Gracie Status Update

Holy cow I can’t believe we’re only 2 weeks into Legion. The first week was a week of leveling and exploring. This past week has been about trying to clear out my quest log more than anything else. The first time leveling in an expansion I like to get the Loremaster achievement, which means by the time I reach the level cap I’m usually pretty close to done with all the quests available. Not so with Legion. I keep half-joking with my friends that there’s some folks at Blizzard laughing their butts off at us because we complained there wasn’t enough to do and now there’s SO MUCH TO DO I don’t even know where to start. I head to an area with the intention of clearing out a quest from my log and suddenly there’s a world quest there too. Or I’m flying somewhere for a world quest and I see a quest hub I missed while I’m flying over. Suramar in particular has two subzones that are gigantic, with pretty extensive quest lines. And I’ve barely scratched the surface of crafting and all its associated quests.

One thing I have done is dungeons. I’ve done all of the normal mode dungeons now, and a few heroics. There’s surprisingly little difference in tuning between the two modes. I wonder if part of that is the way level scaling works on the normal ones, since you never get the benefit of a couple slightly higher characters in there making the whole thing go easier? All I know is I’m more than happy to queue for heroics now, because the dps queue times are much shorter than for normals. I was all proud of myself for doing all the dungeons, and then I found out there’s 2 more that are reputation gated by Nightfallen rep, plus I haven’t set foot in mythics yet. So there’s plenty more on my list.

I have still found the time to do a little bit of work on my army of alts, usually once I’ve finished the emissary quest for the day on the mage and don’t feel up to running dungeons. I’ve unlocked one weapon for my pally and my priest, and have unlocked all 3 weapons and gotten to 108 on my monk. The monk is very fun and flexible, and leveling goes ridiculously fast when you have rested xp. I’ve gotten to heal a few dungeons, and while monk healing is nothing like it used to be back when I picked it up in Pandaria, it is a solid healer with a pretty nice toolkit. I’m still happy that I chose mage as my main, but it is nice to be able to heal again if my friends need a healer to fill in a group.

My goals for the week are to get revered with the Nightfallen, get my 2nd gold artifact trait, and level the monk to 110. I wish I could will myself to slow down a little bit more and savor this time, but this is part of the cycle I enjoy most and part of that enjoyment is the speed with which new upgrades and unlocks are coming in. I’ll just keep doing a little bit of everything and trying my best not to burn myself out.

Legion excitement is still going strong. Last week was busy for me with classes starting and work being stressful, so I was a bit behind my friends on the leveling curve. Then I got to spend all day Saturday playing, and I managed to get myself to 110. The only thing that seems to have changed for me so far is that I’m trying to run dungeons a bit more. Otherwise I’m still doing a ton of quests. In fact, when I hit 110 I had not even started questing in Highmountain yet, so I had that whole zone to do to unlock world quests and get the loremaster and exploration achieves.

This expansion comes with a pretty solid crop of new dungeons. The five that are available while leveling are fairly nice, but the 3 that unlock at 110 really shine. Maw of Souls, Vault of the Wardens, and Black Rook Hold are all incredibly atmospheric places and do some slightly different things with their boss fights.

Helya is the best.

My favorite by far is Maw of Souls. Most of the dungeon takes place on what is essentially a ghost ship full of the damned, and when you get out on the deck you can even see the sea rolling around you. The last boss is essentially a sea witch goddess and I love her more than words can say, although I suspect I’ll love her less when I have to fight her on heroic!

Because my friends have all been leveling at different paces I’ll still have to run through those 110 dungeons a few more times as people hit the cap. Instead of dreading it I’m actually looking forward to it. Part of it is that the dungeons are really fun, and part of it is because I’m a DPS and it is way less stressful than healing. The difference in levels hasn’t mattered much at all along the way. We’ve been able to run dungeons with groups ranging from 100 to 110 with no noticeable difficulty, so that’s a huge quality of life change to the game.

The very best thing is that I’m in no hurry. I’m not planning to raid more than completely casually, so there’s no rush for me to get geared or anything. I’ve had some requests to do heroic dungeons, but I’ve been putting them off for a bit because I want to see and enjoy things on normal mode for a bit longer and give the rest of my friends time to get to 110. Overall am feeling a bit weird about this expansion because I am really enjoying myself, but I’m also super relaxed about everything. I’m used to being very manic at launches, trying to do all the things as fast as possible. It feels very strange to be happy and excited about all the new things to do and yet not rushing through everything. Now I just hope that I keep enjoying the game this much as the expansion continues!