World of Warcraft

[Stigmata]

I stopped playing Shadowlands after I did all the dungeons on heroic and got my fully upgraded honor set. I loved playing my warrior and rogue this expansion, but it still feels like a single-player game to me. I'd rather wipe continuously in Classic with my goofy ass guild. If anyone else is on Benediction, let me know! I have a 49 paladin I'm leveling on there.

This Burning Crusade classic prospect does seem intriguing. BC was such a massive quality of life improvement for so many classes -- for half of the classes in Classic, you're pidgeon-holed into one spec.

 

[GoggleGirl17]

This Burning Crusade classic prospect does seem intriguing. BC was such a massive quality of life improvement for so many classes -- for half of the classes in Classic, you're pidgeon-holed into one spec.

But the subsequent raid drama is so delicious.

 

[Totenkindly]

Got a massive upgrade in my chest this week -- Upgraded my 184 ring to a 220 with the exact same stats. I haven't even really been playing much at all. Last week was probably the most mythic dungeons I'd ran in a long while. That +10 that was a wipefest ended up being worth it because it calculated my chest reward off that +10 dungeon. This brings my ilevel to 201.

I'm kind of at a standstill unless I either start pugging heroic/mythic raids, or do higher level keyed Mythic dungeons.

yeah. This might change later, as it did in BFA, once later patches roll out. (Things were capped around maybe iLvl 415 and then 445 for awhile there... the final ilevel was capped at 480 if you were mythic raiding... I got my pally up into mid/high 460's. Maybe the mythic raids always had the high levels, but world item boots were gatekept.)

I upgraded my legendary belt to 235 last night, so no more from that. My pally is 198 right now.

I also did not bother with LFR this week because the 187 is under what I have in almost every item now (I even have two trinkets in the 190's). Although I could probably run them on my priest and monk at this point, since I am over 170 with both. I don't even need them to get mats for my Enchanting, I passed some kind of balance point and now have about 50 purple-rank mats saved, and tons of the others.

This is a huge shift from the last expansion where people were playing regularly in War Mode and there were regular events for PvP and essentially two separate locations (one for each faction). We all share locations now, and I don't know who plays in War Mode. If you want PvP you need to do PvP battlegrounds. I am not much of a formal PvP person but I always got a kick out of world PvP events and the pure chaos.

 

[Stigmata]

yeah. This might change later, as it did in BFA, once later patches roll out. (Things were capped around maybe iLvl 415 and then 445 for awhile there... the final ilevel was capped at 480 if you were mythic raiding... I got my pally up into mid/high 460's. Maybe the mythic raids always had the high levels, but world item boots were gatekept.)

I upgraded my legendary belt to 235 last night, so no more from that. My pally is 198 right now.

I also did not bother with LFR this week because the 187 is under what I have in almost every item now (I even have two trinkets in the 190's). Although I could probably run them on my priest and monk at this point, since I am over 170 with both. I don't even need them to get mats for my Enchanting, I passed some kind of balance point and now have about 50 purple-rank mats saved, and tons of the others.

This is a huge shift from the last expansion where people were playing regularly in War Mode and there were regular events for PvP and essentially two separate locations (one for each faction). We all share locations now, and I don't know who plays in War Mode. If you want PvP you need to do PvP battlegrounds. I am not much of a formal PvP person but I always got a kick out of world PvP events and the pure chaos.

Oh wow, nice. You geared up pretty quickly once you got to around the heroic level gear. I may go back and start working on gearing up my Hunter (I level this up first to 60 but then abandoned it for the Priest).

 

[Totenkindly]

Oh wow, nice. You geared up pretty quickly once you got to around the heroic level gear. I may go back and start working on gearing up my Hunter (I level this up first to 60 but then abandoned it for the Priest).

It went super fast -- once you get your Covenant advanced... i'm now getting 194-196 level drops in World Quests. I also get an occasional 200+ drop (like a 204 weapon and a 197 trinket) from doing the purple covenant daily. (There are probably two purples a week.)

And then I boosted a lot of my spec gear from the covenant. most are at 190 or 197 (max).

 

[Totenkindly]

1. Finished all four Covenant Exalteds earlier this week. (Currently at 98 Exalteds... I guess to hit 100, I might sadly have to farm pirates in classic areas for Goblin rep. Which is sad. That farming sucks. I'll see if I have 2 others left that I can squeak out instead, but... not sure.)

2. Getting exalteds gives you the typical random assortment of armor and recipes and tabards for purchase. It also lets you buy one mount right now as well for each covenant.

3. I am at 339 mounts apparently and need 11 more for the 350 achievement and freebie mount. this isn't hard to do -- I've got about 6-7 mounts I know how to get but just have to finish doing the questlines for, and then there are others you can purchase... it's just they are a little more expensive. Anyway.

4. I am running the Valentine's Day boss fight for the two weeks, on 15 characters. Takes me about an hour. The drop rate for the Big Love Rocket is not high, that is for sure. However, a guy in one of my PUGs yesterday got it. So it does exist. It's just an annoying mount drop because the event only happens once a year for two weeks, rather like the headless horseman mount drop.

5. I am still doing a few other mount/toy drops -- Rustfeather and Arachnid Harvester in Mechagon, Will of Nzoth in the odd weeks, and Ahn-De the Loyal and Horseman Ren in the Mogu invasion in the Vale, which is 4 days every two weeks. Plus running for the mounts in THe Gates of Hell and Light's Shield lfr (and higher raids) from Legion. I also will finish the keystones for Normal and Heroic Nighthold this week, so I can go right to the end and mount-farm Guldan. But much of the other stuff I dropped. I think all that repetitive mount farming last year resulted in just two big wins for me: The two shadow (purple/black) dragons from Huolon on Timeless Isle and the Sha of Anger.

Never did get Invincible.

 

[Totenkindly]

This is hilarious. I know this quest pretty well, i just didn't know you could break it and spawn a bear army from hell. I can imagine the noise from exploiting it for pvp would get a lot of attention, hence the advice to stick with gold farming. Those mobs in SW mists are pretty nasty, I'm impressed the bears chew them up so quickly.

EDIT: I guess I should say the 40 person raid to defeat that World Boss takes about 90 seconds to complete? The bears kill it in about 5 seconds. ROFLMAO.

 

[Stigmata]

Anduin is getting the Arthas treatment by the looks of the nee patch trailer. I swear if we have to kill Anduin at some point, I will lose my shit. I also can totally see them trying to redeem Arthas in some way now.

Also announced at Blizzcon is TBC Classic wow.

 

[Totenkindly]

So I've been running about 15 characters a day (level 50+) through the Valentine's Day daily, hoping to get that sick mount but nope, nothing yet. Almost done for this year. It's pretty rare, although I did see it drop for someone in a PUG I was in. That was cool.

I also did the Pandaria TW pretty easily, I know those dungeons very well now, and since I had 190+ characters, they clear things pretty well. Still, there's always an occasional blip.

Like, in White Tiger Temple, our tank aggroed everything outside halfway through -- then suddenly typed "Whoops, sorry, I gotta go" and quit; thanks dude, we all wiped. I hope it was a real emergency, because otherwise he could have just dropped after making sure nothing was aggroed and the new tank could have picked it up.

Had another run with the honey dungeon, where it was clear at least two people (including the tank) did not know the dungeon, they kept trying to run down the steps rather than knowing the entire second boss takes place standing at the top of the temple and you have to mortar the honey bombs on the mantids coming up for a few cycles before the general also comes up. And then they stood at the gate when the bombs were set and got blown up; and then they ran down the road and aggroed two packs instead of sidestepping them all (so I mounted and ran ahead to lead everyone the rest of the way after that)... and then they thought they could skip most of the packs in the field and sneak around to just aggro the boss... NO, because about 30 seconds in, Phase 2 hits and he runs to the middle of the field to shield himself, so then he aggroes EVERYTHING that is left including the new pack of non-elites rushing in. (We were high enough level / geared well enough that we wiped out everything anyway, but if it had been a lesser-geared party? Ouch.) I was kind of curious to see how LITTLE of the dungeon they knew, since we seemed geared well enough to compensate; yeah, no, they didn't know anything apparently.

My priest got a 200 socketed helm. My pally got a 200 level trinket that upped my DPS by 3.5% so... good? I just have my monk as far as L60 characters I can finish TW with.

I am currently doing daily runs on Sethekk to get the Raven Lord mount if possible. (It's quick and easy.) Also level another horde and alliance up in Shadowlands -- I have noticed you can still get 3-6K per chest you open in Mechagon in the 51-53 level range. in case someone need fast XP. I still have not decided which is more of a grind -- Threads of Fate leveling or just following the conventional questline starting with Bastion.

Anduin is getting the Arthas treatment by the looks of the nee patch trailer. I swear if we have to kill Anduin at some point, I will lose my shit. I also can totally see them trying to redeem Arthas in some way now.

Yeah, I'm honestly not really keen on messing with Anduin. I mean, even as a Hordey, I have watched Anduin grow up through these games and he is the one really pure/noble soul out there. I really don't want to drag him through the muck or do shitty things to him. Maybe Sylvannis might find some redemption here? I dunno, she's pretty far gone... but she's had a pretty long arc resulting from her untimely death. This is one of those things where if she could be reborn and find peace somewhere, that would be understandable and rather cool; they kind of need to wrap her arc up.

Also announced at Blizzcon is TBC Classic wow.

I saw that. i was gonna bring it up for the Classics crowd, I wonder how they are feeling about it. I mean -- is Blizzard going to keep progressing through, or just far enough to get the Draenei and the Belfs into the game...?

 

[Totenkindly]

World of Warcraft: Shadowlands completely changes the Maw - Polygon

Changes /Additions are coming?

WoW: Burning Crusade Classic will let you level boost once so you can jump right in, but you'll have to pay for it

 

[Totenkindly]

So I lucked out with RNGs this Timewalking event and got all upgrade items:

Priest: 200 helm with socket
Pally: 200 level trinket
Monk: 200 ring w/ avoidance stat (I had a 152 and a 174 ring, so this was a huge upgrade!)

TWs go really fast too. The Monk I did all today, didn't take long, was on alliance, had good groups. I also was around 172 iLvl to start and did really well (and finished my day at around 180 iLvl) -- it was much more fun that trying to do one of the new dungeons when I was only level 155-160 in Maldraxxus, it was the one with all the acid in it. Painful experience. I think Monk is a bit squishy, so like with DH, if you're better geared and know the dungeon and have a good tank, it goes far better.

Plus I had blitz-leveled my Monk and never did any of the dungeons, so I was also doing the dungeon quests on the PUG. The tank was really nice during Siege of Niuzao Temple -- I missed a cage / we didn't kill all the mobs to free them all up -- and he asked me before doing the last boss, and then went back with me to clear a final pack so I could complete it. We wiped on the second boss but everyone just laughed... i was honestly kind of surprised we wiped, we had almost finished him and suddenly he was all over me... I guess the tank dropped. But hey, it was enjoyable because people weren't jerks about it.

Didn't get the Big Love Rocket this year, alas, despite (let's see)... 210 attempts. But hey, the drop rate is only around 1/3000 from what I understand. [From calculations, there is a 50% chance that if I do the same amount over the next 9 years -- for a total of 10 years -- I will see the mount. whee.] Maybe next year.

 

[Stigmata]

So I lucked out with RNGs this Timewalking event and got all upgrade items:

Priest: 200 helm with socket
Pally: 200 level trinket
Monk: 200 ring w/ avoidance stat (I had a 152 and a 174 ring, so this was a huge upgrade!)

TWs go really fast too. The Monk I did all today, didn't take long, was on alliance, had good groups. I also was around 172 iLvl to start and did really well (and finished my day at around 180 iLvl) -- it was much more fun that trying to do one of the new dungeons when I was only level 155-160 in Maldraxxus, it was the one with all the acid in it. Painful experience. I think Monk is a bit squishy, so like with DH, if you're better geared and know the dungeon and have a good tank, it goes far better.

Plus I had blitz-leveled my Monk and never did any of the dungeons, so I was also doing the dungeon quests on the PUG. The tank was really nice during Siege of Niuzao Temple -- I missed a cage / we didn't kill all the mobs to free them all up -- and he asked me before doing the last boss, and then went back with me to clear a final pack so I could complete it. We wiped on the second boss but everyone just laughed... i was honestly kind of surprised we wiped, we had almost finished him and suddenly he was all over me... I guess the tank dropped. But hey, it was enjoyable because people weren't jerks about it.

Didn't get the Big Love Rocket this year, alas, despite (let's see)... 210 attempts. But hey, the drop rate is only around 1/3000 from what I understand. Maybe next year.

Carry my Dwarf hunter to get gearrrrrrrr

 

[Totenkindly]

Carry my Dwarf hunter to get gearrrrrrrr

ROLFMAO.

Honestly... if you want to screw around and have me carry you or something, I'm cool with that. What level's your hunter / what dungeons are you doing? I'm always happy to do old content to xmog. I've got 7 level 50+ alliance and a level 60 ilvl 180 monk, so.

 

[Stigmata]

ROLFMAO.

Honestly... if you want to screw around and have me carry you or something, I'm cool with that. What level's your hunter / what dungeons are you doing?

I think it is 158. I pretty much leveled it to 60, did a few dungeons, then stopped. I haven't logged onto it in in several months. I've been itching to play a DPS, though.

 

[Totenkindly]

I think it is 158. I pretty much leveled it to 60, did a few dungeons, then stopped. I haven't logged onto it in in several months. I've been itching to play a DPS, though.

Oh okay, so you'll need to be doing current content. I don't think I can carry you through a dungeon on my own, lol... Although if you're stuck on a WQ or something, sure.

Battlenet: Charde#1583

 

[Stigmata]

I've got like a level 38 prot paladin, 35 rogue I was messing around on tonight, and a 52 Resto shaman. Given how un-alt friendly shadowlands seems to be thus far, I've been procrastinating on leveling them.

 

[Totenkindly]

I am expecting at some point that the anima costs to activate your Covenant quad of activities to be reduced and/or removed, especially if new content opens.

With my main, I fully activated the teleports and the anima channels. I did the first level of the remaining too, but honestly who will waste anima activating levels 2 and 3 of the Mission table? And from my understanding, it's not worth really investing in the Fae Garden until you can open the max level, whereupon you think have the ability to try for mounts with the most success, etc. (The Level 1 rewards are garbage.) I can't vouch for the others, I did open level 1 of the Maldraxxus one but never figured out how to use it, so I have to Wowhead it at some point... and i haven't messed with revendreth parties yet. I will not have a Bastion main at 60 until sometime in the near future when I finish level my next alliance.

It's just ludicrous for anima to feed into everything (including all the covenant rewards), and for them to essentially demand 16K anima to activate three of the four fully, and then a good 43.5K anima for the last one. Just getting to 10K feels like a chore and you pretty much just have to priority that to get it done in a reasonable time as opposed to other content. Torghast and Soul Ash? Ha! I've barely had time to run any Torghast except what the class quests mandate. I am still trying to open up vendor rep on my other two 60's so I have three people trying for the Maw mount every two weeks.

 

[Totenkindly]

Weird. I went in over lunch and the Love Is In the Air event was still active despite supposedly ending at 10am today with the daily reset. So I did another full roster through the dungeon before it disappeared. This time, while I did not get the BLR, I did get a toy -- the Heartbreaker (1.1% supposedly). So... not a complete waste?

Not sure if I mentioned, but I got the Frightened Kodo mount last week. It appears for a few minutes in Darkshore down near the cracks where Cataclysm shattered the road (about 2/3 of the way down the map). I had been trying to locate this mount for some months, on and off... and this time I happened to have my druid stationed there for a few days. And I saw there was a reset scheduled on an off-day, so I logged in about when the system came back up after the reset. The mount wasn't picked up on my NPC Scan add-on, but I flew around for a minute before leaving and literally about ran into it as it darted around, so I grabbed him, barely believing my good fortune.

341 mounts, 9 more to go, for the "No Stable Big Enough" achievement. I have at least 4 dreadtalons to finish growing, and another mount to finish in WoD stables, so this is very doable especially if I just buy some last few mounts I never bought or get lucky on a drop or two.

 

[Stigmata]

I am expecting at some point that the anima costs to activate your Covenant quad of activities to be reduced and/or removed, especially if new content opens.

With my main, I fully activated the teleports and the anima channels. I did the first level of the remaining too, but honestly who will waste anima activating levels 2 and 3 of the Mission table? And from my understanding, it's not worth really investing in the Fae Garden until you can open the max level, whereupon you think have the ability to try for mounts with the most success, etc. (The Level 1 rewards are garbage.) I can't vouch for the others, I did open level 1 of the Maldraxxus one but never figured out how to use it, so I have to Wowhead it at some point... and i haven't messed with revendreth parties yet. I will not have a Bastion main at 60 until sometime in the near future when I finish level my next alliance.

It's just ludicrous for anima to feed into everything (including all the covenant rewards), and for them to essentially demand 16K anima to activate three of the four fully, and then a good 43.5K anima for the last one. Just getting to 10K feels like a chore and you pretty much just have to priority that to get it done in a reasonable time as opposed to other content. Torghast and Soul Ash? Ha! I've barely had time to run any Torghast except what the class quests mandate. I am still trying to open up vendor rep on my other two 60's so I have three people trying for the Maw mount every two weeks.

All of what you're saying is why I'm becoming much more intrigued at the idea of TBC Classic. I just hate how much busy world one would have to complete per week just to stay caught up, which wasn't nearly as big of an issue in the previous expansions. I don't have 8+ hours a day to play anymore -- I'm in my thirties, not my teens. I just wanna reach a point where if I complete the necessary work beforehand, I can reap the rewards later by being able to just kinda log on and do raids/dungeons at my leisure.

Also, I'm having the itch to DPS on a Rogue but it seems none of the specs are in a particularly good place right now in terms of damage output. I wonder what changes patch 9.1 will bring to remedy this. I hit 35 last night on my void elf Rogue, yet am struggling to stay motivated throughout.

 

[Totenkindly]

Also, I'm having the itch to DPS on a Rogue but it seems none of the specs are in a particularly good place right now in terms of damage output. I wonder what changes patch 9.1 will bring to remedy this. I hit 35 last night on my void elf Rogue, yet am struggling to stay motivated throughout.

Not sure. Early out of the game for Shadowlands, Subtlety was peaking which was a nice change. Outlaw was operating in the middle somewhere, Assassination was doing badly -- but then apparently very recent changes have improved the latter significantly at least for raiding.

My horde rogue is level 53 and I will take her to 60 first before moving to any other characters... I like being able to open boxes. But will I play her much after? I dunno. I don't think any rogue is at the top of raid right now, but it keeps changing. Mythic is a little different.

I was going to develop a fire mage because everyone loved frost... and now it looks like Fire is doing very well. Also, Balance Druids, Marksman Hunter still, Shadow Priest, etc.

I don't really enjoy my DH as much as I did in BFA. I loved it because it felt "off the rails" -- the faster you could go, the crazier things got in a good way. But now it still feels like I'm fighting through molasses. meh. Everything is toned back.