WoW

Sunday started a little chaotic because our guild leader wasn’t available and the officers failed at inviting from the calendar. Our raid lead declared Heroic and so we went in without going Normal first – Eranog, Terros, and the spider proved to be no problem but we were a little slow I think, then we wiped on Council for about three times before finishing. As one of our two tanks hadn’t seen the Dathea fight and some overall meh feeling that day we didn’t really progress there, hoping for a return to normal form on Tuesday… which totally didn’t happen, we wiped on Dathea for 2h with hardly any progress. Those adds on the platforms are kicking our butts, no matter which half of the raid we send first… Anyway, let’s see what next week brings, maybe Kurog or just improving 😛

I also really, really, really hate Need or Greed over Personal Loot – I think I’ve won a single roll for a coveted item so far and it feels like some people got the good stuff on Normal and have now replace it with the same thing on Heroic and some of us never got the Normal version. Or maybe I’m simply too quick to pass up stuff because it’s a better upgrade for someone else. M+ is semi fun on Shaman but not as much as on the Warrior, so I’ll probably leave it at 4 runs for 2 chests.

On the other hand in M+ I’ve been rather busy, having timed half of the dungeons on +13 on Tyrannical already (which means the second chest will be a +13 one as well) and hoping to get one or two more in before reset – not sure I’ll manage to break 1900 rating, but I’m over 1850 already. Also I’d really love to get a first 16 in, even if not timed. My old SL S4 semi-consistent team was lacking their fifth on Monday and so we did some stuff, including timing a +16 Halls and that brought me just past 1900 rating, yay. Only 100 to go for the mount, and thus the season goal – then maybe only doing 2000 on the Shammy as well (will be breaking 1700 tomorrow with a single timed +8 or so).

After that Sunday raid I wanted to try out how Beast Mastery feels in M+ and so I started queuing, with a weird 4dps+1tank +2 HoV at first and then going for mostly +5s, anything where they’d invite my 385 Hunter without rating. Was surprisingly fun and I think I made it to 7 completions… at 2am. That brought me to 700 rating and like 1500 Valor but hardly any items to upgrade. The bow from Nokhud Offensive dropped, but at 379 – I already have the 385 Primal Storms bow/gun/whatever and I’m probably not gonna waste my Valor upgrading anything but Tier pieces… if I manage to get something to drop. Also again I’m really fascinated that you’re usually not invited to the key levels where actual upgrades drop. I’m 385 average iLvl but they won’t invite me to +7 or +8 where the end of dungeon drop would be 385 or 389… But in the end I managed to get 1 +8, 3 +7s and then 7 or 8 +5s done, so 3 chests. And finally did a +6 on the DK. That’s 35 M+ runs in one week. No, I don’t plan to go up that far next week.

Sunday was a quick foray into Normal – Eranog, Council, then skipping, Diurna, and Raszageth all before the break after 1h, then Eranog, Terros, and Council on Heroic and even a first kill of the spider, so that’s 4/8 and we have a full raid to work on either Dathea or Kurog. Unfortunately Tuesday only ended up with a ~14% try on Dathea.

In terms of M+, that was a very busy week with the 4-Mythic weekly, which I managed to complete on 5 characters, not only the two mains, but 3 more – Rogue, Hunter, and DK. All of them will also get a reward from the Great Vault tomorrow, the DK will even be able to choose between two because I somehow ended up with 3 +2 and one M0 and so I went to a +3 to round it out. Don’t even remember what the Rogue will get, but the Hunter only got one +2 and 3 M0s. But the Shaman has a +13 chest and a +12 one (4 done in total) and the Warrior will even have one +15, one +12, and one +11, with a total of 9 M+ this week – this is really an outlier, but I’m sooo close to 1700 rating, I “just” need to run a few Tyrannical +11s next week and that should do it, need the crafting mats anyway. Yeah, definitely a busy week that I don’t plan to repeat so soon. Funny story though, the ~370 iLvl DK got a 398 2h weapon either last week or the week before that and now I got a 411 one from the weekly. If only the Warrior had gotten that one, sigh.

Sunday was a moderately clean clear of Normal, and with 5 minutes quicker we could’ve tackled Eranog on Hc as well. Tuesday had a clean kill of Eranog, one wipe on Terros and Council down after a few tries, then 2 or 3 tries on the spider with the name I can’t seem to memorize. 14% or so, so that should work out next week. We’re planning to skip, but still do council, so Eranog, Council, Diurna, Raszageth, then maybe manage to do 2 or 3 on Heroic on Sunday… We’ll see.

Personally, I’ve been working on my M+ rating a bit and should hit 1400 on the Warrior tonight if I find the time. Shaman is lacking a bit behind, but as I get the raid drops in the vault I’m less motivated and it’s also less fun, but I’m around 1200 already as well. This time I’m trying to change my strategy and will try to actively fill out the gaps in dungeons I miss on Tyr/Fort, even if I’m pugging lower. Last week I did a full +5/+6 sweep on the Warrior, maybe I’ll go +8 now on Fort, otherwise +6 is fine for starters.

On Sunday we managed to clear all of Normal in 2h (ok, maybe it was 2h and 10 minutes) for the first time, so Tuesday was all set for Heroic. Eranog was either one-shot or we had one wipe as we need to work on positioning, Terros needed a few tries to get the cooldown usage and spike positioning down but I wouldn’t say it was hard. I was very pessimistic about Council because our tries on Normal were complete madness with everyone running around like headless chicken, but people seemed to get a grip quickly. I think our best try was like 5%, so definitely doable, but unfortunately we ran out of time there, would’ve been nice – but we got 2 bosses on Heroic for the chest, that might help. Also 2nd week of catalyst today, that should hopefully push most people to the tier set bonus at 4 pieces, but we might be a tad overgeared again already. The loot is iLvl 402 and people like me at 390 are kinda at or above Normal level and some of us are at 400 or 402 already.

Also while I had bought a WoW token already a week ago, I did resubscribe for 6 months last night before the raid, because I actually had only a few hours left and might have been disconnected mid raid. I do hope it wasn’t a bad choice and I’ll stop playing again in a bit, but then you only pay for 5 months, I was subscribed for 10 or so months last year, I like the game, so why not. As I’ve seen in the past, with this guild raidlogging and just doing 5h per week is totally fine, if it comes to that – and I “only” brought 7 toons to 70 and have not started an Evoker, so while I’m already paying attention to not burn out on the gear grind in this first raid tier, just collecting a few pieces and actually just playing the game at max level on a few classes has been fun. Our gear threshold for raiding normal was 370 and I beat that with 3 chars (1 more at 369ish) and now I still could choose one of 4 above 380, but the other 3 are between 344 and 368 and I’m not actively hunting gear, or rep. Just doing a WQ here and there and as many weeklies as I’m having fun doing. Anyway, there is lots to do and I haven’t even touched any of the Horde toons, but of course my Orc Rogue must at least get to max level.

Sunday was a quick thing, we killed the first 7 bosses, then went to Heroic for the first and finished just on time, so Tuesday was fully reserved for Raszageth. Unfortunately one of our healers was MIA and two people on the same connection had massive problems (another healer), so I had to jump in. Didn’t show a great performance (how do I raid heal on Shaman in DF again?) but in the end on the typical “LAST TRY!” we did it with a reasonably clean kill. Week two would have been nice, but at least most of the other bosses went down quickly without a wipe. Let’s see what the Great Vault brings today and how good a normal reclear will go. It was fun though.

Nothing groundbreaking. This week we started on Eranog Heroic, then switched to Normal and did 5 bosses, with one wipe on the Kurog rekill, then on Tuesday we killed Kurog quickly and then needed a few tries for Diurna. That took a bit, so in the end we only managed to get in 2 or so tries at Raszageth. M+ went fine with a +11 (non-timed) on the Shammy and another +11 we barely missed on the Warrior.

We’re finally back to raiding!

Sunday saw us downing Eranog, Terros, The Primal Council, and Dathea, then Tuesday it was Sennarth, Kurog, and Eranog Heroic and finishing 10 minutes early. So we’re 6/8 and 1/8 now after a very late week 1. and more like 3:45h and not 4.

Sunday had a record-breaking attendance of 27 people or so, Tuesday had only 23, but still. Overall the raid seems fun but my numbers as Enhancement feel SO bad. I have parses for 6 bosses and only two green (iLvl %) parses, the rest are grey. One week in and I’m not sure if I shouldn’t just switch back to Warrior…

Ah well, but maybe start at the beginning – we had set an iLvl of 370 as being allowed to raid, and because the raid drops 385 to 402 gear I was not overly enthusiastic to go above and beyond to grind out gear in the 370 to 385 bracket that could be replaced in the raid easily, it’s normal after all, so I was planning on us progressing at an ok-ish pace. So in my post 2 weeks ago I had the Warrior ready, so probably around 375 and the Shaman at 365, so if I wouldn’t make it I had the Warrior to fall back on. At the day of the raid I had the Warrior at 386, the Shaman at 377, the Warlock at 370, and the Rogue at 369, so just shy of being able to tag along. Did I again waste some time gearing alts? Yes. Do I regret it? No, not at all – I was in “waiting for raid” mode for 2 weeks, I had some days off, I got the chance to play 2 other classes, and most importantly, I was not in the mood of actually grinding my way to 390ish. It was fun on the Warrior but I’m still re-learning Enhancement after about 8 years away from the spec.

Let’s see how next week will work out, we have two more bosses to do after all.

So, Dragonflight is… ok, I guess? Something feels a little odd, but I can’t put my finger on it. I leveled 3 chars to 70, one is ready to raid (we’ll probably only start on Jan 8th though), and the second one should be there shortly. I ran a few M+ (it was fine, and fun), but I’m not really excited. It’s fun but I’m not blown away, but maybe I’m just not in a real WoW hype mode right now. I want to raid but for some reason we put it off until after the holidays. Also still unsure if I’m going Fury or Enhancement, that’s why I want to get the Shaman to around iLvl 370 in the next 10 days.

As I have one each of Plate, Mail, and Cloth – I’m now pondering to use my last prepaid character transfer on my Human Rogue (the only Alliance char on my original Vanilla server, whereas my other Alliance toons were on it’s connected sister realm, from where I transferred most of them off now anyway…) to my current server. I do have a Gnome Rogue there (who is also kind of old) but I like this Human Rogue. Maybe I should just do it and then level her, it’s not like I’m planning to really play on the other server a lot anyway.

While I am totally still trying to avoid to redo the slight burnout I had from Shadowlands launch, I have spent some time on my Warlock, but not excessively trying to gear her (no more gear treadmills for me this time, thank you very much) – but I guess if you want to play at max level, you kinda have to do a little with WQs and farming rares and so on. Leveling is relatively quick and fun though, so maybe getting that fourth armor proficiency class up is actually good enough. I don’t crave leveling more toons right now, but I just can’t not have a Rogue.

Back in June last year I thought about my (maybe excessive) list of addons – no, I didn’t count, but because of the complete Default UI revamp in Dragonflight I actually started fresh. Made a backup of my WTF folder and my Addons, then deleted everything. Of course it was clear from the start that I don’t want to play with zero addons, but the list should be a lot smaller now, so let’s have a look.

• Prio 1: UI and the absolute basics
  • BugSack
  • Bagnon + BagBrother
  • Prat
  • SexyMap
  • WeakAuras
• Prio 2: Raiding and still very important
  • BigWigs (not yet installed, but will grab it for raids)
  • Details (Damage Meter)
  • HandyNotes
  • Masque
  • Quartz (replaced by WeakAuras on some toons/specs)
  • Scrap
• Prio 3: I’d hate to lose this
  • Altoholic
  • Bazooka
  • TomTom
  • WorldQuestTracker (the default UI for WQs is just bad for a quick look, so many clicks)
• Prio 4: Not strictly necessary
  • Astral Keys

So that list is quite a bit shorter already. The big addons I eliminated (for now) are PitBull Unit Frames, Bartender 4, MoveAnything, Mapster and several “Mission Table” addons. I use a WeakAura instead of 2-3 XP display addons, I got rid of some StatBlocks

Stuff I probably need to add again are BigWigs (as mentioned above), SimulationCraft, and MythicDungeonTools/MythicRaidTools or whatever they are called

The small things I am missing at the moment are Examiner and SavedInstances. I’ve managed to level just fine with the default UI, but a few things are impossible to move, which isn’t so bad, but on the other also aggravating because we were nearly there. I did not need MoveAnything or PitBull or Bartender, but maybe I need one or several of them now after all because it’s only “nearly there” and not completely fine. Then again maybe my take is from a (even if only a little) competitive point of view, with Heroic raiding and M+ on the horizon, it was perfectly fine for leveling and Mythic 0.

So far I’ve also not grabbed an excessive amount of WeakAuras, but some things are simply so small and nice, or provide everything for a spec/class in a nice package. Guess I’ll ramp up a few there as well.

Overall: Nicely done Blizzard, this should cut down the amount of “basically mandatory” addons for basic tasks like moving Action Bars or Unit frames a lot for the baseline player doing Quests and Instances.