There’s actually a surprising amount going on lately, much of which I haven’t written here about. To be fair some of that stuff is fairly recent, like the recent confirmation that the pre-patch is coming next week which is something of a big incoming change that I feel didn’t have a lot of official notice. I mean, it’s already Friday as we learned, which means that the patch is coming in less than a week. That feels like really short notice for something that so significantly changes the game. To be fair, it was somewhat foreshadowed with them saying the PVP season will end soon and with it being four weeks before the expansion launch, it can’t end up being much later.

Pre-patch

So let’s talk about the pre-patch a bit more in detail. I’m excited to see it coming even though I am miffed about some of the changes, since that will be the first feel for many of how Battle for Azeroth will play out. Now I have been poking a tiny bit at the beta myself, but a lot of people don’t have access to that. Of course we will be missing the new artifact along with the azerite armor, but all of the skill changes along with the loss of our artifact weapon are coming with the pre-patch. This will give a good opportunity for people—me included—to familiarize themselves with the class changes in preparation for Battle for Azeroth. I’m also kind of excited since this means I’ll be able to raid with the new talents and so on, and while those aren’t balanced around 110 content it’ll still give some indication how the end-game will feel like.

It’s also a good opportunity for me to maybe start taking some bigger pokes at Discipline, a spec I’ve so far pretty much completely avoided playing. I’m not conviced I’ll hugely enjoy playing Discipline but with the level of raiding I seem to be going to do with Battle for Azeroth it feels it makes sense at least being familiar with my second healing spec even if it’s not my first choice. I just hope that doesn’t end up with me pidgeonholed into playing Discipline the whole time.

There is one change that makes me sligthly miffed about the pre-patch coming though, namely the removal of master loot. Now I’m not sure I’m a huge fan of this change in general but it seems to be one we have to live with. But why it specifically bothers me, is that we are still in the process of trying to get the mount from Argus to players who participated or were in the guild during progress and have received some new recruits along with promotions to raider since then. This change now means that some of our raiders who contributed to the boss actually being downed might end up being out of luck and some person we aren’t even sure we want to keep in the guild might end up getting it. This is one of those situations I feel makes it a big mistake for Blizzard to force this change upon guilds.

Druids

Or rather, one specific druid, namely my twink. So a month or so ago by now I ended up boosting a druid for myself to 110 in order to have something to play for our planned split-raids. We are going to be doing split-raids to be able to get everyone the mount in time before the launch of Battle for Azeroth. Now as mentioned above we’ll have to see how that turns out with the loot change, but hopefully it all ends well.

Playing a druid has been an interesting experience so far and has given me a somewhat new found appreciation of why they were so popular for mythic+ during Legion and that reason is rather simple: I’m already surviving abilities without cooldowns that my priest would die to without cooldowns. I mean minor cooldows or trinkets, sure, but priests don’t have very many of those to go around especially if one gets unlucky and Desperate Prayer decides not to reset its cooldown. This really makes me hope they get the balancing around not only throughput but survivability and utility down much better in Battle for Azeroth since it kind of sucks being somewhat excluded from a major part of the game that is my favourite part of the game along with raiding. Mythic+ is probably one of the big things that has made me play and kept me subscribed throughout Legion and seeing first-hand how broken the balance is makes me somewhat frustrated. It might even end up with me making my druid my “mythic+ main” which would be a really sad turn of events. I’m also not sure how viable that strategy is with the changes to the druid talents which I feel makes healing mythic+ as a druid significantly harder, though I have no actual experience of those changes yet.

Guilds

Now there is one final strange thing that actually happened just a few days ago: I ended up being contacted by one of the guilds I applied to way back when. Now this puts me in a rather interesting situation, since I wasn’t really looking to change guilds and I kind of hate doing it. It is with some sadness I counted that this would be my fifth guild change during Legion which feels like a ton. Now two of those were leaving at the time basically dead guilds which is of course justified and a third was due to some rather heavy disagreement with the leadership of some decision being taken—I also wasn’t the only person leaving. So while it is all rather justifiable and it is a game after all where the primary purpose is to enjoy one’s time which does mean being in a group one enjoys playing with and has similar goals, it still feels somewhat wrong for that number to be ending up so high.

At the same time, I had hoped for this outcome since I know some people in the guild and would be very happy to be able to raid with those people again. This is why I made the decision to at least go forward by expressing interest in their offer. Nothing is final yet and they still have some internal discussion to do along with probably a interview with me to do assuming everything goes well, but I’m feeling really good about the direction this all is going in. It’s also something of a win-win scenario for me, since even if they don’t end up taking me in I’m rather happy where I am now and having to think about this potential change of guilds has really solified that feeling for me since I have at times been unsure how well I like the guild and now I feel certain that I enjoy raiding here and will be happy with either outcome—changing guilds or staying put—and that is obviously a rather good position to be in.

Somehow it’s been a while again, but that’s probably because it feels like not a lot has happened though that might not be quite true. I’ve picked up streaming as a fun little thing to do, still expanding on it and not quite sure where exactly I want to go but so far it’s been fun though also frustrating at times since I’m so directionless. This has also led to me being somewhat motivated by statistics, which while they seem decent on the surface since I know many awesome people that want to support me also show that the stream isn’t really interesting people since they don’t stay or follow so I’m left wondering what I can do to improve there. But I guess time and experimentation will bring me somewhere, hopefully.

Streaming is also a really different experience from writing this, since firstly it’s all real time and secondly I have those statistics available. For this blog, I’ve made the decision to not really promote or link it anywhere which naturally restricts the amount of people coming in. I also have no analytics running so I have no idea if people are reading anything I write combined with no comments. That makes it a very “putting something out into the void” experience, which is distinctly different from streaming though is the approach I took when starting the stream—since then I’ve expanded to people actually being able to hear me on stream along with whatever VOIP we happen to be using at the time, usually Discord but Teamspeak at times as well.

I think that history might be what also confuses me about what I want from streaming, I know I like playing around with technology and streams and video production and so on are exactly that which makes it enjoyable to me so the whole “putting it out into the void” approach should be appealing in and of itself. I also don’t believe I want to start with streaming as any sort of primary income, since it seems it requires quite a different personality from what I have along with requiring quite a lot of dedication even on days one isn’t really feeling like it. Simultaneosly as stated, I notice myself focusing on and following the metrics and give at least some thought to how I can improve the stream for viewers and hopefully gain some more followers potentially leading to me being able to be partnered on Twitch which would be kind of cool—50 followers being the last milestone I’m missing there. I guess this is where the whole networking thing would come in, getting to know other streamers and getting hosts and so on but that’s also not something I particularily enjoy doing. This has led to me just hoping the random people stopping by due to the viewer count end up liking it and following and that isn’t working very well so far. Maybe it will work better in the future, since viewers tend to bring in more viewers in kind of a positive feedback loop, but for now people don’t stay or follow.

It could also just be down to setup or content of course, I got some reports that apparently the VOIP was really loud at times, so hopefully I can fix that and make it all more even—that should actually be a somewhat easy thing to fix so maybe I need to get on that since I basically know exactly what to do.

I do think I’ll keep streaming though, some of my friends seem to rather enjoy being able to look at what we’re doing even though it’s content they themselves don’t want or can’t participate in at the moment so it is providing a service to them at least. And somehow it feels a bit fun having it running in the background, just from a tech enthusiast point of view as well.

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.