Coming back to retail after 2 years. Very lost and need some help

Community General Discussion
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Hey everyone, long time player here who quit one month into Shadowlands. I been playing wotlk classic and enjoying the hell out of it, however the one class I like better in retail is hunter (can’t stand bm hunter in wrath). My main in classic (frost dk) is essentially just there to raid log now, so I started messing around in retail again last night.

The UI changes were jarring and very overwhelming for me. Took me over an hour to get the bars and keybinds simplified enough to the point I can play again. I tried hopping back on my old hunter main but being gone too long, it was impossible for me to get back into a max level toon especially with all the talent tree changes.

I made a new hunter and got him to level 10 last night, really enjoyed myself. Anyway I have a few questions since I been gone so long and retail is essentially a completely different game than what I’m used to.

Now that I’m level 10, where should I go to level? I got a quest to talk to Sylvanas, so I’m guessing that’s the BFA content? I remember BFA being 50+ so I’m confused as to why I’m getting this quest now. I also see that I can queue up for a BFA dungeon but it says 10-50?? Very confusing.

Do I want to level in Azeroth/Cata or can I level in other zones? Also can I SKIP Shadowlands? Imo the game was at its worst during SL, so I’d like to skip that entire zone if possible. Also want to skip BFA and level elsewhere. Is 50-60 mandatory in SL or is there another option?

Lastly how do professions work? I heard that all the zones are independent of each other now, so which zones are even worth leveling up at this point? I picked up classic mining/engineering but it also gave me the option to pick up the cataclysm versions?? Kinda lost on how professions work now, so some clarification would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry for the long unorganized post, it’s just very overwhelming especially compared to how simple wrath classic is. I’d stay with classic but I know it’s lifespan is limited to 2 years max. I rather invest in retail since it will seemingly go on forever.

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This changed with bfa prepatch back in July 2018. Blizz separated each profession into a per expansion progresion bar. Same amount of points it used to have, but you just can’t no longer craft thousands of wod/legion materials to blast through the earlier expansions for easy skill points.

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Anywhere you want - Shadowlands introduced Chromie Time, which allows you to quest in any expansion you want at any level (up to 50; will be extended to 60 either with prepatch phase 2, or the expansion launch proper). Go to the allied race embassy and you’ll find Chromie sitting on a large hourglass, speak to her and you can choose an expansion to journey in. If you get bored of that expansion, you can return to Chromie and select another at any time

Not until Chromie Time is extended to level 60, which is when Shadowlands will be rolled into it (and thus can be not selected)

Each expansion has been separated into their own categories. You no longer have to level a new profession from scratch before being able to make current stuff. This makes older expansion crafts for the most part obsolete, however it can still be worth learning them depending on the craft, like if you want Jeeves you can just learn Northrend Engineering instead of having to level through Vanilla and TBC Engineering first.

As for the separation between Classic and Cataclysm, there isn’t really one. They’re sort of rolled together since the world revamp, so they’re in the same category, but Classic distinguishes the old revamped zones from the Cataclysm-specific zones (those being Vashj’ir, Hyjal, Deepholm, Uldum, and the Twilight Highlands) and the materials within them

In short, it sounds like you might be overthinking things a little. Basically, you don’t have to level and grind professions through each expansion from start to finish anymore, you are free to choose where and when you want to go at any level…until 50 (later 60) where you’ll be forced to go to the current expansion

Edit: it’s also worth mentioned that your first character has to go through BfA before you can participate in Chromie Time. I don’t know where the cutoff for that is, though, so I don’t know how it affects returning players that have been gone for a long time

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seems like other people have given you some sound advice. I would suggest if you are not in a active and friendly guild, find one!

It makes this game worlds better (imho)

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When they were talking about classic and cataclysm, I think their confusion (as you answered already) the professions. All the vanilla npcs offering profession training offer Cataclysm as a profession skill path. Thus when op was learning skills they obviously were in sw or org (or somewhere equivalent).

To op, as sil and I said professions are split by expansion and all profession trainers in any zone offer the “base” (used to be standard vanilla portion) in addition to the skill path for whatever expansion they are in. So as an example if you roll in with a fresh character to shadowlands, the brokers were offer the base skill path and shadowlands. The rest is explanatory.

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It is a good time to come back OP. A month before the expansion launches.

You will have to level in Shadowlands to get to 60 unfortunately. In terms of learning all the modern in-game systems, I would say not to worry too much about it. Most of it will be obsolete once Dragon Flight comes out and you will start fresh like everyone else leveling to the new level cap.

I’m in a bit of a similar boat, just returned after 1 year of being absent so all my gear is 2 full tiers behind and I havent unlocked any of the systems in the last 2 patches. I visited IcyVeins to read up on the new Shaman talents and what not. Currently, I’m just farming up world quests to save a little gold for when the expac drops.

I say, just have fun with it and don’t worry about anything else other than getting to max level with the character you wish to play with come DF :slight_smile:

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For some further tips, primarily in regards to dungeons in expansion order, and from my own personal experience so mileage may vary:

-Classic dungeons are generally the best for doing quests at the same time, simply because there’s so many of them and most of them have at least 3 quests per dungeon. I’m usually able to get around level 35 on a new alt before I start seeing any repeats

-TBC dungeons tend to be the fastest clear vs mob density, if that makes sense, so they’re a good place to spend rested exp. However there’s also a handful of boss encounters that are scaled very…questionably. Particularly the last boss of the Slave Pens, especially if your tank zug zugs straight to it and doesn’t let you get the Nature resist buff from the npc

-Wrath dungeons are probably the best at capturing the feel of how they were originally, with groups just barreling through without a care…until someone facepulls 3 extra patrols in Halls of Stone

-Cataclysm dungeons are hands down the most hit or miss of any expansion, usually a miss. If your group knows what they’re doing, they’re clean and a very fun change of pace. If they don’t, you wind up wiping over and over to the first trash pack in the Stonecore because “focus skull before it tears you apart with aoe” is too difficult to comprehend. And more often than not you’ll get people who don’t know what they’re doing, because the people that do know what they’re doing don’t queue for Cataclysm dungeons…

-Pandaria dungeons tend to be the least dangerous. I can’t recall any poorly-scaled encounters or frustrating trash packs in any of them. Might get a little stale quickly though, since there aren’t many dungeons to pull from

-No one queues for Warlords dungeons. There are no quests without also questing in the relevant zones, the trash is few and far between so you aren’t getting much exp from that, and boss encounters tend to drag on like damage sponges

-Legion dungeons tend to be fairly popular, mostly due to the artifact weapons being easy access for people that don’t have heirloom weapons, and for the most part they’re fairly well balanced, though there are a few encounters that can leave you scratching your head at “how did that happen?”. Light help you if you get Maw of Souls with a healer that doesn’t know where their dispel button is. Or that holes are very, very bad

-And finally, BfA dungeons are probably the best scaled no matter what level you are, but they also tend to suffer the most from “new player wtf am I even doing” syndrome, since it’s the expansion that everyone has to go through before they’re allowed into Chromie Time, meaning it’s where you’re most likely to run into new players who don’t have the first clue what they’re doing

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Some really useful information here.
Thanks everyone!

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I will also say that whatever scaling that Blizzard implemented with these dungeons was actually really well done. They aren’t particularly hard dungeons, but you will actually get to see those bosses use their abilities and they actually feel like real dungeons. Honestly kudos to Blizzard on that one.

And just as you said, absolutely maddening that Blizzard is throwing new players into this content. The are mechanics in these dungeons that new players should never be expected to be able to handle.

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One thing I’ve noticed on the Tauren Rogue i’m leveling is profession default to whichever expansion you have learned that is the newest… So if you have learned vanilla and cataclysm (which is easy to do as they are learned at the same trainer) it will default to cataclysm.

To me this is exceptionally stupid… and not sure why they changed this interface… Other than on the old one it was perplexing that if you collapsed an expansion it wouldn’t stay collapsed… I REALLY wish Blizzard would revert to the old screen. This new crafting UI is just terrible.

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Except for Gordok Commons. The amount of times I’ve seen tanks get absolutely slapped by pulling too many ogres and then yelling at the healer…

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Haha there are absolutely some outliers.

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longtime player who quit one month into shadowlands, then lists a bunch of stuff that’s been that way for years as if it changed with talents and ui…

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I didn’t do any professions in bfa

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never leveld an alt either last how many years? chromie time has been a thing for along time now. the level squish and scaling for the leveling zones been there a long time.

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So by default, the game puts you into BFA content. You can talk to Chromie in org or Storm in order to level in any zone you want to (except sl content) to 50. It’s scaling.

You cannot at this time skip shadowlands sadly. Once you hit 50, you’re gonna be going through SL.

Professions are separated by expansion and you can learn different aspects of diff professions.

I would check r/woweconomy and YouTube vids for different xmogs that you could make and any of the mounts are usually profitable.

All good. Your post is a lot better than most.