Larsen

I don't really care a whole lot about this drama saga, but I have to wonder what buying gold actually accomplishes in the context of finishing his videos. He's level 20 or something, the footage just consists of him running around a bit doing menial things. What part of this could not be done without buying gold? There's nothing going on in the video that required any gold. The footage is pretty much inconsequential, it's just backdrop.

5000 is less than 12000.

Just did 40-42 with constant mob grinding, no downtime for anything besides riding to the nearest town to sell loot. It took pretty much exactly 4 hours per level, constantly killing level 39-41 mobs. Probably 120 kills per hour. Also made about 35g in those two levels, but they weren't mobs with particularly notable loot. Questing is only faster if you can get uninterrupted, uncontested questing. People trying to quest in overcrowded or PvP-riddled places are going to find their leveling speed significantly hindered. Basically anytime you have to compete with other players for quest mobs/items or have to fight enemy players more than once or twice an hour, you're probably better off finding a secluded spot (there aren't many but they exist) and grinding mobs.

Most people still go the standard VW build. That's what I was referring to. With the drain build, I use succubus or sometimes felhunter if I'm grinding mobs that cast annoying spells or use debuffs I want to purge. If you use VW, you have to have the talents. It can't hold aggro at all without them. Even with, it'll struggle a lot and you'll take aggro every time it gets a resist on Torment or you get a couple of wand crits in succession. With this build, the most you can really do is put up dots and then wand, if you want your pet to hold aggro at all, so there's a hard limit to how fast you can kill things unless you want to be tanking half the time. The biggest issue with the VW build is pet mana. You can't really do anything about that. Non-stop grinding isn't possible with this build unless you want to alternate between VW-tanking and fear-kiting when pet is OOM, or just accepting that you tank the last 30-50% of every other mob. Plus you'll need to manually use pet taunt or else it'll waste a bunch of its mana taunting mobs that are at 5% health and stuff like that. SB-spam is pointless. Until you have real caster gear and 21 points in destruction, SB damage is fairly crap. Drain Life does similar damage per mana, heals you, and you can get 70% pushback protection for DL. The drain spec does more or less the same as SB-spam but you have unlimited mana, heal yourself to full constantly, and never have to worry about pet aggro or mana. It kills a bit faster than dots+wand and about the same speed as unspecced SB-spam, but SB-spam means you take aggro and there's no pushback protection for SB. That turns your SB into a 5 second cast when you're getting beat on, and you'll take damage that you aren't automatically healing back. I just did a 40-42 grind session yesterday where I literally never stopped killing. I never used a bandage, never had to eat or drink, never had to wait for pet mana or anything at all. Didn't have to micromanage pet abilities or pay any attention to aggro. All spells instant or with pushback protection. With some spell power from Shadoweave pieces and the quest offhand, Corruption ticks for like 75 and Drain Life for 60ish damage (and healing) per second, which is about twice as much damage as wanding.

I suspect they'll "switch to the other core" in a ctrl+v job as a token gesture that makes no actual difference. Just wordswap any reference Nostalrius and their team's members. There'd be no reason to do anything else, it's not like anyone can prove that they didn't migrate to another core. There just needs to be no mention of Nostalrius anywhere in order to give the Nost guys a legal escape route as handing over the core and setting up transfers likely equates to non-compliance with the C&D order. Scrubbing their names off of all assets and taking down the transfer application will suffice as compliance, which is the whole reason behind this. The Legacy knee-bending talk is just a smokescreen.

Must be trolling. Nobody is this ignorant.

Shadoweave gear is very much worth getting, just probably not the full set. The shoulders and legs have stamina on them, and gloves and boots are generally low-stat slots while leveling so you can wear these as well without missing out on an unreasonable amount of health. You probably want to wear the quested Bloodrobe or some similar 'of the Eagle' thing most of the way through, as well as a stamina headpiece since head is a high-stat slot. The rest of the Shadoweave pieces are worthwhile, you're missing out on something like 10-20 stamina compared to whatever random quest rewards you'd have worn instead. Doesn't make any real difference. Having a good bit of spell power means you save your pet a fair amount of mana by finishing mobs off one Torment cycle earlier than normal. What else are you gonna wear in these slots? The alternative is green 'of the X' crap that does literally nothing for your leveling speed. The Shadoweave items will last you until 60 and ease your transition into high-end dungeons.

I don't see it. I've tried it in the past and I tried it again this time, and the fact of the matter is that I can barely spend my mana anyway even without it. There are just no situations where I need a bunch of extra mana regen. Are you leveling by spam-SBing mobs or something? I sit at basically full mana 90% of the time when leveling a warlock, and there aren't enough mobs in this kind of environment to consistently pull two or three at a time, nor is that sustainable in terms of pet health/mana. The only thing I ever wait for is pet mana and mob respawns. There has simply never been a situation where I needed a bunch of extra mana regen after killing a mob. Meanwhile, for large parts of the leveling process, the relationship between mob health and your own damage is such that dots frequently run out just before the mob dies and you deal the last 5-10% with wand and pet attacks. In all of those cases, finishing the mob off with just Drain Soul is unrealistic unless you re-apply dots, negating the mana gain. Imp. Drain Soul is just not even slightly close to necessary. It wouldn't speed my leveling up at all, and the need for calling off your pet and stopping your wanding in order to Drain Soul at the end makes for an awkward rhythm compared to just continuing the wanding. Drain Soul still costs mana, takes additional time, and you or your pet will take more hits while finishing a mob in this fashion, so any hypothetical advantage is mitigated by these things. The added hassle isn't worth it, and the talent is also worthless in groups and PvP, further solidifying its superfluousness. When I pull a mob with dots and send the pet, and wand until the mob is dead, I'm back to full mana by the time it's dead. If there's a second mob, I fear+dot that at the same time and Lifetap once after the fight to get back the extra mana that it cost to do that, which Demon Armor's regeneration easily sustains. If I pull three mobs, I can have the pet hit the third one once and tank it, but there are never enough mobs anywhere to do this more than every once in a while, which puts no real stress on my own mana balance over the course of a quest or grind session. Even so, it's nothing that isn't handled with one or two taps after the fight. The only downtime I ever have is my pet's mana, and finding mobs. Why would I put two points into a talent that does essentially nothing for me? It certainly isn't a crucial talent to the extent where condescending remarks are warranted for people who opt out of it. You still haven't seemed to provide a reason more compelling than "it's necessary and you're stupid for thinking otherwise."

Server still hasn't crashed once and has needed only two restarts since it launched. Fairly little lag in most places. Maybe a brief spike every 20 minutes or so. Latency is otherwise stable. Queue grace timer works (in most cases) so you can log back in immediately if you get disconnected. Dynamic respawning makes leveling entirely possible even in ridiculously crowded areas. 10k players starting out all at once and it has been totally playable 100% of the time I've been online, eight hours total. Queues are an unfortunate side effect of 20k+ people wanting to log in while everyone already online gets to stay on as long as they want because the server is running so well despite sporting 10k players. Staff might not have expected it to go this smoothly, which is causing the queue to move forward very slowly as slots are only freed up when somebody finishes playing and voluntarily logs off, or the rare occasions when the grace timer fails for somebody. So far it has worked for me like six out of six times. I had to sit through the queue once because I lagged out and didn't bother to log back in immediately, but other than that, it has been unbelievably functional all around.

I haven't been DCed in over 48 hours. It happened a few times on the first day and then never again since. There may be something wrong with your client, addons or internet connection.

There's several possible reasons why Elysium hasn't done that. Perhaps they're at the limit of how much server space you can rent one month at a time. At a certain point, in order for the datacenter to agree to give you more servers, you may have to sign a plan like €10,000 for six months minimum because that's what it'll take in order for the datacenter to allot so much of their capacity to one host. Or maybe there isn't any more server space available. The staff might have disabled donations precisely because they couldn't get more space at the datacenter, knowing that people would be furious if they donated and nothing happened. It could also be that they just weren't expecting things to run so flawlessly that people who got online could stay on all day and cause the queue to move forward very slowly. Elysium hasn't crashed a single time and has needed only two restarts since launch. You might get disconnected from ingame once in a while but the grace period lets you log back in without a queue if you do it immediately, at least most of the time. You can't necessarily call the datacenter on a Saturday night and ask for an upgraded plan on the spot.

Yeah, warriors are unlucky in that regard, but they do get to be insane gods of PvP in the end so there's always that.

Rogues aren't the only melee opponents you'll be fighting. There's hunters, feral druids, etc. Drain Life can be very powerful at those levels when you have it talented, spruced up with Shadoweave gear, and can actually use it while someone's hitting you because of the 70% pushback protection. You can literally tank two mobs at a time if you want, you just won't finish the fight at full health if you do. The spec isn't any less capable of fighting multiples than the Voidwalker spec, but pulling a third isn't worth the cast time and mana of keeping it feared while you kill the first two. In any spec. I'm talking about the epeen of people in threads like these going "your spec sucks because I can kill THREE MOBS AT ONCE!!!!11½"

In the interest of science and planning, I decided to look at the various sets for warlock (mage sets are also very similar). This is mainly with PvP in mind, but it's still roughly applicable to PvE as well. This takes into account only the pieces that exist for the PvP set. PvE sets have bracers and belts as well whose stats I ignored. So, 6 pieces in all cases. Set bonuses for the noted stats are counted. Pre-1.9 R13: 155 stamina, 103 intellect, 153 spell power T2: 132 stamina, 93 intellect, 187 spell power, 1% crit, 1% hit Post-1.5 T1: 144 stamina, 102 intellect, 99 spell power, 1% crit, 1% hit L58 R10: 133 stamina, 83 intellect, 128 spell power I realize that there's other gear besides tier sets, but that's too much to go into. We can see that pre-1.9 R13 is worse than T2, but not by staggering amounts. It has 23 more stamina, 35 less spell power, and lacks crit and hit but has some useful unique bonuses for PvP. T2 is obviously better, but it will likely take a lot longer (in terms of months, not necessarily hours spent) to get so much T2 whereas PvP gear is obtained three pieces at a time upon ranks 12 and 13. You have to grind more for it but for a shorter period of time. And of course, you can have your R13 before BWL releases, giving you a considerable edge for a while over those who don't. Pre-1.5 T1 is a total joke, it's worse than dungeon gear so it's not even worth looking at. Post-1.5 T1 is roughly on par with the level 58 R10 set but, again, takes way longer to obtain. R10 is quite easy to reach with a moderate amount of effort and is a BiS option on par with the updated T1 until BWL, and much better than T1 until June; T1 is basically unusable until the AV patch. R10 is definitely worth getting early on for warlocks. It's mostly BiS (not counting R13) for the first six months, although the chest might get replaced by Robe of the Void. Getting to R10 fast will set you up with a bunch great gear for months. Some of these pieces will probably last you until you get an upgrade from BWL. Absolutely worth doing at the start of the server. Pre-1.9 R13 is pretty much superior to everything until BWL (chest is so-so but you want the 6/6 bonus), and then you'll still have it for however many months it'll take you to replace the pieces with BWL loot. If you can get R13 like four months after launch, you'll have vastly better gear than anyone else until at least August and, more likely, a couple months further as nobody just gets T2 handed to them when BWL releases. By the end of this year, it will no longer be particularly compelling to start grinding for R13, but the option remains for those who have no interest in joining a raid guild. You'll still be relatively competitive in PvP with R13 and some pug raid gear, but those who have full BWL gear will have an edge over you. Those who ranked up early on will have benefitted bigly from it for the better part of a year before it grows old. To those who claim that ranking up will be "pointless," I'd say that's not really the case, although it will stop being grotesquely lucrative toward the end of the year. Until then, it'll make you one of the best-geared players on the server. You just don't get to stay that way for most of vanilla unless you eventually start raiding again, which I find entirely reasonable. It's a silly feature of NostPvP that people have been enjoying the benefits of BiS PvP gear since 2015. Is that worth putting in 12h/day for a while? Depends how you look at it. If PvPing is what you want, it's hard to complain that you can get very decent gear just from PvPing. The rank system is flawed, that's nothing new, but the rewards remain solid for a good while and will make you the best geared dude until winter 2017 when people raiding BWL will begin to have better gear. All in all, it seems very much in line with the spirit of WoW: if you put in a lot of work early on, you get to enjoy the benefits of having the best gear until more content releases and you have to get back to working on it like everyone else. If you get it quickly, the R13 gear will still be exceptionally good for like six months. That seems worth it to me, if you were gonna put so many hours into the game anyway.

You always die if you get ganked with three mobs on you. I don't recommend trying to fight three mobs at a time, it's a waste of resources. People like to overpull because it makes them feel like gods when they can say they pull three mobs at a time and survive, but you don't save any meaningful time doing this. The low damage you do to the adds, the time and mana you waste controlling them, and the guaranteed death every single time an enemy player sees you fighting three mobs makes it a poor decision in most cases. It's mostly just an epeen thing. The spec is good for leveling PvP because it facilitates the use of succubus, allowing you to park a ganker if you get attacked while fighting a mob, or survive/win 1v2 fights. Sacrificing Voidwalker is okay but it's not that strong in the earlier levels, and it leaves you without a pet and won't really save you from some ganks anyway because the shield is just some extra health whereas Seduce lets you CC a ganker, finish the mob off, bandage/pact and then fight. The spec is also nice because you're basically always at full health and have a way to gain back a huge chunk of your mana for free with Dark Pact. You can be ready for a fight at all times. You just become far less gankable, which is really the main concern when leveling on a PvP server. The pushback protection on Drain Life also makes this spell usable against melees, which is very powerful especially if you can juke their interrupt with Immolate or something. Warlocks are so vulnerable around 40-50 when the melees start to get real weapons, so this can help a lot.

Hard to take it seriously when somebody claims that undead is definitively the best PvP race for horde. He barely even mentions the orc stun resistance, as if it wasn't relevant or something when in reality it's the best way to improve your matchup against your counter-class.

Making the upgraded PvP epic set available early is good for 1% of the playerbase and bad for the rest. Any argument about it being "good for the community" is a joke perpetrated by people who just want benefits for themselves and are inventing reasons why it should be that way. It's objectively bad for the server when there's too long of a period of time where the way to get the best possible gear is to ignore the game's content entirely and sit in mindless queue-hopping premades all day every day, which is truly horrendous for the PvP environment and makes for an awful BG experience for everybody who doesn't do the same. There's only one seriously valid argument for upgrading the PvP sets early: 1.11 is a silly long time away and we don't even know if the server will last that long. Anything else is just "I want my PvP gear to be even better... let's claim it'll be great for the entire community!" which is hard to respect as anything but self-serving nonsense. At least be honest and just say what you mean: I want a bigger advantage because I want to win more. The "problem" created by the Blizzlike sets (i.e. you need to eventually start raiding in order to continue being the best geared PvPer) is nothing compared to the problems created by making the upgraded gear available early. This creates a much longer period of time where the only way to seriously compete is to be single and unemployed and do the nolife grind yourself. It pushes the vast majority of the playerbase out of the competition because players in early vanilla gear don't stand a chance in PvP against those players and can't just go and get that gear themselves because they have jobs and spouses and other obligations. One percent of the playerbase wants to be able to do a few months of intensive BG grinding in order to set themselves up as PvP gods for the next year without any continued effort. They're now lobbying to make that happen, but the arguments are thin. I actually suspect that the absurd entitlement and fabricated claims are hurting that side of the argument by making you seem like petulant, self-serving whiners. If I were a developer, I'd go "fuck that, I'm not bending over backwards for that kind of selfishness."

Druids aren't bad, but they somewhat lack the utility of the other healing classes. Their utility is more aimed at PvE, particularly with Rebirth and the way their healing works (spamming small, cheap but not very fast heals). They're the best flag carriers for WSG, and they're serviceable enough as general healers but not really ideal due to the lack of cleanse, hard CC, and useful buffs. They're good at surviving against melee but only in a kind of timewasting way as you don't really do anything at all in bear form while wearing healing gear. Travel form is quite good for escaping Hamstring, and root is useful against melees. Their tools for supporting others is limited, though.

The imp is like half of your damage until level 10, so it's worth getting even if it takes a full hour.

Because playing the actual game is the bloody point, not existing exclusively in this tiny bubble of 24/7 premades. By your logic, PvP players shouldn't need to level up, either. Is it so unthinkable that doing the most difficult content is the way to get the best rewards?

It's not as if everybody is in endgame BiS gear. The PvP gear is still quite good by then, just not anymore. It would be ridiculous if grinding hard for four months at the start of the server leaves you with the best gear in the game for the rest of all time. The PvP gear wasn't meant to be the best gear that can be obtained, it was supposed to be a viable alternative to raiding for those who are more into PvP. The problem was always the rank system and the absurd amount of time it took. If it didn't take every waking hour for several months to get R13+, it would be completely fine for the gear to be second rate behind those who actually play the whole game instead of just mindless BGs all day. It's not great for the server if the PvP gear isn't upgraded until 1.11, but it's no more irritating than having largely worthless T1 sets for months. PvP players just complain way more. Seeing the witless entitlement going on, I'm inclined to opine that if the PvP gear should be upgraded early, the weapons should be at the same time. That's quite reasonable as they're plainly overpowered in BWL. In terms of balance against PvE gear, the upgraded epic PvP gear should technically be available no sooner than AQ. The blue sets are fine for the ZG patch, though. The only real argument against AQ is that it's a long time to wait when it's a fresh server that follows one where many players already did the same thing once. That's why doing it in 1.7 is relatively acceptable, even though it brings some problems to the itemization balance. It would be healthier for the server to wait until AQ, but there's no guarantee that the project will last that long.

I guess they changed that since the early stages of the server. It was a reported bug but people insisted that was intended. I still think it's an unnecessary investment and a hassle when you can grind without downtime anyway. Can't really do it while wanding, though. It's a channeled spell.

I never take Imp. Drain Soul. It's such a hassle to use and the need to get the killing blow with the spell's pitiful damage negates a lot of what you gain from the extra mana regen. Mana is never really an issue and I'd rather not have to go through that annoying little Drain Soul dance with every mob I kill. You'll take several extra hits and waste several seconds doing it. If you grind the right way, you should have no downtime anyway so there's no serious need for more mana. Got better things to do than try to finish mobs off with a channeled DoT that does like 3% damage per tick. The smoothest leveling spec I've found is Dark Pact and drain-tanking mobs while your succubus attacks and is ready to offtank adds. You stay at full life all the time and never have to worry about pet aggro, plus Seduce makes you virtually ungankable. You can also use the imp for even more mana regen, but then your pet offers no damage and no help in PvP. The spec is amazing for survivability because you have pushback protection for your Drain Life, your pet free to tank adds so you don't waste time and mana on fear, and instant free mana from Dark Pact. Dark Pact is an insanely powerful ability that only becomes bad at 60 when it prevents you from getting Ruin. You don't want Ruin while leveling anyway, and the ability to regain half a mana bar in two globals is absurdly strong in both PvE and mid-level PvP. The base spec looks like this and then you can take whatever you want after 40. I usually go with the same Destruction talents as SM/Ruin so I have a good Shadow Bolt and can DPS properly in dungeons around 50 when you get access to the ones that actually contain gear worth taking the time to get. This route gives you a spec that's fantstic for solo leveling, gank prevention, and doing pre-60 dungeons. Imp. CoA is completely unnecessary :D that spell is like 20% of your damage and half the time the mob is dead before you get the good ticks anyway. Spending three points to increase your DPS by like 1-2% is grossly wasteful and serves absolutely no purpose while leveling. It's so simple and smooth to play. You basically do this: - Pull mob with Corruption + CoA (or Siphon Life if you want) - Drain Life until mob is dead - Loot, Lifetap + Dark Pact, pull another If you get an add or want to tag more than one mob at a time, have the pet attack it to get aggro (or just Seduce); you waste no time or mana handling it. You can handle two adds if you fear, but I don't see the point of spending that much extra mana trying to juggle three mobs. You can probably tank two mobs while draining, too, but then you won't finish the fight at full health and your Drain Life will get interrupted more. If you get ganked while fighting a mob, simply Seduce and finish the mob. Dark Pact once or twice, then start the fight at full life and mana. Melees don't expect you to be able to just stand there tanking them with your considerable self-healing.

Nost had the updated set bonuses from the start.

People are vastly downplaying the usefulness of the pre-upgrade PvP sets. They're not worthless garbage, the weapons just aren't grotesquely overpowered like they were on NostPvP. The original PvP gear is still very solid and very much usable, the weapons just aren't BiS all the way to Naxx. The only concern with waiting for 1.11 isn't that the gear is useless, it's that it's a very long time on a fresh server where everyone already knows everything and most people don't feel sure the server will even last that long. Stop being hysterical.