WoW

As my original plan for Shadowlands was to raid again after all these years, I’m not completely sure how much effort is needed so maybe I’m erring on the side of too much preparation, but I guess it won’t hurt as long as I don’t burn out before the raid even unlocks.

The first week of the expansion is wrapping up and I reached max level, I did quite a few heroics and joined 2 nights of Mythic 0 with the guild (missed one). The problem is that my iLevel is still really bad, 3 slots with 184 Mythic 0 gear, one extra piece on the same slot, having replaced 3 171 items in these slots and really bad weapons – so I guess see myself running Mists of Tirna Scithe and Necrotic Wake every day until I have at least 2 171 2 hand weapons and replace at least some of my 5 other sub-171 slots. For the amount of heroics I ran this week the yield seems bad, but maybe I’m complaining too much and all my guildies just ran even more of them.

As was expected, damage isn’t really great at the moment, but there are several factors, low item level, no enchants, Fury doesn’t seem to be in a great place overall at the moment compared to other classes and specs, and also the player hasn’t actually tried to do top DPS in many years, so I’m pretty sure my rotation isn’t optimal and I’m missing things. I plan to setup at least 2 more WeakAuras, but I think my cooldown usage might actually be better than years ago, where I forget them a lot.

At least I did my callings (Emissary quest successor) every day since hitting 60, did at least collect parts of the Soul Ash from Torghast, and did some other things I was supposed to do in the first week. I even tried to get Sorrrowbane, but that quest is really annoying as you have one shot every time the WQ is up and even if you do everything correctly you can still be unlucky and have other people grab the items before you.

So yes, I’ve been playing a lot of WoW this week, ignoring the launch night but getting in the minute I stopped working all other days. I got to 60 on Thursday, then continued with the main story and chose a covenant, yesterday (Friday) I did some dungeons, first a random normal, then a few normal ones in a guild group and then a Heroic, which went fine. My iLevel is now 152 (started at ~145 before the dungeons) some of the 4 guildies were already in the 150 range.

Overall, I’m loving the expansion so far. I liked all 4 zones overall and had a lot of fun with the story lines. Some were better than others, but overall really happy. My main gripe is that I can’t mount in parts of Oribos and at the Heart of the Forest, so not too bad overall. Again there are quite a few mechanics that are new to this expansion, although some are just old ones with a twist. I also just ran my Demon Hunter through the Maw intro quest line, I think I could use a 2nd Herbalist right now, one that I can just park in one of the 4 zones.

Here’s a complete rundown how long I needed to level, apparently I was slow. But I read every single quest completely without rushing (except a 5min stint where dinner was ready and I absolutely had to finish this for fear of being logged out in the wrong spot :/).

51	1:20
52	1:20
53	1:20
54	1:18
55	1:18
56	1:40
57	1:45
58	1:45
59	2:01
60	1:33

Not 100% sure they add up to 15h 15mins, but I only had exact screenshots for most of them, so could be off a minute or three here and there.

So early last night I actually brought myself to camp a few world bosses in Icecrown and collect most of the transmog set on my Rogue, then at midnight I was too tired and went to bed.

But today after work I logged in (no problems) and started. I needed exactly 4h for 50-53, then 1h 18 for 54 and again 1h 18 for 55. That’s where I stand now, Bastion is finished and I think I’m 50-70% through Maldraxxus. I have no idea how people made it in 8-9h, but I’ve been diligently reading all the quest text and even picked a few flowers on the way. The quest flow is good, I didn’t have any major problems, just a few tiny things. Pretty good so far. Despite being in old 8.2 gear (half epic, half blue) I only died twice, and I probably could’ve avoided those as well.

It’s been fun so far although I didn’t really get a bit of the story in Bastion, either I missed some key part of information or they’re deliberately letting us in the dark or whatever. But some things didn’t make sense to me.

# EPIC ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

Why is this not a meme yet? (Overall I don’t have anything against the subtitles, but I should look if I can switch them off.)

When I summarized my BfA journey in this post I a) wrote “too late” when I meant “too soon” and b) was pessimistic about reaching my goal. Also I kind of didn’t reach it because Level 120 was gone, but now I actually finished it by having at least one character per class, per faction – at Level 50, in BfA, before Shadowlands launched. (Although it feels a little bit like cheating because leveling is so much faster now.)

My Worgen Shadow Priest flew through Level 31 to 40 in MoP, then 40 to 50 in BfA. So that’s 27 characters at Level 50, 4 Rogues, 3 Warriors, 2 of each other class.

So now only the minor goal of all the allied races is unachievable, because it’s only 2 days left.

Oh, and I bought Shadowlands and cleared out the quest log on my new main, a female Night Elf Fury Warrior. Fury doesn’t seem great at the moment but I didn’t want to go Rogue again, especially on the Alliance side, without my main and I like Warriors. Also my guild’s composition checks out nicely like this, and I have an offspec that’s not DPS.

For the first time in forever I made the resolve to focus on my main and my main only. I will allow myself to casually level another toon if I lose the drive to play, but I probably won’t have enough time anyway – but I will not race to the top, I will not gear an alt, or start a third alt. For the immediate future that is, I guess until we have started raiding.

While I wrote that I’m not so keen on playing right now in my last WoW post, I actually logged in because I was curious how fast leveling goes.

Then I promptly forgot to look into the mail and made a few levels without the 16% experience buff, doh. So my Mechagnome Warlock is now 42, up from 37 and my Worgen Priest (where I didn’t forget the xp buff) went from 31 to 34 with a single random dungeon + 2 quests. Gameplay is unexciting, I don’t feel too weak or too overpowered, roughly the same as before. Warlock was in Gorgrond, Priest in Townlong Steppes.

Having all the talents reset was a little annoying, as usual, but I went with the left-side default route as it’s just casual leveling and I’m absolutely not in the mood to look up builds right now. We’ll see if I actually manage to push those 2 to 50 and at least claim moral victory of my goal.

Addon compatibility is surprisingly good, just my favourite experience addon is defunct and a few others, but nothing important. While I had planned to go for a reset again when the expansion hits (which means just unit frames + bars + chat addon and maybe a top bar) maybe I’ll just slim down my list instead of actually starting fresh…

There was a quite annoying bug that plagued quite a few people in guild two nights ago, where you couldn’t switch characters and sometimes had to alt-f4, culminating in “successfully logged off a toon but everything is black and no characters visible”, but it might have solved itself again…

My general plans for Shadowlands are still:

• cancel SWTOR – DONE
• buy Shadowlands – TODO
• level my Night Elf Warrior as Fury
• raid with my Alliance guild

Edit: the post’s title should’ve been “I don’t think it’s too early to summarize BfA goals” but I messed up.

Another month has passed without a post but I’ve simply not had a lot of stuff I want to talk about or that I deemed worthy of writing down, but this is a post I’d postponed for a while.
I’ve not played WoW for a while now, first waiting for the date of the expansion then to notice it being delayed and in day-to-day life actually being busy enough with EVE and SWTOR.

So, the level squish patch happened, and while this isn’t the real end of the expansion I think I can truthfully claim that I failed my goal because I ran out of steam this autumn.

One max-level character per class, per faction.

There are 12 classes and 2 factions, so that would be 24 Level 120 characters. OK, actually it would be 24 Level 50 characters, as the expansion has not yet happened. So where do I stand?

Class	Horde	Alliance
Death Knight	50	50
Demon Hunter	50	50
Druid	50	50
Hunter	50	50
Mage	50	50
Monk	50	50
Paladin	50+45	50
Priest	50	31
Rogue	50 + 50	50 +50
Shaman	50	50
Warlock	50	37
Warrior	50 + 50	50

So while every class is a check and the number 24 is a check, Alliance Warlock and Priest were in their 80s, now 30s, and I don’t know if I will finish this before the expansion lands.

The other goal of leveling the Allied Races doesn’t look any better:

• Mag’har Orc: 50 – check
• Zandalari Troll: 45 – check
• Nightborne: 27
• Highmountain Tauren: 26
• Vulpera: 13
• Dark Iron Dwarf: 50 – check
• Kul Tiran: 50 – check
• Mechagnome: 37
• Void Elf: 28
• Lightforged Draenei: 0

With starting to get into SWTOR again and EVE still going strong I think it’s time to officially take WoW activity and goals down a notch and stop logging in for the sake of logging in. I think I’ve reached or am close to most of the goals I have set myself:

• 1 per class, per faction at max level
  • Alliance Warlock dinged 80 yesterday, Alliance Priest is 73
• get BfA reps to a certain degree
  • 7 chars have most BfA reps at Exalted
  • 2 are missing a select few ones, I’m waiting for emissaries here
  • might go for Ramkahen / Pandaria to Exalted, might not
• Class mounts
  • Rogue and Shaman done
  • Demon Hunter and Warrior are kinda close to class hall done?
• rest is probably out, might revisit later
  • Heritage Armor
  • 4 done
  • 3 leveling
  • 3 meh
• Professions
  • check what’s missing next time Darkmoon Faire is up but I got a good chunk done last Darkmoon Faire, e.g. leveling Cooking to 100 or even 170 on 20 toons, then grabbing the last 5

So I guess it’s down to use of rested XP and just get those 3 toons a level or two every week or so. It’s not that it is not fun, but I’m not in the mood to play for hours and hours, but every few days is fun.

I didn’t actually mean to not post for two weeks but I was kinda busy with EVE. Also a little bit with WoW.

Yesterday I managed to get the first Legion Class Mount on my Orc Rogue (mostly for forgetting about them completely), I just had to finish like 5-6 quests.

Then today I dinged 110 on my Zandalari Troll Paladin (3rd Paladin to 110+) an grabbed the Heritage Armor, which was the whole point of this.

Also I only mentioned in passing that I finished the Mechagon grind around May 21st and the last missing class (Alliance Warlock) already dinged 60 last weekend. So for the goal of 1 max-level per class, per faction I’m missing 60 levels of Mechagnome Warlock and 47 levels of Worgen Priest, that should be doable.

On the Heritage Armor project: Void Elf Rogue is 68, Nightborne Priest still 70, Highmountain Warrior still 61, Vulpera Hunter still 30 and haven’t started a Lightforged Draenei, but on the other hand the Paladin was number 4 of 10 finished already.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Shadowlands and my future in the game. Yes, right now I’d rather play more EVE but I’ve not put WoW away yet. So when I just saw Telwyn’s post… might as well write it down.

I may have written about this at length but from 2005 – 2014 I was mostly a Horde player, usually with a guild full of people and only had a single high-level Alliance Rogue in a guild that I had joined because 2 of my ex-Horde guildies originally came from there (same server) and also went back there. That was in 2009 and I’ve sometimes reached the level cap on that Rogue, sometimes not. When I stepped away completely from WoW in 2014 (end of MoP) and then came back to have a brief look at WoD, I was still 100% Horde. When I came back to play Legion, for the first time ever I set my focus on the Alliance, leveling a Demon Hunter and having a lot of fun, then adding some alts – all in the Alliance guild because the Horde guild has been completely dead for a few years. Again in BfA I leveled Alliance first (Dwarf Retri Paladin this time) and now I have nearly as many max-level Alliance toons as I have Horde. Still did all my rep grinds on my old Horde Rogue Main.

So, what about Shadowlands? Right now I really plan to raid again, at least the first tier. The expansion is supposed to launch in the winter, which absolutely suits me well (but I guess this year it wouldn’t have mattered anyway…), but what will I play?

The only I thing I absolutely hated about my Rogue was that it’s a pure DPS and I can’t have a tank or healing off-spec. So this time I also really want to focus on one main character, and still have an off-spec, so this eliminates every pure DPS class. On the Alliance side this is no problem for me, as my Orc Rogue isn’t available anyway, so I can just level him casually at some point.

What do I have available? I guess my raid main-spec will still be DPS. It’s what I do best and restarting raiding after all these years I am absolutely fine in not having the pressure of tanking or healing. Unless we’ll be short on either, of course, then I’m probably up for stepping up.

• Dwarf Paladin – Not sure I like Holy, but I’ve had fun tanking in the past, a possibility
• Night Elf Daemon Hunter – played both specs in Legion and loved them, likely
• Night Elf Warrior – didn’t Prot tank since MoP, but I loved it, likely
• Worgen Druid – didn’t Bear tank since TBC and didn’t heal since… WotLK I guess, unlikely
• Dwarf Shaman – while I like Resto a lot, I’m not sure I want to main this shammy, undecided
• Dark Iron Dwarf Monk – I haven’t tried tanking or healing on this, but I don’t enjoy Monks, very unlikely
• Worgen Priest – I don’t like Shadow and have never tried Holy, didn’t Disc heal since WotLK, unlikely

So this doesn’t sound like I’m about to use one of the three DPS+Heal classes, and I’m not sure about one of the DPS+Heal+Tank classes, but I’m in favor of both DPS+Tank classes. So right now it looks like a decision between Warrior and Daemon Hunter, with Paladin on 3rd place and Druid still possible. Sadly I don’t have a lot of attachment to this Druid, as I boosted her at the start of BfA and only played her this expansion. I at least “mained” the Paladin and also leveled her up properly (with a little help from the invasions before Legion though). I think I’ve actually raided once and did quite some dungeons on the Warrior and the Demon Hunter was my Legion main.

Similarly I don’t feel real attachment to the Priest and the Monk. The Shaman is different because it’s the one I killed Algalon with, so I’d say that’s proper raiding 😛

Also this means these toons are out, with the current plan:

• Human Rogue, the aforementioned original Alliance alt
• Dwarf Hunter
• Draenei Death Knight
• Kul Tiran Human Mage, I don’t like playing Mages anyway
• Void Elf Rogue, just leveling because Rogue and Heritage Armor
• Mechagnome Warlock, just leveling because of the Heritage Armor and because I don’t have an Alliance Warlock
• Gnome Rogue, would have to be transferred from a different server anyway

Also I didn’t really touch on the possibility of a Horde comeback, because I simply don’t believe in it. I’d need to find a guild whereas I have a perfectly fine and functioning one on the Alliance side. Also all the years have disconnected me enough that I’m ready to switch mains for good. Took a while, and I am still kind of determined to at least do the reps on my Horde Rogue, but maybe not all the other “important” Horde chars.