Returning From Cata

Guides New/Returning Player Questions & Guides
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Hi All,

Returning from Cata has been a very difficult task to try and get my head around as so much has changed. I have looked at the wowhead returning guide but there is still a lot that remains un-answered.

In my bags it appears there is alot more gear than there was when i logged off all those years ago (same with alts). I take it i should be going by “Item Level” now? rather than it being Epic or anything??

Greens seem to be dropping alot more now starting MoP which i take it is to help out with gearing up.

Mob scaling?? That’s a weird concept i’m trying to understand. Can level 60’s and level 5’s be questing in Elwynn forest for example? What is stopping the lower levels from being “one shotted”??

Are professions worth it still? Is it worth me levelling them through MoP, WoD, Legion or shall i just wait for BFA?

Levelling seems very fast now, has there been an experience increase?

I killed a few mobs that had been attacked first by another player and i still got the XP for this? Is XP/quest to slain shared now if you hit someone elses mob??

I have just got my head around the talent systems where it is less involved than it used to be so that’s fine.

Is aggro range and monster health seriously reduced? I find i can 1-2 shot most mobs my level so far. Seems strange it would be that easy??

In regards to quests, i logged in and accepted one quest, next thing im in MoP. Is it right to just forget every quest in my log and just go straight to MoP

I have an 85 Mage,Rogue,Warlock,Warrior and Priest. The specs have changed and i’m not really sure what is best for levelling through the expansions leading up to BfA.

I enjoyed my Mage most through WotLK/Cata. Is it worth sticking with the mage to 120?

Stormwind/IF seems to be dead on my server now. Is there a “new” city that people are mostly in?

Final question.
Is it worth it? I have been playing classic for the simplicity but it lacks alot of the things i liked about further expansions, but i fear that BfA has gone too far the other way

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I’ll go one by one here.

Not sure about the extra gear in your bags, it would depend on what gear it is and where it came from. As for ilvl, that is a decent way to see if it’s better or not, but at lower levels I would mainly just look at the stats. If a new piece of gear has more stats, just use that one instead. I think pressing shift and hovering over an item shows you the stat difference compared to the item you’re wearing in that slot. At max level ilvl is what you should mainly be going for, though specific items can still be better than a higher ilvl variant of another, especially with trinkets for example.

The zones scale from level X to level Y, meaning that anyone in that level range can level in any of those zones. For example, blasted lands used to be a level 60 zone, but now you could level there while being 34. The mobs are all the same level as you are, so you will not get one-shot. Same thing if you are level 60 and go to a lower level zone that scales up to 60, the mobs will be 60 there, so they always are the same level as you are. However, zones do not scale infinitely, there is a “scaling range” for each. For example, blasted land mobs do not scale above 60, and some higher level zones never scale below 60 for example. You can still see the level ranges of each zone when you open the map.

Professions work slightly differently since BfA. Basically, all the expansions have been divided into their own subcategories, and you can only get skill in those subcategories instead of leveling them from 1 to 800 for example. So, you could do 0 profession work in the earlier expansions and then start leveling your profession in BfA from 0 without any problems. Old recipes are in their own expansions category, and you need a certain amount of skill in that category to use them. So yes, you can skip leveling professions while leveling and focus on BfA professions once you’re max level, that’s fine.

There has been multiple, mainly because the max level has also gotten considerably higher, though the leveling process is something that Blizzard has been trying to move away from more and more by speeding it up and offering boosts and what have you.

If they’re from the same faction you share the tag on most monsters up to 5 players, meaning that if more than 5 players tag the same mob, the 6th player won’t get the rewards, but the others will. Doesn’t apply to some elites and bosses though. At the same time, if an opposing faction tags the mob before you do, you will not get credit, this only works when the other tagger is from your faction. Also, you will see whether or not you got credit for the kill by looking at the monsters level: is it red or grey? If it’s grey, you did not get the tag, and thus will not get the rewards either.

You can do that, sure. MoP was originally designed for characters from 85 to 90, nowadays I think you can do MoP content from 80 to 90 (refer to the scaling I talked about earlier). Cataclysm quests should also be from 80 to 90, so you can make a decision by yourself. Both are fine for leveling.

Any DPS spec will do. Tank specs are good for leveling but they work best at lower levels, the higher you get the weaker a tank is at leveling. I would say that just pick any DPS spec that you want, it doesn’t really matter and respeccing is very easy nowadays.

Sure, though I can’t tell you how much the mage playstyle has changed over the years. Mage is a good class at max level and definitely useful, so it’s not like it’s a bad choice. Try it out with your mage and see what you think about it.

Boralus/Dazar’alor are the new two cities that a lot of players are in, though on my server Stormwind is just as alive as Boralus is, IF is slightly more dead. Could just be your server, but I reckon that there’d still be players in the two new cities.

I don’t know, you’re going to have to try it out yourself, as this question is extremely subjective and I cannot tell you if they’ve done something that you wouldn’t like. Playing it yourself is the only way to find out. Personally, WoW has been in better places, but it’s still worth giving a shot.

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Welcome back!

Well, no new gear will have been added, except replacement weapons for classes who lost the ability to wield some types of weapons in Legion.

Yes, go by Item Level as a first approximation now. The extra stat budget of Blues and Purples was removed in Mists. Of course, stats are the ultimate real information, but as an approximation, colour no longer matters, but ilevel does.

Mob scaling is beyond weird, beyond evil, beyond insanity. If I ever met a horde of Radioactive Space Zombies from Narnia, I would simply explain mob scaling to them so that their heads would explode. Nothing you can do about it. The devs have given up on levelling, and will be removing it next expansion, leaving just a sort of stub of what used to be,

The zones are divided by level. A higher level player in a lower level zone will see all mobs at the max level of that zone, plus or minus one. So, on my 120, if I go to Dustwallow Marsh, I will see all mobs there as level 60. Ellwyn has a max level of … 20? I think, so I would see mobs there as 20. However, I would see players as their real level.

Don’t think about it. When you look into it, it looks back.

No. The devs have been smothering professions for the last two expansions, and professions are drawing their last breaths now. You can pick up Herbalism and Alchemy at level 110 onward for some gold; having done anything before 110 will not count towards your BfA professions.

Yes, very much so.

Yes. Shared tagging, it’s called.

Compared to Wrath or Cata, yes. It was reduced in several expansions, notably WoD and early Legion, before scaling … infected the game.

Right? ask a moral philosopher :stuck_out_tongue: It is the most efficient and intended way to play the current game.

Anything will do, but Icy-Veins is your friend here.

I would go
Frost Mage
Outlaw Rogue
Affliction or Destro Warlock
Fury Warrior
Shadow Priest

for those classes. If you prefer another spec, you can certainly use any, though.

Oh yeah. Mages are still very viable and popular.

There was a Mass Extinction Event called The Prune, that pigeonholed classes into narrow specs, and destroyed abilities, so every class is poorer than you remember, but Mages are still holding some ground.

Boralas is the new capital for the new expansion. If you do a /who Boralas or a
/who 120 you will see where people are.

Is it worth it FOR YOU? I can’t answer that. You haven’t even seen the crazy layering of systems you hit at 120, and even when you do see it, you won’t really know whether you like it or not until you’ve lived with it for a month or two.

What did you do in the game? What did you enjoy? As far as I can see, the quality of

  • questing is up in some ways and down in others

  • dungeons is up, up, up IF you enjoy rushing hard dungeon content. The Mythic-Plus system has given a whole new lease of life to dungeons

  • raids are probably about the same, with extra complications

  • casual PvP is down

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