The Key Competition #2: Well Geared

Rounding out my raid progress standing under a dying dragon's butt, such a glorious occupation...

On one hand the craze of the first two weeks dwindled these past two weeks, both for myself and the people I had grouped with. On top of people's interest in redoing raids and dungeons not being skyhigh to begin with, reset 4 saw Mists of Pandaria Remix and a new Diablo 4 season released at the same time.... Making the amount of guildies for groups disappear entirely and general lfg activity plummet.

On the other hand, the season is very easy to gear and get what you want in. I might have had very few social m+ sessions, but both Dominator and Esmënet got a bunch of gear. And did some scoring runs on my own. Pugs have improved massively in iLevel for what dungeons they do, the same with knowledge. Making what was really hard week 1 become really easy week 3 onwards. Except getting into +8s and higher as dps... I was in one +8 where there were 60+ people queued 15 seconds after the key was listed. The reduced number of keys makes the key happening much faster, but there is a general shortage of keys listed and tanks/healers. Nothing new, just seeing new heights of DPS getting bottlenecked. State of healing and tanking obviously at fault, too.

Dominator (the tank)

iLevel: 509 equipped [+8]

Score: 2075 [+119]

Keys ran (after 2 resets): 59 [+24]

Of which had at least one friend/guildie: 31 [+4] (~53%) [-~24ppt]

Did the homework Wyrm crest farm by myself both resets, as there is low interest in 2-5/7 keys from people I know. Getting wyrm crests from raid "for free" obviously means most mains only need to do m+ for wyrms on alts, that most people doesn't play this season. Caught a whole 2 keys with known people both resets. A stark reminder that having a character to mostly play with others is not a sound plan.

Was a bit confusing how few gains Dom got over two resets. The score increase to get KSM and little else. Next to no iLevel gain if you take away the crest spending, meaning there were no drops? Bit weird.

One big change from last two seasons is that surviving has been changed to be pretty hard for tank again, a lot of things hits hard. "Kiting"/mob control/stop spams are back on the menu, which means Vengeance DH is god again. Combined with healers getting an output reduction for some unfathomable reason makes doing progress keys really stressful again.

Motivation took a hard hit for this character - the feeling of being a relic of the past increasing.

Dom's highest key (tied) these two resets, with some familiar faces.

Esmënet (the ranged)

iLevel: 522 equipped [+11]

Score: 2280 [+131]

Keys ran (after 4 resets): 82 [+29]

Of which had at least one friend/guildie: 13 [+4] (~16%) [-1ppt]

With about half the keys done compared to reset 1-2, the drop in craze is very visible. Most of these keys were simply Aspect crest runs, and some wyrm runs. With the odd score run sprinkled in, just to have something to test the gear in. The few social keys I did was low ones with guildies for the mythic dungeon weekly quest in week 3.

I still enjoy this project however. The fact that I can just drop raiding whenever with no strings attached, and take long m+ breaks because I don't need to perform in a group setting just removes all the pressure. At other times it really sucks, because doing progress keys in a pug world is the very definition of wasted time. And talking about a lot of nonsense adds some chill to it all.

Esmënet's highest key these two resets. Much less stressful to dps than to tank. No familiar faces in sight.

Current state of the competition

Gearing

Esmënet a 13 [+3] iLevel lead. Lucky with drops, have capped Aspect Crests. Will be full build in 2 weeks or so, after which potential iLevel increase is very low and pure RNG. Question is if Dom will do enough Aspect crest m+ in ~4 resets to match?

Score

Esmënet with a 205 [+8] point lead. Spreading out where I did the Aspect crest farm (even doing Uldaman and Halls of Infusion!) trickles in points. Most of Dom's score gain came from first doing the easy dungeons, then doing easy dungeons again with friends, which makes for few points.

Social

Dominator leading with 37 percentage points [-23ppt]. With 2 more weeks on the horizon of 10 wyrm crests pugs each, Esmënet is one prog night invite away from a clean sweep. Both characters did 4 social runs, lending some credence to the idea that nobody wants a tank after reset 1 or 2 if they aren't doing max vault runs or progress keys.

Opinions on the start of the lull phase of the season

Gearing

• For the "optimizing" character, the season is almost over gear wise.

• For the non-optimizing who isn't grinding, there is a big gap.

Dungeons

• Algethar, Brackenhide, Azure Vaults and Ruby has so far seen the most success and less iffy pulls

• Uldaman and parts of Halls of Infusion can be really sketchy.

• Neltharus and Plains are mostly boring, and are usually bottlenecked with some trash pulls (before 3rd boss in Plains) or boss (spearboss in Neltharus) where pugs tends to instadisband.

Right now I'm guessing I will keep motivation to play until mid June, at most. I am happy I got to do the Vault raid on Esmënet and do the season 1 Dragonflight dungeons properly - but content is used up and only the gear and social bits makes me log on and do homework keys.

Researching the Arcane #1: Openings

Fyrakk, did I not see you 3 resets ago?

Aberrus, the raid with the most interesting bosses from the expansion I think. Urge to cast Glacial Spike increasing.

This Fated season I have one goal: testing Mage and Warlock in guild raids, while doing as few m+ keys as possible. And compare them to each other and the Hunter who is also doing keys, but stopping raid early.

I enjoyed playing casters the last two raid tiers, and want to continue doing that in The War Within. But if I can't do say, 5-10 hour WoW weeks as a caster and still do well in raids I doubt I will have the motivation to not mainswitch during a raid tier.

Esmëralda (project Mage)

Main spec: Frost

iLevel: 507

Raid Progress: Vault (8/8 LFR), Aberrus (4/9 HC), Amirdrassil (7/9 HC).

Keys Ran (after 3 resets): 18

Of which had at least one friend/guildie: 8 (~44%)

Replaced Serwaswathan by leveling up last patch - wanted to have a naming convention going and retire some of the old characters. Was originally out of guild raids due to a change in raid days, but was given leeway to attend once a week at most.

Since the character was freshly leveled and had by far the lowest ilevel and shoddy performance first raid, I've done a bunch of keys over the last two resets to "catch up". In this reset's raid I was raid average iLevel and was on the upper half of the guild meter so I can slow down going forward.

So far bought Whispering Incarnate Icon and Vessel of Searing Shadows with bullions, due to simming. Shouldn't have; Whispering crit does nothing at the moment and should have gotten Grieftorch instead of Vessel with how raids and keys have been going with the amount of deaths happening.

Raid progress is mostly slow due to missing both the Vault raids, and the Aberrus and Amirdrassil "progress" nights. Assume both Aberrus and Amirdrassil will be one night HC clears next two resets, as long as enough people are still wanting to do Fated raids... As general interest seems to be going downhill, fast.

Navarim (project Warlock)

Main spec: Demonology

iLevel: 491

Raid Progress: Aberrus (9/9 LFR), Amirdrassil (9/9 LFR)

Keys ran (after 3 resets): 1

Of which had at least one friend/guildie: 1 (100%)

Did not manage to level alt to keep with naming convention, so old warlock it had to be.

Did LFR to pick up Bullions the last two weeks, four m0 this week for the dungeon weekly and 1 m+ with full guild as I was capped on wyrm crests on the Mage.

Spent bullions on Dreambinder and Seal of Diurna's chosen as they were big iLevel upgrades. Got unsure about replacing my current trinkets with the better sim ones after the Mage got hosed there, so focusing on other slots first.

Hoping to attend either guild raids once bringing alts is possible, or bring the character to the community raid thing my Hunter attends. Should prolly be over iLevel 500 before I do either, so will be a couple resets yet.

Parse status

I am going to just compare HC parses here, as normal and lfr parsing doesn't really tell much.

Esmëralda Parses

The Aberrus parse I was undergeared and we only did 4 bosses - one of which wasn't even approved. Primary suspects are Power Infusion and Aug buffs.

Amirdrassil had green logs instead of greys, so improvement. Not starting the raid with scuffed gear helped. Council parse could have been higher (great for Frost mage in general). But the tanks valued not randomly killing dps so much by not moving bear around, preventing cleaving. Which I fully support as a tactic, but it does not help parsing :)

Navarim

Navarim did not do any HC bosses the first 3 resets.

Benchmark Hunter parses

I did not start the massive Esmënet farm from reset day, which led to not having super gear the first raid. Hadn't done the raid on normal or heroic before, so was a lot of adjusting and learning instead of padding for parses.

For Amirdrassil I had a big gear jump. The week had the Dungeon Weekly quest - which awarded bullions instead of the normal random loot chest, which let me buy the Grieftorch trinket. Which had massive value, especially on Smolderon, due to the low geared raiders dropping like flies to passive raid damage and mechanics. Reclearing Amirdrassil is not fun, so this parse will stay the benchmark I think.

Aberrus had a big ilevel jump from Vault, due to buying the Rasz bow for bullions. And upgrading it to max with relentless m+ spamming. Also fairly well known content, no need to learn anything. Unsure why my Zskarn, Magmo and Echo parses were so low, though. This was before Grieftorch, so assume next Aberrus clear with have a parse jump on several bosses.

Status

As of right now, Mage beats Hunter on the Amirdrassil council fight and nothing else. Not a great sell on just showing up to raid with Mage.

Missing week 1 makes a big impact there, but it will be interesting to see how many resets will be needed before parsing better on any other bosses.

Coming as the m+ tank for 6-8 weeks (as dps in the raid, backup tank if need be) still clearly the best option - but switching from paladin to druid to be able to be caster might be the best option for that. But there is way less need in the guild raid for a druid compared to a mage or warlock. But worth thinking about if this does not pan out well.

The Key Competition #1: Openings

The only proper way to clear a heroic raid... Also my first time topping the meter in the social raid, which just added to the fun.

Since I started doing proper endgame content again in the Eternal Palace patch in BFA, I've been torn between doing keys on a tank and a ranged dps. The ranged I have tended to raid on as well so the motivation to do keys came from getting gear. The tank always ended up with higher score and gear in both BFA and Shadowlands. In Dragonflight however, it became more of an actual competition. So trying to make a rivalry series of posts for my keystone spam.

Throughout all of Dragonflight, the competition for keys has been between Dominator (Protection Paladin and Esmënet (Beast Mastery Hunter). And unlike the two previous expansions, Esmënet ended up with better gear and score in 2 out of the 3 previous seasons. Dominator keeps having more "premade" and ad hoc guild groups because tank is not something most of my friend play. Usually have an easier time with scoring keys on Dominator simply because of stable teams and me caving in on doing higher keys faster. Esmënet gets competitive the first two weeks with quantity of pugs and in the long run constant play, while the premades and guild groups dry out more and more each week for Dominator. With how gearing works after the Crest patch, keystone quantity means a lot more than doing 1-2 really high keys for a chance of a really good vault item. Esmënet takes early lead, Dominator leads most of the patch, Esmënet wins in a last month hustle.

On April 24th, the Dragonflight Fated Season started, so the competition started afresh. And just like the rest of Dragonflight, it's a prot pala vs bm hunter race... So what kind of maniac playtime did I get myself into this time? As with all things, I like a good statistical project so this might devolve into that :)

Dominator (the tank)

iLevel: 501 equipped

Score: 1956

Keys ran (after 2 resets): 35

Of which had at least one friend/guildie: 27 (77%)

I started with Dominator this season because it looked like I would be unable to attend neither the guild raid nor the social raid from last season. So priority went to gearing tank enough to play with RaeSea without them having to do (for them) super low keys. However, both the guild raid (one day) and social raid (one day) opened up for Hunter and Mage respectively. The paladin rush became a Hunter rush and then a Mage rush instead. I farmed the +2s for wyrm crests and a few 5s to set up KSM for next reset on my own, but other than that all the best keys are with friends/guildies - mostly RaeSea.

Dom's first key of the season, 2 guildies involved. I twitch a little remembering several horrible runs in here. But week 1 season 1 comparisons to general game knowledge of groups 18 months later isn't really valid, people are just much better now.

Highest key on Dominator these first 2 resets. Nice comp for prevoker, but there's a lot of dungeon mechanics having 3 melees on is not the best. With no soothes for the spins in Brackenhide for example, it gets bloody real fast. Dungeons were fun, still timed and friendly though so it doesn't matter all that much. But if we had done these on 8-10 it would have been iffy.

Esmënet (the ranged)

iLevel: 511 equipped

Score: 2149

Keys ran (after 2 resets): 53

Of which had at least one friend/guildie: 9 (~17%)

I was gonna wait a while before playing Esmënet since the social raid wasn't looking like a thing I needed to get ready for. But it did happen, so went a bit ham. But like always, dps life is a lonely life if you want to do things you want/need so lots of pugging happened. But unlike in Shadowlands and BFA, I don't mind the pug life as I can just listen to music and try my best. I also relish the fact nobody has big issues with me just playing on my own. There's obviously at least one guildie that has an opinion on people doing their own thing, instead of helping them do theirs, but that's just WoW life I think. It hasn't gotten out of hand (yet), so WoW-life is good there.

First Esmënet key of the season, no guildies involved. For some reason Nokhud was the key I got into first this season? Not by choice!

Highest key done on Esmënet these 2 resets. It was pretty easy, could have done a 9-10 Brackenhide this week I think.

The week 1 pug experience. Blizzard cutting out the keystone "floor" of 2-10, and starting with what was +11 as a +2 last season made for lots of horrible wipes reset 1. Undergeared people and people that didn't know about the change got a rough start, and turned toxic or just left the keys. At a guess, 50% of +2 keys I attempted week 1 on Esmënet got disbanded very fast. Week 2 had way less disbands, people adjusted and fortified tends to have less horrible boss wipes that tilts people.

Current state of the competition

Gearing

Esmënet 10 ilevel lead - 18 more dungeons, 2 raids and more lucky with drops. Combination of swapping out the old tier with new, Aspect capping so could craft max directly and having a twohander instead of 1h/shield means needing less crests to get well geared. In 2 weeks, this will have evened out a lot.

Score

Esmënet with a 197 point lead. See doing 18 more dungeons, and being way more comfortable pushing keys on hunter compared to paladin when pugging (and in group play!) This will also have evened out a lot in 2 weeks I think.

Social

Dominator leading with 60 percentage points. This lead will most likely increase in the next 2 weeks, as 8 of the 9 social runs with Esmënet happened in reset 1 and is in a downward trend.

I wasn't thinking of these as metrics before I wrote them, but they seem relevant. As a tiebreaker, using dungeon done diversity (DDD) in some form.

Opinions on the season start

Gearing

Gearing has never been this good for a deterministic player like me:

• It adjusted the crest cap up from last season (120 instead of 90).

• Kept the crafting max ilevel just below the mythic track.

• m0 being what a 2-10 was before, without affix and timer is nice to have as an alt option.

• Buillons not being locked to 3 like Shadowlands, can just lfr for them, means keydoers get both the cake and the cookie. And everyone is guaranteed to try their best pieces.

• Open World quests includes a decent reward (champion piece, lots of drake crests).

• Timewalking raid having good drops and a good chest reward.

• DOTI being available on m0 AND having the hardmode for hero track drops.

I wonder if whoever is in charge of the gearing during Fated airs these ideas on normal dev meetings and gets shut down, but has free reigns during this? The fact that WoW gearing can be like this but they choose not to will forever boggle me.

Dungeons

I really like that it's just the OG Dragonflight dungeons. I might not like some of them, but the fact that Dragonflight has been out for ~17 months and places like Ruby Life Pools and Azure Vaults has been available for 5 of them is just plain weird. So after 17 months, it finally feels like the m+ season is new and not some rehash. I might really hate Halls of Infusion, Nokhud and Neltharus when this Fated season is over, but I don't start hating them like I will with half the dungeon pool of War Within season 1...