I play WoW less now, than I did in Cata, when there was catch-up mechanic

[Deleted]

ToT LFR drops 502 and raids drop 522, 526 to 546 is the exact same jump.

Normal will drop something like 554, because Flex mode will be added. The LFR -> Normal distance increases from 20 to 32, according to PTR.

[Djaye]

Step by step guide inc:

1: Farm HC's to get JP
2: Turn JP into HP
3: Buy 476 gear from HP
4: Go into MSV RF
5: Aquire gear from Valor and the easy rep on IoT
6: Aquire avg. ilvl 470
7: Go into HoF and ToE RF
8: Farm Rep/more gear from JP->HP
9: Reah avg. ilvl 480
10: ToT RF
11: Repeat these steps for 1 more week then skip step 1-9 and start buying one ilvl 522 piece every 2 weeks and go ToT RF.
12: ???
13: Profit.

this is about 8 steps more then in cata, its what the op was trying to explain. curious to see how many peeps ignore that and continue to makes posts like this. the grind bloat has been addressed and i doubt we will see a set up like this in 6.0. current catch up grind is horrendous imo.

[mat cauthon]

im with the two saying its not hard, understand im one of those altoholic no lifers that had 10 85s and most of them with all HOT heroic gear at the end of cata (DS got old quick and i got bored lol) so i know where youre coming from in that regard. But gearing isnt harder, just different now.

to put it into perspective i recently made the choice to move my guild to a new realm i had been leveling an alt on with my gf. At the time i lacked the money to move my main to the new realm so i had a very short time frame where i had to not only get a toon to 90 but also had to get it geared enough to go into ToT without it being a complete carry. In 11 days i leveled a fresh toon with no boas to 60, then took my 60 rogue i was leveling with my gf and got it to 90 and for it to 483 ilv. Thats 11 real days not time played from lv1 to 483 ilv at 90 more or less. The method is simple when you stop and think about it.

Step1: get to 90 (duh)

Step2: run heroics until 460 ilv (if you have gold to spare you can purchase items to boost your ilv, not advised for this part though)

Step3: head to isle of thunder and do the initial solo scenario (hence why purchasing gear to boost ilv the first time is not advised)

Step4: run around the isle in search of a golden chest (Trove of the thunder king, all chest coords can be found at http://www.wowhead.com/object=218593...nts:id=1824190)

Step5: hopefully loot a key to the palace of lei shen from the chest, if not locate the neared 'rare hunting group' and tag along with them until a key drops.

Step6: make your way to the shado pan assults hideout cave, talk to taoshi to begin the treasure trove scenario

Step7: while in the scenario focus on opening as many chests as possible within the 5 minute time limit (may not have to leave the first zone in most of them due to the number of chests)

Step 8: during the trove scenario you should recieve at least 10 elder charms of good fortune unless you are terribly unlucky or unable to avoid things. you may also get incantations while in there which allow you to summon ghosts of mini bosses which will drop chests containing more elder charms. it is easily possible to get at least 16 coins, and in many cases 20 for the week doing this.

Step9: with charms in hand run MSV lfrs, use a coin roll every boss

Step10: if your realm has a worldboss channel be sure to join it, if not youll have to spend some time in trade, if you know how form groups for the 4 world bosses, if not watch for groups, despite the seemingly low chance at loot a couple pieces from world bosses can make the process far easier.

Step11: if ilv is not 470 from loot gained from bosses in MSV consider spending jp to upgrade blues or run MSV again and use coins on bosses with 2-3 pieces of loot for you. Alternatively you can purchase items off of your local AH to boost ilv (fine at this step)

Step12: run the remaining 5.0 lfrs using coins on every boss you can. if you do not manage to get at least 16 coins or are forced to use coins on a second run through MSV then remember to use your remaining coins wisely, use the dungeon journal to identify which bosses drop the most loot or the most needed loot and roll for those.

Step13: if any coins remain after completing all possible lfrs and ilv is still not 480 run lfrs again to use coins on bosses with loot.

Step14: finish VP capping if lfr runs did not do the job for you.

Step15: youre done for the week at this point if you were unable to obtain 480 ilv, in addition to all this you may have become revered and a good ways through if you have purchased the kalaxxi commendation on any toon no matter the realm, if this is the case it is highly advised that you do dailies with them every day possible including while still leveling, as at the end of the questline for them after exalted you get a quest that rewards you with a 489 ring, which can make the difference between hitting 480 youre first lockout as a 90 or not hitting 480 ilv youre first lockout.

Step16: Repeat steps 4-14 after the reset

Step17: after obtaining 250 more valor for a total of 1250 vp combined with the previous weeks vp head to the shado pan assule quartermaster (either in the cave on isle of thunder or at niuazo temple) and purchase the 522 vp neck

Step18: You should be 480 by this point with 2 lockouts of all the 5.0 lfr content, world bosses, and bonus rolls used plus a neck that alone should be worth 2-3 ilv upgrade from a lfr neck, a 4 ilv boost from a heroic neck. if not you can wallow in self pity at being the single most unlucky person on wow, and then prepare to repeat the process after the next reset.

sounds like alot of work, really it isnt and aside from running the lfrs it takes little time. depending on the alts role you can spend queue times working on things like rep for factions that give epics as rewards at exalted (namely kalaxxi and golden lotus) or things like cloud serpent riding, or even just camp world boss spawns and get a tag in while in que. With time management and some dedication its a very simple and surprisingly quick method to get geared, yes compared to HoT heroics it seems longer but in truth time spent grinding Hots for gear vs time spent doing each of the above mentioned steps is relatively the same, it just takes more then spam queuing for heroics youve done a hundred times and will do another hundred if you want more then 2-3 alts geared.

Of course you could ignore the advice from the guy with 10 90s whos done it plenty of times, but isnt wisdom learning from others experiences, and you seem like a wise person

[Thelxi]

Me too. Doing dungeons at my own pace to keep alts decently geared was fine. Waiting ~2 hours per week in queue and then waiting for 4x3 5 minute bosses and 5 minute trash to drop dead per alt EVERY WEEK is too much for me, just to keep my alts in shitty purple dungeon quality gear.

[Brian23]

Normal will drop something like 554, because Flex mode will be added. The LFR -> Normal distance increases from 20 to 32, according to PTR.

Oh, then I misunderstood you. I thought you were trying to make a point that LFR wouldn't be that useless.

[mat cauthon]

this is about 8 steps more then in cata, its what the op was trying to explain. curious to see how many peeps ignore that and continue to makes posts like this. the grind bloat has been addressed and i doubt we will see a set up like this in 6.0. current catch up grind is horrendous imo.

addressed in my post right after yours, more steps, same timeframe... luck depending ofc.

[Brian23]

im with the two saying its not hard, understand im one of those altoholic no lifers that had 10 85s and most of them with all HOT heroic gear at the end of cata (DS got old quick and i got bored lol) so i know where youre coming from in that regard. But gearing isnt harder, just different now.

to put it into perspective i recently made the choice to move my guild to a new realm i had been leveling an alt on with my gf. At the time i lacked the money to move my main to the new realm so i had a very short time frame where i had to not only get a toon to 90 but also had to get it geared enough to go into ToT without it being a complete carry. In 11 days i leveled a fresh toon with no boas to 60, then took my 60 rogue i was leveling with my gf and got it to 90 and for it to 483 ilv. Thats 11 real days not time played from lv1 to 483 ilv at 90 more or less. The method is simple when you stop and think about it.

Step1: get to 90 (duh)

Step2: run heroics until 460 ilv (if you have gold to spare you can purchase items to boost your ilv, not advised for this part though)

Step3: head to isle of thunder and do the initial solo scenario (hence why purchasing gear to boost ilv the first time is not advised)

Step4: run around the isle in search of a golden chest (Trove of the thunder king, all chest coords can be found at http://www.wowhead.com/object=218593...nts:id=1824190)

Step5: hopefully loot a key to the palace of lei shen from the chest, if not locate the neared 'rare hunting group' and tag along with them until a key drops.

Step6: make your way to the shado pan assults hideout cave, talk to taoshi to begin the treasure trove scenario

Step7: while in the scenario focus on opening as many chests as possible within the 5 minute time limit (may not have to leave the first zone in most of them due to the number of chests)

Step 8: during the trove scenario you should recieve at least 10 elder charms of good fortune unless you are terribly unlucky or unable to avoid things. you may also get incantations while in there which allow you to summon ghosts of mini bosses which will drop chests containing more elder charms. it is easily possible to get at least 16 coins, and in many cases 20 for the week doing this.

Step9: with charms in hand run MSV lfrs, use a coin roll every boss

Step10: if your realm has a worldboss channel be sure to join it, if not youll have to spend some time in trade, if you know how form groups for the 4 world bosses, if not watch for groups, despite the seemingly low chance at loot a couple pieces from world bosses can make the process far easier.

Step11: if ilv is not 470 from loot gained from bosses in MSV consider spending jp to upgrade blues or run MSV again and use coins on bosses with 2-3 pieces of loot for you. Alternatively you can purchase items off of your local AH to boost ilv (fine at this step)

Step12: run the remaining 5.0 lfrs using coins on every boss you can. if you do not manage to get at least 16 coins or are forced to use coins on a second run through MSV then remember to use your remaining coins wisely, use the dungeon journal to identify which bosses drop the most loot or the most needed loot and roll for those.

Step13: if any coins remain after completing all possible lfrs and ilv is still not 480 run lfrs again to use coins on bosses with loot.

Step14: finish VP capping if lfr runs did not do the job for you.

Step15: youre done for the week at this point if you were unable to obtain 480 ilv, in addition to all this you may have become revered and a good ways through if you have purchased the kalaxxi commendation on any toon no matter the realm, if this is the case it is highly advised that you do dailies with them every day possible including while still leveling, as at the end of the questline for them after exalted you get a quest that rewards you with a 489 ring, which can make the difference between hitting 480 youre first lockout as a 90 or not hitting 480 ilv youre first lockout.

Step16: Repeat steps 4-14 after the reset

Step17: after obtaining 250 more valor for a total of 1250 vp combined with the previous weeks vp head to the shado pan assule quartermaster (either in the cave on isle of thunder or at niuazo temple) and purchase the 522 vp neck

Step18: You should be 480 by this point with 2 lockouts of all the 5.0 lfr content, world bosses, and bonus rolls used plus a neck that alone should be worth 2-3 ilv upgrade from a lfr neck, a 4 ilv boost from a heroic neck. if not you can wallow in self pity at being the single most unlucky person on wow, and then prepare to repeat the process after the next reset.

sounds like alot of work, really it isnt and aside from running the lfrs it takes little time. depending on the alts role you can spend queue times working on things like rep for factions that give epics as rewards at exalted (namely kalaxxi and golden lotus) or things like cloud serpent riding, or even just camp world boss spawns and get a tag in while in que. With time management and some dedication its a very simple and surprisingly quick method to get geared, yes compared to HoT heroics it seems longer but in truth time spent grinding Hots for gear vs time spent doing each of the above mentioned steps is relatively the same, it just takes more then spam queuing for heroics youve done a hundred times and will do another hundred if you want more then 2-3 alts geared.

Of course you could ignore the advice from the guy with 10 90s whose done it plenty of times, but isn't wisdom learning from others experiences, and you seem like a wise person

All you've done is get people to 490. The grind is no longer getting to 490, within the first day I got my Warrior to 480 from just running MSV and HOF with the Extra Rolls. The issue is getting past the 490 plateau, its a whole nother monster.

[Deleted]

I think that not being able to gear very fast is not a bad thing. Before WotlK there was not even the option to acquire good gear other than farming hours of Alterac for PvP. The only other way were some purple items from the end of the instances or some reputation vendors. Still too slow. But back then people didn't except to have all their toons geared up.

During WotlK, I started playing 4 months before Cata hit. In one month I had a new character at lvl 80 and I started farming heroics as feral. Afterwards I switched to balance because that's what my raid group wanted. All in all, I was able to kill the Lich King at an ilvl of around 251 which was the ilvl that 10 man ICC had then. 1,5 month after I had reached 80.

The problem in MoP is that if you want gear, you have to go through the torture of LFR. Let's admit it. It sucks. I didn't try to raid once in MoP and the reason is that LFR put me off completely by being utterly tasteless as an experience. Simply stand there and win. Plus the fact that you may never get a drop, whereas in the LFR of Dragon Soul, you could eventually roll higher than the others and take that loot.

[Deleted]

Step by step guide inc:

1: Farm HC's to get JP
2: Turn JP into HP
3: Buy 476 gear from HP
4: Go into MSV RF
5: Aquire gear from Valor and the easy rep on IoT
6: Aquire avg. ilvl 470
7: Go into HoF and ToE RF
8: Farm Rep/more gear from JP->HP
9: Reah avg. ilvl 480
10: ToT RF
11: Repeat these steps for 1 more week then skip step 1-9 and start buying one ilvl 522 piece every 2 weeks and go ToT RF.
12: ???
13: Profit.

seems a little long-winded, when in cata it was just queue 5 mans, i know what id rather spend my limited time doing.

[Deleted]

I'm glad I have enough things to do on my main.

[Deleted]

Its harder to get geared up due to LFR having such a low chance of actually giving you what you want. I sat with a 450 xbow on my hunter alt for the entirety of 5.0 and 5.1. I finally got the sha-touched gun after 5.2, and than later upgraded it to the Tyrannical PvP weapon. Way to hard to find specific items in LFR, where with the old catch up mechanics you could just run a dungeon a billion times until you got that item (maybe with groups that didn't need said item).

haha tell me about it ! i was rocking a turd weapon till this tier...

[Pua]

No idea what you're talking about, catching up now is easier than ever. Do dailies for 2 days, get tokens, go into LFR, get gear. The older LFRs give a ton of gear, it's insanely easy to max out Valor with heroic scenarios (another quick way to get loot, they take what, 10-15 minutes?) and then buy Valor gear.

Come on, it's not "easier than ever". It's harder. Sure, some people will be lucky and get everything within a couple of weeks, but the vast majority won't; they'll be stuck relatively early and for a relatively long time.

Plus, RNG is a huge factor nowadays whether you want it to be or not. My luck on my Holy paladin in LFR has been atrociously bad, you can't spend Valor on anything decent without running ToT, which I can't do because I don't have the item level. There's literally no way I'm going to spend gold on crafted 522's, and heroic scenarios have given me two items in three weeks (one from the quest); two pairs of boots. I don't want to spend Valor on the last tiers vendors because those items are sub-par, and I can't get a PuG to do the normal versions of T14 raids with.

@jessicka_apc put it to Ghostcrawler pretty well; without a reasonable catch up, you're expecting people to wait on you.

Who's going to?

[Deleted]

I'm glad I have enough things to do on my main.

im glad you enjoy the stuff they added, i enjoy encounters 5 men or raids, has there been more of these added in proportion to cata ?

[mat cauthon]

All you've done is get people to 490. The grind is no longer getting to 490, within the first day I got my Warrior to 480 from just running MSV and HOF with the Extra Rolls. The issue is getting past the 490 plateau, its a whole nother monster.

they are at the ToT lfr point, if they cant take it from there, theres no help for them. i give advice, its more then im required to, if they cant at least play their own toon and find their way into raiding well that ones on them despite what some are claiming its not hard to get into a group without absurd ilvs, granted it may not be a clear group for ToT but at 490-500 ilv if youre expecting a clear you better break out your wallet and be ready to pay up for a carry.

but for the sake of being through ill list it clearly,
-make sure to get mogu runes every week
-find pug groups for ToT or a guild with promise and a opening
-/pray often to the rng gods
-continue to do oon and nalak for 522 world boss loot
-run heroic scenarios daily for chance at 516 epics

not much to do after 490, its the easy yet long because luck and networking capabilities take over whereas the journey from fresh 90 to ready for it is far quicker if slightly more complicated.

[Klingers]

Step by step guide inc:

1: Farm HC's to get JP
2: Turn JP into HP
3: Buy 476 gear from HP
4: Go into MSV RF
5: Aquire gear from Valor and the easy rep on IoT
6: Aquire avg. ilvl 470
7: Go into HoF and ToE RF
8: Farm Rep/more gear from JP->HP
9: Reah avg. ilvl 480
10: ToT RF
11: Repeat these steps for 1 more week then skip step 1-9 and start buying one ilvl 522 piece every 2 weeks and go ToT RF.
12: ???
13: Profit.

Or, my alternative steps:
1: Resub. See wall of boring grinding.
2: Fuck that. Buyers remorse on game card. Log out.
3: Play Mass Effect.

[Deleted]

seems a little long-winded, when in cata it was just queue 5 mans, i know what id rather spend my limited time doing.

In cata it was near impossible to catch up too, 5mans wouldn't even get you to 350, until the Zandalari dungeons got added.
When FL released you were still horribly undergeared for it with no way to close the gap. And who did the Molten Front dailys on their alts anyway? Molten Front was way worse than Isle of Thunder. And all you got out of it was a trinket and a necklace.
Helms and shoulders above 346 were literally impossible to get from any source besides normal mode raids, until Dragon Soul LFR.

[Deleted]

I have in DS days 3 HC raiding (hunter, mage, holy/protodin), 2 normal raiding (Druid/DK) characters. I farm purple gems for my main characters and i have a lot of fun. I geared them by LFR ( almost all the time we took more than 15ppl to lfr to gear alts) . We have 25man ALT RAID (we killed few HCs too)

These days we have SAD 10 man alt raid(raiding 1/7 a week) ( 3 of them are friends of guild which dont have time to raid 3/7). I have 2 characters with 520 plus i lvl.

I just start to gear up my holy paladin. It is two weeks now. I have 484 i lvl . I run LFR TOT 1*, LFR HoF 2*(bonus roll on all), LFR Tes 2* (bonus roll on all bosses), LFR Msv 1,5* (all bosses bonus roll) . I have still HC DS boots ( i know i can have from Nalak but i forgot to loot him) and PvP crafted shoulders. I bought 496 Hands and wrist (both are already replaced by ToT drops... LOL waste of money). I was extremely lucky in drops in LFR. And also I run HC scen (only one which i can do till now because of i lvl). So dont say to me , that you can get 500 ilvl in few days. I was extremely lucky to get drop from Nalak (t-hands) and extremely lucky in LFR drops, i bought also SPA 522 neck for VP. It is much worst than in DS days. I am not ready to go normal mode yet. I am not counting shity random drops in LFR when I am getting one thing 3or more times. And may be this thing will make someone else happy.

I just love to play different characters. Only one character will makes me bored soon. That is just my playstyle.

[Deleted]

im glad you enjoy the stuff they added, i enjoy encounters 5 men or raids, has there been more of these added in proportion to cata ?

yes
13 bosses in ToT vs 7 in firelands
14 bosses in Soo vs 8 in DS

and I on't even count world bosses

[Brian23]

they are at the ToT lfr point, if they cant take it from there, theres no help for them. i give advice, its more then im required to, if they cant at least play their own toon and find their way into raiding well that ones on them despite what some are claiming its not hard to get into a group without absurd ilvs, granted it may not be a clear group for ToT but at 490-500 ilv if youre expecting a clear you better break out your wallet and be ready to pay up for a carry.

but for the sake of being through ill list it clearly,
-make sure to get mogu runes every week
-find pug groups for ToT or a guild with promise and a opening
-/pray often to the rng gods
-continue to do oon and nalak for 522 world boss loot
-run heroic scenarios daily for chance at 516 epics

not much to do after 490, its the easy yet long because luck and networking capabilities take over whereas the journey from fresh 90 to ready for it is far quicker if slightly more complicated.

Except the whole issue is getting to current tier, on one should need hand holding to get to 480. Again, you literally ding 90 (get your 460 average), get a key and your tokens, and trololol through the first 2 raids and get a crap ton of gear. The problem lies in ToT LFR where I've run it for over a month straight and gotten maybe 3 or 4 items out of it, 2 of which have been duplicates and the other a lesser trinket then what I bout with my Valor.

Which is another whole issue, getting the same gear or lesser gear then you already need when the RNG God actually feels like bestowing something upon you.

[Deleted]

I seem to run in the complete opposite, i usualy cap my main for the week, then just do daily login for professions and auctions.
Then raid 2 days/week

I used to run DS 5-6 times a week in Cata, i just don't feel like alting that much anymore. (But my server has become a ghost town so pugging is non-excistent (spelling?))
Got my hopes up for 5.4 and virtual server