The WoW pugs of early Cataclysm

Our Goblins finally reached 85 and have enough gear to do heroics!  Aside from Outlands and some annoying Northrend quests, the leveling experience was excellent.  Leveling has always been good though.  What starts to matter now is precisely that: “What now?”

We’ve run quite a few ‘normal’ dungeons to get ourselves to the point of being able to queue for heroics.  The normals themselves were a step up from the last expansion.  In fact, they’re like what the heroics were in newbie gear.  The heroic dungeons of Cataclysm are like the 10-man raids used to be in that they have various mechanics that can not be avoided simply by getting better gear and even if they did the average gear out there is at least a year or more away form making it easier.

This increased difficulty has brought an interesting feeling (back?) to WoW.  The dungeons take enough thought that I feel mental fatigue after two of them.  Today I didn’t have a single successful dungeon run.  Not one.  It’s like the days when Scholomance was so difficult that it took hours to complete and you didn’t just form a group to run the place real quick — it was a process.

Naturally the dungeons are fun and easier with guildmates.  The PUGs are their usual charming selves but now it’s weird to see how the grouping dynamic has reverted.  People are marking targets and taking time between pulls to assign CC duties and talk about which mobs will be fought where.  Bosses are tried more than once and new strategies attempted to find out what works best.  It’s actually a lot of fun to see people stepping up and working together — in the cross-server dungeon finder no less.

Now if we can just find a way to avoid the jackanapes (Graev’s word of the day for Puggers) then we might get somewhere!

  • Happy new year to you !

    My best memory ever of WoW was Kharazan. Will I find the same enjoyment with Cataclysm dungeons ?

  • The Heroics are definitely unforgiving, but they will get easier with gear (not even raid gear) and more experience.

    I’m spoiled in that I tend to anchor a guild group as a tank, but there have been times where PUG folks made up the majority of the group and those were pretty fun.

    I also felt the ‘fatigue’ of running these on heroic, even with full guild groups – definitely unforgiving and somewhat frustrating. I think a big part of that is we’ve gotten used to not dying or being able to be healed through mistakes. Now? You’re likely going to cost the group a ‘win’ if you screw up.

    I was running Throne of Tides Heroic last night with guildies and one PUG. One of the guildies commented on this guy’s gear being really poor – likely just making it into the heroic iLevel. He was our ‘dungeon guide’ (hehe) and didn’t seem to know to get out of the bad. He ate a geyser, stood in the void zones and the rock stuff the brain eater tosses up. Oh, and he wasn’t sure what to attack during the last boss. Our healer, rather than burn through his mana trying to keep the guy alive, just let him die and we finished off the bosses with only 4 people up.

    I should note that none of us had raid gear, but we do mostly have heroic gear. It will get easier with gear and that gear really isn’t all that far off.

    @Olrick – some of the boss mechanics in Kara are used in dungeon fights in Cata for normal and heroics.

  • I have fatigue with WoW. Period. I keep hoping for the fire to come back, I never actually bought the expansion, and with Cat it was the first time I didn’t do a midnight launch for an xpac for WoW. And I am an early WoW beta participant and a 3-time Blizzcon attendee. I have no immediate plans to go back and just reliving dungeon crawls and the grinds in my head makes me ill. The idea of grinding rep and content to get better gear to grind rep and content so I can raid and grind for gear to be ready for newer raid content is a fucking job.

  • how do you know if you are gear-ready for heroics? is there some kind of meter or score calculator now?

  • They won’t let you queue for them until you hit an average gear score of 329. On your character sheet you can see what yours is at. When you go to queue, what you can’t queue for will be grayed out. Hover over it and it will explain why you’re barred from entry.

  • I am leveling a new character and I hope the instances are still hard due to a low ilevel when I get there. I fear most people will have outgeared them by then though.

  • Keen? My fiancée and I rolled goblins and just made it to ashzara. Can you give your run down of leveling zone order but only list your favorite zones you played..

    For example, you said you went to ashenvale next, but didn’t like it, was there another one in that lvl range we should go to? You said after Stonetalon, you went to Desolace, but didn’t like it..

    Just an ordered list would be awesome of 1-85 leveling zones that you liked during your quest to 85. Obviously 60-80 there’s no difference but 1-60 would help greatly