With the Dragonflight pre-patch event in full swing and the expansion release in just a few days, I thought I’d talk about how Shadowlands season 4 went. I already blogged about Heroic: Fates of the Shadowlands Raids. Now let’s look at m+ and RBGs
Mythic+
I mainly played Sotiros, my resto shaman again. We didn’t go for Keystone Hero this season, so it was an easier season. I had a 2229 rating, which is mostly the +16 to +18 range.
I barely played Devee, my holy priest. Maybe I’ll play him more in Dragonflight! He had a 1481 rating and was missing a lot of scores.
Rated Battlegrounds
Mooglegem and I earned the Vicious Warstalker mount this season in rated battlegrounds. The win rate was fairly even, and I earned an extra Vicious Saddle too.
Now that we’re a couple days into Shadowlands season 4, I thought I’d talk about how the last season ended. I successfully reached my three goals – 3k m+ rating, Ahead of the Curve, and the Vicious PVP mount.
Mythic+
I definitely spent more time on mythic+ than anything else in Shadowlands season 3. I ended the season at 3017 rating on my shaman.
Here’s the breakdown from raider.io. As we were unlocking portals, I had timed a couple +20 fortified keys but no tyrannical, so I really thought tyrannical was going to be the harder one. Somehow I ended up with a lot more rating from tyrannical than fortified, which I didn’t realize until working on this blog post.
Not the most exciting screenshot, but this is when Shadowlands Keystone Hero: Season Three popped! Like last season two, I main’d restoration shaman. I also earned the rest of the dungeon portals this season that I didn’t get last season, and we made sure everyone in our m+ group got all the portals.
I also played holy priest a little. My goal was just 2500 rating, and I got that done without much stress!
Raiding
I finished Sepulcher of the First Ones heroic on my resto shaman, although the Jailer did give me some trouble. We ended up splitting the raid team into multiple small groups after determining that the fight was easier with smaller groups. I didn’t end up getting my kill until week 19 of the season – 56 days after defeating the previous boss, Rygelon!
This is Carcinized Zerethsteed, the Ahead of the Curve mount! It’s pretty cool.
The Shimmering Aurelid mount was the reward for Glory of the Sepulcher Raider; it’s another awesome mount!
RBGs
My goal in PVP was to get the Vicious War Croaker, which is the cool frog mount that you can see I earned above. I love the frog animation in which the frog shoots its tongue out to eat the glowing fly! I PVP’d on my priest in discipline.
I ended the season at Challenger II – 1691 RBG rating (also my best) with 45 games won out of 95 played. We also tried 2v2 arena a little, although I like battlegrounds significantly more. In 2s, I ended Challenger I with a rating of 1481 and best rating of 1490 with 20 wins out of 37 matches. Mooglegem and I were expecting to do much worse to be honest, so we were happy with how we did. However, you get much less credit toward the mount while doing 2s, and it caused way more stress. We mostly did RBGs, but it was nice trying 2s.
It was a good season! Now it’s time for season four, which will definitely feel a little different for PVE. I hope everyone has a great season!
Good news for some of us, and bad news for the Exarch – we killed High Exarch Turalyon in Stormwind recently! I completed the For the Horde achievement years ago, which tasks you with defeating the various city leaders. Since then, the Storming Stormwind achievement was changed from Varian to Anduin and then moved to Legacy when Executing the Exarch was added in Shadowlands.
We had to pose on the throne of course.
This wasn’t really our original plan. We only had 8 people and were in Stormwind to screw around and fight NPCs and any Alliance who wanted to stop us. None engaged us, so we decided to try Turalyon. Afterwards we went back to clear out the bank and auction house, then eventually found where all the Alliance players were – there was a raid group outside Goldshire. We saw a few people in the inn there, and then suddenly the raid group phased into existence. We had a nice battle and then hearthed home!
Korthia and the covenant assaults in the Maw brought a lot of new mounts to hung back in 9.1. With 9.2 here, I’ve been looking back at my 9.1 goals. I got most of the 9.1 Korthia/Maw mounts except the Hand of Nilganihmaht (putting the rings together), the Fierce Razorwing (Death’s Advance paragon reward), Tamed Mauler (Archivists’ Codex paragon), and Hand of Salaranga (Breaking the Chains, Korthia meta achievement).
This is my favorite mount from the patch and one of my favorite all time mounts – the Fallen Charger! The gold looks awesome!
The Rampaging Mauler from Konthrogz the Obliterator is also pretty.
I don’t use the Mastercraft Gravewing from Stygian Stonecrusher a ton because it’s so big, but I do think it’s really cool.
The Forsworn Aquilon from Wild Worldcracker is really cool. I know Kyrians already had other tints of this, but I like this one!
While not from this expansion at all, my group has been occasionally going back to Mechagon to get Aerial Unit R-21/X from the hard mode. Only one party member can get it per run, and I came in last! But I did get it last patch. Sweet!
With the release of 9.2, I wanted to look at the transmog I’ve been collecting this expansion. Here’s what I earned, with more details and screenshots below:
Kyrian, cloth – campaign and renown
Venthyr, plate – campaign, renown, and Ember Court
Night fae, leather – campaign, renown, Queen’s Conservatory, and Winterborn
Necrolord, mail – campaign, renown, Abominable Stitching, and Unity
Kyrian 9.1 – all four
Venthyr 9.1 – five of the eight
Night fae 9.1 – all four
Necrolord 9.1 – all four
Castle Nathria – all four LFR sets
Sanctum of Domination – cloth, leather, and plate LFR sets
PVP Season 1 – cloth aspirant and gladiator
PVP season 2 – cloth aspirant, gladiator, and elite
First, these are my completed Sanctum of Domination sets. I got the LFR sets for leather, plate, and cloth. I actually like the cloth raid finder tint (the last one above), but the other raid finder ones are rather boring. I didn’t try for mail raid finder because I was pushing heroic on my mail character, but I didn’t finish the set. Funny thing is, I don’t think I’d use the cloth LFR tint despite initially liking it because I like the PVP variant much more.
These are the Shadowlands Season 2 PVP sets I collected – all three cloth sets. The aspirant is the same as last season’s aspirant. The gladiator variant is really cool although the elite set has the extra flair.
These are the raid sets I collected from the first tier – all four LFR tints. These are actually all pretty cool in their own way. In order above, those are the mail, plate, cloth, and leather sets. I used the mail set on my shaman for a while.
In season 1 of PVP, I only managed to get the aspirant and gladiator variants. As I mentioned above, the aspirant is the same set in both season 1 and 2. While I prefer my priest in a robe over pants, I think the gladiator tint doesn’t look as nice as the LFR tint.
I got all four of the Aspirant’s Regalia tints, the Kyrian sets from 9.1. I think they fit Kyrian pretty well.
I collected the four Night fae tints from 9.1. They’re cool, but I think I like the 9.0 leather sets better.
I can’t really imagine using any of these even though I did collect all four Necromantic Vestments tints for Necrolords in 9.1.
I’m not sure why, but Venthyr had two different sets each with four tints in 9.1. This is the set with pants, Court Attire. I collected three of the four variants.
And I collected two of the four Inquisitor’s Vestments tints.
My first character this expansion was my Kyrian priest, and I collected two of the cloth Kyrian tints. I didn’t progress much in Path of Ascension so was unable to collect the other tints.
After my Kyrian priest, I played by Venthyr DK. I got three of the plate tints, with the campaign version being the coolest.
I played my Night fae druid third and got all four of the leather tints. I like the one with purple leaves best!
I played a Necrlord shaman last and collected all four mail tints despite not liking any of them. Why did I spend my time doing that?
I’m not sure how many of the ones I missed I plan on getting. I’ll continue pooling my anima to get the missing 9.1 Venthyr tints. I dobut I’m going back to old raids. Doing Path of Ascension for the missing Kyrian cloth tints or the mirrors for the missing Venthyr plate tint isn’t high on my priorities. I like a lot of the Kyrian armor actually, but I absolutely do not want to grind more Grateful Offerings!
While my druid normally uses one of the Night fae ones, my other three toons use different transmog. While not related to collecting Shadowlands sets, let’s finish the post by talking about them.
I love my priest in T10 from Icecrown Citadel, including a weapon from ICC. There is a touch of Shadowlands there – the back piece is Kyrian.
When we started doing rated battlegrounds, Moogle and I were aiming to get the Vicious War Gorm. As you can see, we got our wish.
Here’s a closer look because I think it’s so cool!
I also wanted to collect the gladiator set, which I thought looked great. I know I usually like my priest in blues and whites, but this just looked awesome, at least for PVP, and appropriate for the expansion.
I wasn’t expecting to collect the elite set! We pushed hard the final week of the season. On 2/10, I was at 32.5% and Moogle was at 25% progress toward our seasonal mounts. We had to win at least 30 games over a week and a half, and luckily we made it. However, I wish we pushed earlier so that we could have pushed higher. We both hit 1954 rating without really hitting a wall. If we had more time, I’d love to see how high we could go!
Happy 17 years to World of Warcraft! It’s crazy that the game is still going and I’m still playing! Here’s my current main, Sotiros, with the anniversary event world boss, Doomwalker. I’m also using the Akama’s Edge weapon transmog that was introduced for the event!
I took a screenshot of my first character, Petros, for this post. He’s level 14 now after the Shadowlands level squish but was 32 previously. I don’t think I broke level 20 with him before I switched mains. In this screenshot, my warrior is wearing mail boots (because I didn’t have anything else), no helm, and no belt!
This is the earliest screenshot I can find of Petros, night elf warrior and my first main, on 11/25/2004. This is only two days after the game was released.
By 12/12/2004, I had switched to Dimitri, a tauren hunter.
At some point soon after that, I made a hunter on a different server. I wanted to switch from a PVE to a PVP server. This is Petros, orc hunter, on 5/15/2005.
I can tell by my screenshots that on 3/18/2007, I hit 20 on Petros, my warrior. I’m not sure if he was back to being my main or if I was bouncing between a few.
By 10/16/2007, I was playing Sotiros, my shaman, as my main. He was level 24 in this screenshot. Crazy that he’s back to being my main today! He’s the same character shown in the screenshot at the top.
When gem started playing, I switched to a priest to help her level until she caught up with my main. I loved playing him so much that I decided to keep him as my main. Here’s the earliest screenshot I can easily find of Devee from 3/25/2008. gem’s character, Mooglegem, is in the background. Devee was my main until the most recent major patch, 9.1, on 6/29/2021. He was my main for over 13 years!
Here’s a good screenshot of Devee with Mooglegem. It’s one of the earliest I can find of the two of us where you can see us both clearly. This is from 4/4/2008!
As an added bonus, here’s a screenshot of Mooglegem with Sylvanas on 4/11/2008. This is during Sylvanas singing Lament of the Highborne upon turn-in of the quest Journey to Undercity. Things sure have changed!
This week we got our second Sylvanas kill, which got most of our group Ahead of the Curve, including Moogle! And this time, unlike my first kill, we actually got a group screenshot!
We also did mythic Tarragrue, Eye of the Jailer, and the Nine. These mythic bosses are so much easier than heroic Sylvanas. Is it always like that? I doubt we’re going to push mythic much more, but it was fun to get a little mythic progress. Now that I have tier of shaman healing under my belt, I can say that I definitely enjoy it. I plan on sticking with resto shaman over disc priest next tier as well.
My troll likes watching the fireworks in Orgrimmar! I’m glad Mooglegem reminded me to go check them out this year.
I brought the Inky Black Potions, which I think made it looked cooler. Honestly, those potions make most places look better! I hope everyone in the US had a great Fourth of July!
We earned our Glory of the Shadowlands Hero achievement this weekend! It’s been a long time since I’ve gone for a Glory achievement to be honest. This was pretty fun and not very fun honestly, although you definitely wouldn’t stumble into all of them without trying. For example, there’s Kaal-ed Shot, requiring you to pick up a Filled Anima Container in Sanguine Depths to get the Shadow Ball buff, carry it through the gauntlet, get knocked off the boss platform toward a lantern, click the lantern to dunk the ball, and then kill General Kaal. What a weird achievement.
The Voracious Gorger is a pretty cool mount. I like the devourers and the little bit of lore about them originating from the in-between. This isn’t one of my favorite mounts necessarily, but I like it. In the screenshot above from left to right is Mooglegem, Delillidan, me, Mushkin, and Kanora – with two of them naked because that’s how they earned the final achievement!
The last achievement we earned for the meta was I Can See My House From Here – another that you’d be unlikely to do without really going for it. The biggest things we learned are 1) perspective can mess with you and 2) trust your friends and don’t tell them what to do haha. We kept correcting each other, which just caused more problems.
Just because I haven’t posted recently doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy in WoW. Lately Mooglegem and I have been joining PUG rated battleground groups in an effort to earn the Vicious War Spider. Those groups come in two flavors – YOLO groups that fill quickly and are not very good and organized groups that fill slowly, use voice chat, and actually coordinate. Sometimes I might have “played” for over an hour just searching for a decent group, and once I joined one, I’d hope to stay for a couple hours.
Eventually I found steady group that welcomed Mooglegem and me to join them consistently. In addition to their RBG groups, we began to raid with them. Thanks to that group, I earned Ahead of the Curve: Sire Denathrius and Heroic: Castle Nathria! I was way over-geared for heroic already thanks to m+ and had a done a few of the bosses, but trying to find PUGs was always such a hassle that I never got around to finishing before this. It’s been fun raiding again, seeing how the fights are supposed to be done, and getting to know new friends.
The PVP grind took longer, but with a good group, I was at least making consistent progress. And about a week ago, I earned by Vicious War Spider! I’m continuing to do RBGs though because I’m having just too much fun. I used to PVP much more before it took a backseat to raiding and then m+, and it’s been so much fun focusing on it again. Playing with a coordinated group certainly helps! Now I’m looking forward to gaining rating (hopefully) and maybe earning another mount! In the screenshot at the top, I’m enjoying my mount while Moogle is on her IMPOSTER Vicious War Spider! Actually she’s about 10% off, and the rest of the group isn’t too far behind. Soon!
Last week I got Shadowlands Keystone Master: Season One! Here’s the five of us on our Sintouched Deathwalkers in Oribos. From left to right: gem (Mooglegem), me (Devee), Matt (Mushkin), Marc (Kanora) and his minions, and Elias (Delillidan). Was the other character in the screenshot the guy who made fun of us? Possibly.
This season felt a lot faster to me. We have one dungeon left, Mists of Tirna Scithe, for a sixth guildmate!
I finished Castle Nathria normal last week by pugging it. I’m overgeared at this point thanks to m+ but wanted to get a handle on the mechanics before starting to pug heroic groups. The raid’s pretty fun, and I think Sludgefist, Stone Legion Generals, and Sire Denathrius are particularly good fights. Stone Legion Generals can seem overwhelming but it’s not bad if people follow a plan. There are spoilers for the outcome of the raid after this.
The Sire Denathrius fight was fun with some interesting mechanics – unburdening our sins, using the mirrors, dodging Remornia. Sire Denathrius was a really cool character with superb voice-acting. I think he has a lot more personality than Prince Renethal, which is too bad. I’m kind of disappointed we defeated Denathrius so soon after his introduction.
After he is defeated, Remornia absorbs him into herself. In an effort to bind him in the blade so he can’t escape, we bring Remornia to Prince Renethal and Z’rali (the naaru from Sanguine Depths) where Z’rali uses the Light to bind and torture Denathrius. Prince Renethal remarks that after “time the likes of which your kind have yet to measure” Denathrius may be released, changed, “his true purpose once again affirmed.” Obviously Blizzard could bring him back if they wanted, but I’m doubtful we’d see it any time soon. Too bad. What a fun character!
Let’s talk about the kyrian covenant campaign! Spoilers, of course. I finished it the week that the end was unlocked and enjoyed it. While I didn’t have a problem with any of it, it really started to pick up part way through.
So, a brief summary. After helping Kleia with her final trial, she becomes Ascended. During her ascension, Uther leads the Forsworn in an attack on Elysian Hold and damages the Crest of Ascension. We defeat Devos, the Forsworn leader, in the Spires of Ascension, leaving Lysonia in charge. Mikanikos rebuilds the Crest of Ascension and we empower it with three items.
Alexandros Mograine of Maldraxxus requests kyrian aid in defeating Margrave Gharmal. The kyrian travel to Maldraxxus and kill the fleshshaper. Xandria cuts out his heart, and we use this to empower the Crest of Ascension.
We travel to Revendreth and talk to the Curator about finding something to empower the Crest of Ascension. She tells us about the Seal of Contrition. We eventually track it to Duke Vielle, who we kill so we can acquire the Seal.
Finally, we talk to the Winter Queen in Ardenweald, who tells us that she can give us power but it needs to be contained. Willowblossom volunteers to help. We save a worm, Grubby, from spriggan at Willowblossom’s request and then acquire items for a ritual. During the ritual, we learn the Willowblossom herself must become the vessel to contain her power. She gives her life so we can empower the Crest of Ascension.
We track down Lysonia to the Temple of Humility where the Forsworn are fighting the kyrian. On the verge of being defeated, Lysonia and Uther escape to the Maw using a portal opened by Helya. After going to the Maw, we witness Lysonia going through a ritual with Helya to create a manifestation of her pride, which we defeat.
Uther is disgusted at the lengths to which Lysonia would go. He seems to agree with some of the Forsworn’s ideals but not their methods. We escort Uther out of the Maw. This really isn’t that big of a surprise. I totally understand Uther’s thinking. The Archon’s way seems pretty brutal, but aligning with Helya and the Jailer is obviously terrible too. And as a player, I didn’t think Blizzard would keep Uther an antagonist.
Glad you could make it, Uther… to Oribos.
We lead a big final push against the Forsworn at the Temple of Loyalty. It was at this point that I knew Uther was going to step in sometime soon. He had to save the day, right? The fight goes in our favor until Lysonia reveals that it was a ploy to leave the Archon undefended. The kyrian forces return to Elysian Hold where Lysonia is using her new powers.
And then Uther shows up to defend the Archon and fight Lysonia. Because of course. Even though it wasn’t a surprise, I’m a simple man who likes simple, cliche stories.
Right after this screenshot, Uther flies away with Thenios to the Temple of Wisdom to find out what’s wrong with his soul.
I’m hoping that later in the expansion this involves more information about Arthas and Frostmourne. How could we not? While a bit less likely, I’d like to see some change within the kyrian. Is it really okay that they give up all their memories? With so many Ascended joining the Forsworn, perhaps the Archon needs to rethink her ways. I’m sure we’ll see continuations of all the covenant campaigns in future patches!
Two zones down now that I finished the story quests in Maldraxxus! Spoilers in this post by the way. (I posted previously about Bastion.)
I was expecting just Naxxramas as a zone and a lot of evil and undead… and I guess it kind of was, but at the same time, it was more than that. It had such a cool, desert wasteland vibe to it. The houses were not all pure evil even if they were quite brutal.
The area around the House of Plagues was a bit different even if still distinctly necromantic. Here I am with Mooglegem and our slimes! My transmog is quite different than what it normally is. During Death Rising, I changed to heroic sanctified tier 10 since it felt proper to be back in ICC gear. It matched Bastion so well that I decided to put something on that fit Maldraxxus.
There were some cool characters in the zone. We knew Draka would be here from the video, but I especially enjoyed meeting her and her declaring that she was once part of the Frostwolf clan. It contrasted well with the Kyrians in Bastion being forced to forget who they were. It did feel weird that we didn’t have a conversation with Draka about the mortal world. “Hey, you know that baby you had, Go’el? Well he became Warchief of the Horde and leads the orcs. And by the way, he might be stuck in the Maw.”
Running into Lady Baroness Vashj was also neat. I didn’t actually kill her in Serpentshrine Cavern until Wrath and didn’t play WC3, so there wasn’t much nostalgia for me in that sense. However, I still enjoyed her being present.
Ooo my runeblade!
Finding that the missing Baron was Alexandros Mograine was definitely awesome. His story regarding life, death, and family is pretty interesting. In addition, I think he has a cool role in the history of the game thanks to the Corrupted Ashbringer and the various retcons. I’m looking forward to his interactions with Darion in the future.
The dungeon, Plaguefall, was challenging to heal. It might be a real “fun” time for mythic+. I had to drink quite a bit, and it’s hard to keep up with dispels. We had a couple wipes.
I didn’t think I’d like the Necrolords of Maldraxxus much at all, but I could see a few of my characters fitting here – at least RP-wise. I’ll figure out who goes here later. For now, it’s off to Ardenweald!
Death Rising, the Shadowlands pre-patch, had some interesting story points, lots of gear for catching up alts and unlocking transmog, and a small but fun plague event. I enjoyed the bits of story and character development, and I farmed rares like crazy.
Calia Menethil is in the screenshot above; she’s an interesting character given her important bloodline and rather unique status of Light-infused undead. Plus, her character model! That outfit is sick!
Watching Taelia find out about her father, the former Lich King, Bolvar, was pretty cool too. It’s no surprise she wasn’t happy to have been kept in the dark, and I look forward to seeing what Blizzard does with her and Bolvar. I suspect I’ll find out relatively soon, but I’m not sure since I’m staying in the dark about Shadowlands.
The rare farming for drops was kind of crazy, especially around Bronjahm, the Godfather of Souls and holder of bags! I managed to get one Papa’s Mint Condition Bag for Devee, my main. (Edit: I also just got one on Sotiros!) And I may have helped gem get some… including 1 duplicate by mistake. Oops. But 7 of her characters ended up with the bag, which is insane.
I also loved how for some reason, tons of people transforming into Gamon became a thing for Bronjahm! Apparently I didn’t take a screenshot, but I did take a photo of my phone once when I was the one to kick it off.
I also managed to get two Accursed Keepsakes!
I killed as many rares as I could. All 12 of my max-level toons managed to purchase all possible upgrades from the Argent Crusade and get everything for transmog. I also swapped characters per rare depending on what dropped and got a lot of drops even if I know a few ilvl doesn’t make a big difference.
I guess I got obsessive, but it was a bit of fun! It’s the little moments, like lining up on the Headless Horseman’s mount.
I posted about Nathanos previously, but he was a fun world boss that hit hard!
I think a lot of people underestimated him… look at all those skeletons!
The zombie event wasn’t very disruptive at all. In fact, I kind of wish it was more disruptive. It was hard to get infected and find battles between the living and dead. gem and I spent time claiming the Stormwind portal room for the Scourge!
Here’s a clip of me infecting and killing gem in Stormwind!
I think the weirdest thing about the event was the random dailies. I kept track of which ones I did and compared to lists online, and there were two dailies that I never saw pop up at all. Oh well, but I like to do everything I can.
All in all, it was nice little event. It gave the community something new to come together and do, helped gear up alts, and had some pretty cool little moments.
My friend gave me Lost Mail recently so I could do the mail quest series and earn the Postmaster title. It excited me when I learned about it during Legion, but I never sought it during that expansion. Now I’ve finally had the chance to finish it, and it was pretty great!
During the quests, you learn how mail gets delivered throughout Azeroth and even find out how lost items that get mailed to you actually find their way to you. You get to interact with Johnny Awesome, the NPC that spoofs a twinked out alt, which is always fun. And you get to sort mail! It’s more fun than it sounds, and it’s a minigame that you can access at any time in Dalaran.
As weird as it is to say this, I’m a big fan of the postal system in general. I think it’s great how effectively it works internationally, and I enjoy trading postcards with new locations. And now I know how it works in Azeroth too! I’m proud to be Postmaster Devee!
I wrote previously about earning Battle for Azeroth Keystone Master: Season Four for doing all +15s, but I wanted to recap a little more about m+ this season. I ran a few m+ in season 3 but didn’t seriously start until this last season. I know I was late to the party, but I think mythic+ is a fantastic addition to the game. It’s great getting challenging content that can be done in small chunks of time as well as with smaller groups of people than raids.
I mainly played disc priest, but I also used shadow a little. As for other classes, I did m+ on demo lock, holy and ret pali, resto and ele shaman, and a little bit of guardian druid and frost mage. This was my first expansion playing multiple classes as end game, and I had such a blast. Yes, it was stressful dealing with a weekly chest, assaults, and horrific visions on a bunch of toons, but actually playing them was so much fun.
I’m not sure which one to even talk about. The lock was by secondary most of the expansion, but I really enjoyed learning to heal dungeons on shaman and paladin. Holy paladin felt quite different since it’s played in melee. The most challenging past of holy paladin was hunting for glimmer on Azerite pieces. I think resto shaman was awesome, and I enjoyed using elemental when doing solo content. I really enjoyed the feeling of saying “you know, I think I’d prefer to heal this on my resto shaman rather than disc priest.” I had never tanked end game before, so trying my hand at guardian druid was exciting and nerve-racking. I couldn’t have done it with guildmates guiding me, but I might try tanking more in Shadowlands. I think if I do it from the beginning, I’d actually learn routes myself. Setting the pace and routes seems like the biggest hurdle to tanking. While my mage never got super geared, it was fun really learning frost. Even at low gear levels, it became so apparent how powerful Glacial Spike was. Mages can certainly bring the DPS, but they’re also definitely glass cannons!
In the end, here’s the raider.io scores I reached:
Priest: 2017.3 (bestkeystone.com put me above 90% of m+ players that season)
Warlock: 1329.7
Paladin: 1199.4
Shaman: 937.7
Druid: 491.3
Mage: 250.8
You can see how I tapered off. The priest was strongly my main, and then I played the next three for most of the patch. The final two classes were late additions.
Now if only I could figure out which ones I want to play in Shadowlands!
I might be emotionally scarred from the amount of Horrific Visions and accompanying assaults I did in 8.3. They were neat content, and I really enjoyed the challenge of pushing myself to play better on multiple classes, but I also felt completely burned out by the end of the patch.
By completing both the Horrific Vision of Orgrimmar and Horrific Vision of Stormwind solo while all five masks are activated (the hardest version), you earn the Mad World feat of strength, which rewards the title, The Faceless One. I found that it was significantly harder to do this on cloth characters than any others. I really pushed myself to master my mage and warlock, while it felt like the other classes came easier. In the end, I earned Mad World as a discipline priest, demonology warlock, retribution paladin, elemental shaman, and balance druid. Five classes down!
I also managed to save up the 100,000 corrupted mementos from Horrific Visions to purchase the Wicked Swarmer, shown at the top. It’s a really great mount I think. The color looks good, it’s a cool model, and it’s small enough that it isn’t annoying when using it. I decided to save up for it on my warlock so that my priest, my main, could spend the corrupted mementos on sockets.
The Glacial Tidestorm is guaranteed to drop twice off mythic Jaina in Battle for Dazar’alor, which is fairly easy to do with people who follow some simple directions. Mooglegem got the drop on her first try when I showed her the strat. Here she is with her Glacial Tidestorm, Squishy (her water elemental), and Aborius, the elemental fury in Nagrand!
It took me a lot more runs, but I got mine too! I got on my frost mage for the screenshot so we could have maximum water elementals!
We had to visit alternate Draenor as well of course!
Before talking about the raid, check out that skybox in Ny’alotha! It’s really gorgeous!
The five of us who have been actively pushing m+ were geared and had our Ahead of the Curve already but wanted to be sure the rest of the guild could get it too. Carpe Flux Capacitor has a lot of people who have been in and out this expansion (some fairly geared from pushing through +10s) as well as one friend of mine who just recently came back to WoW and was a hard carry. Plus even the five of us had some bosses we still needed. I had never done Vexiona (besides LFR) even.
We did it over the course of three nights. The first night, we cleared the first few bosses without much issue. Unsurprisingly, Dark Inquisitor Xanesh and Vexiona gave us the most trouble. We eventually pushed through Xanesh, which I thought would be the hardest boss, but then we hit a brick wall with Vexiona.
Night two we descended into that pit to defeat Shad’har the Insatiable, Drest’agath, and Il’gynoth. Again, not too much trouble. And we managed to get Vexiona down as well!
On the third night we tackled Carapace of N’zoth and N’zoth himself. It was a lot of fun to be coordinated again in a group. While I’m enjoying m+ and prefer it to raiding now, raiding is a different beast and scratches an itch I’ve had for a while. Everyone did really well, and even my friend who was a carry in regards to his gear had execution down.
Here I am on my Uncorrupted Voidgwing, which now most of the active guild members have too! As fun as it was, getting the group together also reminds me of the most stressful part of raiding – organizing 10+ people.
Hopefully we can follow a similar path next expansion: pushing m+ primarily but then looping back to try the raid before the end of the patch. This patch has been a blast!
Last week my mythic+ group finished our last +15. This was for the Battle for Azeroth Keystone Master: Season Four achievement, which awards the Awakened Mindborer mount.
Here’s our mythic group! It makes me feel gross! Matt had already finished the achievement before the rest of us but was still helping the group push. It seemed like last week was our best shot because the affixes got harder this week, and we were running out of time.
The hardest part was getting the key we needed. Our final key was Siege of Boralus. We actually had a 16 of it. Besides little issues here and there with our run, our tank disconnected for a bit. We were fairly confident though, because even if we fail on +16, we’d be able to try again on +15. We were just about done with the boss, and the timer was close. We pushed hard and accidentally went just a couple seconds over – and that’s when we realized that by finishing it overtime, our key would change. We meant to walk out and reset. There goes our SoB key.
From that point, our group split up into PUGs. Sometimes a few of us went together, but usually we were pugging alone. Matt continued to try to run his own keys in an attempt to generate the SoB key, which was unlikely. It took forever trying to get into good PUGs, but eventually we all did it! While the end was stressful, m+ was a blast and felt very rewarding!
Trolling aside, I got Invincible last week! It took 68 attempts according to Rarity, which means like a few more than that but not many. Pretty lucky honestly. While trying for the mount, I’ve also been collecting tier sets from ICC. I almost have all of them, so I’ll likely finish them up. It’ll be easier now that I don’t have to even bother finishing the raid during my transmog runs!
After performing a solo 5-mask run in the Horrific Vision of Stormwind last week on both my shadow priest and demonology warlock, I did a solo 5-mask run in Horrific Vision of Orgrimmar this week. This was a big goal for me, and while I’ve been working toward it for a while, I’m also kind of surprised that I managed to do it. Now I have my Mad World achievement and “the Faceless One” title! Later in the week I’ll give it a go on my lock!
Last week I managed to solo a 5-mask Horrific Vision of Stormwind for the first time! There was something about the madnesses that week that made me think that was the week to do it. It did take my shadow priest a few attempts (maybe 4 or so), but I managed to do it. There wasn’t really any magic trick or breakthrough, although I did use Potions of Unbridled Fury and drums for lust. My priest was ilvl 466 in shadow when I managed to do it.
Next I set my sights on my warlock. My demonology warlock is only ilvl 460, and I don’t play it as well as my priest. This took a lot more attempts and a lot more breakthroughs. I think I ended up trying 8 times last week. Like with my shadow priest, I used pots and drums. This isn’t really some big innovation, but I didn’t use those when I wasn’t seriously thinking I’d be able to solo 5-mask.
I also really struggled with Umbric. My first time on Umbric, I use an orb on pull, so not only was I at max sanity, but I stayed at max sanity for the first few seconds of the fight while in the orb. I still lost all my sanity during the fight. I get polymorphed and then wander in circles, leaving void zones on the ground and walking through them. My felguard’s stun wasn’t so helpful. I also tried using the felhunter for silences. What I found worked best was using my imp. It removes harmful magic effects on a very short CD, so it can break me out of polymorph. That was the ticket to defeating Umbric!
And then I went back to felguard for Alleria and lost to the same problem. On my successful run, I had to use my imp on both Umbric and Alleria, and I had to be sure to have my self-resurrect for Alleria. You can see it activate near the end of the fight with Alleria in the above video. Glad I had it!
These were challenging, and I’m not super confident that I’ll be able to do it this week in Horrific Vision of Orgrimmar. I’ll give it my best shot though!
This weekend I hit 20,000 achievements points on my account! Thanks to mythic Hellfire Citadel for pushing me over that threshold. And thanks to Mooglegem for tagging along to the run. There’s still many more to earn!
Time for an update on horrific visions! Last week I did a full clear of the Horrific Vision of Orgrimmar for the first time. I’ve been sitting on a lot of Coalescing Visions recently but just hadn’t had the time to keep running Horrific Visions. Also, I took Matt’s advice and switched to shadow when running these with gem (frost mage). It went much, much faster as shadow!
We also earned Mail Muncher mounts from the mailboxes in horrific visions!
I’m disappointed that there isn’t mail stuck to him or something, but oh well – still cool!
I befriended the Friendly Alpaca in January but never posted this video! I’ve been very excited about alpacas being in WoW, and I now have two of the three.
For this alpaca, you have find the Friendly Alpaca in Uldum and feed it Gersahl Greens for the Alpaca It Up quest. This can be done once per day, and once it’s done 7 times, you get the quest Alpaca It In. This one rewards the Reins of the Springfur Alpaca so you can bring this friendly alpaca with you on your adventures!
Memories of Azeroth, the special raid celebrating the 15th anniversary of WoW, was quite different than the LFR version of Molten Core that was part of the 10th anniversary celebration. Having three wings instead of one long instance is huge in opening it up to more players, and I think that’s a good thing. Molten Core LFR was tuned too difficult in my opinion: casual players should be able to experience an anniversary celebration. The tuning on Memories of Azeroth felt very much in line with LFR. There were wipes, but groups could consistently finish it.
The idea behind the raid was pretty fantastic. Three wings, each featuring one of the first three expansions in World of Warcraft. As far as I know, this is the first time WoW has had a sort of boss rush too. In each wing, all three bosses had to be downed without wiping. However, you only see certain phases of the bosses and not all. Between bosses, all CDs are reset, and anyone who died is rezzed.
What seemed off to me was that some fights were so boring and easy that I never saw a wipe on them.
Memories of Fel / The Burning Crusade: Lady Vashj, Kael’thas, Archimonde. This was the easiest wing. I’m not sure I saw a wipe on Lady Vashj or Kael’thas. If so, I didn’t see many.
Memories of Frost / Wrath of the Lich King: Heigan, Anub’arak, The Lich King. This was the weirdest difficulty. Heigan should be incredibly simple. The “dance” of the fight is to simply stand in the one safe quadrant, moving with the group. The safe quadrant shifts in order. But there were wipes. Then there’s Anub’arak. Not only were there definitely no wipes, but there was no challenge at all. That fight is incredibly boring. And then we get to The Lich King, with many, many wipes to defile. Aw, the memories. Wiping is frustrating, but adding some challenge made it fun, and calling out defiles and teaching people was satisfying. Anub’arak was the worst part of this wing. It felt like a waste of time.
Memories of Fire / Cataclysm: Cho’gall, Nefarian, Ragnaros. This wing mirrored the last one pretty closely, except Cho’gall is much easier than Heigan. I’m not sure if we had wipes on him or not. But Nefarian… I don’t even think I saw any mechanics because it was so simple. However, the room filling with lava and later draining made a fun sort of timer so we could be in a DPS race with out past selves in an effort to do better than last time. Ragnaros was challenging for some people, and I don’t mind some wipes as people learn an encounter.
It was a nice stroll through past memories and it makes me long to see full versions of some of those fights. Complex, multi-phase fights felt gutted. I miss the rest of Arthas! Memories of Azeroth makes me with we had more timewalking raids – but broken into wings so I don’t have to do them in one go like Black Temple or Ulduar.
And for my trouble – an Obsidian Worldbreaker! Who wouldn’t love a Deathwing mount of their own? It’s pretty cool!
The best part of patch 8.3 releasing last week is the availability of three alpaca mounts! I obtained my first last night, the Elusive Quickhoof alpaca. Look how cute it is when it does its /mountspecial animation, bouncing in a little a circle. I’m pretty happy with it! Now I’m still farming the second one :)
I completed Unfathomable, the achievement for completing the Nazjatar story, two months ago. I really enjoyed doing Nazjatar. The mix of dailies, one-time quests, and increasing the ranks with your bodyguards felt fun to me. However, once I completed Unfathomable and switched to working on Mechagon, Nazjatar felt worse. My primary goal is usually to finish main story beats, so going for extra things in Nazjatar wasn’t a high goal. After experiencing Mechagon, maneuvering through Nazjatar felt like such a chore.
Last month, I completed Battle for Azeroth Pathfinder, Part Two, unlocking BfA flying. This is the first time I’ve been able to fly in current content since Mists of Pandaria, and wow is it nice. I do really like the pathfinder system despite not flying in WoD or Legion. I do think it should be relaxed once a new expansion is released though.
You can see me on my Wonderwing 2.0 mount and Mooglegem on hers in the above screenshot. That’s the mount that’s given as a reward. And all of a sudden, Nazjatar is no longer a headache! It’s a much more beautiful zone when I can fly through it!
As a bonus, I love this dialog between Urt the Bridgeholder and Urd the Heavy.
Urt the Bridgeholder: Too heavy!
Urd the Heavy: Who say that? Bridge can talk now?
I don’t have anything terribly insightful to say, but I wanted to share some screenshots of Zandalar. I love that we can jump on these big boys to ride around the zone. I’m on the far side, and Mooglegem is closer to the camera.
These direhorn are just so cute!
This shows the citizens of Dazar’alor at Rastakhan’s funeral.
I finally got around to unlocking the Nightborne recently after the long trek through the Suramar questing. The experience in Suramar was great and yet at the same time, it really seemed to drag on too long. I enjoyed that it had a cohesive story and that the zone changed with the progress, but I think it would have been better if it was shorter.
As for the unlock scenario, I really enjoyed seeing more story surrounding the blood elves. I realize the scenario was arguably about the Nightborne, but I was too distracted by the Sunwell, Lor’themar, and Lady Liadrin. And Alleria. Come to think of it, was this scenario even about the Nightborne?
The auction houses of Orgrimmar and Stormwind were overcome with the party spirit for Winter Veil and New Year’s Eve. Logrus, my orc death knight, is shown above in his gimpy clubbing finery.
Take a look at the party in the above video! Not too happy with the app I used, so I’ll have to switch it up in the future. And to see some quick screenshots of the outfits I put together for my characters, see below.
Devee, my troll priest and main, went with the Winter Veil sweater and some matching clothes.
Faiella still wanted to show off her blood elf demon hunter tattoos.
Illuminnae, my blood elf paladin, was sad that she didn’t have more revealing plate. Also, I didn’t even recognize her when I took her helm off. I usually keep her in a full plate set.
Voidgazer, my forsaken warlock, isn’t usually into the club scene. He’s more metal.
Spritzi, my goblin rogue was… you know what? Goblin women are pretty thicc.
Tyrse the tauren druid and banker extraordinaire just wanted to get silly.
Giving my alliance alts some love, Kavax the worgen hunter practiced his disco moves.
Sleepypaw, my pandaren monk was feeling extra jolly.
I was pretty impressed with the scandalous gnome mage transmog for Mooglepete.
I really didn’t have much for Petros, my night elf warrior and very first character.
I hope everybody had a happy Feast of Winter Veil, happy real life holidays, and great New Year!
I loved Dolly and Dot the alpacas so much that I had to share this later quest starring them. (If you haven’t heard the song, please see this post.) This is from the quest Knowledge of the Past in Vol’dun. There might be minor spoilers if you’re avoiding those!
No alpacas were harmed in the recording of this video. (They’re okay.)
World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth is definitely the best expansion, and it’s easy to see why – alpacas! Check out the cute song in this quest. Adorable! It’s from the quest On the Move in Vol’dun.
Here’s another quest about alpacas – Alpacas Gone Wild. It’s not nearly as cute, but I thought I’d include it too.
Val’sharah has a pretty evil quest that honestly feels like a mistake to me. Rylissa Bearsong gave me Frenzied Furbolgs, tasking me with killing eight Smolderhide furbolgs. They’re in a “frenzied rage.” Okay, fine. That seems reasonable enough. As I approach their location, I saw Elder Sookh standing to the side offering Littlefur. He tried to flee the village with his nephew when the rest of the furbolgs were afflicted with some kind of wrathful curse. He made it out, but his nephew is still there. After killing some furbolgs in the village, I found Littlefur. He told me that he knows the cause of what’s happening; a totem is giving the Chieftain power and causing the madness. With Totemic Call tasking me to destroy it, I was off. I did destroy it, and lo and behold, the curse was lifted and the furbolgs were back to normal!
Of course, I still had to kill more of them. Rylissa Bearsong, Elder Sookh, and Littlefur are all within speaking distance. Elder Sookh could have explained things to Rylissa Bearsong. But that’s not how it works. I had to go slaughter some innocent furbolgs. If I ever play through on an alt, I’ll be sure to finish the kill quest before destroying the totem so I don’t have to kill any innocent furbolgs.
Today’s the last day of Warlords of Draenor, although with the content Blizzard’s provided in the pre-patch, it feels like we’re already in Legion. I enjoyed Warlords, and now the pre-expansion content has me excited for Legion.
The Broken Shore scenario and accompanying cinematics were awesome content. If this is what’s in store for us now, what will the expansion bring? Quests given to us weekly to slowly give us more content leading into Legion was a great idea as well. It reminds me of the Garrison Campaign in some ways. I wish more content was released like this.
I took care of everything I wanted. I got all the pamphlets from the Doomsayers, and I terrorized Orgrimmar as a Dreadlord. I managed to unlock every reward from the invasions – all the weapons, all the armor, and the pet. Illuminnae, my paladin, doesn’t even seem to care about the invasion itself. Here she herbalizes while demons attack in the background. And I managed to hit 100 with her, which is only my second character to ever reach a level cap. I did some LFR on her as well to experience more max level content.
With the awesome XP from the invasions, I couldn’t stop at Illuminnae. Logrus, my Death Knight, also hit 100 with the invasions, ran some LFR, and even got the Pocket Fel Spreader on his first Dread Infiltrator kill.
I’ll leave you with a stuffed dinosaur I found in Dalaran!
It’s been a few weeks since patch 6.2 released, and I’ve been pretty happy with a casual consumption of the content. Overlooking the idea that the Horde and Alliance somehow forgot how to build shipyards and ships, the introduction quests were exciting and well done.
Once in Tanaan Jungle, the new daily system works well in my opinion. The focus is still on assaults on various locations with a progress bar that fills by performing various tasks. I liked these in Warlords first launched, and I still like them now. You go to the location and can space out and take care of things, whether in a group or alone. It’s nice that I can very easily drop from the group in the middle, stop playing, come back, and pick up another group. There’s no start or finish for the group as a whole. While there are a couple other objective-based daily quests, they can be done alongside the assaults and don’t seem overwhelming.
As for Hellfire Citadel, I’ve done the first six bosses in the first two wings of LFR. For some reason, the aesthetic doesn’t really stand out to me. Hellfire Assault, the first boss, tasks players with using the Blackfuse company’s Hellfire Cannons against Hellfire Citadel itself. Sounds cool, but it wasn’t so cool when I did it. The Iron Reaver fight is interesting mostly because I think the boss looks cool – a bit like Samus Aran. I liked taking out Kilrogg Deadeye eventually! My favorite fight so far is the disgusting, glutinous Gorefiend. Going into his stomach and dealing with the souls of draenei that he devoured? Awesome.
Everyone has different goals, and I had a few for this patch.
Draenor’s Last Stand – Complete the Tanaan Jungle daily objectives.
In Pursuit of Gul’dan – Complete the Garrison Campaign.
Hellfire Citadel – See the fights through on LFR at least.
Things have gone pretty fast so far, and I admit that I like the pace. Draenor’s Last Stand and In Pursuit of Gul’dan went quickly and were fun. Obviously I don’t really even need to think about Hellfire Citadel LFR; it’ll happen as soon as it’s all released. As for the legendary, I’m working at it. On that subject, if anyone chooses to comment on talk about it, I avoid spoilers, so I don’t know what happens in the legendary quests and don’t want to know until it’s revealed.
We’ll see how everyone else feels about patch 6.2 and if it lasts long enough for them. As for me, I don’t like it when I get overwhelmed with too much. I know I don’t have to do it all, but I prefer when it feels manageable. I’m also fine completing all my goals and then not playing WoW for a while, but that’s just my opinion. Right now, WoW feels very leisurely for me, and I like that!
I got some sweet new followers recently. First, here’s Garona. I know pretty much everybody got her through the legendary, but she’s still cool. It’s nice to have someone who’s good in every situation.
Next up is Harrison Jones. I don’t hate him quite as much now that’s he’s a follower. When someone is sent with him, they’re scaled to his level and ilvl, making him fantastic for training.
Lastly, here’s Cyril Fogus, accountant extraordinaire. If you didn’t realize, he’s an Archer reference. For some reason, it was really difficult to get a picture of him.
Now I want some Stir-Fryday. But more importantly, I want Lana as a follower.
I’ve been wanting one for a while, and I finally purchased a Spectral Tiger on the Auction House. I’m pretty broke now with a total of 8873 gold across all my characters, but the only thing for which I really needed gold was this, and it’s mine now!
My druid was actually the first to mount it. Looking good there, little feral druid.
The Spectral Tiger is still significantly cheaper than the Swift Spectral Tiger. I wonder if there’s some ingrained sense that epic versions are better even though they’re the same speed now. I actually prefer the Spectral Tiger because it has less armor, so yay for me.
I’ve earned a couple monuments recently that I didn’t mention. First, I earned the Master Draenor Crafter monument for crafting 50 epic items with an ilvl of 600+. There was one thing I could craft – the gun through the engineering building.
I also earned the Master of Apexis monument for collecting 100,000 Apexis Crystals. Now I have three distinct monuments, so each pedestal can display a unique monument. I think the Mythic Draenor Raider monument is far away from my goals, and I don’t have any max level pets, so Draenor Pet Brawler is out of my immediate reach as well. My eye’s on the legendary ring monument for next patch though!
Today’s Mooglegem’s last day with an active account. In fact, by this time the subscription has already lapsed. She just doesn’t have the time to play. She raided during Highmaul, but never even had a chance to finish questing let alone enter Blackrock Foundry. Last night she wanted to make the final push toward the Nagrand finale.
There were a few quest lines she hadn’t completed in Nagrand, but most importantly, Thrall was offering her “And Justice for Thrall.” She was so close this whole time. I was happy I got to witness her witnessing such an amazing moment.
I made her do this emote, heh.
She also went through her bags a little. There were a lot of old memories. One included a letter from my bank alt.
Dear Mooglegem,
Thank you for the stuff. How are you? I heard you were far away, south of here. How is it there? I’ve never left Mulgore. I live at Thunder Bluff.
I guess I liked RPing in letters.
Or how about this one I sent to her hunter?
The fight against the Lich King is slow but progresses well! I look forward to the day when we put him down for good!
Congratulations on reaching Outland! I hope you’re enjoying Nagrand; it really is quite beautiful. I’m surprised [Nesingwary] remembered me! Someday you’ll surpass him as a hunter, I’m sure.
Chompsky and Sumo are both very cute. Give them my love! Mooglegem says hello too.
Hope to see you in Northrend soon!
It’s been a while since we’ve really played together, but it’s weird to have her account inactive. On the plus side, she got to see the Nagrand finale. Afterward, I summarized the events of Highmaul, Blackrock Foundry, and the legendary quest, and then I showed her the finale of the Garrison Campaign and the 6.1 legendary cutscene. At least she’s caught up on the lore!
Hurry and come back, Mooglegem, so I can take you on a tour through Ashran and we can slay Alliance like old times.
I recently finished collecting my Primal Gladiator’s gear, the conquest gear for Warlords Season 1. Because I usually do arenas or rated battlegrounds, I think this is the first time I’ve finished by conquest set. Thanks, Ashran!
Ashran is actually very fun. Hopefully I can finish killing gnomes and pandaren so I can get that title!
The Iron Assembly, the third wing of Blackrock Foundry’s Raid Finder, opened Tuesday. Wednesday night are raid was cancelled, but I ventured into the new wing. I’d already done Beastlord Darmac on normal, but I’d never seen Operator Thogar or The Iron Maidens.
I have mixed feelings about The Iron Maidens. I think I’ll learn to dislike that fight only because LFR will struggle with it (and it’s a long ass fight). It was honestly kind of fun once I got into the swing of dodging bombs. That’s great the first week of LFR, but I know I don’t pay close attention in LFR usually. This will grow to annoy me.
Operator Thogar is an awesome fight! According the the Dungeon Journal, he “oversees the operation of the Grimrail.” The fight takes place on train tracks. Periodically trains come into the station with additional troops or weapons. It’s a cool looking fight and fun too. Again, who knows how I’ll feel in a month, but I was pretty happy with it last night!
Of course, there had to be a douche taking selfies in the middle of the fight.
Last night we attempted Hans’gar and Franzok for the first time, taking the fight onto their huge treadmills. After a few attempts, we were able to handily defeat the cardio bros.
We pushed deeper into Blackrock Foundry, stopping to struggle against Flamebender Ka’graz. This took a decent number of attempts, but we bent the Flamebender so out of shape that she dropped and gave us her loot.
Our new raid progression was celebrated with selfies! Hopefully next week we can down Kromog!
Rum ham! Treasure!
Kor'kron 501st 