Returning player have quite a few questions

[Papapwn]

Hello,

Old school wow player here. I played upto the end of cata. Looking at wow now i feel kinda lost so wanted to know if there are any guides or videos that can help me catch upto speed and understand the current game.

- Was also wondering how is the pvp now?

- What classes are considered strong? I used to play Rogue Paladin and Hunter and can adjust to any considering i like to stay competitive in pve and pvp.


Also how should i go about starting now? I dont understand what AK is or anything. If i were to buy a fresh copy anything i should know before i start or should i just roll out and see what happens. Any tips and help would be appreciated.


Thanks

[Brewhan]

-PVP is abandoned game don't bother with that right now.

-PVE raiding is fun and there is multiple ways to gear up now making it much easier and bridging the gap between realm first raiders and the average pug player.

-For class guides visit icyveins or join the competitivewow sub reddit with the links to their class discord channels for more indepth knowledge.

-warcraft logs filter rankings by 7.2.5 will give you an idea of top parsing classes if you want to see which epeen class is the biggest to satisfy selfish desires.

-If you start now you will be pretty far behind but its possible to catch up to some degree with lots of grinding. You've got to understand you're 9 months behind the curve so dont get upset if people do 50% more damage than you in dungeons or raids.

If you buy a fresh copy now I think you get a lvl 100 boost class or can try out the class trials as well to see which you like more. GL

Legion tells a great class story and makes a decent single player experience right now. All the classes have their own unique story line you get to experience while leveling up.

[Huntaer]

My friend enjoys pvp, so that kinda makes it a personal experience. It has changed a lot since cata, so best try it out really

[Papapwn]

-PVP is abandoned game don't bother with that right now.

-If you start now you will be pretty far behind but its possible to catch up to some degree with lots of grinding. You've got to understand you're 9 months behind the curve so dont get upset if people do 50% more damage than you in dungeons or raids.

What's changed in pvp that makes it so bad?

Also how much grind is it about to catch up? this is pretty disheartening considering I want to join a top tier guild.

[High Function]

Ignore those that say PVP or PVE is dead. The game is in a good spot to make it what you want it to be.

So for PVP, right now Ilvl does not really matter in PVP. There is a system in place that you can wowhead or google to basically allow players that just hit 110 to be able to compete with players who are full on mythic gear with a 915 or whatever Ilvl. You do get better stats and such if you have a higher Ilvl but it is not game changing. The PVP head of WOW just left so PVP should change for the better now from what many people are saying. For PVP right now there are clearly heavy hitting classes, but if you play any spec right you should do well. Hpally are in a great spot for pvp right now. There are some classes in PVP that may not hit hard enough, but if you play strategy you can beat any other class.

Right now there are clearly classes that do more baseline dps than others for PVE. I recommend going to wowlogs and look at rankings, it is a very simple way to see how the average player of a spec is doing and what the best players of the specs are doing. Rouges are in a tough spot with 7.2.5, assin was the top NH raid player to bring but changes have hurt the class for TOS. BM hunters are in a really great spot for pvp and PVE, and your pallys do well in all three specs. TOS is said to have lots of more tank healing which helps hpal for the next raid. You will always almost want a hpal in your raid and a ret in your raid for the utility a ret can bring.
So for AK, basically it allows you to get more AP from an AP item to help you get AP faster. AP allows you to unlock traits in your weapon, traits like "increase fireball dmg by 3%" or " increase healing rain by 8%". The game will explain it to you as you get back in the swing of things. They have systems in place now to speed up your catching up. For instance, it took players 4 days to get one upgrade of their AK, and now you can get one in 4 hours.( max AK is 40 now)
One major thing they have added are Mythic plus dungeons. They are basically challenge dungeons that if you complete in a timer give gear. They just changed the system again in 7.2.5, but for instance in 7.2 if I have a level 7 key and beat it in the 'gold' time standard, the key would change to a 10. The higher key you complete the better the gear, obviously the higher the key the harder it gets and the more AP it drops. If you look at the patch notes they will explain mythic plus changes much better, people are still figuring it out for 7.2.5. Right now if you just complete the key you get the same amount of gear (3 pieces of loot for the group drop) regardless of how fast you do it, which is opposite of 7.2 where if you did it in gold, silver or bronze, you got more gear to drop. (this is not true for keystones after 15 with 7.2.5 I think you get more if you silver a 15 plus)

Bottom line you will have fun no matter what you do, not going to lie there is A LOT of content, but do not be overwhelmed or told it is too hard to get. Just do what you want.
Message me if you have any questions!

[Inari]

If you get a lvl 100 boost (which you should get for free with a copy of Legion) you can do a class trial which boosts a class of your choice too 100 temporarily so you can try it out and get a feel for how it plays and you can do this as many times as you like until you use the boost. Keep on mind that legendaries and artifacts change stuff a bit so there's that, but it can be a good starting point

[High Function]

.
-If you start now you will be pretty far behind but its possible to catch up to some degree with lots of grinding. You've got to understand you're 9 months behind the curve so dont get upset if people do 50% more damage than you in dungeons or raids.

This is not a correct statement. Sure it will take a few weeks to get your AK up which will change how fast you fill your weapon out. Yeah at a new 110 people will get beat 50% or more but that's expected. You will need some luck with gear to TF or WF (gear can upgrade on its own randomly to 925). Many top end guilds you are looking for will run mythic plus and carry you because they just want AP. Just have to find the right group of people

[Deleted]

Also how should i go about starting now?

You should buy the latest expac - it comes with 30 days of gametime and a free boost to current content. That's it.
After that, the rest of it works out automatically and you'll also find answer to such questions as: "is it worth coming back?", "do I still like the game?" and "how does xyz work these days?"

After those 30 days you'll have pretty clear picture of the state of the game these days and you can decide if you want to continue - or play something else.

Good luck!

[Ghazar]

The thing is even though there are, and there will always be better classes, every class can be played to a competitive level, I don't think any class is completely crippled for all situations, not much different there from previous expansions.

Since others answered some pvp stuff I'll try to explain AK quickly.
As you may have read somewhere, in Legion you use artifact weapons with its own progression system, you can level the artifact up by using Artifact Power (AP), which in turn gives you a boost in primary stats and a choice of an artifact trait (traits include specific spell boosts like reduced cd, increased damage, or even new spells that can change the play style). Each Artifact Knowledge (AK) rank increases the rate at which you gain AP, at lvl 1 you get 100% at level 40 you get 4000000% ap.

You buy AK in your class order hall by spending order resources (you gain them by doing world quests-new form of dailies, and class quests).

In this patch you can instantly buy AK up to level 25 provided you have enough resources, which should take a few days to collect, depending on how much you play, and then from 25 to 40, each level will take 4 hours to research, which is way faster than most of us got it (used to take 5 days each) so you can get those pretty fast, so your artifact will be at a good level in a week or two.

The best way to gear up initially is by doing world quests for upgrades (you can see the rewards on map), and by collecting nethershards (check some wowhead guides) to purchase ilvl 880+ items. When you reach a certain ilevel you can start doing raid finder for low lvl raid gear, and start from there.

After you get decent gear, you can start doing mythic + dungeons and higher level raids for some serious gear.

Note that some classes scale better with gear or certain stats which may mean that at the beginning you'll be pretty weak but it will get better (i.e. demo locks at low levels with low haste barely do any damage, and need time to ramp up, but with a lot of haste they scale amazingly)

Hopefully you found something useful in this post.

P.S.

Also how much grind is it about to catch up? this is pretty disheartening considering I want to join a top tier guild.

If you asked a few weeks ago it would have been horrible, but as I stated above, you get get AP pretty fast now, and as for ilvl, the biggest struggle is getting into m+ because people expect you to be high ilvl, but it shouldn't be that bad, and once you start doing m+ you'll gear up in no time

[Papapwn]

Thanks all for the replies. Will be trying the game now.