WoW

More alts, more stuff

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Apparently Midnight is one of those expansions where I forget to blog because I am playing too much.

After Firelands Timewalking last week and pushing all chars through, it was Mythic Dungeon week this time and I managed to do 2 more after my main, but I also reached the Delver’s Journey Level 10 by spamming Tier 11 Delves and I did 20 Nightmare Preys… again.

I’m at 9 chars at Level 90, 6 weeks after release and 7 are at 250 iLvl or higher.

For M+, the main team is at doing 7s or 8s but our DH still has permanent connection problems, which doesn’t help with progress. But I also successfully tanked an 8 on my VDH alt tank.

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Raiding the Voidspire – Week 2 & 3

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So I was indeed made a raid tank (well, they did ask and I had offered to do it) and we went for the Voidspire first.

That Sunday we killed the first 3 on Normal and people were less upset about our progress, and then 2 more on Tuesday, but Chimaerus still proved harder than anticipated, with some low percentage wipes.

Week 3 we killed 4 on Sunday, then cleared the Voidspire on Tuesday, and had time left to kill Chimaerus – so 7 in total. So far the two dragons and Chimearus proved to be our roadblocks.

So if we ignore that first night: 1 wipe on Averzian, 3 on Vorasius (incl 1 on rekill), 0 on Saladhaar, 12 on Vaelgor (incl 5 on rekill), 8 on Paladins (incl 1 on rekill), 6 wipes on Crown, 3 wipes on Chimaerus.

Not completely happy with this, but at least we reovered.

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Raiding the Voidspire – Week 1

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Disclaimer first: For the last 5 years I’ve titled these posts mostly “Raiding [name of the Raid instance]”, because there was only one per season. The last time I remember having several raids per tier was in Mists of Pandaria, 12 years ago (and I have no clue about the 8 years inbetween where I didn’t raid). So maybe I’ll just keep calling the whole tier the Voidspire, this is my blog after all.

So Sunday was the first raid, we had a potential cadre of 19 people, 15 showed up. Unfortunately one of our healers wasn’t finished leveling and out sick (thus the delay) and the replacement had barely reached 90 and postponed raiding for lack of time, so we had to scramble for a replacement first. Before our pre-raid meeting 2 weeks ago we were still short a tank as well, but one of our long-standing more casual guildies stepped up, which was nice, so I was off the hook as one of two replacement tanks.

We tried Chimaerus in the Dreamrift first, unfortunately no better than 38% in 8 tries (my damage as Fury was kinda meh), so we switched to Imperator Averzian and got 9 tries in, best at 20% and 16%. People were not happy with our new tank at all, so I’ll probably have to do it on Tuesday… and actually watch a video I guess.

Update: Tuesday raid was cancelled.

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Odd updates and leveling so many toons

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Planned to write a “Getting ready to raid” post 2 weeks ago. Fumbling a keybind ate it and then I forgot to post the boring rewrite.

Normal raids drop 250 gear, and we said we’d like people to have 220+ iLvl, 230 is better. Back then I hadn’t guessed how much the gear would be dropping, I estimated being 230 sharp or a bit over, I ended up at 246 and of the 19 potential people 15 showed up to raid and we had at least 10 over 240. (And just like in TWW and DF S1 I even had some spare chars at the 230 mark, just unenchanted.)

So I had written about my Retri Paladin being the 2nd to 90, shortly after that I managed to finish the Elemental Shaman. Then it kinda spiraled out of hand, with the Demon Hunter getting to 90 on Thursday or Friday, the Demo Warlock the next day, and the BM Hunter today. With the full +25% experience boost and a well-known speed leveling route (first one was campaign + some side quests, second one was finishing missing side quest lines, third one was kinda random, only the fourth was mostly done with the “Follow the Arrow” addon)… the BM hunter was finished in a bit under 6h today – from 80.4 to 90.

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WoW – Midnight

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So that’s a launch that happened. I had refused to preorder, but on the launch night, 2 minutes after midnight I pulled the trigger, so we could play for an hour or two. Went surprisingly well.

I dinged 90 yesterday, after mostly playing a bit every day (Wed-Fri) and some more on Saturday. Unfortunately I didn’t make a screenshot when I started, so no idea how many hours. I leveled my Warrior Solo, first 1-2 level as Prot, then I switched to Fury.

No real criticism from my side, except I’m not really hyped. I don’t like revamped zones, and we got 2 of those, but otherwise it was… fine I guess? Didn’t really replace a lot of my ilvl 160 raiding gear until Level 87, but ok. I did like that doing 2h of World Quests instantly boosted me like 20 ilvl, sitting at 200 equipped, 210 in bags now, could start doing heroics already.

Other alts I have lined up to level: Feral Druid in a duo, and probably either Shaman or Paladin as the next solo one. We’ll be talking about our raid plans tonight, the timeline of this expansion is really weird. Still weeks until the raid and M+ opens, I think. It’s so weird I need to double check the dates.

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Pre-expansion lull

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WoW is a bit boring right now and I’m mostly playing around with addons. Others’ and my own.

My sub will run out soon and I plan to only pay on the day of the expansion launch, not earlier, but to continue doing addon stuff I needed a low level sub-20 character, so I have a new Shaman now.

Looking at my list of too many characters I started counting the high level ones. 5 Warriors, Rogues, Paladins – 4 Hunters – 3 Warlocks, Druids, DKs, Priests – so from my actually favourite classes only Shaman and DH were missing, so that’s why it’s a Shaman. If we had server transfers I’d shuffle quite a few around, but I am not planning to spend money on chars I hardly play. It’s still a shame, though.

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WoW Addons for Midnight – Part 2

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My trial and error phase expanded in the last 2 weeks (part 1), and there are some new developments, first some 1:1 replacements or installing what I missed:

  • AstralKeys – keeping after all
  • Chattynator instead of Prat – trial
  • Details – keeping after all
  • Platynator instead of Plater – trial
  • WarpDeplete – keeping after all
  • TargetedSpells for M+, trial
  • Missing Class Buff instead of several WeakAuras – trial
  • Sensei Class Resource bar – trial

And then some other stuff:

  • WeeklyKnowledge – for professions, trial
  • Watchtower (WeakAuras Light) – trial
  • Already Known? – trial

The Cooldown Manager seems semi-ok, but the last big thing is Unit Frames. I’ve had no luck finding something I like and that works, so I’ve started writing my own (not from scratch, of course), but based on the setup by oUF’s main developer. We’ll see if I get that into a usable shape until the release.

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That Midnight pre-patch event

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This week I spent a bit of time in Dornogal, sorting all my gear from this expansion, converting to set pieces and upgrading stuff but I’m missing a few bits and pieces.

So today I checked out the prepatch event and it’s kinda… bad?

Story is meh, but that’s ok, the quest line itself is short, but then I get to two weeklies – kill 3 rares and also a combined “kill 8 rares and/or do WQs in that zone” so I dutifully do my 4 or so WQs and need some rares (only managed to grab one while doing the WQs) and then I notice they’re only spawning every 10 minutes, one at a time. What? Got one, missed one due to looking at the other screen, then I set my phone alarm and go tthe last two. But I was just waiting for 20min. Engaging gameplay!

And then I don’t even need most of the gear.

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WoW Addons for Midnight – Part 1

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So with all the addon changes and WeakAuras gone I decided to just start at zero.

Made a backup of my WTF and Interface folder and nuked them (minus keybindings). Apparently I had moved to the Blizzard bars in DF already, so nothing to do.

So here’s a list of Addons I have currently installed, partially kept them, partially replaced some WeakAuras.

  • AlterEgo (M+, Alts) – keeping, trial
  • Baganator (Bags) – keeping
  • Bazooka (Bar for Icons) – keeping
  • BetterCharacterPanel (Character Stats + Gear) – keeping
  • BugGrabber/BugSack (Errors) – keeping
  • Frogski’s Cursor Trail (finding my cursor) – WA replacement, trial
  • Leatrix Maps (Map) – Mapster replacement, trial
  • LiteMount (Mounts) – keeping
  • LoggerHeadLite (Logging Raids) – keeping
  • Masque (eyecandy) – keeping
  • Plumber (some QoL) – keeping, trial
  • SexyMap (Minimap) – keeping
  • SimulationCraft (sims) – keeping
  • Teleport Menu (Travel) – keeping
  • WoWthing_Collector (out of game) – keeping

Not a lot of new stuff… yet, because I have not even looked at Unit Frames and the CooldownManager and Nameplates.

Maybe I can work without a unit frame addon and as long as I am not healing, the raid frames were also ok for me.

The big things that are missing:

  • displaying my buffs and procs and cooldowns (especially tank defensives)
  • “class weakaura packs” displaying e.g. Rage or Combo Points and Cooldowns
  • some QoL stuff from WeakAuras, like weekly profession quests and treasures
  • Details (Damage Meter)
  • BigWigs/LittleWigs (Boss timers)
  • HandyNotes (not needed now, but probably at launch)
  • WorldQuestTracker (I never liked it but I need something like it)
  • RaiderIO (when M+ starts)
  • TomTom (Navigation)
  • WarpDeplete (better M+ timer display)
  • Prat (Chat)

And then there is the long list of stuff I’ve either had multiples of or think I have covered, we’ll see:

  • Altoholic (WoWthing & Baganator)
  • DataStore
  • EnhanceQoL (Plumber)
  • Mapster (Leatrix Maps)
  • SavedInstances (AlterEgo)

And then… for about 7 WeakAuras I had I just wrote my own Addon that I hope I won’t really have to update for the whole expansion.

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Mostly Guild Wars 2

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Today I managed to finish the Seasons of the Dragons achievement, netting me a nice Legendary Amulet, and my fourth Legendary overall. I’ve already said it will be hard to keep up the pace – I came back to the game in October and managed to get one Legendary per month. Eikasia in October, Sunrise in November, my Heavy WvW Helm in December, and now this. Next week is the WvW Rush event, and I guess I’ll try to make as much time as possible to do WvW with full buffs and get some more WvW tickets, although I doubt I can break 400-500.

Overall I’ve logged in most days and done my dailies, I don’t think I missed the Wizard’s Vault weeklies even once, and I’ve ran out of things to buy, so my gold stash has been growing.

For story progression, finished Chapter 6 (of 8) of Visions of Eternity today, so that’s two more chapters, and then it’s only Living World Season 1 missing.

It’s been hard to keep track of what I achieved and my next goals, it’s all going so fast.

I’ve been switching around chars quite a bit – Ranger (Untamed) for PvP, Warrior (Berserker/Paragon) for WvW, Guardian (Dragonhunter) for story and random stuff and I’ve been playing my Mesmer (Troubadour) for events quite a bit as well. Thief (Daredevil) is fun, but I just don’t have enough time for this or my Necro (Scourge).

On the other hand the WoW expansion is looming on the horizon and I stupidly forgot to use up my Legion Remix Bronze before I unsubscribed, so I have to spend a token 2 weeks earlier to not lose the stuff I wanted to buy. And I guess I need to finish the Trading Post for January anyway.

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