WoW

Oops, forgot to post the post, fumbled something together, then found the draft.

I’ve not had terribly much time to play WoW, and as of Monday evening I think I’ve acquired a total of 2 upgraded pieces of loot. Running 2+2 Tier pieces is worse than 4 of the old ones, so I passed for some guildies. Still feels bad because I know some of them are just rolling for the 20 iLvl upgrade, not simming if it’s an upgrade. Still, bad itemization if it’s a 5% dps loss like this.

The catchup mechanic in 10.2 doesn’t seem bad, in an evening on Saturday I managed to run my 2nd toon through the quest line (this time not reading the quest text, not having to search, etc) and she had no real problems doing it at iLvl 385ish and is now iLvl 421 which is just below Normal gear in the last raid tier (that should have been 424 I think). Not sure on how many I’ll do this, I’m trying to not just gear all the alts this expansion (yeah I did way too much of it at launch, I know).

Fyrakk down on like the 3rd try on Tuesday, oneshot Gnarloot, then Igira on the fourth pull and 2 wipes on Volcoross. Got a nice 2h weapon from Gnarlroot, iLvl 467 but other than that maybe one other drop, everything good I have is from the Vault :/

So, six bosses on Sunday and two more on Tuesday, and we even got into phase 3 on Fyrakk.

Not a total win, but still not too bad. Lost quite some time with explanations, so let’s see how next week will work out.

Been decently fun but I’ve not had any further time to progress with the quests. At least I got one drop this week.

Now let’s see what the Vault holds.

So, since we cleared Aberrus at the end of August I’ve not really done a lot. Was subscribed for a bit, did some solo casual things, don’t even remember if we did anything as a group.

But I was called to Discord recently and it was decided we’d start raiding today, so in true “guess I’ll have to do a bit of prep” fashion I resubscribed this morning (took the 3 months bundle), updated all addons (some have not been updated but still everything seems to work), checked my spec, started with the new patch’s questing, and looked at the strategies for the first few bosses.

Then off we went and in our 2 hours cleared 6 of the 9 bosses, with 2 wipes on the seventh (no wipes before). Fun was had, drops were distributed (I got nothing), my damage is bad because I’ve not replaced a single piece since August and some people are already a full tier (aka 13 iLvl) or even a bit more ahead. But I didn’t regret resubbing and that’s the only important thing, although I’ve got no urgent plans for any alts or M+ right now, we’ll see.

So, not too long after we finished the Raid on Heroic my WoW subscription ran out and I didn’t renew it at first. We had still planned to get 2-3 people who had missed the kill the achievement, so at the start of September I was on standby, if there were enough people to raid I’d use my token and resub, otherwise waiting. The 17th looked like it might happen but I had to bow out due to RL on short notice, but they didn’t end up killing the final boss again. So today we extended and had 16 people and after a few wipes it worked. I’m amazed I could remember the fight after 5 weeks.

I had actually claimed my token yesterday because I was a little bored and wanted to play WoW again, after that little break, and I also didn’t want to miss out on the Trading Post if I am honest.

So yesterday I didn’t even play that much, but I managed to finish the Trading Post, do the last 3 Zereth Mortis achievements I was missing for the final achievement, caught up on nearly all of the story quests from 10.1.5 and 10.1.7, did the Valdrakken weekly and some WQs and today did some Dragonriding achievements, finished the Niffen weekly and did some digging.

All in all it was quite nice and I had fun, but now I’m already a little unsure how to continue. For the first time I’m not burning to level my Horde chars (not even my old Rogue main), I’m only missing two of 13 classes to 70 (Priest and Evoker) and it feels a little pointless to do stuff on alts at the moment, except for some Profession stuff on 2-3 of them, but only what is useful for the whole expansion lifecycle and not just this patch/tier. I’m totally not in the mood for M+ right now and so I don’t think I’ll do the grind to KSH or KSM as I had originally planned. (I’ve deliberately put off doing the Night Elf & Undead Heritage Quests as they count for the Trading Post, so either I’m saving some time by doing them in October or at worst lose nothing either.)

Now I’m not sure I have a lot of real goals left for this 5-6 week stretch until the next raid opens, maybe some achievements but I’m not enthusiastic. Then again it’s also not that I’m eager to play something else. FFXIV was fun but I’m currently not inclined to resub, Cyberpunk 2077’s new patch sounds cool, Baldur’s Gate III and Starfield are fresh and somewhat interesting, but I dunno. When I’m not really in the mood for any game I suppose it’s a safe bet to stick to something I know and that I could buy with ingame gold. I know I’d be angry if I bought Cyberpunk now and stopped playing again after 10h, even if it’s on sale.

Week 11 was a quick clear of the first 7 bosses and then 3 wipes on Neltharion (as usual), then a clean oneshot on Tuesday and on to Sarkareth. Three bad pulls, six semi-ok pulsl in P3, then 3 pulls below 20%, including our new best 11%.

Week 12 – Sunday. We decided to go the skip route, so boss 1 & 8, then the last boss. Boss 8, Neltharion, gave us some headache today again. Three wipes that were worse than usual, but then it worked. On to the last boss. One 33% wipe without Vantus runes, then off to our break. Came back from the break, someone had bought Vantus runes… and the boss just fell, on the 50th pull or so. One person died, nothing spectacular. Kinda underwhelming because it wasn’t close at all. Now we just need one reclear for our 2nd main tank, who is on vacation… and he already missed one of the last tiers’ end boss, just the worst timing.

Anyway, AOTC in Dragonflight Season 2.

So the real question for me and WoW (until the next raid tier) is now if I want to start doing M+ in earnest or leave it be.

The Heritage Armor for Orcs and Humans came out in 10.0.7 in March and I had only done the Orc one (and liked it a lot). Today I had time and remembered that I was still missing the Human one. Can’t say how long it took but I liked it. If my Human character had been any other class than a Rogue I might even transmog it, but maybe I can use some parts…

When I last made a consolidated list about all the races in February 2020 there were still some missing, especially as I hadn’t leveled all Allied Races to max level, but if I am not mistaken now it’s these:

• Troll
• Undead (should be in the next Patch)
• Night Elf (should be in the next Patch)
• Draenei

I missed the Tuesday raid in week 9 but they did not kill Sarkareth. Don’t remember if we managed 8 or just 7 on Sunday, doesn’t really matter anyway.

Sunday in week 10 had us down a few key people and so we missed the 8/9 by maybe one pull or so, but for dragging along someone who only had done Normal once it went fine. (The person knows how to play, does a lot of M+, but we still lost some minutes by explaining every boss briefly, no blame here.) Tuesday was a quick kill of Neltharion and then a lot of tries on Sarkareth – some bad ones, but also quite a few good ones, one at 15% – should be doable.

After the Sunday raid I got dragged into a +20 Freehold, and I don’t know why. Guess they were already sure they wouldn’t time it and so it didn’t matter 😀 That was my 2nd M+ run in that dungeon, but hey, we did it – overtime with dozens of deaths. Kinda curious about the Vault loot next week now.

Sunday was a little slower, only managed to kill 7 bosses, Tuesday saw us reaching 25 wipes on Sarkareth Heroic with down to 25%. Progress.

Managed to do 2 M+ this week and also play for an hour or two and catch up on quests on the latest patch, yay.

Tuesday of week 6 was the first time I’d missed a first kill on Heroic since… I don’t know, maybe since I’ve been raiding with this guild (that would be 2 years) but RL called to do other stuff and so they killed Magmorax without me, and Zskarn as well, I think.

Sunday of week 7 was really good, we skipped Normal for the first time and straight up breezed through with only 2 wipes or so, everything including Echo of Neltharion is down, so that would be a full evening of Sarkareth pulls ahead on Tuesday. Tuesday: Soo, not sure what to make of it, but we got into P3 relatively consistently and then it broke down, like 12-13 tries in total. That will be a piece of work.

My “iLvl %” parses seem really good, but of course overall some 0f my fellow raiders are miles ahead with an average of 12 iLvl higher, that is basically a full tier. Can’t complain, if you have no time to put into gearing but a little annoyed how it could be a lot better.

Oh wow, the end of a raid week and I manage to post. Nothing spectacular, but we’re 6/9 Heroic now after some grinding of teeth on Zskarn and again only 15 people. (Last week it was 5/9 with I think 4 new ones) – and we had done Normal again at the start, so that’s actually 9 bosses in 4h, weirdly quick for our usual pace.

Anyway, still raid logging and probably having to continue to do that for most of July, but at least I get to play. For some reason my DPS numbers seemed pretty stellar last week, now they’re back to “Oh I’m undergeared relative to our top DPS and thus can’t compete”. Maybe I should investigate, or maybe I shouldn’t…

Still no time for M+, but with 2 Heroic drops from the Vault that should be ok. I managed to get my MH upgraded to 437 last week and thus could upgrade my OH basically for free and now I can still upgrade my belt and also buy some more upgrades, maybe I should try to get that done before the next raid…