Legion’s Pre-Patch: Jumping into the Madness

The pre-Legion patch dropped on Tuesday, and I jumped head first into the madness. You all know that I’ve been waiting to play a Gnome Hunter. So as soon as the patch was live and I managed to get home, I boosted my Gnome Hunter up to 100.

Thankfully I started with some decent gear. Blizzard provides iLvl 640 gear and mailed everyone a new set of weapons with iLvl based on their HFC progression. Given that my gnome was brand new, I received a fairly weak weapon.

What to do first?

This was my biggest question. I realized I was woefully unprepared. I need gear. I need to level crafting. I need to learn what my abilities do, and figure out how to actually play my class again!

Transmog All the Things!

I decided to tackle Transmogs first. The new system is really great because it’s one window with filters and all the items you have. I logged into various characters to unlock the transmogs that I’ve held onto for over a decade. I found my Rhok’delar bow, my full set of Giantstalker, my Dragonstalker set, etc. Awesome.

Then I logged into my dozen other characters with all of their gear and got those unlocked. The process took longer than I had anticipated due to the transmogs taking a while to propogate (server lag). I built myself a nice little set of gear that looks fantastic on a Gnome Hunter. Look = Done.

Tradeskills

My Gnome Hunter is going Engineering/Mining. I fumbled my way through Ashran looking for all of the recipes and trainers. I learned what I needed then used all of the ore I had saved up. In less than 10 minutes I had my Engineering up to 645. I’m told I only needed like 300? I still don’t understand that. Anyway, I’m now still trying to figure out what I have to do to get some Engineering goodies. Are there teleporters I need to get? If so, where? Anyone know?

Now the mining problem… The Garrison Blizzard gave my boosted Hunter only has a level one mine. I don’t have Draenor flying because I couldn’t stomach the dailies in Tanaan. So now I have to roam around and look for nodes and somehow manage to get that up over the next few weeks.

Stats and Balance are Messed Up

With every expansion comes a retuning of stats and abilities. Legion’s artifacts exacerbate this problem because our classes are tuned around having abilities and stats we do not yet have. I jumped into a Mythic Dungeon (already a mistake with iLvl 640 gear) with some friends. They said they’d carry me. I facerolled my hotbars having no idea what I was doing.

We wiped a bunch and realized that Mythic Dungeons were ridiculous. Blizzard confirmed this yesterday by saying they were nerfed, but we tried them again shortly after that statement and came to the conclusion that the nerf must not have been implemented yet.

PvP Scaling

So we jumped into PvP thinking maybe I could get some gear there. We thought it was tuned, but sure enough it isn’t I had 243k HP, and people in gear had 300-400k. Definitely not working. That ended with my slapping people with a wet noodle and being obliterated.

Learning the Ropes

I’m becoming more confident in my Survival Hunter spec. I feel like I finally understand the gist of gameplay. I wasn’t prepared for the rotation to be so intense. I have to worry about executing a lot of abilities at their most opportune time. I also have to worry about keeping certain abilities up.

My experience will most certainly improve as I actually get into Legion content, have an artifact, have more abilities in my rotation that make more sense, and build muscle memory around my skills. I also need to tweak my UI to better show my Mongoose bites, etc.

Preparing for the Burning Legion’s Invasion

The invasion comes in probably two weeks or less. I’m slowly improving my gear already. I’m almost to iLvl 670, which really only takes a bit of Tanaan to accomplish. I want to be about 680’ish before the invasion in order to give me a chance at surviving the fights and feel like I can burn though them. The higher the better.

The invasion will give gear 700+, so that will be more than enough to prepare me for Legion — at which point the first quest drops will replace everything anyway.

More to come on my adventures.

  • I have not touched WoW since 2008… so much of this post confuses me!

  • I started a Gnome Hunter too. I played for about an hour and logged out Level 4. I was minded to buy Legion and subscribe for a month or two until this patch but now i don’t see any reason to bother. I only wanted to play a Gnome Hunter for a few levels and take a look at the transmog system and they are giving that away for free. Not complaining.

  • @nukethesitefromorbit

    Oh its easy once you know how to read between the lines.

    Basically, Keen is saying a whole bunch of “And this number is now (10*OriginalWoW)^2” over and over. 2 Beeeeeelion HP instead of 2000! And the background image you must picture for this is him running on a treadmill.

    😛

  • Step #1 : Fix all these add-ons !

    Even after months of hiatus, I cannot back to the default UI. It’s so horribly designed and cumberstone. I need my action bars mod, unit frame and proc warnings to work at the minimum.

    Step #2 : Well, try again, because the server died, it’s patch day…lol

  • Not playing but guessing getting a free power level to the top has one monther written all over it.

    It’s really all about the journey and investment in the character when you come right down to it. And it sounds like a throw away.

  • @Sanz: The boost only goes to 100. The top is now 110, and the “journey” is built into artifact power and leveling that up (which doesn’t end when you reach 110). WoW is a themepark and thus has no true journey, but given the state of the MMO industry we will take what we can get when there’s nothing much else to play.

  • You need to level fishing, cooking, and archeology as well keen.

    Fishing if you want the Artifact fishing pole, cooking is very important.. All crafts, even engineering, require cooking food for some recipes, and then archeology has weekly quests.

    As far as engineering every expansion has a teleport, some of them you get from the trainer, some you have to go to a certain place in the world and talk to a npc to learn the recipe.
    I’ll help you Sunday on how to find them when I get back.

    You definetely want Nitro Boots attached to your belt (it’s an addon/enchant from engineers) you also want goblin glider attached to your back.
    You then want to craft a Gnomish Gravity Well. In legion you can use this to go up into the air really high then goblin glide to wherever you need to go. Will help you a ton getting around without flying

  • @Bartillo: I have been a blacksmith since vanilla and I have NEVER needed any cooking for any blacksmith crafting ever.

    U HIGH?

  • @Ulthor, Blacksmithing will need many different items now due to the new quest system. You will find you need leather, herbs, dusts, ores and now food to complete the quests. The idea is that this will force players to start trading motivating the economy and force some of that garrison gold to move around. I expect new players to see a windfall in their banks if they sell gathered items within the first few months.

    Crafting in general will be very interesting as players will be able to craft their way to top tier 1 raiding gear in legion. After a few patches this (supposedly) won’t be the case, but for the launch it is expected that crafting will be a major part of this expansion.

  • “I had 243k HP, and people in gear had 300-400k. Definitely not working. That ended with my slapping people with a wet noodle and being obliterated.”

    Sounds like how wow PvP has been forever, just with inflated numbers.