Nelway
commented
10 years ago Unfortunately I couldn't find a documented vanilla source yet, but here's a TBC video from before the big vanilla nerf of the 2.3 patch showing a lvl 57 mage AoE grinding the Dalson's Tears cauldron (where some mobs -Blighted Zombies- are currently marked elite on Ascension):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW7D7iKGDBg
A wowhead comment on Blighted Zombies from before 2.3 notes the area is good for AoE grinding. Also, the 1st and 3rd cauldrons (haven't checked the 4th one yet) have no elites around them. It wouldn't make sense to have plenty of elites around just the 2nd cauldron, making that sub-quest unfairly difficult and perhaps outright impossible for some classes when all the other cauldrons are perfectly soloable, just like they were in vanilla.
As for the Andorhal mobs, again vanilla sources are close to non-existent so I'm afraid you will have to rely on the memories of old-time vanilla players like myself on many of these issues. The closest thing I could find to a digital source is a wowhead comment from 2.0.1 (the last patch before TBC, so it's actually still vanilla):
http://old.wowhead.com/npc=1795#comments
The commenter notes they have insane dps for their level, advising caution for when someone grinds Andorhal. This comment wouldn't make much sense if the mob had been elite, as something like this is only worth pointing out if it isn't obvious - i.e. the mob is non-elite and appears to be just another random trash. But the commenter is correctly surprised as I also remember those fire-casting zombies dealing extreme dps despite being non-elite and pulling 2 was often a lethal mistake.
Comments for the Soulless Ghoul don't mention anything about it being elite either - i.e. none of them refer to having any particular difficulties with the mob apart from its mana drain (which was indeed annoying).
The only elite mob (apart from Araj and his entourage) that you could encounter in the open areas of Andorhal were the Flesh Golems (big Stitches type abominations) which patrolled the streets. This mob has a lot of comments compared to the others and most of these are people bragging of how they soloed it and how easy it was to kill despite it being elite. If the above mentioned zombies had been elites as well, they'd probably have similar comments on their respective entries.
The Skeletal Warlords (inside the Andorhal towers and in Araj's bodyguard) were also elite and they too have people commenting on how they were soloed.
Skylark14
scotty0100
After a short trip to the Western Plaguelands I noticed numerous elite mobs which shouldn't be elites.
I haven't checked every single mob but the ones that I noticed:
That's it, nothing else was elite in vanilla Andorhal - i.e. the skeleton/ghoul trash that's all over Andorhal were normal, non-elite mobs. Even Feenix has this partly wrong because they classed the Searing Ghouls (one of the trash mobs) as elites when they weren't back in vanilla.
Source: Vanilla is my favourite state of the game, played it since launch and spent a lot of time on WoW back then so I remember a lot of things pretty well. But you can also check the old comments on WoWhead, their context clearly indicates these mobs weren't elite.
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