Heirloom gear is losing it's appeal to meFollow

Nope, not a QQ about wanting to do things the hard way - that's easy - don't use the stuff (your loss though - my Tauren shadow priest has everything AND the fishing ring with the bonuses of a level 25 guild to boot - it gets XP just from looking at mobs).

Nah, the real issue from my perspective is instances - lowbie instances are being run like you've got a 85 leading the charge - pulls consist of every visible mob, mana regains are near impossible and the corresponding wipes which occur due to overpulls chew up any time savings earned by the fast pace (meaning I usually break even from a time perspective).

On my SP, that's not too much of a problem - I say f-it and just sit down to drink every few pulls so while I'm not topping the DPS meter, no big deal as long as the tank doesn't nerd rage out of the group because the healer is OOM and the tank decided to pull the entire room/boss and died.

What worries me is my healadin - it's my first time as a healer and I'd really like to learn my job now rather then wiping groups at 80+ when repair bills mean something - I'm sure I'm not the only one.

There's also the issue of all of the bad habits people are learning - imagine the joy of getting into an 80+ group only to find that the tank's idea of a good pull is half the instance and neither said tank nor the healer have the item levels to survive the experience.

Finally, more of a side note since the folks on these forums mostly don't seem to care, under the law of unintended consequences, Blizz has effectively rendered moot its twink fix for the BGs as full heirloom gear gear hunters and melee obliterate anything they happen to tab target in 1-3 hits - nothing like having a toon quite literally disintegrate as two or three (or God forbid, five as I encountered in a recent BG) hunters all hit you at once from way out of all spell range - so much for encouraging peeps to hit the BGs.

All said though, my main beef is the instances as >40 the heirloom gear only makes BG opponents tough instead of invincible.

My SP is now 71 and while these mass pulls (yup, they're still doing them even at that level - heirloom gear is definitely over powered) are great for XP I foresee a large number of window licker grade tanks and healers soon entering the Cata instance grind.

So, in some sense this is a thread about heir loss? Better heir care?

The only places I find heirlooms really start to rock are Outland and Northrend. I have done the quests in those two areas enough that once my alts hit those zones I really struggled to continue. The new quests in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdom rock (for the most part) and even without the BoAs you end up skipping chunks of quests in zones as you level. I would hate to imagine how that would be with full heirloom + guild bonus xp. :S

Honestly, even not using the stuff doesn't let you get the feeling that you're doing things the hard way. I've been leveling a few alts here and there and am just not finding any feeling of challenge while leveling (pre-60 at least). It's so controlled now that even if you want to skip ahead to where the quests feel hard, you can't anymore because of the linear design to the zones. You can't start a new zone until you are at least a certain level and by the time you're that level, it doesn't feel very hard anymore.

I haven't tried any lower level dungeons lately but I've heard many people talk about how easy (even boring) they are now which kind of turns me off to trying them. I remember spending hours in WC with a determined group through several wipes and really feeling proud that we made it all the way up to the top (didn't even try the escort to get the Murloc boss). I know people don't want to spend that kind of time in dungeons anymore though so I can understand the changes they've made but I'm not sure it's just the heirlooms that are making the experience feel more trivial. I have noticed the differences in many of the old dungeons while running alts through and can see how doing them at level would be nothing like what I remember from the pre-BC days.

Short of making 'heroic' versions of all the dungeons for people with the heirloom (or at least higher gear level), I don't see an easy fix of making the dungeons work for people with a wide gear range. They have to be doable by people without heirlooms and only in quest gear because they don't want to turn off actual new players. Unfortunately, the gear disparity makes the BGs a lot worse for people who don't have the heirlooms.

It would be funny if heirlooms adjusted their stats to match the average gear level of the people they are grouped with (or against in the case of BGs) everytime the heirloom wearer got into a party group. It would even things out a bit though I'm sure the people who love being so overpowered would cry about newbs making things harder on them. Heheh

Yeah that's just dumb. 1-60 there isn't a need for heirlooms at all unless you're playing a class with uncommon stat/gear combinations. For example, on my pally I've been using mail caster heirlooms that I bought for my shaman (who is still level 1 lol) since mail caster gear is so hard to find STILL in the lower level content. Even with that, I'm still wearing a fair amount of cloth and leather gear.

Heirlooms are nice for sure, but they definitely aren't necessary. I typically don't even use them until I hit Outlands anyways, because rushing from 60-80 IS a necessity to avoid boredom and drudgery.

I've healed VC with an Enhancement shammy, in Enhance gear with no heirlooms with a chain pulling group. Then the tank left and we kept pulling. I averaged #3 on DPS.

News flash, old content is easy and meant to be steamrolled.

I like the heirloom bow...it is super badass looking.

On my rogue alt I used heirloom gear until 70. I had done enough pvp while leveling that I had almost capped my honor points at 68 so I looked on wowhead and found the Brutal Glad set from BC. From 70-74 the stuff makes you invincible in bg's, even compared to heirlooms.