Dragonflight RIO Review and Shadowlands Comparison

It's xmas in August for statistics people again!

There's a reason I am super sick of Amirdrassil... All of the Vault kills are from the Awakened season. I rated Aberrus as the best, but that just might be because it has a more moderate boss kill number... Overall I found DF raiding to be enjoyable, good heroic difficulty and had good experience with the two raid teams I was part of.

I just raided a lot more than in Shadowlands, and had the opposite development. The difficulty of Nathria and Sanctum combined with the increasing guild tensions made raids something I disliked.

Case in point. The boss times are inflated in Amirdrassil because I progged all of them the same weeks in two different teams.

I did not even curve Sepulcher. And I seriously doubt the timers still on Sire and Sylv - we had ~150 wipes on both over several full raids.

I failed to have constant progression, and I blame the crest system for that - you hit the point you need vault items (or raid mythic) to get upgrades much faster in the current system. I like that, but it made it hard to spread out the gearing over more time :)

However, it does look like I have fewer weeks in Shadowlands with upgrades still. And obviously my best geared character was the same one for 3 seasons straight and my only prolonged period of having a main.

Top 3 are BM Hunter (650 runs), Protection Paladin (428 runs) and Frost Mage (290 runs). Not even sure how I managed to stick to just 9 specs after the last decade of altoholism. The increased number of runs on a few characters is to blame, with the increased need to farm crests drawing me away from 1 run on 28 characters.

Top 3 are Vengeance Demon Hunter (642 runs), Protection Paladin (432 runs) and Beast Mastery Hunter (418 runs). And obviously played everything besides the Evoker that released during the prepatch. So I played the top two about as much, but made time for all the other specs too in Shadowlands.

In season 1 and 4 I never tried to push. In season 2 and season 3 I did try in pugs, but most of the score increase can be attributed to the scaling being easier.

Shadowlands had all these scoring changes, so a bit hard to compare. Season 2 I remember I had hundreds of keys done with the same people, and then season 3 had hickups and leaving TH and change in people I played with. Got portals in Season 4, but don't think there was any pushing besides that. The score colours are about the same, and seeing how I just pugged in DF and SL was the premade expansion I find that a bit... odd.

Retribution Paladin (870 occurences) got massively popular after they had a rework at some point, and then the legendary on top - plus had several in the guild for runs. Resto druid (641 runs) always gets a fix that makes them m+ viable, and Nighed, Trollblomst and RaeSea's healer friends were all resto druids. BM Hunter (568) remained popular throughout the expansion, even if none of my usual non-pug friends besides Simple (and I didn't play that many keys with him).

Resto Druid (1359 occurences) was very popular after Resto Shaman fell off - and Ulveblomst most likely had a few hundred of those instances. Fury Warrior (1278 occurences) was in every pug and Grongle was in a few I think. Restoration Shaman (1190 occurences) were popular, and between Kris, Zebullit and Makaria there were hugely popular in the "static" groups. Not sure why RIO claims I missed playing with an Aug, as they did not exist until mid season 2 DF.

This shows how much I played in premades in season 4. We had one saturday where we did 6-7 keys with two of RaeSea's friends (I think) which was this comp.

While Shadowlands finished with the "new" premade of Rae, Sea and Chaos. With Sherazade the most frequent healer.

Oh dear. That's a lot of mythic plus... Except for season 4, progress was spread out more than in SL below. I also did less dungeons, and the average length of the dungeons is obviously shorter since ~500 dungeons less cut ~15 days of playtime. I did not cut as much as I wanted, but I did cut.

Graph a bit wonky. The sheer amount of premade nights that had keys that went to around the dungeon timer makes the amount of time spent absurd. Glad I didn't do this in Dragonflight. Despite good memories during a wonky time period in the Outside.

Top 3 are Freehold (143), Brackenhide (133) and Waycrest Manor (113). At least one actual expansion dungeon made it into the top 3... Bottom 3 are Temple of the Jade Serpent (47), Halls of Valor (40) and Galakrond (38). Two from least played season and Galakrond I still don't understand how ended up so low considering how short and easy it ended up being.

This paints a perfect picture of how far away from everyday Shadowlands my WoW gaming has become... Raennya (17), Trollblomst (16), Smør (16), Astiria (13) and Searkareth (10) makes up for a very low percentage of keys run.

Meanwhile, in SL... Raennya (73), Searothr (50), Marowak (49), Searey (16) and Lavabloom (11) had a premade going for portals where none of us really played outside.

Summary of important numbers for goal tracking

• 1830 keystones (do less than this).

• 9% (top m+ partner). [The rest of the m+ partners are so low in % it's no point calculating.]

• 9 classes in m+ (do fewer).

• 0 multispec classes in m+ (do more).

The war within plan

I have to admit that TWW might be the wow expansion I've been the least hyped about (when actively playing). I don't care much for the characters that are fronting the expansion. And I don't care much for dwarves. The prepatch event was not fun and did not spark any expectations for the expansion.

I haven't enjoyed raiding for a long time, and don't want to prioritize it. But I do like logging into wow after a tiresome day at work, just running around doing stuff (like collecting transmogs and mounts). Instead of watching something on Netflix. I still enjoy m+, but I enjoy it more when I have a consistent group.

The plan is to keep being a solo player. Play the story, do delves and maybe some LFR for transmogs. And if I enjoy the game, I might do some m+ to get KSM. The plan is to main druid (Trollblomst) and have warlock (Ruthe) as first alt.

Selfie with a random owl

Here is a list of of the (newer) expansions I have enjoyed from most to least :

• Legion

  • Probably because this was the expansion when I first started raiding and m+. Both resto druid and affliction warlock were excellent choices. The class halls made us feel special. Played a lot with friends and was in a good guild.

• Shadowlands

  • I liked a lot in Shadowlands. I am one of the few people that actually liked Torghast. Probably since I didn't play much alts. I liked the theme and the areas. Its biggest flaw was that covenentas were tied to power and not just aesthetics.

• BFA

  • After Legion, I was superhyped about this expansion. But for me it was a let down. I hated the azerite system and it killed the affliction gameplay. Resto druid lost stuff like casting tranquility on the move. The focus on horde vs alliance is not my cup of tea either. The consistent m+ groups are the reason I rate it above Dragonflight.

• Dragonflight

  • I should have loved this expansion. The theme was perfect for me, and the new class was very good. But somehow I failed to do so. It might be because of the guild breakup, and that I didn't find myself truly belonging in any guild. This is the expansion (in newer time) that I have played the least. Maybe I'm just tired of the game.

Esmë's tWW Prepatch Experience

It's that time of year with another silly season, and I don't mean the international football transfer window. So how much fun has the prepatch been this time?

Prepatch content

We got some more quests, which consisted of clicking on some consoles in Silithius like it was BFA, and get Bronzebeard's grandson to come look after his unconscious granddad. That was it. Err?

The other thing we got was a remix of how world quests and world bosses work, with "modern" event timers. With some rewards to buy for a new currency, and a heirloom ring to craft from some drops.

I farmed the ring, and was going to get some gear. But buying the "Bind to Warband" items from the vendor was costly, so I just dropped it and did m+ and raid instead.

Prepatch class experience in endgame

So pretty much every class got some adjustments to their kits, talents and numbers. However, without the Hero Talents there's no good way to tell what will be fun to play in tWW or what works well. As of right now, a lot of melee specs are busted (except Havoc DH?) while most ranged specs looks bad (except Elemental Shaman and BM Hunter?). I attended a raid, and did better than a bunch of ranged that had 10-20 ilevels on me and me not having played retribution paladin before the prepatch.

Half the raid was made up of people from a mythic raiding guild some of the officers know people in (I think) so the melee from that guild made us all look bad.

Also did a bunch of m+ as protection paladin, mostly pugs but some guild runs also. It feels like either Blizzard nerfed the numbers or all base output was increased. Because every dungeon run so far has felt like it's been 2-4 key levels lower than they were before the prepatch. Melee has generally been boss here too, except Havoc that does tank damage most of the time.

In tWW, all tanks are going to lose self sustain and some survivability baseline. The fact we will also lose the trinket effects, here accounting for 50% of my healing on paladin, will be a bit rough going from this season.

Protection wasn't changed THAT much from before the prepatch when it comes to base kit, but it feels like it does more damage? Have enjoyed it in the prepatch, at least. Holy had a bunch of changes but I didn't know the spec that well beforehand, and Retribution is downright broken when it comes to damage numbers.

Threat has started to become an issue again, and after prepatch can feel dps rip threat much more often than before.

Wutteät kept the chain going

Before setting up the paladin, did a bunch of keys with Trollblomst and some with Caco, resulting in KSM number 8 in a row on the character. Felt a bit old school playing like that again :)

Vengeance after the nerf felt better to play for me, as I could take the damage and survival talents instead of doing all the stops and playing Brand ping pong. But much less beneficial to the group. I feel doing the actual tank job is much easier on this character than the Paladin, but not having CR/dispels/group heals makes it feel less useful for the group.

Overal Prepatch Impressions

This is the dullest prepatch I've played. Some kind of cinematic questline, or some event not on a timer would be a start. They scrambled to make adjustments before the free weekend so at least people wouldn't show up to just timers and nothing to do, but still a lackluster experience.

I got a bit hyped from the expansion cinematic trailers, but there's hasn't been a single thing they have put out about what we are going to do that makes me excited. Everyone is shitting on delves. Half the m+ dungeon pool is garbage. Class balance is a disaster. Hero Talents are mostly meh unless you play some dps specs. The raid and zones seems decent, but I am currently not keen on commiting to raid or m+ pushing or even buying the expansion after the prepatch and design notes from the beta.

Still 3 weeks left, but I might pull a Legion and just opt out of the grind and just pop in to do the story bits when I have a bunch of spare time. Taking bets!