I’m here for advice on whether or not it’s worth starting to play again now. I know for sure that I’ll be coming back for Shadowlands but I’m wondering if the state of the game is good enough right now to come back to the game to try and play up through what I’ve missed and level alts. For reference I stopped before the stuff with Queen Azshara. A few other sort of related questions: how hard is it to earn enough gold for game time? And lastly, what classes are good for healing right now because I’ve been wanting to heal since I stopped playing and I’m not sure which class to run.
I think it’s a good time to come back we have the 15th anniversary event until 1/7. This includes a 15% exp/rep buff for all your characters. If your level 120 and item level 380 (not hard to get), you can run the 9 boss throwback raid. The reward is an obsidian worldbreaker deathwing Mount that looks as cool as many of the $25-30 store mounts. The current Eternal Palace raid is very good.
All the healers are fine the only real stand out is resto druids are king for high level mythic +. 8.2 brought two new zones and the essence neck system. We have the final BFA 12 boss raid and 8.3 coming in January with alot of new content and two allied races. The healer rankings will probably change.
I currently have seven 120’s so when there is an emmisary for 2000 gold I get 14k. One just popped today. Takes me like 5-6 minutes per character. I don’t play the AH to make money. You can also make extra gold gathering and farming old raids with all your alts.
That said, The token prices are high so it would take a lot of gathering and old raid farming to make enough for a token each month. Token price went from about 120k Gold in May to 185k now.
Alright cool. Would you say it’s best to just do the pre order bundle to get game time if I’m going to get Shadowlands anyway? Also as for each healer what race would you say is best? I doubt I’d be into high end stuff quickly but it would be a goal of mine. Last thing (sorry for asking so much) how are the offspecs of each healer?
I forgot to mention you also make good gold from battle-scarred augment runes. when you get missions for them on the table you usually get like 5-7 and they go for 450 gold each on the AH. Also, you get them in LFR on every boss that you dont get loot from.
I think picking the healer based on offspecs is important. Do you only want to play ranged dps? Do you ever plan on tanking?
I have all the healers at 120 now except pally. I leveled my monk, priest, shaman, and druid to 120 all in the past month. I like them all, but the druid and monk probably my favs partly because they have the highest mobility. However, its easier to DPS on priests and shamans because they have ranged attacks. If you only have one character, priest gets you two healers.
I melee with my monk and druid healers, but here is a druid balance affinity talent if you want to range dps so they can go either way. I find monk healer the hardest to dps with. I think pally healers are almost always in melee range. Lastly, there are good you tube guides on every healer spec so you can check those out.
If you wanted to just buy BFA now for the free 110 boost. There are plenty of brand new BFA’s selling on ebay in the $35-36 range no tax free shipping.
Alright, thanks for the help. I already have BFA from back when it came out so I’m just unsure of preordering now or just doing a regular subscription and waiting. As for class I’ll probably end up with Shaman I think but will work on leveling all.
Anytime. I suggest making 110 trial characters and testing the healing specs on the boat tutorial, dummy, and 15 minute battle scenario using the icy veins class guides.
I personally like druid, monk, and priest better than shaman for healing because shamans spam chain heal most of the time in raids so it’s less variety. I didn’t spend much time healing on my shaman At 120 though so not sure. Elemental shaman is fun though IMO. I forgot to mention disc priests are mobile too, but holy not so much.
Cool. I’ll try each out. I might just stick with druid as I have on at 116.
Edit: Even without having leveled Pally to 120 do you know if they’re good in end game for each role?
My pally is lvl 26, but I know Ret is below average in raids and mythic +. Holy and protection pally’s are fine. I failed to mention the most important thing you need with any healer. The ability to cast on players by hovering mouse over their party/raid frames without actually clicking them.
This is the macro I use with every skill that targets a player. Just copy and paste to make ones for every skill and change the skill name obviously. Some people use addons for this but I just use the macros in conjunction with my ELVUI add on.
#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, help, nodead][] Purify
I also use this macro on all my characters dps, tank, heals, for every skill that targets an area on the ground. The skill casts immediately wherever your mouse pointer is instead of bringing up that green circle and having to click, move circle, click again.
#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Angelic Feather
Thank you once again. I’ll probably work on my already leveled druid to get to the anniverssary raid then start leveling alt healers. Last thing from me, would it be better to save or use the 120 from pre ordering Shadowkeep?
I suggest taking advantage of the 15% exp buff leveling your other chars, while gearing up the druid in end game. I’m loving the druid probably my favorite healer now after I did my first raid and mythic + last night…hit 120 two days ago. I think feral affinity is considered better than balance affinity. I like feral melee on my resto druid because it has dots and the combo point system, which I have enjoyed with rogue for a long time. I use balance druid in open world content to kick back and chill.
I didn’t pre-order SL so i don’t even have the 120 boost yet. I hav’nt even used the BFA 110 boost that’s saved for Vulpera warior coming soon. I will keep leveling my pally, hunter, and dk the last of my non 120 classes.
My druid is currently at 116 and I think about 240 ilvl. Roughly how long would you say it would take to get them ready for the raid? I want to try and make sure I get that done while still getting alts leveled.
There is good advice for fast gearing in this thread especially by Udiza. 116-120 do the war campaign, TW dungeons, and old AV (you get exp every couple minutes your in there). I don’t think it takes too long to get 380, but all of my 7 alts have been mailed full sets of 385 benethic gear from my first who got flying. Buy some gear on the AH as soon as you hit 120. 400 trinkets are going for like 1.5k gold on my server, 310 rings like 800 gold
Unless you already have a clear idea on what you want to do with the boost, I’d hold off on using it. While they’ve said they aren’t planning to make major changes to how classes play in Shadowlands, there will be changes.
If you’ve already unlocked world quests on the account, that will put you ahead when you get your druid to 120. (All you have to do is the 3 foothold quests of the war campaign while leveling to be able to unlock them right at 120 if you’ve already done the unlock on another character.)
The Naz’jatar tokens are BoA, so you might want to take your warrior to Naz’jatar to collect some Benthic tokens you can mail over for when your druid hits 120. That will immediately boost their ilvl to take advantage of world quest ilvl scaling. (Which will help in getting trinkets and rings, which aren’t covered by the Benthic tokens.) The tokens themselves are cheap, so it wouldn’t take that much time in Naz’jatar on your warrior to get a full set for your druid. You can probably be high enough ilvl for the raid on your druid within 1-2 days. (Less if you throw some gold at the AH for rings/trinkets.)
Head right to Naz’jatar and make sure you do the quest from Magni to unlock essences (it will greatly boost your neck’s ilvl, and set it’s Artifact level to 35.) Magni will show up with the quest once you’ve unlocked the portal from Naz’jatar back Boralas/Zuldazar.
Thank you for the help. So if I understand correctly I should finish war campaign on both then go get the tokens on my warrior to give the druid a boost?
The only part of the war campaign you need is the initial 3 foothold unlocks (that can be done before 120) so you can access world quests. From a gearing standpoint, doing the rest of it would be fairly low priority. (Although since they’ve removed the rep gating, it doesn’t take that long to get through it for the story.)
You only need to have world quests unlocked to get access to Naz’jatar.
I like to go a little farther in the war campaign on my alts to get another champion for the mission table. I’ts not too far past the foothold unlocks.
I forgot to mention I would take advantage of the 15% rep bonus to unlock BFA flying while your working on manapearls. A Nazjatar emmisary popped today those give like 1800 rep with the bonus. There is also a weekly quest in the lab for 500 rep that takes 1 minute. Mechagon has a daily world quest that gives like 1k rep with bonus.
It took me about 9 days of questing in Nazjatar and mechagon with with no 15% rep bonus to get flying. Nazjatar was rough on the ground I liked mechagon much better till I got flying. In mechagon, you can buy jet packs and fly almost half the time. Flying makes BFA so much more enjoyable, faster for world quests and traveling,and especially great for alts. Buy the unshackled and rust bolt resistance contracts on the AH for an additional rep bonus.
Hi. I just wanted to say you’ve gotten a lot of great advice here from Ana, and Udiza too. I concur that right now with the catchup mechanics, wow anniversary, another content patch to be coming out… it really is the ideal time to get back into the game.
I also concur it is not worth using any boosts currently but to instead save them. If pre-ordering SL gets you a boost you don’t normally get, prolly worth doing so - it’s why I usually end up doing so.
Also, you’re 116 druid can be 120 in less than an hour with FreeHold boosting (from 120’s now) while wearing heirlooms. I know someone that basically geared to 430 ilvl within a week of reaching 120 (tho it’s an alt). So gearing up alts quickly is extremely fast - again, insane catchup mechanics atm.
As for Paladins, Ret is in the usual mediocre dps status at max level. Prot is still middle of the road good and reliable, and holy still shines as the predominant tank healer in raids.
Additionally, the hype and mass exodus to Classic has pretty much burned out and most people have returned or started returning. So again, good time to come back while others are coming back to retail.