event

Elevator Broken

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Fun While it Lasted

Wow-64 2016-08-16 09-52-40-00

On Monday I wrote about riding this new Legion Event to 100 on several of my characters, and how holding chests allowed me to instantly have viable level capped characters upon dinging.  At least the second part of that statement is true now, but sadly the first part…  not so much.  It seems yesterday they patched the servers to increase the spawn rate of events, but greatly decrease the experience gained from each.  While this is technically a net gain… it is also a whole lot of busy work to gain it.  Previously on my Monk in his 50s/60s I was gaining at least one full levels worth of experience from each event I participated in.  So that mean’t every four hours, I could run two events with him and then still have time to swap in some other alts for gearing purposes.  As of yesterday I was getting a little less than half of a level of experience per event participated in.  That means during the same four hour window, there are now a total of six events, instead of two…  and as a result if experience stays roughly half a level that means I gain 3 levels instead of 2 before.  The gotcha however is that you spend almost every second of that four hours either participating in an event or travelling to the next one, and in my experience I had no real time to swap in that many alts to also attempt to get gear.  Given how fast experience is gained through questing, it also feels like during that same four hour block I could probably do significantly better than three levels.

What made the “elevator” nice is that I could more casually swap in my lower level alts, and still have time to do the ones I was trying to get gear for.  Now instead I have to make a choice between getting the gear from the event, or leveling.  I mean I get why they did this, because they really want folks to focus on the gear and not the easy ticket leveling.  I am just glad that I managed to pull my Priest from 92 to 100, and my Mage from 90 to 100 before the elevator broke.  As a result I am tabling my Monk for the moment, at least until I finish getting all of the rest of my stable of 11 characters fully geared in 700 or better items from the event.  Technically Belghast my Draenor main has the least stuff from the event, but he also has 700 or better in most of his slots already.  Other than that my rogue really is the one missing the most gear, so I will be working on him next.  Exeter my Paladin is missing a weapon, Lodin my hunter Shoulders, and Tallow my Shaman a handful of items.  Instead of focusing entirely on the Monk I am going to work on getting these characters the last of the missing pieces so that they are in a better state to be prepared for leveling them in Legion.  I have this feeling that 700 is essentially the place they are expecting us to be at for the new content, and even though we will be swapping all of it out for better gear almost instantly it should at least ease that transition.

Unknown Main

Wow-64 2016-08-16 21-29-32-58

I am hoping over the next few days to be able to reach a point where I am completely okay hopping off the event train.  While it has been a fun ride chasing the skulls around the zones, I have to say I have neglected other important things during the process.  For example I have yet to complete the Broken Shore quest chain in live on any of my characters.  While I did it a bunch of times in Beta and have since seen the cinematics I missed… with the patching in of more quest content I feel like I need to get on the ball and start in with this.  More than anything this expansion feels really different, and in a good way.  I like the way that they seem to be easing us into the content with the invasion, and the head start into Broken Shore or the Demon Hunter experience.  It feels like we are having this rolling soft launch more than waiting for the 30th to flip the switch and have everyone rush into doing exactly the same stuff.  My hope is this is going to allow us to have a more staggered experience with different groups of people progressing through the content at different speeds.  I know personally I will likely be starting the new content in Stormheim, but that is largely because it feels like this great big love letter to Northrend.

The biggest challenge however still yet to be solved is… I have zero clue what my main is going to be.  There are a bunch of different classes that I really enjoy right now.  I love Vengeance Demon Hunter, I think in part because of its mobility and the ability to get places due to double jump and glide which comes in super handy in the new content.  I also am completely in love with Lodin my Hunter… because I am finally getting to play out that fantasy of being a melee hunter.  Belghast and Belgrave are both strong contenders because well… I tend to level tanks first, but in both cases they don’t necessarily feel that new or fresh but more the same.  I am also loving Tallow my Enhancement Shaman and Gloam my Outlaw Rogue… but they will more than likely be relegated to the back burner.  The character that I love that I am shocked to admit it though is my Demonology Warlock.  It is actually a really strong contender for getting leveled quickly, because I have enjoyed playing it so much.  Now however you can see the problem… I am loving this game at the moment because I am loving a lot of my characters at the same time.  There however has to be a first… and I am still completely up in the air as to who that is going to be.

Elevator to Top

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Wow-64 2016-08-15 06-28-24-85

This weekend was a weekend for many things, not the least of which was some interstellar exploration in No Man’s Sky.  However an even larger portion of the weekend was spent with the Legion invasion event in World of Warcraft.  I am not exactly sure why Warcraft is so sticky for me right now… but whatever the case it absolutely is.  I am probably having more fun playing this game than I have since long before Cataclysm… and potentially even before the launch of Wrath.  I am actually looking forward to coming home and playing, and this event is a large part of that.  At face value the event is an easy way to get characters decked out in item level 700 gear, and additionally a source of a new pet.  However the way this invasion works makes it so much more enjoyable for me than the previous ones.  I’ve already talked about this in previous posts but two zones open up around the world and every four hours these swap.  The only somewhat negative part of this is that I have apparently swapped logging into all of my characters to fiddle with the garrison, to logging in all of my characters to try and get both invasions in before the zone timer runs own.  There however was an eventual end to this madness and that was collecting a full set of gear on every character.  Friday however the game was patched and it all changed.

LegionEventBags

Now in addition to getting two chests worth of gear…  you also get a significant experience boost every time a phase completes.  In the high 90s each zone invasion is worth roughly half of a level, so each set of two invasions is a little more than a full level of experience.  As a result I have been using and abusing this event to level up those characters that I was never likely going to level on my own.  In this case that is my Priest and my Mage, both classes I have not had a whole lot of interest in playing, but would still like to add to my stable of 100s.  When I started this process my priest had seen enough leveling in Draenor to unlock the Garrison, and then from that point onwards was nothing more than a profession character.  I managed to get to level 92 through doing the various XP missions that came available as part of the daily Garrison queue.  Over the course of the event it took 14 full events to go from 92 to 100, and I literally dinged moments before sitting down to write this post.  Now as I ran this event I held onto every chest, apart from one I opened just to see if my theory was going to be correct.

LegionEventLoot

The chest loot is assigned at the moment you open it.  That means by holding my chests I was able to open them as soon as I dinged 100 and get a fast infusion of item level 700 gear.  In the bags I had 3 weapons, 5 chests, 3 boots, 4 gloves, 4 helms, 2 pants, 2 shoulders, 1 belt, and 4 bracers… as well as two of the weapon infusion items and 657 Nethershards.  So I was able to level up without worrying about my gear at all… and then go to instant reasonable levels upon dinging.  I am absolutely going to use this elevator for as far as I can take it to push up some of the character that I never really got around to leveling.  Once I finish off the Mage I am probably going to try and see where I can get with my sub level 60 monk, and at least push it levels out of the old world.  If you have some of those characters that are sitting in the 90s that you never really got around to leveling in Draenor I highly suggest you take advantage of this.  If nothing else this has been an amazing way to pull up those gear levels for the various characters that I leveled to 100 but never really raided much on.