Skipping packs in leveling instances: pointless Wrath remnant.

[Deleted]

It takes a few seconds to kill a pack. The pack will give high experience, with rested most likely over half of what the random dungeon reward is. Even running random dungeons one after another, you won't be getting higher experience by skipping packs.

Experience is what 99% of the people in the instance are there for. Gear is made useless in a few levels by access to the next expansion's content. Most people have heirlooms anyway, and if you don't, skipping content shouldn't be your priority.

Tons of awesome fast experience has been lost this way. Pointless Wrath of the Lich King mentality remnant.

[hulkgor]

Let's say you kill 100 packs of mobs over 1 hour of running instances. Killing 100 packs in 1 dungeon is worse then killing 100 packs over 3 dungeons, whilst getting 3 times the random dungeon bonus. Not hard to grasp that notion, i'd say.

Now, you can argue that the queue is long, bla bla. But if you get a good group and run through a couple of dungeons on a row, the faster the better.

[Stevegasm]

You're right. It is better experience. People are quite set in their ways though, so fat chance making any change. Skipping packs isn't so much a Wrath thing as it is a Vanilla and TBC thing. It was Wrath that introduced the easymode AOE tanking to every tank, AOE DPS to every DPS, and AOE healing and infinite mana to every healer. During the Vanilla and TBC days, packs were skipped because each would take 30-60 seconds of setup and about 1 to 2 minutes of fighting, and then recovery. That is not to mention dungeons were much bigger back then and there were much more mob packs in a dungeon.

[Deleted]

Let's say you kill 100 packs of mobs over 1 hour of running instances. Killing 100 packs in 1 dungeon is worse then killing 100 packs over 3 dungeons, whilst getting 3 times the random dungeon bonus. Not hard to grasp that notion, i'd say.

Now, you can argue that the queue is long, bla bla. But if you get a good group and run through a couple of dungeons on a row, the faster the better.

Even with zero queues, the act of starting a new instance will destroy whatever advantage you had by skipping a single pack, not to mention, of course, you lose out on greens, cloth and perhaps even something more valuable. People who I've played with, who skip, aren't in a group, so they've got the usual queue. It's not just tanks who skip, so it's not just the spoiled people who get the fast queues. I've gone as a tank, and had the rest of the group wanting to skip. Healers with sometimes 5min+ and DPS with even more.

BS statistics. It's just a moronic mindset people have left from the days when people skipped in heroics because the actual act of killing something gave you absolutely nothing.

You're right. It is better experience. People are quite set in their ways though, so fat chance making any change. Skipping packs isn't so much a Wrath thing as it is a Vanilla and TBC thing. It was Wrath that introduced the easymode AOE tanking to every tank, AOE DPS to every DPS, and AOE healing and infinite mana to every healer. During the Vanilla and TBC days, packs were skipped because each would take 30-60 seconds of setup and about 1 to 2 minutes of fighting, and then recovery. That is not to mention dungeons were much bigger back then and there were much more mob packs in a dungeon.

Yes, we skipped some in TBC, bosses even, but it was Wrath and the 5min heroic zergs that made it a problem. Skipping was done in order to get the end reward faster. That didn't exist in vanilla, so it has nothing to do with vanilla.

Point is, the whole skipping mentality derives from getting the end reward as fast as possible. The handful of experience in leveling randoms though isn't worth it, period. Still, people are set in their ways, as was said. Who's to blame? Well, originally Blizzard, of course. Instances should have been designed from the beginning so that it is not finished, it is not cleared, and you don't get your end reward, until every single enemy is dead.

[Grocalis]

That didn't exist in vanilla, so it has nothing to do with vanilla.

Someone never did the BRD lava swim.

[Recondition]

Let's say you kill 100 packs of mobs over 1 hour of running instances. Killing 100 packs in 1 dungeon is worse then killing 100 packs over 3 dungeons, whilst getting 3 times the random dungeon bonus. Not hard to grasp that notion, i'd say.

Now, you can argue that the queue is long, bla bla. But if you get a good group and run through a couple of dungeons on a row, the faster the better.

But you spend more time traveling between packs than the 10-15 seconds it takes to kill a pack (probably faster if the group is good)

[Deleted]

Someone never did the BRD lava swim.

I can't say I remember doing the BRD lava swim for any other reason than to reach MC or the anvil.

[Deleted]

It takes a few seconds to kill a pack. The pack will give high experience, with rested most likely over half of what the random dungeon reward is. Even running random dungeons one after another, you won't be getting higher experience by skipping packs.

Experience is what 99% of the people in the instance are there for. Gear is made useless in a few levels by access to the next expansion's content. Most people have heirlooms anyway, and if you don't, skipping content shouldn't be your priority.

Tons of awesome fast experience has been lost this way. Pointless Wrath of the Lich King mentality remnant.

Since in wrath on people who lvled in dungeon always killed everything possible .. your last sentence is wrong .

[hulkgor]

not to mention, of course, you lose out on greens, cloth and perhaps even something more valuable.

Errr, you aren't grasping the idea. You will kill exactly the same number of packs... so, you have the exact same chance for greens, cloth or something more valuable... You simply kill the <same number of pack> throughout more runs, benefiting more from the dungeon completion bonus. Well, except for the 5-30sec loading screen joining the new dungeon.

the simple fact that you don't understand it, doesn't mean its "BS statistics". Why try to explain it if you just ignore the unavoidable facts. More runs, more bonus rewards. Your kill rate is not affected, so you would kill the exact same number of packs you would otherwise... 20 packs per 5 dungeons or 100 packs in a single dungeon over 1hour is the same amount of packs, and xp. You simply kill more bosses and complete more dungeons, getting more xp bonus and items. Simple enough?

Cookie McNuts-> Im talking about out of the way packs, that can be ignored. Not stealthing around or invis pots to avoid packs. That affects kill rate, thus is not worth it. I'm talking about, let's say, the optional boss in Ahn'Aket that is pointless (The fungus guy down the ramp, wayyyy out of the dungeon path), or clearing whole rooms when your progression through the run isn't affect... hence, no 10-15 runs around packs. you would always be attacking something...

[ringpriest]

I can remember skipping packs back in vanilla. While it was certainly important to clear everything around any difficult fight, in larger dungeons (BRD, I'm looking at you) we normally had a couple of specific objectives, and only a limited amount of time. (Even if the group was free to go all night, trash would start respawning after a while, which usually put an end to a run.) So there was always a trade-off between quick progress and potentially wiping when a skipped group of mobs got pulled. But I definitely remember using stealth, invisibility(potions), and feign death to bypass trash.

[Cernunnos]

I can't say I remember doing the BRD lava swim for any other reason than to reach MC or the anvil.

The reason you did a lava swim (by jumping of flamelash's room) was so you didn't have to go through the trash and seven dwarves between the grim guzzler and the lyceum to open the door to the bridge.

And you could skip even more of the dungeon if you turned left after zoning in and heading staight for Incendius and swimming from there.

You skipped all those mobs because the reward from them was useless for your level, and it was just wasting time if you fought them

[Deleted]

More runs, more bonus rewards.

Well first of all, that's fine if you join with a full group of 5 people. Otherwise you're just being a complete douchebag towards the people in your group who are only going to run a single instance.

Secondly, the bonus experience from running a random isn't high enough. Even without rested experience and heirloom gear, you'll get such a high xp/h ratio by killing everything in your way that it beats not killing them. In full heirloom gear, with rested experience, and not to mention if you happen to be a monk, skipping mobs drops your xp/h significantly.

I can remember skipping packs back in vanilla.

Thinking back to 2005 and 2006, I can't remember there being this systemic skipping of packs at every possible turn, mainly because instances back then took an hour or two, perhaps even three. 45 minute Baron was considered a fast run.

Yeah, people skipped shit here and there, but it was Wrath specifically when runs became so fast, 5-15 minutes per heroic, and when people started to have their stable of 10 characters, that everyone just ran to the end boss, killed him, and got their raid-level currency.

That's the mindset and mentality that has been etched into the minds of people; skip whenever you can because the rewards are worth it. Well, they're not worth it in the leveling instances, not anymore anyway.

[bionics]

In my encounters as a tank when a DPS or healer nicely asks, "Can we kill these mobs for xp?" I will usually acquiesce or pull for them. It only takes an extra minute at the most and if I'm in there leveling as well I might as well get the extra experience along with them.

[Stevegasm]

Even with zero queues, the act of starting a new instance will destroy whatever advantage you had by skipping a single pack, not to mention, of course, you lose out on greens, cloth and perhaps even something more valuable. People who I've played with, who skip, aren't in a group, so they've got the usual queue. It's not just tanks who skip, so it's not just the spoiled people who get the fast queues. I've gone as a tank, and had the rest of the group wanting to skip. Healers with sometimes 5min+ and DPS with even more.

BS statistics. It's just a moronic mindset people have left from the days when people skipped in heroics because the actual act of killing something gave you absolutely nothing.



Yes, we skipped some in TBC, bosses even, but it was Wrath and the 5min heroic zergs that made it a problem. Skipping was done in order to get the end reward faster. That didn't exist in vanilla, so it has nothing to do with vanilla.

Point is, the whole skipping mentality derives from getting the end reward as fast as possible. The handful of experience in leveling randoms though isn't worth it, period. Still, people are set in their ways, as was said. Who's to blame? Well, originally Blizzard, of course. Instances should have been designed from the beginning so that it is not finished, it is not cleared, and you don't get your end reward, until every single enemy is dead.

I don't think you played the game in Vanilla. Dungeons took about an hour long, especially after the reduction to the group sizes you could take to Scholo, Strat, and BRS. It wasn't unheard of to see people in one for up to 2 hours. Hell, even at level 15, my first WC run took 3 hours because no one knew what they were doing. There were end rewards in Vanilla. Back then the game wasn't all about the epics. You finished a dungeon in hopes for a piece of a dungeon set. Valor, Devout, etc. among other pieces of gear to help you get started on raiding. Even some blue gear rivaled that of epics. You finished BRD and UBRS to get a key to Onyxia (alliance side at least, no idea how Horde got it), as well as attunement to MC and BWL. You entered some for certain crafting mats, hide of the beast, abom stiching, and so on. There were actually more reasons to step in a dungeon back then than there has been in the last few xpacs. When we skipped mob packs back then, it wasn't so much to get to the end boss faster as it was to save up to 20 to 30 minutes of our time. Sure the result is the same (get your stuff faster) but the motivation was different.

Then again, and I'm making an assumption here, you could have been on of the later comers to the game who didn't have to gear up much and got carried into raiding MC and BWL or geared up through ZG and AQ20 instead. My guild was one of the first on the server to even bother raiding and we had to gear up from scratch and had no raid like ZG and AQ20 to bridge us into MC.

[parkerlynne]

I skip packs, I'll also skip any part of a dungeon that is not needed to get to the end. I'm leveling a horde right now for the Double Agent achievement and with full BOAs and the guild perk, a mob at lvl 30 is worth about 150-200xp and finishing the dungeon is worth 3100. That's 15 extra kills needed to equal the completion bonus. If these packs are easily pulled while completing the dungeon regularly, then sure, but any time spent wandering down halls is time that could be spent in the next dungeon.

In fact I have found that at lower levels with no rested, it's faster to do a dungeon only once for the quests. Questing is much faster with no rested.

[Dhurn]

Let's say you kill 100 packs of mobs over 1 hour of running instances. Killing 100 packs in 1 dungeon is worse then killing 100 packs over 3 dungeons, whilst getting 3 times the random dungeon bonus. Not hard to grasp that notion, i'd say.

Now, you can argue that the queue is long, bla bla. But if you get a good group and run through a couple of dungeons on a row, the faster the better.

I skip packs, I'll also skip any part of a dungeon that is not needed to get to the end. I'm leveling a horde right now for the Double Agent achievement and with full BOAs and the guild perk, a mob at lvl 30 is worth about 150-200xp and finishing the dungeon is worth 3100. That's 15 extra kills needed to equal the completion bonus. If these packs are easily pulled while completing the dungeon regularly, then sure, but any time spent wandering down halls is time that could be spent in the next dungeon.

In fact I have found that at lower levels with no rested, it's faster to do a dungeon only once for the quests. Questing is much faster with no rested.

These are the right answers. If you want to really max xp/hour its better to go for completion bonuses. If the queue is long you're probably getting better xp anyway while you're waiting and questing.

[Grocalis]

I can't say I remember doing the BRD lava swim for any other reason than to reach MC or the anvil.

Every BRD I joined we did the lava swim to avoid trash and bosses we didn't want, allowing us to get straight to the bosses we cared about.

In LBRS, we skipped dozens of packs, every chance we got, in order to speed up the run. Most of them were sleeping packs on the upper levels, but even some smaller packs down in the troll section or spider area. We even skipped some bosses, like the ogre boss you had to grab some items to properly summon.

Did you also forget the "famous" Whelp Room in UBRS? The one that actually has a boss that most player didn't even know existed, because they always quickly skipped that room to move on to Rend? How about the other room above the Whelp Room that no one even attempted to clear? The one with the blacksmith boss. No one did that crap.

Even going to places like Scholomance, I can count on one hand how many times we did the original Jandice Barov encounter, because everyone went straight from Rattlegore to the Lich boss. Did you know you can also fight the students and a mini-boss in the classroom area? Yup, but no one ever did.

Do I really need to keep going here?

Pack skipping is not something new to this game, it never just suddenly started as a problem in WOTLK. It has existed since Vanilla. If you don't force people to spend 30 seconds fighting those five mobs, they are not going to fight them.

[pokmin100]

This is why i level tank when i can. I'm quite competent when i wanna be, and i always pull a few test 'large' groups to see if the healer can handle it. if they can, the whole instance is gonna be dead, i won't leave a single enemy alive. especially leveling right now as a brewmaster, just dizzying haze a bunch of groups and watch the carnage.

[yjmark]

Reading this post affected my alt xp gain more than skipping a couple packs of mobs on a few dungeon runs.

Point being - the amount of xp lost from skipping packs of mobs is negligible. Don't let it bother you for that reason.

imho - the biggest problem with skipping packs is that someone seems to always screw it up, pulls the pack, tank doesn't notice, and it ends up being a wipe.

[Tziva]

Yeah, I think it's dumb. Unless a pack is way out the way, it's much more efficient xp to clean every thing up.

It amazes me the lengths people go to to skip trash that takes a couple seconds, too. Waiting on pats, hugging the wall, jumping on baziers and boxes to keep out of aggro radius.... and often on packs that people are prone to facepulling anyway, after you've jumped through those hoops.

Although this behavior didn't really start in Wrath. I don't remember doing a lot of it in classic, although I'm sure it happened, but I have very clear memories of doing weird things to try to skip as much trash as possible in Burning Crusade, particularly in heroics where large packs were often very challenging.