Wrapping up tWW season 1 projects

Season 2 of War Within has been announced with patch last wednesday of February and the actual season starting first wednesday of March. So time to wrap up the projects of season 1.

The usual m+ - raid - profession triumvirate has continued, with a small dash of leveling the last new Esmë-reroll.

m+

The majority of the keys done has been the Epiphany m+guild nights, which for the most parts tends to be the same four dungeons (mists - ara kara - grim batol - dawnbreaker). As it usually tends to go when I do m+ in guild groups, even when Im not even voicing opinions. :) My OCD made me pug a couple of keys so scores would end up more even. One of the weeks the group I was in was hard carried by the tank, and timed 2 10s while at it. Sadly that means I have the Necrotic Wake portal, the one I really DIDN'T want :D

Broke down and did a few +2s on Wutteät on the side, the pull of keeping the KSM streak going hitting me now that time is running out. Intention of making a final season project of getting KSM in a week on the character, will see how that goes..

Raids

Esmënet did 3 raids, 2 of which were full reclears and 1 stopped on Ansurek. The raid that failed was fairly big and did not manage the usual stability. Picked up the one item I needed from there (Mandate from Ansurek), and obviously a lot of crests.

Professions

Now able to reliably craft rings, neck, cloak and wrist-belt-boots of all armor types at max rank. Can do max rank flasks and potions too but costing a lot of concentration at the moment. Way off on creating gems and enchants, so that's for next patch.

Have also stocked some more materials, but running low on enchanting materials as Esmëriel the Druid got to be enchanter... That I have not done anything on since october. Thus few items to disenchant besides the warband bound stuff from the island, and had to buy loads of dust to create the enchanted crests.

Leveling

Leveled another replacement alt up, Esmënehr the warlock hit level 80 after spamming timewalking dungeons with the xp buff you get from doing it during the event going on. And did the timewalking and dungeon weekly the week it was up to spice up the warbound gear it got equipped with. Made the character an enchanter (to disenchant all the warbound gear the character will no doubt get a lot of) and tailoring (to pick up cloth while doing the weekly dungeon rep quest if I do it). No plans to do anything endgame related.

Current feelings on the game

• I was really not feeling like having WoW commitments when the new season starts. Intend not to be in a raid group that expects me to show up every raid night, so have notified Epiphany I will be erratic - which seems to mean I won't be able to join the raids at all. Which is a blessing.

• Which means I'm not essentially back to non-commital Fighting Mongoose style play, which suits me fine.

• None of the patch content (besides the raid) looks very appealing for long periods of time, so I'm going to guess I'll have another long break before 2 months passes of season 2.

For next time

• Wutteät KSM in a week project first.

• RIO season in review once it's available.

KSM, m+ "grind" and professions

After my holiday playtime was over, I surprised myself by going for putting in another month. Even if I had "done" all the things that had much meaning in the patch.

Most of the playtime has gone into Esmënet the Hunter, with some side content on Wutteät the Demon Hunter and Esmëralda the Mage.

m+

Esmënet ended up with KSM some weeks ago, after finally bothering to up my score in some dungeons I barely do. This was mostly done through pugging.

But one of the things that made me do another month was that my "primary" guild, Epiphany, is trying out a bunch of new things with the new officer setup. One of those things is a guild m+ night every week. I think that was the best thing Friends With Benefits did when I was there, so I thought I'd check out how it would end up here. Been part of 2 of those nights so far, with a mixed experience. It's been nice to play with the same bunch for a couple of hours, but the gap between people's interests and abilities and whatnot creates some friction just like in raids. I'll sign up for these as much as I can, and will prolly do as little pug m+ as I can until next patch.

I have somehow managed to not take a single screenshot from guild m+... Me and forgetting to take pics, name a more iconic combo :)

Raids

Esmënet and Esmëralda has both raided. Multiple times with the Exiles socials as the barrier to entry isn't really there. I asked if I could do current content raids with Epiphany until end of patch on Esmënet, so for now both characters has a night each a week. Both characters needs a trinket still, since I didn't raid for 2 months and the trinkets comes from the last 2 bosses, so never really farmed for gear.

Right now the Exiles raid is a little over an hours for reclears mostly, while Epiphany had to relearn Ansurek after the raid team shatter a couple of months ago. In general the Epiphany raid times are way less hassle (2 hours ish) but there's more demands, while the Exiles raid times are more of a hassle, more erratic on how much gets done but can just come if you are reasonably geared. Which is the reason I have ended up in more Exiles raids than Epiphany raids this season.

Professions

Done a bunch of profession stuff, but have focused on Leatherworking and Skinning, since Wutteät could craft stuff with the Enchanted Runed Crests for 619 gear you get from rep and Esmënet wanted stuff crafted with Enchanted Gilded Crests for 636 gear. Try to log in every day and do work orders and 10-15 minutes of skinning for the knowledge point drops, and starting to be able to craft the most important stuff at max rank. Hoping to be able to craft both mail and leather versions of boots, belt and wrists at max rank before season 2 starts.

Have also gathered a bunch of herbs and meat to prepare for consumable creation for season 2.

Current feelings about the game

• Tired of delves and m+ dungeons still, think the design in current stuff is annoying and/or dull.

• Raid is ok, but I've done it too much at this point.

• I like the profession system still, but how knowledge points works at the moment is predatory when it comes to farming me for daily logins.

• The fact that I don't have WoW commitments makes it a relief that I can log off for 2 weeks without anyone getting pissed off, but it also means all attempts at doing harder stuff is way more annoying.

For next time

• Take screenshots of guild m+ nights.

• "Finish" gearing Esmënet (All slots 626+).

• Disenchant all the crappy warbound gear stuff in the warband bank.

The Return of Esmënet (and Curve)

After 55 days on a break, I ended up clicking "play" on the launcher to do some m+ on hunter.

After playing big crpgs and 4x games for my digital gaming fix during the break, my brain ended too fried in the leadup to christmas to do anything but be a good WoW zombie.

Since the return of Esmënet I did small batches of m+ each day, with a big batch on christmas day of all days (all trains nationwide held up by IT issues leaving me stranded). Going from 0 rating to 1950ish in about a week. The big batch made me remember very fast the dungeons aren't very fun.

I also randomly stumbled over a HC clear run in my mage's guild that I managed to get a spot in, and was promply humbled on the meters since a bunch of mythic raider mains was in that raid. But hey, random curve is a good thing.

There was a patch with a new special ring grind (like season 1 of Dragonflight had) with player hostile grinds and lots of bugs - they changed the hostile grind fairly fast but the bugs haven't been shaken so easily. Old Blizzard avoided doing patches for holidays for a reason, memo to current management...

The big thing that came with the patch wasn't the content - rather adjustments to crests. They increased crest drops based on key difficulty (so a +7 gives 6 more runed crests than a +4 for example), decresed the exchange rate (upgrading crests costs 45 instead of 90) and the cost of getting a gilded enchanted crest was reduced from 90 to 60. Making a max level craft go down in cost from 540 runed crests to 180 runed crests, a third of what it cost most of the season. Add to that crest cap is removed, and gearing is suddenly not a brick wall for people like me.

Meaning that if I cant reliably get into timed +8s for gilded crests, I can do double the amount of +7s and get a max level craft still. Or even spam +4s, but then needing 15 timed runs. Or if you do a full HC raid clear, you get enough crests for a craft just from that.

So I'll chomp away at trying to get ~630 iLevel before next patch, and get KSM while at it.