EDITORS NOTE: Starting with TSZ 2.0, hosts Jesse and Mick will begin blogging their WoW experiences here on the site. Enjoy Mick’s weekly rants here on “Snarl’s Rants”.
I find myself in the same boat as several other players with a level cap 85 looking to get into a 10 or 25 man raid. It is taking a while to gear up. I have the credentials to RAID via my “King Slayer” title, so I know what I am doing. I know how to play my class, but getting to that elusive 339 (or 341) gear score in today’s world appears to be back to the old PRE-WRATH era path of hours and hours and hours of time spent looking for the BIS item to get to a gear score so you can get into a RAID.
My main obstacle appears to be TIME. Towards the tale end of Wrath, you could LFG into a nice little competent pug for a heroic and wrap up your trip in about a half an hour. You received anywhere from 6-8 emblems plus the Random heroic bonus, and if you have more time, you ran a few more.This allowed you to save up to purchase better gear, if you did not receive a drop that was an upgrade during the run.
With the designs of the new instances relying more on CC than Wrath did, you end up taking longer to complete an instance. For example, on a NORMAL run of Halls or Origination, it took me 57 minutes and I received 0 drops from the run, and we had zero wipes. I received my little stipend of points and then had to log off because my kid woke up from his nap.
NOW, I LOVE LOVE the new instances. I love the boss fights, the designs of the rooms, etc. But I feel jipped now on my time spent in game, and worse it is holding me back from rejoining my awesome RAID team.
I find myself forced to go the “old fashioned” way; buying gear with gold or farming mats to try and save up for a nice epic piece. This is fine, but once again I’m taking up a lot of time ‘working’ in game instead of ‘playing in game’.
So, my question here is this, are you having the same issues?
What are you doing to compensate or speed up the process?