A bunch of questions from a vet player coming back after years of inactivity

Jerfy, on 11 January 2013 - 01:18 AM, said:

Hey there!

Welcome to the forums, and welcome to Mists of Pandaria!

The answer to a lot of these questions is "it doesn't really matter." Why so? Because in Cataclysm (somewhat) and especially in Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard has been doing an increasingly good job at balancing classes and specs, at least in PvE. This means that there are very few, if any classes or specs left that just cannot compete. I realize that this isn't a very satisfactory answer, so...

For tanks, they're all good right now! All tanks now rely on "active mitigation" to survive, and are no longer punching bags with 3-minute defensive cooldowns. Some take the damage better than others, though, and a Warrior or Paladin is going to take smoother and more controlled damage than a Death Knight, which still relies heavily on self-healing and proper timing of Death Strike to stay alive.

For healers, again, they are all good right now. There is always a bit of variation in performance, determined by the current state of the content/gearing, etc, but I really can't say that there is a healing class that outshines the others, or one that lags behind.

For DPS, yet again, things are pretty well balanced. I'd say that melee DPS have an advantage at the moment, and will be doing overall more DPS than most ranged, but the difference is minor, and it depends a lot on the fight. And, it is *still* the case that melee DPS have a lot to put up with in terms of avoiding things in the boss's proximity, and that they're more prone to dying to all manner of things, and so on. The usual problems that melee DPS faced still exist, so keep that in mind.

Choosing a race does matter, in the sense that some races have bonuses that are considerably better for raiding than others. For example, as a physical DPS player on Horde, you're almost always going to get the best results by being an Orc or a Troll, and not a Blood Elf. For Alliance, the bonuses are a bit more even, so as long as you aren't a Worgen or a Night Elf, then you're probably getting good benefit for your class/spec. You really need to look at it in terms of race/class combinations, though.

For professions, you really just want to have some crafting professions ultimately, unless you enjoy farming materials and selling them (but this isn't really efficient in the least, I would say). Any of the crafting professions should be fine.

In regards to PvP, I really cannot comment I'm afraid.

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EU Servers back up after lengthy downtime

Problems began late last night in the EU, with players reporting on the forums that they had been seeing battle.net friends disconnecting in large groups from their servers, 20 or more at a time. These issues eventually turned into random disconnects for ever larger numbers of players, followed by players being unable to connect at all.

As WoW Insider's EU spy, I tried to connect myself, and received an error saying that my characters could not be found. Don't be alarmed if you received the same error, simply check your characters on the armory, if you can access it, and ensure they're still there.

Blizzard Community Manager Lurdlespor took to the forums at 10:51 GMT, some eight hours after initial reports came in, to inform players of what was going on, and has provided hourly updates since then. There is not a resolution, nor is a timescale available, leaving many players frustrated after a reported 17 hours downtime. WoW Insider will continue to update this post with new details as they appear.

The technical issues that we were experiencing earlier have now been resolved. Apologies for the inconvenience.

- Blizzard CS EU (@BlizzardCSEU_EN) December 29, 2012

The technical issues are now resolved, with a fairly epic 20+ hours of downtime for some EU players. Lurdlespor's posts remain after the break.
LurdlesporUpdate 18:00 GMT: The issues restricting access to World of Warcraft continue, we are still liaising with our network partners to resolve this issue but we have no updates at this time regarding an estimated time for a solution.

This issue will continue to be investigated and is our top priority. We apologise for the disruption this has caused.

Update 17:00 GMT: We continue to work with our network partners to resolve this issue, however we do not have any updated info on this at this time. The forum and website access continues to be intermittent, which is also under investigation.

Update 16:00 GMT: We are still working with our network providers to resolve this issue, however we do not have an ETA for a fix for this just yet. When we get more concrete information, we will let you know.

We are also experiencing slowdown and some errors with our community sites, which may prevent players from reaching the Account Management and Forum pages, this is also under investigation.

Update 15:00 GMT: This is still being worked on, however we do not have an estimated time just yet for a fix. Please check back on this thread later, we will update as soon as we have more information.

Update 14:00 GMT: We do not have any firm updates to share with you regarding a time for a resolution of this issue, it is still under investigation and we are working closely with our network partners in order to resolve this. We will let you know as soon as we have further information.

Update 13:00 GMT: We are still working on this issue in liaison with our network partners, no estimated time for a resolution just yet. We apologise for the delay in this being resolved.

Update 12:00 GMT: This issue is still being investigated and worked on, and our network team is working with our network partners to resolve this issue as soon as possible. We do not have an estimated time for a solution yet, and will update you with further information as soon as we have it.

Update 11:22 GMT: Please note this issue is also affecting emails sent from us, so if you have requested a password reset or require another form of email from our support team, it may be delayed while this issue is being worked on.

Update 10:51 GMT: We do not have an estimated time for a resolution on this issue yet, we continue to liaise with the affected parties, and we will let you know as soon as we have further information on this issue.

We are currently experiencing external general connectivity issues which started on the night of the 28 - 29/12

Symptoms of this issue include either being unable to connect properly to a character, i.e. being stuck on a loading screen, or being disconnected once in-game.

Our network technicians are investigating this issue, and we will update here when we have further information regarding this issue.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this issue

Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.

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