Simplifying the Warlock

After talking about it for the better part of a year, I finally pulled the trigger this week and dropped tailoring and enchanting on my warlock. Mining and herbalism are in. The crafting professions are out.

Here's what really drove it. Every expansion, I finish with tailoring and enchanting parked somewhere around 75 out of 100. The last 25 points come from content I don't run. The rare recipe drops, the specific mats that only show up in places I'm not going, the patterns gated behind the higher-end stuff. So the professions just sit there incomplete, every cycle, while I look at them and feel mildly annoyed. With mining and herbalism, I can actually get to 100. Fly around, hit nodes, finish the tree. That sense of completion matters to me a lot more than whatever spread I'd get on a stack of cloth on the auction house.

The gold side is a bonus. Mining and herbalism are perfect casual-player professions because the demand never really dries up. I don't have to log in with a plan, chase a recipe drop, or wait on a cooldown. I just fly past nodes while I'm doing something else and turn the materials into gold at my own pace. That fits the way I actually play.

The other call I'm making is that I'm going to stop pretending I'm going to level alts between now and July 1st. The druid at 82 can sit right where it is. The plan is warlock, warlock, warlock. Keep grinding renown, finish replacing the last few blue pieces, and stick mostly to delves. The new ritual site is on the list to try too. LFR and normals don't really fit my playstyle anymore. Even queued group content needs more coordination than my schedule can promise right now. Delves I can drop in and out of without burning anybody else's evening.

And there's a lot of move logistics on the way. DJ just graduated from Carnegie Mellon and is heading to Boston for his job at IBM. Jake just graduated from high school and is coming with us to Arizona for ASU. We're closing on the house, packing the truck, driving the dog out, finding temporary housing, scouting Prescott Valley, and somewhere in the middle of all of that, Brandon and Lindsay are expecting their second baby this summer. None of that leaves a lot of room for a serious altoholic agenda.

So the warlock gets all of it. The whole idea is to finish things for once instead of accumulating half-done projects across a stable of characters.

That's it for now! Cheers! Joar

April Month in Review

April clocked in at 21 hours, 30 minutes, and 45 seconds across all games. That's well under my usual, and the move continues to eat my schedule. 23-minute average sessions and a 5-day streak. I'm playing in slivers when I can find them.

WoW took 20 of those hours, which is basically all of it. I kept grinding renown across the various factions, and Silvermoon is running away with the lead. I'm not sure if it's the rep mechanics or just where my dailies have been pointing, but the other factions are crawling by comparison. On the gear side, I finally rounded out the 4-piece set bonus on my warlock main, which felt good after weeks of waiting. I still have a few blue pieces hanging around that need to be replaced, so the upgrade grind isn't quite over.

The druid hit level 82. Progress, even if it's slow progress. Leveling a third character at this play rate is more long-term project than active work.

Elder Scrolls Online showed up on the report at 33 minutes. I'd love to claim that was a meaningful return to Tamriel, but no. Blizzard kicked me off for maintenance one afternoon and I needed something to fill the hole. That's the entirety of my ESO career for April.

I haven't touched any of the new patch features. None of them. With everything stacking up on the move side, I just haven't had the bandwidth to learn anything new in-game, and the stuff I already know is what's been getting played. May and June probably aren't going to be much better either. Closing on the house, the actual move, all the related family logistics. That's the next two months before any real play time comes back.

That's it for now! 

Cheers!

 Joar