Morning Friends! This is the weekend that Christmas finally came the rest of the way to our house. If you have watched any of the Catfriend Television channel, you will have been able to see that it arrived at our front door some time ago. However a combination of laziness and the desire to progress in Shadowlands caused me to delay a bit in the more tedious task of assembling the indoor decorations. We have a tiny RGB tree on top of our entertainment center, because that is a place that the cats can’t reach. We’ve gotten three Christmas cards so far so I am starting the menagerie on the side and working left to right. Various ornaments that we have been given that the tree can’t support on its own are sorta around the tree skirt.
As far as gaming goes I have been spending my time in Shadowlands chasing the unknown goal of the item level required for raiding. As it stands right now, even though the time slot is not stellar for me… I am planning on joining in the madness with my guild Facepull and setting forth into Castle Nathria on the opening week. Currently I am item level 170 in my tanking gear and 171 in my DPS gear… with the real sticking point slots being the lack of a decent shield and the lack of a heroic or better belt. The shield could be remedied quickly with an outlay of gold, and the price of those is in the reasonable range right now. The belt however… is just going to require me grinding my face at either heroics or mythics a bit longer.
Since the last time we talked, I did manage to finally get a serviceable two handed weapon from a heroic. Sadly it was the worst possible one, but for now I am living with it. Haste is good but versatility is the worst possible itemization for pretty much any item. If we still had the wonderful system called Reforging in the game, this would have been corrected to Crit the moment it dropped. However I said I needed a weapon and I got a weapon, so for at least this very moment I am satisfied and in theory if I keep doing mythics and start into the raid I might be able to correct that soon from one of those locations. The one BOE weapon that would be viable is going for upwards of 500k now which is so far out of the range of reasonable that I don’t even want to think about it.
Last night I tanked my first two dungeons of the expansion… and they were mythics. I have mostly been dpsing as a Ret, so that all of the heroic grinding I have done has been in that spec and towards that goal. However if I was running a dungeon that didn’t drop a two handed weapon, I would flip it over to protection spec for the loot rewards and as a result I had managed to pick up a solid weapon. Still had yet to see a shield but I did have at least a 155 since I do all of my world quests as a tank. All in all I think it went pretty well and we managed to complete De Other Side and Sanguine Depths. The last was a bit annoying on that final boss gauntlet but we managed. I felt fairly squishy but I figure that will stop being the case once I get some more gear.
Other than that I have unlocked the final of my Abominations from the Factory, and I can now ride around on the shoulders of Flytrap which is mostly a novelty at this point. The one that I seem to keep using the most is Roseboil which offers me a heal. I had kinda hoped that Flytrap which costs more to create would be a combo of multiple different abominations, but alas that was not the case. I would never not use this one if Abominations were usable in the Maw because it would give me a functional mount down there.
Lastly I have been working on my Demon Hunter, and that was my original intent for last night until Mythic groups started forming and they needed a second tank. I just finished Bastion and am starting Maldraxxus. I think the character that I am going to start next is my hunter and I am probably going to use him as a test of the Threads of Fate system to see how I like that for leveling purposes. It seems sorta like doing adventure mode from Diablo 3, and to be honest… that might be a fairly relaxing option. Just log in each day on that alt and gobble up the World Quests and then log back out and do something else.
All told I am still enjoying myself in this expansion and that might be a remnant of the forced gating. I have not been allowed to run out of content because they are feeding it to us very slowly. I still miss systems that would come in really handy like the Flight Whistle and Reforging… but for now I am having fun.
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Well friends… my evenings have now apparently become the time when I run a bunch of random heroics hoping for rewards. I am still spending my time mostly in Retribution, since if I do manage to raid with my Facepull family… I will likely be doing so as a DPS. As I talked about yesterday my hit and miss schedule for that sort of thing is not exactly the material fitting a tank anymore. The hard truth is that I have not actually raided legitimately since the very beginning of Legion. We fully cleared The Emerald Nightmare, Trial of Valor and started on The Nighthold before I buggered off and wandered away from the game. The be truthful a similar story happened during Warlords with me sticking around until we had defeated Blackhand and then never returning to raiding that expansion. Basically the last time I was a dedicated raider was Wrath of the Lich King.
One of the big challenges that I have encountered is trying to find a reasonable DPS weapon. Thankfully yesterday there was a world quest up that rewarded a 158 strength two handed mace, which was a sizable upgrade over the 146 weapon I had been using. There are sadly only three two handers that drop in the heroic dungeons and as a result I have been focused on trying to at least make one attempt at Necrotic Wake, De Other Side and Mists of Tirna Scithe. Some of them like Tirna Scithe I often queue more than one time a night given that something curious happens in that dungeon. The axe drops off the first boss… and folks seem to be farming something specific off that one encounter because we almost always lose our tank and healer immediately following that fight.
Of course there is also the BOE epic sword that is a world drop that would be completely lovely. However I missed out on the exploit-a-thon of the first few days where BOE epics were dropping like candy and that particular one seems to be going for upwards of 400k. Very much not in the cards which leaves either farming one up from Heroic/Mythic or doing something that I have been really wanting to avoid doing because it is a colossal pain in the ass.
In the Theater of Pain arena in Maldraxxus there is a sword sticking out of the ground with an arm attached to it. When you click on the weapon it informs you that you are not strong enough to pull it out of the ground. There is a way to do this but it involves a specific set of circumstances and perfect timing. Essentially it involves the following:
You have to go to a region of Eastern Maldraxxus and collect 4 stacks of a buff from a specific mushroom that respawns slowly… which means it is impossible if there are multiple people attempting to do this thing at the same time. Side note this slows you by 80%… and only lasts 2 minutes
You then need to get back to the Arena of the Theater of Pain and consume the following potions giving you 25 seconds to click the item in the ground.
Basically I have gathered up all of the necessary items including a Teleport Scroll to the Theater of Pain which should allow me to complete the quest. Now I just have to wait for the world quest to spawn again and hopefully be during a time when the server isn’t super active so I have a shot in hell of actually getting the 4 mushrooms I need. In the meantime however… I am going to keep farming for a 171 Two Hander out of Heroics because that seems more likely.
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Good morning friends! This morning I am riding the struggle bus to catch the fail boat chartered to the island state of confusion. I have no clue why I am so tired, but my wife would tell you it is because I periodically sleep sitting up during the night. I have no memory of doing this thing at all. She claims that she will wake up and just find me sitting there on the edge of the bed snoring… at which point she convinces me to lay back down. Like last night I do remember getting up to turn on the ceiling fan, but that is all I have in my head. I mostly had nightmares about my folks and needing me to do a million different disconnected things for them.
I had originally intended to spend the evening getting Soul Ash in Torghast, but instead I queued for a bunch of dungeons. There are some significant deficits in my gearing… namely I don’t have a reasonable weapon. Sadly the only Auction House version is around 300-400k which I do not have especially after dumping money into leveling professions. Effectively there are three dungeons I can be running: The Necrotic Wake, Mists of Tirna Scithe, and De Other Side. They each drop a weapon but for some reason the queue times for each of them is completely nonsense. Mists of Tirna Scithe for whatever reason involves people dropping after the first boss… because I guess folks are farming it for a specific drop. All told though the heroics I did run gave me quite a few decent upgrades even though they were not a weapon.
Another day passed netting me another pull in Genshin Impact and I lucked out and grabbed Xinyan one of the new characters on this banner. I am not certain what I thought she was going to be, but I did not expect another greatsword user. She sorta seems like a fire version of Beidou, but I have not spent much time playing her. Since I do not have a Diluc she is absolutely a good pull. I am wondering about trying to level her up as a replacement for Xiangling in my main party. I also wonder how well she would work backed up by Bennet as a main damage dealer.
Something that I meant to talk about yesterday morning but did not… is did some nonsense. A few years back I installed a security cam on the front porch. It was shortly after doing this that we realized we had quite a few cats in the neighborhood. We have been feeding these catfriends and then enjoying watching their lives via the camera. I have been sharing some of these clips with my close friends, and on a whim I decided to create a YouTube channel called Catfriend Television where I upload various clips and write about the babies that were captured in the footage. If you are so inclined for this brand of nonsense then feel free to follow.
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Yesterday did not really go as planned in so many different ways. It was of course the reset day for World of Warcraft which meant that we would be able to once again make progress in our covenant and also on the trail of crafting the first legendary. My plan was to get home and clear some Torghast to get the soul ash required to craft a rank 1 ilvl 190 legendary. Instead I had a fairly horrific run that mostly soured me on Torghast for the rest of the night. It is a very RNG based game mode like most Rogue-Lite games and the luck was not with me. I got to the final boss and had barely found anything that would give me significant power in order to defeat it. So I will make another attempt tonight once some time has passed.
Instead I spent a good chunk of the night messing around with the new systems that were unlocked. Namely I made some abominations! Right now I have the default one you get Chordy, which has an ability that runs off and finds something shiny for you to loot. Through additional questing I got the parts to build the abomination of my choosing and I went with Roseboil, which has the ability to throw out a seemingly decent heal. I am a little disappointed that I can’t mix and match parts, because that is ultimately what I envisioned in my head. However having a little undead pet friend seems pretty great nonetheless and right now it seems like you can choose between shiny finding, healing, tanking, one that is a vendor and one that is potentially a mount. The only customization seems to be in giving them items to hold… like mine has a Horde faction flag.
Another thing that happened yesterday is that I spend copious amounts of gold and resources to grind up my blacksmithing. This was prompted by the fact that the precursors required for the legendary plate items are complete nonsense right now, going for between 300k and 400k on the auction house. I wondered what it would take to power level my blacksmithing instead of paying that premium, and it turns out for about 150k I could purchase the materials to level all of the way to 100 as well as the enchanted materials that I could not craft that were required for the legendary item I was seeking. Since I have a lot of plate wearers this seemed like a reasonable choice because as soon as one of my enchanter friends can make the metal required I should be able to knock out precursors fairly reasonably.
In other news… Genshin Impact got a new character banner, this time for Zhongli. I had a few single pulls saved up and managed to luck out and get him. I had originally hoped to get another Razor which also has higher rates during this banner, but I will settle for a five star. I was not a huge fan of Childe so I wasn’t super pumped to keep making attempts to get him. Zhongli however seems like a pretty reasonable option given he does a lot of AOE Geo Damage and is I think only my second spear wielder total. I need to figure out a way to work this game back in my rotation because I would like to at least get far enough in the Battle Pass to unlock another weapon.
Hopefully tonight I have some better luck in Torghast and can finish off crafting my legendary. Right now I am leaning towards one that is beneficial to all three specs even though it is technically flagged as “Retribution”. I need to start setting foot into heroics so I can push up my item level a bit more. The raid opens in a few weeks and I am not sure if Facepull plans on going in… but I would like to at least have the option to join them. More than likely I would be focusing on Retribution given that it is easy to have a DPS show up than the commitment to always being there as a tank. They raid at a not great time slot for me so it would be really hard for me to lock down to always being there every week.
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