WoW

I didn’t plan to play, then I didn’t really plan to level, but the mounts and transmog kept calling me.

Started a Protection Warrior over a week ago and been slowly chipping at it until yesterday, when I was 35 or so – but today I had a few hours so now I just dinged 71, at 8h /played. Just want to get to 80 quick and farm some Bronze, I wouldn’t say I’m enjoying it, but I also don’t hate it. I always liked leveling in Legion, but it’s kinda ridiculous how you get weird quests that are just done so easy. I’ve been in the Heroic World Tier since Level 42ish and it’s fine.

Every time we slow progress or I drift away from WoW except raidlogging I miss updates. Nothing of value was lost, but still.

Sunday of Week 9 saw 5 rekills, but 1 wipe on every boss except Loom’ithar. Weird. Then Tuesday a Fractillus kill and many Nexus-King wipes.

Sunday of Week 10 was 3 clean rekills, then 2,1,1 wipes an calling it early and then we lacked people on Tuesday.

Our DH was still busy with moving and having bad internet, so not a lot of M+ – still failing the +12s.

But both my toons are now 715 iLvl after the first Dinar item, but still below 2700 rating. It’s a bit of a slog right now.

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.