On To Black Mage and Sage and Maybe Some ESO?

As you probably could have forecast from my last post, I managed to finish my Ninja and Warrior on their respective paths to level 90.  I have picked up both Sage and Black Mage and am working on both.  I've made decent progress; the Sage is around level 75, and the Black Mage is around level 56.  I'm enjoying both jobs so far.  The Sage initially felt a little underpowered to me, but as I've gotten the hang of it more, I'm getting a lot more comfortable handling damage spikes.  I've even run some of the Stormblood Alliance Raids on the Sage and have done just fine.

Once these two jobs are done, the next ones up are Paladin, Monk, Dark Knight, and Dragoon, probably in that order.  There is no particular reason Dragoon is going to be last.  It just seemed to roll out that way.

I also managed to get the next level of my relic weapon on my Summoner.  I've added the daily 50/60/70/80 Dungeon roulette to my routine just to ensure that I'm adequately stocked on the appropriate Tomestones for the next round.  I'll cut that off as soon as I've maxed those out.  I continue to have absolutely no luck in Euphrosyne, having now gone something like 4 weeks in a row without a single piece of caster gear dropping at all in the entire run, now even counting my chances of winning the roll.

In Warcraft, I've continued to do basically nothing.  I may try the new zone out when the next patch drops, but I'm still not feeling it right now.

There are two other games that I've dipped my toes back into over the last few weeks.  With new content out in Guild Wars 2, I did start that process.  I've also gone back into ESO with a new Chapter coming soon.  I only have one zone to finish now to wrap up Caldwell's Gold, so I'm working on getting that knocked out.  I hadn't been focused on crafting as much, but I somehow got my clothier skill up to level 50, so the next stop after Caldwell Gold will be the zone with the good crafting recipes for Magicka Templar - it's the Mother Julianos set, or something like that.  I don't remember what zone it is, but I know it's one I haven't played yet that's not part of the main storyline.

That's the update for now.

Cheers,

Joar

Home Stretch for both NIN and WAR

 I have played almost no World of Warcraft in the last 14 days.  Not even just logging in twice a week to knock out world quests on my main to keep his renown levels progressing.  My attention has swung back to FFXIV, and I may even pick up my Reaper in GW2 with new content available there.

In FFXIV, I'm in the home stretch on leveling my NIN and WAR to max level.  My Ninja is at level 87, and the Warrior just hit level 81.  The Arkasodara dailies are giving the Ninja a nice boost, which is why he is pulling ahead.  I managed to hit Sworn reputation level for them, so I grabbed my styling new hippo cart mount.

I've also started going back and making orchestrion rolls out of all the faded copies I had in my bags.  It took me a while to figure all that out and how to get the needed books, but now I seem to be on a roll.  Taking the time to gather ingredients and do the crafting has been a nice distraction.

Finally, I'm continuing to run Euphrosyne each week on my Summoner.  I think I've now hit three weeks of the 6 or 7 that I've done it that not a single piece of caster gear has dropped in the entire raid.  A bit frustrating, but I'll keep at it.  I assume they'll lift the one-piece-a-week gear limit at some point, making it slightly easier.

That's the update for now.  I should have more play time again starting next week, so hopefully more to report.

Cheers,

Joar

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

Thoughts on FFXIV Patch 6.3 and Warcraft Renown Strategies

 That's a wide range of topics to be covered, right?  But those are the two games I've been playing, and with the new patch in FFXIV, the playtime has been pretty evenly balanced between the two for the past week.  

FFXIV

As I have come to expect from the team at FFXIV, the MSQ storyline with the new patch continued to be excellent.  The latest dungeon for the patch was exquisite, and the boss fights in it were great.  I also loved seeing the character of Zero fleshed out a little bit more in this patch.  

I also took a crack at the new Alliance Raid.  I went in before any strategy videos were available, so I ended up dead quite a bit.  But we made it through.  I screwed up my gear rolls, so ended up with absolutely nothing to show for it, but I'll do better this week, at least in terms of roll strategy.  The fights are very challenging, with some pretty interesting mechanics.  

I know there's some new Island Sanctuary stuff, but I have yet to mess with any of that.  I did put a bid in on a housing plot in one of the new wards, so we'll find out how that goes on Friday.

World of Warcraft

For the past week, for the limited period that I haven't played FFXIV, I've mostly just been doing World Quests on Joar.  I have unlocked the cataloging and climbing world quests, which have been a pleasant addition to the routine.

I also decided to go back and knock out all of the quests in each zone on Joar to get my faction renown up and unlock a few more faction campaign sections.  If you haven't already taken that approach, I highly recommend it to increase your Renown.  For Joar, pretty much all the factions were slightly lower than 10.  I'm not entirely done yet, but I managed to get to Renown level 15 with everyone just by finishing up all the various side quests in each zone.

Note, this is not my actual renown

This week, I'm also looking forward to the final wing of LFR opening up and seeing if the final LFR boss is as challenging as it has been for the last several raid tiers.  There has been no leveling on the Shaman at this point, and it likely won't be again until Joar has finished gearing up and has his entire four piece set bonus.

That's it for now. 

Cheers,

Joar

A Lot of Warcraft Leveling

Since my year-in-review post two weeks ago, I've mainly been focused on leveling in World of Warcraft.  Not only did I finish up the hunter mentioned in that post, but I also finished up the paladin, death knight, and druid.  For the last few, I focused on doing all the quests in a particular zone and the main story quest, so that let me knock out Dragonflight Loremaster for my account as a whole.  At some point, I should probably go back and do everything on Joar just for the additional reputation, but there's probably no time for that right now.

Right now, out of all of those alts, the leveling time for the death knight came in fastest at 9 hours and 38 minutes, while the paladin ended up slowest at 11 hours and 30 minutes.  Oddly enough, the hunter and the druid had the exact same leveling time, to the minute, at 10 hours and 11 minutes.  These are definitely much faster leveling times than previous expansions.  Granted, I only leveled two alts in Shadowlands before quitting, but the average for those was around 13 hours.  And for Battle for Azeroth, the average was 13 hours and 50 minutes.  Of course, all of those pale compared to Cataclysm, the earliest expansion for which I have data, which came in at an average of 23 hours and 20 minutes.  

For many classes, the leveling process gets to be highly challenging, particularly later on in the process.  I ended up leveling the death knight exclusively as blood for survivability.  I did level the paladin primarily as retribution, although a lot of the reason that the leveling time was so long was that he died frequently.  I switched to feral from balance for the druid because I saw feedback that was easier.  As someone that generally enjoys leveling alts, I'm not particularly thrilled about this particular aspect of this expansion.  I like being able to level my alts in whatever spec I choose, so having some that appear significantly less viable than others is a bit frustrating.

In other developments, I knocked out the newest raid finder wing and have done it twice on Joar.  I also got my first piece of tier gear yesterday morning, not out of LFR, but out of my vault.

Next up in Warcraft will be the shaman and demon hunter, the last two I need to round out a complete set of professions.  My priest is the only other character that I leveled to max in Shadowlands, and I haven't decided yet if I'll level them up in Dragonflight or any of the other of my 42 or so max level alts.

Of course, the other big news this week is that there was a new FFXIV patch yesterday morning.  I'll provide my thoughts in my blog post next week.  I did finish the latest MSQ release but have not done the new 24-man raid yet.  

2022 Year In Review

A year-in-review post is something that I used to do pretty regularly on this blog, but it seems to be a habit that I've gotten out of over the last few years, so this is an excellent time to bring it back.  Looking back, my previous year-in-review post was in 2019 and was entirely about World of Warcraft.  It is notable how much things have changed since then, as I have a lot more games to write about for 2022, although, after a break, Warcraft will still play largely in the story.

I started 2022 primarily working on FFXIV's new expansion, Endwalker.  Over the year, I managed to get all the DOH/DOL jobs to 90, except Fishing, and managed to get 11 combat jobs to level 90, with all the others to at least 50.  I've stayed current on the raiding content and look forward to the next major patch coming out in mid-January.  I've still been playing Summoner as my main class, so I am fully geared on that particular job but not others.

Once I got most of my jobs leveled in Endwalker, I switched to focusing more heavily on Guild Wars 2.  While I had played that quite a bit before Endwalker launched in 2021, I still hadn't gotten fully caught up on all the expansions and living story content.  Plus, a new expansion launched in the Spring of 2022 called End of Dragons.  I spent a lot of time getting current on the content and working through the new expansion.

In June of 2022, I returned to World of Warcraft after a break of almost 18 months.  I got caught up on the current content on Joar, working through Korthia and Zereth Mortis and working through all the raid content I'd missed.  I also leveled a few more characters to max, but not nearly as many as I'd entered Shadowlands with, totaling 42.  Before my break, I only had 3 characters at max level, and I managed to get 5 more done before Dragonflight launched.  

Most of the summer and fall basically involved splitting time between World of Warcraft and FFXIV with a little bit of time in ESO thrown in for good measure (enough to finish up another faction for Caldwell's Silver and make sure that I was also staying current on content there).

Since the launch of Dragonflight, I've been almost exclusively focused there.  So far, only Joar is at max level, although I'll probably hit max on my hunter very soon, as they're currently sitting at level 69.  After the hunter, I think the paladin will be up next.  

Joar has done the first wing of LFR once and is working through building renown with the various factions, although not at any particular fast pace.  I'm doing the main things at a somewhat leisurely pace each week.  

Looking forward to 2023, I expect the first few weeks to be focused mainly on Warcraft, with a detour in January to run through the new patch for FFXIV.  The main plan in Warcraft, assuming I hit 70 on the hunter before year-end, is to level at least the death knight, paladin, druid, shaman, and demon hunter to 70, and we'll see where we go from there.

In FFXIV, I'll continue to work on other combat jobs.  I'm currently leveling both Warrior and Ninja simultaneously, and both are sitting in the early 60s.  

So that's the year-end update!   See you in 2023!

Cheers,

Joar

Initial Impressions of Dragonflight

My playtime has been limited because of some real-world travel and other obligations.  I hit max level on my main undead warlock Joar, but I haven't attempted to level any other alts.

I've done most of the available things once you hit max level as well.  

I stuck to the main story quest for leveling and did a few dungeons.  This left me a little more than one level short of max when I finished, but that was quickly completed by doing some world quests and queueing for a couple more dungeons.  A lot more dungeons unlock when you complete the main story quest, regardless of whether you are at max level, so that also helped.

Overall, Dragonflight's leveling experience was much more cohesive and well-put-together than it has been for the last few expansions.  The zones all fit together well and don't seem like they're entirely separate stories in land areas that just happen to be near each other.  There seem to be fewer bonus objective areas in each zone than usual, and I missed those.

I also did manage to run every single one of my alts with a profession through the early part of Waking Shores to get the Dragonflight professions, which then let me go through and do the Darkmoon Faire profession quests on all of them for the skill-ups, knowledge and artisan's mettle.  I figure that'll be helpful later on once I start leveling those guys.

My initial impression at end game is there is a ton to do!  I started working on my professions and have gotten tailoring and enchanting up to around 35.  I haven't done much with either cooking or fishing at this point.

There are fewer world quests available this time, and there's also no main faction objective each day like there was from the Covenants in Shadowlands.  I've been knocking out the world quests for reputation and running some regular dungeons.  The excellent news is that the way they've structured things at end-game, the to-do list really ends up on more of a weekly cycle rather than a daily cycle, which gives you a lot more flexibility so you don't feel like you're falling behind just because you couldn't log on for a particular day.  At least for me, that is an excellent quality of life improvement.

This is my current list of the weekly cycle for max-level characters.  Please note that this list is intended for a casual player, not someone pushing high mythic+ keystones or high-end raiding.

• Grab the various weekly quests in Valdrakken each Tuesday upon reset - Aiding the Accord, Profession Quests, Dungeon or World Quest weeklies, etc.
• Run the Great Hunt at least once
• Run Siege of Dragonbane Keep at least once
• Participate in the Community Feast once
• World Boss
• Wrathion or Sabellian and Obsidian rep
• Cobalt Assembly (there seems to regularly be a world quest up related to some aspect of this)
• Trial of Elements and Trial of Flood
• Super Rare Circuit

I'll talk more about each of these in a later post.  The timers on a few of these can be a little challenging to figure out, and I haven't found a great solution for that yet.  Also, a few of these are more about gearing up initially and can probably be stopped once you're fully outfitted in current gear.

I have yet to do the Great Hunt or the Community Feast stuff, but they're both on my list for this week.

Pre-Dragonflight Update

I know it's not technically pre-Dragonflight since the game launched last evening, but I don't plan to start playing it until tomorrow, so we're still in a pre-Dragonflight realm.  Before getting into what I've done to prepare in World of Warcraft, I thought I'd provide a quick update on where things stand on the other games that I play.

ESO

After noticing that there was new Firesong / High Isle content, I managed to run through that and complete the entire Firesong storyline.  Like most things with ESO, the story was pretty well done, and I enjoyed the experience.  

With that complete, I returned to working on my third faction for Caldwell's Gold.  For me, this is the Ebonhart Pact.  I'm working on finishing up the next-to-last zone for that particular alliance.  With Dragonflight essentially out and a new Final Fantasy patch expected in early January, I probably won't finish that until late in the first quarter of next year.

FFXIV

I've started to work on the Omicron tribe quests.  I had not finished leveling Fishing to 90, so that's the job I'm using to work through those.  Which so far has been progressing well.  I've also continued to work through both my Warrior and my Ninja.  I'm leveling the Ninja along with Warrior because I don't have enough confidence as a tank to queue for the regular leveling roulette.  I'm okay with most dungeons before level 50, but I'm not comfortable with some of the higher-level ones to queue as either a tank or healer. Hence, while I'm leveling one of those jobs, I always keep a DPS spec running through the daily leveling roulette. 

The Warrior and the Ninja just hit level 60, so I have a long way to go on both.  I will probably try to keep both of these moving along even while starting to level my various toons in Dragonflight for World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft

I'll provide an update with my initial thoughts on Dragonflight sometime next week after I've had the chance to play for a bit.  I'm going to be taking it relatively easy as I'm not really in a rush to get to anywhere in particular, as I no longer raid or do anything like that.

I went through my usual routine of preparing each of the characters I planned to level to get ready for the expansion.  I plan to only level a relatively limited number of characters to max level compared to previous expansions, with probably only 8 that I'll really work on, which are the only ones I bothered to get to max in Shadowlands.  That compares to 43 or 44 that I had at max level going into Shadowlands.

So here is the basic routine:

• Clear out bags and vendor, sell or discard most things.  Clean out bank while in the process of depositing anything you just can't live without.  
• Clear out quest log
• Spend any remaining currencies from the previous expansion for either gear for alts or items to sell or disenchant.
• Update all addons and find other options for ones that don't appear to be supported for the new expansion.  Scan sources for new add-ons or extensions that might be helpful.
• Note current /played time for all characters.  So this one is unique to me.  Being a giant dork and a previously huge altoholic, I track my leveling time for each character, and I have for every expansion since Cataclysm.  I'm always curious about the speed for the first character out of the gate and later characters.  It might be a decent blog post to share some of that data.

Then, around the time of launch/play start:

• Log in to each character in a rested XP zone.
• For all the main server profession characters (basically the 8 that I reference previously), get them all far enough in the new content to unlock professions for the new xpac so you can start earning points immediately with the next Darkmoon Faire.

So that's the plan.  I'll plan to post an update next week with my thoughts on Dragonflight so far.

Cheers,

Joar

Reaper and Enhancement Shaman to Max Level

Real life continues to limit my playing time, so there hasn't been much of an update here in a while.  I continue to play a bit in both games but am not motivated to make much progress in either one.  In any case, here are the updates:

FFXIV

I managed to get my Reaper to max level yesterday.  I'm now going to start working on both the warrior and my ninja jobs.  I don't like to tank dungeons above level 50, so I will limit myself to alliance roulettes, frontline, and MSQ roulettes for the warrior.  So I can use the leveling roulette for the ninja.

I also did the latest installment in the Hildibrand quest line and got my relic weapon on my summoner.  I could theoretically do relic weapons for my other characters. Still, I haven't really been focused on gearing anyone other than the summoner this time around, so there's not really any point.

WoW

I have been picking this up a little bit more lately.  Given the exciting changes coming to professions, I decided it wouldn't be a terrible idea to ensure I had a max-level character with each profession set and ready to go for Dragonflight.  So, as a result, I finished leveling my Enhancement Shaman to max level since that character is my Inscriptionist. 

Once that was done, I started leveling my Rogue.  It made me very quickly realize that I completely despise leveling rogues and really have ever since the Combat spec went away.  So I'm thinking about adding engineering as a profession to my priest or demon hunter instead.  I probably enjoy leveling the demon hunter a little more, but the priest already has mining leveled.  Although I guess since points start over with each expansion, that piece doesn't matter much anymore.

That's about it for now.

Cheers,

Joar