How was MoP Phase 1+2 and Tier 14 for you?

WoW Classic Mists of Pandaria Classic Discussion
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MoP has been out for 3 months now! How was Phase 1+2 for you? How do you like tier 14?

TLDR: The starting week was a horrible slog, dailies are mind-numbing, the dungeons are tedious, the raids have been subpar and uninteresting with some fights being trivialized and others having bad mechanics, healer gameplay is reductive. Phase 1+2 and Tier 14 in MoP has been the worst period in Classic so far.

My humble opinion:

1) Opening Week: Imho the worst Classic up to now. The leveling was slow, we were pushed into dull questing in specific zones to farm reputation. For pre-raid BIS you had to farm more reputation and Conquest points.

2) Dailies: Rep and farming dailies are busywork. I have stopped doing all dailies. I canā€™t take it anymore.

3) Leveling alts: Was a nightmare until the XP boost. You had to repeat the opening week which was dreadful.

4) Dungeons: Too many dungeons have RP. Siege of Niuzao is particularly tedious. Gate of the Setting Sun has a dud final boss. I only liked Mogushan Palace, Scarlet Halls, and Scarlet Monastery. Celestials were implemented poorly because mechanics persist after bosses are dead and sometimes they overlap.

6) Raid Finder: Removing the Raid Finder was a mistake. It provided access to the end-game for people who wanted to play MoP casually. It could be reworked to provide the same service as Celestial Dungeons.

7) Gameplay: I main healers. The gameplay has been reduced to sniping heals with CDs e.g wild mushroom, divine star, uplift, revival etc. Itā€™s the worst it has ever been. Iā€™m actually thinking of switching to a DPS class.

8) Tier 14 Raids:
a. Stone guards, Will of the Emperor and Meljarak have been trivialized by class abilities.
b. Feng, Garajal and Elegon are fine.
c. Spirit Kings, Zorlok, Tayak, and Unsok have mechanics that force you to stop engaging with your class and abilities for a prolonged time and/or multiple times.
d. Tsulong day phase is just a Valithria fight with the same problems.
e. Protectors and Garalon have mechanics which melee are disadvantaged having to deal with them.
f. Shekzeer: Challenging fight that requires team coordination and organization. I like it.
f. Lei Shi and Sha: Just boring and annoying. Sha is the worst end-of-the-tier boss fight ever. I have never been so bored in a final boss fight like this.

Overall: Uninteresting and annoying raids. The worst raid tier to date.

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I liked all the raids so far (yes, also Heart of Fear).
My favorite bosses from a DPS perspective are Elegon, Zorā€™lok, Melā€™Jarak and Lei Shi.

The end bosses all kind of suck. Although I like the movement on Will of the Emperor and the reward strike.

Cant really fathom why people dislike this tier.

I hate the dungeons.

Leveling was ok the first time around.
At launch we just pulled an all nighter and got to 87 through dungeon spam, then in the next 2 days we got to 90ā€“thats where the real pain started, running the dungeons for pre-raid bis 100 times.

Also doing every factions dailies got us into a really unfun cycle of work - dailies - raid - sleep for several days in a row which burnt us out a bit. But we got it over with.

Now I just do old content raids for Tmog and raidlog on 3 rogues waiting for ToT.

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Easily in the top three worst tiers of WoWā€™s (entire) history just because itā€™s a slog to do anything and boring.

Just like it was originally in 2012 I guess.

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I agree with almost everything you said in the opening post. Burned out on endless dailies (also stopped doing 95% of them), uninteresting dungeons with forced RP, overlapping mechanics in celestials, affix mechanics being cast after the encounter is finished, etc etc. I also am kinda meh about the raids, I do think some bosses are good though, itā€™s always fun to pump on bosses like Elegon and Melā€™jarak. I also agree about the healing gameplay. Most classes have more buttons to press, but it feels like only a handful of them actually do something. Spells like healing rain, divine star etc doing half your total healing. Healing felt more rewarding in earlier expansions.

But yeah. MoPā€™s saving grace is really the setting, aesthetics and Pandaria as a continent. I liked it back in 2012 and I like it in 2025 aswell. But thatā€™s about it this far, every other aspect I kinda prefered Cataclysm.

Oh, and I have to add how much I dislike the gear upgrade system. Getting an upgrade is no longer just fun, itā€™s also a drag because I have to go back to celestial jail to upgrade it before I can use it. Because for some reason youā€™re not getting enough currency to upgrade raid gear in raids. Coming Thunderforged is gonna make this feeling get even worse, Iā€™m afraid.

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I would agree on this. The Celestial gearing system needs readjustment.

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Up to the pvp quest (see my post on my thoughts on this matter) I have enjoyed this expansion immensely although that is probably due to the fact I am much, much more casual that many (most?) on the forums so bits hit very differently for me.

I was away for the first two weeks on holiday, and I wasnā€™t in a particular hurry, so I accept I had a different experience but I really enjoyed the leveling process. I found the quests on the whole nicely balanced and paced. There werenā€™t many with hideously low drop rates, there was a nice mix of types and it kept you moving around the map with all types of lore sprinkled in. I didnā€™t find it took overly long, I think I was at 90 in a week which is absolutely fine and didnā€™t set foot in a dungeon to get there.

Which means the dungeon experience was much better for me, there is only one bit with RP that drags in the Siege of Niuzao, otherwise I find them fine and I quite like bringing down the big bug. I do find the fact that people can (and do) get locked out of boss fights by closing doors or lift issues a pain but it is rare and by this point we are all so overpowered that you can easily win through without a full team. I am reaching the point where I am not that interested in the dungeons and only run them on occasion.

Raiding has been limited. I am on a small server (and of course it is getting smaller still) and my guild tries but we simply donā€™t have enough bodies at this point. Done a few, they seem fine, but it is all a bit chaotic for me until I have a chance to practice a few times and work out what is going on. Yeah you can watch videos and read guides but I donā€™t find it the same. I do absolutely agree that the loss of LFR is huge and wish this wasnā€™t out, it allows people like me and my small group of friends to access the raids and see all the content that is currently denied to us (and get some practice time in).

The dailies did drag a bit but they were nicely varied for the most part and as I wasnā€™t pushing all of them as hard as I could (I just picked a faction or two to work on at a time and then moved on once each reached exalted) I didnā€™t find them too much of a chore. I suppose I would really like a way to influence what you can do on a given day. I quite enjoyed roll club for example but have only had it offered to me once.

My main gripes remain lack of LFR (my low stakes conspiracy is that they couldnā€™t get it work with the resources they were prepared to give it and made up some guff about ā€œstate of the gameā€¦community spiritā€ which is complete rubbish when you consider the route that retail takes with these things) and of course the forced pvp for players only interested in pve. I pay my sub same as everyone else it would be nice if I had a chance to access all the content I am interested in.

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Already quit. The only hyped thing about MoP was the PvP, which is now just hope you kill the warrior before dampening kicks in. Raids are meh, Challenge modes were cool to do again but now you can be spending half a day waiting to do the ones your character needs, and what else is there to do? spam dailies?
I think the population drop off says it all really. MoP just isnā€™t a fun time and by this expansion the MMORPG factor has been erased. This isnā€™t what the Classic audience wanted.
Most of us have played through Classic like 4-5 times now? TBC is going to hit itā€™s third run, no more seasonal serverā€¦ thereā€™s nothing new to experience.
Liverstab might be content farming the same thing over and over again on 5 different characters but given the state of LFG even at peak times and active population numbers Iā€™d say itā€™s not something the majority of us enjoy playing.
I hope the team seeā€™s sense, knows the Classic community is mostly disinterested in Midnight and stunts their silence soon. Iā€™d even take Titan-Forged servers at this point.
I would doubt Classic + is going to be ready before 2027, so thatā€™s AT LEAST an entire year where our options are 3rd run through of TBC orā€¦ WoD, where we started calling it ā€œRetail WoWā€ and Nostalrius began popping off.
An update on whatā€™s actually happening, what theyā€™re working on and how long we can expect it to take would go a long way. I wish Blizzard would actually communicate with their audience and update us rather than end SoD with a little tease and then vanish into the basement for 2 years. Cā€™mon manā€¦

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It worked on PTR so I think they can make it work

I heard rumors that they are gonna add it back to ToT/SoO so stay tuned i guess.

I dont care about LFR but see no reason to not have it

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  1. Opening Week was easily the worst Iā€™ve ever witnessed and played through.
  2. Dailies I did em once on the main character till exalted and done.
  3. Levelling alts is still a pain, I have 4 90s and I hated how slow it was.
  4. Dungeons: Siege of Niuzao has easily the worst RP possible and Stormshout last boss is no fun especially when 99% of pugs dont know what the heck they are doing with the adds + lack understanding on the heal beam you could benefit from.
  5. No RF hurts a lot for the legendary questline, especially when there are parts of the legendary quest that have no alternative in celestial dungeons. See ToES Sha of Fear normal requirement.
  6. Gameplay: Playing a WW monk mainly, but OS tanks and mistweaver. Blizz actually got monk specs right bar the balancing. WW monk is EASILY the worst DPS in this expansion and it isnā€™t even close.
  7. T14 Raids
    oh boy at least it is better than T11 and that isnā€™t a debate at all. T11 bosses were so bad and not fun to do. T14 bosses had fun bosses for the most part bar Amber Shaper which is cursed with bugs like after every big add throw you kind of should taunt the bosses so they donā€™t delete the driver. Also it is a vehicle fight.
    Not sure why people donā€™t like SoF HC, as a tank it is actually a good fight.
    But bosses are again more melee unfriendly than ranged unfriendly, why is it like that in every expansion where ranged gameplay is simplified to just dodge or do 1 mechanic whilst melee might get punished for bad RNG and get locked out of DPS for multiple seconds at a time?
  8. Celestial dungeons: They have been done very well compared to T13 h++ dungeons which were the pinnacle of pain if you were playing a DPS. Imagine this, you donā€™t get griefed anymore for moving or taking damage, that is fun gameplay. Losing damage because you moved or took damage as a DPS wasnā€™t fun gameplay at all, especially when bosses either required moving or/and had AOE damage mechanics.
  9. PvP in OG MoP neg diffs the current philosophy of dampening damage/healing/whatever>actually nerfing OP classes. The legendary quest shouldā€™ve NEVER included a PvPQuest in these conditions. Premades getting queā€™d into soloque is also a bad idea.

tldr: beats cataclysms opening tier by a long shot, cata had 1 good raid FL and many bad bosses. MoP has better bosses on avg and has at least 2-3 good raids.

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Legendary questline is infinitely easier now with celestials, also u dont have to do Sha of fear normal, thereā€™s another quest u can chose to just do Sha of Doubt in Jade Serpent on Celestial difficulty so yeah that entire point is moot

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Thats not true at all.

Its not very strong in Single Target but on cleave fight it is insanely good.

In Single Target its in the low middle, There are 5 specs worse when you go by Warcraftlogs 95th percentile in HoF / ToES.

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Iā€™ve enjoyed mop so far, but the devs could be so much more hands on when it comes to balancing things outā€¦

This is what frustrates me the most, complete lack of balance. I dont know how many weeks its been atm, but warriors are just to strong in pvp.

RBG teams stacking 3 warriors in a team, that alone should say everything the devs need to know.

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Thats just straightup wrong. The celestial dungeon daily is random and gives you frags+valor, you still have to do ToES.

And two of these specs have DPS alternatives, hunters can play MM/BM to do more damage and locks can just touch DoTs/play destruction. They can legit gain multiple DPS just by spec swapping. Iā€™ll wait for the buffs for WW, SP and Ret because that is truly sad.

Not very strong in ST is understating the issue:

  • Top 5 Bottom on Zorlok
  • Tied at the bottom with arms warrior on Tayak
  • Bottom 3 with Feral and Fury (both have DPS spec alternatives) on Wind Lord, thats a multi cleave/aoe fight BTW.
  • Bottom 3 with both warrior specs on Amber Shaper, Warriors at least scale, WW doesnā€™t.
  • 7th from the bottom on Empress, SP is very bottom and inbetween WW and SP those classes have ALTERNATIVE DPS SPECS.
  • bottom 4 on protectors, both shaman specs are below alongside survhunter
  • bottom 5 on tsulong, balance, SP and shaman specs are worse
    - Lei Shi is like the only fight that is worth a talk when it comes to WW monk and is by far WW best fight in HoF/ToES
  • SoF barely above middle of the pack.

If it wasnā€™t for Lei Shi and SoF, WW monks wouldnā€™t be in raids and would be playing BM/MW all the time in these two raids. MSV isnā€™t looking much better either.

In total there are 2 fights worth talking about a good placement for WW monk:
Will of Emp + Stone Guard, every other fight WW represent bottom or top 3 bottom.
For a class that has a single DPS spec and no alternative WW should pack more of a punch in the literal sense. Overall there are like 25% of the tier where a WW monk has value, other 75% you might aswell take another rogue or smth instead of running a WW.

Iā€™ve done more OS than actual WWing even due to how bad the damage/scaling is from a DPS monk. Yes healing and tanking both.

The WW monk T14 tier set looks cool, setbonuses are worth for the trash bin, it is just CD reductions on FoFury and increased DR on energy brew. No damage increases or anything that matters.
ToT tierset is basically spawning balls you can eat for energy and a % chance to gain another tigerbrew when getting a stack. Again no damage increases.
SoO tierset is the first and only tierset this expansion which gives a damage buff when a combobreaker occurs, and the other is just reducing chi cost on kicks/FoF.
The tierset bonuses straightup suck, WW needs big DPS buffs on tiersets or even base to even be a consideration for DPS without griefing your team by playing WWalker

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I enjoy MoP but honestly the majority of the bosses in this tier are just trash. WotE, Empress, Lei Shi and Sha being strong contenders for ā€˜worst boss in classic so farā€™.
WotE is a complete meme fight on 25 if you have enough druids but on 10 man its an 8 minute slog ā€” worse than Spine of Deathwing.
Empress - Long fight with a mechanic that in 10 man has a 1 in 4 chance to completely brick your parse.
Lei Shi - every 20 seconds some dumb phase happens where you cant hit the boss anymore
Sha of Fear - way too long of a fight while thereā€™s nothing actually happening. Lich King at least did a bunch of new things in each phase while this is a Patchwerk fight with an extra step.

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I see you havenā€™t played T11 in Cataclysm then.
Choā€™gall HC was basically an add fight with consistent swapping to ensure tanks not flopping on either Flame/Shadow Orders or kicks on an add to prevent corruption taken whilst also killing the boss.
Halfus HC was just hoping not to die to some random ground affect or the AOE that his dragon did. Also tank threat on adds :face_vomiting:
ToTFW was just bad, especially Alā€™Akir debuff management so you could kill him before he flattens your raid.
Or do we wanna mention General from ulduar where you couldnā€™t DPS the boss until HM was active whilst having the most boring dodge/kick mechanics in the game?
You could slap in the entirety of MH having a combination of bad mechanics and raid layout, remember you had to kill 8 waves per boss and nowadays they have a tendancy to bug out anyways forcing a soft reset.

Comparing any early tier fight with LK is gonna be like that. Nothing happening is more like actively ignoring mechanics to get to P2 and do mechanics. Also calling SoF HC a patchwerk fight LOL.

Is this per chance some parsing DPS take that is irrelevant if you wipe anyways?

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I quit after clearing raids on normal and few bosses on HC. Healer gameplay is so incredibly boring in MoP. Most of your healing either comes from smart heals or AoE ground effects. Not sure why people glaze this expac as being good. The only real agency as a healer I have is when Iā€™m pressing a CD. wow so cool!

I also agree with fights being boring. I loved progging spirit kings hc for 3 weeks, because people were unable to stop attacking, so cool! I also LOVE ambershaper and people not pressing self interrupt or not allowed to use my heals as pala, because it might hit the debuff target. Very cool!! Iā€™ll prob just do tot and soo once when they release and just play retail fulltime instead.

Oh speaking of stupid stuff: Mage has insanely strong specā€¦ what do we do? Letā€™s buff other mage specs too! Canā€™t have a weak mage spec, can we? While specs like ww and spriest do negative damage. Thanks zirene! I loved doing 90 parse on my WW and then being near bottom of the DPS meters in raid. SOOOO COOOL!!! My bad for not rolling warlock / mage.

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You can specific queue celestialsā€¦ what you on about?

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I played every phase of Cataclysm. I actually liked t11 aside from al-akir and nefarion. If you play with complete stinkers it sucks and I know a lot of guilds flopped before they killed every boss on HC. What I didnā€™t like about Cataclysm was that mage was the main character and I thought Dragon Soul was a very bad raid.

MH was a trash raid but I donā€™t have the same expectations of TBC as I do MoP. And yes, Sha is a patchwerk fight for dps. You get teleported to a platform once where you hit a panda instead and occasionally move to the right or left. P2 you cleave some adds and chuck a ball. Itā€™s a joke fight and its way too long for what it entails.

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Frost mage was the lowest dps in the 95th percentile, lower than WW and Spriest which got Zirene buffs. WW also got nerfed after its buffs in the beta. You trolled yourself by playing WW instead of Rogue in the caster expansion. I am thankful because Frost is much more enjoyable to play over Arcane and Fire is completely dependent on RNG.

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I meanā€¦ my bad for not keeping up with beta I guess? Also, nobody played (that is good) played frost, because there was arcane which is 100% better. Why would you play worse spec, if youā€™re playing at the highest level of the game.