DF Season 3 Part 1: The Start

Two weeks of season 2 has now passed. I have put in the hours, but in a different form than the last two seasons. But again I have not stuck to a single character, so here's a brief summary...

Esmënet

m+

As a BM Hunter, learning new dungeons is very easy. And boy did I do a lot of dungeons the first two weeks on this character. 2237 rating and crest capped and gotten lots of loot. 100% of the m+ I have done on Esmënet has been pugs, however.

The fact that BM is one of the meta classes for once makes it more fun too. I have failed to replace my trusted pets with some of the new pets I tamed in the Emerald Dream, so need to work on my style score.

Raid

In season 1 of DH I cut out raiding completely, before returning last season. And now I have 2 characters who raid 2 nights each. I am intending to do things a bit different this time around, and just get to Curve on Esmënet and maybe reclear once or twice after if there is a people shortage in the group I raid with. In the last Heroic raid, there were 7 hunters, so getting loot from there is not gonna happen regardless.

Currently sitting at 6/9 heroic, which after two weeks seems a bit wild. And not doing too shabby on the dps, except the 2 progressed bosses this week which were grey and green parses.

Serwaswathan

m+

Serwa has kept more of a guild group profile than Esmënet, and has been doing lower keys. Capped on crests, but does not have KSM and is behind on gear. Have pugged some, but it's a rough world when you have to compete for the one range spot and you are behind BM Hunter and Aug Evo for the Bloodlust spot. And when I have gotten into groups, there's the stereotype pug things like...

The amusing bit was that the guy got red, ran out of the dungeon to HS, got summoned back, hadn't actually repaired and alt f4ed when it was found out. And it was their key... Have been bad at taking screenshots with the usual guild suspects (always forget when something is normal!), so will have to remedy that.

Raid

Serwa is doing guild raids, which are shorter and more laidback than what Esmënet is doing. And just like as in m+, Frost Mage is a shade compared to a bunch of other specs, especially on cleave stuff where adds just melt. I've done allright on normal, but haven't really done well on the heroic bosses we have done so far.

Playing the frost mage is generally more interesting than playing BM Hunter, as there is always a lot to adjust so fights doesn't get stale. The guild raids are also so well suited to me (they are 2h 15m with a break), and at times have reached both TH and FM levels of nonsense raidchat which I enjoy.

Dominator

m+

I didn't really do any m+ the first week, but if there is any dungeon that makes me rage over tanks in pugs (and even guild groups), it's Atal'Dazar. So here we go again...

Technically 3 of these are mains, but one hadn't played much (I think) and the others were doing a couple key levels lower than they normally would. I say, and see that everyone got score from that run...

Prot paladin is ok, they keep getting set bonuses I don't like, but it doesn't feel off like they did to me in Shadowlands. Still not BFA with corruption, but can't have everything.

Faffing about in patch 10.2 part 1: Emerald Dream & patch release

When I blogged here last, I had some overdone weekly report thing going with lots of numbers and few opinions and insights into content that I did. So I want to change that this time around. Primarily to talk about casual stuff more, where I define casual as content in the game I do that has no bearing on how well I can do endgame stuff. Like pet battles, doing side quests to get into the story, getting weird crafting recipes and all that jazz. So without further ado, here's what casual stuff I did this week!

Emerald Dream

The new zone. I generally like the green nature zones, and if this was not tagged as THE Emerald Dream I would be content on the looks and atmosphere. But a tiny splinter, with nothing wacky going on, and just looking like a bunch of normal zones have done lately? Eh. It's still fine though, just a smidge miffed they keep bringing out these almost mythological places, and then make a tiny zone out of it.

The main quest and sidequests were pretty cool. And unlike the caverns questline, it was free of horribly designed mobs, not horribly coded companions and some of the usual mistakes they have done with these zones the last few years. Happy about this part!

The repeatable content have a target audience of someone not me, so not much point reviewing it. It's a glorified escort quest, a fill a bar world quests for a currency and plant a plant with a currency and let it grow with the fill a bar currency. And the obvious rare spawns and treasures and whatnot. I need a Healing Potion recipe from the flowers, and the Enchanted Crest recipes from rares ideally, but others in the guild has that stuff so can just work order them.

The best part for me, just like with the rest of these zones in this Expansion, is that I can just go and do things there as I feel like it, instead of being obligated to like in SL, BFA and Legion.

The Gift of Cheese

Since there's a lull, there's time for random other stuff. There's this cooking recipe that's a contender for best food for my characters that I didn't really know how to get. A quick search, and it was tied to some weird achievement... You had to pick up a cheese in the caverns to get a rat in your backpack that you had to bribe with cheese, to teach you a cheese dish recipe, and then you had to give 50 rats a serving of that cheese recipe in the vanilla zones. Got a decent amount of audiobook in while doing this :) Very amusing, not something I do in WoW often.

Farewell Dungeons

For people not on a massive amount of alts, the new zone wore off fast. So got to do some farewell to the season dungeons. Feel I have a pretty good mastery of the dungeons now, so it's very chill to play, especially on the Tyrannical weeks.

It is kinda funny a lot of people are still doing m+ one can't get anything relevant from on a patch week, I must admit.

A note on patch release stability

Just for comparative purposes I'll make a few notes on well the game ran during release week. Logging in has been fine and getting to character select has been fine. However, lots of trouble with game perfomance this week:

• Stuck on loading screen (bar 90% full ish).

• Lagging out when entering a new shard or zone, like being invited into an m+ group on another shard, I lag out when the shard swaps, but don't disconnect (and can't log off).

• Randomly dc when on taxi, and fall to my death when reconnecting.

• Random graphics lag (but not framedrops according to the tracking) when doing mage aoe, like once blizzard and frozen orb is out it gets weird.

So not the best patch release from a technical point of view. But unless the dc stuff is fixed on wednesday, it is going to be a nightmare to pug stuff as I will dc the moment I get invited. :(

Plans and Intentions for Dragonflight Season 3

Gone are the days of lots of thoughts and plans and structure and adjusting to what others are doing... So what will I be doing?

Season 3 Goals

• Get Ahead of the Curve and 2500+ m+ score on Esmënet (BM Hunter). [Challenge from elsewhere].

• Give Serwaswathan (Frost Mage) an honest try in guild raids and m+. By honest mean try to improve, have 75%+ raid attendance the first 3 months and have at least 2 vault options every reset the first three months.

• DON'T play Dom or Wutteät (or other tanks) at a level with other people's mains. Especially the mythic raider mains that some of them have turned into!

Season 3 Intentions

A decent chunk of things I do in WoW now has gone back to the way I played before Battle for Azeroth. And it changes a bit based on what I feel like. Season 1 I did PVP and Battle Pets. Season 2 I've done a MASSIVE amount of profession stuff, done a lot of sidequests and leveled up a bunch of alts. So this is not so easy to predict, but I'll make an attempt.

• Get any useful non-raid profession recipes from the new zone.

• Tame half a dozen of the new really good looking pets in the new zone.

• Do all the story based quests in the new zone on Dom, and max out the rep on Dom.

• Finally decide on some naming convention, and then change at least Dom and Esmë and whatever raid main I will have further season(s) to follow that naming convention. I get increasingly more annoyed at the Dominator name, but struggle even more with a name to pick instead...

So that's it this time. The Twilight Hope stuff started to make me lose interest in whipping in people for keys. House of Small Gods made me see how brittle guilds can be. And most attempts at making a stable group after the last static group went mythic raiding has failed. I have signaled interest in attempts at a static for the start of the season on my Hunter, but I'm not expecting it to be the best thing since season 4 BFA versatility corruption stacking.

Happy patch times (thanks to NA for beta testing as per)!