It's not just you. Emerald nightmare was a lot easier than Uldir is, with both simpler mechanics and more forgiving number checks.

 

EN was easy as fuck. Pugged normal the second night it was out. Only hard fight to pug was Cenarius.

Note: This was back in the Surrender to Madness Glory Days - when WoW was a dream.

 

Eh, I'm actually glad that its harder. Makes the feeling of clearing it a lot more satisfactory.
But it also makes the e-peens of the PUG group creators that much more heavy. XD
But the mechanics disparity between Legion and BfA was kinda glaring to me.
The last time I saw this much confusion among PUG groups on Normal difficulty (I've never even tried Mythic) was on Kil'Jaeden.
So I was just wondering if it was just me or was it by design.

 

This last week was interesting, if for nothing else than it's fascinating to watch Method live stream their progression.

Other than that, I really didn't get much done. Well, I did, but none of it's that tangible. Drops were very scarce for me this week. Though, that being said, my mage isn't actually that far off from 360. I'm within grinding distance of the CoA helm, and then I pretty much just need a new weapon and I'll be there. I tried bonus rolling on both normal and heroic Fetid Devourer for a new staff, but that did not work out. Shaman is just about 350 as well. Just need to get enough expulsom to craft the 2 slots. But, that shit is expensive. Like, 1k per expulsom on average. Expensive enough that it's not really feasible to reroll your items unless you really hate gold. My mage has made 4 pieces, and every single piece is "of the harmonious" which is mastery/versatility, and I want crit/haste. That about sums up my luck in this expansion so far. I still haven't done a +7 mythic, so I guess I'll be slightly behind on that again, but ohwell. Maybe I can try to get in one tonight, but I still have a lot of other last minute stuff to do.

Lastly, my Maghar rogue is up to 70. I can't honestly remember what the previous character I levelled up from low levels was. I started this account (which is my second) during MoP, and I levelled my shaman the old fashioned way. Most of the others might have been freebie boosts (I definitely know my druid was) that you get from buying an expansion, and I think most of the recent expansions came with that, though I don't remember. But, with 4 expansions and 6 characters, that means one of those others other than my shaman and rogue weren't boosted, since I still havent used the recent boost. Whatever, doesn't matter. Point is, levelling seems a lot different now, perhaps having been rebalanced at some point. I remember it got crazy fast at some point, more than just the RAF thing. It's not slow now by any means, but 100+ levels is still 100+ levels. I'm getting maybe 2 levels per hour, and I am running dungeons on cooldown. Even still, I made it to 60 without having completed all of the vanilla dungeons. It's easy to forget how many of them there actually are, and a lot of the later ones have been broken down into 2 or 3 parts (though that was done awhile ago). Like, I never got 2 parts of BRD, either BRS, 2 parts of Dire Maul, Scholomance, live side of Stratholme, or 2 parts of SM. The LFG tool was pretty decent in not giving me too many repeats, but there were a few. Did SFK 3 times, DM tribute twice, and Maraudon end twice. Not a huge issue though, since just completing a dungeon is 25% of a level, though it's better when there's a bunch of dungeons quests. TBH, even with a completion bonus, I'm not even sure dungeons are faster than just doing quests, but doing them helps to break up the tedium.

Once I hit 60, that's when I saw that there had been a chance made that I had been unaware of, and that WotLK is now the same levelling tier as TBC, meaning that they both go from 60-80. Cool. I figured I would still just level in TBC to 70 (or, I guess, 68) and than go over to WotLK to 80. I remember leveling my paladin back in the day and pretty much going 58-66ish just in Hellfire Peninsula, so I figured I'd do the same. And, it does pretty much work out like that. I feel like you can probably make it all the way to 80 without even completing all the TBC zones, or even half of them. I did the same thing as with vanilla, queuing dungeons on cooldown, and went 60-70 in about 4-5 hours yesterday, and that's only with 6 or 7 dungeons, and luckily no repeats. I can do the same thing with WotLK dungeons, since there's the same amount of them, and getting repeats there will be unlucky, so I suspect hitting 80 won't be hard at all. I will say one thing, however, and that the quests in TBC feel pretty outdated. Of course, TBC is well over a decade old at this point, and has not gotten an overhaul except to make everything scale to your level. So, you still get a bunch of bullshit quests. Well, I guess bullshit might be a bit strong, since there was a point where the grindier a quest was, the better. Hell, I loved when the Nagrand Nessingwary quests required you to kill like dozens upon dozens of mobs, but you're told that at face value (and IIRC, those did actually get a nerf at some point?). Instead, it's the quests where you have to collect 12 items from mobs. Standard stuff, but these are different, since the drop rate is something like 25%. That low of a drop rate on something you need 12 of is ridiculous. There was 2 of those in Hellfire Peninsula, and 1 (so far) in Zangarmarsh.

With that being said, there is one thing I would like to note, and it's that even Hellfire Peninsula feels more like a warzone than anything in BFA feels like. While leveling there, there was constant skirmishes over everything, mostly induced by the fact that there were those pvp towers right in the zone. Yet, you could still mostly mind your own business and just quest out of the way of everything going on. A large part of that is probably because you're sharing the same levelling zone as the alliance, instead of being sequestered on your own faction's island. I'm kinda curious as to how Cata leveling is going to be, when you're funnelled even tighter together (though I suppose people can still technically pick vash'jar). Though, now that I'm thinking about it, it would almost make sense if Cata and MoP are on the same tier now as well, so I feel like I can almost assume that if they did that for TBC and WotLK they probably did that for these as well, so in that case, I'd probably go level up in MoP since questing there has to be more efficient.

Final note, and that I had hoped to have some alternate dialog when discovering the Mag'har in Outland, But as far as I could tell (and I could be mistaken), it was the same thing they would have said to a Tauren. Maybe it will be different in Nagrand, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

-edit- did end up getting a +7 done today, which is nice

 

Next raid is completely different for Alliance and Horde, which is awesome.

Can't think of anything else nice to say tbh. Week 2 no Azerite in chest and no loot from any of my coins.

 

Here's what else nice to say: Dorf heritage armor is fuckin sweet.

 

If belf heritage armour looks like valeera, I'm race changing my rogue...

Or I might just stay NE for the tiddies.

Spoiler

Ooh, human heritage armour leaked!

Spoiler

 

358 right now, feel kinda stuck. Tbh though it's because I should push my key and not be a bitch. Still kinda salty every time i try some hilariously stupid shit happen.

Really i should run through heroic uldir and try to get nice stuff but that's even more meme prone.

Was playing destro (and still for some of the m+ stuff) but hard affi for the important stuff now, pumping out 12k was never so fucking boring.

 

Not quite different? From my reading it looks like 3 Horde, 3 Alliance, 3 Shared. You kill your 6 then unlock the other faction's 3. The order, progression, and scenario do seem to be quite different though.

The 2 boss raid also looks interesting. 11 boss tier?

Horrible week to be pushing keys. Fortifying+Teeming is hell. Absolute hell.

 

I managed to finally get a mega titanforge last night. Well, sorta mega. Got a pair of 395 titanforge boots from Heroic Uldir. Perhaps not as good as that person who gets +55 from raid finder, but it's my first mega titanforge of the expansion, and unlike last expansion, it was actually on my main. Though, my alt shaman is actually capable of getting weapons, which my mage isn't :< I've been using my bonus rolls on heroic fetid devourer, and I've seen the staff drop, just not for me. And it's not like I'm seeing offhands and mainhands either, because I have 0 of those. Anyways, those boots, plus the 370 bracer from my weekly mythic chest (which are actually a downgrade because my 360 have a socket) put me at 360, but honestly, I'm struggling to do any meaningful dps. Obviously, part of that is the class, but the bigger part of that is me. I love frost, but glacial spike is super annoying on any fight that requires any movement, which is most of them.
--- Post automerged ---
watching the world first mythic g'huun kill in realtime was fucking surreal.

 

I've been keeping an eye on it while doing other thing these last few days, and when I saw that everyone was still up at sub 7%, I knew it had to be it. It was great to see how they utilize WeakAuras as well. I definitely stole a couple of ideas from their setup (not Sco because damn that UI gives me cancer). But yeah, that was fucking amazing. I'm surprised Limit didn't get it, but that decision to extend lockout cost them WF!

 

Yeah the lockout extension is weird. If anything, I would have thought the reverse logic would have been true, since NA get's their reset first, that Limit would be able to get another M Uldir worth of gear before Method would even wake up the next day, and that Method could extend their lockout (though I don't think they ever do that) to keep pace. It was a big risk and didn't pay off. Though I think Wowprogress accounts for reset times.

Funniest thing to me is that they spent all that time waiting for Xirips to come back only for them to kill it with a substitute.

 

Man mythic races were so hype even off stream that's what made me want to play wow to begin with. Seeing this live was sick.

 

It's been impressive to see WoW blow up on Twitch like that, and how Method has dealt with it all. Interesting few days.

 

Datamined from PTR:

• The Alliance is getting a new scenario that covers Tyrande's exploits against the Horde in Darkshore in the immediate aftermath of Teldrassil's burning. It involves her undertaking a ritual to become the Night Warrior, giving her a new model with dark eyes. Completion of this scenario unlocks "Night Warrior" customization options for Night Elves.

Okay Blizz. I'm listening.

 

Another week gone... did not really get that much done on my 120's this week. Only got a +6 on my mage, and my shaman hasn't done any, but I'll try and get one done when I get home from work. Honestly, I feel a bit unmotivated. Gearing up just doesn't feel very rewarding. I hate it. It's like all the details and additions from the last few expansion have finally merged together and created a loot system I'm just sick of. And, I still hate the Azerite system, and how you can't them to drop from M+. So without a lot of luck, I'll be stuck with this 340 chest piece forever. Part of the issue is that they just don't feel special enough to warrant that kind of treatment. They don't feel anything remotely like legendaries. I'd rather have access to sets. Hell, I think I'd rather just have it be a normal armor pieces with crit and haste or whatever. I did get the exalted CoA helm though, so at least that's something.

On a different note, I got my Mag'har rogue to BfA content last night.

Spoiler

It's kind of a breath of fresh air, but only because I haven't levelled a character in so long. It's just weird. Like, it was tedious, but not too tedious. Yet apparantly, before I think 7.3.5 (according to forums) it used to be a lot easier. And even so, I remember it taking weeks upon weeks just to hit 60 or 70, so this wasn't bad. Actually, I daresay it was still pretty fast. It just the character progression.

So, I felt like there's 3 phases to leveling a rogue. I levelled as outlaw, mostly because it was the only spec that used swords. So, up to level 63, you have no aoe at all. Very tedious. Like, the idea of going through the entirety of vanilla without being able to attack more than one mob at the time is almost ludicrous. Dungeons felt super slow, because while the tank would pull 10 mobs at a time, I could only attack 1 at a time. But, at 63 everythings change. Blade fury now has two charges rather than being a toggle (which I actually vaguely remember, despite my last rogue having been banned at the beginning of Cata). It's really good, and I was top dps in pretty much every dungeon at that point, not that that really means much. But, I guess there's a reason that Rogues are pretty much the best on Zul (though I think that's Sub).

Then, there's the third phase, which is at 100 when you get killing spree, so when you blade fury, you teleport all over the place and pretty much kill everything. It's sweet. I also remember this back from Cata as well, so either I'm misremembering that, or that it's more or less the same as it was back then, except now we get to shoot things. It's pretty fun.

So, this issue is apparent. That gap from 63-100. It just doesn't feel like you're making any progress at all. No character growth. The level 75 and 90 talents are good, just not tangibly noticeable, and don't really have an effect on gameplay, though I admit that this could just be for this specific spec.. I think the only new spell I got during this time was cloak of shadows, which is good, but rarely used. Add in the fact that everything scales to your level now, and then it's obvious that it's just a needless grind. Level scaling issues are still a hot debate at 120 as well, but it felt very annoying levelling up. Sometimes it would feel good to outlevel a zone and just smash through it all, but that's not a thing anymore.

Here's what I did:

20-60. Vanilla. When from ashenvale to the northern barrens to duskwallow marsh. Didn't take that long, but 40 levels is a lot of levels, so I mostly did it in small chunks when I had an extra hour or two. I did a lot of dungeons, as all the dungeons had quests in them as well, so you could get a level or two in per dungon. Some of them like SFK were pretty long though, so even if dungeons weren't the most efficient thing, it was good to break up the monotony.

60-80. TBC. I'm not sure why I picked TBC. I think I mentioned above that I still planned to do WotLK after 70, but that never happened. I think I just wanted a dose of nostalgia, and I got it. TBC feels very outdated. Too many quests where you have to collect 12 items from mobs, but those items are a 25% drop rate, which means you end up needing to kill like 50 mobs for one quest. The game is long past the state of needing to grind mobs to level, and is more of just completeing as many quests as possible as quick as possible, so it just feels outdated, but this kind of thing is just part of the game.

Pro tip: Don't do Zangarmarsh like I did. Nagrand actually still felt pretty good. There's a lot of kill X mob quests. Dozens of them. And even with the Nessingwary nerf, it was still a good zone to level in. I hit 80 in here. I did a lot of dungeons as well. I tried to split up my time between both TBC and WotLK dungeons, so if there was 16 different TBC dungeons, I would do 8, to optimize my chance of getting one I hadn't done before, before switching to the other set. It worked out fairly well. I even got the Oculus as one of my randoms, which was pretty much the only one I wanted to avoid, but it wasn't actually that bad since the drakes scale to level and when everyone is wearing heirloom gear it's actually pretty easy. I'm not actually sure how long it took me to get through TBC, but probably longer than it should. Like 2 days of casual play.

80-90. It's fucking strange that the new leveling systems lets you go from TBC to Mists of Pandaria, but that's what I did. I hate the Cata leveling zones, and have done them way too many times to want to do them again. So I went to Pandaland, and honestly, it was great. Now, I hated MoP when it first came out. Asian culture just doesn't interest me at all. But looking back on it, MoP did a lot of things right, but of course, a lot of our current problems started back in MoP. Only looking at the levelling experience though, it's great. Colorful zone, neat cast of characters that you progress with, and the constant presence of the Alliance also doing the same. BfA should have taken more levelling cues from this place. That being said, levelling here was quick. Like, 5 hours maybe. I hit 90 without even finishing the first zone. Dungeons helped a bit, but most of these dungeons don't have any quests in them. I think there was maybe 2 out of the ~10 I did with quests. So, you mostly just do it for the XP bonus. Probably faster to just quest, especially when you consider the possible dungeons. The first one I got was Halls of Origination. 7 bosses there, and it came out long enough ago that most people probably don't know how to do the first boss (though with my instruction, we breezed through it.) It's just long, with no quests inside. And, I don't think the bonus objective of killing the extra bosses even gave anything. Then I got the Stonecore, which sucks in a pug who doesn't know how the third boss works, even with an explanation, and Blackrock whatever, where the third boss sucks in a pug who doesn't know how it works, even with an explanation. There are easy dungeons in that expansion, such as lost city or vortex pinnacle, even throne of tides, but there's also worse, like Grim Batol. But, there are a lot of them. MoP's dungeons are way better, a lot quicker. Even Gate of the Setting Sun isn't too bad when everyone is wearing heirloom gear. Issue is that there's only 6 of them. One last thing of note, was the free XP. I discovered this by accident (though it's probably common knowledge) is that the treasures give you XP. A lot of it. It was like 40k XP per, which was probably like 10% of a level, and there was enough for about 2 levels, and with a flying mount, it was fairly quick to get them (though maybe not as quick as just questing). Without stealth, it would have been harder. Also worth noting is that you should level with herbalism and mining, even if that isn't what you plan to be at 120, since each node is a decent chunk of XP, starting at about 1% of a level in vanilla, tapering down to about .6% in MoP and .4% in BfA. Only mentioning this now, since the ghost iron in MoP was worth a ton of gold for some reason, I sold 2 stacks for 14k, which was a nice surprise. That reminds me that I should probably go get list all the ghost iron that is on my warrior...

90-100. Warlords. Both the best, and worst levelling experience. I actually got a tip from a reddit thread on how to do it. Without flying unlocked, it sucks. Took me about 5 hours, which is still fast. Supposedly with flying, it's like 2 hours. There's a trick. Simply collect treasures and do the bonus zones. The treasures gave like 16k XP each (compared to a quest giving 20k), and the bonus zones gave about 170k. yeah, 170k. That's a ton. That number might be off slightly, but it was a ton of XP. I legit did not do any quests past starting up the garrison. TBH, doing the quests might have actually been faster than doing what I did without a flying mount, since while you quest, you can do the treasures and bonus zones as well. I did some dungeons as well. The issue with that is that there's not that many for levelling (I think 4 for level 4 for max level), and half of them suck. Luckily, with heirloom gear, the ones I got were easy, being Iron Docks and Auchindon. I can only imagine what the train car one is like since WoD was long enough ago that most people have probably forgotten what it was like, or never experienced it.

100-110. Actually, I cheated a bit. Well, not really a cheat. You can go to legion at 98, so that's what I did. Just have to relog to get the quest to pop up, and you better bet that I got out of Warlords asap. Levelling in Legion was way faster than I remember. I did 98-110 in about 7 hours. Heirloom gear goes a long way, though at this point the artifact weapons are stronger than heirloom swords. And, the starter dungeons are super easy, though the only quest in them is the end of zone quest. None of them really take longer than like 10 minutes. That being said, the reward XP for completing them was nerfed. about 100k xp, which was maybe 15% of a level. So, while you could maybe grind dungeons and get a level an hour, it wasn't really faster than doing quests, since with quests, there was also bonus zones, and treasure. Legion is kinda weird in that regards. Everything felt so much easier than the previous expansions. Probably because it is. Rare mobs went from having 40k health in both MoP and WoD, to having 20k health in Legion. Normal mobs too, were much weaker. But at the same time, XP was nerfed out there as well. The bonus zones gave maybe half of what they did in WoD, though it was still worth it to do all of them. The treasures were hit or miss as well. I found a few that gave like 10k, but most of them didn't give anything. Still, 7 hours felt like lightning speed for what was still current content not that long ago, though I guess without heirlooms, it would be about 10-12. With that kind of time, I'm almost tempted to take my warrior through there. Worth noting that I only ended up finishing the vrykul and druid zones. I also got a free level xp for doing the legion invasion, though for whatever reason, I never got the scenario quest for it. Not sure how that triggers, maybe a rep thing, but I still did the 6 WQ which were worth like 80k each.

So now I have another character in BfA, and I do have to ask myself, why? Another melee character. I don't have a definitive answer to that, though some of the reason may be the dislike I have for where shamans are at right now. I don't really enjoy my shaman, though honestly, I'm not that bad with it. I do more damage at my ilvl than my mage did at the same ilvl. It's just... unfulfilling. The rotation is pretty much meaningless, just the mashing of buttons. Overall sims have them as one of the worst classes, depending on what site you look at. Part of me wants to switch to restoration... but they have the same problem, in that they're the weakest healer right now. So mostly I'm just sort of maintaining the shaman until whatever patch comes out and help them, though that is unlikely. Then of course the issue is that my next alt is a monk, which is also leather wearing melee. I could heal or tank with it, but I think my druid is going to be a healer, and my warrior, well, I guess I'll make that a tank at some point, if they get buffed. So maybe the druid is next.

 

You're going to be waiting awhile on that. Apparently, 8.1 is removing taunt's extra threat generation, so Blizzard's vision for tanks seems to be increasing their difficulty.

 

8.1 just seems like what the game should have been released as.

 

I'm... in a weird place right now. See, the first week they removed the cap on M+ (was that last week?), I managed to complete a +8 Motherlode, cause we had an awesome tank and there were lockrocks. Which was great. The problem starts when you have your average dick PuG creator looks up your toon on Raider.io. Effing, I get insta invites for Motherlode now, but almost every other dungeon I have to keep trying for 7-8 groups to finally get an invite. And my own Keystone is a +7 Tol Dagor. Tol Dagor with Fortified, Teeming and Quaking. 2 tanks left mid run. 3 healers left mid run. God damn. Then finally completed a +7 Siege.
Right now, I'm just desperate for a ring drop. Carrying 2 335 rings for forever. :/
On a side note, Siege of Boralus, I think, is my favorite dungeon right now. I can even do +9's on them with a good team. Its more mechanics than damage.

Speaking of damage, I stopped bothering with Azerite Power at level 19. I'm absolutely certain game boredom lies that way.
Doing something like 1 level per week right now and frankly, I'm happy with that. I'm at lvl 22 for AP currently. Which means my damage output is considerably lower than people with similar iLvls, consequently I get kicked out of raids a lot. But I lost that feeling of burnout, which I feel is fully worth it.

And I'm finally starting to lvl my horde alt, now that Artifact knowledge is at a descent level. Oh yeah, right now, the Horde story line definitely feels like it has more depth to it.

 

I honestly cbf with raids. When I'm asked to link achieves for week fucking 2 normal, they can go eat a dick.

Honestly the only thing I need from Uldir is a chest from Mythrax. Everything else is meh.