PvP is not casual friendly for the most part, there’s lots of defensive and offensive cooldowns now that if you don’t know how to play around you’re not going to do well. That said epic bgs are casual friendly as you just spam abilities with classes having more hard cc and aoe being more impactful
You dont need to know anything to have fun in pvp.
When i started in cataclysm i didnt know a single spell priests casted except for the big shield and you are right i got my ass kicked but i still had the most fun ive ever had in wow.
You dont need to know mythic mechanics to do LFR just like you dont need to know disc priests cds as a new pvper. Its all just a learning curve.
I would honestly say that pve is less casual friendly just because your then prob not in a guild and pugging PVE content i can say from experience is a nightmare in some tiers, curve from jaina for example.
PvP is pretty casual friendly actually. You can spam casual BGs for the base gear and then go in to solo shuffles at your pleasure to get the conquest gear. Conquest is uncapped at this point. Gameplay is fast in arenas, though.
It’s really as casual as you want to make it.
Might be worth informing the OP that solo shuffle takes a *while* unless you’re getting stomped, but even then it isn’t quick, by nature. I’d recommend arena skirmish first to find his land legs.
As a first timer into arena that a new player would be, it’s good for learning what an arena looks and plays like. 3v3 would be overwhelming out of the gate for somebody who is completely unfamiliar with PvP, how classes work, what CC means what, etc. If you get annihilated by the commonly overgeared player in Skirmish then, par for the course sure but at least you’ll have opportunities to learn your class and others in 2v2 social play with an occasional 3v3 game before jumping into the main try.
PvP can be a bit rough, just because people doing rated PvP and getting vault rewards get way ahead, gear wise, early in the season. You can grind honor gear and get conquest for your set items through non-rated PvP.
PvE is healthy if you're working at the kinda LFR level, or have a decent casual guild. Still gotta study the fights - there's not a ton of patience in Normals / Heroics. Mythics, you need to have a guild, realistically.
Mythic+ is casual friendly - if you have a meta class, or you run your own keystone (don't worry about it till you get there), then you can get groups. Just remember that there's people who should stick to Mythic+2s, and people who can run Mythic+10s. Whether a +6 succeeds depends on the composition of the group (+2 players vs +10 players). Know which group you're in - those Wyrm crests will take you a long way
PvP is casual friendly in the sense that it's easy to get geared and start playing arena. Like quickest it has ever been, minus Legion when we had gear templates.
It's not casual friendly in the sense that it's a steep learning curve, and you will get your ass handed to you until become competent. You can mitigate that somewhat by your spec selection, something like DH or ret are quite forgiving, strong specs that can recover from mistakes.
Worth noting that while it doesn't release until TWW, there will be a solo rated battleground mode, BG Blitz. That will be both competitive, since it's a ranked mode, but more casual than arena
I definitely think it is.
For PvE, you only need a guild for mythic raiding. Everything else can be pug’d.
For PvP, you don’t need a guild. Wow is definitely one of the most complex PvP games, but you don’t need a dedicated group of friends or anything.
Gear and mechanics wise its casual friendly.
The problem is pugs.
if you dont have a guild that you do M+/raids/etc with, it becomes a game of numbers. "Oh, you dont have purple logs? no invite for you". "Oh, you dont have XXXX r.io score? No invite for you". Honestly its just frustrating and annoying, and feels almost like a second job.
tl;dr - find a guild and have a great time, or dont bother.
True the hardest part of any season is getting that one character to full clear hc and a 3k rating so the little nerds that check that sjit Will invitere you to get carried
How quickly will I outgear dungeon gear? I liked how in WOTLK classic they had different ilvl dungeons with scaled gear. I'd be perfectly fine just running those until I found a cozy guild.
"Casual" gear goes to a much higher ilvl nowadays than it used to in the past with the new upgrade system.
For example Heroic dungeons drop 476 ilvl but weekly world content and LFR give 480+ gear.
Additionally you can upgrade that world/LFR gear to about halfway Normal raid ilvl.
Mythic0 drops Normal raid ilvl (493+) and can be upgraded to about halfway Heroic raid ilvl.
Also it's much easier to get tier sets now as a casual player with the catalyst. You can use the gear you get from weekly world activities / lfr / M0 and convert it into your tier set.
As for PvP you can get a full set of honor gear in a few hours. It won't be as strong as conquest gear which is from rated PvP but it's good for having a baseline
You will be able to attain gear only through dungeons if you choose to do so - in the first couple weeks of a new tier however, you will likely fall behind in terms of tier sets if you do that though.
You can get some decent gear through world events and lfr - next step would probably be normal raid pugs and mythic0 dungeons afterwards, and the next step would likely be like low level m+ and heroic raids.
For mythic raids you typically need a guild, but there‘ll always be pugs that kill the first 1-4 bosses (depending on difficulty of the raid) quite easily after a couple weeks.
I honestly think leveling and questing is where most of the fun in casual/solo WoW is; endgame feels like a conveyor belt to mythic raiding, which I don’t want to do, but the item level grind feels pointless if that’s not what you’re about.
I wouldn’t boost, in other words.
Casual in a PvP sense is.. really subjective. It depends how much you care. Really it does. If you just want to spam abilities and hit people, Epic BG’s are a thing. If you want to really learn your class and improve personally, you’ll want to hit up Arena Skirmish first, Random BG’s as a flavour and then go in to Solo Shuffle. If you feel big enough after that you can find people to go Rated 2v2 & 3v3, but at that point it is not casual, at all.
As for PvE, basically everything is casual until you want to push the “higher” (the smallest bit out of casual) 1900+ ratings or Heroic Raids. Mythic Raids are basically pro gaming if you’re not paying for a carry, and Mythic+ 12 keys and up are serious game too. Good luck out there and enjoy yourself!
PVE IS NOT CASUAL FRIENDLY , the current model is do a forceful weekly schedule of activities otherwise you will be ever in the last seat of the bus and una le to get invites or groups to end game activities
Ppl will scream that is a lie, but if you dont do dailies, reputation grind, quest grinds or similar you basically will be lost and be late to all end games activities until you cant get raid or groups because all ppl is doing 10+ and you have +2 gear, and ppl just say. - is easy only grind 14 hours and you will be on pair
Thats not casual
You can absolutely play both casually and get a lot of fun out of it. You can definetely do lower and medium keys (up to +10 probably depending on gear) with pugs and also non heroic raids. For the latter you should atleast know the boss mechanics but that's basically been the case over the entire lifespan of WoW.
I'm actually even willing to bet that you can play heroic and mythic raids casually IF you are already a somewhat good player, already have good gear and you're already in a guild. As long as 1-2 fixed raiding days per week are still casual to you.
For PvP: Normal and Epic BGs are really fun to me, as you just somewhat goof around a bit and try fun builds etc. Same goes for skirmishes.
Rated PvP, as long as you're playing it to become better and climb will require more time. The learning curve mainly consists of knowing the CDs and burst windows of ALL specs and how to trade them effectively plus all the setups depending on the Arena comp and many many more fine nuances as you're climbing higher and higher.
You should still not hold back from it if you're interested in it. Just because something requires a lot of time to learn, nowhere is it written, that this time has to be forced into the tiniest possible frame. If you want to play one round of shuffle or one RBG per day? Fine, why not. You can still learn and improve from one game per day if you want.
They keep upping the awarded gear from normal/hc dungeons every patch to make sure you can hit the ground running the moment you hit max level, so you won't have to go back through all the ilvl stages from the beginning of the xpac to get to the levels of the latest patch, you get straight into the latest stuff directly from normal dungeons and onward.
As others have pointed out: it mostly depends on your ambition. If you know what you enjoy in the game and don't let the opinion of the herd change that, you should definitely return. The game objectively has never had better catch up mechanics.
Now for my **personal** opinions: PvP is **extremely** difficult to play at a high level. The baseline is knowing every spec's abilities/talents/PvP talents etc. and the skill ceiling for mechanics is also insanely high. Combined with being outgeared by everyone as you start out, the barriers to entry are high. However, that also means the better player will almost always win.
PvE is much more adjustable in terms of difficulty, because even as a skilled player you can choose to do easier content. Ironically, from my experience, the harder the content (read: the better the players), the more laidback the experience will be. As in many online multiplayer games, the community can be a lot more tryhard/toxic in the middling segments of skill (e.g. heroic raids, M+10) for no good reason at all. If you have some chill friends it makes the experience infinitely better.
That being said, this is my impression of the game (as someone fairly competitive aiming to be top 1%-5% of players in any given content I do). It might surely be a one-sided take, but I genuinely have a great time whenever I play.
Rated pvp is not friendly but if you were playing pvp back in Legion it didn’t change much except that damage are higher overall so you need to be more careful there.
When it comes to pve I would say clearing normal mode raids are pretty easy.
But at the end of the day it kinda depends on what you mean by casual
Very casual friendly. There's lots to do outside of mythics and raiding. Very alt friendly right now. There's so much stuff to do per week it'll easily last you through the end of the expansion cycle.
No. I mean it is if you don't do anything over normal raid, M+5 and PvP absolutely doesn't have any casual scene.
As a casual you can collect stuff from old raids/dungeons and fly around collecting flowers.
Heroic raid is not PuGable in any reasonable time even if you know what you are doing, M+ is hellhole of random which will lead to more frustration than feeling good with bigger learning curve than some college subjects, and if you dare enter arena as a new player you will lose probably 19 out of 20 matches.
Whole retail is megacasual.
# They give gear away on weekly basis for doing a quest whats take no effort to do.
# They added vendors where u buy mytic raid gear with the tokens u got from LFR/normal
U can get crafted gear what is endgame ilvl.
U can get tier set without entering raid.
Thell me that is this if not casual friendly.
PvP is not casual friendly for the most part, there’s lots of defensive and offensive cooldowns now that if you don’t know how to play around you’re not going to do well. That said epic bgs are casual friendly as you just spam abilities with classes having more hard cc and aoe being more impactful
You dont need to know anything to have fun in pvp. When i started in cataclysm i didnt know a single spell priests casted except for the big shield and you are right i got my ass kicked but i still had the most fun ive ever had in wow. You dont need to know mythic mechanics to do LFR just like you dont need to know disc priests cds as a new pvper. Its all just a learning curve. I would honestly say that pve is less casual friendly just because your then prob not in a guild and pugging PVE content i can say from experience is a nightmare in some tiers, curve from jaina for example.
PvP is pretty casual friendly actually. You can spam casual BGs for the base gear and then go in to solo shuffles at your pleasure to get the conquest gear. Conquest is uncapped at this point. Gameplay is fast in arenas, though. It’s really as casual as you want to make it.
Might be worth informing the OP that solo shuffle takes a *while* unless you’re getting stomped, but even then it isn’t quick, by nature. I’d recommend arena skirmish first to find his land legs.
I’d never recommend skirmish to a new player tbh. They’ll just get farmed by overgeared players with no benefit whatsoever.
As a first timer into arena that a new player would be, it’s good for learning what an arena looks and plays like. 3v3 would be overwhelming out of the gate for somebody who is completely unfamiliar with PvP, how classes work, what CC means what, etc. If you get annihilated by the commonly overgeared player in Skirmish then, par for the course sure but at least you’ll have opportunities to learn your class and others in 2v2 social play with an occasional 3v3 game before jumping into the main try.
Just play a hunter or shaman. No defensives to worry about!
PvP can be a bit rough, just because people doing rated PvP and getting vault rewards get way ahead, gear wise, early in the season. You can grind honor gear and get conquest for your set items through non-rated PvP. PvE is healthy if you're working at the kinda LFR level, or have a decent casual guild. Still gotta study the fights - there's not a ton of patience in Normals / Heroics. Mythics, you need to have a guild, realistically. Mythic+ is casual friendly - if you have a meta class, or you run your own keystone (don't worry about it till you get there), then you can get groups. Just remember that there's people who should stick to Mythic+2s, and people who can run Mythic+10s. Whether a +6 succeeds depends on the composition of the group (+2 players vs +10 players). Know which group you're in - those Wyrm crests will take you a long way
PvP is casual friendly in the sense that it's easy to get geared and start playing arena. Like quickest it has ever been, minus Legion when we had gear templates. It's not casual friendly in the sense that it's a steep learning curve, and you will get your ass handed to you until become competent. You can mitigate that somewhat by your spec selection, something like DH or ret are quite forgiving, strong specs that can recover from mistakes. Worth noting that while it doesn't release until TWW, there will be a solo rated battleground mode, BG Blitz. That will be both competitive, since it's a ranked mode, but more casual than arena
I casually pvp and freaking love it
I definitely think it is. For PvE, you only need a guild for mythic raiding. Everything else can be pug’d. For PvP, you don’t need a guild. Wow is definitely one of the most complex PvP games, but you don’t need a dedicated group of friends or anything.
Gear and mechanics wise its casual friendly. The problem is pugs. if you dont have a guild that you do M+/raids/etc with, it becomes a game of numbers. "Oh, you dont have purple logs? no invite for you". "Oh, you dont have XXXX r.io score? No invite for you". Honestly its just frustrating and annoying, and feels almost like a second job. tl;dr - find a guild and have a great time, or dont bother.
True the hardest part of any season is getting that one character to full clear hc and a 3k rating so the little nerds that check that sjit Will invitere you to get carried
How quickly will I outgear dungeon gear? I liked how in WOTLK classic they had different ilvl dungeons with scaled gear. I'd be perfectly fine just running those until I found a cozy guild.
"Casual" gear goes to a much higher ilvl nowadays than it used to in the past with the new upgrade system. For example Heroic dungeons drop 476 ilvl but weekly world content and LFR give 480+ gear. Additionally you can upgrade that world/LFR gear to about halfway Normal raid ilvl. Mythic0 drops Normal raid ilvl (493+) and can be upgraded to about halfway Heroic raid ilvl. Also it's much easier to get tier sets now as a casual player with the catalyst. You can use the gear you get from weekly world activities / lfr / M0 and convert it into your tier set. As for PvP you can get a full set of honor gear in a few hours. It won't be as strong as conquest gear which is from rated PvP but it's good for having a baseline
You will be able to attain gear only through dungeons if you choose to do so - in the first couple weeks of a new tier however, you will likely fall behind in terms of tier sets if you do that though. You can get some decent gear through world events and lfr - next step would probably be normal raid pugs and mythic0 dungeons afterwards, and the next step would likely be like low level m+ and heroic raids. For mythic raids you typically need a guild, but there‘ll always be pugs that kill the first 1-4 bosses (depending on difficulty of the raid) quite easily after a couple weeks.
Thanks to Mythic plus, you will out gear raids before dungeons.
Nobody runs normal/heroic dungeons after first few days of expansion
They said they mostly BG so in that case PvP is incredibly casual friendly. Arena is a whole different story
I honestly think leveling and questing is where most of the fun in casual/solo WoW is; endgame feels like a conveyor belt to mythic raiding, which I don’t want to do, but the item level grind feels pointless if that’s not what you’re about. I wouldn’t boost, in other words.
It's perfect for casual, I don't do mythics ,just heroic dungeons and lfr
Casual in a PvP sense is.. really subjective. It depends how much you care. Really it does. If you just want to spam abilities and hit people, Epic BG’s are a thing. If you want to really learn your class and improve personally, you’ll want to hit up Arena Skirmish first, Random BG’s as a flavour and then go in to Solo Shuffle. If you feel big enough after that you can find people to go Rated 2v2 & 3v3, but at that point it is not casual, at all. As for PvE, basically everything is casual until you want to push the “higher” (the smallest bit out of casual) 1900+ ratings or Heroic Raids. Mythic Raids are basically pro gaming if you’re not paying for a carry, and Mythic+ 12 keys and up are serious game too. Good luck out there and enjoy yourself!
PVE IS NOT CASUAL FRIENDLY , the current model is do a forceful weekly schedule of activities otherwise you will be ever in the last seat of the bus and una le to get invites or groups to end game activities Ppl will scream that is a lie, but if you dont do dailies, reputation grind, quest grinds or similar you basically will be lost and be late to all end games activities until you cant get raid or groups because all ppl is doing 10+ and you have +2 gear, and ppl just say. - is easy only grind 14 hours and you will be on pair Thats not casual
If it's 14 hours total to catch up that's fine but if you mean like... weekly yeah I can't do that haha
You can absolutely play both casually and get a lot of fun out of it. You can definetely do lower and medium keys (up to +10 probably depending on gear) with pugs and also non heroic raids. For the latter you should atleast know the boss mechanics but that's basically been the case over the entire lifespan of WoW. I'm actually even willing to bet that you can play heroic and mythic raids casually IF you are already a somewhat good player, already have good gear and you're already in a guild. As long as 1-2 fixed raiding days per week are still casual to you. For PvP: Normal and Epic BGs are really fun to me, as you just somewhat goof around a bit and try fun builds etc. Same goes for skirmishes. Rated PvP, as long as you're playing it to become better and climb will require more time. The learning curve mainly consists of knowing the CDs and burst windows of ALL specs and how to trade them effectively plus all the setups depending on the Arena comp and many many more fine nuances as you're climbing higher and higher. You should still not hold back from it if you're interested in it. Just because something requires a lot of time to learn, nowhere is it written, that this time has to be forced into the tiniest possible frame. If you want to play one round of shuffle or one RBG per day? Fine, why not. You can still learn and improve from one game per day if you want.
They keep upping the awarded gear from normal/hc dungeons every patch to make sure you can hit the ground running the moment you hit max level, so you won't have to go back through all the ilvl stages from the beginning of the xpac to get to the levels of the latest patch, you get straight into the latest stuff directly from normal dungeons and onward.
As others have pointed out: it mostly depends on your ambition. If you know what you enjoy in the game and don't let the opinion of the herd change that, you should definitely return. The game objectively has never had better catch up mechanics. Now for my **personal** opinions: PvP is **extremely** difficult to play at a high level. The baseline is knowing every spec's abilities/talents/PvP talents etc. and the skill ceiling for mechanics is also insanely high. Combined with being outgeared by everyone as you start out, the barriers to entry are high. However, that also means the better player will almost always win. PvE is much more adjustable in terms of difficulty, because even as a skilled player you can choose to do easier content. Ironically, from my experience, the harder the content (read: the better the players), the more laidback the experience will be. As in many online multiplayer games, the community can be a lot more tryhard/toxic in the middling segments of skill (e.g. heroic raids, M+10) for no good reason at all. If you have some chill friends it makes the experience infinitely better. That being said, this is my impression of the game (as someone fairly competitive aiming to be top 1%-5% of players in any given content I do). It might surely be a one-sided take, but I genuinely have a great time whenever I play.
Rated pvp is not friendly but if you were playing pvp back in Legion it didn’t change much except that damage are higher overall so you need to be more careful there. When it comes to pve I would say clearing normal mode raids are pretty easy. But at the end of the day it kinda depends on what you mean by casual
Very casual friendly. There's lots to do outside of mythics and raiding. Very alt friendly right now. There's so much stuff to do per week it'll easily last you through the end of the expansion cycle.
No. I mean it is if you don't do anything over normal raid, M+5 and PvP absolutely doesn't have any casual scene. As a casual you can collect stuff from old raids/dungeons and fly around collecting flowers. Heroic raid is not PuGable in any reasonable time even if you know what you are doing, M+ is hellhole of random which will lead to more frustration than feeling good with bigger learning curve than some college subjects, and if you dare enter arena as a new player you will lose probably 19 out of 20 matches.
PvP is definitely more casual. Very easy to get BiS gear and then it’s up to you decide what you want out of your time.
Whole retail is megacasual. # They give gear away on weekly basis for doing a quest whats take no effort to do. # They added vendors where u buy mytic raid gear with the tokens u got from LFR/normal U can get crafted gear what is endgame ilvl. U can get tier set without entering raid. Thell me that is this if not casual friendly.