Thoughts on 8.2 so far

Since 8.2 came out, I've been diligently grinding out the rep during the days that I have play time available.  That tends to be 3-4 days a week during a busy summer, give or take.  While quite a few people already have flying unlocked, I'm about halfway to revered with the Unshackled folks and about 1/3 of the way there on with the Rustbolt crew.  I'm guessing I'll have flying unlocked sometime next week.

So here are my thoughts so far.

• Nazjatar sucks.  It's difficult to get around in, the mobs hit like trucks and a significant number of the daily quests, at least in my opinion, are just terrible.  Having to run around a difficult to navigate zone looking for the same random spawn starfish, seaweed, flotsam, whatever that 1,000 other people are looking for and seemed to have been placed right in the middle of areas with large numbers of mobs are less than fun.  Also, after so many years, we still can't come up with anything more compelling than "Go Kill 15 of Mob X"?   However, I'm guessing I'll enjoy it a lot more once I have flying unlocked and can get around easier.
• Good things on Nazjatar - the zone is beautiful, I like the bodyguard daily quests and leveling system and some of the side quests (Mardivas, and the various rune and ley line puzzles) are really fun and well done.
• I like Mechagon a lot at this point.  It would be even more interesting if I was an engineer, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit nonetheless.  Even without an emissary quest or the volume of world quests, the pace of gaining rep seems to be just fine.  I've gotten some neat mount rewards out of the zone so far which are unique and that I really like.

Love this guy.  Seems kind of like something you had to pay 1 million gold for in Legion, so even better that it was a free drop.

Still need to pick a pretty color for this guy, but love the mount.

• The rares in both zones seem really well done and have good, meaningful rewards
• There is definitely an incentive here to get back into pet battling because it grants a large amount of rep in some cases, so that's been interesting as I've tried to resurrect a team that hasn't really been used since MoP.
• Also, rep rewards from fishing.  Yes please!

So I think overall I'd give it good reviews.  The things that I'm really enjoying slightly outweigh the things that are pissing me off.  And as gated rep grinds go, it's not the worst they've ever done.\

I've finally gotten to the point where I'm finishing my rep grinds on Nazjatar and Mechagon with some time left over to continuing leveling my allied race toons.  I got the Void Elf Monk to 110.  He's the third allied race toon to make it to that point.  The Highmountain Tauren Warrior has moved up to around 82.  Everyone else is basically right where they were from the last update.

Cheers, 

Joar

More Grinding to Do For Flying

So this expansion's version of Tanaan Jungle / Argus will be releasing next week along with the requisite rep grind required to unlock flying.  So my time of gradually leveling up allied race toons and my various 110's will be drying up, at least until I get through the rep grinds and the new raid.

So I've continued to make really good progress.  My Horde shaman, who I am still leveling as Elemental, is sitting at level 117 and working his way through Zuldazar.  Will likely finish him up before the patch drops next week.

Here is where we stand with the rest of the allied race crew:

Void Elf Monk:  90 ->  99
Highmountain Tauren Warrior:  68 -> 80
Mag'har Orc Hunter:  48 -> 58
Dark Iron Dwarf Warlock:  50 -> 59
Zandalari Troll Druid:  53 -> 69
Kul Tiran Shaman:  49 -> 61

I'm enjoying all of them so far.  Once I get flying unlocked and the rest of the 110's leveled up (which will be 16 more to go), then I can finish these guys up.  Maybe one at a time at that point instead of a little bit at a time.

That's it for now.

Cheers,

Joar

Update on Leveling

Since the last update, I managed to get two more characters from 110 to 120 - Joarvyk the Horde Priest, and Joarpaw, the Alliance Monk.  Both were leveled in full heirlooms and took just under 11 hours.  The priest was surprisingly easy to level, but I really struggled with the monk at various points.  I ended up switching back and forth between Windwalker and Brewmaster quite a bit as a struggled with survivability at times.

My Horde shaman will be up next.  The plan is to level him as elemental, but we'll see if I'm able to stick with that.  A slightly different strategy that I'm going to use this time is to replace the heirlooms with decent azerite gear once I get it to see if sacrificing the XP boost is offset by the additional power.  We'll see how that works.

On the allied race front, I've continued to make quite a bit of progress:

Void Elf Monk  77 -> 90
Highmountain Tauren Warrior  54 -> 68
Mag'har Orc Hunter  40 -> 48
Dark Iron Dwarf Warlock  41 -> 50
Zandalari Troll Druid  41 -> 53
Kul Tiran Shaman 41 -> 49

That's about it for now.

Cheers,

Joar

Progress on Allied Race Leveling

So it's been a while since I've done any kind of meaningful update.  Most of what I've been focused on lately has been grinding out medals on Joar so I can get one of the mounts from Arathi / Darkshore stuff.  But besides that, it's really been all about leveling my allied race toons.  I've made quite a bit of progress since my last update:

Nightborne Priest - 86 -> 110
Void Elf Monk - 51 -> 77
Highmountain Tauren Warrior - 37 -> 54
Mag'har Orc Hunter - 23 -> 40
Dark Iron Dwarf Warlock - 20 -> 41
Zandalari Troll Druid - 20 -> 41
Kul Tiran Shaman  41

The total leveling time on my Nightborne Priest was about 2 days and 13 hours, which isn't great, but a substantial chunk of that happened before the current leveling nerfs.

My plan is to really stay focused on these guys until the the next patch releases and I have to go back to grinding for flying.

That's really it, sadly.

Cheers,

Joar

Allied Race Update

So I feel like I need to write something, but then I struggle with what to talk about.  Things have been relatively quiet on the gaming front.  I took a week away with the family for spring break, so there was no gaming at all for that period of time.  With the Darkmoon Faire in town this week, I grabbed those extra 5 points for each of my professions.  At some point I'll need to buckle down and drive the rest of them over the finish line, but for now I'm content with my 5 points a month.

Mostly, I've been working on leveling my allied race toons.  My Nightborne has gotten all the way to 101 and will be starting on the Legion content soon.

My next highest is my Void Elf, who is sitting at level 60 and will be heading to Borean Tundra soon (although I may do another level or two in classic zones first).  You can see where the rest of the group stands on the main page of the blog.

So we're making good progress on all the allied race folks.

The Draenor content went really quickly.  I took the short cut to Gorgrond from Timeless Isle, quickly set up my garrison, then basically went back to Gorgrond.  The quests and bonus objectives there took me all the way from 91 to 101 in a fairly short period of time.

I'm going to see how well it works to stay in the Legion zones until 111 or 112 and will report back next time.

Cheers,

Joar

A Switch To Allied Races

So I've decided to take a break from slamming toons through the 110-120 process, at least until flying is released in another couple of months.  Instead, I'm going to go back on focus on my allied race toons.

I made a fair amount of progress on them before Battle for Azeroth dropped.  Here is where they currently all stand.

Lightforged Draenei - 110
Nightborne Priest - 86
Void Elf Monk - 51
Highmountain Tauren Warrior - 37
Mag'har Orc Hunter - 23
Dark Iron Dwarf Warlock - 20
Zandalari Troll Druid - 20

Oh, and can I just say how much I love the old Zandalari balance druid form.

So you'll notice the lack of Kul Tirans on the list.  Well, about that.  I was chugging happily along assuming that I'd done everything I needed to in order to unlock the Kul Tirans.  I had the Kul Tiras Loremaster achievement, was Exalted with Proudmoore.  So imagine my surprise on patch day when there is no quest to unlock them for me.

Turns out, that while I had achieved Loremaster of Kul Tiras by completed each zone across several different toons, you have to complete the entire thing on a single toon in order to unlock another questline that has to also be completed in order to unlock the Kul Tirans.  I was only short by 4 portions of the Stormsong story line in order to finish it up on my main alliance toon, but now I'm working through the Pride of Kul Tiras quest line, which so far has been pretty decent.

In any case, once I finish up the process of of unlocking the Kul Tirans, my plan is to work on leveling my alliance race toons for a while until flying comes out.

I also did the Mimiron questline and unlocked all the various versions of Hati, which was pretty interesting.  Nice to have him back.

Cheers,

Joar

February Update

So I went through a few weeks where I was diligently hitting the world boss on each max level toon, working through both the Arathi and Darkshore Warfronts on the toons that were able to on each toon in the interest of gearing those toons up, and I made some decent progress over those weeks across all of my max level toons.

I do have trouble figuring out why I'm bothering.  I'm assuming there will be the normal late stage gear pinata at some point in the expansion that will let me quickly catch everyone up with substantially less work. 

I finished up the Battle for Dazar'alor raid on both an Alliance toon and a Horde toon and have caught up on the War Campaign on both sides.  It was a bit disappointing that the final Horde quest in the chain clearly had some serious bug issues.  It's probably only an issue when a lot of people are doing it at the same time, so it's possible they decided they just didn't care.

For any of you that might be getting stuck on that quest, what finally worked for me was hitting /reload as soon as Baine started his second piece of dialog. 

I've also been leveling the rogue.  I wasn't finding subtlety nearly as fun in this expansion as I did in Legion.  I tried Assassination for a while before finally settling on Outlaw.  Since my rogue is also my engineer, I should probably just do more PvP so that I have more marks for recipes later on, but so far I'm just doing the normal leveling thing.

Next up, after the rogue hits max level, will be the druid on the alliance side.  Plan is to level him as feral, but we'll see how that goes.

Cheers,

Joar

Back to Gearing a Bit

So I've been feeling like I need to slow down the breakneck leveling pace, so I've been going back to working on professions a little bit as well as focusing on gearing up some of my characters a little bit more.

I know have everyone geared up enough that they're at least able to do the Arathi Warfront, and it really only seems to take a couple of weeks of that to get to the point of being able to do Darkshore.

I managed to get both Tailoring and Cooking to 150, and all the other professions are at least started so they can cycle through the Darkmoon Faire quests each month.  Enchanting, leatherworking and herbalism are all at 110, so they're the next closest.

I also ran the first LFR wing of the new raid, which I really enjoyed.  Did it both from the alliance and horde side, which was kind of interesting.

I have been making decent progress on the alliance paladin, who is currently sitting at level 116.  I started leveling him as prot, but was finding that mobs were dying much too slowly, so have switched back to ret, at least for now.  After this guy is done, the Horde rogue will be up next.

Cheers,

Joar

A Real Life Pause in Leveling

I've had several very busy real life weeks that have seriously cut into my normal leveling time.  So I've made very little progress since my year-end update.  I did manage to get that 11th toon to 120, and toon #12, my Horde Goblin Warrior, is sitting at 117.  So I guess that's some progress.

I also did the latest phase of the war campaign on both the Horde and the Alliance.  It was something to do, but not particularly inspiring.  At least for me.

I spent a week out of town for work in New York City, which was fun, and a week out of town for work in Miami (in a windowless conference room, yay), but at least had dinner on the beach one evening.  So cheers for fresh air.

In NY, I had some of the most amazing sushi.  I'm not normally one to share pictures of food, but holy crap, you have to see this.

Also, the hotel, which was decorated for Christmas still, was pretty amazing.

In Miami, while I didn't actually get outside hardly at all, the view from my room was pretty cool (although no balcony and the window didn't open at all).

So, that's what's been keeping me from leveling, and blogging.  And work.  Lot's of work.

Looking forward to LFR on the new raid opening next week.  The eldest Joarling tells me the fights are pretty awesome.

Cheers,

Joar

2018 Year In Review

I used to do these year in review posts every year, and just noticed I haven't done one since 2015.  Going back and looking at my calendar, I think it's actually because I was off skiing with the family that past two years, so I suppose that's a reasonable reason to miss it.

But some IRL work stuff has me stuck this year, so at least we'll get a year in review blog post out of it!

2018 has been a pretty productive year from a leveling standpoint.  When last year finished up, I had just finished getting my 26th toon to level 110.  I ended up doing 7 more over the course of the rest of 2018 before Battle for Azeroth came out.  I also managed to finish up all the professions for Legion in 2018 as well since I had put that off longer than I ever had before.

There doesn't seem to be quite as much to do on quite as many toons at end game this time around, so I'm finding that has given me more time for leveling alts in Battle for Azeroth.  I have managed to get 10 different alts to level 120, and the 11th is about half way there.  For comparison purposes, at this same point in Legion, I only had 7 alts done, so we're running pretty far ahead of the normal pace.

I do need to go back and spend some time working through the professions.  I've been collecting a fair amount of materials as I've been leveling.  Just need to go back and knock a few more out.

That's really the update.  Once the current toon (Alliance death knight) is done, it'll be back to the Horde side with my goblin warrior.

Cheers,

Joar

Pre 8.1 Leveling Update and Plans

So I managed to finish toons #8 and #9 since my last blog update.  The mage was fine right up until the last 2 levels or so where the scaling seemed to be get a bit off, my ice shield turned to paper, and the last two levels became a constant corpse run.

Got through it though.  What only kills you a dozen times or so makes you stronger.  I guess.

Also started on the plan of switching between Alliance and Horde, so went back and did my alliance warlock, with War Mode on, just for something completely different.  Only got killed by the Horde twice during the entire 110-120 leveling process.

That's just sad, Hordies.  Sad.

It didn't really seem to speed up the time significantly at all.  I also leveled as Demonology, also just to change things up a bit, and did some battlegrounds since I was in PvP mode.  So the mage was 14 hours and 15 minutes played, and the alliance warlock was 16 hours and 2 minutes. 

Keep in mind, I do a lot of screwing around while leveling so these are intended to be casual times, not leveling speed records.

I'm back to Horde side now and working on the monk.  Not sure I'm liking leveling as Windwalker this time around, so I've been switching back and forth to Brewmaster on and off.  He's sitting at 114 now and just starting on Nazmir, so we'll see how things go as he gets closer to 117/118.

I'm looking forward to checking out the new content in 8.1 once it drops.  I think pretty much all of it should be available to me right away.  I realized as I was looking things over that I didn't have a Dwarf that was exalted with Ironforge or a Blood Elf that was Exalted with Silvermoon, so I've grabbed some tabards and I've been running a few dungeons, both to gear those toons up and to rectify that so I can hopefully grab those heritage armor sets sometime soon after they're available.

My primary alliance character is also pretty close to having all the key alliance reps at Exalted.  So should be able to grab my extra horses soon, along with the Dark Iron Dwarf allied race. So more to come on that!

Cheers!

Joar