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.

So my modem died on Monday which was a bit of a downer since it died too late to get it fixed the same day. It was kind of sudden, it was working fine and then suddenly connectivity problems and after a restart it was just completely broken. This put a bit of a damper on my ability to do mythic+ since I only had my mobile internet available and that proved very unreliable especially later into the evening—was working decently early on with just one disconnect in a couple of hours. Only did a couple of lower keys to help some friends get geared due to that, those went fine considering the circumstances.

Luckily on Tuesday I was able to get a replacement, though it did take a few hours of back and forth due to me not having the necessary documentation and later finding out that I could actually get a free replacement if I brought my old modem in which I naturally didn’t have with me since I had thought I’d just be buying a new one. So by now everything is working again which is nice, though I am slightly disappointed in the capablities of the new modem and might end up having a router behind it again and just using it as a “dumb” modem instead of the modem/router combo it is which feels unfortunate since it in theory should be able to do the things I want, it’s just the UI that’s too locked down.

Beyond that though, last week went pretty nicely with regards to mythic+ and we got some decent keys in though nothing spectacular—to be fair, I wasn’t expecting anything spectacular with those affixes, the pulls need to really sit for things to run well with fortified and teeming. And this week also started really nicely, with us almost clearing everything in one day even though we had buyers present—Argus ended up living still which surprised me since we had more than an hour time when going in so there must have been something going really wrong or maybe just many small mistakes. But as said overall the raid went really well, which is amusing since as said we had a buyer there, even two in the beginning. I guess that got people to play more properly and not expect them to be carried themselves.

It was really nice to see people raiding “properly” again.

So this past week—WoW wise at least—has been rather nice. We managed to reclear in decent if not good time—two days instead of the one day we managed two weeks ago. This was in nice contrast to last week where we actually ended up not clearing, primarily I suppose because people are quickly losing their motivation—also, our raid leader wasn’t present, but one person really shouldn’t make that difference. This might happen next week again, if we raid at all since the sign-ups are rather weak so far.

But beyond that, there has been a lot of decently successful mythic+ going on especially considering it’s a tyrannical week. We managed to play several high-ish keys and even do some improvements on previous keys which feels a bit surprising, though todays tries in Seat of the Triumvirate were unfortunately very unsuccessful. The first two the tank just couldn’t manage the first boss—I suppose I learned my lesson there in being pickier with which tank to pick—and in the third run we unfortunately had one player disconnect at the third boss which killed any chance of completing it. It was rather close and might even have been possible to do in time, which makes it extra unfortunate.

I’m hoping we can carry this momentum forward tomorrow and keep pushing keys, though next week I feel is rather less appealing than this one even with tyrannical gone since we’ll have: teeming, quaking and fortified. Teeming and fortified will make the trash annoying to deal with, especially in places like Maw of Souls or Halls of Valor which have bad trash to begin with and quaking can make some bosses much harder to play since it will keep breaking the Prydaz shield which is necessary to survive some big hits—examples being Lady Hatecoil in Eye of Azshara as well as General Xakal in the Arcway. Both of those bosses have big AoE hits that Prydaz can help with dealing, but unfortunately the quaking damage is more than the Prydaz shield meaning one will probably not have the shield up when the hit comes. Especially since quaking hits more often than Prydaz refreshes.

Which means it unfortunately looks like there might not be a significant amount of pushing going on until three resets from now, when we get fortified again along with bolstering and skittish. Sure, those both make trash take longer but they’re a lot better than what we have in between. I’m still looking forward to doing more mythic+ though. I’d also like to play some more Magicka—there’s been a distinct lack of that with Easter and what not, will have to see about remedying that as soon as possible maybe even tonight still depending on who’s online.

So last weekend we—along with most of Europe I believe—changed to summer time. Now while this is a change that would seem minor for me since I don’t have that many things in my life that are dependant on being somewhere at a specific time, it still has somehow managed to make me feel a bit more tired than before and caused me to sleep longer as a consequence—which feels slightly ironic, since I believe one of the purported benefits of summer time is that one has more daylight hours available. Anyway, I’m sure I’ll end up adapting soon enough, though the transition period is always annoying.

There is an ongoing effort to abolish summer time in the European Union which would be nice, but I think it will be a while until that goes through if at all. From what I remember the reception has been rather lukewarm so far, with no one opposing the change but not really giving it any direct support either which I find rather disappointing. Hopefully something ends up coming out of it before next year, so we don’t have to suffer through the change too many more times but knowing politics it’ll probably take longer than that.