Shaman Hits Level 70

 As is normal lately, this update will be broken into two pieces, World of Warcraft updates and FFXIV.

World of Warcraft

As the title mentioned, I hit level 70 on the Shaman yesterday.  This is the first character that I leveled almost entirely through dungeon runs.  At 8 hours and 17 minutes played, it was about an hour and 20 minutes faster than my previous record holder and significantly faster than the average has been so far.  So that appears to definitely be the preferred approach.  And that's with dps queues.

The demon hunter is up next, and it goes without saying that I'll be following the same approach.

FFXIV

I'm continuing to work on both the ninja and warrior in FFXIV.  The rogue is now at level 78, and the warrior is at level 77, so I've made solid progress on both.  I'll be able to use the new Endwalker beast tribe quests on them starting soon, so that will speed things along a bit more.  After these two are done, the next up will be a combination of Sage and Black Mage, and those two will be followed by Paladin.  I may try including the leveling roulettes on the Paladin and doing that one straight instead of mixing it with a dps class.  Everyone tells me the leveling dungeons are okay with a tank, but I've always been so bad at it in WoW that I'm hesitant to try it.

That's it for now!

Cheers,

Joar

Thoughts on Some New Things in Both Warcraft and FFXIV

 I've been able to get through a few of the new things that have come out in both World of Warcraft and FFXIV recently.  On the Warcraft side, I had the chance to visit the Trading Post and also complete this month's challenge to get the mount on offer for the month.

It's a cool-looking mount.  As it turns out, you can get about 75% of the monthly points needed to obtain it just from completing various Love Is In The Air activities, none of which take terribly long.  Of course, you get quite a few points just from doing your regular stuff each month, so not sure using the holiday is all that necessary, but it ended up getting it done for me quite a bit faster than I likely would have done otherwise.

The other mount on offer from the Trading Post this month, for purchase with the coins you get, was the Celestial Steed, which I already have, so I can save those coins up for next month.

In other World of Warcraft news, I've mostly been doing World Quests and weekly quests on Joar to continue to work on faction renown.  I did dip back into leveling my Shaman, although I've been mostly running dungeons to avoid the higher-level squishiness issue.  I'm currently sitting at level 67, so getting pretty close.

FFXIV

On the Final Fantasy front, I finished the latest installment of the Tataru questline.  I also got a 2nd piece of gear from the alliance raid, so hopefully, that's a sign of better luck in the coming weeks.  Beyond that, I continue to focus on leveling the Ninja and Warrior, who are sitting at levels 71 and 70, respectively.  

With Square's most recent earnings release making it clear that the next FFXIV expansion won't be coming in 2023, I'm confident that I should be able to level all of the remaining combat jobs to max level before the next expansion hits.  Besides the Ninja and Warrior that I'm currently working on, the others that I still have to go include Sage, Black Mage, Paladin, Monk, Dark Knight, and Dragoon.

More Balanced Play Time Between FFXIV and WoW

I had very little play time last week because of some work-related travel, so this update is delayed by a week.  Despite those limitations, I have had some exciting developments in both games.  

In World of Warcraft, I managed to get my four-piece set bonus on Joar.  Three of the four set pieces came from my Vault rather than as raid drops, but I'm okay with that.  I'm mostly doing regular world quests and other activities for more renown, and I may go back to leveling the shaman and other alts now that the Joar gearing process is pretty much done.  The only downside to those plans is that I really don't enjoy leveling in this expansion as much as I have in the past.  The warlock, hunter, and tank classes have generally been acceptable, but most of the other classes end up feeling a little too squishy to me to be all that enjoyable.

While I still enjoy Warcraft, the leveling process was always the thing I enjoyed most about it, and they seem to have killed that.  It definitely hasn't been the case since Battle for Azeroth, and that makes me pretty sad.

In FFXIV news, I also managed to get a house finally.  With the extra wards, it seems that everyone wanting one was finally able to close the deal.  Mine is in Shirogane.  I probably should have tried for Mists if I had known it would be that easy since I spend most of my time in Gridania, but I enjoy it just the same.

I've also spent more time leveling some of my alt jobs.  I've gotten the Warrior to level 66 and the Ninja to level 65.  Still a ways to go on both of those, but I'm trying to do a split of roulettes each day between the two now, so hopefully, it starts going a little more quickly.  The plan is to start leveling Sage after I have both of those done, and I will probably do BLM through the leveling roulettes simultaneously.

I also finally got my first piece of gear out of the new Alliance Raid.  It doesn't fit with the last Pandemonium set, so I had to glam over the whole thing.  Hopefully, that will mean better luck with the new raid going forward.

Cheers,

Joar