I compared the human starting area from tbc and the wrath prepatch yesterday. Did it on a human warlock, and I completed Elwynn almost twice as fast in the prepatch.
In Tbc I had to pull 1 mob at a time, until I got my pet and then I could pull 2. I had to send my pet into 1 mob, dot him, and then go onto the 2nd mob letting my pet deal with him after it killed the 1st mob. I would have to auto attack when the mobs were low health to be able to save mana enough to be able to drink every 2 pulls. If I stayed casting until the mob died, my mana was totally gone and I had to drink after every fight. My healthbar also moved a lot and I had to eat a few times when it went down too far. Also my imp pet was always low on health and mana.
Now in the Wrath prepatch, I could pull much more mobs from level 1. My only limit was the casting pushback from too many mobs hitting me. My mana and health bar barely moved. In fact you don’t get water and food when you load in the beginning of the game from being a new character. I thought this was a mistake or a bug, but I guess it’s not because I never had to eat or drink at all. I bought 20 waters and never had to use any of them. I also casted all my spells until the mobs died with no remorse for mana. When I got my pet I felt unstoppable, as I can just let him tank while blew up the extra mobs 1 at a time. Neither of both of our health and mana bars seemed to move at all.
My question is does it change and get harder when I level or stay the same? I think the old way of combat felt not exactly better, but it was different. Like you had a choice of the slow, old, plan each action before you press the button playstyle of classic, or the machine gun, fire off your spells as fast as you can feel of retail. Comparing the games back to back let me see how different they feel, and how much wrath feels like retail already. I hope it changes as you move to harder zones. If not in the old world, then maybe it steps up in difficulty when you reach outlands or northrend.
In general, Wrath talents, redesign of the classes, and reduced XP makes leveling overall much easier and faster in general. I don’t think any spec gets worse at leveling.
It’s not quite retail level, but it removes the limitations of many of the specs - which could be a good or bad thing. But you do need to use more abilities as you level, since mobs will start doing the same.
well, ofcourse leveling is easier with each expansion. At some point it got too far and now in retail you level in two days, can’t die even if pull evereything around and completely alone in open world.
Even vanilla to tbc had those moments of this is to easy. I’ve soloed elite quests (still elite) on my rogue that I never would have been able to in vanilla. Talent changes, spell changes ect all play a part.
Also a warlock in tbc can pull like 2-3 at any point and upwards of 4-5 mobs by level 10 in tbc. Most of it comes down to knowing how to play.
There is an exp nerf in general and specifically from 58-70. You can also gain some exp from battleground objectives like the towers in av. Finally the talents should be stronger than now. c
I have also recently compared wrath leveling to tbc. From the point of view of a warrior.
One thing that I noticed had changed is that there were no hostile mobs in the undead starting lvl 1-6 area (in vanilla/tbc some spiders and scarlet crusade mobs were hostile to the player). I believe the same is true for all races
Another change I noticed was that undead warriors now start with a 2h sword (was 1h sword + shield previously).
Finally some warrior abilities have been buffed. The abilities warriors can get below level 10 in tbc are: heroic strike, charge, rend, thunder clap, parry and battle shout.
In wrath warriors get the same abilities before lvl 10, but additionally warriors get victory rush at lvl 6. Of the abilities warriors get in tbc and wrath 3 are buffed: charge now stuns for 1.5 seconds (was 1.0), rend now does 25 damage + 8 based on weapon damage over 15 seconds, (was 15 + 0, yes the rank 1 rend rend actually reads “additional 0 (based on weapon damage)”), lastly thunder clap now does 15 base damage (up from 10) also thunder clap’s damage is now increased by attack power and is no longer limited to 4 targets. These buffed abilities + victory rush serve to make the low level warrior experience a little less awful.
Beyond level 10 protection may go from being the worst solo lvling spec to the best. Thanks to early talents increasing the cleave capabilities of thunder clap, cleave, and a new highly buffed revenge (rank1 revenge now does 122 - 144 base and scales with ap and can be increased by talents, previously rank 1 did 50-60 damage and did not scale)
I know it supposed to get easier every expansion, but I’m just asking if it stays like that the whole way thru or does it get harder. The mana and health regen are just extremely overpowered, and its a pretty drastic change tho I couldn’t get any of the bars to move.
I copied my 67 Holy Paladin (yes, Holy) in her same spellpower/healing appropriate leveling gear over to PTR the other day & the difference in questing/solo leveling feel/efficiency/effectiveness between live TBC & PTR pre-patch is like night & day (in favor of WotLK changes to the class).
Leveling in wrath is a joke compared to classic/crusade. All classes are much stronger than before. Mobs are now just fodder unless you pull groups. When it comes to elites on group/boss quests, most 10-60 were already nerfed in crusade. Wrath does it for 60-70. But even then, with the increase in power, you can most likely solo it. Things you can’t solo are easily skippable thanks to the XP discounts. In wrath, you won’t even need to do more than 3 zones before you’re 68 and setting sail for northrend. It’s not like there’s a shortage of quests. A 4th zone would only be used if you want to do 68-70 in outland. That’s really unnecessary since wrath has 2 starting areas. I prefer and recommend 60 before hellfire, but for wrath, you have 2 zones, so there’s no reason to wait.
If I recall correctly, spirit works overtime in the first 10-20 levels. After that, your base health and mana regen don’t recover you without food/water as quickly as it did before.