My only real issue with the leveling process, or more with the story, I suppose, is there were so many "bosses" (for lack of a better term) that I easily could have killed, but they added in a mechanic where at 10% or something they perma-stun me and they go into a cut scene, and the bad guy escapes. That's fine, I mean, they need that to progress the story; however, it shouldn't be so easy for me to kill them. Maybe I should be able to take them from 100-90% health, and that's when the cut scene happens, or maybe I should have to dodge zones that stun me, and they progressively get harder to dodge, until eventually I can't do it, and that would be when the cut scene would happen. As they are right now, it seems like Nerzhul, Guldan, Garrosh and the others are really week and kind of push-overs. It's hard to imagine them ever being meaningful raid or dungeon bosses if I can solo them while leveling.
Ashran
I did give Ashran a try a few times over the weekend. I was so incredibly excited about Ashran during the beta, and it was a huge let down on live. On beta, on the max level PvP realm, you had mostly all people who had decent skill with PvP, and everyone was in the exact same gear. On live you have a terrible mix of really skilled and really unskilled players, and a huge range of gear levels. I'm still hoping that the zone will be worthwhile in a couple months, once everyone is geared, and some of the newer players have been scared off, but as it is right now, it's a worthless way to spend your time. I'd maybe go back in with my RBG team, but other than that, I'm done with it for a while.Garrisons/Profs
I must admit that it's really nice to have all the gathering professions at your fingertips. The garden has kept me in enough Gorgrond Flytraps to do my LW daily, and it's nice to be able to d'ench and enchant your own gear.
I would like to see more breadcrumb type quests for the garrison. As it is, it works out fine for people like me who spend way to much time looking at guides, and just in general exploring, but for the average player, they should be able to spend their in game time doing things, instead of looking for things to do.
The same goes for Outposts. I'd like to see a better description of what you're getting, and what you're giving up by choosing one or the other option. Again, for someone like me who's going to tab out and look up guides to optimize every little bit of the game, it's fine as is (I really just needed the names of each so I could figure it out), but for other players, accidentally choosing the wrong one (for them) is really frustrating.
I had a friend online who just randomly picked buildings in his garrison that seemed cool, and when he got the outpost blueprint currency, she spent them on whatever she had built at the time. So now at max level she's being punished (at 750-1000 gold per building) for not going out of game to look up guides. That seems like fairly poor design, that really punishes more casual players, who I would think are the target audience of garrisons.
Rare Hunting
I was disappointed on the beta that Rares were only killable/lootable once, and that they weren't actually rare anymore, with nearly instant respawns. However, now that I've played around in the Nagrand 100 area, I'm fine with it. There's no challenge in killing a level 90-99 rare at level 100. Having repeatable level 100-102 rares available at least allows for some more fun. I've been doing a circle through Nagrand every day since hitting 100 to get most of them, and while they aren't exactly challenging for a hunter, I think they will be for some classes (all you need to do as a hunter is keep up mend pet). Hopefully as the xpac progresses, we'll see more with abilities that actually require thought, like the Archiereus of Flame on the Timeless Isle, or the War-god on the Isle of Giants. Perhaps there already are some like that and I just haven't run into them yet.
There was one rare elite in northern Gorgrond, I forget it's name, but it was level 101 I believe, and it tore right through me and my pet, very quickly. I was on my way to something else, so I didn't give it any more tries, but I look forward to battling him solo. I'm hoping there will be a way to mix pet tanking and kiting to get him down.
One very pleasant thing I've seen, is some classes which couldn't normally kill a rare elite, will come across me killing them, and will pitch in by healing my pet. It's kind of nice that I can focus on damage dealing and they can have a way to participate and help with the kill, even if their damage is fairly insignificant.
On the flip side, there was a bear druid who came across me killing one of the rare clefthoof, who kept taunting away from my pet. Normally that would be fine, I'm happy to let him tank, but he kept dying, then would run back, taunt, die, run back, taunt, die... Finally I started taunting with my pet when I saw him drop low (it only took a few hits). Eventually he realized how much better my pet tanking/healing was, so he switched to cat form. I suppose he thought he was being kind, and was relieving pressure by taunting away...
Dungeons and Proving Grounds
When I first hit 100, I was siting around 600 ilvl, and went into the proving grounds, and they were crazy easy. I don't remember them being that easy in MoP, so perhaps they've changed some of the mechanics, or the relative health pools. Especially given that I wasn't in max ilvl gear for them, I was surprised at how it went. I've only gotten through a few heroic dungeons (as most of the folks I'd normally go with took there time leveling), and haven't done any CModes yet, but I'm definitely looking forward to that in the next few weeks.
Aldarana is working on the hunter challenge mode guides for the Warcraft Hunters Union said she'd have some up soon (maybe a couple are up already). I'm looking forward to getting into challenge modes, as I really feel like their one of the best opportunities to really shine as a hunter. Everyone should check out her guides, though. I'll be sure to link them here as soon as they're posted.
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