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...
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