While I was running around leveling my warlock I decided to try a random group instance. After a long wait and almost getting a group, I was bumped to the front of the queue. That put me into a group that was 1/2 done and struggling. As I got there the group cycled a few more members. We got a new tank and another DPS. Other than the tank and healer bickering about how bad the other was, the group moved at a steady pace.
They did comment on how crappy my stats were at 74 for the high gear score I had. I guess the BoA items must add a lot to gear score at my level. My stats are pathetic. I have under 9k health and mana. I did hold my own on the charts. Not sure how though.
I started out as destruction because thats what I was leveling as for the last hour. I felt clumsy in the group. My rotation went out the window and I was pulling a god deal of agro. I must have been front loading the damage too much. I also struggled to manage my mana/health. So I made the switch to affliction 1/2 way into it. Affliction is much more natural for me to play. I spent most of the time leveling as affliction and raided another lock as affliction at 60 and 70.
I knew my dps would suffer a little on trash but I would survive much easier and felt better with agro. I found that my damage didn’t go down all that much. Mobs were living long enough I could spread the damage around a bit. On the last boss (single target) I pulled top damage at 1086 dps. My damage for the run was about 920 dps. I know that not all that much, but I remember kicking level 80′s from groups because they could not pull that much damage. You really have to wonder what they are doing at 80 to suck that bad.
The shaman healer claimed he needed the cloth robes. So he asked everyone to greed and trade with him. I rolled need as the only cloth in the group and I was replacing a green. Good luck getting me to pass it for someone I don’t even know. He tried to make a stink about it but the group would not let him.
My 2nd group later on when I was 75 was just pro. Great tank, great heals, and went fast. I watched my damage closer that time. I stayed destruction the whole time this instance. I was 1381 dps for the run. On a few larger single target mobs at the end I saw 1700 and 1900 dps. I did have better party buffs this time though.
I remember trying to get groups on my leveling characters and it just never happened. What I like about this option is that it keeps working to fill the group. I hate being that guy that has to find people to finish a run. When a tank drops it finds a tank. I know I only ran this once so it may not be as smooth every time. So far so good.
the new LFG is great for getting dungeons when you level. I do my daily as heals. Then i quest and que up as dps it allows me 2 triumph badges and upgrades for my crappy blues. I understand not passing on cloth. Kinda sucks that a s a druid there is very little spell power leather in dungeons so i cry every time cloth drops and i dont get to roll on it.
Comment by bobreaze — February 8, 2010 @ 9:43 am
I just leveled a resto druid from 62 -> 80 almost exclusively though LFG and it was great. Of course I had a few fail groups and a few assholes, but in general they were few and far between. I hit 80 with really great gear (ilvl 167 – 187) and 60 Emblems of Triumph so I could start gearing up right away.
One thing that I found is that the leveling groups seemed to be much more chatty and friendly than the heroic runs, which as has often been remarked tend to be grimly single-minded.
When I find myself some free time I’m gonna roll me a shaman Horde-side and send him some heirlooms and see what the Horde life is like for once, and will probably try healing that as well.
Comment by Jarnow — February 8, 2010 @ 3:56 pm