WoW

Had a nice lengthy chat with our ex-raid leader (Sanctum) on Discord last night, WoW was not a major part of the discussion, but as we was also back ingame I checked his Armory and well…

We needed 6 weeks to clear Sepulcher on normal, that’s when he stopped playing. He was mostly doing M+ that season and just occasionally popping in for raids. His toon is still at iLevel 272. This is noteworthy insofar, as he’s basically wearing a single piece of gear from the normal raid (iLevel 252/259). Heroic was 265, Mythic was 278. So all his pieces are already higher item level than Normal drops and 7 are above Heroic Level, 5 are at 262/265.

I’ve lost track how many weeks Season 3 lasted (we killed the Jailer on Heroic in week 22 and I think it was the last one), but after 6 weeks he was already at 272 and I only managed to get to 277ish when S4 dropped – that’s 16 weeks.

If gear was any major motivation for me this would make zero sense. M+ drops are simply too strong and it’s kinda ridiculous. Yeah, I’m not checking out and just leaving the gear on the table – I’m not good enough to just ace the content, I kinda need the appropriate gear… or even a smidge higher than that. But we killed the boss that dropped 265(+4?) loot when a third of the raid already had 278 gear and everything we needed was a special weapon or trinket.

It’s not really taking away a lot of my enjoyment for the game – I just find it a little pointless that I can’t get any nice upgrades in raids.

This is Blaugust 2022 – post #13.

Saw this prompt at Paeroka’s blog (originally by Syp) and it’s a fascinating question.

I guess I’m not one of the “forever” people, if I have a favourite mount I usually get a new, more interesting one at some point months or years in the future and then I’ll change it.

There are a few notable exceptions though:

• WoW:Black War Raptor on my Orc Rogue (PvP Rank 11 in Vanilla gave you Epic Riding without having to buy it, and I wanted a Raptor and not a Wolf, so I ground Cloth for a while to raise my rep and get this)
• WoW: The class hall mounts of Legion are all pretty nice and I use them a lot, Raven on Rogue, Elemental on Shaman
• WoW: The Headless Horseman’s Mount is one I lucked out on getting and a few chars have used it for years
• At a time, some of the reward mounts for completing a Raid
• WildStar: My Aurin’s Hoverboard
• Final Fantasy XIV: A healthy mix, different one for every job, but I do like my Black Chocobo
• SWTOR: I was very happy when I got a Jetpack for my Powertech and have used it ever since

But overall, if I get a new mount I’ll probably use it for a while on a char, or even longer if it fits a theme, like this one I just crafted myself for around 90k? instead of buying it for 220k.

This is Blaugust 2022 – post #12.

I’m not actually a huge fan of the Timewalking dungeons. It’s a nice concept but it’s only good to catch up gear on alts that just dinged max level, although the chest at the end can be nice. This week there’s also a special thing where you can get a +2 Timewalking Mythic keystone, that’s more interesting, as that counts as Timewalking AND you get a Great Vault reward.

I didn’t plan to run as many, but now I did 5 on Hunter and DK, and 4 on Shaman. Guess I should do 5 on my main Warrior, but meh.

This year I was lucky and got a mount, though.

Also what happens if you’re semi-afk and not paying attention? People from the M+ crowd spamming you on Discord for 10 minutes because no one else is on and then you end up running M+ for 4h straight. Was some nice healing practice and higher keys for my main though, lucky day.

This is Blaugust 2022 – post #11.

Rant incoming. I guess I’m in a bit of a WoW binge at the moment (completed the “run 4 Mythic dungeons for a shiny item” on four toons, went to a few old raids for transmogs, caught up on a few very old achievements) and I’m currently really, really, really annoyed that progress isn’t shared.

Sure, back when I had one main on Horde from Vanilla to Pandaria it was all no problem (well except doing Heal and Tank Challenge Mode) and of course my main had all of them, but I mained an Alliance Demon Hunter in Legion, an Alliance Paladin in BfA, and an Alliance Warrior in Shadowlands while still doing some rep grinds on my old main. Yeah, now it’s a complete clusterfuck, especially with the four covenants in Shadowlands where I kinda have one “main” for the sake of Covenant stuff/zone and also sometimes one char is just more progressed on one daily/World Quest than the other. There’s no really good way to track this either, I need to do the parasol WQ 5 times more on one toon, 6 times more on another, good luck remembering that without a spreadsheet – why can’t it be 10 in total?

The other thing is the cross-realm thing, and while I don’t begrudge the people who can now happily use their toons, why did this only come in 2022? I did not have any meaningful presence on the Alliance side except one Rogue until 2014 and then after my return I levelled up at least one of every class there. And in general (and I agree this is my fault) I could’ve transferred some of them earlier when I switched to the German server where I’m playing now, but now I’m kinda stuck with all my Horde toons with shitty equip on my original server, five more 60s (two of them important to me) on that same server, but Alliance side. I already paid for the 8 transfers bundle (and used up 6), but still. Why did I have to leave all my Horde legacy behind from late 2016 until early 2022, and now – even mid-expansion- I could’ve finally continued to use them?

So yes, it’s my own fault, but in contrast to FFXIV (lame, always a comparison with this game) – nothing here would’ve been my own fault except if I had wanted to reroll on a different server group, and then I would have 2 characters to maybe transfer, but realistically not needing to do it, and not one per class and faction. Hell, I’d gladly accept 12 transfers over 24.

And the last pet peeve, I love how the Armory keeps track of your boss kills from older expansions… just that you’re never allowed to go in there again for transmogs if you want to conserve e.g. your original Pandaria raid progression, which means I always need to farm transmogs on alts of the same class (I’m lucky that only Trial of the Crusader had faction-specific sets afaik), but I will admit that this is 100% a me problem and only really affects Rogue/Warrior/Shaman, but I’m not actually collecting transmogs on SO many classes and I have enough Rogues and Warriors.

So, what’s the point now? I don’t know what Dragonflight will be and if I will play, and then which toon – I will probably stick to an Alliance char in my guild just for logistical reasons and because the damage is done and I’m now attached to some of them already as well. The achievement thing is probably digging up which character has the best progression already, per achievement, and continue from there… or just not bother at all, which seems to be the best course of action, really.

Can I really change anything about this? No. Is it my own fault? To some degree, I could’ve just tried to find a Horde guild. But having moved to a guild where my friends play (and it is Alliance), that’s not my fault – this is squarely on Blizzard’s asinine imagined conflict thing, and all the per-character stuff plays against that as well. I guess that’s enough ranting, in the end I’m still having fun playing the game, but I would have invested so much fewer hours… so I guess it is indeed in their best interest to keep the people busy… until it’s enough and they quit.

This is Blaugust 2022 – post #10.

This week there’s this weekly quest up where you need to run 4 “Mythic” dungeons, M0 counts though.

When I got roped into an M+ by the guild they of course did not tell me, but we ran an M0 after that, so my Shammy is sitting at 1/4 now at least.

This afternoon I wanted to run those with my DK, but opted for Unholy. First one was Taza’vesh and today I learned a few things. First of all that the “Forged Credentials” thing makes it a little harder, but you get a mount in the end. And for the dungeon to count you need to do Streets and Gambit, not sure if Gambit alone counts. But I got a mount, even if it took an hour – and doing the Hylbrande console thing for the first time is actually hard, messed it up somehow.

Second run was Halls with an Outlaw Rogue with unbelievable damage, but the rest of us was kinda bad and they tried to skip trash that we then still pulled. Onto the boss.

Third run was Necrotic Wake and was quick and uneventful, the last one was Plaguefall and kinda ok, except a weird near-wipe because we had Tentacles where I’d never seen them, maybe a M0 thing?

Maybe I was lucky that I didn’t meet any real idiots but it was still more tedious than running a +15 with the guild (last season’s +15, maybe +11 now).

Anyway, I’m not actually sure getting this 291 item (meh item as well) was worth the 2-2.5h. I mean, on the upside I could replace 2 252 rings with 262/268 ones and got Head/Shoulders/Chest, but don’t have enough flux to upgrade them all, especially 259 -> 262 isn’t worth it. If the 291 had been a Tier slot piece or a Weapon however… It did dampen my enthusiasm to run 7 or 6 more of those, but let’s see how I feel about that tomorrow or if we’ll run some after the raid tonight.

This is Blaugust 2022 – post #8.

Everyone who is mildly interested in WoW might have noticed that the Alpha has started, talent trees are being released, new Alpha builds are released, and so on.

On the one hand I’m following the topic with a low amount of interest, but for example last night I looked at the Warrior Talent Tree and my interest instantly vanished. So many talents, I don’t feel knowledgeable enough to spec out a good build – but then again history has shown that not all talents that sound good are indeed good and ones that sound bad aren’t secretly good. Maybe I simply can’t muster up the hype for any of this anymore. If I read about this, I want to play it, but I don’t like playing Alphas or Betas either. Maybe I should simply stay away from the topic?

That said, I’m moderately looking forward to the new expansion – but I wouldn’t say I’m excited or even hyped. Maybe I’m old and boring but I guess I’ll just take a cookie cutter spec and then change the 2-3 things that annoy me, more of a top-down iterative approach over a bottom-up creative one.

This is Blaugust 2022 – post #6.

I hadn’t actually planned to do much last night, just weekly login of all toons, grab the quests, maybe have a go at the new old world boss with supposedly higher iLevel loot… when I got messages on discord to log my main and then being told I shouldn’t log through all toons so quickly when they want to message me 😛

Anyway, my +12 Streets keys was waved away and they really wanted to do that +16 Mechagon Workshop. Wasn’t fun, so we switched to +15. Still wasn’t exactly fun and took a lot of dying and trying out things, but we made it through with a lot of overtime, but that’s one 304 item in the vault secured. I had warned them that I only ever did the instance once, overleveled, but it’s not like I was the only one bumbling. Took like 80 minutes, but it wasn’t wasted time… but I think I should stick to a lot lower besides one weekly +15 for the gear, for now, at least until I know the fights. Also I guess we were criminally undergeared at our 273 to 278. And I think they only took me with them (it’s the +20 crew) because 3 of the big pumpers are on vacation, but I’m not complaining.

This is Blaugust 2022 – post #4.

I’m not sure it was exactly a good idea, but I did manage to finish off 2 more WoW chars to 60 last night, even if it took until 1:30 my time. I hadn’t originally planned to take advantage of the 50% XP buff (and I’ll only find out if it’s really gone when I will login later today), but with my main goals reached it sounded like a fun challenge. Goblin Warrior (my third) and Void Elf Rogue (my fourth) are now at 60 and it’s a nice round number of 30 toons. In a totally random twist of fate I now have two of each class at 60, and then 3 Hunters, Death Knights, Paladins, Warriors, and 4 Rogues. I’ve never been a huge fan of Paladins and especially not DKs, but it kinda happened, mostly because of different servers and the sale on transfers coming much too late. Then again I kinda covered most of favorite classes this way, the only outliers being Shaman, Warlock, and Druid. Is it weird to have 6 favorite classes out of 12? Maybe.

Sounds like it’s time for a ranking, shall we?

Rogue/Warrior > Shaman > Hunter = Paladin =~ Warlock > Druid = Demon Hunter = Death Knight > Mage > Monk > Priest

I guess Retri/Prot Paladins have always been ok since TBC/WotLK, I only hated them in Vanilla. Warlock and Druid are classes I really like, but I feel I’m not as good without extensive effort, so they’re a little more tedious. DK and DH are not great, but solid most of the time. Frost Mages are either fun to play or meh, depending on the expansion. And I don’t think I’ll ever warm up to Monk or Priest (WotLK Disc was cool tho). Rogues would be perfect if they weren’t sometimes so squishy/not able to solo elites anymore. Also can’t tank, so I guess that’s why I’ve gone more towards Warrior for many years. I’m not sure I ever want to main a Hunter but I always enjoy playing them. Maybe stuck with Warrior for now…

Kinda funny how the one number (Level 60, yay!) is meaningful to the point that I level so many toons and the other – more important – number (iLevel, boo!) I don’t care at all. Never in the mood to grind out gear, especially not on alts. Catch up is fine, but actually putting in time and effort? Nah.

Also managed to sneak in a last M+ after the (short) raid and could upgrade my MH to 272 with 1000 of my 1035 Valor. Will be a win either way – either I will now have a 272 MH until a good one drops, or it will drop just because I upgrade. But the Valor would be converted to gold anyway, so nothing lost. Kinda shitty that I lose all my Valor on the Shaman, but she’s just not reached a high enough rating to upgrade stuff above 255.

Season 4 is starting today, and we’re only gonna raid on Sundays. Despite hardly missing a raid the last 3 tiers this expansion and the summer still going I’m probably not gonna try to schedule other stuff around the raid, but with it only being one day, me still not being keen on a lot of events with tons of people… and my friends basically never going out on a Sunday… I’ll probably still be able to attend most nights. Kinda glad it’s only one night as I’m not overly enthusiastic about repeating the content.

I have a low key plan/desire to heal more and also tank a little this season, but on the other hand I’m in a bit of a WoW lull right now. The Jailer AOTC kill wasn’t the grand finale I’d hoped for, with all the nerfs and then the “we gotta go fast” and then also not being able to rekill him (for lack of an ID) for our tank who missed the kill. Interestingly the tank itself seems to care the least for the missed achievement, but some of us still feel bad about it.

This was supposed to be a very short “yay, 30th Level 60 and made it just in time for S4” post, but sometimes you write a few words and your lunch break is over…

This is Blaugust 2022 – post #3.

During the run of WoW’s 9.2 patch cycle (let’s call it the Zereth Mortis season) I ran quite a few chars through this daily zone. I mean, I also did a lot of other things, raids and M+, and so on – but for some reason I wanted to see this campaign done on all classes, and get my 265 Belt Legendary as a reward. Also the world boss dropped some items (better for Cloth and Plate, worse for Leather, worst for Mail) and with the Sandworn Relics you could buy low-level Tier pieces (or to be more exact, 246 items that could be converted to Tier pieces of the same level). Some hotfix patch just before Season 4 made them Bind-to-Account, so on Friday I could finish the last pieces.

• One character per class (and faction) to Level 60 – long ago
• One character per class to Renown 80 – done
• One character per class completing the ZM campaign and get a Legendary – done
• One character per class with the 4-set tier bonus – done
• One character per class unlocking all 6 levels of the cypher – done **
• One character per class at item level 252 or above – meh, only managed 8 of them

Yeah I know it’s kinda stupid, but I somehow enjoy some mindless grinds, often only 20 minutes after work for a very quick tour. I’d say I’m basically done with the alts for this expansion. We’ll see how Season 4 actually is and how many toons I want to actively play (it’s summer now after all), but I guess it won’t be that many.

• Raiding: Warrior, unless we do alt runs, then maybe Shaman
• M+: Warrior and probably Shaman, maybe tanking as Blood DK or Demon Hunter
• collecting gear: not sure, no plans really.

I’m at 28 Level 60 chars and we have an XP buff running, so maybe getting to a nice round 30 would be an idea.

Maybe I’ll use the Sandworn Relics I have left to finish a few transmog sets, but unfortunately the LFR level ones are all some meh tone of mostly greens. The normal versions look so much better. I think I got all the reputations to Exalted on my main, but there are a few of the covenant special things I haven’t spent a lot of time with, although I’m 2/3 towards Exalted with the Stitchmasters, but I mostly ignored Revendreth and Bastion in that regard. I think I did all quest lines and I definitely unlocked all Heritage Armors that are ingame. I should have all professions at max level once as well.

**: ninja edit: 30 minutes after publishing this scheduled article I actually managed #12. Talk about timing.

This is Blaugust 2022 – post #2.