Why is leveling Alts so brutal in BFA?

[Jetstream]

Meh. I have a hard time too, but that’s just because I burned myself out in Legion getting one of every class to 110. BFA leveling is fine.

[Topornic]

I have multiple 120s although the bigger issue in my mind is there is too much discouragement to even level an alt. Neck levels and essences are the reason why my alts are just abandoned straight after they reach 120. Shame. Why would anyone level an alt now?

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In legion was fun, and actually interesting to play, getting this legendaries and doing mage towers as well. Was quite of a experience. I loved doing all mage towers in every character, actually had a reason also to level them up

Also this. I had done all class mounts and most of the mage tower challenges (like 5 not done).

[dayne87]

I completely disagree. Compared to Classic leveling, leveling in Retail (including BFA zones) is a cake-walk. Now, aside from mechanically difficult, I will say it can get tedious leveling from 110 to 120. I've only done it on 3 characters, with the rest slowly being brought to 110 from 100/101 (I have 1 character of every class 100+ on Horde side and 3 characters 100+ on Alliance side).

to keep it fresh due to the repetitive nature of the experience, I am trying to alternate leveling my high level horde alts and my lower level Alliance alts on a different server. Playing different classes, etc.

That is nothing new, though. Even back in Vanilla I would grow bored with my main and role alts. I've been an alto-holic from day 1 practically. Tedium is the name of the game when I'm trying to pay attention to 13+ characters. Up until Legion I kept all my Horde characters up at max level before that expansion ended. With Legion, I didn't have as much time, so I only leveled 5 characters to 110 before Legion ended. Now I have some catching up to do.

The reason I waited until now to level in BFA is also flying. I wait until I have flying in new zones before really going balls to the wall with leveling. I leveled 1 Horde and 1 Alliance at the start of BFA to 120 so I could unlock allied races on both sides, but aside from that I kept my other 3 110s at 110 until flying came. I just got one of the 110s to 120 and left him there (didn't pursue new gear, etc.) because I can't really be bothered both leveling up AND gearing 13+ characters at 120.

so my goal before BFA ends is to have at least all my Horde characters at 120 and bring my Alliance characters to 60 or higher. Then if I have time to spare I'll bring all the Alliance characters from sub-60 to 120. But Alliance has always been second-fiddle for me.

Any, I think the "brutality" of leveling alts in BFA just comes from the nature of leveling alts. It can become tedious repeating the same experience several times. But what makes it enjoyable for me is the differences in the classes. Leveling as a rogue plays different than leveling as a hunter and both of those play different than leveling as a mage or a shaman, etc. I just love it.

[Reaper0329]

Definitely going to echo the sentiment that leveling itself isn't that bad, but gearing at 120 is absolutely miserable. I find it somewhat incredible to believe that anyone at Blizzard looked at the system and said"let's them grind the same rep, over and over, is a great idea" or "yeah, let's make them grind Conquest points for PvE progression multiple times" and wasn't immediately laughed into unemployment.

[Fred Skinner]

When blizzard buffed mobs, they unfortunately also raised the time you need to level.

Thats the downside if you ask to make gameplay harder. Blizzard will use it to get more /played.

[Fred Skinner]

But scaling also allows you to do the most optimum path for questing without being penalised for your level - which is a much bigger advantage than mobs taking a few seconds longer to kill (which isn't actually the case at this point)

Well, my impression is that leveling takes longer since the changes.

But that just could be anecdotal. Probably i am just getting old and my reflexes skyrocket my level time

[Nagawithlegs]

Coupled with what has been said about mobs being harder, they have also purposefully made it so that only the last patch of each expansion has really helpful catchup mechanics. Most likely to make the last patch more popular/pad numbers during the content drought.

[spleen1015]

I find the OP's opinion here interesting. The questing and zone stories in the 6 BfA zones is some of Blizz's best work, ever, IMO. All 6 zones look great and the storylines are all unmatched.

I love leveling 110-120. Once I'm at max level, that's a different story. Not a big fan of how they've handled essences.

[darklogrus]

Boring Classes/Specs, Lack of Char progression, Chars regressed as BFA leveling went on. Followed by a pretty lackluster story is what made me not like BFA leveling in a nutshell..

[Puddlejumper]

It's definitely more about how sucky it is to go from being an interesting Legion-era character to a boring BfA-era character than it is about how much effort it takes to get there. 120 is easy to reach but it's pretty darn hard to develop the motivation to get there with a 110 character you actually liked, because the entire process is one of losing access to stuff you had.

Honestly easier, mentally-speaking, to level a new character from 1. I had a paladin at level 110 that I literally could not get interested in leveling, so instead I levelled a paladin from scratch and it was fine. Of course then I ended up quitting the game a month later because everything about BfA sucks, but you know...

[toffmcsoft]

LOL... this must be a joke of a thread.
Lvling in retail is brutal?

Aren't people able to get from lvl 110 to 120 in under 1 day /played?
If anything, lvling in retail needs to be longer.

[Bruteney]

Leveled 12 classes to 120, and it's a bit boring every now and then, but I have 12 more to to level from 110 and 2 from 76
Not brutal though.

[Zyrinx]

Why would anyone feel the need to level a 2nd to 120? There's nothing different than having the first.

Many people (me included) probably assume there will be a "Mage Tower" in 8.3, and want to be ready. Personally my 12 toons are all 120 and in Benthic (easy, obviously) so it'll be a (I hope) fairly short pull to get them competitive for a solo challenge, if added.

And if it's not added, maybe the next Expansion has one. IDK, keeping my chars leveled is just one of the things I do in WoW. I'm not currently actually playing any Alts though.

[MasterHamster]

Because BFA leveling fails at giving players any sort of dopamine-reward. Got a big azerite upgrade? Wohoo, if only you weren't obliterating everything in your path regardless. 110-120 is little more fun a theme park run of the zones stories, after that it's the same soulless weekly cache-hunt, filled with content that is designed around you winning, hoping you'll be back the next weekly reset. They couldn't even be arsed to add a new talent row. Pathetic.

[Redecle]

Didn't feel brutal the slightest. Quite the opposite, i got all 14 alts at max level until 8.1 even dropped.
Never had that before, ever. Tried multiple expansions, but it always ended up in burning out of leveling after 4-6 chars, had to wait ½-1 year to finish the rest.
This time it was pretty simple and fast. Could be faster, but not bad at all.
Artifacts in Legion really slowed it down if you wanted to gear up for mage tower with alts.
This time the neck can be 100% ignored, which is perfect.

[Pawstruck]

It's a problem of leveling on Live in general that, imo, is only alleviated briefly by the Legion content. Everything is far too easy.

Go try Classic for a minute and you'll find that it's very easy to die for any number of reasons. Each fight requires your engagement, even moreso if you're on a PVP server watching for the opposite faction. At any given moment leveling my hunter, I am:

1. Switching between Track Humanoid and Find Herbs
2. Making sure my pet is alive and has positioned itself reasonably
3. Watching for patrols (on all sides)
4. Doing my "rotation"
5. Making sure I don't pull threat - and if I do, kiting the mob until my pet taunts it
6. Checking my progress on the quest(s)
7. Taking inventory of my supplies and armor

Take that, versus Live on my priest:
1. My "rotation" until the mob dies
2. If I pull another mob, who cares? I'll kill it too
That's it.

Not meant to be a Retail-bashing post. Actually, I like the game and lament what it's become in this expansion. Legion was a solid uptick for me. Leveling, however, has been broken for a long time. They could triple the damage mobs do and it would probably still not be enough - at least, because they don't have enough health to survive more than 10 seconds.

It's really sad.

[darklogrus]

It's a problem of leveling on Live in general that, imo, is only alleviated briefly by the Legion content. Everything is far too easy.

Go try Classic for a minute and you'll find that it's very easy to die for any number of reasons. Each fight requires your engagement, even moreso if you're on a PVP server watching for the opposite faction. At any given moment leveling my hunter, I am:

1. Switching between Track Humanoid and Find Herbs
2. Making sure my pet is alive and has positioned itself reasonably
3. Watching for patrols (on all sides)
4. Doing my "rotation"
5. Making sure I don't pull threat - and if I do, kiting the mob until my pet taunts it
6. Checking my progress on the quest(s)
7. Taking inventory of my supplies and armor

Take that, versus Live on my priest:
1. My "rotation" until the mob dies
2. If I pull another mob, who cares? I'll kill it too
That's it.

Not meant to be a Retail-bashing post. Actually, I like the game and lament what it's become in this expansion. Legion was a solid uptick for me. Leveling, however, has been broken for a long time. They could triple the damage mobs do and it would probably still not be enough - at least, because they don't have enough health to survive more than 10 seconds.

It's really sad.

Classic for me is

1. Fight to the 1 mob I actually need
2. Rotation of 1-2 buttons 30 levels later
3. Pray it doesn't run to their buddies or self heal to full cause my class doesn't have a stun yet.
4. Pray RNGesus doesn't give me a bunch of parry, dodge and miss to my atks on the mobs with less then 30% health..
5. Pray RNGesus actually drops the item I need cause its already been 30mins on just this 1 quest..

vs Retail

1. Fight to mob I need
2. Ration of 1-2 buttons
3. move on..

[rohoz]

The scaling world destroys any sense of your character being able to explore anywhere dangerous. The quest markers all over the map and free travel between any hub combined with no threat from any of the mobs in the world create a system that begs the question, why do this at all when I can not lose? The sense of power progression goes backward as your character gets weaker relative to everything in the world as it progresses. The lack of any meaningful reward, gold rewards are useless and each item reward is incremental adding 2 or 3 of each stat to totals in the hundreds.

Those are the objective reasons why the leveling process in BfA is awful, you may also throw on top of the list that you hate how your class plays, or you hate the story, or you hate all the cutscenes, or you hate the characters they added, or you hate the fat humans/troll art, etc. which will just dog-pile what was a truly soulless production in BfA.

you can go to areas outside of your level range, like the mobs in hillsbrad will tear you a new one if you're level 15.

[rohoz]

You know the expansion is crap when i'm able to level an alt to 60 faster and easier in Classic than in BFA. In BFA even with herilooms it takes 1-3 days played to 120 unless you do some retarded xp pot/island/dng spam non sense and then have to catch up througn the war story to unlock warfront, level your followers or you can't do island missions for that bonus AP or Essence, you need to collect all your essences all over again and some BIS essences are bs to do again on alts like the 50,000k honor blood of the enemy, you need to do the new zone story to unlock that non sense, then you need to farm pearls to get BIS benthic pieces through rng, then you need to grind raid and M+ for gear(If you care about doing any damage/healing)

what the hell are you even saying? roflmao

also don't be a liar, you're attempting to push in endgame in your description of bfa and not including the fun ony attunement in your classic description. huh

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- class homogenization makes differences feel minimal.
- class ability pruning eliminates any challenge; every class can be played to 90-95% of its capability with 6-8 buttons.
- mob and quest difficulty is laughable, and button click for 'instant group/raid' trivializes anything which a challenge.
- heart of azeroth grind
- same 3 zones for every character. same linear story in each zone. nothing is emergent.
- world pvp is dead.
- island expeditions are brain dead
- world campaign is tedious and horrible story
- zones are dead; low player count + phasing + flying mounts + everyone at the cap is in najazatar / gnomerrobotland / mythic instances

the amount of leveling content is a joke too. you can go from 110->120 in about 10 hours played if you have heirlooms / xp bonuses / rested bonus and just grind quests. anything less than questing isn't optimal for xp/hour.

rofl world pvp is dead okay buddy
class pruning eliminates all challenge? buzzword soup.
wow has always been linear, difference now is instead of 3 zones from 50-60 where you have to do all the quests or grind, you have 3 zones where you can do wtf ever you want in whatever order. I'm sure you'll act dumb when you remember you had to choose between wpl, epl and winterspring to not grind green mobs for hours
I'm sorry that capped players ganking low leveled zones was a draw for you.

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It's a problem of leveling on Live in general that, imo, is only alleviated briefly by the Legion content. Everything is far too easy.

Go try Classic for a minute and you'll find that it's very easy to die for any number of reasons. Each fight requires your engagement, even moreso if you're on a PVP server watching for the opposite faction. At any given moment leveling my hunter, I am:

1. Switching between Track Humanoid and Find Herbs
2. Making sure my pet is alive and has positioned itself reasonably
3. Watching for patrols (on all sides)
4. Doing my "rotation"
5. Making sure I don't pull threat - and if I do, kiting the mob until my pet taunts it
6. Checking my progress on the quest(s)
7. Taking inventory of my supplies and armor

Take that, versus Live on my priest:
1. My "rotation" until the mob dies
2. If I pull another mob, who cares? I'll kill it too
That's it.

Not meant to be a Retail-bashing post. Actually, I like the game and lament what it's become in this expansion. Legion was a solid uptick for me. Leveling, however, has been broken for a long time. They could triple the damage mobs do and it would probably still not be enough - at least, because they don't have enough health to survive more than 10 seconds.

It's really sad.

You do exactly the same thing as a priest in classic, too.
mb/swp/wand/loot/mp/swp/wand/loot all day. Maybe if you're fighting yellow/oranges you drink and heal every 5th/6th mob.

[Jotaux]

Getting to max level is fine, it's what you have to do once you hit max level thats soul crushing. I can't be bothered to grind out all the essences again on an alt. My one alt I do plus with has 2 essences, the one from your weekly cache and the one you get by default.