Legion – Page 5 – AggroChat

Legion Without Rushing

August 30, 2016 by Belghast

This morning feels a little odd, for many reasons. Firstly I got a good nights sleep, when normally in the past I would have made a failed attempt to get up in time for the launch of a new expansion. In fact there was a point last night where I woke up at 3:30 in the morning… a mere 30 minutes after the servers went live and thought to myself… I could get up. Then instead I rolled back over and went to sleep again. Always in the past I have felt like I was chasing some goal that I never could quite catch. I knew I could not take the amount of time that my friends like Kylana did, and push through during 24 hours of solid play time. In fact when I logged in this morning I was shocked to see that he was only level 102, which seems slow for him. I’ve heard however that this time around, the process just takes longer and that power levelers who have practiced it on beta say it is going to be around a solid eight hours to get to 110. Which means for someone attacking it more casually you are looking at ten to twelve hours. The strangest thing about this expansion is that maybe I have finally realized there isn’t a rush. In the past I had my reasons… and those were namely an attempt to be a viable tank for folks to run dungeons with while we leveled. My favorite leveling experience was likely Burning Crusade, because I was a fledgling tank and excited that everyone seemed to need me to be able to run dungeons… which at that time were significantly better experience than doing pretty much anything else.

During the launch of Wrath I remember leveling mostly through dungeons in a similar fashion, but when the change happened to Cataclysm I noticed that worked significantly less well. It was as though folks just didn’t want to run dungeons in the same manner that I was used to. In fact I remember going through a bit of an existential crisis at that time because it felt like there was only one dungeon group worth of folks willing to run dungeons at a time. More often than not I ended up the tank left out in the cold and unable to get groups. Now the truth is if you asked other tanks they probably would have felt the same, because we went from being the most valuable commodity in the guild… to one of what felt like the least valuable over night. By the time Pandaria rolled around I found myself still rushing to keep up… but never actually running the dungeons until I hit maximum level and was desperately trying to gear. Similarly with Warlords I got drug through a few dungeons as dps, but mostly to knock out the quests as they came available and not so much as a leveling vehicle. With Legion I am not even planning on leveling my Tank artifact first, but instead focusing on Fury which seems extremely fun to me at the moment. So since I expect to be leveling almost entirely by doing the content… especially since saving up those dungeon quests can reward 110 level gear at the end, I also don’t feel that need to rush around.

I logged in this morning long enough to do the teleportation of Dalaran to the Broken Isles and to rebind at the now Gilnean run Inn there. I completed a few quests but stopped just short of delving into the lengthy quest that will ultimately end in me getting my artifact weapons. While it was odd to not try and push through it this morning, I knew that all it would end up doing is making me have to rush horribly to get to work. Instead I will have that waiting on me for when I get home and fight through the now inevitable server queue. The thing is… that is perfectly okay. If I am in a server queue that looks like it is going to take some time… I have other things that I can do. I can poke my head into Destiny since I have not been there in a good while, or I could go out into the back yard and go for a swim. In any case I am trying to approach this expansion at a much more measured pace. In the past I have rushed my ass off to get to the new cap, and with it beginning a lengthy gear grind. Every time in the past I have always managed to burn myself out in the process to where logging in every night is a misery. I now have a proper army of alts to tend to… and I fully expect to get each and every one of them to 110 before starting on the next round that have yet to be leveled. I say all this with certainty… but really in the back of my head I have my fingers crossed that it will work. I am hoping that I can fight my own tendencies and take things slow.

Listless

August 22, 2016 by Belghast

The past week was hyper focused on a single goal… getting Belgaoh my monk from 53 to 100. The weird thing about this process is that once completed… I am finding myself drifting a bit without purpose. The above screenshot is unrelated to anything, but I thought it looked cool so you are getting it with this mornings post. Starting yesterday I begin finally running my stable of characters through the Broken Shore content. I managed to snag all of the toys, and troll shoes transmog from my single leel 100 horde character, and on my second time through on an alliance character successfully got the bonnet cosmetic item. I am assuming that tomorrow there will be a new step on the quest chain being patched in, and this time around we will actually do the moving of Dalaran to the Broken Isles bit. Tonight is our Final Fantasy XIV raid, so that means I will go into this weeks patch not having run Broken Shores on the bulk of my characters. At least in theory the content isn’t going anywhere so I shouldn’t feel that much of a rush to push through it. I think this content will essentially be the “welcome to Legion” content for everyone from this point on wards. I will say it was really strange buzzing right past the quest starter for Cataclysm, Pandaria and Draenor on the monk. I think I have all of the quests sitting in my log, because they are given automatically when you zone into Stormwind, but I am not sure when if ever I am going to do them. At this moment I am contemplating using the Timeless Isle port to get to Draenor, but then again that would mean I need to open up Pandaria to get to it.

Even though I have completed one journey to 100… I am finding that I cannot seem to quit the Invasion Event. A good chunk of yesterday was also spent running characters through the event trying to get the last few 700 items for each. I managed to finish off Lodin and Tallow last night, which leaves Gloam, Exeter and Belglaive all needing a single item slot. Belglaive is a little more complicated because I used that character to purchase the pet, and as a result he is still missing several of the purchased pieces of gear. I just need to run ANY instances on him to get that finished off. I do have his Glaives upgraded to 725, and I have started a second set mooching off of everyone else’s spare tokens to upgrade them for my eventual Horde demon hunter. I wish the other weapons worked like this, in that they were bind on account and you could pass them around as needed. Some characters I have gotten more than my fair share of weapons… and then others like Exeter have yet to see a single one. I have this feeling that ultimately it is going to be Ex my Paladin that I will continue to run events on, as I try and get three weapons for him. The other big thing that I need to accomplish before this event is over is to try and find the Demon that spawns in Orgrimmar and Stormwind and get a Fel Spreader toy. I failed to get one the two times I tried it yesterday, with the one in Orgrimmar bugging out and running back to the Doomsayer and fading.

The big thing I have learned over the years is that I have a lot of fun playing World of Warcraft, so long as I have a goal in mind. For example this last week has been a blast as I leveled my way through to 100 doing events. In theory I could pick a Horde character and start doing the same, but I don’t really have any that are nearly as close to finish as my Monk was. Doing the event without flight was a pain in the butt, and I am not sure if I want to go back to that frustration right now. If I was going to pick a character on that side of the fence I would probably pick my Warlock since I have really enjoyed playing my Alliance lock… and I have full cloth heirlooms. Similarly I have full leather heirlooms, but of the leather classes the one I am most likely to play… is the Demon Hunter, which is easy as hell to get to 100. I do however have the cash to just go ahead and outfit my plate heirlooms up to 100 and then push something else that I would likely play. My Orc Deathknight is sitting at 60, so flight is possible, even if it is a slow version. I might be fun to be able to use this event to play with one of the other specs like Frost or Unholy. If the next goal is NOT the event however… I need to pick something be it Mount Farming or Dungeon Achievements because so long as I can keep a list of things I want to do… I will be able to stay engaged in this game. I really am having a lot of fun being around all of these people again. It is a bit like a reunion, because everywhere I turn on Argent Dawn I keep running into familiar faces from the past. I know we have roughly a week until the official launch of Legion, and with that comes a whole new set of goals so I just need to keep busy in the meantime.

The Top Floor

August 21, 2016 by Belghast

Off and on throughout this event I have used the “elevator” metaphor to explain how the experience bonus of the invasions has felt. It started off as a steady elevator, and then took a bunch of detours for maintenance. However at the end the final version felt like it was picking up speed as I finished the climb towards the top. The other day Devolore made a comment about this invasion that I think is worth sharing.

While I realize the goal of the event was not to level everything to 100… that is precisely what I set out to do. Before the initial change I managed to get my Priest from 92 to 100, and then turned around and got my Mage from 90 to 100. That left only my little monk that starting last Wednesday was sitting at only level 53. In the last four days I have finished the climb to 100, finally dinging off of an invasion last night after we wrapped up recording the podcast. It was a wild ride filled with pure madness, but overall it was an enjoyable one. This is the feeling I have been chasing for awhile, going into an expansion knowing that every single character on at least my primary server was ready to go and awaiting the next content release. There are a bunch of things I learned on the trip, and I took care last night to log some of my findings. The rest of this post is likely going to be a bunch of bullet points explaining what all I found out.

It took a total of 49 Invasions to go from level 53 to 100
I was wearing full heirlooms the entire way, so adjust accordingly
That makes it .95 levels per invasion completed
I saved 97 loot boxes while doing the even, 49 Blue, 48 Green.

The Loot

This is what 97 loot boxes from the event looks like sitting in my bank. I saved every single one from the moment I started climbing from 53 to 100, in a large part because I wanted a bunch of information to be able to draw conclusions from. On a whim I ended up opening all of my Green chests first, and they my Blue chests… which caused me to notice a pattern.

Phase 2 – Small Legion Chest – Can Contain

Bracers
Gloves
Belt
Boots
Weapons

Phase 4 – Large Legion Chest – Can Contain

Helm
Shoulders
Chest
Pants
Weapons
Coalesced Fel

In the course of the events I ran I got 118 items to drop from the chests, and around 2000 nethershards… but I was not keeping as good of track on that number as I did the others. As I opened the boxes I recorded the what dropped and divided up level 700, 710 and 720 drops in the hopes of being able to pull some percentages together on the chance of each.

Level 700 Item Drops

Helm – 9
Shoulders – 13
Chest – 10
Bracers – 11
Gloves – 11
Belt – 8
Pants – 9
Boot – 6
Weapon – 14
Coalesced Fel – 9

Level 710 Item Drops

Helm – 2
Shoulders – 1
Bracers – 2
Gloves – 1
Belt – 3
Pants – 1
Boots – 5

Level 720 Item Drops

Shoulders – 1
Belt – 1
Pants – 1

So in total I got 100 level 700 drops, 15 level 710 drops, and 3 level 720 drops. Using some quick and dirty math that means that I got a Warforged 710 item 12% of the time, and a 720 item 2.5% of the time. In any case… my Monk is likely going to be my best geared character once I complete the Broken Shores content and get my ring and trinket. Leveling through Invasions was often times frustration… but overall it was an extremely enjoyable experience. I would love to say I would do this same rough on my hordies… but with only nine days until the launch of Legion I just am not sure if I have that sort of grind in me. More than likely I will be focusing on filling the gear holes in my various characters, and pushing them all through the broken shores and follow-up content.

Fixed Mostly

August 20, 2016 by Belghast

The Wild Ride

The last two weeks have been a bit of a roller-coaster of nerfs and buffs to the Legion Event. When I first wrote Monday about the “elevator” it was really simple and fast to get a character through the levels, and it didn’t even require much attention to detail. Simply being in the zone allowed you to reap the entire lions share of experience. This unfortunately lead to a bit of a plague of afk leveling, because players would park in a relative safe spot and just wait for the phases to complete. The irony here is that I didn’t actually do this myself until the first round of nerfs, taking the experience down so much that the event didn’t really feel worthwhile. The positive takeaway of this experience is that Blizzard kept trying different combinations to see if they could find the sweet spot. I know of at least four different hotfixes that were applied to tweak this variable or that until we wound up with the one that happened last night, and seems to FINALLY restore the event to a level that isn’t AFK leveling, but still feels like you aren’t wasting your time. Also the new version of the event seems to reward group player, and dissuade players from some of the antisocial behavior that had sprung up.

For a period of time your best bet was to find a quiet corner of the zone to camp for demons and solo everything you could. This however lead players to getting rather vocal when someone was encroaching upon their turf. I mean I get the frustration because it could literally half your experience gained if another player touched whatever you had been soloing. A drive by dot could wreck your experience, and as a result folks were somewhat understandably grumpy about the experience. You can read my own twitter feed full of random comments about this over the week, so on several levels I have been grumpy as well. Since I have been writing about it I thought this morning I would talk about the various methods I have personally experiences, and which have good results if you are going into these events hunting experience for leveling, rather than loot boxes. You admittedly end up with more lootboxes than you could ever want as well, but that is just a fringe benefit.

Your Own Private Army

Scattered throughout the Invasion zones are a number of NPCs that can be saved. Several of them will fight along side you when you save them, and are really handy. I am sure I don’t have a full list, but here are some of the ones I know about and have used.

Darnassian Starcaller – Druid – Ranged/AOE
Ironforge Crusader – Paladin – Melee/Stun
Gnomeregan Mechano-Mage – Mage – Ranged/AOE
Senjin Battle-Healer – Shaman – Heals/Ranged

I am certain there are more, but wowhead is freaking out this morning. I know at some point I also had a dwarven hunter lady while out in Tanaris. Essentially they are scattered throughout the battlefield, and in Westfall they are often times inside the farm houses. Rescuing them essentially allows you to take things down more quickly because you have a battle minion following you around and attacking whatever you happen to be attacking. For example if I have the Crusader I tend to go after the huge mini-boss type baddies because the stun effects them and allows me to shred them. If I have one of the AOE minions… then I tend to focus on large packs because they will chew them up with AOE damage. I am not sure how many of these you can have at once, but I have for certain had two up at once and been just fine. Essentially when you have a couple of these battle minions up, you can run throughout the zone looking for packs of Legion mobs and shredding them for experience.

Vehicular Demonslaughter

The option one of my friends tends to favor is to grab one of the many vehicles scattered around the battlefield and start laying waste to baddies with it. There is a shockingly wide variety of these available. For the alliance I know we have Dwarven Steam Tanks, Gnomish Spiders, and Darnassian Glaive Throwers. Similarly there are horde options as well including some weird undead thing that throws bombs. Once again the idea is to grab a tank, and just go to town wrecking as many demons as you can before you run out of fuel. Fuel being a buff that you get that shows how long you can be active in the vehicle. Personally I have had the best luck with the Steam Tanks because they allow you to just brute force large packs of mobs at once. Demolishers I think play a similar role for the horde, and allow you to just storm into a Legion camp and destroy everything in your path.

Chase the Skulls

Now personally after the patch I think this is the best option for maximum experience gain… and it seems like everyone else has caught on as well. Boss fights reward a silly amount of experience now. In my 70s last night I was getting 45k-60k experience per boss kill, and the various mobs scattered throughout the map and marked with Skulls in phase three… count as bosses. So new best way to gain experience seems to be to chase these around the zone, and I say chase because there will be a massive amount of flying mounts heading in one direction or another. The key here however is to stay alive. This is my only real complaint about the changes… is that with placing so much emphasis on boss kills, you are completely screwed if you are dead while the boss is taken down. If you are dead you get exactly zero experience for the boss kill, and makes the entire process a complete waste of your time. As a result you have to play super cautiously, especially as you near the end of the bosses health bar. I tend to disengage from melee range and use my extremely crappy channeled range attack just to make sure I am on the threat list of the boss but also giving myself maximum room to duck away in case of one of the many one shot boss abilities. Overall the changes are much better than they have been… and in truth you can end up with a lot more experience per invasion than you could even before the first round of nerfs. The big difference is that you have to be extremely active and constantly moving around zone and fighting to make that happen. Ultimately I think that was what they were going for, and I wanted to reward activity that helps the invasion out… and not activity that happens to get in through a loophole.