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[Flying Carcass]

Normally there are mountains between the land and ocean except in areas where there's a quest, so folks don't often explore those areas but there were a few interesting pointless abandoned things to be found if one was willing to do some swimming (or fly around post cata, I guess).
One time I found a fishing shack with a goblin NPC who said something to the effect of having moved out there because he enjoyed the solitude.
Another time I came across an unused Tauren village (I think it was off the edge Silithus) with several buildings and a cave system, but apparently I wasn't the only one to find that village since as I was leaving I rode past a pair of (what I presumed to be) ERPers in one of the huts (RP server and all that); I /waved them a hearty hello of course. 
There was also a quest to be found, a hidden bottle NPC surrounded by turtles, if one was willing to swim along the coat to the southern tip of tanaris.

[itisnotlogical]

Oh wow, people have been really imaginative with their exploring. I thought I was cool for going on top of all the little floaty rocks in Outland to see if anything was hidden on them.

[Baneling]

Something I think a lot of people overlook - there are rivers and waterfalls in the mountains behind Stormwind. They've always been there, as I recall a bunch of the northward-bound flight paths took you through them? Not sure, haven't played non-private servers in a loong time, and those tend to have flight paths a little buggy. Since Cataclysm, though, you could fly around there and see where they lead. There's a little cliff a little behind Stormwind Keep that has a bunch of sheep and an NPC who punches you off the cliff if you attack the sheep, or something.

[Niveras]

Personally I think most people did heroics all wrong. Gearing up through heroics is awful. The proper way to do heroics was to both do arena and to be in a raiding guild doing raids on the day they're released. Then go back and do heroics once you're overgeared for them, to fill in blank spots in your gear. Don't be the guy desperately trying to play catch up to convince people to let you into raids. That doesn't work because of "need kara gear to do kara." Instead be the pvp/raider who everyone is grateful to have in their heroics.

I had so much fun doing heroics. Healing pugs in arena gear, just waiting for the inevitable question from dps "Why do you have more health than the tank? OMG!!!! You're a healer? WTF are you gemmed for stamina?!?!!?" Then being asked "is this too fast?" and saying "no, hurry up. Bigger pulls, come on let's go" then watching the dps stop to drink as the two us charged into the next room without them. "I have mana. Pull. They'll catch up. And if they don't, that's ok too." Being in a dungeon with a raid tank I knew, then deliberately pulling rooms before before queuing for replacement dps so they'd show up in the middle of the fight. Booting bad dps and not even bothering to requeue for a replacement because "dude, it's just a heroic. What do we need five people for?"

I'm very, very surprised that you had a good experience healing heroics in PvP gear. PvP gear is inferior to PvE gear because it "wastes" potential stats on things that only apply in PvP (resilience, extra stamina), which on PvE gear would be going toward DPS/HPS/evasion. Now, it's not a surprise that you didn't necessarily struggle with heroic dungeons since player skill can make up for a lot in terms sheer throughput, but the fact that you were never insulted for it doing so is a surprise. A group would suffer if a tank tried to pull this; less so if the DPS did since DPS requirements for heroics tend to be low, but there's no amount of additional skill in the world that will push a person to perform as well as they could in PvE gear, using only PvP gear.

On the other hand, (rated) arena is absolutely more difficult than heroic dungeons, so the gear you have from arena is a higher quality (ilevel) than what you'd get from dungeons, even if some its stat allocations are "wasted" on resilience. And since heroic dungeons aren't exactly the hardest content in the game (particularly for a healer, whose job is made easier by good dps, and good tanks especially - particularly since your friend was raid geared himself), so its no surprise that you could "get away" with this.

And no, players aren't going about gearing up "wrong" because they do heroic dungeons before raiding. That's obviously Blizzard's intended gearing path, and you can tell not only by the item levels alone but also how, in the past, it's been required that you do certain heroics before entering raids (keying up for Tempest Keep, for example). Like, game-required, not just "prove your worth to other players" required.

[LordBucket]

tl;dr:
Haha, no. Check any best in slot raiding gear chart.

I'm very, very surprised that you had a good experience healing heroics in PvP gear. PvP gear is inferior to PvE gear because it "wastes" potential
stats on things that only apply in PvP (resilience, extra stamina), which on PvE gear would be going toward DPS/HPS/evasion.

Casual dps player detected!

Ok. First, let me qualify this. I haven't played since cata. If you've played more recently than that, it's possible things have changed. I can only speak to how things were from BC through cataclysm.

However, what you're saying is/was an entirely common statement from dps, and...I apologize for my eltist generalizing here, but...yeah, dps throughout my WoW experience have generally tended to be pretty clueless about most everything that isn't the one thing that you do: dps.

since heroic dungeons aren't exactly the hardest content in the game (particularly for a healer, whose job is made easier by good dps, and good tanks especially - particularly since your friend was raid geared himself), so its no surprise that you could "get away" with this.

I think you misunderstand. I've been a raider through three expansions. I've been class lead and raid lead for raiding guilds with over 100 people. If you're imagining me as the tagalong in heroics bring carried by his raider friend....I think you have the wrong idea.

As for "healers have an easy job" and we can get away with slacking because you awesome dps do all the heavy lifting...hahaha, no.

Dps is the most expendable of the three roles. We all know it. Don't pretend otherwise. From the perspective of a healer, tank and healer are a team. A good tank can accommodate a below-average healer, and a good healer can accommodate a below-average tank. Speaking generally and barring specific fight mechanics, if you have a good tank and a good healer and they have good rapport, it doesn't really matter how bad the dps is. Dps only controls how long it takes to kill a boss. Meanwhile, if the tank and healer are both bad, it doesn't matter how good your dps is: you're going to die.

Classic example: Heigan in Naxx. I've done that fight where every single dps dies, and it's down to main tank and me are the only two who know the dance, so dps sits from their corpses and watches for 10-15 minutes while we finish off the boss.

And yes, I geared up with pvp gear during wrath, just like I did during BC and cataclysm.

If you never been in a big raiding guild, you wouldn't necessraily know this, but using pvp gear to gear up for raids is/has been a totally standard thing to do since at least Burning Crusade, especially during the early few weeks or months of an expansion. Sure, the details have varied, Blizzard likes to change how their stats work, but it's not uncommon for the occsasional piece of pvp gear to be best in slot for raiding, even better than some of the gear you get from the raid you're gearing for. It's routinely better than anything you can get from heroics.

Again, haven't played since cata, but checking google, here's a resto druid best in slot chart from the current expansion:

 * Main hand weapon: top two picks are pvp gear.
 * Hands: top two picks are pvp gear
 * Staff: top two picks are pvp gear
 * Waist: first, second and third best picks are pvp gear
 * Off hand frill: (not first, but) second and third best picks are pvp gear
 * Trinket: (not first, but) second, third fourth, fifth and sixth best picks...all pvp gear

Take a look at the list. Every gear slot has pvp gear in the top picks, and even when they're not absolute best, they're typically second or third best. Or second and third best.

It's always been this way early on during an expansion cycle, through every expansion I've played. Heroic gear, sure it's on the charts, but pvp gear is better.

If you're unhappy about people in your heroics using pvp gear because of "wasted stats," you're really missing the point of gearing. It doesn't matter if a item has stats that don't help you if the stats it has that you do care about are better than the alternatives. 1000 spellpower and 40 resilience from a piece of pvp gear is better for a caster than 600 spellpower and no resileince from a pve piece. And yes, it's not always that simple, since the pve piece might give you regen instead of resilience, but stat valuation varies by class, and it's not uncommon for the 400 more spellpower and no regen to be comparable to or better than the 400 less spellpower with the extra regen. And if you have a whole bunch of pvp gear, all of which has stronger spellpower stats and a bunch of gem slots to add yet more, that  makes it petty to make up for the regen problem with potions and totems and things because you're casting less often because your heals are bigger.

But hey, that's for a resto druid. Let's check BiS for a hunter:

 * Weapon:   first, second and third best: pvp gear
 * Cloak:    first, second and third best: pvp gear
 * Chest:    first, second and third best: pvp gear
 * Wrists:   first, second and third best: pvp gear
 * Hands:    first, second and third best: pvp gear

Do you detect a pattern?

Again, go through the list. Pvp gear is on the BiS chart for every gear slot, and when it's not it's best, it's typically second or third.

So why is it this way? WHy is pvp ger better than everything else? Because we're early in the expansion cycle. Apparently the latest expansion was released only three days ago. A month from now, a lot of those best in slots pvp pieces will have been bumped down to second because of newly added raid drops. But they'll still be better than heroic gear.

Right now, your big raiding guilds are working on getting their players to the new level cap. A lot of the core members are already there. On day one that the first raid opens, those people will be ready to jump in and spend 8 hours at a time learning the new boss mechanics. And they'll be wearing mixed and matched pieces, some from heroics, some from quests, and some pvp gear. But what happens, is that that first wave of raiders will then come away with raid gear. Any time they can replace a quest or heroic item, they will. But when it comes to replacing pvp gear, sometimes the pvp gear will be better so they'll pass on it. And in some cases the raid gear will be better, so they'll upgrade. But, because upper tier pvp reward tokens have weekly caps (just like raids have cooldowns), they'll not only be replacing their heroic and quest gear with raid drops, they'll also be replacing it with pvp gear. And a month later, you'll have a lot of raiders, the ones who didn't get lucky with the raid drops, wearing an awful lot of pvp purples. Weapons, chest, helmet, gloves, maybe.

Meanwhile, there are the more casual players, the people not in core groups and not in raiding guilds. Those people will still not be at level cap for another month. And by the time they get there, the raiders will have already moved on. They'll have a couple bosses on farm. Their secondary raiding groups will be collecting drops.

By the time the casual players catch up, the raiders have mostly best in slot gear in most of their slots. And while pvp gear isn't always best, but it's among the best, it's better than heroic gear. They probably maintain mutliple gear sets. Personally I routinely had three: a pure pvp set made exluciselvly of pvp pieces, a raiding set that until relatively late in an expansion was typically a mix of raid and arena gear, and a feral set. But since I'd only raid 2-3 nights a week, I spent most of my gameplay time wearing my pvp set. Because, if I'm goign to pvp, I want it. And if I'm not pvping, and I'm just doing casual heroics...I don't really need the raiding set, and the pvp set is still better than somebody fully geared from heroics and crafting and rep rewards.

But, the casuals don't know this. They don't pvp. They're either not raiding yet, or only occassionally getting a lucky spot when a lower end raiding is short on people. They're still grinding rep and crafting skills and heroics to replace their quest blues.

Meanwhile, us raiders are bored because we have the first raid on farm and the second one hasn't been opened yet, so we go back and pug heroics for fun...in our pvp gear. Sure, we were probably doing heroics all along. There's always those one or two items that are low priority for spending the limited pool of upper tier pvp tokens, we just haven't been lucky enough to get the raid drop we want, and there's some particular heroic that has a really good item that we want. And unlike lower tier pvp gear, we can't endlessly farm for it because heroics have daily limits. But we did that grinding with raid buddies, not pugs. Raid buddies who already know everything I'm saying here, and are probably wearing their pvp gear too.

Cue fully pvp geared tank and healer ready to faceroll a heroic, when undergeared clueless dps show up to complain. Or, post-cataclysm, raid geared tank and pvp geared healer, because of this:

things that only apply in PvP (resilience

This is actually a very good example of a case where the rules and value of stats have changed. At one time, resilience gave pve crit reduction. A tank could stack resilience instead of defense, wear nothing but pvp gear and do perfectly fine. That changed in cata. But even still, not every tank has always needed defense. For example, bear tanks didn't depend on defense. They geared for high health and dodge, and pvp gear has notoriously always had a lot of health on it. So even after the resilience change there were still bear tanks wearing pvp gear Plus, even for pallys and warriors, there eventually comes a point where you reach defense cap. At that point, no further crit reduction from defense is possible, because you can't go lower than zero. At that point, defense is worthless so you want high health next. Again, if you don't get lucky on raid drops, pvp gear is routinely your next best option.

So, that's tanks. Resilience and extra stamina. Now, true, yes...as a healer, I admit, I've certainly healed for tanks wearing pvp gear and it's often been a very different experience than healing for tanks in raidng gear. Pvp geared tanks during cataclysm in particular tended to take especially spiky damage because of the resilience change. But...resto druid. Spiky damage is exactly the thing that resto druids are good at dealing with, because most of of our healing tends to be from HoTs. The moment a damage spike hits, the tank is already being healed before I can react. And we have panic abilities like swiftmend that are off the global cooldown. When the tank takes a crit, I push swiftmend, poof he's back up. If he gets hit by a second crit while swiftmend is cooling down, I can let his lifebloom stack expire. And at that point, if I'm proactive I can start big-heal spamming just in case he takes a third crit while I'm waiting for my cooldowns to come back.

But that's talking about tanks. And, sure...if you're dps, resilience and stamina are not putting you higher on the dps charts. But, and this has always been a problem with dps, getting the number one position on recount is not always the best way to contribute to a dungeon or a raid. Sure, doing lots of damage is great. We all love those facerolling hunters who always top the charts. But ask any raid leader in the world who they'd rather have: fantastic dps who dies in fire, or a completely mediocre dps who knows to not stand in fire.

Every one of them will say they'll take the mediocre dps with enough of a clue to survive through the entire fight.

And as a raid healer doing heroics for fun, when I see dps show up to my pug wearing arena purples, I know that he has a clue. And he has a bunch of health, which makes him easier to keep alive. And while it doesn't always happen it's not uncommon that he out-dpses the people wearing heroic and crafting purples, despite the fact that a few of his gems and enchants are probably wrong for doing dungeons.

If we're talking about raids, yes I expect dps to show up with correct gems and enchants. But heroics? Sometimes the same people complaining about people running heroics in their pvp gear don't even have gems or enchants themselves.

Now, it's not a surprise that you didn't necessarily struggle with heroic dungeons
since player skill can make up for a lot in terms sheer throughput, but

Well, it helps, yes but gear definitely is important too. Gear check fights are not uncommon. But you'd be surprised how often pvp gear has been good enough for early raid gear checks. Again, check those BiS charts. It's usually better than heroic gear.

the fact that you were never insulted for it doing so is a surprise.

No, I was routinely insulted for it. Generally by dps without a clue. The people who six months into an expansion are still gearing up in heroics hoping to someday be let into a  raid.Sometimes by hunters who rolled a tank alt because they were tired of waiting in the queue. Meanwhile, anyone with a clue would take one look at my gear (or my achievements) and say "uhh, no I think we're good."

Linking a couple end-raid hardmode achievements goes a long way to shut up dps complaining that the healer has more health than the tank.

[Niveras]

Okay, so there's a lot to go over, and I don't even really want to because who else wants to listen to two nerds nerding it up over gearing practices, but whatever...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If you thought I was shitting on you for being terribad and wiping groups because of your PvP gear, you misunderstood me. My only concern is performance; if the group isn't wiping (and isn't taking hours to clear a dungeon that should be done in 30 minutes), I don't care. I was only pointing out that, for example, 300 ilevels worth of stats spent on PvP gear is of course doing to be inferior to equivalent piece of PvE gear, for the purposes of PvE, just because of the resilience.

That said, as you point out, a lot of the current BiS slots are PvP gear. Since apparently the PvP gear doesn't even have PvP stats anymore, this is not a surprise to me. Presumably Blizzard has changed its philosophy in terms of PvP stats; my statement was certainly true in the past (certainly during the time from which you drew these conclusions), and I would argue is still kind of true anyway since from what I can tell there are no ilevel 660 PvE weapons yet (the next highest I could find, for resto druids at least, is 655, which for some reason isn't in the list you linked; but it's still not as good as the Season 1 arena weapons anyway).

I already pointed this out. Arena is harder than dungeons, therefore arena gear is better than heroic gear. I never even said arena gear is worse than heroic gear, but that PvP gear is worse than equivalent PvE gear, for the purposes of PvE.

Regarding resilience: yes, that was true for a time. However, druid tanks never, ever, ever disregarded crit reduction. They may have used resilience to fill this in while they could (hell, I did it on my warrior for a while), but after Blizzard changed that (precisely because they, at the time, didn't want people gearing up through PvP to take on PvE; or rather, they didn't want PvP gear to invalidate PvE drops), they still needed defense. I don't know how you, as a healer, could trivialize the importance of negating the chance for the tank to be crit. Most tank deaths aren't caused by them getting whittled away, they're almost always caused by spikes - whether from an encounter mechanic or being crit. (Being a druid healer mitigates this risk, but doesn't negate it.) Getting a 0% chance to be crit is the absolute bare minimum every tank - bears included - had to do through WotLK and Cataclysm (presuming they wanted to be taken seriously in heroic dungeons or raids).

The trick is that during Cataclysm, all the tanks were given crit reduction talents, so while they didn't need defense for this purpose anymore, defense was still useful. Bears themselves didn't need or want defense, because it only helped dodge (the parry and block bonuses being completely wasted on a bear), and because it was largely only present on pieces they couldn't use (plate) or didn't want (strength, where bears wanted agility for the dodge and crit rate).

The other tanks wouldn't gear defense after hitting the crit cap, but being a health sponge wasn't their only goal after that point either. Avoidance stats were still important (including defense, to an extent) in improving Time To Live, baring patches where the scaling for a particular class might exceptionally favor one stat over the others. Bears had it the worst since for a long time all they had was health, dodge, and the highest armor of any of the tanks, even capping out at 75% sometimes, but they were given Savage Defense and their armor nerfed in order for Blizzard to mitigate this problem.

I've played warrior as tanks and DPS, a druid as everything (primarily a healer), and a warlock, through BC, WotLK and Cataclysm. I wasn't exactly in a server first guild, but I was by no means a "casual DPS". A healer's job is absolutely made easier by the group performing well. Like, I don't understand how you could possibly argue this point. If the tank's gear lets them avoid damage (proper defense, dodge/parry/block ratings), you don't need to heal as much. If the DPS have two cents and avoid what they should be avoiding, you don't need to heal them at all. That said, obviously we can't expect top tier performance from the people running heroic dungeons, but that doesn't disqualify the statement. You're "weightless" while in orbit, but that's not cause to say there's no gravity in space...

Anyway, all that to say your whole argument was instigated by a false reading. I will reiterate: I did not say arena gear is worse than heroic gear. I said PvP gear was worse, for the purposes of PvE, than equivalent PvE gear. This would mean comparing arenas to raid gear, which you've already affirmed yourself... The obvious exception is that apparently PvP gear doesn't carry resilience anymore so WTFK, Blizzard's philosophies are dynamic and easily change.

I would also point out that the mediocre players who are left to grind out PvE gear in heroics wouldn't exactly fair any better at grinding out PvP gear from arenas, even if arenas have better rewards.

[Baneling]

Isn't dungeon vs raid gear like honor vs conquest gear, anyway? Saying arena gear is better than heroic dungeon gear early in or even throughout an expansion, then, seems a bit pointless. It's like saying your Cataclysmic Shank or whatever is better than Shadowmourne. Of /course/ the former is better than the latter, it's intentionally a higher quality of item. Just because the former wouldn't do as well at the latter's job as an equivalent PvE piece would, doesn't mean it won't do the job better regardless.

[LordBucket]

who else wants to listen to two nerds nerding it up over gearing practices,

It's actually even more amusing than that, because it's two nerds nerding it up over gearing practices in a game we don't even play anymore.

did not say arena gear is worse than heroic gear. I said PvP gear was worse, for the purposes of PvE, than equivalent PvE gear.

Ahh, ok. As you say, a misinterpretation on my part then. I wasn't particularly distinguishing between battleground and arena gear when I said "pvp gear."

I would also point out that the mediocre players who are left to grind out PvE gear in heroics
wouldn't exactly fair any better at grinding out PvP gear from arenas, even if arenas have better rewards.

That's probably true. Though I generally encouraged them to all the same. Every now and then even a seriously undergeared team will win an arena match for one reason or another, and even managing to get one single arena purple can make a massive difference. It's like...imagine going from freshly level capped all wearing nothing but quest rewards, and in exchange for a couple hours of dying horribly between getting lucky, at the end of the week you get handed an epic from the final boss of the first raid...that you're not even going to set foot into for another couple months. The gear is that good, and if you're "doing pvp" then you may as well do arena. There's so much upside, and just no reason not to.

Plus, it was always nice to fight those people for free wins.

I was only pointing out that, for example, 300 ilevels worth of stats spent on PvP gear is of course doing to be inferior to equivalent piece of PvE gear, for the purposes of PvE

Sure. But generally when I've seen people complain about pvp gear in heroics, I don't usually get the impression they're looking at item levels. Again, I've personally shown up to heroics decked head to toe in arena epics, and occasionally had people complain because "that's pvp gear what are you doing in a heroic?"

I already pointed this out. Arena is harder than dungeons, therefore arena gear is better than heroic gear. I never even said arena gear is worse than heroic gear, but that PvP gear is worse than equivalent PvE gear, for the purposes of PvE.

So you're talking about battleground blues. Ok. I remember that being a bit more mixed. Depends on where you are in the lifetime of the expansion. Battleground gear doesn't depend on lucky rolls. Any idiot can sit through battlegrounds and be guaranteed to eventually get a blue pvp set. Combine that with one or two purples from crafting or rep, it's a good way to gear up even if you don't set foot into arena.

Especially if you save up battleground tokens so that you're already capped when an expansion arrives, you can instantly on day one have blues that you can't even use yet because you haven't leveled up to them. And by the time you do reach level cap, you've probably picked up another piece or two, so you can pretty easily end up with a an almost full suit of "pretty good" pvp blues. Those pieces won't be better than than end-boss heroic drops, but they will be better than an awful lot of the early and middle boss heroic drops. During wrath that was a totally viable way to gear up for heroics. You could skip normal 5-mans completely. In cataclysm, you could still do it but it was harder.

But, yeah...six months into an expansion, the guy showing up in unenchanted, ungemmed pvp blues...I agree, he's badly geared. But five days into an expansion as a freshly leveled-capped healer, absolutely a full suit of pvp blues plus the couple quest rewards you picked up while leveling that were better and one crafting epic, that's a decent way to go.

from what I can tell there are no ilevel 660 PvE weapons yet (the next highest I could find, for resto druids at least, is 655, which for some reason isn't in the list you linked; but it's still not as good as the Season 1 arena weapons anyway).

This being only three days into the expansion, it's possible they just don't have all the data yet.

To be fair, weapons have traditionally been an unusually extreme case. During wrath, for example, I think I was pretty comfortably into Ulduar before I finally managed to replace my pvp weapon, and only then by going back and getting a drop from the very last boss in Naxx. Even if you're farming raids that do drop better gear...you still have to get the drop and either win a roll or outbid the loot council. Regardless whether we're talking about battlegrounds or arena, pvp is a very reliable way to get "pretty good" gear.

And I'd rather have the guy in my 5-man who says "I've done Stonecore 5 times over the past week but I still don't have the drop I want. I don't do pvp, but that pvp blue is better than what I have...and I know I can get it without depending on luck, so I'm going to grind battlegrounds to get it" than the guy who says "I've done Stonecore 5 times over the past week but I still don't have the drop I want. Pvp gear is for pvp, pve gear is for pve, therefore I will continue to grind pve until I get lucky."

I don't know how you, as a healer, could trivialize the importance of negating the chance for the tank to be crit.

Expansion dependant and context dependant. Of course I want a crit-immune tank. But like we said, pre-cata, resilience gave crit reduction so a pvp-geared tank was totally fine. And even in cata, I remember a couple times healing in heroics, and thinking the tank seemed a little squishy. Cue conversation:

Me: "Hey, tank. you seem squishy."
Tank: "Oh, sorry. Forgot I was wearing my pvp gear. You need me to switch?"
Me: "If you have it on you, sure. If not, that's ok. I'll adapt."

Granted, that was not during early cataclysm, when every healer was freaking out because blizzard changed everything such that healers who, a week prior, could put a single rejuv on the main tank then go to sleep in Icecrown Citadel, suddenly five levels later were going OOM even in 5-man normals. Sure, I remember that. It was pretty awful. But incidentally, I had an easier time with that than some because I had a full set of battleground blues waiting for me the moment I reached the level cap.

But...six months later, as a raider in a guild with raids on farm, at that point, pugging heroics in arena purples with a tank wearing same, it just didn't make a whole lot of difference. Noticeable, sure...but not worth the five minutes it would take to recall out to switch gear and come back. So I realize I'm talking about a fairly specific case here, but...at that stage of the game there are still a lot of people who are seriously grinding heroics to try to gear up to "earn their way into a raid." And in my experience, those are generally the people who complain about pvp gear in heroics. Nobody is complaining about people in pvp gear during the first few weeks of an expansion, because anybody who's running heroics that early is probably still wearing a couple pvp blues themselves.

Bears had it the worst since for a long time all they had was health, dodge, and the highest armor of any of the tanks, even capping out at 75% sometimes, but they were given Savage Defense and their armor nerfed in order for Blizzard to mitigate this problem.

Well, again: it depends on when during which expansion we're talking about. As you pointed out, Blizzard has changed the rules a bunch of times. I remember pretty clearly a stretch where bears were stacking nothing but stamina, showing up with half again to twice as much health as anyone else, and when they took crits we could barely tell, because they had such massive health pools. For example, I vaguely remember a Ruby Sanctum trip, debating which of two tanks to use for the boss, and it was either a pally with like 28k health or a bear with over 50k. The way I remember it we chose the bear, and pally took the adds. Granted, by that time bears were almost exlcluislvey off-tanks, not main tanks. I don't remember seeing very many bear tanks after BC. Even during wrath they were dying out, and by cata you could go a month at a time without ever seeing one.

A healer's job is absolutely made easier by the group performing well. Like, I don't understand how you could possibly argue this point. If the tank's gear lets them avoid damage (proper defense, dodge/parry/block ratings), you don't need to heal as much. If the DPS have two cents and avoid what they should be avoiding, you don't need to heal them at all.

...I don't think I was arguing it. Absolutely, yes having a better group makes a healer's life easier. But wearing pvp gear does not disqualify the above, except in the specific case of a post-cataclysm tank trying to tank heroics with resilience that doesn't do anything. What I did intend to argue (at least in the statments I think you're referring to. It was a big post.) was that dps is not as important as tank and healer. Sure, if dps is great, that makes my life easier. But I'd much rather heal for a competant tank and incompetant dps than competant dps and an incompetant tank. Same for the healer: good healer is more important that good dps. It's easier for a good tank and good healer to carry 3 bad dps through a 5-man than it is for for 3 good dps to carry a bad tank and bad healer through.

Bad tank and healer means you wipe. Bad dps just means it takes longer to beat bosses.

But that's kind of side-tracking from the pvp gear issue.

Saying arena gear is better than heroic dungeon gear early in or even throughout an expansion, then, seems a bit pointless. It's like saying your Cataclysmic Shank or whatever is better than Shadowmourne. Of /course/ the former is better than the latter, it's intentionally a higher quality of item. Just because the former wouldn't do as well at the latter's job as an equivalent PvE piece would, doesn't mean it won't do the job better regardless.

Like Niveras pointed out, this entire sub-topic appears to have been a miscommunication. When I was talking about showing up to heroics "in pvp gear," I was talking about a scenario where I'd be with an arena weapon purple with a spellpower enchant, a full suit or almost-full suit of arena armor enchanted and gemmed with resilience and stamina, an anti-stun trinket, plus offhand, rings and things mixed from various raids, rep rewards or whatever. And then swap out the anti-stun trinket for spellpower or something. Sure, I'm incorrectly gemmed, but wearing gear 50 or so ilevels above what the bosses drop...it's just not a problem.

But I didn't actually say that earlier. I think Niveras interpreted "pvp gear" to mean showing up to heal heroics in a full suit of battleground blues. Which I agree would generally not be a good scenario. Actually, I think during a lot of wrath that would have been viable. Wrath got kind of easy toward the end. But by cataclysm not so much.

[Therolyn]

I've always had some dislikes about certain things in World of Warcraft and there was a time where I wouldn't touch the game at all.

While in my time playing it I was never truly good at it, (depending on the role I was either the mediocre skilled badly geared person, or the badly skilled badly geared person).

Then again I was awfully casual. I preferred getting interesting items or seeing interesting places rather than raiding/heroics or pvp. My relatives who played managed to get me to do heroics eventually but I didn't perform my role very reliably. I was well known to choke and screw up when under pressure as dps (My main was a arms warrior). Overall I tended to feel most comfortable with healing and could be somewhat decent but then again I made a unreliable healer.

Tanking low-end dungeons have provided me with both some of my greatest close calls and my most embarrassing failures. When I tried tanking in low level instances, I both preferred and was really horrible at bear tanking as I was always the sort who preferred to be a solo type and thus wasn't geared well at any level.

My relatives have again begun to try to convince me to get back into the game. Once again I'm faced with the hard decision to start playing the game in a way I don't like but with the fun that could sometimes ensue or not follow them. I'm not sure these days, on one side there are still interesting things I could do, on the other side they rarely coincide with what my mates like to do.

[Vendayn]

I'm not gonna spoil anything since that would be definitely douchey...but...

I'm playing alliance and damn...the 2nd zone you go to, its a total hectic war zone. If you are on a PvP server, its battles all over the place. Even if you can handle the horde (or alliance), the wildlife gets you!

It feels like you are thrown into the depth of a jungle filled with EVERYTHING THAT WANTS TO KILL YOU and man, huge battles break out between horde/alliance. Granted, I'm on Emerald Dream and the server cluster has most balanced horde/alliance out of them all...so your experience might vary.

But damn is it hectic. I actually had to get off and relax rofl. Never had that happen at all in WoW.

[Flying Carcass]

I'm not gonna spoil anything since that would be definitely douchey...but...

I'm playing alliance and damn...the 2nd zone you go to, its a total hectic war zone. If you are on a PvP server, its battles all over the place. Even if you can handle the horde (or alliance), the wildlife gets you!

It feels like you are thrown into the depth of a jungle filled with EVERYTHING THAT WANTS TO KILL YOU and man, huge battles break out between horde/alliance. Granted, I'm on Emerald Dream and the server cluster has most balanced horde/alliance out of them all...so your experience might vary.

But damn is it hectic. I actually had to get off and relax rofl. Never had that happen at all in WoW.

Sounds like a ton of fun. Back when I played on a PvP server in classic, Stranglethorn was kind of like that (albiet less congested than a new expansion zone, I'm sure, and with the occasional lv 60 ganker rogue picking on lv 30s).

One of my fondest-remembered outbreaks of world PvP was when I was with a group doing group quests in that castle town in Arathi while a horde group was also doing group quests, so both groups kept on bumping into each other and duking it out in that urban battleground.

All that discussion about gearing for raiding n' stuff reminded me of this one time in WotLK I, a retribution paladin (DPS), joined a group going for a Naxx weekly raid kill against that abomination boss. However no tanks were willing to join, so the raid leader just had me meat shield. Luckily it was late Wrath so I had plenty of HP from my gear and could reduce some of the incoming damage with my pally spells. The group succeeded and good times were had, who needs a tank anyway? 

[LordBucket]

Time for another anecdote.

Anyone remember the Onyxia quest chain? The one that sends you all over the world and back a bunch of times, into Blackrock moutain, and eventually ends with a terribly long walk following some gurd in Stormwind and Oynxia herself appearing in the throneroom?

Well, back during...BC, I think, I did that quest chain, and thought the conclusion was awesome. I could summon a dragon to Stormwind castle. So, instead of turning it in, I canceled it. So for a good year or two when I was bored I'd trigger the quest again and wait in the throne room to watch people's reactions. "WTF why is there a dragon attacking the guards?!?!!?"

Ahh, good times. I actually had a lot of fun with old, original WoW quest chains that nobody knew about. Like the T1 turn in quest, that gave this gnomish contraption that you could put on the ground and emitted smoke to capture ghosts. It worked anywhere, so years after most everyone had either completed the (one time only) quests or forgotten about them (who does the tier 1 quests anymore?) I kept placing that thing down in random places, leaving collectors frantically asking what it was.

Sadly, when (cata, I think?) was released, the Onyxia quest chain was removed.

But, Blizzard didn't get it entirely right. They removed the ability to pick up the quests, and they didn't completely remove them. So a couple months after the release I noticed on the forums somebody complaining that they'd removed the quests. But I still had it in my quest log. So...triggered the quest event and the guard showed up, as expected. Sadly, it was broken, and I couldn't get Onyxia to appear. He just stood on the bridge in a perpetual walking animation until he eventually despawned.

Would have been better if I could have summoned Onyxia one last time (I think there was a feat of strength for having completed it). But still, fun times.

EDIT:
Found somebody who summoned Onyxia when the horde raided Stormwind. I tried that a couple times, but could never get the timing right. It's along walk, following that guard to the castle.

[Darvi]

Anyone remember the Onyxia quest chain?

I actually remember t he first time I got killed by it.

[nenjin]

Oh ho ho ho, is this the part where the Tank and Healer say the raid doesn't happen without them?

Try meeting the DPS necessary to win some timed fights without well-geared, smart DPS who know that DPS doesn't happen when you're dead. Everyone likes to assume DPS that can get you through a raid are a dime a dozen. I've kicked enough shitty rogues, wizards and DoT-locks out of my raids to know that's not the case.

Everyone's job in raid is important, and requires focus. Used to piss me off something fierce when someone would act like it was otherwise.

[Darvi]

shitty rogues, wizards and DoT-locks

Ahem.

Shitty mage, thank you very much.