Shadowlands Season 3 Week 2

This week brought more unlocks. The last 3 bosses on normal and heroic became available, and mythic raid opened. M+ drops uncapped so +14s drops 262 items. The campaign had the crafting recipe to upgrade legendary items to 291.

Affixes were Fortified - Bursting - Storming - Encrypted. This was one of the best affix combos last season, but right now it's kinda rough - bursting does a lot of damage over +10s right now compared to health people have. The Uhr encrypted helps a bit, and was also a massive help for defensive cds when tanking with all the incoming damage. My disdain for Vy keeps growing.

The new campaign chapter I kinda liked this week. It felt like a continuation of the main story line, and some of the non-kill quests reinforced the plot and quests earlier in expansion without being tedious. It had some interaction between npcs not central to main plot that was also nice to see. Still think having different plot arcs with just those npcs and have some resolved instead of cliffhangers galore would be better. Also the kill quests felt relevant to the task at hand, not sent into the wood to kill plants and boars just to take up time.

Wutteät the Cryptic

Prio 1. Wanted campaign for the legendary upgrade recipe and fill vault.

Got a 268 haste/mastery helm from vault. Got 262 boots, a 255 neck and a 259 trinket from dungeons that are all valor point upgrade candidates. Upgraded scale to 265 with valor. Got a 265 weapon from the weekly dungeon quest. Upgraded scorched soul shackles to rank 7. A beefy upgrade week.

Keys (11)

Sanguine Depths +13 * [Premade]

Necrotic Wake +14 * [Premade]

Tazavesh Streets +10 * [Premade]

Spires of Ascension +12 * [Premade]

Tazavesh Gambit +10 [Guild]

De Other Side +11 * [Guild]

Theater of Pain +12 * [Guild]

Necrotic Wake +12 * [Guild]

Plaguefall +10 *

Mists of Tirna Scithe +9 **

Halls of Atonement +10 **

World/Other

ZM World Boss (no loot)

Campaign chapter 5

Replenishing the Reservoir

2x Callings

Patterns Within Patterns

Stats

iLevel: 257 [+6]

Legendary items: Scorched Soul Shackles (r7) [+1], Everburn (r6), Collective Anguish (r4), Darkglare Medallion (r1)

Score: 2032 [+722]

Raid prog: -

Professions: Leatherworking (max) and Enchanting (max)

Valor total: 1500 [+750]

Stormlufser the Awakened

Prio 2. Wanted 4 keys for weekly and do the guild raid.

Upgraded Doom Winds and Witch Doctor's Wolf Bones to rank 7. Got a 265 weapon in the vault. Upgraded IQD to 255. Got 265 boots from the weekly dungeon quest. Got 252 tier gloves (!), 252 crit/haste neck and 252 First Sigil from raid. Very good haul this week!

Raid (7)

Vigilant Guardian [Normal] (DPS: 6.4k)

Skolex [Normal] (DPS: 7.2k)

Artificer [Normal] (DPS: 6.5k)

Dausegne [Normal] (DPS: 6.7k)

Halondrus [Normal - Progress] (DPS: 7.8k)

Prototype Pantheon [Normal - Progress] (DPS: 6.8k)

Lihuvim [Normal - Progress] (DPS: 4.7k)

Keys (8)

Halls of Atonement +5 **

Sanguine Depths +8 **

De Other Side +5 **

Theater of Pain +5 **

Theater of Pain +11 *

Spires of Ascension +6 *

Sanguine Depths +6 **

Tazavesh Streets +5 **

World/Other

2x Replenishing the Reservoir

3x Callings

ZM World Boss (no loot)

Stats

iLevel: 252 [+6]

Legendary items: Doom Winds [r7] (+1), Leggings of the Vesper Vortex [r6], Handguards of the Primal Tides [r1], Witch Doctor's Wolf Bones [r7] (+6), Deeptremor Signet [r1], Echoes of the Great Sundering [r3], Cloak of the Windspeaker [r4]

Score: 1114 [+417]

Raid prog: 7/10 Normal [+3]

Professions: Herbalism (max) and Skinning (max)

Valor total: 1500 [+750]

Dominator the Seeker

Prio 3. Wanted 4 keys for the weekly and be up to speed on Enlightened rep and the campaign.

Got 255 haste/verse gloves in vault. A 246 haste/master neck a 249 shield haste/mastery shield from dungeons. A 265 haste/crit neck from the weekly dungeon quest. The shield was so nice I upgraded it to 262 with valor. OK upgrade week.

Keys (8)

Theater of Pain +5 **

Mists of Tirna Scithe +6 **

Sanguine Depths +5 **

Halls of Atonement +5 **

Spires of Ascension +5 **

Plaguefall +6 **

Necrotic Wake +5 ***

De Other Side +5 **

World/Other

Replenishing the Reservoir

Patterns within Patterns

Chapter 5 of campaign

Enlightened Rep grind

5x Callings

ZM World Boss (no loot)

Stats

iLevel: 244 (+4)

Legendary items: Seal of Righteous Fury (r3)

Score: 1103 [+338]

Raid prog: -

Professions: Herbalism (max) and Enchanting (max)

Valor total: 1500 [+750]

Hollowfury the Faceless One

Prio 4. Wanted 4 keys for the weekly.

The 4 dungeons themselves yielded no loot. But the ZM World Boss dropped a 259 chest, the weekly dungeon quest got me a 265 weapon and the vault had 3 ilevel bracer upgrade. Nice progress for not much time spent.

Keys (4)

Necrotic Wake +5 **

Mists of Tirna Scithe +6 **

Sanguine Depths +5 ***

Halls of Atonement +6 *

World/Other

Replenishing the Reservoir

3x Callings

ZM World Boss (got loot!)

Stats

iLevel: 247 [+4]

Legendary items: Waistguard of the Crimson Rune (r6), Rage of the Frozen Champion (r1)

Score: 662 [+268]

Raid prog: 0

Professions: Herbalism (max) and Mining (max)

Valor total: 1500 [+750]

Other Characters

Navarim did:

Chapter 5 of the campaign to unlock the +3 ranks crafting item.

Serwaswathan did:

Patterns Within Patterns

Replenish the Reservoir

Ihnanna did:

Replenish the Reservoir

4x +2/3s for weekly dungeon quest

Notes from this week

Raid

I ended up switching legendary to Bones and covenant to Night Fae for this raid, in spite of wanting to finish normal as Venthyr. There aren't really any burst clumped up adds fights except for the first boss and Anduin it looks like though I have not seen what the Jailor fight looks like. Felt like it paid off this raid, although not sure how much was gear and how much was change in covenant/legendary/talents.

Keystones

I need to be better at telling people I am taking mobs back like it was 2006. In both the Tazavesh dungeons people have pulled because they thought we were going forward, so I need to be clearer there.

So far protection paladin just seems like the best out of the 3 tank specs I currently play. High damage and a good toolset. The current levels of haste has helped some with how slow and clunky it felt at the start of the expansion, even if I still dislike some of the reworked abilities.

World/Other

I have spent all my valor so far on upgrading the cube. While it's really handy in dungeons at the moment, it's kinda bad with Bones/Night Fae in raid. So might have been a mistake. However, I do not have anything else to spend valor on at the moment sooooooo...

Some cypher unlocks seems to let you get extra regular quests. I hadn't really interacted much with that, but someone mentioned it in guildchat. Now that I am mostly done with the place when it comes to grind, I can hopefully spend some time doing those instead of the world quests and stuff.

Motivation

The raid motivation is pretty good at the moment. Everything is new and shiny, and learning the new fights have been fun. The bosses have also been less of a "random person gets selected to do something, if they dont do it the raid is wiped" kinda thing, but it looks like heroic will have more of that. Playing enhance has been fun - not played shaman in raids since TBC, so it was a welcome return.

Keystone motivation is kinda shot. For guild keys we are back to most active people wanting to go high at once. Not minding slow runs with a deplete for a possible vault option, always someone pointing out a possible route change. Always me being the one wanting to do something lower, with my route, going for smooth and reasonably speedy completes. Always me asking everyone else asking people if they could lower their keys. Last season I was not alone in this, but now it seems I am. So it's time to stop. I'll skip the guild keys for a while. There's at least 2 other guild tanks active in keys at the moment, so I am not the only tank so it's a good time too. I vastly enjoyed doing pug keys this week in comparison, since I could just dabble in things on levels I consider fun and efficient, without having to be a tyrant or do organizing for people that prefer to do other stuff. Even free of people backseating this week!

Plans for next week

Keystones

Wutteät 8x keys (nothing aimed for)

Dominator 4x keys (pugging 5-9s)

Hollowfury 4x keys (pugging 5-9s)

Stormlufser 4x keys (pugging 5-9s)

Raid

Stormlufser attending guild raid

World/other

Dominator reaching revered with Enlightened & complete campaign chapter 6.

Planned for this week

Keystones