Alts

So that part of the expansion cycle is with us again, the endtimes. The raid is cleared, there is no new content on the horizon beside the next expansion and the general interest towards the current content is rapidly waning.

Raiding

We are still going somewhat strong and maintaining our weekly raids though we have those down to one per week now, but aside from that it’s mostly just the occasional mythic+ run along with the weekly alt-run that keeps us coming together and playing together.

The reduced activity has given me the opportunity to actually participate in the aforementioned alt-run and I’ve actually taken and geared my paladin well enough to be allowed to join in there which has been rather fun. My paladin I tend to play as a tank so getting to play another role again has been fun as well though surprisingly stressful even in a raid environment which I wasn’t expecting—usually I find raids more relaxing to tank than mythic+ but this somehow hasn’t quite been the case with Ny’alotha so far though I’m getting there with my comfort level.

This has also given me the opportunity to see how much of the raid I had been ignoring mechanically since these things didn’t really directly concern me though in at least one case it would have actually been useful to know. Three specific things come to mind: Shad’har tank mechanic; Ra-den phase two tank mechanic; N’Zoth Psychus phase.

Now the Shad’har tank mechanic is essentially don’t let your co-tank get two different types of debuffs which while quite simple as a mechanic and not something I need to concern myself with when not tanking is something that tripped me up the first time there.

The Psychus phase again is very relevant as a tank since I’m directly responsible for positioning Psychus correctly so that the debuff gets applied as well as ensuring the pool on the floor spawns correctly, and it’s also very good to know as a damage dealer so the correct tentacle is getting damaged it is largely irrelevant as a healer except for impacting how and where I move though even that is more down to environmental awareness than anything else.

The Ra-den tank mechanic however is something that might have been somewhat useful to know even as a healer though to be fair our tanks did call it and as such specific knowledge of how it works wasn’t important. But essentially, in phase two, Ra-den applies a debuff that does damage to the tank which scales with their current health at the time the debuff was applied. Knowing not to heal the tank before the debuff gets applied is of course important because of this, but as noted it got called anyway and I wasn’t focusing on healing the tanks in that phase so how and why it was important didn’t really register until way after progress was over.

All of this has however made me even more interested in maintaining more alts in Shadowlands if possible so that I have reason and opportunity to gain this insight earlier on in the content when it might actually prove relevant to progressing those bosses on mythic.

Shadowlands

Speaking of Shadowlands, we are slowly also getting more information to how the upcoming expansion will work and while my outlook remains perhaps more pessimistic than most I’m trying to keep an open mind.

The systems on the surface actually look quite promising, I’m looking forward to seeing interesting legendaries again and Thorgast could end up rather fun if implemented correctly especially considering my recent experience with another roguelike but I’m just worried they’ll suffer from the same problem that the Mage Tower in Legion and the Horrific Visions in Battle for Azeroth: being gated behind world quests/dailies. To me, this just adds a completely unecessary level of stress and frustration to the experience especially when playing multiple characters.

My other really big worry are the Covenants since even with the updated information of the initial switch being easy but returning being difficult I’m really worried about how Blizzard will manage to balance the abilities in a sensible manner as well as tying cosmetic rewards to gameplay since that will probably mean I won’t really have much of a choice in the matter. With luck those two things will align however I don’t feel that is overly likely. The optimal case is of course all of the abilities being close enough together that one can actually choose freely and this is more likely for the healers anyway than for damage dealers or tanks, but it is still something I’m looking at with more worry than excitement at the moment.

I think that actually sums up my general feeling toward Shadowlands: a mix of worry and excitement, though definitely more of the former; I’m looking forward to what’s to come but wary of getting overly excited.

With timewalking being active a friend of mine asked if I wanted to level a character from 110 to 120 since it was apparently supposed to be easy to level through timewalking and this indeed proved to be true—I think we averaged two dungeons per level.

I used this opportunity to level my Paladin whom I rather liked playing as Protection before though not so much Holy since somehow the toolkit just felt lacking to me being used to playing Holy Priest. This ended up actually being a rather fun time after the first dungeon where I needed to get used to my keybinds again and rediscovered my abilities—one thing that surprised me was that Protection Paladins have bubble again, I believe it was simply a 40% damage reduction in Legion though I’m not quite sure anymore. What also contributed to the fun—for me at least—was it being The Burning Crusade timewalking—my favourite expansion after Legion—and the scaling being somewhat difficult again making smaller pulls with a bith of line of sighting necessary. It also really made me miss being able to effectively level through dungeons again, it was so much more fun than questing. Another cool thing about timewalking while leveling up with a character one played in Legion, is being able to use the “legiondaries”—the random legendary equipment from Legion—the whole time since your level gets scaled down so it stays active.

Tanking with a Paladin again was really fun as well, the Paladin was actually my first tank that I leveled back in Wrath of the Lich King when the mana management for them became a bit more sane and the easier time with keeping aggro made me more confident to try tanking. The ability at the time to easily generate area threat with Consecration along with friends wanting to take a poke at Horde characters and me consequently wanting to play a Blood Elf sealed the deal—Warriors not being available to Blood Elves at the time and Blizzard already having killed my interest in tanking with a Death Knight when they nerfed dual wield tanking. This makes me think, one of the things I would probably actually want to try with Classic is playing a tank—along with re-experiencing old school Priest healing—since I never really tried it back in the day though the time investment required for leveling makes me wonder how much I actually want to try this.

The whole shield and Consecration based tanking style I still find fun and in general I find myself strongly preferring tanks that can actually block—so Warriors and Paladins—over other tanks having played a bit of both Death Knight and Druid tank somewhat recently even. I also have to admit, Avenger’s Shield is also just such a fun ability to use and I makes me a bit sad to lose the legiondary that gave us extra damage and bounces to the shield since just seeing it fly around felt fun and satisfying. This all makes me actually want to play my Paladin more than my Warrior at the moment and the gearing and Azerite hurdle shouldn’t be too bad with the upcoming patch especially since it seems we get to easily unlock Azerite level 35 and the new Essences without much grind—well, the early essences at least. So that might very well be my secondary project for next reset, getting some questing in with my Paladin in addition to my Priest so that they both are at a decent point when it comes to essences, though this should apparently be easier with the Priest since from what I hear the best Discipline at the moment can be acquired through questing in Nazjatar which shouldn’t be too bad as long as there is no time gating—I don’t know if there is, haven’t really done much on the PTR outside the raid tests since farming the same content several times happens often enough on live for me.

I guess all of this means one more reason for me to look forward to the new patch and the next reset, I’m also curious to see how much I actually end up getting to use my Paladin since my Warrior so far hasn’t seen too much use—unfortunately doesn’t have enough gear at the moment to confidently tank alt keys for the guild and haven’t really been motivated to gear. Hopefully I get time to play both tanks a bit more, but I guess we’ll see that in the coming weeks.

So with me having changed to Horde a while ago I ended up leveling a new warrior, since my previous one was still on Alliance and a different server and I wanted to be able to play a tank with the guild as well as the other people I now actively play with.

Another reason for getting back to the warrior was that it seems to have gotten some fixes since the pre-patch where they played really terribly and for some reasons warriors have always been the tank I most like the theme of—just being badass enough to handle all the incoming punishment, well the armour helps too. They are also the “meta” tank at the moment especially for dungeons, but seeing as that probably won’t be true with the next patch anymore and I’ll hopefully be playing the warrior for the rest of the expansion again—as long as it continues to play fun—that didn’t really factor into my decision. Generally being a good “meta” class doesn’t play into my decision on whether to play something, more important is the theme and feel of the class or spec.

Leveling the warrior went okay, I did something unusual for me and decided to level as fury instead of my usual choice of protection—I tend to prefer to play tanks and healers over damage dealers even for leveling. This was probably a good decision since fury was a decent amount of fun—I have always liked dual wield specs—as well as having some self-heal for survivability though it did get a bit tough at times at the very late levels and there I probably should have changed to protection.

Not leveling as protection did mean something new for me however: I needed to actually get the correct weapons at max level in order to start tanking. To be fair, I wouldn’t have been able to tank anything relevant anyway but still it was a new experience not being able to get started with my chosen spec immediately. This lead me to start gearing through world quests instead of the usual getting boosted in mythic+ by friends and guildies and it was actually somewhat of a nice experience. I’d actually done something similar not too long ago with my hunter that I leveled which is still Alliance and on another realm so I didn’t really have any choices beyond just gearing myself through world quests and there as here it proved to actually be a bit of a interesting casual experience. It was also interesting to see how luck-based world quests actually are since you need to not only get something in a slot where the item level is still an upgrade but the quest also needs to be one that actually provides the highest possible item level—a good example of this is from yesterday, where I actually saw a world quest on my warrior for a piece of 355 azerite gear even though I had already been getting mostly quests for 370 azerite gear and was wearing all 370 azerite gear as well as an average item level of 380 or so. This means world quests still have to a degree the randomness of being able to actually get useful gear from them as other content just that you know beforehand if you even need to bother—expecting titanforging of course.

It was interesting to witness this in play again since I have been mostly ignoring world quests for a while since the chance for relevant gear is so low—basically on most of my characters it needs to titanforge—and the content in and of itself isn’t that fun. What made it fun for a while on the warrior and hunter was the possibility to look around for new world quests and see at least one or two that gave a guaranteed upgrade and to be able to see that slow progress towards higher item level pieces after a while, still that doesn’t last long and is already ending pretty much on my warrior—I very rarely now see any world quest that provides an item level upgrade and while I know that world quests can scale higher it doesn’t seem like a realisitic gearing path for me anymore.

The general diversion into more casual content—leveling and world quests—has been welcome though as at the moment the general level of interest for the more interesting content doesn’t seem to be that high—or maybe more the availability of the people I would like to play with—and at times it’s just nice to be able to play the game at a slower pace. Maybe that’s what classic will end up being for me—the more slow paced casual diversion for the times when there is less going on in retail. I guess we’ll know that in a few months when it releases though we will probably be in the middle of progress again by then.

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 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.