5 Year Blogoversary (slightly late)

So my five year blogoversary past this past Monday without any fanfare because of real life obligations.  And because, not being in the Warlords of Draenor Alpha at this point, I don't have a ton to write about.  My various Warcraft toons are basically on hold, making gold each week, but generally hanging out waiting for the next expansion.  I've been playing a little bit of Wildstar, and, while it's an excellent game, I'm not sure even that is going to be enough to hold my attention until WoD drops.

But I did want to reflect a bit on what I've accomplished here over those 5 years since I first laid down the first post in this space.  At that time, I had exactly 2 level 80 max level toons (having only gotten one character to max level over the course of Vanilla and Burning Crusade.

So since then, I've managed to level a total of 15 characters to max level - one of each class on the Horde side on one server, and 4 alliance characters on another server.  I've also leveled one character to max level in Rift (with a second not far behind), one character to max level in SWTOR, and I'm about a third of the way there on Wildstar.

I may give up on Wildstar and go back to playing Rift a bit more.  My guardian mage is pretty close to max level but my defiant rogue / hunter has a way to go.  I have managed to get my Engineer / Settler to level 19, but I'm finding it's not a game that's as conducive as I'd like to an extremely casual play style.  I tend to play mostly while traveling (which is fine) or in the evenings while watching TV with my wife.  If I set things down to watch something or talk with my wife about something, it's not a great situation if that has a huge impact on me in game.  In WoW or Rift, I can park my toon in a safe place, and worse case scenario, I have to run back to my corpse.  That's not an option in Wildstar, and I've found that a bit frustrating.  But that's me as an extremely casual player.  Fantastic game and if I was playing a lot more than I am now, I'd probably be much more focused on it.

So cheers!  Thanks for those of you that have been reading!

Adventures in Wildstar

So I've started to dip my toes into Wildstar, including playing a little bit during the early launch period.  My play time has been pretty limited because of other real life commitments, but wanted to report out here on some initial thoughts.

I may need to change the name of this blog by the time it's all said and done, as I find myself still reporting out here as I try out and play other games.  I've talked in this space about Rift, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2, and now Wildstar.  My alt addiction hasn't changed, it's really just spreading as a disease to other platforms.

So here's what I've done so far on Wildstar.  My "main" character so far has been my Mordesh Engineer / Settler.  I'm enjoying the engineer so far as a ranged class with a decent amount of survivability.  It has a little bit of a pet class feel with the two bots that you get to run around with and that's firmly within my comfort zone.  The bots are a little buggy at times though and have a tendency to sometimes run off and do their own thing - particularly if you're in an area with heavy mob concentrations.

So far, I've been playing as a pure assault focused build, but I may switch that up a bit and try a "tankier" spec to see how that feels.  While the class overall works well, I"m not killing things overly fast.

The Settler path has been pretty interesting so far.  I like building the little buff stations that help out the other folks in the zone.  There are a lot of thing that show up with the settler icon - planting flowers, repairing banners and other things that I feel compelled to do because they have the little icon, but they don't really appear to be accomplishing much or adding value.  And it just reverses anyway after a period of time.  So while I'm still enjoying it, start to feel a little bit of regret on the Settler choice.

My other character that I've mostly been messing with has been a Human Spellslinger / Soldier.  So far I really like this one a lot.  Seems to still have good survivability and fun abilities.  The Soldier path, while not wildly popular, works pretty well for me.  As long as I'm out killing a bunch of stuff anyway, I may as well get "extra credit" for some of it.

I'm thinking about also trying an Esper / Explorer and and a Medic / Scientist - maybe on the Dominion side, just to try everything out a bit.  For right now though, I want to focus on working to get one of my first two to max level.  My engineer is only level 11, so I've got quite a way to go.

Update on the Joar Army

So there really hasn't been much going on lately for me in WoW.  I've been raiding on various toons when I can, and doing Ordos on a toon or two each week.  I just recently changed jobs, and that's taken a bit of a bite out of my normal play time as well.

Looking back over the blog, I realized that I haven't posted an update on ilvl for the whole Joar LFR team, so I thought I'd update that here.  I've actually make some decent progress on a small group of toons, having 4 toons over 520 ilvl versus only two the last time I posted about this topic here (which was way back on January 7th).

So here is the update

Warlock - 543 -> 548
Shaman - 508 -> 529
DK - still 526
Hunter - 511 -> 523
Priest - 505 -> 517
Druid - 511 -> 513
Warrior still 511
Mage - 503 -> 510
Paladin - 506 -> 508
Monk - still 506
Rogue - 501 -> 503

My shaman has obviously been the biggest mover, but honestly, that's just been an effort to pick up those last few glyph recipes more than anything.

Might be time to give the monk, rogue and paladin some love over the next week or so.

Act V Done on My Crusader - So Now I Do What?

So I finished up Act V on my Crusader this weekend, which ended up being really quite easy.  Not sure overall I enjoy the class as much as my Wizard, but it's still quite a lot of fun for me.  So my Crusader is sitting at level 45 or so, and I'm looking at the "what now" stuff - which seems to involved doing Adventure Mode bounties and Rifts at increasing levels of difficulty.

We'll have to see, but I'm not sure that's going to be enough to keep my attention.  I'm more of a quester and story line guy myself, so having to do the same stuff over again a few more times to get to max level...well, just not sure I'm going to be up for that.

And I really have no idea why I feel differently about that than I do about, say, running Siege of Orgrimmar over and over and over and over again.  I just do.  It's not even the possible drops and rewards from running Siege, because you get similar rewards from Adventure Mode.  I'm still going to give it a try to see if I can push the Crusader through to level 70, but I'm not feeling as enthusiastic about it as I was while finishing up the actual story line.

I've been working on the rest of the alliance army a bit as well.  I've got 7 toons left to go on the alliance side, and here's where they all stand.

Priest - level 48
Mage - level 46
Rogue - level 46
Druid - level 49
Paladin - level 49
Warrior - level 49
Monk - level 17

Having concluded I wasn't using my boost on my monk, I now need to go ahead and level that bad boy.  Which is a ton of fun anyway, so no issues there.

Should be getting the whole family off to Outland here in the foreseeable future, so that'll be fun.  And with that, they just started playing "Love Shack" by the B-52's.  Good music to kill gnolls by.

Reaper of Souls - Initial Crusader Thoughts

So I decided to assuage a little of my basic boredom around WoW by springing for Reaper of Souls.  I played D3 a little bit when it first came out but never really got into it.  Didn't have a single character past level 10, although I'd started a few.

So I thought I'd give the new Crusader class a try since I wasn't really invested in anything else.  So far, I've been enjoying it a fair amount.  He seems to have pretty good survivability - at least better than what I was seeing at low levels from my demon hunter or wizard - but puts out enough dps to get through most of the boss fights and large mob packs easily enough.

I'd tell you what build I've been using, but frankly, I've been messing around with it a fair amount, switching back and forth between Smite and Judge for my primary and trying a little bit of Fists of Heaven, Blessed Shield and Sweep Attack for my secondary.  It all seems to work fairly well.  Not sure it's as strong as other classes, but the AoE seems good enough to easily take down most large mob packs.

I've really been debating on the Utility spell.  Most of the builds that I see seem to rely on the Steed Charge, but I've actually really been enjoying using Provoke to get everyone's attention and rounded up so I can mow them down with my AoE.  Plus it is another Wrath generator which always helps as well.

So far, gear doesn't seem to be an issue.  Lots of interesting drops and plenty of legendaries to keep my character afloat as well as a few to set aside for alts.

Right now my Crusader is sitting at level 28 and just got started on Act III, so we'll see how it goes from here.

Lessons from a Boosted 60

So with my Warlords of Draenor pre-order, I went ahead and boosted by level 60 Shaman to 90, in the process earning him max level inscription and tailoring in the process.  The process seemed to work fairly well, was intuitive and easy to understand.  I then set about grabbing some quick Golden Lotus rep so I could learn the recipes for the spellthreads to start making some money.  Picked up a few extra glyph recipes in the process dropping off the mobs I killed for the Golden Lotus rep.

So far it has worked pretty well.

The only downside was the unexpected confluence of my decision to boost a 60 to take advantage of the veteran profession boost with Blizzard's decision to do a realm merge with my alliance server at the same time.  At least in the short term, the realm merge has had the immediate impact of cratering glyph prices, making it not nearly as lucrative as it appeared to be when I first started analyzing the process.

But glyph prices do tend to swing a fair amount over time, and I'm guessing a server merge is a fairly traumatic event to the local economy, so I'll stick it out for a while and see how it goes.

In the meantime, I continue to take down Ordos each week on an assortment of toons, run the occasional LFR here and there and am back to working on the rest of the alliance army.

Had an interesting run on my hunter this past week where I managed to get both best in slot trinkets to drop out of LFR in the same afternoon.  The turned around and had a Dinomancer Tome drop almost immediately on the Isle of Giants.  It was a good day to be my hunter.

Ordos finally put an end to his lucky streak by awarding him with the traditional double gold.  So you can't have everything.

I'm heading out on spring break next week, so won't be playing much or posting.  Will be soaking up the sunshine and barking at my kids to stop fighting.

To Boost a 60 or a Low Level?

So now I'm completely torn.  The final announcement that boosting a level 60 character to 90 will also boost both of that characters chosen professions to 600 makes my decision on which character to boost just a little bit harder.  My alliance shaman, who is an herbalist and inscriptionist is currently sitting at level 50, and would be pretty easy to level those last few levels.  Having a max level inscriptionist would be a nice source of gold for my other toons on that server, so it's very tempting to go ahead and level that toon, especially with how quickly a monk can level to 60 with full heirlooms and the xp boost.

So I'm tempted to go ahead and level the shammy those few extra levels and boost him for the extra source on income on my alliance server (where I currently have exactly 0 maxed professions).

In other news, I've continued to do a little bit of LFR here and there on my monk, my paladin, my shadow priest and my shaman.  I've been trying to get those last few random drop glyph recipes on the shaman without much success.

I've also gone back to leveling the alliance side army and have gained a few levels there on the shaman, priest, mage and rogue, all of whom are in the mid to upper 40's.

So that's the story for now.  I'll be running Ordos on a quite a few toons over the next few days just to gear a few more folks up, for reasons that sort of escape me.  And in the meantime, I might be focusing on that shammy a bit more.

Level 90 #14, and How Quickly We Gear

So on Friday, I managed to finally push my warlock over the finish line to 90.  I did it sitting in an airport boarding area.  I've been spending so much time waiting for delayed flights lately, I was thinking it might be interesting, in a sadly disturbed and insane kind of way, to level a character from 1-90 completely while sitting in airports, waiting on flights.

So when Saturday rolled around, it then quickly became an exercise in how quickly could I gear this character up.  She was basically starting out with a full set of Timeless Isle gear, with the exception of the neck piece, which I thought I had, but apparently not.  Must have used it on the bloody paladin or something.

In any case, I then purchased a second trinket from the JP vendor and ran Arena of Annihilation for the weapon.  That got my character geared enough for ToT, but not quite there for SoO.

One run through ToT was all it took, particularly the staff off the twins before Lei Shen, as well as tier pants and pretty new boots, and my new femdorf warlock was all ready for SoO.

I did manage to get her through the first wing.  Of course the Immerseus trinket, that I waited months and months for on Joar dropped for the dreaded femdorf the very first time through.

So within 24 hours of hitting 90, I was able to get my ilvl all the way up to 499, partially also with the help of nice PvP gloves off the Celestials.

So we'll continue to work her through SoO as time allows so that she can become the 12th member of the Joar army to kill Garrosh.

Raiding With Whoever

So I've discovered one enormous advantage of my adventure to kill Garrosh on a toon of every class.  When I feel like running LFR and doing a little raiding, I can pretty much just spin the character wheel and pick whichever class and toon that I want.  I'm not feeling any real need or drive to gear up any more toons - chance are they'll just be replacing that gear within the first few zones and dungeons of the new expansion anyway.

I had even considered working on getting the legendary cloak on more toons, but would that just mean that I wouldn't be replacing that item until level 97 instead of say, level 93.  Probably, so what's the point.

So for now, I'm just picking whatever toon inspires me at the moment, and jumping in.  If I get gear on that toon, or Secrets, or Runestones, great.  If not, that's fine too.  So for the last week or so, it's been primarily my hunter, my shaman and my shadow priest getting the love and attention.

I've also been very focused on continuing to level my alliance warlock and have managed to get them to level 83.  So definitely in the home stretch on that one.

A Return to Leveling the Alliance Army

So I've run out of things to distract me at this point, so I've gone back to working on leveling my alliance army.  Right now the warlock is getting the most attention, but I've been slowly working on the other 7 characters a bit while they have full rested xp.

Hard to believe it, but my last update on this blog on my various alliance toons was all the way back in October.  I'm actually pretty surprised with how much progress I've made since that point, with a total of 81 levels gained over that period of time.  I actually managed to get both my death knight and my hunter from 85 to 90 in that period of time as well.

So here's the update on a toon by toon basis from where they were in October to now:

Death Knight 85 -> 90
Druid 40 -> 45
Hunter 85 -> 90
Mage 39 -> 43
Paladin 40 -> 44
Priest 39 -> 44
Rogue 37 -> 43
Shaman 40 -> 46
Warlock 38 -> 72
Warrior 39 -> 44
Monk 10 -> 12

The monk is going to be the recipient of the free boost to 90 since he's obviously the toon that will benefit the most from it.

My plan is to finish the warlock up and then probably switch to either the priest or the shaman for the next concentrated burst.  I very seriously doubt I'll be able to get all of these to 90 before the next xpac drops, but that's no big deal.  Just something to do while I wait.

Dear Emperor Shahao

Dear Emperor Shahao,

First of all, let me thank you for the shiny, glowy new cloud serpent.  While I'm not sure it was really worth the effort, I do like a shiny sparkly new mount, so it does bring me some measure of joy.

With all that being said, I'm sending you this letter to tender my resignation effective immediately.  After stacking yaungol corpses so high that people no longer needed to use an albatross to get to Garnia, I'm officially done.

I'd also like to take this moment to suggest that you might want to consider getting some help.  I mean, what is your huge issue with the yaungol anyway.  They seem to be keeping pretty much to themselves, picking flowers and standing around campfires roasting, well, something.

I figure I've probably killed somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 yaungol for you at this point, but now I'm done, and no more yaungol will die at my hand in your name.

So please, don't ask for any more elites to be killed, I'm not gathering any more epoch stones.  Frankly, I think Nozdormu has put up with enough crap for one dragon and doesn't need more people screwing with the timeways  I will still be killing rares of course, because shiny pets!

So that's it.  You'll occasionally see me on the other side of the courtyard, queuing for pet battle tournaments or waiting for groups for the Celestials and after I've had some time to recover, I may every now and then give a friendly wave.  But it's going to take me some time.  Right now, I'm covered in yaungol blood, and I'm sort of done with you.

Good day, sir.

Joar