I have tried returning to retail 5+ times, and it's overwhelming

Guides Returning Player Help & Discussions
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Hi all, apologies if this is a long-winded post. I am currently playing MoP Classic, but I’m a huge transmog fan and there’s simply way more options available in retail, so I want to try and make the swap over.

Problem is everything is so drastically changed that I can’t get the hang of anything. I get overwhelmed by the UI, and generally just don’t even know where to begin. I also can’t use this alleged new players chat because I technically already have a 60 here that I’m posting on – but the last time I played this character was probably a couple of weeks into BfA. The last expansion I genuinely devoted attention to was Legion. I might have played BfA and a little bit of Shadowlands? I really don’t remember… And unfortunately there’s not anything in the game to teach me how the class or game systems have changed since Expansion X or Y. I remember using an ability called Shadowstrike in Legion but my memory is… very fuzzy.

Is it possible to maybe swap the action bars and overall baseline UI to how it looks in Classic? I don’t really care for the “cleaner” UI look and the positions of the action bars bother me too much. I would like to do it without addon assistance if possible, because I really don’t like having to maintain addons.

Also, I have played enough to have a good understanding of the Rogue up to a certain point, but so much has changed that it might as well be a different class altogether. The gigantic talent trees are daunting, but at the same time I don’t want to slap on a cookie cutter build without understanding how everything works together.

I’m considering just scrapping this guy altogether, and starting a new Rogue fresh from level 1, just to try and get an idea of how the class works again and ‘ease into things’, but I have tried this a couple of times and I end up losing steam because I have 60+ levels to burn through ontop of the changes feeling overwhelming. Not to mention I have put so much time and progress and effort into WoW Classic up to this point that if there’s something I have to re-earn, I get pretty discouraged and I wish there was some way to just… move a character over from Classic to Retail.

I also tried jumping into Legion remix and it threw a whole ton of crap at me that I feel like I should already understand from retail but don’t… like it walked me through a crash course of dragonriding but I kinda feel like I should do the ‘real thing’ first? Legion Remix felt like mayhem even just from the into Dalaran sequence so I kinda stopped there, it’s a little too fast paced for my needs I think.

Even the character select screen is confusing me, half the time I have no idea what realm I’m set to? I don’t understand what camps are, but it does look cool to see my characters all sitting around together.

Anyway, some advice would be great on how to ease into things, I was thinking maybe I should find a guild that is helpful to returning players – that’s one of my gripes right now on Classic is that I’m in a guild that just, mass invited people with a bot and no one ever speaks to each other, they sit there and milk the guild perks I guess. All my old guildies from the old days have vanished so I don’t really know where to start or what realm to go to.

Thank you all

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I want to say: use Bartender4 and choose the “Classic” pre-set.

But if you really don’t want to use the addon, have a look at this article:

I think you can see how that situation has no solution except the ones you have ruled out.

Moving a Rogue from Classic to Retail, even if possible, would not be useful, because the changes would still face you there.

I don’t see the problem with starting by using a cookie-cutter build, and learning as you go. You can have separate preset builds, and switch between to try things out. Or you can bite the bullet and spend a few hours at the dummies going over the talents while testing.

I completely understand your Legion Remix experience. It just isn’t like WoW, and would not be helpful for you.

Yeah, it’s bad in a few cases that it doesn’t show your current realm, but for just logging in, it’s not supposed to matter, unless you have eleventy-seven characters. Just pick the one you want to play - or is there some case in particular that is givingyou problems. Personally, I agree that the new login screen is a BIIIIG step back, and I wish we had an option to use the original, but if you are reasonably careful, you should be able to manage OK.

And camps are nothing except a cool visual the first few times you see it, after which you wish it would go away. It has no implications in the game.

As I see your character now

you are in Subtlety, so Shadowstrike should be in your Spellbook. (I always thought that Shadowstep was the cool ability for Sub.)

One problem is that a LOT of what used to be your basic abilities are now in your Talents, so you’re not seeing what you expect.

Load a cookie-cutter build. Do it, for now. At least you will start to see a full set of abilities.

This one is pretty helpful in explaining itself
https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/subtlety-rogue-leveling-guide

Some people do feel that starting from 1 again does help, but I’m not sure you need to. But if you do, levelling is so fast now that I’m not sure why you would lose steam. But, as I say, I’m not convinced you need to.

Please ask again if you want more, or to clarify anything. :+1:

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if you want more or less classic UI feel, go to edit mode, pick classic

after that, uncheck action bar 2,3, but check show action bar 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and further edit the locations of each UI parts

all classes in TWW has been design as 1,2,3 hit KO punch rather than 1 hit KO punch. in other word, more buttons to press

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Thank you!

So the other day I did log in and mess around on target dummies (it seems like Subtlety is overall a lot simpler than I thought it was) and I also sat down and played around with the UI edit mode to get it as close to classic UI as I could. I think I got something mostly there.

My biggest discourager now though is, I just keep finding myself returning to MoP Classic because I’ve accomplished a bunch of stuff there that I never did in retail when I last played, and the thought of having to do it again is killing my drive… so I guess we’ll see

I’m not sure I fully understand what “Warbands” are, and it seems like a ton of transmog is baked into ‘ensembles’ but I have no idea how to get them. Do you have to wait for them to just randomly appear at the cosmetic vendor?

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Meh. “Warbands” are just a marketing term for the characters on your account. DO you remember items that were “Bind on Account”? Not tradable, but you could mail them to your own characters? Yeah, well they’re now binding to Warband. Po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to. The one cool addition is the Warband Bank, bank tabs that are shared by all your characters, on all realms.

Ehhh … no. Not a ton. Where did you get that impression?

Oh wow, there are a lot more of them than I realized:

but paging through them, an awful lot seem to be in Remix, bought for Bronze. Not so many in the main game. The ensemble sets seem like a shortcut available in Remix instead of actually earning them the regular way.

The vast majority of transmog comes from the usual suspects - raids, dungeons, and quests. A lot of these “ensembles” seem to be just copies of the regular sets as rewards for doing Remix.

Check out the full Rogue selection here:

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I came back a few months ago at the start of S3 after vanishing from original MoP.

There are times I’m still overwhelmed.

Here’s what’s helped me (YMMV):

  1. Start a new toon. Level it from scratch. Should be reasonably quick all things considered.
  2. Remix might not be a bad option IF you can contend with the chaos and let a lot of expectations go.
  3. Avoid crafting profs for the first - gathering if you must. Market sucks right now, so keep that in mind if gold matters. (Honestly another reason to consider Remix)
  4. Dragonflight is throwaway content, so don’t stress yourself out trying to complete it. Nothing builds anymore, it’s all its own little silo. I’m sure housing will throw a wrench in this point, but you can only do so much at once.
  5. WWI is close to baked, so you may be questing alone a lot or find queue times really long. (IMO, another reason to try Remix, at least for now, esp if you want to level several classes).
  6. It took me way too long to get cozy with dragon riding. Remix at least gives you dragon biscuits to help. Honestly, I did a lot of bouncing and quick hops before I really figured it out and even still, I’m slow compared to others and can only fly thru targets so well.
  7. Button bloat - controversial to write, but coming from a Classic environment, you’ll notice it. You can use the one button rotation to help as well as rotation assist (see options and arrow doodad in spell book). YMMV here a lot.
  8. Wowhead, so much Wowhead to look up quests.
  9. Guildies to ask things, as well as this forum. Ask all the things because it’s like a different game entirely.
  10. Patience - it really took about 3 months for things to click enough.

Hope this helps and all the best.

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