For some reason, I’ve been playing Skyrim again—I’m not quite sure what it is with that game but somehow it keeps drawing me back in from time to time. This time around, I’ve started a new playthrough as kind of a mage-y character mostly focusing on destruction so far with a bit of poking into conjuration which seems like a rather useful school of magic to have as a distraction—I’m not very durable as a mage after all, so having something summoned to take the hits is useful.

It has been fun so far, I’ve managed to play through the College of Winterhold campaign and have gotten a good start into the main campaign. It is a bit sad to see, however, how quickly it all goes past when one is moderately familiar with what is going on—it feels like the campaigns are rather short and shallow.

I mean, take the mage campaign for example: I’m barely getting started in the college, go on a field trip, find some big magical artifact, get sent to find another artifact related to the original one and to get advice on how to find it. After that, I basically get promoted to being the archmage of the college. Sure, there are some intermediate steps in there, but they tend to be rather short and samey which really makes the whole experience feel really compact.

I tend to find that the other Skyrim campaigns have a similar problem, where you get one small starter quest, then get a big goal and a few smaller goals around that and after completing those you’re the leader of the guild/college/whatever. And this is a pattern that from what I can remember tends to repeat throughout the guilds, at least Dark Brotherhood and Thieves’ Guild, not quite as sure about Companions as I’ve only played that storyline once I believe. It’s a rather unfortunate flaw in a game that otherwise is good enough to keep me coming back since I feel like I want to play it again which clearly means they have done something very right with the design of the game as well. Or maybe it is the very fact that I have played the game so much that is preventing me from enjoying these more focused experiences?

At any rate, I’m enjoying myself so far and I think I’ll keep enjoying myself for a while still—probably through the main and Companions’ campaigns considering where my strengths lie.

Somehow, it has been a while since I’ve decided to write something which feels slightly strange. It is partially due to not much happening I think, mythic+ was really quiet last week for some reason with barely any runs going on. We did take a poke at a Lower Karazhan +26 but unfortunately decided not to even finish it much less do it in time. That was also Tuesday evening so we did not get a chance to go on and try the +25 at a later date which I find slightly unfortunate—though it would’ve proved rather difficult with Moroes and grievous which is an especially painful combination even without tyrannical.

What has been happening, strangely enough, is some more leveling. I actually have two character’s I’ve been leveling a bit, namely a Highmountain Shaman and a Nightborne Warlock—mostly just so I have the appearances unlocked in case I want to play one of those races.

It has been going decently, getting to Karazhan again was really nice since that’s just such an amazing spurt though it does make normal leveling thereafter that much more difficult. I honestly don’t know how I feel about the classes yet—I probably won’t play the warlock much after leveling because I tend to not like playing as a damage dealer and that is the only choice as warlock but for leveling alone Affliction has been rather nice so far and it goes at a decent pace but then I’m only in Classic zones at the moment which are rather a lot easier than the later zones.

The shaman, on the other hand, feels really slow at the moment both as restoration and elemental. It just feels like the casts take forever and they don’t feel overly impactful. This might be a case of poor gear which is understandable while leveling especially since we’ve used some more unusual methods that don’t provide much relevant gear. But we’re about to start with Legion zones—specifically the invasions—which should provide a rather nice boost of experience and hopefully a bit of gear as well.

Speaking of unusual methods, we did some more experimenting this time around specifically going into Firelands and trying some of the trash there. It wasn’t something I would recommend since the packs there didn’t give overly much experience and were actually rather hard to kill even though we went in there more overleveled than Karazhan—72-73 into Karazhan, 90-91 into Firelands. Though the turtles there did give a rather big chunk of experience, almost 3000 each and they were also much easier to kill than the other packs. Unfortunately, there aren’t overly many of them so the instance limit will be the biggest blocker along with how much one will need to move. But Tol’vir is around those levels anyway and much more lucrative so I would suggest going there until 91 or so and after that just doing treasures and bonus objectives in Draenor—that seems to be the quickest route.

So we actually managed to get some mythic+ “pushing” done with our new alts, we didn’t get spectacularily far yet but still up to a +10. Unfortunately we ended up depleting that one due to one of us having disconnects which made some of the bosses take a long while to kill. Despite that it was quite a lot of fun which probably surprises nobody I think—after all, mythic+ is still enjoyable and getting some of the challenge back in the lower keystone levels due to actually being geared appropriately for them rather than horrendously overgeared unsurprisingly led to those dungeons being fun again. That along with the new perspective of another class.

It has also been interesting to see people playing those new classes and how quickly and well they end up adapting to them classes. I think all of us are adapting somewhat quickly though I still feel I do a terrible job at playing a Death Knight with some real newbie mistakes in Neltharion’s Lair on the last boss for example. This was primarily due to me being somewhat overwhelmed with trying to remember a new set of keybindings while juggling a new-to-me mechanic—gripping mobs—along with proper positioning of the boss. With that triple threat I ended up positioning the boss poorly at times. I also ended up somewhat confused as to what exactly counts as active mitigation for a Death Knight since I had been assuming just having Bone Shield stacks up would be enough but that was not the case. This confusion added a certain incapability to concentrate.

At the same time, that confusion is the exact reason why we decided to go the route of doing this “pushing” on our alts since it allows us to iron out such mistakes and not make them in the future and as such helps us learn our classes better in the appropriate environment. We already had one instance where our tank in a somewhat high Black Rook Hold key either wasn’t aware of what active mitigation was for Death Knights or just the necessity to keep it up for the Shear on Illysana which felt somewhat awkward later on. This demonstrates rather well that there are some things that Blizzard could be a lot better about signaling—specifically what exactly counts as active mitigation and possibly even more strongly showing those requirements in the Dungeon Journal though it is usually noted in the ability text but maybe a custom icon like there is for interrupts would be good as well?

Beyond that though, it has been a good experience so far and I’m slowly coming to terms with how the Death Knight tank works, how much I can handle and what I survive which is good. There has been one small oddity though: none of us has gotten a legendary so far. With the amount of mythic+ and what not done along with some of us having a weekly chest as well it feels somewhat surprising that the bad-luck-protection hasn’t kicked in yet and given us a legendary. That is of course something of a limiting factor on our ability to progress forward in mythic+ as legendaries—especially at this item level—are a significant boost. Even a bad legendary would be a big upgrade over the gear we are using at the moment. Here’s hoping we start seeing them roll in soon, and hopefully we end up getting some of the decent ones and not the useless ones. But that will be for the coming weeks I think, not sure how much more time we’ll have this week along with not having done so much mythic+ on our mains yet.

So I managed to reach 110 with my Death Knight on Tuesday, which was before the reset meaning I had a nice 960 item waiting for me in my Order Hall today since we also managed to do a quick +15 key for me and the other level 110 in our leveling group. Unfortunately, I got a ring which feels like it would be a somewhat small upgrade compared to one of the major slots like chest or legs but was still nice, I believe the stats are at least decent as well though I do need to poke into Blood Death Knights a bit more in order to confirm that. To be fair, I already have a 950 chest I got from the weekly for doing four mythic dungeons, so maybe a ring wasn’t that unlucky.

Unfortunately, two out of four in our leveling group of four did not manage to get to 110 in time, hopefully, today or tomorrow at the latest so we can get to doing some dungeons. We have been planning to do some lowbie dungeons, potentially starting with running just plain mythic dungeons for gear and then mythic+ afterward. Might end up starting with mythic+ immediately since it’s so easy to get gear at this point, especially with I believe most of us have some of those Argus tokens stacked up somewhere.

Beyond that, there was something of a nice surprise this week—even though I had heard rumblings about it earlier—with the second mythic+ affix being changed from necrotic to volcanic. That will make this week quite a lot more manageable than before even though trash will still remain relatively painful with teeming and tyrannical is generally quite a huge spike in the general difficulty—much bigger than fortified. Still, I think it should be a pretty nice week for getting started with the new characters since fortified doesn’t become a big problem until higher keystones and all of the other affixes are quite manageable.

For now, though I’m just happy to be done with leveling for now because while it was fun doing it in a group the last few levels were a bit annoying since we decided to split up which led to me having to level alone a bit which isn’t the most engaging thing as a tank. Overall the leveling experience was rather educational since we ended up doing some more unorthodox tactics that I was unaware of—namely trash farming in Karazhan and Tol’vir. This was possible thanks to the buff given from out-leveling content intended to make old raids and whatnot still soloable with the stat squish that came in Warlords.

It worked strangely well in those two places, other dungeons and raids not so much. We did try some of the Wrath of the Lich King raids but unfortunately, those were not worth farming as they always presented some sort of problem—examples being the debuff that heals mobs when dealing damage in the Obsidian Sanctum or just how plain hard the trash was in Ruby Sanctum. Naxxramas and Icecrown just didn’t seem worth it on the basis of experience gained. We didn’t really end up trying the Cataclysm raids since we already had Tol’vir available and that worked rather well.

Finally with Warlords we—though I suppose this is more common knowledge—farmed the treasures and bonus objectives of the zones rather than questing. They went rather quickly once everyone was the appropriate level—we tried starting already at 88-89 but we couldn’t loot the treasure and the mobs were already rather dangerous—and were rather easy sailing, would definitely recommend for people planning to level especially in a group since the bonus objectives are so quick to complete. Having a group and being on voice comms also helps quite a lot with the boredom that can creep in while doing such farm focused tasks which is also nice—I’m not sure I would’ve done this whole leveling adventure if I was alone, I probably wouldn’t even have started it.

Now I guess I just need to wait for everyone to get to 110 and then we can start doing some dungeons which I’m really looking forward to—get to properly tank a bit again.

Last weekend I actually ended up doing a bit of leveling again, which even though quite a bit slower now with the changes in 7.3.5 was surprisingly fun, just running through dungeons with friends. Didn’t really do any questing except for the odd dungeon quest which tends to be my preferred way of leveling since group content is much more fun than solo.

What was more surprising however, was how big the changes to dungeon leveling actually ended up being, not having tried them myself since the patch. One truly does need to pull quite calmly, at least once we started getting into Burning Crusade/Wrath of the Lich King-content. Part of that however might be how unused I am to playing a Blood Death Knight, not having tanked with a Death Knight since Wrath of the Lich King and back then not as Blood but rather Unholy. It feels strange compared to a Warrior and at times rather frustrating as I’m not quite sure yet how to manage my runes and runic power yet in order to ease the job of the healer as much as possible. I also keep forgetting some of my abilities, which certainly isn’t helping but that’s what leveling is for—learning the class and its abilities—though at times it frustrating not having core abilities in dungeons—for example, I had to do the first few dungeons without being able to interrupt which feels like a bit of a pacing issue. I know that’s primarily an issue with Death Knights due to them starting at a higher level and consequently having a somewhat different pacing to their abilities, but something so core missing at such a level when the dungeons are already expecting interrupts to be available feels a bit iffy.

Despite that, leveling has been fun and I think one of the big contributors to that has been being able to tank a bit more again. Dungeon tanking remains really fun even though I’m not as convinced by raid or mythic+ tanking—mythic+ tanking just feels to focused on managing silly pulls and kiting the mobs which doesn’t feel like tanking as much especially during weeks like this one with necrotic. Managing necrotic stacks does obviously increase the difficulty of tanking but the amount one can do alone feels limited at times though I guess that’s the point—dungeons being a team effort and all.

Still mythic+ at least on the higher levels feels much more gimmicky than standard dungeons.

I am still looking forward to be able to do some mythic+ once we finish leveling though, since getting a better perspective as a tank will probably help my healing as well especially with learning when to expect big incoming damage on the tank and big abilities from trash and what not. I’ve already done much of that learning but still get surprised by new knowledge at times.

It will also be good to get a better feel of the damage patterns and cooldowns of a Death Knight tank since with me not having played one since Wrath of the Lich King I don’t have that good of an idea of what abilities they have available and what they exactly can do to mitigate damage—I know they are extremely durable and probably the best choice for most higher end mythic+ content with exceptions in certain dungeons perhaps but beyond that not much. So that will certainly be a useful learning experience. I guess I really should have all tanks at max level to have a better idea to heal them.

Hm, maybe that’ll end up being my next project? It’s a bit more quiet with the expansion looming anyway even though mythic+ pushing is still really fun, so might be some time over to level. I’m not convinced I’m interested in playing all the tanks however with druids seeming the least interesting primarily due to being stuck in bear form and as such not being able to see the gear and consequently transmogs. The new artifact forms do counteract that a bit but I’m not sure quite enough for me—there’s just something about being able to create one’s own transmog set and the personalisation that comes through that. Monk tank doesn’t seem that appealing mechanics-weise either but I guess I need to actually try it first. I do have monk sitting around somewhere, so wouldn’t even need to level from level one which is nice.

Will have to give it some though, first things first I need to get this Death Knight to max level and next week looks a bit more promising for mythic+ so that might end up taking a while.