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...

Dragonflight Season 3 Recap

Raider IO was making me twitchy waiting for the Season 3 recap, but it came out in the end... After season 4 started maybe?

Another season of playing with everything! Shocker, affliction clenched last spot for specs played with again..

Esmënet rush at start, then got all content I wanted done (KSH + Curve). Then I did vault m+ and raided with Serwa for weeks as I attended raid as mage that led to a Frost Mage lead. Esmënet had a resurgence after Serwa got curve, and took back the lead after getting all portals plus some score change. Dominator did not at any point have the lead which is new for the expansion. In fact, none of my tanks got that well geared in Season 3.

The amount of bosses killed was about double the amount killed in season 2. The guild raid had farm runs for longer, and I also raided outside guild which was the cause of this. I doubt these numbers will be repeated unless they go down the rickety path of doing big m+ changes that backfires.

HC Fyrakk top with 20 attempts for progress. Considering that was during week, it puts the raid difficulty in a weird light. I doubt that short a progression in non-fated season will happen again.

The season 2 tracker was bugged, so I don't know if this season had longer progression time than that. But I would assume so, but I don't know how they count this. (First boss kill until final boss kill? Start of season until boss kill?)

The most unstable "vault" season yet. The first 20 was on Dominator in a premade I set up a couple of saturdays, then score runs on Esmënet later on made up the rest of the 20s and over. Random alts and some aspect crest runs in between makes up for a lot of variation on key levels.

Down from 8 specs in season 2, and same number of specs as season 1. Windwalker Monk and Demonlogy Warlock replaced Guardian Druid and Restoration Shaman. I am pretty happy that I reduced the amount of classes played, but unhappy I did not increase the amount of specs played.

Played the same premade comp for two sessions of a few hours, which was enough to make it the most played comp. The double havoc as part of the comp has been the same for 4 seasons in a row now I think...

Waycrest tops with 113 runs, Galakrond bottom with 38 runs. The rest ~50 runs per.

I know Waycrest very well and it was very easy to get into keys there, which explains the amount. Galakrond was my most successful key in terms of completion rate and timing rate, but I dislike the DOTI dungeon setups (having the portal here and there, RP breaks and "set piece" encounters).

Sad part is this continues the trend of becoming the "Freehold only" guy of my random BFA horde guild instead of having all dungeons be about the same to prevent burnout I am attempting to do.

Lowest amount of weeks with progress this expansion. Exactly 200 less keystones than in season 2 and 133 more than in season 1.

The reduction in progress weeks is much like the dungeon diversity not a good development. Reduced keystones is a good thing, and if I can drop down to season 1 key levels and start finishing backlog of great games like BG3 and other marathon games with the freed up time. Or even watch Stranger Things (I fell off after season 2 of that show)...

And so the most depressing part. Rae tops with 30 runs (~6%) and Fenaii is fifth with 17 runs (~3%). Further dropping Rae from 16% of season 1 and 8% of season 2.

I raided a lot more with RaeSea that makes up for this in some regard. And at least I still keep in touch. At this rate RaeSea will take over the longterm constant m+ teammates for real time, but I don't think I will do enough premade m+ for the rest of WoW's existance to overtake the TH crew. But at some point I will have to count...

Hodgei would have been top if he wasn't an altoholic. And other people than Nighed and Fenaii I played with more - but people that stick to one character always does best on these kinda lists. 3 out of 5 are guildies and there are no alts on the list, which I also think is a first since I left TH 2 years ago. So it took some time for change to happen :)

Summary

This was my peak PUG season, playing at odd hours, erratic frequence, long breaks during the season and raiding a lot more than I usually do. And I think I have done enough of that pug spam now.

I am happy with:

• That I played less keys than last season (but bad content the reason, not self discipline).

• Reached all my character specific goals on Esmënet.

• Properly tried to do progress raiding and parse raiding for once. Including raiding with RaeSea a tier, even if my attendance for that raid was rather bad.

What I didn't like:

• Wutteät, Navarim and Ihnanna I played more out of alt-habit rather than wanting to do anything with them. Could have been skipped and read a book with that time instead.

• Having so few runs with people I know compared to total runs. A few days into Season 4, I have 2 people beating 4th and 5th place on this season's played with list. Which puts things into perspective.

• Rushing through content fast, with very few progress weeks as a result, resulting in the feeling of hitting the ceiling and losing the motivation to play.

DF Season 3 part 6: Season 4 Date Announced and the nailbiting end of the Parse Project

So season 4 or Dragonflight Fated Season has been announced for April 24th. Obviously everyone wants to do something else instead until then.

Being a fated season, it is just the same raids all over again. With some new weekly quest to get a Spark for crafted gear (a redo of the season 1 one as far as I can tell), the m+ pool being what it should have been in season 1 (the 8 DF available-at-release dungeons) and a test run of the slimmed down dungeon difficulty/keystone scaling. And nothing else. For x amount of months. They skipped the raid affixes this time as far as I can see too.

I am not "hyped". While I want to do the DF dungeons more (especially the 4 that were in season 1 which was both short and I didn't bother trying to learn them properly) and the first raid, paying sub money to regrind the same gear in the same content but have to swap raid every week is kinda frustrating. We will if I manage to not be a dumb customer again.

The Parsing Finale

So luckily I had time (and interest) enough in playing I managed to get in a final raid on Esmënet so we could finally find out which of my characters is the best character. Serwaswathan was in the lead, but after looking at several 15k-25k Fyrakk parse improvements the time we killed it and multiple bad boss mechanic rngs. So this was the most exciting raid personally for me for the season... I even managed to dodge seed carriage on Fyrakk for equal terms despite two carriers being absent.

Without further ado...

The list:

*Esmënet wins Gnarlroot with ~18k dps.

*Serwaswathan wins Igira with ~1k dps.

*Serwaswathan wins Vocoross with ~1k dps.

*Serwaswathan wins Council of Dreams with ~45k dps.

*Serwaswathan wins Larodar with ~10k dps.

*Esmënet wins Nymue with ~3k dps.

*Esmënet wins Smolderon with ~28k dps.

*Esmënet wins Tindral with ~56k dps.

*Esmënet wins Fyrakk with ~1k dps.

Esmënet wins 5 bosses to 4!

(As an aside, Navarim wasn't close on any parse in the end)

What I picked up from this project

Besides the obvious statistical humbug when n = 1, there's some other stuff that is interesting here for someone that never looked at raid parses before last raid. (I had to look up BFA raids on my old hunter to compare the best % numbers once I started, however.) That stuff is:

*Some of the bosses are very obviously made to cater to some kind of dpser. On council, frost mage was really good (and elemental shaman) while for melee and BM hunter Smolderon was really good.

*Bosses like Gnarloot and Tindral the timing of things decide all the dps. Gnarloot end right after vulnerable phase and you have little competition for add cleave damage? Massive parse. Can you snipe the Tindral root cleave and dps the boss shield while others pick up the damage amps? Massive padding. As it were, Esmënet had better runs for both of those.

*Bosses with minor amount of adds like Igira, Larodar and Fyrakk favours the ones that can do great single target while having some aoe burst now and then in the same spec (like frost mage) while the ones that can't (like bm hunter) has to grind their teeth if it's a pull worth doing aoe on.

*Sheer luck plays a large part. I've had lots of pulls with massive increases in the bank on Nymue and Fyrakk, but then it's a wipe and the bad pulls has just been sitting there the entire raid tier. But sheer luck can be offset with increasing n. If I had raided on both characters all season, I am sure Serwa would have won this.

*Then there's obviously what the pure parse doesn't tell (taking away the luck bit, which obviously isn't factored in either) - Serwa brings Arcane Intellect and if you factor in the extra damage from the casters and healers (although that isn't much in our raid) it's not a stretch to say it would make Serwa win Nymue and Fyrakk if it was counted in. Esmënet was just another hunter in an ocean of hunters, and the raid would have Hunter's Mark whether or not I was there.

*At the end of the day though, this might be the most useless part of the game? DPS in reclears is nice because you can do it faster obviously, but if you take doing mechanics right (especially the ones doing chores like the watering on council or seeds on Fyrakk) and doing ok dps that's what gets progress and has a point. Not getting 480+ ilevel and being fully gemmed 2-3 months after first kill and know what to pad on.

I'll try to go back to not caring now.

m+ Score update

Esmënet managed to get a score bump with some lunch keys. The amount of wasted time on disbands has increased a lot over +20s, and most of it consists of tanks pulling stuff the group can't handle, swear at someone, do it again, leave when it didn't work out the second time either. People are so genuinly angry at this key level too. Right now I'm thinking whatever dungeon I end up getting the first +22 in wins the patch, and that's me done for the season.