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.
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