Leveling Plans for Battle for Azeroth

So I'm working on a new leveling order for Battle for Azeroth, this time based purely on how much I enjoy playing the class, rather than trying to get any particular professions on their way to whatever the new cap is.

So here is the list that I have worked out so far:

Warlock
Hunter
DK
Paladin
Druid (these 5 will be the main ones that I focus on for world quests, emissaries, world bosses, LFR, etc)

then..

Monk
Demon Hunter
Mage
Warrior
Rogue
Priest
Shaman

Now the trick is that I will likely start inserting an alliance character or two in the progression after the initial 5 are done, but those will most likely follow the same order.

Those initial five also give me every profession except engineering and inscription, so I think that actually works okay.

Cheers,

Joar

Ding! Level 110 #33. Lightforged Draenei Paladin

So I managed to hit 110 on the first of my allied race toons yesterday.

Blizzard hasn't done a particularly good job of explaining how to complete the quest that pops up to obtain the Heritage Armor set.  There's really no clue given as to how to get to the place that it instructs you to go, and if you try to get there the "normal" way, which requires a fair amount of effort, the NPC that you need isn't there.

So that was a bit frustrating, but a quick bit of research on Wowhead quickly showed the way.  But that really shouldn't be necessary.

In any case, I look cool.

My total played time to 110 was 2 days and 14 hours.  That's a bit longer than it used to take to level to 110 from scratch, but not as bad as I was expecting it might be given how long the slog from 20-60 felt.

Planning to work on the other three allied races next, but haven't decided if I want to push them one at a time, or do them a bit together. 

Cheers,

Joar

Incoming 9 Year Blogoversary!

The 9 year anniversary of starting this blog is this Saturday.  Of course, I'll be at a swim meet all weekend with the Joarlings, so not able to actually post something then.  So I'm doing it now, while maintenance is ongoing.

When I started this blog 9 years ago, the idea, which at time seemed crazy, was to see if I could level a character of each class to max level (which at the time was 80!)  At the point that I started this journey, I only had two max level characters, and one of those was a death knight.  Also at the time, 8 days of /played time was a reasonable amount of time to get to max level (versus 2-3 now).

 It was almost 2 years before I actually hit that goal.  I managed to get every class except for warrior to max level before the Wrath of the Lich King ended, but that still left warrior to complete fully through Cataclysm.  So on May 26, 2011, I actually ended up getting there.

Of course, the next idea that occurred to me thereafter was "wouldn't it be cool to have a toon from each class from EACH FACTION?"  Yeah.  That seems brilliant.  I got a little distracted by both Rift and SWTOR in between, so it was almost a year in between before I started working on a few alliance toons before Mist of Pandaria came out.  I only managed to get 2 alliance characters to max level before the release of Mist of Pandaria, which also added a new class, so raised the total required for each faction from 10 to 11. 

It was August of 2013 before I managed to get all 11 Horde classes to max level in MOP.  I was also delayed a little bit in MOP with leveling my alliance toons because I thought it would be fun to have all 11 toons kill Garrosh in LFR, which is also something that I accomplished over the course of 2013.

I didn't end up getting there before the end of MOP.  Wildstar provided an additional distraction and I also got into pet battling during this time. 

Now Warlords of Draenor.  That was a different story.  Not much distraction during good old WoD.  And a much faster leveling pace!

The first 11 toons went a bit faster in Warlords of Draenor, and I had them all knocked out by July (and that was with grinding out stuff for the legendary ring on 3 different characters).  About 5 years after completing the first goal, I finally got there on the second, having my 23rd max level character, consisting of one of each class of each faction, plus one extra warlock (you can never have too many warlocks) on May 23, 2016.  Almost 5 years to the day after finishing the first 10.

I continued to level through the rest of Draenor and finished that expansion with a total of 26 level 100 toons. 

Through Legion, we added one more class, and I've continued to work on the third set, bringing my total as of today to 32 max level toons.  I expect to finish one more well before Battle for Azeroth launches, and I guess we'll wait and see what leveling opportunities are presented by the pre-expansion launch event to see if I can make any progress on the last 3 on the third server.

As you can imagine, with 32 max level toons, there is a decent amount of preparation needed before the new expansion including cleaning out bags, banks and quest logs.  I'll be putting together a separate blog post in late July / early August laying out my pre-expansion preparation process.

Cheers!

Joar

Time to Buckle Down

So it looks like the pre-expansion patch is going to be hitting in early July, which means it's time to buckle down and see how many additional toons I can get to 110 before that point, and then maybe see if whatever events go with that provide any benefits that might let me get a few more down the road before BfA launches.

I've been making decent progress on the leveling front and a little bit on the paragon farming front.  I got the Dreamweaver paragon mount since my last update, so that leaves me with just three to go - Valarjar, Farondis and one last Army of the Light.  Of course, with Army of the Light emissaries only coming around every 3 weeks lately, the likelihood of that happening any time soon is really low.

So, I'm not sure the Dreamweaver mount is the most warlocky mount I've ever been on.  Seems like more of a Blood Elf mage mount.  Just sayin'  Would probably look pretty good for a Nightborne priest too now that I look at it.  Not shadow of course.

I've been leveling all four of my allied race toons, with 3 of them just making progress until they run out of rested xp, and then going back to working on the main one that I'm focusing on.  I may stop that until the pre-patch comes out and just focus on getting the paladin to 110.  Currently the paladin is sitting at level 81 and working his way through Pandaria and the remaining characters are all sitting around level 35.

Other than cleaning up quest logs and a little bit of bag clean-up, everyone is basically more or less ready to go for Battle for Azeroth anyway.

Cheers, Joar

Leveling and Paragon Farming

So not much going on lately other than leveling and farming for paragon mounts.  I did manage to get one more of the Army of the Light paragon mounts (so one more to go!) and also got the Nightfallen mount, so I'm down to just four still to obtain.  Gotta say, I really like the Nightfallen mount, and it's a good way for all you non-tailors to finally get a flying carpet!

That leaves me with one more Army of the Light, Farondis, Dreamweaver and Valarjar still to go.  We'll see how many I get before Battle for Azeroth.  At that point, I'll probably be too tired from all the battling to worry about farming for mounts.

I've been leveling one of my allied race toons along with a third demon hunter basically at the same time.  The demon hunter is at level 105 and just finished Aszuna.  The lightforged spacegoat paladin is starting on Western Plaguelands and is in the low 40's.  Probably going to have this guy go to Northrend instead of Outland just like the last guy, but then will have the one after that do the Outland route.  The 0-60 portion of the revised leveling doesn't feel quite as good as the 60-90 patch with the redo, but it's still not terrible.

Not much else going on unfortunately.  I'm still playing regularly, and it frightens me a bit that I could potentially enter Battle for Azeroth with 36 or so max level characters.

Cheers,

Joar

Professions Done - Still Working on Toon #31 and Paragon Farming

So with the Darkmoon Faire coming back to town this month, I finally managed to finish all of the professions and get everything maxed to 800.  This is without a doubt the longest it has ever taken me on any expansion.

I'm also still working on leveling.  My human death knight is sitting at level 81 and working his way through the Jade Forest in Pandaria.  Being able to fly in Pandaria while leveling is a nice improvement to the process there.  After the human death knight is done, I'll start working on the various allied races, although  I don't have much hope of getting those done before the next expansion launches.

I've also continued to work on farming paragon chests on 5 different toons in the hopes of getting the last few paragon mounts I need.  The ones I still don't have are Farondis, Dreamweaver, Valarjar and Nightfallen.  Might never happen, but hey,  it's something to do.

I'm about 10 mounts away from the next mount achievement, which I think would give me the green hawk thingy.  There are a few that would be pretty easily attainable:

Vial of the Sands
4 more Pandaria Jewelcrafting mounts
Giant Yak

Those 6 and the 4 paragon mounts would do the trick without having to do any dungeon or raid farming.  One of these days I'll also go back and knock off the 9 argent tournament mounts that I never got.

I've also been working on gearing up a few toons to make the initial leveling process slightly easier.  So right now, everyone has an ilvl of at least 840.  The average across all 30 max level toons is 870, which isn't bad.

That's about it for now.

Cheers,

Joar

Catching Up Professions in Legion

So better late than never, right.  I finally decided that I should probably finish up maxing all the professions before the next expansion hits.  Just always something I've done, really since Cataclysm.  But with Legion, I haven't really been feeling the profession game as much, so it isn't something I've been bothering with.

Going into this little project, I only had a handful done.  Most of the professions on my main - Tailoring, Enchanting, Fishing and Archeology (courtesy of the moose) were all done.  I also managed to get Herbalism on my Hunter, and Skinning on my Druid, then knocked out both Leatherworking and Blacksmithing a couple of months ago (if you're doing the quest chains on those, they end up being pretty easy to finish)

That has left Jewelcrafting, Inscription, Engineering, Alchemy, Mining, Cooking and First Aid.

The first step in all of these has been to hit the Darkmoon Faire each month for that easy 5 points.

Jewelcrafting has really just been a matter of keeping an eye out for the world quests in order to get a few recipes to three stars.  Once those were done, getting it at least to 790 was pretty simple.  Particularly since I've had my paladin rolling world quests with the gem finder shoulder enchant, which has kept him reasonably stocked.

Inscription required getting some Darkmoon Faire tickets and buying up to the three star recipe for the Prophecy Tarot.  Once that was had, it seemed like mass milling Dreamleaf was by far the best bet for knocking out the needed Sallow Pigment.  From there, getting to 800 was easy.  Excess Bloods were used to obtain the Dreamleaf.

On Engineering, this one has been one of the biggest pains because it has required farming up Sightless Eyes in the Dalaran Sewers.  Or in my case, Fishing up Sightless Eyes.  It took a couple of hours, but with a level 3 recipe for Gunpower Charge in hand, after that the process was expensive but quick.

Alchemy has required some questing and dungeons to get the various flask recipes and the Argus recipes have also been helpful.  My Hunter alchemist has the Harvester enchant on his shoulders, so he's been stocking up on herbs while doing world quests, making it fairly easy.

Mining has probably been one of the biggest pains in the butt.  Once you hit a certain level, it seems the only way to get additional skill points is by completing one particular world quest whenever it's up - the stupid giant infernal thing.  That, and Darkmoon Faire each month.  This one seems to have been really poorly thought out.  It's possible that if I was doing more actual mining and gotten some of those to 3 stars, I'd be getting more skill ups from actual mining, but we're trying to be quick about this.

Cooking basically has involved buying a recipe involving Falcosaur Eggs from the Wardens and then either buying those on the auction house or farming them.  Also a pain.  I'd gotten at least part way on the nonsense with Nomi, but I gave that crap up a long time ago.

Finally, First Aid - doing the quests whenever they pop up is probably the easiest way to knock this one out, but of course I haven't been doing that.  If you want a quick catch up approach, there's a Loofa thing you can buy from Wardens that you can make with Falcosaur feathers that will get you to about 760.  From there, you can get a recipe from your trainer for a splint that will get you to about 790 or 795.  From there, either the quests or the Darkmoon Faire will get you the rest of the way.

So that's my quick guide to profession catch ups!

In other updates, toon #29 and #30 made there way to 110.  Toon #30 was a boost from level 60, so it doesn't entirely count.  It did remind me though that if you're going to be boosting a toon from 60, be sure to send anything you've accumulated to your auction house toon before kicking off the boost, because everything in your bags disappears in the process.

Oh, and after finally accumulating 150 Curious Coins, Joar is now the proud owner of:

Cheers!

Joar

Leveling and Scaling in 7.3.5 so far

With all my level 100's now sitting at 110, I've now started moving some lower level toons up.  My first exposure to the new scaling was with my Horde shaman, who was sitting at level 80.  Because of a momentary lapse in judgement, I elected to do the 80-90 path using the Cataclysm zones instead of Pandaria.  (Reminder:  see about getting a CAT scan...possible brain tumor)

So a couple of general observations.

• I don't hit nearly as hard as I used to, and mobs are taking longer to die, at least for this stretch. 
• It was pretty interesting being able to finish entire zones.  The only downside was that doing both Hyjal and Uldum all the way through only took me to 89 1/2, so I had to go back and do a few quests in Deepholm, which seemed odd.
• All the portals to the Cataclysm zones seem to work now whether you've done those zones or not.  Makes getting to Uldum a lot easier, but there's still no easy way back, so make sure you have your Hearthstone set to Orgrimmar / Stormwind before embarking on Uldum.
• With the ability to choose between Outland / Northrend and Cataclysm / Pandaria, I would have liked having an option that would have allowed me to avoid Draenor.  I certainly understand why that wouldn't necessarily work.  But I hate Draenor.  So I'm still sad.
• Most quest gear prior to Draenor basically sells for nothing, which also sucks.  Gold isn't really an issue for me on any server, but for folks where gold is a challenge, that's not going to be a great thing.

I'm continuing to do emissaries on my warlock main just to continue accumulating Curious Coins.  I'm also working on finishing up those last few professions, although not with any intensity.  And my access to materials has dropped off now that I'm not doing emissaries on everyone.

That's about it for the news for now.

Cheers,

Joar

Ding. Level 110 #28 is Done. All the 100's are now 110 (Plus Two Demon Hunters)

So I managed to hit 110 on my Assassination Rogue today, which is the third rogue I've leveled in Legion.  Didn't like it as much as I enjoyed Subtlety, but definitely preferred it to Outlaw.

Since my last blog post, I also managed to get the Guardian druid to 110.  Beyond that, I've not been playing much, or have been focusing on world quests and emissaries on some of my existing max level toons.  But even that has gotten a bit old at this point.

I did manage to get my warlock all the way through Antorus, which unlocked some of the post-raid content.  I found that to be really well done and very enjoyable.  No spoilers though.

So now it's going to be time to focus on my lower level toons, start checking out the zone scaling that was introduced in 7.3.5, and see how many other toons we can get to 110.  At the moment, I've got a shaman sitting at 80, a mage somewhere in the 40's and a third death knight sitting, well, right where death knights start.

So I supposed we'll start working on those.  Everyone else on server number 3 is somewhere in the teens, so a long way to go.

Cheers,

Joar

Level 110 #23, #24 and #25 are done...#26 in progress

So it's been a while since I've posted because I feel like there hasn't been much to talk about.  I'm running 5 toons through daily emissaries now (warlock, hunter, paladin, druid and death knight) trying to get all their weapons to 75.  Will probably only run the warlock through Antorus LFR as it opens.

I'm also starting to look at finishing leveling the various professions.  At the moment, I have all the gathering professions at max level and also both tailoring and enchanting, but that's it.  Jewelcrafting, Leatherworking, Blacksmithing, Inscription, Alchemy and Engineering still need some love.  Inscription and Engineering are the farthest behind with me literally having done nothing on those.

So I'll start leveraging the Darkmoon Faire when I can (should have been doing that all along, darn it), and may work on finishing all of those up.

On the leveling front, things continue to move briskly.  I finished three more toons since the last time I posted about it here.  I did the paladin purely as prot, then Havoc Demon Hunter and then most recently a third warlock (leveled as Destro).  Leveling time for all of those was pretty consistently right at 9 hours played.  I'm working on the third hunter now, and leveling as beast mastery, just because I love it so much.

After the hunter, I'm going to do a third druid.  This one will be leveled as guardian, just because I've never done that.  After that, it'll be a rogue, and that'll be the last of my existing 100's.  Beyond that I have got a shaman sitting in the 80's somewhere, and it's probably fine to work on that without spoiling the scaling changes coming with 7.3.5 (assuming that doesn't drop by the time I get to the shaman).

Cheers,

Joar

Initial Reactions to the New Expansion

So after watching some of the Warcraft news coming out of Blizzcon, my initial thoughts was that there wasn't a whole lot for me to write about.  And I said as much on Twitter, and then started to say more...at which point it became apparent that there was a bit of a blog post there.

So let me start by saying that I've always enjoyed PvP.  It's never been a huge thing for me, and I tend to generally avoid PvP servers, but I've got almost 100,000 HK's on Joar and I have had a character parked on a PvP server just for the fantastic world PvP on that server.

Sometime in the last few expansions, it feels like PvP sort of died, and was something I stopped doing.  But the idea of reinvigorating it isn't something I'm opposed to.  It's just different from what I have been doing.

So the idea of scrapping the whole artifact weapon system and scrapping class halls seems fine.  The process of grinding Artifact Power and Resources seemed to get a lot of complaints, so I don't necessarily mind them getting rid of that.  Although it seems like I'm going to be grinding Azerite instead?  I'll reserve judgment on the new Heart of Azeroth thing until I see more details on how it's going to work.

The other thing that has really peaked my interest in the new expansion is the concept of Warfronts.  Wintergrasp was always one of my favorite things in game during Wrath, so something that brings back some of the flavor of that is something that I'll definitely look forward to.

Some of the really interesting news from my perspective was around streamlining the leveling process.  Being able to choose between Outland and Northrend for 60-80 and then between Cata and MOP for 80-100 both feel like really interesting options for mixing things up for new leveling.  I'm not sure why Draenor seems to have gotten left off of those lists, because the one thing that I did think worked pretty well in Draenor was the leveling process.  I actually wouldn't mind if we had the option to choose between Draenor and Broken Isles for the 100-110 portion.

The allied races are also something that I'm particularly excited about, as I'll likely start working on all six of those once I unlock the quests.  So between streamlining the leveling experience and allied races, there's definitely enough there to keep me in the game and doing my leveling thing.  Oh, and if we might be getting more than 50 character slots?  Well, that would be fine with me too.