DF Season 3 part 5: Review and Parse Update

This week has the final patch of the season. And for once Blizzard blindsided just about everyone: they added a (Pirate) Battle Royale mode. I get the impression it's a time limited thing.

It's not my cup of tea. But adding more things to do in a game is never a bad thing. It's prolly fun for the more competitive minded WoW people, especially the ones that don't want to do the grind for gear and stuff. At the same time, a lot of the gameplay isn't very WoW, like skillshots and no autoattacks. So will be interesting to see what the verdict is once the event is over.

If you are a collector in retail WoW and get FOMO easily, the grind to get every transmog, pet and mount here is plain disgusting. Especially for a time-limited event.

With that out of the way, it's time to review the season content, the stuff that affected me at least.

The Things That Worked

The in-season gearing

Just as I enjoyed the crest system last season, I enjoyed it this season. They made some adjustments so I couldn't get BIS by playing it the fast and easy way by crafting stuff every other week. I can understand why they made adjustments, but it also makes crafting more pointless again which I don't like. I'd prefer a complete loot overhaul after 4 expansions with the same haste/mastery/crit/vers gear to something more exciting, but as long as that isn't happening, this might be as good as it will get.

The world content not getting in the way

Another season with no AP, no Torghast, Corruption and the like you have to do to do the thing you want.

The raid (on heroic)

I enjoyed the raid a fair bit. It was scaled so Curve guilds neither could clear it week 2 nor end up spending 12+ weeks and 100+ wipes on last boss to clear it. It might have been on the easy side, and some bosses other than Smolderon could've been a bigger hurdle to make it more exciting on progress. But for me that is more of an m+ enjoyer, I enjoyed the raid more than the m+ this season. Which doesn't happen often.

The Things That Didn't Work

The season-to-season gearing

This was the season the meaning of having gear from the last season became utterly pointless. The "Veteran" tier of gear you could get as drops from +2s, LFR and Emerald Dream/Open World content was a big upgrade over mythic raid and the best crafted and m+ gear from Season 2. While you are always changing out gear fast with a new season, being able to swap out your BIS gear in the offseason is a bit too much for me. It also kills the meaning of gearing up topping up your main once you have completed the content you want (Curve and KSM for me). Or gear up alts in case you want to use them next season, as you'll have better gear in 2 resets from open world the season after.

The m+ dungeons

There were two things that made the m+ dungeons a letdown this season. Primarily it was the 6 out of 8 old dungeons in the rotation that made for "I've done this too much before". Combined with the 2 DOTI dungeons being in my opinion the worst DF dungeons, it made for a dull experience. The other detractor was the scaling and adjustments. You were cruising through all that could be considered low and mid tier dungeons (between +2 and +14). You could wipe a bunch and still time the dungeon for most key levels, and then at one key level you just couldn't live some pulls. Or it would turn into a 1+ hour wipefest. Routes didn't matter much either, as every dungeon was mostly move press W - except Atal which saved the day AGAIN. Doing mechanics either didn't matter or were very punishing. You were invincible as a tank except for a small amount of pulls. DPS had to mind their defensives, health, LOSing and all the stuff that is mostly expected of the tank more than the tank had to. Healers didn't have to heal large parts of the dungeon, only to run into sudden BLOW ALL CDs AND YOUR OWN DEFENSIVES to get through the pull. If you didn't know about it beforehand, you have no chance. And healers being in such high demand, lots of them were the reason some runs disbanded because they could just jump straight into key levels you have to have learned, but they hadn't.

The world content (Emerald Dream)

Get dewdrops -> click on plant a few times during 3 minutes - > follow tree around - none of it without any risk, just boring. The campaign quest storyline didn't do much for me either. Upside was that getting the crafting ingredient was fairly fast to get. But altogether a forgettable experience.

The Parse Update

So I did a full clear with Navarim three resets ago, and Serwa two resets ago. Most of the pulls were pretty much as expected when it came to improvements and which weren't gonna be. With the one exception being Fyrakk on Serwa, where I had 10-15k parse increases every pull for 5+ pulls, but we wiped due to seed management. And then I died on the first intermission during CDs after using all my defensives, and then I wasn't CRed for 30-40 seconds. Obviously that ended up being the kill that reset, and it wasn't a parse improvement to put it that way. Which reminded me that playing for parses is pointless. And I only get mad where I normally wouldn't be, so I stopped the project.

There is a slight chance I will sign up for a raid after easter so Esmënet will get a chance to redeem the hunter as my expected best performer. Or I might play Pathfinder 2nd edition every thursday and never raid again, it will be rough to decide.

My biggest takeaway from the reclear parsing is how much correct timing of cd use, killtime and what the rest of the raid is capable of. Having raid buffs like DH for 5% more spell damage is an obvious thing. But stuff like how much AOE burst the rest of the raid does on Gnarloot, Igira, Larodar, Tindral and Fyrakk has massive impact on how well you can pad on the adds. If Gnarloot dies right after the vulnerable phase and you are single target, and if Gnarloot dies right after add spawns and you don't have aoe burst, the results are massive for both parse and how Details look.

Having n = 1 for a competition like this then doesn't really give any information. Competing against myself the entire season and using all consumables, and then compare performance on first kill and best parse at end of season would be a more informative way of doing it. But raiding 10-20 hours a week and doing the same amount of m+ (and other things that boosts character power) equally is not something I want to do. Maybe I could have in Shadowlands or BFA (to some extent I did in BFA, but never looked at a parse, ever), but I have way too much WoW fatigue now.

m+ pushing

Since I gave up on parsing, I decided to test myself a bit on Esmënet by doing some m+ for score again. It was pretty fun up to and including doing +20s. +21s and over I got personal experience of how frustrating puging can be.

The amount of time spent on getting a group that would time the dungeon is massive. One evening, I was 75 minutes in groups that never actually started a dungeon.

The one +21 I've gotten into this patch that finished, had two rat characters and two people who did not know mechanics (including tank that missed count by skipping as much as possible, as if he had never been in Waycrest before) - and depleted, but only by a little.

A couple of +21s was disbanded shortly into the dungeon because someone got mad at someone else doing things a certain way. It's just massive timesink to get up to 10 score, and no other benefit.

So the amount of time spent on crap that is not trying to improve myself, improve score or get gear is very high. And not worth it. But I already know this, which is why I am down to 1 week a season of trying this.

So at this rate Esmënet is looking like will be my best character this season again, with this:

At this point, I have better score than last season. But have dropped 40 spots on the ED/Terenas Hunter rankings.

I generally think I could do +22s for most dungeons (maybe some +23s), making this one of the worst seasons for getting score that reflects where I think my character is and my ability to play it.

Having had a set group would have solved that. And that is what everyone always told me in Legion, BFA and Shadowlands :)

DF Season 3 part 4: Ranking Dungeons and Parse Update

One tradition I've been bad at upkeeping, is ranking dungeons within a season. It was much easier when you had them for an entire expansion, as you only had to do it once...

"Reviewing" anything has lost all meaning, and given what I think of the dungeon pool this season I will do things in a different manner this time. Anyway, from best to worst:

8: Throne of the Tides

A Cataclysm

Of oily death and canines

Sink it to the depths

7: Everbloom

Let us pull a lot

Why nobody kick naturalist

Go outside and leave

6: Murozond's Rise

Tyr goes down real fast

Morchie dead with no leavers

Chromie bugging out

5: Galakrond's Rest

Nice big pull at start

If you do not die to Time

You die to blight orbs

4: Darkheart Thicket

You go straight ahead

Except someone pulled side group

Do not release please

3: Black Rook Hold

Camera struggles

Scrape by the arcanists well

Someone lusted Kur'talos

2: Waycrest Manor

It used to be great

Then they opened all the doors

Buffed Soulbound Goliath

1: Atal Dazar

The timer is good

I ran over a spider

Group cold as winter

To drop the silly attempts at haiku for a moment. The only dungeon in this pool that has actual route variation is Atal, just like back when. The fact that it is one of the three easy ones on top, and is the only one that has actual variation, has made it a go to again. Just like Freehold was last season. Not sure how good it is for me that 4+ year old dungeons I have done hundreds of times gets another long run.

Most dull set of dungeons (mostly due to them being old and used up) so far in my m+ career.

Parse update

Navarim:

The guild run this reset was small, which made our usual alt run nemesis Smolderon doable. A bunch of people swapped for Fyrakk, but I managed to sneakily stay on Navarim and got curve.

Somehow Navarim outparsed Serwa on Tindral. And would have outparsed Esmënet on Fyrakk if I hadn't died due to greed during CDs in p3 and got knocked off the platform by a tornado.

Bit unsure if Serwa is "topped" next reset or the next for final mage parserun or not. Esmënet isn't. At this point, it looks like Season 4 will happen in April (and last until August/September, then prepatch and expansion in September/October maybe?) - so if guild keeps raiding should get ~4 more parseruns in.

Dragonflight Season 1 Recap

With the image-problem at the end of season 1, I never actually got around for a season 1 recap post, so here is a very late one.

Played with every spec. Again. Resto Druid being top spot without playing with anyone who mained one is a bit of a mystery, assume it's from pugging.

When the expansion started, I played Dom in all social groups. Which was most of my playtime at the start. The "House of Small Gods Static" from last season of Shadowlands, and the Skrike project. I can't remember how long either of those lasted, but after 1-2 months both groups had lost people to quitting the game or adjusting to playing more or less with other people. A very normal thing to happen for a new expansion. That however led to me playing my non-social characters (mostly Demon Hunter and Hunter), with the Hunter stealing the top gear spot in the end. Solo play won!

It took about 4 weeks to get to +16s. After KSM, the static changed to 3/5 people instead of 5/5. Played less and I didn't want to pug much over +16s, so the other static people went elsewhere. There was a long break during easter, and then Esmënet pugged the season best (a +18) in late april. Not a happy graph.

Dom had the sheer weight of keys done at the start of the season, with the static and the Skrike groups. I played Wutteät enough for KSM and the odd fun key, so a bit surprised the tally went so high. The other alts never really took off. Esmënet having 118 runs, Dominator having 108 runs and Wutteät having 95 runs isn't a very high number for me.

This was the "static" of me on Dom, Ruthevoker, Rae/Sea and Marowak. Clearly the meta. Seeing the season comps, not very strange Resto Druid was the spec I played with the most, assume most pug healers was a resto druid...

Shadowmoon Burial Grounds tops with 57 completed keys, Nokhud Offensive 35 completed keys takes last place. If I had done as many vault runs as I could, I would have just stuck with Shadowmoon. But that place was so boring after 30 runs I would have gone mad if I was doing keys every day with the same people. My best m+ dungeon spread to date, kinda happy with that.

This was the graph I wanted to see be smoother than they tended to be in Shadowlands. So that worked. Some progress from Dec 14 until Feb 22. It mostly stagnated due to the extended break that ruined the graph a bit, but it was a nice break.

Rae at 58 (~16%) and Maro (~8%) at 29 made up top and bottom. The Skrike groups nearly made Lava and Tara beat the "Small Gods static" but that screeched to a halt at some point too, so it ended up very even. It's a bit odd really. That season was the end of both the Small Gods static and the last proper remnant of playing much with people I knew from Twilight Hope. Good to have that pic to show for it, but dear god I am now feeling nostalgic.

One thing to note is that I did not do a single raid in Season 1. I churned through LFR on Esmënet and maybe Wutteät once, but that was it. I didn't really miss it. But at the same time, my entire network was gone and House of Small Gods was not mending after the end of Shadowlands drama so I went looking for something else.

In Summary

One of the goals I set for myself in Shadowlands was to cut down on premades. But not cut it out. So I wanted to have some people at least that I did 10%+ of my keys with. Rae, Lava, Sear and Tara were all over that goalpost. Which is the most important thing, really.

The lack of raiding and the much more reasonable amount of keystone time I had might make this seem like a more laidback season. But RIO obviously omits the fact I both conquest capped through Solo Shuffle and did a bunch of Random BGs on the Hunter for other endgame, and a staggering amount of profession related things. So it was more broad than most of my seasons. I also did some pet battles and questing and stuff. Turned into a right casual effort hardcore timespender I did.

It was an odd season. In hindsight I don't feel like I missed out on not raiding, except getting tier months after everyone else was not great since most of the tryharding happened before the catalyst opened. I also have more memories of people than I have of the content. Like one of the lunchkeys with Perse and Rae turning into a "who would play what instrument in this pug" discussion with the pugs after wiping on the bird boss in Academy instead of the usual toxic frustrations. All the strategy cooking in the Solo Shuffle with 4 BM Hunters and 2 Resto Druids in the lobby.

Think the issue mostly stems from how the m+ dungeon pool is done these days. Before DF I was really happy they would rotate in stuff. But not this way. Had they kept the 8 DF dungeons and added 2-4 old ones, fine. Having 5 months of Ruby Life Pools, Azure Vaults, Algethar Academy and Nokhud Offensive when they are new dungeons and it taking some months to adjust them to be ok, and then they are just gone again. While in season 3 for example the only DF dungeons are the DOTI wings, it's just absurd. As an m+ player, it's just that the professions and hub city is different while the majority of the content is old. What exactly did I pay Blizzard something like €100-€150 for here over the course of buying the expansion and playing the season?

Shadowmoon Burial Grounds is still my favorite dungeon in the game (or any mmo really) when it comes to atmosphere. Does it work well as an m+ dungeon except be a good vault filler? Not really.

if someone asks me 3 years from now what happened in DF season 1 I will say I had my last hoorah with some good online friends of mine. But I could not give them a favorite content piece from it. And I can't now either. Nor can I point at anything that was horrible. A first!