Completed Toon Number 8

So I managed to finish the Joarfu the windwalker monk last week.  So this was the first toon that I leveled with a class hall follower body guard.  I know, I know!  As a result, it was perhaps also unsurprisingly my fastest toon to get from 100 to 110 with a total played time of 15 hours and 2 minutes, making it almost 2 hours faster than the next fastest toon, my beast master hunter.

The monk stayed fun to play throughout the entire leveling process and felt smooth and powerful the whole way.

Next up is the shaman, and I can already tell I'm going to have issues deciding between elemental (which was my original plan) and enhancement.  Elemental seems much more fun in dungeons, but with 30-40 minute queues for dps in normals while leveling, dungeons just aren't that big a part of it.

For regular questing, enhancement seems much more powerful and capable for taking down mobs with minimal downtime.

After a fair amount of leveling this weekend, the shaman is sitting at level 105 and is working his way through Val'sharah.  Highmountain is up next and at the rate that is going, I will likely hit 110 in Highmountain without moving on to Stormheim (which means I'll have to run around to grab some flight paths later on for world quests).

I'm also working on the Touch of a Titan quest gathering essences for the various toons that have 910 legendaries.  It's a total of 5 legendaries that I have to upgrade.  I've already managed to finish it up on my hunter.  I've got two on the warlock, one on the death knight and one on the priest that I need to upgrade, so it'll be back to running world quests on both the death knight and the priest. I may put this on hold though to pursue the new goal, which is to get the remaining classes leveled to 110 in time for the class mount questline to be released in 7.2

With the shaman currently in progress, it's just the rogue, mage and warrior still to go, so I may try to get those knocked out and the class order hall campaigns completed before I go back to worrying about legendaries.

That's it for this week.

Cheers!

Joar

Completed Seven Class Order Hall Campaigns

So I managed to complete my seventh class order hall campaign this morning.  They've all been pretty interesting as content goes, and I'm not sure that I could pick one that I've liked more than others.  But it's been pretty interesting working through all of them.

I wasn't a big fan of having to grind out the various dungeons on the demon hunter campaign (as I understand it, that also happens in the mage campaign, which I haven't done yet).  My main issue there is I never really did decide if I preferred playing as tank or dps.  I was questing mostly as tank, so I wasn't doing real well as dps in those dungeons.

My monk is still sitting at level 103, so I've got a ways to go at this point before I'm in a position to start doing much on his order hall campaign.  The windwalker monk has been fun so far, but I'm not in a huge hurry to finish leveling him.  I don't particularly see that as a class that I'm likely to do much beyond finishing the order hall campaign, much like the demon hunter.

I also managed to fill out the 35th trait on my weapon on the warlock, and I'm getting close to a full weapon on the hunter.  Rather than continuing to fill up the warlock destruction artifact, I decided to switch over and start putting points into the affliction weapon.  So we'll see how that goes.

Beyond that, with Nighthold opening today, the quest to upgrade your legendary is out, so it's important to grab that before you open any emissary chests, because the quest items can drop from those chests.

At some point, I also need to go back and work on the leatherworking and alchemy profession quests as well.

Cheers,

Joar

The Long-Term Patient Approach to Generating Artifact Power For Alts

So I'm going to write up the approach that has been working well for me in terms of generating significant amounts of artifact power for alts with what seems to be a minimum of effort.  While I'm putting this out there, I also fully acknowledge that this approach will definitely be impacted by the release of Patch 7.1.5, which is right around the corner, although in general, the changes in that patch may actually make this method slightly easier to execute on.

So here's what I do:

Once you hit level 110, don't do much of anything other than the regular artifact knowledge research every couple of days.  You can certainly finish up the class order hall campaign if you want to, although there are also benefits to waiting on that.

The one thing that I do make sure to do is the Nighfallen emissary quests every time that they come up.  You can do Kirin Tor emissary quests as well, but frankly those have gotten to be enough of a pain in the butt, that I can certainly understand passing on them.  Note that without unlocking most of the Suramar story line, it'll likely take you more than one day to do the Nightfallen emissary quest because of the limitations on the world quests available.  The good news is that means it'll be a bare minimum of time each day.

The rest of the process starts once your artifact knowledge gets to something over 20 which takes a little over 3 months at current rates, but will become significant faster once 7.1.5 drops and you have the ability to "buy" alts up to artifact knowledge 20 instantly.

At that point, go out and do the the full Suramar story line.  If you did the full 3 month wait approach, while doing the regular Nightfallen emissary quests, you should have enough rep with Nightfallen to knock out the entire thing.  If not, it's going to take you quite a bit longer.  At level 25 of Artifact Knowledge, the Suramar story line is going to earn you enough artifact power to fill all 35 traits on your weapon.  And it's a hell of a good story in the process.

2016 Year In Review

So when 2015 came to a close I had just finished leveling my 19th character to max level in Warlords of Draenor.  I ended that expansion with a total of 27.  I'm a little surprised that it was only 8 more from the beginning of the year until Warlords end, but that's probably mostly an indication of how much time I was spending on garrison gold making over that period of time.

I also spent a little bit of time on other games as Warlords wounds down, dabbling again in Rift and in SWTOR as I looked for things to do.

I also started publishing more detailed analysis of Blizzard's regular earnings releases and public filings, both on my blog, and in a couple of instances on the Starting Zone podcast, both of which have been fairly well received.  While I intend to continue with that exercise, it's somewhat complicated by the fact that, as Blizzard has continued to grow and expand, they now disclose almost nothing in their regular filings about World of Warcraft specifically as it just isn't that material to their overall business anymore.

I've been somewhat re-energized with the launch of Legion and the new World Quest and Artifact Power regime and am back to being fully dedicated to Warcraft.  This is somewhat balanced by the demands of real life, which have served to somewhat reduce my available play time.  Even with that, I managed to level 7 toons to max level within the first four months of the expansion, and three of those will likely cap both artifact knowledge and their artifact traits within the first week or two of the New Year.  As usual with this game for alts, if you're willing to play a little bit of the waiting game, you can very quickly catch up your alts with a few tricks.

My plans for 2017 are to continue to level my toons until I get all 12 of each class finished and through their class order hall campaigns.  If I stick to the current pace, that should take me to the end of March or so.

It will be interesting to see when the XP nerfs hit this time around.  The unlock of flying will certainly make that an easier process (assuming it is account-wide again), but the real benefit from a leveling standpoint comes from the gross XP nerf and the ability to boost heirlooms to work until 110.  No world yet on when either of those are coming, but rest assured, you'll hear about it here with new expected leveling times, when that happens.  Interestingly enough, in Warlords, it was only 3 months between launch and when level 100 heirlooms were made available, so we're already past that point.