The Dragonflight Activity Review

I've written 3 or 4 lengthy reviews of Dragonflight at this point, but no matter what I do it ends up as a wall of text. So here's attempt X: the bullet point list in a random order. [Spoiler: it did not end up any shorter than previous attemps...]

Actual Dragonflight Main: Esmënet (Hunter)

Played for all 4 seasons of the expansion, mostly as Beast Mastery but dabbled a bit in both Survival and Marksmanship.

Dragonflight Release Patch Doings

• Leveled and did Main Quest and some gearing in the two opening weeks. For profession purposes, as I was drinking health pots like water. Very efficient.

• Herber/miner/gold generator, made me not to go broke and kept the phials flowing. Good planning. Mostly done in PvP queues.

• ~100 Solo Shuffle matches. No titles. Was pretty fun until the queue times got silly.

• My best geared PvE character, but did not farm vault slots nor the raid bow so it was only "ok" overall. But since I did not put much effort into it, not a sore point.

• Cleared LFR, mostly for the crafting reward. Boring - nothing in real life feels as much of a chore as doing LFR to get an ingame reward I need.

• Did ~10 keys with Happy Monk/Ruthe/Tara/Moon/other TH-related people. Bit sad and nostalgic thinking about it, but at least we did something before everyone went their own way. Otherwise just pugs.

• KSM achieved in m+, 3-4 key levels off potential maximum, ok because again little effort put into endgame.

Aberrus Patch Doings

• Curve in the raid with Epiphany, top 3 guild dps all bosses. Very happy with the raid tier.

• KSH, all portals in m+. Within ~1 key level of potential. Happy about that, put in a lot of effort.

• Herber/miner/gold generator - mediocre effort. Some audiobook/podcast farming, but stopped Audible and Critical Role and did not find replacement. And the lack of PvP on top made me lack the staying power.

• My best geared PvE character for the season, one vault shoulder drop away from perfect gear and beating BFA Arathor-Esmë. Proper lucky season.

• Did ~30 keys with Epiphany guild groups. Mostly two constellations: the Fen/Kael/Hodgei/Kiti setup or the Sehl/Beady/Asp/Bod setup. Good patch duration on guild activity, the stretch of a few keys a week was made me turn very happy with the guild.

• Did the new zone questline (Zeralek Cavern). But it was so boring I couldn't manage to force myself to do the rep farm, besides getting the exact crafting sparks I needed. Annoying zone elite mob design the biggest negative.

Amirdrassil Patch Doings

• Curve in the raid with Exiles (socials/friends raid), top 5 dps for most bosses. Pretty good experience, but could really feel the skill diff in CE raiders compared to little old me.

• KSH, all portals in m+. ~2 key levels within potential. Fairly happy, but had a lot of failed prog keys that someone tilted over something minor and killed a timed run. That would have meant I hit potential for the dungeon and finally achieved potential...

• Herber/miner/gold generator - lousy effort. I tried multitasking by making spotify playlists at the same time, but I just ended up with doing the spotify playlist part and no farming.

• My best geared PvE character of the season, but some ways off perfect gear - luck from last season didn't hold. Still happy, not hitting any walls makes game more enjoyable.

• Did ~10 keys with Epiphany guild groups. There was an officer static that played every night the first two weeks with the only active m+ healer (the "Sehl" group). And I missed the casual group when they played (the "Fen/Kael" group). So my least social m+ season, which wasn't great. Mostly my "fault", as I stopped organizing groups much over a year before this point hit, so it took some time to get to that point.

• Did the new zone questline (Emerald Dream) and the rep grind to max renown for max rewards. Except I didn't buy the infinite rune - too much gold. Even did some extra open world stuff after max renown, so it was decent content. Except the Superbloom, ugh.

Awakened Patch Doings

• Curve in all the Awakened raids with Exiles (socials/friends raid), top 5 dps for most bosses. Still a good experience, but mostly because I stopped playing before it got boring maybe?

• KSH, all portals in m+. 2-3 keys levels away from potential. Good, considering the drop in keys done (RIO review might prove me wrong).

• Played ~5 keys with Rae/Sea and ~10 keys with Epiphany semi guild groups (mostly Smör-runs). Pretty bad. But with D4 season start and the MOP Timerunning everyone was doing different things at different times, so it wasn't something that went wrong or anything - just the schedule ghost.

• Best geared character for me in PvE again, about the same level as the Amirdrassil patch. The bullions that lets one buy pieces from raid made this a bit of a cheat, though. :)

Alts and other activities

Alts

• Endgame done on: Paladin, Demon Hunter, Mage, Warlock, Druid, Shaman, Evoker, Monk. Season 2 was the big alt patch. Easy endgame content, easy entry, easy to get aspect crests and crafting materials made playing alts as mains so easy they shut it down later. Liked that.

• Leveled to 70: Warrior. More out of habit leveling tanks than any plans to do anything.

• Untouched: Priest, Rogue, Death Knight. Not missing Rogue or Priest, not sure why the Death Knight went unloved.

• Mage curve in s3 and some of the s4 raids, some raid alting s2. Greatly enjoyed it. Did not put a lot of effort/time into it so never felt I overdid it.

• m+ tanking done on Paladin and Demon Hunter all seasons. Mostly to play with friends, but also because I like to experiment with how dungeons are done. Sometimes problematic since friends wants to do higher stuff and more of it than I do. Sometimes boring if I am spam pug keys for crests to gear up to play with friends. Sometimes the most fun I have in the game once I find some neat play. And sometimes feel really useful for my friends and guildies. Overall really conflicted about tanking, and reined in the tank play over the last year. And the amount of crap that happens has dropped sharply. Also tanked a bit on Monk and Druid, but that was just not fun this expansion.

• Druid, Shaman, Evoker got KSM s2 - untouched since. Since the guild was active and loads were playing it was fun and social, and a nice thing to see how many KSMs I could get in a season. Aug Evo in bad group is the worst WoW feeling ever, worse than naggy dps as tank.

• Warlock has been played in some capacity the entire expansion, but it can't compete with Hunter for solo play (getting into m+ groups is hopeless for example). Nor can it compete with Mage for raid only priority. When WoW gets shuts down at some point, will I regret not ever maining Warlock an expansion?

• Monk just a huge letdown, did not enjoy any of the specs. I miss BFA Brewmaster. As much as I miss BFA Havoc for DH.

Other Doings

• Done ~20 hours of pet battles. Was a lot of fun, but the UI and systems made it too cluttered for me to compete with non-WoW activities requring about the same brainpower.

• Maxed out all professions skillwise (but did not get all recipes nor knowledge points). Very handy to avoid the horrible recraft craft order system for my own crafting needs, and helpful for guildies/friends. But a massive goldloss as I didn't actively try to do craft orders. Expensive fun.

• Did ~20 hours of Random Battlegrounds. But after doing a massive amount of them for 15 years before quitting it in Warlords, they have outlasted it's fun.

• Questing. I have done nearly every quest in the expansion, missing some Heritage Armor stuff and bits and bobs. The ones that stuck was the guy being nostalgic on the "shelf" in Ruby Life Pools, the old dragon killing orc having regrets and the blue dragonflight "tomb" questline. The rest did not leave much of an impression, if at all.

• Dragonriding. Did a lot of races early on, but fell off fast. I can't say why I stopped doing it, but feel it's like pet battles. It just falls off against doing something else.

Goals, Expectations, Questions, Social and Standouts

Original Goals and Expectations for the Expansion

The goals and expectations I put up before Dragonflight was really weird. But it came from the place of not knowing what was going on. The whole Twilight Hope thing was still fresh in my mind, and it escalated after the expansion started. House of Small Gods (the guild I was in at the time) were dying. I was playing on another account for a while (that I did not play one second on this expansion).

• Progress every week be it m+ score or dragon riding race times. m+ score progress has been a constant, so that plan worked. The other progress lines not so much. The goal was badly put, so I don't mind so much.

• Do less keys in than in Shadowlands. Without even seeing the RIO expansion review, I know I have cut out hundreds of keys. So that's met, which is good.

• Do less raid bosses than in SL (ideally 0). Need to see the RIO review for this, but it certainly isn't 0. With the change to raids and m+ over the course of Dragonflight, I currently enjoy raids more than keys, which I couldn't have foreseen. So not that fussed if I fail.

• Have the RIO Recap have everyone of the friends of season be 10%+ of season runs. This one failed - mostly because I pug so much. Not even sure I managed that goal a single season... If I wasn't a tank with a big ego and poor social skills this would have been easy :)

• Stick to just one character for the weekend thing. I had forgotten this was a goal. I think I managed to stick to this, but might have had some mythic dungeon "weekend" mishaps at some point. But for the most part, I have met that goal. Thankfully, Timewalking dungeons are not horrible if you only do them sometimes and I enjoy doing these more now than then.

• I also have a bunch of oddly specific character goals and plans that just seems insane I am not going to repeat them. But they failed, all of them.

The Three Questions

I discovered I had three questions I wanted to respond to after the expansion was over:

1. What characters will have done the most things, achieved the most and had the most progress - the social character, the planned progress characters or the comfy characters?

2. What will I do with guild/community with the different sets of characters?

3. Will I actually do different things or remain "Dom does not have a main, he only has a million characters he does m+ on and nothing else"?

1. I didn't really specify in the goal post what these characters were. But as far as I remember, Dominator was the social character, Wutteät was the planned progress character and Esmënet the comfy character in season 1. Esmënet did the most things, achieved the most and had the most progress. Slam dunk for the comfy character, all seasons.

2. All but one of my active characters are in Epiphany (the Monk is in Fighting Mongooses, as there sometimes happens to be some old members around). I don't really get bugged much so the concept of a guild to hide in is no longer needed. I have however given up on the community feature in WoW, as they are either too big or too small. Discord servers better.

3. I have become "Raid in two raid groups at the same time as ranged, with bursts of m+ on less than 5 different characters" so yes indeed past me, I am doing things in a different way.

Social doings

• Did a bunch of keys with some ex-TH people in season 1 (Tara, Happy Monk, Ruthe, Moonwing, Ulio, Simplehuman etc) that fizzled out fast. Also done a couple of keys with Caco and Simply every season, but the premades times are long gone.

• Did 100+ keys at a guess with Rae/Sea, some of which also had Chaos/Marowak and Ruthe in season 1 and bits in season 2. But most had people from Epiphany/Exiles/pugs.

• ~100 keys in Epiphany groups; mostly pure guild runs, some with some pugs.

• We already had premade time slots at the start of Dragonflight for the ex-HoSG group, but that group died fast. The Skrike groups was not built around premades. And at most, I made a premade 5 times a season so the 2019 me is no longer here.

Standouts

• Good: I've not been involved in drama, had fun with m+, had fun with raiding, gearing systems improved, professions greatly improved and generally a good time.

• Bad: Class balance horrible after Aug Evo came out, I spent too much time being an m+ loner.

• Best moment: Algethar Academy run with Rae and Caco - bad mistake by me ended up having a baffling "if this m+ group was a band" moment and music talk, very enjoyable.

• Could use improvement: Me writing expansion goals.

• Could be added to: Expansion questions was good, need to redo. Could also add expansion predictions.

End of the Expansion Tier List

It's a good test to see if anyone reading made it to this point, because I'm assuming noone else would rank the expansions like this :D

Researching the Arcane #2: Problems with gearing through raid and burnout

Everyone's favorite spider boss. Maybe playing fire or arcane would be better here?

HC Sark, easiest end boss this Fated season.

So these last two weeks have been dominated by two things: making it clear how limited HC raids are when it comes to gearing, and how much the playerbase is burning me out.

HC raids currently have some issues that makes the rewards somewhat obsolete:

• Hero track items needs aspect crests to be better than Champion track items, so the difference between getting NM drops and HC drops isn't actually a difference at all (except the Very Rare drops that drops on Myth track in HC raids). You get those crests in Mythic raid or +6 and higher keys, so if you do neither HC raids is dead content really fast.

• Bullion items are flat out better if you do content that drops Aspects, making lots of raid drops pointless to begin with.

• There is a very finite amount of items, and everyone has to roll on them. And the "need" button is a very relative button that can be pushed without the person needing it in actuality.

• So besides raid being entertaining to do (which I currently do think!) the only thing that feels like a good reward are wyrm crests. Once you are done with those, it's all over.

When it comes to playerbase issues:

• The whole boosting thing is becoming more prevailent - I know more people that get them to avoid dealing with all the other issues at hand here with the game and community, and I know more that does boost runs for gold (to then buy boost runs themselves for other characters).

• The hustling. This season I have repeatedly gotten boost offers with a price list automatically (it seems) after I have signed up for some keys and some raids. "Can't get into 10s and need a hand? Need HC Final 2 bosses to get into raids? Just pay us X gold and we can run you through!".

• This was what made me not play classic, because how a large portion of the playerbase plays the game (especially the ones that organize things) - they want to monetize their hobby. If you arent trying to rake in something, you are doing it wrong. Pay for GDKP runs, run GDKP runs once you are geared. Rush to have a +10 key at the start of the season, sell those off during boosts early on instead of just running it normally.

Perhaps it has in actuality been like this since Legion, but I've never felt it be so all encompassing. Maybe because I'm increasingly in the pug/streamer world where everyone is out for a payoff, while guild/friend groups made the game seem like it had never changed. But this has burned me out somewhat on trying to improve or earn things the old fashioned way. So we will see how that pans out in the end.

Esmëralda (project Mage)

Main spec: Frost

iLevel: 513 [+6]

Raid Progress: Vault (7/8 HC), Aberrus (9/9 HC), Amirdrassil (7/9 HC).

Keys Ran (after 3 resets): 29 [+11]

Of which had at least one friend/guildie: 8 [-] (~28%) [-~16%]

OK progress with gear and raid since last time, considering it's one raid night of 2 hours and 5,5 keys per reset. Guildies are not playing retail much, so the friends & guildies stat will be in the dumpster.

Performance has been all over the place the last two weeks. While meters and parses gets affected by being behind on gear and I can blame that to an extent.

With 26 bosses, all having different things going on, playing 3 specs would be ideal - I think Fire might be better for Sennarth with moving scorch and instants, for example.

Some of the bosses - like Primalist Council - might be better served with an m+ build since there are four targets that don't move much.

But let's be real - if I farmed +6s to cap Aspects that would be the biggest dps increase here.

Navarim (project Warlock)

Main spec: Demonology

iLevel: 500 [+9]

Raid Progress: Vault (8/8 NM), (Aberrus (9/9 NM), Amirdrassil (9/9 LFR)

Keys ran (after 3 resets): 1 [-]

Of which had at least one friend/guildie: 1 [-] (100%) [-]

Navarim has run into the archtype modern wow progression problem, or any modern day problem really. Keep clearing normal raids, but not getting drops nor Wyrm crests means hard stuck at this iLevel. To get into HC raids as a pug, you need to have cleared HC already have like 2/3 of your gear or so be upgraded with crests. If you don't want to farm keys, you only choice is to A) get a guild that will take you or B) buy one or more boosts. Doing just pug raids has proved to be impossible. So that was an easy answer to that test :)

As for rotational things, I am struggling loads with CDs. Without Grand Warlock's Curse, nothing really aligns. With it, I have to press things on CD, and without building things up those CDs might get really suboptimal. One thing is to do target dummies, but if you are moving for mechanics and make a puny Tyrant and need to wait 10-20 secs for the extra Felguard on top there's a lot of dps loss going on.

Destruction is all the rage at the moment, including for some obscure reason a damage buff after the season started, so if I was smart I'd go Destruction instead to pick up stuff. I am assuming I'll just log on for one raid a week on this character as long as I am subbed, so could do some comparisons later maybe.

And much like Esmëralda - if I spammed m+ for crests there would be a big dps increase. But also make heroic raids obsolete.

Parse Status

Managed to attend HC raids on both Esmëralda and Esmënet to have the main comparison going, Navarim still struggling however.

Esmëralda Parses

No change here as Amirdrassil happened during last update.

Did not have Vault parses last time. There were some learning hiccups, and died halfway through Broodkeeper by being out of range of healers (my fault). I should prolly play m+ spec on Primal Council, and find a better way to position on Sennarth.

Navarim Parses

Navarim raided Normal Vault through a twitch streamer during that reset, and pugged a Normal Abberus. But did not manage to get into a HC pug of either - most require 510+ ilevel unless you know someone or go with a community/guild.

Benchmark Hunter Parses

I am pretty happy with these parses. I accidentally went downstairs on Sarkareth without needing to, but other than that it's just rotation details I could have done better.

No change here since Amirdrassil was not on the rotation these past two weeks.

Vault still a learning process, think this is my first orange dps parse on HC. A tank killed the entire ranged camp with the frontal on Grimtotem, but since output is what it is these days could finish the boss with a quarter of the raid dead at start still - so no new parse there.

Status

So from 3 raids, Esmëralda has a better parse on Council of Dreams (an ideal Frost Mage boss) and Grimtotem (where Esmënet died both times). Not exactly a vote of confidence.

With the amount of people that just do Remix now, the upcoming holidays and already dwindling signups this week, I might just do raid next week on Esmëralda, maybe pug Vault week after if guild raid will be swapped to Remix raid or something.

Looking at these progress parses, I think it's safe to say no amount of Arcane Intellect or Healthstones is worth the dps tradeoff. And if raid gets boring after Curve, not playing better than going for a spec more suited to have fun reclearing with.

The Key Competition #2: Well Geared

Rounding out my raid progress standing under a dying dragon's butt, such a glorious occupation...

On one hand the craze of the first two weeks dwindled these past two weeks, both for myself and the people I had grouped with. On top of people's interest in redoing raids and dungeons not being skyhigh to begin with, reset 4 saw Mists of Pandaria Remix and a new Diablo 4 season released at the same time.... Making the amount of guildies for groups disappear entirely and general lfg activity plummet.

On the other hand, the season is very easy to gear and get what you want in. I might have had very few social m+ sessions, but both Dominator and Esmënet got a bunch of gear. And did some scoring runs on my own. Pugs have improved massively in iLevel for what dungeons they do, the same with knowledge. Making what was really hard week 1 become really easy week 3 onwards. Except getting into +8s and higher as dps... I was in one +8 where there were 60+ people queued 15 seconds after the key was listed. The reduced number of keys makes the key happening much faster, but there is a general shortage of keys listed and tanks/healers. Nothing new, just seeing new heights of DPS getting bottlenecked. State of healing and tanking obviously at fault, too.

Dominator (the tank)

iLevel: 509 equipped [+8]

Score: 2075 [+119]

Keys ran (after 2 resets): 59 [+24]

Of which had at least one friend/guildie: 31 [+4] (~53%) [-~24ppt]

Did the homework Wyrm crest farm by myself both resets, as there is low interest in 2-5/7 keys from people I know. Getting wyrm crests from raid "for free" obviously means most mains only need to do m+ for wyrms on alts, that most people doesn't play this season. Caught a whole 2 keys with known people both resets. A stark reminder that having a character to mostly play with others is not a sound plan.

Was a bit confusing how few gains Dom got over two resets. The score increase to get KSM and little else. Next to no iLevel gain if you take away the crest spending, meaning there were no drops? Bit weird.

One big change from last two seasons is that surviving has been changed to be pretty hard for tank again, a lot of things hits hard. "Kiting"/mob control/stop spams are back on the menu, which means Vengeance DH is god again. Combined with healers getting an output reduction for some unfathomable reason makes doing progress keys really stressful again.

Motivation took a hard hit for this character - the feeling of being a relic of the past increasing.

Dom's highest key (tied) these two resets, with some familiar faces.

Esmënet (the ranged)

iLevel: 522 equipped [+11]

Score: 2280 [+131]

Keys ran (after 4 resets): 82 [+29]

Of which had at least one friend/guildie: 13 [+4] (~16%) [-1ppt]

With about half the keys done compared to reset 1-2, the drop in craze is very visible. Most of these keys were simply Aspect crest runs, and some wyrm runs. With the odd score run sprinkled in, just to have something to test the gear in. The few social keys I did was low ones with guildies for the mythic dungeon weekly quest in week 3.

I still enjoy this project however. The fact that I can just drop raiding whenever with no strings attached, and take long m+ breaks because I don't need to perform in a group setting just removes all the pressure. At other times it really sucks, because doing progress keys in a pug world is the very definition of wasted time. And talking about a lot of nonsense adds some chill to it all.

Esmënet's highest key these two resets. Much less stressful to dps than to tank. No familiar faces in sight.

Current state of the competition

Gearing

Esmënet a 13 [+3] iLevel lead. Lucky with drops, have capped Aspect Crests. Will be full build in 2 weeks or so, after which potential iLevel increase is very low and pure RNG. Question is if Dom will do enough Aspect crest m+ in ~4 resets to match?

Score

Esmënet with a 205 [+8] point lead. Spreading out where I did the Aspect crest farm (even doing Uldaman and Halls of Infusion!) trickles in points. Most of Dom's score gain came from first doing the easy dungeons, then doing easy dungeons again with friends, which makes for few points.

Social

Dominator leading with 37 percentage points [-23ppt]. With 2 more weeks on the horizon of 10 wyrm crests pugs each, Esmënet is one prog night invite away from a clean sweep. Both characters did 4 social runs, lending some credence to the idea that nobody wants a tank after reset 1 or 2 if they aren't doing max vault runs or progress keys.

Opinions on the start of the lull phase of the season

Gearing

• For the "optimizing" character, the season is almost over gear wise.

• For the non-optimizing who isn't grinding, there is a big gap.

Dungeons

• Algethar, Brackenhide, Azure Vaults and Ruby has so far seen the most success and less iffy pulls

• Uldaman and parts of Halls of Infusion can be really sketchy.

• Neltharus and Plains are mostly boring, and are usually bottlenecked with some trash pulls (before 3rd boss in Plains) or boss (spearboss in Neltharus) where pugs tends to instadisband.

Right now I'm guessing I will keep motivation to play until mid June, at most. I am happy I got to do the Vault raid on Esmënet and do the season 1 Dragonflight dungeons properly - but content is used up and only the gear and social bits makes me log on and do homework keys.