Nogamara

Sunday was some good reclearing, 1 wipe on Loom’ithar, 2 on Soulbinder and Araz. Then some progress on the Demon Hunters, 4 wipes and best at 23%.

Tuesday they died on the 2nd try, then another first kill of Fractillus on the third try. So we’re 6/8 Heroic now.
Finally some 10 wipes on Nexus-King, which felt a little painful.

Oh, and I had to tank on both days but hope to be back on Warlock.

With people offline we didn’t do a whole lot of M+, just 4-5 on the Warrior and one on the Warlock. The first part of Turbo Boost was scheduled for the next reset, so some gear upgrades incoming.

I’ve not written terribly much about addons here, but I did make a post about my fully redone UI at the start of Dragonflight, and even when I wanted to go minimal I noticed that I didn’t go minimal.

At the time of writing this I have 148 folders inside my Interface/Addons folder, luckily that doesn’t mean I run 148 addons, because I can quickly eliminate around 100 by removing addons that are split in subpackages, but I think 40-50 remain. Surely they all can’t be important. And surely they all can’t stop functioning with the next expansion (if they are combat addons).

I suppose I’m just very happy to eliminate some quirks in the game, or just improve things I don’t love. My guess would be that half of those are just QoL addons.

Oh, and I hadn’t even counted my WeakAuras. A lot of those are also just QoL stuff or reminders “No Pet/Pet Passive/Use Battle Shout” which would be fine as addons out of combat. Or Profession knowledge point tracking, but we’ll see how that develops.

I’m certainly not in despair, especially not about combat. I’m just a little wary of maybe losing some customization I really like, stuff that makes the game more enjoyable for me – maybe because I don’t have to count to 10 in my head, maybe because a certain thing is positioned better than doable with Blizzard’s own UI.

Sunday of week 6 saw us clearing Normal and then Sentinel and Loom’ithar on Heroic, Tuesday was cancelled because people were offline (me included).

Sunday of week 7 we skipped Normal for the first time, so we had more time and actually got to 4/8 Heroic and then unfortunately Tuesday was cancelled again because different people were missing (not me).

So 4/8 is not bad, but if we can’t consistently get 10 people online (this time it’s not even about healers and tanks…) it’s not looking good. It’s a weird coincidence though, because another guild of ex-guildies we still regularly talk to also has problems fielding 10 for raid and 5 for M+. No one has outright complained about the expansion, and I’ve not heard anything from other people.

M+ was also a bit dialed down this week due to one person moving, so we only did 4 10s with one replacement, but this should work again next week. I also did 4 10s on the Warlock, tanked a +7 on the DH, did a +5 on my second Warrior and a +2 on my Mage… the latter two with medium success.

So our main tank is still MIA and our DK didn’t really want to permanently switch to tank, so today it was my turn. Worked fine so far. Cleared Normal and Plexus Sentinel Hc, unfortunately a single wipe on Loom’ithar, not only but also because of tank coordination problems

On Tuesday we had a bit of a slow day with long breaks, but we rekilled Loom’ithar on the 3rd pull and then Soulbinder on the 4th one. Then some wipes on Araz, with a respectable 17% on the fifth try. Maybe we could’ve gotten them if we didn’t have to change a tank who has to relearn the fights…

For M+, until the weekend I had reached 2500 on the Warlock (5 timed at +10) and the Warrior was close (2400, and also tanked a couple +6 on the Demon Hunter and ran a couple low ones on Shaman (2x Resto, 2x Ele). That went on to become 8 +10/11 on Warrior, 6 on Warlock and nearly 8x +6 on DH. A good week.

Sunday: Cleared Normal, then 5 wipes on Plexus Sentinel Heroic, best at 6.5% – not great.

Tuesday: Sentinel down, Loom’ithar down, 6 wipes on Naazindhri, best at 18% – could’ve been a kill if we hadn’t wasted so much time on Sunday.

People seem a little on the edge, but we’re only one boss behind compared to Undermine and Nerub’ar Palace (in week 4).

Managed to time my first +10 on Warlock (Eco-Dome) and filled out all Vault slots on Warrior and Warlock.

Sunday went pretty well – no wipes on the first 7, then Dimensius rekill after 2 wipes, then we called it 10 min early.

Tuesday saw Plexus Sentinel die on the 6th pull (incl obligatory 0.5% wipe), then Loom’ithar died on the 3rd pull and then we had 4 wipes on Naazindhri (best 36%).

I managed to get a single +10 done on both chars (timed neither) but the vault items were not great, but both chars had their 4-set in that week and I did quite a lot of PvP, trying to get the Gladiator gear for Conquest (already managed to get the full Honor set).

Sunday we rekilled the first 7 on Normal without a single wipe (weird) and had time for 7 pulls on Dimensius, none of them progressing to phase 2, I think some people hadn’t even watched a video. Tuesday went a lot better, 4 P3 wipes and a kill on the 21st pull, roughly 5 minutes over time. From what I heard people want to clear Normal again for 2 weeks, but maybe we’re quicker and can at least start on Heroic.

In terms of M+ I tanked 8 – from +4 to +8 on the Warrior, close to 1850 rating and did like 4 or 5 between 4 and 9 on the Warlock, and tanked a single +2 on the VDH. Still no 4 pieces for the new tier, but maybe the Vault works out tomorrow.

So this week we finally got to start the raid (it was release week) and on Sunday we got 4 bosses down on Normal, and 3 more on Tuesday, but the few tries on the last boss were… interesting. So again a tier with 7/8 Normal week 1 in 4 hours, that’s ok and I hope we can clear 6 or 7 on Sunday in 2h.

I’ve kinda accustomed to my Demo Warlock already but it feels a bit weird to play a ranged caster instead of Melee.

Last week I did a lot of Mythic 0 and this week I managed to squeeze in 20 M+ from +2 to +4 (9 on Warlock, 10 on Prot Warrior, and one on Vengeance DH) and a lot of Delves, grabbing all that gear. Maybe even a bit too much, but next week will have several evening booked for other things, not WoW.

It’s been raining all week and we didn’t really go outside, but at least yesterday felt somewhat productive.

Someone reminded me of the Mage Tower challenges and because I was curious and had time, I tried the Fury Warrior one, just with my normal iLvl 677 gear and none of the special pieces. Took about 90 minutes and I had it. Nice transmog. Then I tried the Guardian Druid one on my 640 Druid and got instantly smashed in the first 30s, repeatedly. But you get the Werebear Bear form and not just a transmog set, so I got to crafting and spent about 3000 or 4000 gold (in mats I laying around) to get 4 pieces crafted (Symbiosis weapon, Shoulders with a Writhing Armor Banding, and the Darkmoon Decks Symbiosis and Radiance). Took another hour and I got it down, after wiping repeatedly with just the first 3 pieces (and trying to save the 2k Radiance deck). But now I have that Werebear form.

I also got some of the Dragonflight (Emerald Dream) and TWW (Isle of Dorn) Skyriding achievements done and have positioned a character to continue. I’m not going for Gold (unless it’s easy), but for all Silver, which usually only takes one to three tries.

And then finally someone on Discord asked about Sulfuras and if it worked for Druids, so that reminded me I had started to collect the mats ages ago. Turns out I was missing some mats but this was a good opportunity. So I bought the remaining Dark Iron Bars (don’t have a char to smelt them and the savings would have been miniscule), and then the ugly part – transmuting 50 Arcanite Bars, which needs 50 Arcane Crystals, and those were 330g on the AH and I only had 14 saved up. So I bought a couple, transmuted, and hoped for procs. In the end I procced about 9, so had to buy 27. I guess in the end it cost me about 13k, and I needed to fly to Blackrock Depths to craft the Sulfuron Hammer on my Troll Warrior who knew the recipe (got an achievement), hearth back, put it in the bank, take it out on my Orc Shaman, use it with the Eye of Sulfuras she had banked, got the Legendary (and no achievement, boo) and now I have that 2h Mace Transmog. It still looks nice, better than the Firelands version.

Also the Darkmoon Faire started today, so that means 2 free profession skill points, which means I could finish up Blacksmithing and Enchanting just as it hit midnight, and I had put in some work into Leatherworking (94), Tailoring (90), and Inscription (90) – but not sure I will finish those to 98 with crafting orders this week. And I still have no Jewelcrafter on this server, just 26 on my Horde Paladin.