers with no help and reaching 1-5000 gold (with max level character still below 20).
I'm at 15k gold on hordeside of my main server and the only assistance I got there was a 100g horde/alliance trade with a friend to avoid starting out with an hour or more of copper farming.
@Gevlon: I do not mean it is impossible to have good bought blues at level 19, only that most new players are not natural goblins who will figure it out on their own. Low level dungeons were designed with players entirely new to the game in mind. Most such players do not have the gold to buy blues or know how to make it without being told.
@Gnome: I fully agree that most can't do it, but not because it's theoretically impossible (like getting BoA gear for a lowbie main). They simply fail to figure it out.
I had 3-400G on lvl 20 on my first char and that was early BC.
Gevlon, you also have to take into account how much more gold there was in the game after BC. Having 1,000 gold in vanilla was astounding. After BC came out he amount of disposable income in the game doubled, maybe tripled.
So when looking at the vanilla instances you have to take that into account.
Post a Comment