World Of Warcraft

Good morning friends. The last few days have been rough. Getting up has been exceptionally hard and when I do get up… it sorta feels like I have been hit by a train. I am not “sick”, just weary. I could not bring myself to make a post or upload anything to Catfriend Television. The day itself was packed full of meetings, which I dutifully attended but still found myself mostly struggling. I have no clue what is going on necessarily but I am not in a great place. It doesn’t help that Covid continues to strike close to home with my friend and mentor coming down with symptoms and one of my employees as well. I’ve not been in actual contact with anyone for awhile… apart from the fact that my wife is back in person with kids in spite that they had to come up with colors more critical than “Red” to denote the community spread.

We live in “Dark Red” and my wife teaches in “Dark Red”. For reference according to the county board of health, this denotes…

Dark Red – Stay Home. Dark Red signifies an extremely severe and uncontrolled level of COVID-19, meaning outbreaks are present and worsening and testing and contact tracing capacity is strained or exceeded. At this level, residents should take every possible action to minimize contact with anyone who does not reside in their household. Use curbside or delivery services for food and medical supplies. Work from home. Participate in religious services virtually.

Definition of Dark Red Status

I think the stress of all of this is getting to me in a way that maybe it hasn’t before now. About all I have in my control is to prepare for the eventuality that my wife feels like she needs to quit her teaching job to feel safe again. Of note… pretty much all of the districts are on distance learning right now because of the rate of community spread. The district my wife teaches in is one of the lone hold outs and quite frankly watching her go through all of this is a grind. It is taking a physical toll on her health. I realize this is nothing quite like the front line medical employees, but still wearing.

This weekend opened the first “Season” of World of Warcraft Shadowlands. Can I just state how much I hate that games are not grouped in seasons. What this means however is that Mythic+, Normal and Heroic modes of the raid, and all of the World Bosses start opening up. The above screenshot is when I rolled over to where the world boss world quest was spawned and the massive number of randoms fighting it. I got absolutely nothing of use at all from running it, apart from I think 250 anima. The whole “you will get less loot but better loot” statement before the launch of Shadowlands largely just seems to equate to getting less loot.

I am still in desperation mode for trying to find some horde healer friends for running Mythics. This desperation even lead me to PUG a Mythic Dungeon group. I was tempted by the fact that so often in the premade group finder tool there are groups sitting there just waiting on a tank. While in truth with randoms I would rather sit back and do some chill dps… I have reached the point where I am willing to tank because I feel like I am timezoned out of running with the single guild healer that seems to be around on the regular. My normal go to is twitter… but thusfar my calls for Horde healers has been met with a chorus of crickets. It does seem like there are just less healers around this expansion than there have been in others, and I wonder what that says about the state of healing currently.

In other news on a whim I decided to power level up leatherworking because the price of leather seemed to be pretty cheap. This gave me access to the 151 item level patterns, and I was able to drop some of this on my friend Grace to help with the gearing curve. Similarly when the Demon Hunter actually gets up to level it will make his transition from Normals to Heroics that much easier. My hope is that by seeding some gear it might kick the World Quest system in the ass and get it to start producing something useful faster. Right now it seems to be completely useless for picking up free upgrades.

Similarly useless is the new Adventures system… aka the commanders table gimmick that has been rebranded each expansion since Warlords. Nothing of use seems to be capable of dropping and the rewards in anima almost don’t make it work churning through these on the regular. I did finally manage to get a Soul Ash mission, and I stacked every single character I had on it… only to fail. The whole arranging pieces on the board mechanic mostly just feels for show as it is still a “wait and see” type system. I know someone spent a lot of time working on this, but quite frankly it is absolutely no different to me than the Garrison, Shipyard, Legion Hall, and War Campaign systems. You click some things and then RNG happens and maybe you get a reward.

In other other news… I started Cyberpunk 2077 last night and so far I am enjoying it quite a bit. I decided to go with the Corpo start, because really it seemed to be the one that I found the most interesting. I am not sure what ramifications each start is going to have on the game long term. It seems based on the little I have seen, you more or less end up in the same location regardless of which you choose. I will likely spend some more time tonight playing around in it. I think I am just about to exit the tutorial mission.

So… Apologies for not having the oomph to push a post out yesterday. I am struggling a bit, but I will do okay as I always seem to. Occasionally there are going to be days where I just can’t conjure out a post demon and bind it to my will. Thanks for reading. If you have made it this far you are likely going to keep returning even if I miss a day here or there and I guess there is solace in that.

Hi Friends. I am struggling a bit this morning to cobble together something resembling a post. I did not run mythics last night quite the way I would have hoped. I contemplated joining a party in the group finder, but was uncertain that I could handle that level of frustration. Ultimately I struggled finding a healer and in the “Bel School of Group Building” the first rule of business is to lock down a tank and a healer. I had the tank since I was willing to do that… but at every turn I was missing a healer. Ultimately I need to make more hordefriends that are mythicable healbutts that are not Grace.

We ultimately ended up running a heroic with the purpose of trying to get Kelion and Merrymoo some gear, but I am not sure if any of that actually happened. I know Moo walked away with a few pieces but I don’t think Kel managed to get anything other than a frustrating evening. I pinged a few friends that were playing classes that could heal, but much like me they had wisely chosen other paths. Whenever Grace manages to get to dungeon level I am going to devote myself to grinding for gear until we can once again do really fun things together. However in the meantime I need to start adding up a list of hordefriend healbutts that I can build groups around.

Other than that I spent some more time on my Demon Hunter and pushed further into the Maldraxxus storyline. Originally I had planned on just having a chill evening but really I should be helping out more in the guild to help gear people. I pugged my face off until I got Retribution geared, but that is an unpleasant proposal for most folks. I know my friend Mor has also been pugging his face off so at some point we should join forces so at least we won’t be alone in our madness. I am looking forward to reset because it should mean some additional things unlock giving me more stuff to do. The gating has been pretty extreme, but it also has meant that I was not done with the expansion in a single week.

Unfortunately there are also a lot of things that are just downright frustrating. One of these mornings I am ultimately going to end up doing a giant “airing of grievances” post. I mean Festivus is just around the corner so I might save it for then. This is one of if not “the” least polished World of Warcraft expansion, and in many ways it feels unfinished. However I will save all of that for another day. If you are hordefriend healbutts, especially if you are mythicable… let me know so we can be friends. Even if you are not mythicable I am also amicable to helping you get there.

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.

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 wait for a specific world quest to be available and collect two stacks of a 10 minute buff that you gain while doing it.
• 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.
  • Potion of Unusual Strength
  • Strength of Blood
• If you did all of this right… you should now have a level 180 sword called Sorrowbane.

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.