Now that season 2 has started, I wanted to look at how I did in season 1. I got Keystone Hero (2500+ rating) on my shaman and Keystone Master (2000+ rating) on my warrior. I got Ahead of the Curve and finished Vault of the Incarnates on both my shaman and warrior. While I’ve played alts a little in the past, this is the first season I’ve earned KSM and AotC on two characters. Awesome! It was one of my goals this season, so I’m glad I succeeded. I also played my druid a tiny bit. While I PVP’d a little, I decided to focus my time elsewhere.
Last night we earned Dragonflight Keystone Master: Season One! It’s just in time for the catalyst tomorrow. It feels weird that we can get KSM while still waiting for the Inspiration Catalyst. Right now, only one of us has four piece. That’ll change soon!
I wanted to share some fun Winterveil screenshot from last months! I’m always excited to put on my holiday transmog and celebrate, even if Bulleto here has that silly grin on his face!
Going for a sled ride through Orgrimmar.
Slow down, Bulleto!
Winterveil in the Ohn’ahran Plains.
Look at all our friends!
Who needs reindeer when you have a friendly bakar?
Taivan is a good, good boy. I loved his storyline. Skip to the next paragraph to avoid spoilers. Taivan doesn’t appear good at anything, but eventually we discover he’s a rescue bakar!
Sled ride!
Weee!
Making a furbolg friend.
I don’t remember what this world quest was exactly, but I liked all the mage tables!
Taking a break for a Winterveil picnic.
Winterveil in the Court of Stars.
I have a lot of holiday spirit!
Raszageth might want to fight the aspects, but she still celebrates Winterveil.
She’s wearing her Winterveil hat and holding a candy cane and wreath.
Dragonflight’s pre-patch event provided a nice way to level alts. I had 6 max level characters when the pre-patch released, and on the day of Dragonflight’s release, I had 18 level 60 character! And yet I still don’t have a level 50+ highmountain tauren to unlock their heritage armor.
Please note that I’ll be discussing quests in this post without regards to spoilers.
The expansion release was a mess for me at first. Apparently things were okay the first half hour or so, but by the time I tried to play, Orgrimmar and Durotar were empty, and I kept getting “instance transfer aborted” error messages. On the plus side, I got to ride my rocket indoors!
Eventually I was able to see everyone. Like most people, the zeppelin did not want to show up for me. Eventually I saw a reddit post suggesting you could summon people to a dungeon in the Dragon Isles, and it worked! Thank you to my guildmates for summoning me to the Isles!
The Waking Shores
Once we reach the Dragon Isles, we have to backtrack across the zone from the dungeon to where we should have arrived. Cool zeppelin!
Alexstrasza’s new model is detailed and looks great. I’m looking forward to helping the aspects more!
Bulleto and I are little whelps!
The lava mammoths are amazing enemies. I need to level a hunter because I want one, and I can’t wait to get a mount.
This was from a later zone, but I thought I’d include it here. These were just a temporary buff, but it was fun to ride them!
I don’t know what to think about Sabellian vs Wrathion, and I could write a lot more about them. Wrathion acts like he’s always acting in our best interest, but he’s made a lot of stupid decisions and then didn’t even show up in Legion. Are we supposed to remember that, or was that bad writing? On the other hand, Sabellian hasn’t even been around in years. Who should I hope becomes the new aspect?
Hanging out with Bulleto!
Did… did Bulleto transform into a whelp and take a little lava bath in that cauldron of lava? I think so!
I didn’t think I’d like dragonriding much because my friend and I use two person mounts a lot while questing.
I was quite surprised to see you can enable the ability to let someone ride your dragon with you. They even get to turn into a little whelp! Of course, we now know dragonriding is super awesome and amazingly fast!
Ohn’ahran Plains
I never really cared about the centaur previously, and I still wouldn’t say they’re one of my favorite races. However, their inclusion in Dragonflight just makes the world seem so much more grounded. I like seeing races that were present in classic. And I love the architecture and world around these Maruuk centaur!
Especially cool is Sansok Khan, the tall centaur on the right in this screenshot. She’s the leader of her clan, and she’s deaf. Okir, the centaur next to Sansok Khan, speaks on her behalf, translating Sansok Khan’s sign language. Sansok Khan’s quest text starts with As Sansok Khan signs, Okir vocalizes. The dog next to Sansok Khan is Basran. It appears you can pet him as you can other dogs in World of Warcraft, but when you click him, you get this: You extend a hand to offer Basran pets, but he stays stoically next to his khan. Basran is currently working and you should not pat service dogs on duty. How amazing is that? I really like the representation, and she’s a cool character in general.
This was one of the longest quests I’ve ever experienced – or at least it felt that way. You escort the caravan and listen to the centaurs tell their history. It was a little hard for me to focus, but I still like to soak up all the lore.
I love how green and beautiful the zone is.
Yay, we get to ride him!
I thought the green dragons’ area was pretty too.
The Azure Span
Who knew a powerful mage could control their mirror images independently? Kalecgos knows, apparently.
Seeing Sindragosa, or at least a simulacrum of her, is an amazing moment. We don’t really know how sentient this is, but she sure feels like a character in her own. I hope we interact with her more!
Finally, we get to the tuskarr! This is the best and cutest race in the game, and you better believe I would be a tuskarr if they ever made them an allied race. I can’t believe Blizzard said there are no plans for allied races in Dragonflight, but I’m still hoping.
I really thought the tuskarr for which we were searching was dead, but his feign death tricked me. Bulleto is so upset that he feigns death.
Relaxing with Kalecgos and our new tuskarr friends.
During a quest with some tuskarr and Kalecgos in which we’re battling the decay, the tuskarr Kaqiata dies. Her dying words are “Please, tell my son Rowie in Iskaara that I love him. And I’m sorry.”
We meet her son Rowie later and help him “defeat” this yeti. This was a such a cute quest!
We also helped the tuskarr say good bye to Chieftain Ponoliak and learn about their funeral ceremonies. It’s another sad yet touching quest.
The tuskarr children are just super adorable!
And so is this frog!
Some tuskarr children want to help this abandoned baby gnoll they named Scraps. I thought it was cute, and I’m looking forward to this being referenced again later I’m sure.
This quests tasks us with helping Elder Poa with her stories. Elder Nappa suggests we get Elder Poa a new story – even if we have to make it up! Elder Poa takes the quest answers and spins a story from it.
You can also read it here.
This one is Bulleto’s!
The zone ended with the blue dragonflight coming together to help Kalecgos. It was to be expected from the major story beats of the zone but was exciting nonetheless!
Thaldraszus
Eventually we reached Thaldraszus, the final zone and home of the dragon city Valdrakken. You’d think a city made for dragons would have chairs spaced a little further apart.
Due to some time shenanigans with the bronze and infinite flights, I met my future self here. Why does his armor look worse?
When I get sent back in time, I’m not expecting this. Camp Narache?! (Of course, when my character lived this, it was vanilla and not Cataclysm.)
A timeline where the Horde and Alliance are murlocs has to be one of the coolest things in the game.
Even the map is modified!
Here I am with Bulleto, Varian Wryngrrlgulgll, and Thrallgrulgulgul. Deathwingurlugull is in the background!
Who are those murloc heroes with us? Why, they’re Bulleto and Sotiros the murlocs of course!
We even found Baine Blrrgfin!
Here’s a clip of this awesome quest.
We’re sent even further back in time to before the titans ever came to Azeroth and the Black Empire ruled. Don’t worry, we make it home.
Bulleto and I fit better at this table even if Sumo hogs the camera while Chompsky stands nicely in the back!
Need a break from adventuring? Maybe you could get some cheese from Gorgonzormu.
It would go perfect with some wine from Zinfandormu!
Well, maybe I’m off to have some cheese and wine in Valdrakken. See you on the Dragon Isles!
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.
Back in mid-August I earned Fates of the Shadowlands Raids, and a couple weeks ago I earned the heroic variant. Once we earned our Jigglesworth Sr. slime cat mounts, we promptly jumped off Oribos!
While most people reading this likely understand the fated system, for those of you don’t, this was the first time Blizzard used something like this for a raid season. Rather than using new raids or even just updating an old raid (like Naxxramas and Onyxia’s Lair level 80 versions), this season involved scaled up versions of all three Shadowlands raids. Each week, one raid would be “fated,” scaled to current ilvls and with additional affixes to change things up a bit. Most of these affixes boiled down to being buffs, but some did cause issues on fights that were positionally difficult. The affix on each boss rotates each time the raid is fated as well.
Each boss could have one affix when the season started and later it was changed to two out of a possible four.
Chaotic Essence: Someone must interact with it to make it hostile. When it’s hostile, it keeps summoning little adds. Every little add that’s killed grants a stack of a damage, healing, and absorbs buff. The adds do damage, but it never felt like it mattered.
Protoform Barrier: This appears as a buff on the boss. When dispelled, it creates an add that’s attackable and shares a big absorb shield with other enemies. When it’s killed, it mirrors the damage done to it to the boss and gives a damage bonus to players. (There’s also a second add that healers can heal to reduce the absorb shield.) This was usually not a problem, but if the group is near a wipe, the boss is almost dead, and then a Protoform Barrier appears, it can cause a wipe.
Reconfiguration Emitter: An add casts raid-wide damage and gets a stacking damage buff over time. Once it casts or is interrupted, it’s attackable. When it dies, it increases player stats based on its power level. This never felt like an issue.
Creation Spark: Players get debuffs that will create circles on the ground when dispelled or expired. Standing in one gives players a mini lust. Every circle that doesn’t have a player standing in it will explode with raid-wide damage. This can be deadly on heavy movement fights.
Here’s Delillidan (Elias), me, and Mooglegem (gem) on our mounts!
This fated system certainly seems designed to extend the life of the content without heavy development. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and I enjoyed the season. However, the fated rotation adds difficulties. During the first three weeks of the season, my raid group spent the first raid night of the week doing normal and the second doing heroic. On the third week, I had to miss the second raid night. While I earned my normal achievement and the mount, it means I missed heroic fated Sepulcher. In the following weeks, my raid group decided to raid just once per week and stick to heroic. Three weeks after the previously missed Sepulcher, I had to miss raid night once again – which means I once again missed heroic fated Sepulcher. Yes, it’s on me for missing raids. But bad timing with a schedule plus the fated rotation can really hurt things.
I did manage to do some pugging to get my heroic fated Sepulcher of the First ones done. Now I’m Sotiros, Hero of Fate!
I earned Shadowlands Keystone Master: Season Four about three weeks ago and earned this purple beauty – the Restoration Deathwalker! (And I’m glad they recolored it, because this one is much better.) I enjoyed mixing in the old dungeons to keep things fresh, and I think it was a good test run of how mythic+ dungeon pools will work in Dragonflight. It’ll be a little weird not to be experiencing all the new dungeons in the first Dragonflight season, but I do think it’ll help keep the second season feeling new and exciting. From left to right in the screenshot is Delillidan (Elias), Carmela (Marc), Sotiros (me), Mushkin (Matt), and Mooglegem (gem)!
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!
Last week I earned Keystone Master, and this week the last of my 5-man group earned it too! (He would have had it earlier but he fills multiple roles and splits his time between multiple characters.) As is tradition, we took this screenshot on our mounts on the edge of Oribos. From left to right, we are Mushkin (Matt), Delarm (Elias), Sotiros (me, Peter), Todesfall (Marc), Max (Todesfall’s pet), and Mooglegem (gem).
On 3/26 we defeated the Jailer in Sepulcher of the First Ones normal! I guess I got behind on updating the blog. It’s a fun fight, but Anduin feels like better fight and something closer to a final boss. Maybe that’ll feel different on higher difficulties.
We’ve moved on to heroic progression and are currently 3/11. Hopefully we push further this week!
We’re in the 7th week of the Shadowlands Season 3, but I never discussed how mythic+ season 2 ended for me.
I ended with a 2294.1 rating, almost entirely healing. According to raider.io, globally I was in the top 6% of all characters, 4.9% of healers, 7.2% of shamans, and 7.5% of restoration shamans. I was the 65th best Horde shaman on Kil’jaeden and 48th best resto shaman on Kil’jaeden.
My top key ratings worked out like this (with asterisks indicating key level increase like raider.io’s UI):
Dungeon
Fortified
Tyrannical
De Other Side
17*
20
Halls of Atonement
16*
19
Mists of Tirna Scithe
20*
19*
Plaguefall
19
18
Sanguine Depths
20
18**
Spires of Ascension
19
20*
The Necrotic Wake
17**
18*
Theater of Pain
21
20*
I earned Keystone Hero for Theater of Pain, Spires of Ascension, and Mists of Tirna Scithe for completing them on +20 or higher (in this case, +20, haha). While they were far from easy for me, I think others were within reach had I pushed to do them earlier. I didn’t try until the last couple weeks of the season, and our group had to split up to earn them.
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.
On the last night of Winter Veil, four members of Carpe Flux Capacitor decided to go on a Winter Veil sleigh ride through Orgrimmar together! From left to right, that’s Syravia (Marc), me, Mooglegem (gem), and Mushkin (Matt).
I look especially silly in this one I think, but I’m also blocking Mooglegem unfortunately.
We’re gonna hit the camera!
I also recorded our little ride too.
As an added bonus, can I just say that cutscenes are way more fun when I’m in my Winter Veil transmog?
When am I ever going to see a ranking like that again? I ran some Legion timewalking mythic+ and realized that I had a shot at topping the rankings without too much effort. I managed to become the #1 shaman on US Kil’jaeden for Legion timewalking! I expect to fall as more people play, but it was fun to get here for now.
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!
Happy Halloween! Enjoy these photos of my New World-inspired costume as I harvest a plant and log some wood. It’s still a work-in-progress with a few small things to add soon!
Here’s a spooky look at my New World character, too!
Let’s not forget Hallow’s End fun in WoW! Mooglegem and I took our friend who is new to WoW to kill the Headless Horseman!
Today is my dad’s birthday, so I thought I’d share this screenshot. Ever since I was a kid, I primarily used “Petros” as a character name for melee characters and “Sotiros” for casters. This started long before WoW existed. My current main is named Sotiros, a tauren shaman. “Sotiros” is Greek for “Steven,” which is my dad’s name, and I’m Greek-American. In World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, there is a zone called Bastion that’s heavily influenced by Greek mythology. Bastion has a summonable boss named Eliminator Sotiros. To celebrate my dad’s birthday, I wanted to share this screenshot of my Sotiros with Eliminator Sotiros. I took this so I could show him when I take him out to dinner!
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.
On top of New World launching this week, I also earned Ahead of the Curve: Sylvanas Windrunner. Heroic Sylvanas seemed tuned pretty difficult compared to the previous bosses, and we’ve been struggling for a couple weeks. This week we used a smaller raid group, and it so much easier. The fight is very positional, and it’s much better with a small group. Over the next few weeks, we’ll get AOTC for the whole raid group.
Somehow I forgot to take a screenshot – not that there’s much to screenshot. But I had this clip saved!
We recently got Keystone Master for another guildmate! Congratulations to Mike! This screenshot shows from left to right, Elias, gem, me, Mike, and Matt. He was missing a fortified Necrotic Wake for a couple weeks now, but now that’s behind him!
Tuesday night was achievement night for my raid group. This was my last Tuesday raid for a while because the group is moving on to mythic, and I’m not on their server. We still have a couple Saturday raid nights left though, which is good because I wasn’t there for the Sylvanas kill to get Ahead of the Curve.
The Glory of the Dominant Raider meta achievement was easier than I expected. I didn’t really think they were easy enough to finish in one night, but my raid group didn’t question it so maybe they always do it like this. Some achievements made me nervous; Tormentor’s Tango requires you to /taunt Garrosh, which gives you a slow debuff, and then not get hit by any Torments. And if anyone messes it up in the raid, no one gets the achievement. I thought for sure it would be hard, but we did it in one attempt.
The Kel’thuzad fight has one of the cutest achievements – Together Forever. As a reminder, Kel’thuzad had a pet cat back in Naxxramas, Mr. Bigglesworth. If you killed it, he would yell and curse you. I think it’s cute that he had a pet he loved even as a lich. Well, it turns out Mr. Bigglesworth also ended up in the Shadowlands. For this achievement, someone in the raid has to find and pet Mr. Bigglesworth, now a slime-ghost-cat, near the Tarragrue’s platform and then again near Painsmith. This will cause him to spawn in Kel’thuzad,s room, where a player can click him once more. Mr. Bigglesworth will hop on that player’s head. During the Kel’thuzad fight, that player must enter Kel’thuzad’s phylactery and deliver the cat, thawing Kel’thuzad’s head (and causing him to take increased damage). How cute is that?
Here I had some nice tea with Keridwen and Mooglegem while we waited for others to find Mr. Bigglesworth. It was our Finer Things Club.
Look, there he is riding on someone’s head!
I Used to Bullseye Deeprun Rats Back Home was an interesting achievement. There’s a vertical hoop on a stick next to Remnant of Ner’zhul’s platform (like a quidditch goal) with a second hoop swinging. Three “goals” must be scored by throwing the bomb off the platform and through the hoops. None of us had ever noticed the goal posts before.
Whack-A-Soul seemed like one of the most appropriate achievements. On top of everything else Painsmith throws at you, there are Burning Gibbets that appear on the sides. More continue to spawn throughout the fight, and they case a raid-wide four second fear. Basically, you just have to keep killing and interrupting them. This would have likely been very hard earlier when we were less geared.
This World is a Prism, on Sylvanas, was another neat achievement. One prism from each covenant spawns in phase two. Four players must each pick up a prism. In the last phase, each platform has a sigil corresponding to a covenant. The players with the prisms must stand on the sigils to channel on to Anduin. Lore-wise that does… something? But every good WoW fight needs to beams or magic lasers.
And after a little over two hours of raiding, we finished Glory of the Dominant Raider. Now we can all ride our Hand of Hrestimorak mounts! I’m not in love with the hand recolor, but it is a cool model. I have the Hand of Bahmethra from Tormentors of Torghast already. I still need the Hand of Salaranga from Breaking the Chains as well as Hand of Nilganihmaht, the gold hand and one I want the most!
I ran a Plaguefall 14 on tyrannical back on 8/23 expecting to improve my score; it ended up giving me Keystone Master! Because some people switched characters during our runs, it took another week or so for all five of our main m+ group to get KSM. I wanted to wait to post about it until I had a screenshot of the five of us on our mounts (the Soultwisted Deathwalker) but then forgot about posting until now.
I believe the five characters in the screenshot (it’s hard to identify alts) are Delarm (Elias), Kanora (Marc), me, Mooglegem (gem), and Kuuna (Matt).
Season two certainly went quicker. It was the first time I ran m+ in two consecutive seasons within a single expansion, so maybe it’s always like this. I liked the seasonal affix, but it seemed much easier than Prideful; whether that’s good or bad is up for debate I suppose. Now let’s see how high we can push!
We got our revenge on Tazasvesh, and I was so excited that I rocked out in Myza’s Oasis on the drums!
We first tried Tazavesh the week it was released, but we hit a wall on the last boss. This week, we returned to the megadungeon and tried it on hard mode.
This guy looked shady, but we made a deal with him anyways.
At our gear level now, there were some mechanics we didn’t even see because we killed the target so quickly. It was not a big deal.
I really enjoyed it, and I think megadungeons are a cool concept that Blizzard could use a bit more. It’s definitely a different style of gameplay. I think the biggest issue, if they were done more frequently, would be balancing rewards. Right now, it’s mostly just about having fun. The gear reward barely mattered since we decided to gear through m+ and come back to wreck it later.
Not that I expect it, but maybe we can get another megadungeon in 9.2!
The Grungy Containment Pack was such a cool transmog item that I had to build an entire set around it. Now I’m glowing green as much as I can!
I’m also using the Worn Turtle Shell Shield from way back in Wailing Caverns! It’s rare that I find a good transmog use for such an old item, and I have happy memories of killing Kresh for it.
We decided to clear normal Sanctum of Domination before heading into heroic. We defeated normal Sylvanas on our fourth raid night, which was in the second week of the raid. In heroic, we’re now three bosses into the raid with The Nine falling this week. As mentioned in the title, there will be some spoilers in this post.
I got the Sanctum Gloomcharger’s Reins on my second defeat of The Nine, which was actually in LFR. I’m not sure of the drop rate, but it doesn’t seem too high. It’s a pretty cool mount!
We’re struggling against Soulrender Dormazain in heroic for now, but at least we’re making progress and getting better. This is a pretty cool fight, and I really enjoy seeing Garrosh again.
Here’s the cutscene at the end of the fight courtesy of wowhead. I think this is a pretty good end to Garrosh’s arc. No redemption. He is who he is, and he does feel remorse for his actions. He goes out fighting and even screaming “for the Horde!”
And then I guess he becomes a pile of ash. Oh well.
And this is how I feel after wiping repeatedly to Soulrender Dormazain in heroic! Okay, actually things have been going well, but I thought I’d end the post there. Happy raiding!
Mythic+ season 2 is off to a fun start! This is the first time I’ve done two seasons back-to-back in a single expansion, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. To be honest, I just assumed that we’d be starting with +3 or +4 keys, but that wasn’t the case.
For now, our main goal is to get the best loot from the weekly vault rather than time lower keys. To that end, we’ve been mostly doing +15s over time, which ensures we get 252 loot each week. Soon we’ll need to start timing keys!
I’ve been enjoying the Servants of the Jailer, the minibosses from the new affix. I enjoy the flexibility they give – yeah, I know that they’re in set locations while Manifestations of Pride could pop up wherever you want, it also meant than in season one, a mistake with trash can drastically change the whole run. Plus, these minibosses seem much easier to me.
Devee, my discipline priest, has been my main since BC. In fact, 8.3 was the first time I played max-level alts. This patch, I’ve swapped to Sotiros, my ele/resto shaman as my main. Most likely I’ll be elemental in our main runs, but I’m healing dungeons too and raid as resto. It’s weird but fun to be playing a different toon as my main. Discipline feels like significantly more work and burns mana extremely fast. When things are hectic and player health is low, I feel like I had to lean away from atonement, which tore through my mana. Shaman doesn’t have that issue, but I’ll admit I certainly miss Pain Suppression, and Desperate Prayer. I miss some other CDs too, but those are the two big ones that I find myself wishing I had the most. However, the shaman has a lot of other strengths.
My elemental DPS has come a long way, but it’s still hurting in single target fights, and I’d be replacing the position held last patch by an unholy DK that could really bring the DPS. Hopefully I can get it to keep climbing and I can learn to be better on ST fights. If so, that unholy player will be healing on his holy paladin. This is my first patch ever DPSing in my main role rather than healing. Although so far, I think I’ve healed more than I’ve DPS’d across all my toons this patch. It helps that three of my four characters have healing specs!
I hope everyone has been enjoying Chains of Domination!
I went necrolords with my shaman to round out my covenant quartet. Was he picking flowers here? I don’t remember the details of this screenshot, but it looks nice.
Maldraxxus is a surprisingly fun zone despite having a theme that I thought would be boring. I still feel like my nature-loving shaman likely would have preferred to join the night fae, but the quest series in which Mograine wonders why he wasn’t sent to Bastion instead of Maldraxxus puts some of that in perspective.
There are lots of fun references in this zone, like Tapani Nightwish, the innkeeper. I also enjoyed the quest names “Build-A-Bomination” and “Dude, Where’s My Necropolis?”
Since this was the fourth and final covenant campaign I completed, I enjoyed seeing the moments in which it intersected with the kyrian and venthyr campaigns. I also really like learning about how the covenants interact. There are some quests that show what other covenants think of the necrolords, which is really cool. It’s kind of odd that three of the four covenants deal with a bit of a civil war within their zones, but they’re all entertaining despite the similarities. I’m looking forward to making more abominations and eventually dealing with Kel’thuzad!
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.
I spent a lot of time during the anniversary event leveling characters in Korrak’s Revenge. I love battlegrounds, and I’m slowly working toward the 250,000 honorable kills achievement. This seemed like a good time to do a ton of battlegrounds thanks to the increased XP rate. By level 60+, you gained a level per battle or so!
I already had three classes as 120 – priest, hunter, and warlock. I leveled an additional 8 to 120 with the event! The first I leveled to 120 with Korrak’s Revenge was Death Knight. Logrus, my frost DK, was a lot of fun to play. Compared to my main, a healer, it felt like enemies really melted.
My fifth class to hit 120 was my Demon Hunter, Faiella. Like my DK, I found Demon Hunter was great at killing. Movement is incredibly fun with Demon Hunter as well.
Next up, my sixth toon to hit 120, paladin! Here’s Illuminnae standing next to gem’s paladin, Melantho. I’m glad I finally got Illuminnae to max level. It’s nice to have a really heroic-looking plate wearer. I envision her wearing full suits of armor always, as opposed to many other characters that I have in robes or other lighter-looking armor. I played her as ret, but I’d like to learn holy eventually.
This is Spritzi, my little goblin rogue. Stealthing was a lot of fun, but I don’t feel like rogue ever really clicked with me like the other classes did. Diko, gem’s priest, is cheering for her!
Here’s Sotiros, my shaman. He was the third character I ever thought of as my “main.” I created Devee thinking Devee would be temporary, yet Sotiros quickly got pushed aside and I focused on Devee ever since. Now Sotiros is finally max level. I played as resto, and wow, how fun. Chain Heal is amazing in battlegrounds (at least when there are a lot of players together). I enjoyed standing on top of towers and targeting the one Horde character in range with Chain Heal over and over so it could hit the others.
Here’s Mooglepete, my Blood Elf frost mage! I never knew just how much mages are glass cannons. He died easily, but he killed easily too! Here he is with Diko.
I named him after Mooglegem, gem’s mage. Here we are together with our Water Elementals.
Tyyrse, my Zandalari druid, was my next character to his max. Druid was difficult. I wanted Zandalari because I wanted the dino druid forms, but I felt like I wasn’t being “loyal” to Tyrse (one ‘y’), my Tauren druid who I use a bank alt and is lower-level.
But the dino forms! This is Tyyrse in the middle in the tank form dancing with Lafayette, gem’s druid. Awesome!
Lastly, I leveled my Mag’har Orc warrior, Mostymush. I named him in honor of Mushkin, the coolest warrior I know. My friend Matt plays Mushkin and a character named Mostydead, so I combined the names. Warrior is awesome! Heroic Leap gives such fun mobility, and I feel so powerful playing the warrior. Mostymush is my 11th character to hit max level. All I’m missing is monk! I leveled him as a tank, which was insanely fun.
All in all, I played 198 matches of Korrak’s Revenge and won 158 of those. That’s a win rate of 79.8%! I leveled 8 characters to 120 with it. Thanks Korrak’s Revenge!
earthwormgem
Peter (Devee)
Kor'kron 501st 