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

Ding. Level 120 #19 is done. First Since Unlocking Flying

So I finished my #19th toon on their journey from 110 to 120 yesterday.  The latest was my alliance demon hunter, who I also leveled as Havoc.  I continue to find the tank specs to just be too slow for leveling this xpac.  This was the first character leveled since unlocking flying.  The result seemed to be around a 20% reduction in leveling time.  I've got quite a few more to get through (as you can tell from the main page of this blog) and then a bunch more allied race toons to finish up before I even think of adding fresh characters starting from level one.  This one came in under 9 hours and I was average right around 11 hours with heirlooms but before flying.  Note that, as usual, I'm not trying for any leveling speed records with these - just a nice leisurely pace that usually includes some herbing and mining along the way.

Next up will be my alliance fury warrior.  I've been using him to mind the auction house so far this expansion, so those duties will have to be switched to the just completed demon hunter.

I'm thinking I might be trying a few level 1's in WoW classic before it comes to further expanding my character count in regular WoW.  Ah, the good old days when 6 days /played to level 60 was a really fast leveling time!  Fortunately, I still have my old hard copy of Joana's guide, so I'll be using that to help.  An actual printed out leveling guide instead of an addon.  That'll be fun!

I've reserved my first three toons on the server where my main guild will be playing.  Given that I play a wide variety of characters named some version of Joar, there's always a name I can use available.  Fortunately, the base Joar was still available on this server, so I snapped it up!

Cheers! 

Joar

Favorite Classes and Specs In Battle for Azeroth So Far

So I had some interesting conversations in game yesterday around what my favorite classes and specs have been so far in Battle for Azeroth.  So let me start with a couple of key points.  I have two characters at this point that I consider my mains.  The "main" main (is that a thing), is Joar, my Horde Warlock.  He's been mostly played as Affliction this time, as we was in Legion, but I've bounced around a bit to Demonology and Destruction as well.  My "other" main is Joareesa, an Alliance Hunter.  I've primarily been playing her as Beast Mastery, but have flipped over to Marksmanship occasionally.  Joar has always been my "main" main since Day 2 (see early blog posts for an explanation of that), and the alliance character has just been the last couple of expansions since it seemed to make sense to play both factions.  Neither has anything to do with those necessarily being my favorite classes or specs at the time.

I am however going to leave both warlock and hunter off the list because they tend to be what I play first, and I've always enjoyed pet classes, so tend to enjoy those the most.

Second key point is that these are just from the perspective of leveling.  I've basically tried nothing other than my warlock for raiding this expansion, and frankly the warlock has been fairly mediocre.

I'm also not supremely confident about individual position within the list.  In general, top half of the list are the ones that I liked best and bottom half of the list are ones that I liked least, but the relative order within those halves aren't necessarily super precise.

Retribution Paladin - good rotation, good utility with lots of interrupts and stuns, good survivability
Balance Druid - rotation feels much smoother than it used to and also really strong utility and survivability.
Havoc Demon Hunter - really strong damage, lots of good utility and feels a lot more durable than in Legion.
Arms Warrior - I'll be honest, I haven't tried Fury yet.  But I really enjoyed leveling as Arms.  This one has also traditionally been in the bottom half of my list for a long time, so this is a pretty huge move.
Elemental Shaman - at least for me, this is an even bigger move.  The past two expansions, I would have ranked this one absolutely dead last.  But this one fees really strong to me this time.  Best interrupt in the game, good damage reduction, really strong damage and create synergy with the elementals.
Outlaw Rogue - this is also a big change for me because this would have also been close to the bottom in the past.  This feels a lot more like the Combat Rogue of old, which I always loved for leveling.
Frost DK - It was fine.  I've always enjoyed DK's, but this one felt underpowered to me this time and not quite as fun.
Windwalker Monk - like the frost DK, this one was also fine, but just felt underpowered relative to the others.
Shadow Priest - this one is also a big change for me, because for at least the last 3 expansions, this one would have been very close to the top of my list.  It just felt less inspiring this time.
Frost Mage - so let me start off by saying that this is absolutely not because I main a warlock.  I've actually always enjoyed mages as well.  In Legion, I would have probably had Fire Mage much higher on the list.  Survivability just felt terrible this time, and the glass cannon wasn't enough of a cannon to compensate.

So that's my list.  But just to be clear, I love all these classes.  That's part of the reason I'm such an altoholic and why I don't really focus on multiple characters particularly (by the end of this expansion, I will likely have 3 different toons of each class leveled to 120).

Let me also add some quick commentary on tank specs.  I've traditionally done that for at least one toon of all the relevant classes.  In BfA so far, the tank specs have just felt too underpowered to be great at leveling, particularly for higher level mobs with additional ads and quick respawns.

Cheers,

Joar

Profession Updates in the Joar Empire

I've been really slow at leveling my professions this expansion, particularly since there doesn't seem to be any major benefit.  Legion was much the same way.  The completionist in me will eventually get them all to 175, but I'm in no hurry.  There's plenty of time to do that late in the expansion when the prices for everything drops significantly.

Here is where I currently sit with all the professions.

I finished cooking, mostly to get all of the new cooking materials out of my bags.  I haven't even started archaeology yet, which should be somewhat obvious since it's not even on the list.  Everything else is ticking along at a decent pace.  I knock out the Darkmoon Faire profession quests every month and then will craft a few things when I have materials available.  Joar will make enchants to sell and my jewelcrafter will sell gems.

Once I get to the higher levels on some of these crafts, I think it's going to get a bit annoying since for a few of them, it appears I'll need to do some PvP to purchase recipes.  I don't necessarily mind PvP, but it seems odd to have profession progression effectively gated behind it.

Cheers,

Joar

Latest Status on 8.2 and a Joar Family Wedding

I have had very limited playing time for the past month or so.  Between the Fourth of July holidays and then championship season for swim meets (during which meets, the Joarlings have done quite well!) I've been lucky to get in a day or two per week over the last month or so.

I did manage to get rep with both the Unshackled and Mechagon to the point where I've unlocked flying.  That also brought me to the point that I'm starting to level characters from 110-120 again.  The alliance demon hunter is up next and he's sitting at level 112.  (Actually, he might be a she...might need to check that).  Might be able to knock him out this week in which case I'll have some data about how much of a difference flying is making on leveling speed from 110-120.

I've continued to work on the Unshackled and Mechagon dailies to try to get both of those to exalted.  I also finished construction on the mechanical spider mount, so I've two of those now.  A rusty one, and a shinier one for when I'm taking Mrs. Joar out on the town.

So the other big news isn't entirely game related, but it's been something that's been mentioned in these pages regularly over the last 10 years (oh, apparently I missed my 10 year anniversary of blogging which was a month and a half ago!).  My oldest son, who was mentioned in my third ever post on this blog back in June of 2009, got engaged last month.  The little kid that I started playing this game to help stay in touch with almost twelve years ago is getting ready to start a family of his own.  Hopefully a family of two for a little while - not sure I'm ready to be Grandpa Joar yet!  Kind of boggles the mind.  And he's still doing a fair amount of progression raiding, although that has slowed down a little bit now that he's got a full time job.

Tomorrow's #Blaugust2019 Blog Post will be about the Darkmoon Faire. 

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