First week of Mists - Personal Evaluation

The first week since the release of Mists of Pandaria is almost behind us. I took some time off, while I leveled my character to level 90 and so far I must admit I'm loving the expansion. The new zones are very neatly designed and the quest flow is awesome.

Throughout the leveling process, I experienced some difficulties which were fault of my own, such as wearing heroic Dragon Soul gear up to level 90, because of the set bonus and leveling in fire spec.

As a fire mage it wasn't easy to level in Dread Wastes. The mobs hit for a lot of damage, have a fairly large health pool (something that wasn't seen in WoW yet, you could almost two shot mobs in Hyjal if you remember) and not to mention their quantity. I had to use Evocation on every cooldown. Leveling from 89-90 was really a pain, because of sleep deprivation as well as high amount of XP needed to reach the new cap.

Upon reaching level 90 that took me two days my item level was too low for heroics, so I had to spend a decent amount of gold to get ilvl 450 PvP gear, in order to enter. Even all of these issues, I was the first one to reach 90 in my guild.

I was able to accomplish this mainly because of switching zones. Every level I moved to another zone, because of the XP/quest you can get, which increases in every new zone.

Basically:

Level 85-86: Jade Forest

Level 86-87: Valley of the Four Winds

Level 87-88: Kun-lai Summit

Level 88-89: Townlong Steppes

Level 89-90: Dread Wastes

I also did a couple of the new dungeons on normal mode, just for the quest, since they award a pretty decent amount of experience. Dungeon leveling though, hasn't proven to be as efficient as questing.

At 90, I started doing daily quests. Since the daily cap has been removed. I really love how slow you need to build up your reputations via dailies to get ahold of patterns for your professions. Gear isn't really useful. You need a ton of Justice Points to buy it and it's only item level 450. If you farm heroics you can get items of a level 463 (which is the minimum gear requirement for Raid Finder, which opens in two weeks as of now).

Order of the Cloud Serpent was the first faction; main reason: serpent mounts (they look awesome!). Some people made use of the insane respawn time of eggs, which granted +500rep per turn in but this got hotfixed.

The Golden Lotus was up next. This is the key faction of Pandaria. You need to be Honored with them, to unlock dailies for Shadopan & August Celestials factions.

Profession leveling was easy, as I'm an Enchanter, I disenchanted every single green gear quest rewards while leveling. I dropped mining for Enchanting, thus I had a bit difficulties to level my Jewelcrafting as the ore prices are insane at the moment. Luckily, I play on a high populated realm, so the prices will eventually go down.

I've currently farmed tons of heroics for my gear and I'm ready for Mogu'shan Vaults raid that's unlocking this week.

What are your thoughts about Mists of Pandaria thus far? Is it better than Cataclysm or does it remind you of Vanilla in some way?

Share your thoughts in the comments below.