Looking forward to 8.3

Having accomplished all of my goals for 2019 and for the anniversary event, I've sort of run out of things to do.  With the leveling streamlining that will be coming with the new expansion, I really don't want to start leveling a new character.  

So for that reason, I'm really looking forward to the patch coming next week.  Seems like there is going to be lots of new content to get through once that drops including some pretty long introductory quest lines, which I'll likely be running on 6-8 different characters.  Between that and new Warfronts and new Incursions and everything else, hopefully that'll be a lot of progress in filling my time gaps.

In the meantime, I've been working mostly on making some extra gold.  Was debating whether I wanted to buy the brutosaur mount thing, but I'm not entirely sure it's worth 5 million gold just to avoid having to mail things to an AH alt. 

I may do some PvP as I enjoyed that a bit during the anniversary event.

So for now, I'm back to running emissary quests on 5 different toons each day, and doing some crafting and farming for gold.  I've never actually done a heroic warfront, so I might give that a try as well.

Cheers, 

Joar

 

2019 World of Warcraft Year In Review

This year, I'm continuing with the tradition of the annual year-in-review blog post.  Once again, the family is not off skiing during these last few weeks of the year.  Instead, the youngest Joarlings, who are both competitive swimmers, are spending a few hours each day with weightlifting and swim practice.  So that means we get a blog post summary again this year.

During 2019, I've managed to level 29 characters to 120, giving me a grand total of 39.  I've got one more that I'm working on during the anniversary bonus, and I expect he'll be done by the end of the week, giving me a grand total of 40.  Thirteen of those 29 have been completed during the last two months while the anniversary bonuses have been active.  This has also included getting seven of the eight allied races to max level.  One of my favorite things has been the heritage armor sets for the various allied races.

Looking back at last year's update, I had just managed to get all of the professions to max level shortly before writing that update.  I'm nowhere close this time around.  There doesn't seem to be as much need to level the professions.  The fact that you don't have to be maxed in order to train the next expansion's professions really eliminates the pressure entirely.  Right now, I have five professions of the fourteen currently maxed.  I've got one more that will be done soon, but the other 8 may not end up getting finished at all.  There just doesn't seem to be a compelling reason.

In other updates, I've got a Horde and an Alliance character that have both been fully through the current content.  My main has completed all of the raids on LFR and I'm really looking forward to the new expansion in mid-January. 

Right now, the big consideration is going to be what to do after the anniversary bonus expires in a week.  I will likely go back to running daily emissary quests on 4-5 different toons.  I may also work on completing the rep for heritage armor sets on a blood elf, dwarf, gnome and paladin.  The gnome has the farthest to go.  There will obviously be new content and new raids with the new patch that will take some time, and I'll at least want to get characters set up for the new allied races.  I'm likely done with leveling until Shadowlands hits though.

I may also spend some time on gold making.  This expansion hasn't been a particularly good one for me from a gold standpoint.  Part of that is I've spent quite a bit on new mounts and on upgrading heirlooms (leveling so many toons is pretty expensive on that front).  I'm still net ahead for the expansion, but not by nearly as much as normal.

So that's the update for 2019.  Hope you'll continue following into the new decade!

Cheers,

Joar

Ding. Level 120 #36 is done. Three characters of each class complete.

So I managed to hit 120 on my Highmountain Tauren Warrior yesterday.  It was an interesting milestone because it managed to give me three characters of each class complete, and also finished getting all of the Legion Allied Race Characters to 120 as well. 

I'm now left with working on the remaining four Allied Race Characters from Battle for Azeroth.  As noted in my last post, all of those are at least level 60 already.

My plan is to work on the two alliance characters first, simply because I like the alliance leveling zones in BfA the least, and if I'm potentially only going to get two done before the anniversary bonus expires, I'd prefer it be those two.

Also, I've been trying to get a handle on when the experience bonus for Korrak's Revenge ends up being better than leveling.  It is definitely not the case in the 60's and 70's for leveling.  I'm goign to give it another try in the mid 80's.  The leveling in Legion with Treasures and Gorgrond Bonus Objectives is so fast anyway, I doubt that it's faster in the 90's even if it is in the 80's. 

I already tested the Highmountain Tauren through Legion and Korrak's / AV is definitely faster than the Legion zones.  The exception is when invasions / incursions are up.  You can always just wait for those and work on characters while those are up, but if you're just powering through, you'll be lucky to get one up anyway.

After I get these guys up to 120, I'll likely to continue to do daily emissary quests on my five horde-side mains but then switch to working on finishing the rep to get the last of the Heritage Armor sets that I don't already have.  Those four are Blood Elf, Dwarf, Gnome and Tauren.  Gnome is farthest away as the highest rep of my two gnomes is at 5,100 / 12,000 towards revered.  The other three are all around halfway to Exalted, so shouldn't be too bad.  One of those two gnomes was a Death Knight, so that's at least part of the reason the rep is bad.

Cheers,

Joar

Maybe Working on the Allied Race Toons a Little

So having gotten all of my 110's to 120, and with the anniversary bonus still sitting there calling to me, I've decided to go ahead and work on the allied race toons a little bit.  So I'm setting this blog post in place as an indicator of where I started with my remaining non 110/120 allied race characters.  So here is the list:

Highmountain Tauren Warrior - level 80
Mag'har Orc Hunter - level 58
Dark Iron Dwarf Warlock - level 59
Zandalari Troll Druid - level 69
Kul Tiran Shaman - level 61

So we'll see how far I get before the anniversary bonus expires.

Beyond that, I'm mostly just doing emissary quests each day on my five "mains", mostly for gold and whatever happens to drop.

Cheers,

Joar

Anniversary Provides Change In Plans

So the anniversary bonuses and events provided a quick change in plans and basically threw everything I said in my last blog post out the window.

Since that time, I've used the anniversary rep token and the new Korrak's Revenge / Old School AV event to level absolutely ALL of my remaining level 110 characters to 120.  It was taking on average about 3 1/2 hours each to go from 110-120 in AV.

So those are all done, and I've now got 35 characters sitting at 120. 

I'm now back to running the daily emissary on 5-6 different characters.  I've debated working on the remaining allied race toons and leveling them using the xp token as well.  I've decided to do those a little bit and work on my character in classic a little bit.  Running the emissary quests each day doesn't take a ton of time and seems to be keeping the gold rolling in.

Cheers,

Joar

Impact of Shadowlands on Alt Leveling Plans

Since my last blog update, I've managed to get toon #26 to 120, my third demon hunter.  This character was the fastest one yet, with a leveling played time from 110 to 120 of 8 hours and 29 minutes.  Characters #27 and #28 are well underway with one sitting at 116 (hunter) and the other at 112 (death knight).

The announcement from Blizzcon over the weekend really got me thinking about my plans for continuing to level alts over the remainder of this expansion (which could be as much as one more year in theory)  With a 60-70% reduction in leveling time, it really raises the question of whether it makes sense to continue to work through these.  Although not working on them raises the additional question of what else would I do?

So here is where things currently stand.  Excluding the two already in progress noted above, I have 7 more level 110's that need to be leveled to 120.  Assuming a 65% reduction in leveling time, and a 9 hour average played time between 110 and 120, if I continue to work on these pre-Shadowlands, I'd essentially be wasting about 30 hours of time.  That's a lot.

In addition to those 7, I've got 5 allied race toons at various points between level 58 and level 86.  Those seem like an easier call to not work on until after the new expansion.

So then the question of what to do instead.  In Classic, my warlock is sitting at level 29, and I've got some interest in working on the hunter, since I can't seem to make up my mind between drain tanking and voidwalker leveling. 

On retail, there are a number of things that I could work on accomplishing:

• Finish maxing all the BfA professions (only 3 of the 15 are currently sitting at 175)
• Work on making some gold.  I've already got a fairly decent amount of gold, although I've basically been pretty flat for this expansion, so I could look at opportunities to do more there.  I've been spending a fair amount on heirlooms and some of the other mounts and not doing quite as much to make money, particularly on my main server.
• Finish grinding out a few mounts - never did get the paragon mount for Unshackled, and could work on the meta mounts for Mechagon and Nazjatar.  Plus farming other old school raid mounts.
• Go back and work on more pet battle achievements.  I started on this a bit when Mechagon and Nazjatar first came out when it became obvious there was additional rep available from pet battles, but I lost interest after a while.

Still deciding what approach I want to take, so we'll see where that goes.  As always, suggestions are appreciated.

Cheers, 

Joar

Third Server Underway. Level 120 #25 is Done

So I'm mostly back to leveling.  I gave up on the Unshackled Paragon mount after 7 unsuccessful attempts.  I'm splitting time between classic and retail, because I feel like I'm going to run out of toons on the retail side long before the new expansion comes out.  Unless there's some kind of grindy obnoxious new content as part of the new patch.

I managed to hit level 120 on my first character on my third server today.  Destruction warlock.  It's probably my least favorite warlock spec to level this expansion, but even with that, it was still totally fine.  I've got a survival hunter that I'm leveling with a friend that's about halfway through, sitting at level 115.  I've also started my third demon hunter through the process, but he's still fairly early on.

I may shift back to alliance for the fourth toon on this server and do another frost DK. 

Happened upon the mysterious flying fish of Zuldazar today while finishing up the warlock. 

All of it's buddies were clearly down below in the river, so I sort of felt bad for this guy.  Must be kind of lonely just hanging out there in mid air.

Cheers,

Joar

Almost Done with Alliance Toons

I'm very close to being done with leveling a toon of each class on the alliance side as well.  Character number 24 is sitting at level 118, definitely in the home stretch.  I'm using the same approach with this one that I did with my Horde shaman, taking the Azerite gear for Head, Shoulders and Chest instead of using heirlooms in those spots. 

I'm not sure if it's improving the leveling speed in the slightest (for the shaman, it felt like it didn't), but the extra survivability definitely makes me enjoy the process more, so I'll sacrifice the time.

It's been a while since my last update, but I did manage to get three more characters to max level.  Enhancement shaman, Dear God Whatever Will Keep Me Alive Rogue (had issues picking a spec there if you can't) and A Little Bit Of Everything Mage.  As I mentioned earlier, the mage I leveled with a friend.  There was a lot of time waiting as a result, so the leveling time there wasn't great.  Frankly, the leveling time for two of the three wasn't great:

Shaman - 10 hours, 25 minutes (3rd fastest so far)
Rogue - 12 hours, 32 minutes (interestingly, identical to the Horde shaman)
Mage - 12 hours, 5 minutes

The priest has felt pretty good through the leveling process, so I'll be interested to see what his numbers end up at.

Also, I've still been grinding out Unshackled rep for Paragon chests in the hopes of getting the mount to drop.  I'm 0/4 so far, and slightly more than half way to number 5.  It's getting a bit frustrating, but I'm planning to continue with it for now.

I also did the stuff needed to unlock the rep grind for the bee mount, although I likely won't take that on until I get the Unshackled mount.

After the priest, it'll be on to my third server, where as usual, I'll be starting with a warlock.  This one will be leveled as Destruction, just because I haven't done that yet.  After that, it'll be a survival hunter.

Cheers,

Joar

Update on Alliance Leveling

So my alliance warrior managed to hit 120 about 2 days after my last blog post.  His time from 110 - 120 was about 40 minutes slower than the previous character that I had leveled with flying, but I was using a slightly different leveling path.

For the next group of four alliance toons that I have left, I've been using a slightly different tactic.  First, I've been rotating between the four, particularly once I use up rested XP.  My enhancement shaman seemed to run out fairly quickly, so I had him parked for a while.  I did manage to get to 119 on him today before running out of rested XP again.

My mage I've been leveling with a friend.  Can't really seem to decide on the spec that I like.  I'm leveling with a paladin tank, so good AOE is key, and right now the honors on that seem to be split between Fire and Frost.  Seem to be sticking with Frost lately.  The mage is currently sitting at level 116. 

After I ran out of rested XP on the enhancement shaman, I started my alliance rogue.  So far, with heirlooms, rogue has been my least favorite.  I've died A LOT while leveling.  There are a few basic quests that I struggled to get done.  Not even the WANTED: XXX (you may need help with this) kind of quests, but just some of the basics.  Very frustrating.  I've been switching back and forth between specs trying to find something that felt right, but I haven't found anything that seemed particularly comfortable.  Outlaw felt fine the first time through, but it ends up feeling significantly underpowered in heirlooms.  In any case, the rogue is now sitting at level 117.

I've also started the priest, but have only gotten him as far as Boralus, so no real progress, but if I run out of rested XP on the rogue as well, I'll spend some time on the priest.  I doesn't seem like there's a viable leveling alternative other than shadow, so I will likely stick with that.

In the meantime, I've had no luck on my first two paragon caches for Unshackled, but I'm keeping at it.  And I have at least gotten enough manapearl thinys to outfit all 20 of my 120's in full benthic gear.

On the classic side, my warlock is at level 15 and getting ready to head from Silverpine to the Barrens, where he will begin pondering the eternal question, don't all Zhevra's have hooves?

Cheers,

Joar

Returning to the Unshackled

I decided to go back and keep doing quests in Nazjatar every day to try to get some paragon caches with a chance for the Snapdragon mount.  So we'll see how long that holds my interest.

Meanwhile, leveling on the Fury Warrior is coming along well.  My play time has been fairly limited lately, so it's somewhat slow going.  But he's working his way through Drustvar and is sitting at level 114.  I finally decided that doing the Nazmir foothold first at lower levels made more sense, and it definitely seemed to work out that way. 

Alliance shaman will be up next and I'll be doing him as Enhancement since I haven't done that yet.

I've also been doing full LFR runs every week because I'm trying to grab one of the trinkets.  So far no luck though.

Cheers,

Joar

Remaining Alliance Characters

So I've already pushed my alliance warrior to level 113.  I've been playing mostly as Fury, which has been fine, although I'm not sure I enjoy it as much as Arms for leveling.

I'm looking at the remaining roster of alliance characters and trying to figure out what order I'd like to level them in.  After the warrior, I have mage, shaman, rogue and priest left.  I leveled my Horde shaman as elemental, so I will likely do this one as enhancement.  I did the Horde mage as frost, so may try arcane for this one.  Rogue will likely stay Outlaw and Priest will almost definitely be shadow (unless I do something crazy and try to level the priest as a dungeon healer)

I may do the shaman next, next then mage, then priest then rogue, but haven't decided for sure.

In other news, Joar finally hit exalted with Rustbolt Resistance.  I then went and looked at the price of the mount you can buy at exalted.  Oh hell no.

Trying to decide if I want to keep running Unshackled and Mechagon stuff for Paragon rewards, but I'm thinking not.

That's about all I have in updates for now.  I still need to run my alliance hunter through the latest updates to the war campaign, so may work on that when I get the chance.

Cheers,

Joar