The elite trains used to be pretty horrrendous. Struggle up to the top, Engage the boss, another group starts to come up gets in trouble and runs to the other group to survive, everybody dies. Run back and it had all respawned. In reply to your earlier the post, while the idea of people grouping up for the elites in ogre mound and Stonewatch keep was good, in practice people just dont. For every 100 groups that venture into deadmines I would be suprised if one groups up for ogre mound and even then only because of the Paladin quests.

You get the quests for the elite areas, you go lfg, a hour or two later you finish all other quests in the zone, You leave the zone never to come back.

Anyone kill this thing yet, or have an idea of its difficulty?

I have to disagree here, largely because no one actually clears zones in an hour or two. You'd get the quests and you'd usually have something like at least 4-6 hours in a zone, which usually was enough time to find a group if you put minimal effort into doing so (using the LFG tool isn't enough.) I just finished leveling up a Horde Druid on a low-pop server and I was able to find people to PUG Jintha'Alor, Alterac Ogres, Jintha'Alor, etc. with. I agree that there are probably some areas where you won't be able to find a PUG in a reasonable manner (Silithus hives) or which simply weren't rewarding enough for the effort they required (The Den), but I thought the whole "here's an elite area and a bunch of questgivers next to it" paradigm was perfectly fine still. I mean, honestly, why not just make all the lowbie instances non-elite as well if we're going to say it's too hard to get groups at that level?

I kind of miss the elite areas in TBC, tbh. There's the one outside of Gruul's Lair, and the Forge Camps in Nagrand, but.... that's really all I can think of. The problem with many of the lowbie elite areas isn't that there isn't a big enough population to support people doing those quests, but because a lot of the time these quests will be so difficult to get or unrewarding that there's no point in trying. For example, Hordeside... I would never do beyond the first part of the Trollbane chain simply because it wasn't worth it to run back and forth to Stormgarde several times for one chain. Or The Den sucked terribly because there was only two quests for it, one of them having been added in TBC iirc. otoh, Dun Garok in Hillsbrad was pretty great because there were 3 quests that sent you there (though often people didn't get all of them) and it wasn't terribly large, and the Alterac Mountain area was more manageable because it was close enough to TM that one could go back and forth without wanting to kill yourself (iirc Alliance also had several quests there they could do at once.)

I hope at least that Blizzard has learned the "right" way to do outdoor elite areas (the ones in TBC are fine) at least, for future reference.

I was more replying to comments from rk which where about the newbie areas.

For example Loch modan, outside the ogre quests most quests are 10-18. Their are 2 ogre quests with no prequests and 2 others that chain to the ogres. One chain quest needs 4 other quests completed before you need to kill ogres and the other is a chain from the paladin class quest at 20.

Redridge is a little better but again if you are doing quests in order of difficulty ie green first, by the time you get quests for the elites you will have done 75% of the quests in the zone.

As recently as 2 weeks ago I was doing the quests for arathi Highlands. at 35 their was one person lfg for the elite quests but I knew I didnt have the prequests completed for 2 of the chains, one of them was orange for me at that stage ,I came back at 39 and finished the prequests I was lfg the whole time but was unable to find more then one 34 priest out of the 4 people in zone.

I wasnt suggesting that you can clear zones in a hour or two, just that by the time you looked to do the elite quests you probably only had a hour or two of non-elite quests still to do.

Jintha'alor twice in a row, you sure know how to enjoy your time ^^. Anyway while I agree I usually liked doing these quests, it's still annoying to find groups mainly because people might not want to go there if they don't have the quests/don't know there's quests, while you'll usually still find people for isntances(not all of them) because of the chance of getting loot, even tho you have no quests there. Mind you, I completed all of these elite quests at least once, and even sometimes had to solo them(ah soloing hillsbrad dun garok for the elusive humbert's sword)

But as you said, what killed those zones, on top of the no loot issue, was really terrible design. The elite quests in dustwallow(which are probably gone now) were like, yo get rare drops from rare spawning elites. Wtf, that's so fucking retarded, you had to run around like an idiot and be lucky with drops/spawns, the more people you had the worse it was, and those dragonkins weren't on the easy side of elites. On the opposite, you had the "elite" giants in azshara, that were pretty much non elite as far as I'm concerned. Most of those quests weren't really balanced and you had to know in advance how the quests were to know what was worth doing. For example, The Eye in STV in the elite ogre place wasn't always a walk in the park because the boss, on top of being annoying, was spawning with 2 guards that were doing tons of damage. The elite part in the Searing gorge chain tho was usually worth doing because the item was a group drop, and was rather easy to get, and led to a good sum of xp.

But travelling and non shared group drops killed most of the elite quests out of instances.

The lurker below mob -- according to wowhead -- is the final step of a new questline in Theramore. You 'kill' it with a set of three canons that are attached to the docks.

Also, in regards to the new npcs on boats, they are only on the Theramore to Menethil boat and psuedo-hostile to Horde. You can't attack them, they won't attack or call for guards, but you cannot interact with them. There's about half a dozen or so npcs on the boat with specific names (two of which are marines that are attackable and will aggro Horde) so my assumption is they are part of one of the new Theramore quests.

But the entire point of the change was to make it so that you didn't need a group to do these old world quests so that people had more options available. How is someone supposed to solo an elite and 3 adds still?

You obviously aren't, but with those changes you'll need a smaller group for a shorter period of time.

Simply removing all group quests from 1-60 would be a shame.

I'd rather try to find one other person to bump off an elite with two adds after clearing through a few non-elites than slog my way through a bunch of elites to get to the elite with two elite adds.

The only reason I didn't solo the mobs outside of WC to get to the instance when I was appropriately leveled was because it took like a minute per mob. Quests should be more reasonable now - grab a friend or two and clear it.

I don't think it's fair to compare these elite zones to instances, because, frankly, they aren't instances. They don't give nearly the same quality or quantity of rewards and they rarely have reasons to be completed more than once, cutting down on your recruitment pool each time someone does them. If Jintha'alor had given me blues for killing bosses, I would have run it several times. Instead, it gave me a green quest reward or two. Not exactly a favourable comparison to, say, a ZF run.

I know at the very least that Fozruk (the 42 elite giant roaming Arathi) and his three Kobold lackeys are soloable by a level 40 priest, because I did it. Kill one kobold quickly, fear bomb and run until you drop combat, repeat. Then fear/shield/pot to down the elite. Lots of classes have tricks like this they can use to handle an elite with non-elite adds, and challenges like this help reasonably smart people to figure them out. All-elite packs on the other hand are difficult to the point of near-impossibility.

I think they're just for flavor; haven't seen them involved in quests so far.

It's not too difficult. It just requires a plan and some good execution. One general tactic I use is too distract or mitigate the adds while I burn down the elite as fast as possible then escape run without bothering to kill the adds. For my shaman, sometimes it goes like:

1. Pull elite with LB
2. Drop stoneclaw for adds.
3. Kite and melee elite while walking backwards or sideways to open distance between adds (Flameshocking, Stormstriking, etc).
4. Drop EB totem the very second that stoneclaw is killed (to slow the approach of the adds).
5. Keep burning the elite and pop AB shield trink and pot if need be.
6. Pop another Stoneclaw totem as soon as CD finishes (for adds that have more than likely caught up to you now).
7. Kill elite, loot, and drop an EB totem on the exit (CD should be finished from the first EB totem).

A strat like this isn't too hard to do if the adds are non-elite because they won't two-shot your stoneclaw totem so you have some time. Also, you are probably going to take a little bit of a beating from the adds at some point in the pull and it's easy to just ignore the adds damage to you for a short while during the time you are burning the elite.

I actually enjoy these types of pulls in the game because they are by far the most challenging content that really tests your skills while leveling.

edit: As an example, I think that a quest mob like Overseer Maltorius (Searing Gorge Slag Pit - 50 elite) would be much easier to solo and allow classes that normally couldn't solo him to do it if the two adds weren't elite. In its current incarnation, it is only soloable by certain classes below 60.

That's assuming you play a class that is capable of brute-forcing an elite mob down in the first place.
I've played warrior and rogue, they'd both have a very hard time doing that :-)

Paladin on the other hand, soloing +3 elite mobs was actually possible. Not with adds though.

Yeah - I'd love all of you guys who say elites are "easy" and soloable to try to level a warrior... Not fun.

I guess the way Blizz are thinking is now that they are making levelling easier, there will be more people to group with as you go along. It's a big assumption but it may be partially true.

Is there a class that isn't? Of the 8 classes I play (all but Shaman, various levels) I can't think of one that couldn't burn down one elite with the proper technique. Sometimes it's less of a "burn", e.g. fear kiting, bubble+heal, stun+bandage, but it can be done.

My first character was a warrior and it is very doable if you play to your strengths. Two maneuvers that work really well for a warrior are the "intimidating shout/bandage" combo and the epic "hamstring/bleed kite/bandage on every CD" combo in a 1v1 when the adds are down.

Plus, the burn tactic really works well for a warrior due to being able to burn for a longer period because of plate armor (retaliation works well here too).

It's possible w/ every Class, some you just might have to burn a CD like reck for.... or bandage/pot. Also remember on most bosses w/ adds you can burn down the adds then run away and let it reset... keep repeating till only the boss is left.

Rogue is one of the best classes to do these type of solo elite pulls. They have so many abilities that work awesome in these situations (especially against melee).

Burning w/ Evasion
Rupture Kiting + Bandage
Sprint Kite + Bandage
Sapping an add before pull
Blind + bandage
Kicking casts.
Kidney shotting casts.
burn an add then vanish to get last mob in 1v1 pull
or just vanish when shit starts to go wrong to save yourself the walk

I'm sure most people here have seen the video of the rogue soloing Magmus and the Emperor in BRD (stealth HoJ runs).

I doubt it. The new graveyard rules will turn the place into a giant meatgrinder. Most people will just want to get out as quickly as possible and at least get some honour, and tactics like you propose requires way more coordination than an AV pug will have.

I expect it'll just be a mindless HK grind until one side wins by attrition, and that charging in and AOE'ing will still be as popular as ever.

To be honest, the new AV sounds like a load of crap, and I suspect a lot of people will decamp to either Arathi Basin or EOTS when they realise than the honour/hour has been so drastically nerfed. Honour gains in all the BGs are wildly out of sync with how many people play them and the cost of the gear as it is.

One thing to note is, most of these old encounters aren't designed as raid bosses, you can very well kill one or 2 of the guarding mobs, then run and leash the elite, and come back to finish the job.
That or you can brute force the elite down depending on your class, I see people saying warrior isn't good for that, when I lvled my warrior, and that was without uber twink gear(few blue weapons, mostly bad fast speed ones cause I was poor back then, with fire enchants), and one of the easiest thing was taking out the elite single bosses for certain quests.
Zerker rage benefits from having multiple mobs on you, recklessness flat out kills elite in seconds, intimidating shout buys you time so you don't get hit and when everything else fails, you can always suck it up with a shield+shield block spam+demo shout and hope you finish the elite before you die.

However, beside jintalor and the ogre thing in alterac, I don't think I remember a place full of elites that was worth doing(maybe stromgarde if everyone in your group was 40+ with mounts and you knew what you were doing and your luck wasn't terrible with sigils... a lot of conditions) because of terrible design/lack of good rewards.

The new AV to me sounds alot like BF/BF2 with "tickets".. so splitting up into smaller squads (groups?) may be the fastest way to win via capping as many objectives while skirmishing the main force and keeping them busy/picking off those rushing to defend.

I have wanted something like this for a long time - and if rezzing prevents point loss, that is icing on the cake. Finally PvP that rewards having support in a larger way than "My Warrior smashT u lolz."

EDIT: Does this also mean I need to obtain as much spellhaste as possible for machine gun rezzes? MEDDIIICCC.

Player rezzes don't consume reinforcement tickets?



That adds a tiny new element...