A Shifty World #4: Completion (tWW day 4)

After the letdown day 3, day 4 started well with one bugged questline (Memories of the Sky) for the Hallowfall Sojourner achievement being fixed so it was marked as complete. The other questline I had issues with (Striking Steel) either had a wait time to do the last quest, or there was a bugfix that went live. So Loremaster was within reach...

Side quests

That was the questlog sorted out.

• I will mark the goblin ghost use mishap questline in Ringing Deeps as my favorite.

• With the worst being the Moira questline in the same place.

• There was a lot of them this time, but not too much so you drowned in them. Good spot for them to be in, I think.

• Not entirely sure what I think of the reward structure however. There was a single pair of boots on the Explorer track as a reward from all those quests, and I feel the number of items available are really low? You get a rep thing (once per warbands) per questline, and something else, and once the warband rep is gotten there's not much incentive to redo.

Delves

The two last Delves I missed now done, I forgot to take a screenshot of the achievement though.

• The two last delves I did was Underkeep and Skittering Breach. It was the two I enjoyed the most, as it had a fairly straightforward objective the times I did them, reminding me more of m+ than the others. Not sure how much variation there is in a delve, though, as I've done each once and the achievements listing different versions?

• As it stands, Delve usefulness in gearing will be decided by the keys for the bountiful chests it seems. The rewards without them doesn't amount to much.

• Leveling Brann does seem to have an impact - some of the Delve trash he didn't dent at level 1 is another matter at level 10. So there might be some farming needed besides own gear to make the Delves doable at an 8 reasonably fast?

Dungeons

I capped Weathered Habringer Crests, and wasn't very keen on just doing dungeons for valorstones, so I stopped for the week with heroics. Overall I don't think doing dungeons as Balance was enjoyable, so it was good to have an excuse.

End of day status:

One of the last quests I did had boots on the Explorer track as a reward, so with valorstone farm I can reach 580. Which also happened to be the raid requirement. Not a fan of that requirement. The fact that the raid leader posted it with "doable in an afternoon or two", and when confronted with this the entire tryhard early access part of the guild went "don't worry about it" made me remember Fighting Mongooses in Wrath of the Lich King... Nothing really changes with heroic raid guilds :)

Since I was done with overworld content (including the main quest, which was a snoozefest), I swapped out Herbalism for Enchanting. And freed up all the bagspace made up of quest rewards and BoEs I had collected while leveling. Didn't get me very far, but at least all the excess loot from m0s and m+ will be put to use once the season starts.

There's a buff coming on next reset with a 20% buff to Starfall and 12% buff to Starsurge - we'll see if it's enough to actually make me go through with raiding as Balance :)

A Shifty World #3: Dungeon Downers and Stupid Sojourning (tWW day 3)

After the overwhelming reset day with a lot of random activities, I had a more focused approach on day 3. Since Loremaster, clearing quest log, farming herbs and getting big gear upgrades from renown all came from doing more side quests and wandering around the overworld that's what I did. And some odd heroic to get some variation and valorstones.

Side quests

• Quality of side quests still variable. Some really good sad ones, the odd npc powertrip and some hopeless fetch quests.

• Getting the renown for gear was pretty easy, I managed to get all the veteran pieces today.

• Getting the Sojourner achievements for Loremaster was harder. Two of the Hallowfall ones were bugged for me; I have done them (and confirmed with youtube and wowhead) but they were not tagged for achievement. The other zones has quests I can't find, and I'm not in the mood to have to google them up just yet.

• Got Pathfinder, which was really nice. Herbing in the expansion has been a bit annoying since everything is so vertical, so if you have to land on the ground to pick a herb and run out of vigor you can't back up and have to wait. It was a nice quality of life.

• At the end of the day, my quest log is still mostly full. But I still have hope to clear it out before the season starts.

• Overall still happy with the quests, except the bugs for tracking things.

Dungeons

• Mostly stuck with Heroics today, and completed about 5. The amount of failed runs though...

• Problem 1: Loads of people are targeting loot in heroic with reduced ilevel drops on day 3 of them being available, and leaving if they don't drop. Usually that's a tank/healer duo that leaves the dps stranded and facing a new 10 minute wait after waiting 10 mins to get into a one boss dungeon run.

• Problem 2: Rage. Tanks pulling all trash between bosses. Tanks not pulling all trash between bosses. Not trading. Trading. Doing quest. Not doing quest. Not doing mechanics fast enough. Doing mechanics fast so they can't see. Literally everything causes someone to snap. I don't think I've ever had this large a percentage of dungeons runs have someone be mad, and even my ranked League of Legends games in silver was calmer.

• I simply don't like half the dungeons, so I am already weary of doing random HC. Not great.

• At this point, I am hoping Delves will save me from dungeons.

End of day status:

I think I am getting to whatever the ilevel requirement for the normal raids will be. I need some boots that is at least on Explorer track to drop from anywhere, and then I can just farm some Valorstones to pump my gear up to 580 if I need to.

I don't know about playing Balance so much though. Playing Druid is very practical for doing all the content, but the current Balance rotation is... odd. Might be that everything in dungeons die so fast normal rotation doesn't really apply, so can hope it gets better in raid, but seeing how all the Balance mains fled the spec I'm not so sure...

A Shifty World #2: Overwhelming First Reset (tWW day 2)

Once again there was light, and the first reset of the expansion was upon us. And boy, I keep getting more overwhelmed...

I have tried to make a list of everything I could do (and maybe should do), but not sure if it's exhaustive:

• Dungeons (Normal and heroic - heroic with lower than normal gear)

• Weekly Open World quests (like World Soul that gives you a craft for sparking)

• Events (like the Theater or the Machine)

• Delves

• Side quests

• Rep farm

• Professions

• Rares

• Achievements like Pathfinder and Loremaster

I didn't really choose since I didn't know what was going to pay off, but I did a bunch of side quests, delves and dungeons to scout what the content was like.

Dungeons

• Normals while leveling was a stomp.

• Normals at 80 while badly geared was rough.

• Heroics at 80 has generally been easier than normals. Go figure.

• Just two days since heroics were introduced, people are throwing tantrums, targeting items and leaving group after the boss they are after and generally it's been the worst state of dungeons I've ever had in WoW.

• The dungeons themselves have been very mixed, I get Shadowlands vibes here. Ara-Kara, Rookery, Stonevault and Priory were all fine. Cinderbrew and and City of Threads I find annoying. Dawnbreaker and Darkflame might be the two worst dungeons for m+ in the game I've encountered. So I'm not getting more hyped for season 1 when it comes to dungeons...

• A fairly negative experience, but I did a couple runs with guildies which were fine for gearing purposes.

Side quests

• The quest log was bursting at the seams, so I had to get rid of some. Why is there a quest limit, and why isn't it visible again?

• There's been several side quests I enjoyed a lot more than the main quest. Wandering around cursed areas figuring things out, helping kobolds and goblins with random projects and some... really sad tales. As usual the side quests are the best quests!

• There's also been some REALLY dull ones - drop quests which doesn't really have any story related to them, the beat up elites with your main character friends who are just that much better than you and they know it and some general dogsbody assignments.

• I found out that at renown 7 (Council and Hollowfall) and 8 (Assembly) you could get Veteran gear, one slot for each, so my side questing was going to pay off some days later... No more gear hidden at Exalted when you get better from elsewhere!

• Overall very enjoyable, but it's only going to be fun once.

Delves

• Since all of them has a quest, I needed to do some to unclog as motivation.

• I have a really hard time telling them apart. I cannot remember the name of one I did and what was in it.

• As far as I can tell there are 4 types: Jump on mushrooms, don't step on webs, run around with a candle and ones with circles you don't want to stay in. Or a mix of them at the same time.

• Bronn is not too bad for an npc companion, but the constant spam of "nice" or something like that when you pick up treasure and stuff gets old, fast.

• I was not overly entertained, nor was I bored like I was with Torghast.

• Sailing up as alternative to m+ dungeons as side content to raids and professions, but needs to have reasonable amounts of crests per run to have a point when it comes to gear for me.

End of day status:

I enjoyed the first day of max level more than I did leveling. Variation and less playtime might be the reason :)