Battle Stance

It’s been quite a while since I last posted about WoW Classic, April 2020, over a year ago and after that quick adventure we stopped again.

But the news is out that in just 3-4 weeks there will be WoW TBC Classic with their “you can choose either version per character” plan. The problem is… do I know what I want to choose? Will I even play either version?

As with Classic, my memories are surprisingly fresh and again I’m claiming to not have the problem of rose-tinted glasses. I know what was good and what was bad, I know what was fun and what I didn’t like. The attunement chain was annoyingly long, my Karazhan experience was horrible because our guild didn’t really click there (or maybe we simply sucked). I dread all the rep grinds that I didn’t mind doing back then (even on multiple chars), but the point is.. I’ve been there, I’ve done that.

But even more important is the choice of character, so what is available right now?

• 45 Tauren Warrior, of the failed instance group, Arms and Tanking as Arms
• 35 Undead Assassination Rogue, played solo
• 24 Affliction? Warlock
• 13 BM Hunter

If I was 60 and had acquired some gear, it would be easy. That character would probably stay in Classic. If I was close to 60 and it wasn’t a Rogue, I’d be going into TBC. But my Vanilla Main was a Rogue (+ Druid Alt), that’s why I chose a Warrior main and didn’t roll a Druid. In TBC still Rogue Main but I also played Druid, Warlock, and Warrior a lot. So if I’d be looking to redo some sort of TBC experience, Rogue and Warrior would be out I think, same as every pure DPS class, so what do we have left?

• Shaman – one of my staple classes, maybe not a bad choice with 2 diff. DPS specs
• Priest – not sure if SP was good in TBC, but not sure I like Priest healing either
• Paladin – Blood Elves again… but Heal+DPS+Tank
• Druid – one of my alts in TBC (2nd to ding 70, iirc) but versatile enough to give it a shot

So yeah, recently my thinking has always been going like “If I really want to focus on one char and not a bunch of alts, it must be able to do at least 2 roles”, which was a lot harder in the older expansions. No DK, Monk, DH (hey, notice a pattern?) and Horde Paladins/Alliance Shamans only from TBC on.

So yeah. Warrior in TBC is uninteresting, Rogue only as a solo alt. Warlock is too low and I also had that already (Frozen Shadoweave was reall nice though) and a 13 Hunter also isn’t really worth mentioning. So maybe no copying over to TBC. I think we won’t be able to use the Level 58 character boost for Blood Elves, so I guess my choices would be Shaman or Druid, with a preference for Druid.

Or maybe skip TBC outright. Maybe I’ll ask the dungeon group again but we’re still lacking a fifth, even if we four agree to do something there.

While I wrote about the inception of the group, I already missed last week, but we did play. First week was 10-16 with initial setup and starting Jade Forest, the second week was 16-28 and mopping up most of Jade Forest, and doing 2 or 3 instances.

Today we finished the north half of Jade Forest and only once we got down to the horrible set of 4 “solo scenario” quests (after having done the first 2-3 quicker ones) we skipped the zone and went on to the Valley of the Four Winds and knocking out the east and south half of the map. Then we queued for a random dungeon and got the Sotmstout Brewery first, then Siege of Niuzao Temple, which means we’re only missing Gate of the Setting Sun of the 6 Pandaria dungeons now I think.

We encountered the first of the “you need to not fly but ride on the ground to finish the quest” bugs we all love and while I was completely surprised how few problems we actually had with keeping 4 people’s quest completion in sync, today was worse than the last 2 times.

At level 31 we made a quick trip to Orgrimmar to learn flying, just as we did at Level 20 for fast mounts, but other than that it’s been pretty much speedy leveling while only stopping to pick a flower once in a while. In the end we got to Level 36 and ~50%, usually ending with the people missing some XP to go pick a few flowers to get to the same percentage. Probably not needed but at least we can be reasonably sure to avoid any “I can’t get that quest” and it’s only 5 minutes at the end of the evening anyway.

I know the first evening sounded pretty slow with only 6 levels gained, but the intro isn’t really quick and we had to prepare and actually didn’t play the full 4h. The second night I was surprised we got 12 levels, and today’s 8 was a little less than I had hoped but we’ll see how it will scale. Not that we’re hell-bent to powerlevel, just trying to not waste time.

Anyway, it’s a fun diversion to have a static group again and doing a weekly thing.

I just need to get some screenshots next time…

Having completed the Twisting Corridors we were looking for another Saturday night activity for the merry band of adventurers.

After a little discussion, thinking about getting a group of 50s to max level and some other ideas that didn’t meet a quorum we simply decided to start a new group of characters and level them to 50 for the Heritage Armor, because all 4 had at least one allied race that was lacking that achievement and so we brainstormed a group composition and landed on this:

• Vulpera Shaman, Ele/Resto
• Vulpera Mage
• Nightborne Shadow Priest
• Vulpera Blood Death Knight, me

So that’s a composition we can easily run instances with, otherwise we could’ve probably gotten by without a tank, but it’s a lot easier this way. I would’ve preferred Druid but I already have a Zandalari Paladin with the armor and Troll was too boring, thus Vulpera – the others were a lot quicker in their decisions but also less restrained.

We weren’t sure where or how we’d start but apparently Allied Race chars all start at level 10 and we just needed to get to Orgrimmar, grab the Chromie quest and make our way to Pandaria. Sorting guild invites, gold, bags, and other stuff took a while – but we managed to get to around Level 16 and run a first instance as well. Let’s see how this will work out in the long run.

Not really enthusiastic about endgame grinds in WoW at the moment, so I dusted off my Death Knight who was sitting at 52/53 in Bastion, switched to Threads of Fate and pushed her to 58 now with dungeons and quests. Out of rested XP or I would’ve continued there I guess. My Druid is still sitting at 154 iLvl and I don’t want to spend time grinding dungeons and I also don’t want to spend gold on upgrades from the AH, guess I’m not enjoying the spec enough.

I stopped going for the Void Elf Heritage set a while ago (didn’t make it to 110 in time, so now the goal was 50) at Level 44, so I was at 150% rested XP and pushed through 3-4 dungeons and Spires of Arakk the last 2 days, hitting Level 50 an hour ago. Not that I particularly like the Ren’dorei set on a Rogue, but I wanted to get this done and now I can shelve her again. This was actually the last Allied Race on the Alliance side, except the Lightforged Draenei where I still haven’t started a character or decided on the class. Paladin or Hunter, maybe. Very much maybe.

With all the Alliance alts I leveled due to being active in the guild, I’ve quite surpassed the Horde ones. Highmountain Tauren and Nightborne still at 27, Vulpera at 13, only Zandalari and Mag’har finished at 45+50.

Maybe I should actually start Mage or Monk, or at least run one of them through the Maw intro and then see if I feel like leveling slowly, but realistically it’s either fast or not at all…

We did it!

As I’ve written in a past post a duo run at the Twisting Corridors with Prot Paladin and Arcane Mage nearly ended in tears ( or more realistically in a damaged desk, so we joined up with a Resto Druid and Destro Warlock (I switched to my Warrior in Prot spec) and we chipped away slowly at the Twisting Corridors, doing one layer every Saturday (unless we had to move it), so after 8 weeks we finally did it yesterday. Most layers took around 2 hours, taking it slowly and killing every mob and the last 2 actually taking even close to 3 hours. But it was time well spent chatting on Discord, hanging out with people we couldn’t meet for months, and the added benefit of an achievement and a handy mount (which will maybe be obsolete when Patch 9.1.0 hits, we’ll see).

Yesterday we actually had a little oopsie when someone accidentally used the Ravenous Anima Cell on the floor 3/9/15 vendor in floor 3… but at least we could save up and still buy stuff in 6/12/18. Also surprisingly as a tank I only ever died once if I remember correctly, by failing to move from a poison bomb on the floor 18 end boss, otherwise it was only the others being oneshot or someone walking into a trap or falling off a ledge. Bit weird, healing was basically not needed up to layer 6 or even 7, only in layer 8 our healer wasn’t fooling around or dpsing and had to heal me like in a normal instance. Also Arcane Mage does get quite a few i-win buttons, but of course me being able to debuff enemies to take an extra 90% damage also helps.

Overall I’m really happy to be done and that I don’t have to go in there ever again. I’m all up for helping out people if they ask, but Twisting Corridors? No, we’d be talking a lot of money or cashing in the biggest favor I’ve ever owned someone. Nope.

Apparently we had a little bit of guild drama and that’s one of the reasons I had to tank a lot more on progression the last 2 weeks, interesting to find out so long after the fact.

I’d finally got up and just ground out the remaining Soul Ash on the weekend so I could craft my Level 4 Tank Legendars, Reprisal (recently buffed with 9.0.5) and use that 235 item instead of my 235 DPS pants, and it felt really good, esp in the Denathrius fight where I can actually charge in P1.

Sadly there wasn’t a lot of progression, we got P1 finally down to 90% survival rate but we didn’t enter P3 with everyone alive a single time last night, but we started with only 10 and made it to 14 by the end, a month or two ago we were always raiding with 25 people… but we lost a few once we had cleared normal, so apparently that was enough and I can’t blame them. But I really, really, really want to get him down, and very preferably also get the Ahead of the Curve achievement, with buffed 9.1.0 gear it will be kinda pointless I guess. Still making too many errors myself, but I’m mostly tanking out of necessity and trying to improve, but the fight isn’t great for a Prot Warrior in P2 – a ton of magic damage and a lot of movement through the mirrors where the boss can hit you in the back.

Also I got a slight headache and we have our Layer 8 of Twisting Corridors scheduled for tonight, when the guild decided yesterday to run M+, so that will be fun either way, I guess.

Actually wanted to run my 2 wings of Torghast last night because I want to craft the new Level 4 Tank Legendary, but I got a migraine and went to bed early. I think this also might be the second day since Shadowlands launch that I didn’t log into WoW at all.

So I got up before 8 today and started my first run with ~65 minutes until the daily reset (not sure if it’s also the Torghast/weekly reset on Wednesdays) and made it out the second wing with ~7 minutes spare.

I usually don’t play games before work, as I’d much rather start work early and not stay longer, but sometimes… and in this case it’s the second week in a row. Let’s see if I manage to get my 2 runs in tonight…