One month has already passed since Shadowlands was released, and I'd like to share my thoughts about what I have experienced so far.
Krisilia, the restoration shaman, is still my main, and this is the first expansion I am starting with another main than shadow priest since The Burning Crusade.
I enjoyed playing a lot of alts in Battle for Azeroth, but I didn't really pay a lot of attention to healing. If groups needed me to heal, I'd go on my druid, and later I also tried healing on my priest, but I found it boring. But I wanted to level my shaman this spring, and I did so, grouping up with Munhz/Eggo on his warrior. We leveled in dungeons, and he was tanking while I was healing, and I really enjoyed the playing style of the resto shaman with their interrupts and stuns, and I still enjoy it very much.
I was afraid that I would only be spam healing in the beginning of the new expansion, and that it would be tough and difficult, but as long as we are doing guild groups where people know what to do, I can still be helpful with other stuff than just healing. We have, however, been in quite a few PUGs (mostly plus fives and sixes) where the tanks don't seem to know how to play their class properly, and all they do is just face tanking without lifting a finger to try to make life easier for themselves or the group. In those groups, I need to spam heal, and it is very stressful. In those situations I can handle one or two dungeons, but after that, I need a break.
This week we have a completely new affix in mythic pluses. It's called spiteful, and every time a mob dies (except for a few), they spawn a Spiteful shade that will target a player and go up to him/her and deal a lot of damage. The shades can be CCd and they will lose HP every second until they finally die, but sometimes it is better to just kill them, because they are really painful when not controlled, and if you are in a hurry, you're out of mana and need to drink (mostly in PUGs), you can not do that as long as you're still in combat, so as a healer, I find it much more comfortable when the shades are killed, especially in tight spaces where you can't move around safely without body pulling other packs.
Characters
I only have two level 60s so far. My shaman and the shadow priest, Krissie. Krissie was super fun to level in dungeons, as they have made some changes to the class, but I have barely done stuff with her after she hit max level.
I also have two level 57 tanks. My monk, who was my favourite back in BfA, and my paladin, who I transfered to Emerald Dream, cos I thought it would be nice to have her in the guild. But I pretty much stopped leveling or focusing on alts altogether after mythic pluses were released.
Mythic plus
Both Eggo and I are really enjoying the mythic pluses, but it's not like we've been going crazy trying to do as many as possible, because with corona, and traveling, and quarantine restrictions, we also want to spend as much time as possible together outside the game, but we are trying to find a balance, because we would both like to do more dungeons.
At the moment, our raider.io score is 590.6. We have completed two +9s in time so far, and we have done two +10s that we didn't manage to do in time.
My favourite dungeons so far this season, are Halls of Atonement and Mists of Tirna Scithe. My least favourite dungeons are De Other Side and Sanguine Depths, and sadly, I haven't practiced them that much either, so I find them a bit scary to try, especially in PUGs. Maybe I'll change my mind about them when I have gotten more used to them.
So far we have mostly been running as demon hunter tank, outlaw rogue, two balance druids and resto shaman, and it has seemed like a nice setup.
While we have only completed +9s in time, others are already completing +20s in time, and it's only our third week of mythic pluses this expansion. Eggo and I were watching a few streams earlier today, and they were quite inspiring. Everything is possible as long as you have a group of people who all enjoy going for it. I certainly miss tanking when I am watching tanks jumping around and kiting, but I am not planning on changing my main any time soon. I am having fun with the shaman.
Raiding
The raid this season is called Castle Nathria. I actually joined the guild raid the first week it was out. It was extremely awkward, though, because I went in as elemental, without knowing how to play it, and of course, in my healing gear. After a few wipes on the fourth boss, I was asked to go healer instead, and that helped me a bit. I felt way more comfortable and a lot less useless, but we had 27 people in the raid, and I am just not too comfortable in those situations. Raids with 10-15 players would fit me better, so at the moment I am not signing up for raids, but it doesn't mean that I never will.
Torghast
Eggo and I are enjoying our weekly Torghast runs. I was doing them as elemental in the beginning, and sometimes we were struggling a lot, but I tried changing to healer, and that made the runs a lot easier, cos the mobs have less health. Blizzard also made some nerfs about a week ago that made the runs easier, but now some of the abilities seem bugged. One of the powers you can take as a shaman, is that the first heroism on a floor won't cause exhaustion, but now all longer cooldowns are supposed to reset when you reach a new floor, and heroism certainly does give exhaustion, even with that power. In some runs, all the powers you get are very boring, while in other runs, they are amazing. My favourite power as a shaman is the one where your group gains 15 seconds of heroism every time you put down a totem (there is a 30 second cooldown). I also love the one where you get cooldown reduction for your earth elemental, cos there are a lot of packs in there that can be a bit nasty when you don't have a tank.
The Maw
Then we have The Maw. I get so frustrated whenever I go there, so I try to avoid it as much as possible. Last reset I didn't even do my weekly quests there, which probably wasn't a good idea. I will try to do them this week.
Lovely Christmas present
This year I got a really amazing Christmas present from Ruthe. It's a 2021 calendar where every month has a screenshot of her and me together, from when I had just made my horde shadow priest back in Legion, until now, playing Krisilia the shaman. I had a WoW calendar for 2020, and when I went to the city last week I was looking for a new one, but they didn't have it, so the fact that I got one for Christmas that was even personalised like this, is just perfect. I love it so much! This whole blog is just proof of how much I suck at taking screenshots, so the fact that someone else is making an effort to take care of the memories, means a lot to me!
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