Sunday Post: Presented Without Comment
stargrace 
August 2016
I Take Back my Take Back..
Invasions are useless for alts.. Invasions are great for alts! Invasions are not worth the time / effort for alts.. Invasions are once again great for alts!
That’s what this week has been like in World of Warcraft. I know, two days ago I JUST made a post about how I was tired of the grind and felt that I could level up faster other ways – and then Blizzard saw that post and was like “Woah, we just can’t have that.” So they tweaked things, again, and now I finally feel as though they are at a comfortable level.
Lets see, people who want to AFK for loot and don’t need the xp – can. Lowbies who want the xp to get to 100 before Legion – can. It honestly seems like win-win. There’s no reason NOT to have people pushing for level 100 when you’re going to want to sell them on that expansion to begin with.
Last night I started off tentatively playing my level 94 warlock. I did a total of four invasions (not rounds of invasions, just complete events) and I reached 100. That’s with rest experience and full heirloom. The trick? Participation. You get a LOT of experience for the larger named, bosses, and mini bosses. Hit as much as you can, try not to die during the named fights, and you’ll be sailing through the levels. Unfortunately she also didn’t earn enough boxes to gear out very well but that’s alright.
After my warlock was ‘finished’ I decided to keep the leveling going (especially because you never know when these things will be reverted, again) and pulled out my trusty level 91 paladin. Four invasions later, she’s at a comfortable level 96. I burned through the rest experience I had pretty fast, but even “regular” experience makes it worth it.
After the paladin, I have the 91 death knight (horde). After THAT, I have the 34 priest. Will they all reach 100? I’m not sure. Will I try? Probably. I don’t have much more going on this weekend since it’s going to be incredibly hot, and Friday was a complete bust as far as “life” goes, so I plan on taking it easy and indulging in some gaming. Am I tired of invasions? Not quite yet. I’ll get there, I know, but for now because of their natural fast pace, they’re OK. It helps that the rewards are so grand, whether it’s experience or gear.
Are you taking advantage of the experience this weekend? Let me know in comments!
That’s a Lot of Money Sinks
Back when garrisons actually provided money I barely noticed just how expensive it was to upgrade my buildings to a functional T3 state. Now that there’s no real “easy” way to earn the same amount of money I used to be making, I’m finding things a lot more complicated. A few of the “essentials” I’ve wanted to get for my monk include her T3 town hall (at least, because you can’t get the introduction quests to Tanaan Jungle or Shipyards without it) which is 5,000 gold to start. Then there’s also faster flying, which is another 5,000 gold if you don’t have the faction, and 3,000 gold at its cheapest. That doesn’t include the cost of upgrading any of the smaller buildings or medium buildings in your garrison, or working on your professions (if you decide to purchase materials instead of farming them) or any new and fun things you may want to purchase.
Alts are expensive.
If I count up how many of my characters have a T3 hall, plus flying, and other extra expenses.. it’s pretty easy to see where all my money has gone. Not to mention I spent about 100,000 gold so far on upgrading my heirloom pieces so they work to 100 (and I’m not nearly done that project yet). I’m hoping that Legion has another good way of making some coin, or that things won’t be quite as expensive. As it is, the best thing I can do right now is to hold off on trying to get all characters all the things.. and maybe watch my spending a little bit.
Enjoying “New” Classes
As I mentioned in my last post, I boosted the monk to 90 back when WoD was released, and then I leveled her to 91 and never touched her until invasions started and Legion was just around the corner. I’ve always wanted to play a monk but I found them very intimidating, with a LOT of skills on my hotbars and no idea what any of them did.
Then the update that condensed almost every class out there came out. While some of my characters have fallen by the wayside, others that I had previously pushed away started looking more appealing. The monk falls heavily under this category.
I started out by playing windwalker. Used Icy-Veins to set up a rotation and got myself to level 100 with invasions, then decided I wanted to try out a few raids. I didn’t feel like raiding as DPS though, so I swapped over to mistweaver and organized my rotation for that, too. A handful of raids later I realized I was really enjoying the class now. A lot. With a few minor frustrations tossed in that have nothing to do with the class. One of those issues is that the felshroud gear (in specific, the chest piece) doesn’t swap stats like all of my other pieces. It remains an agility vest, and even when I’m in heal spec and open new chests, the subsequent vests are all also agility.
Right now I’m wearing a mixture of agi / int gear, and I’m still enjoying myself a huge amount but I know I could be doing better as a healer if I was wearing a full set of int gear. Right now that consists of chest, neck, weapon, 1 trinket, and 1 ring. One of the reasons I love to queue as a healer is because of those WoD goodie bags you get which includes 500+ gold and is how I’ve been earning coin since the garrison nerf. The gear isn’t that great of an upgrade any more, but can fill in my missing int pieces, and sometimes you’ll get lucky with a titanforge or warforged piece.
One thing I will say is that monks are very heavy on mana. It’s actually nice to have to manage it, my other healer classes feel as though they have unlimited mana. I am enjoying monk a LOT more than my holy paladin, and I’d say on par with my druid. My holy priest is still my favourite, but since I’ve been playing horde instead of alliance, I’ve been taking a bit of a break. Any classes out there that you’re suddenly enjoying that you never have before? Let me know in comments!
I Take it Back
If you recall, yesterday’s post was all about giving my alts a chance, using Invasions to help level them up, and potentially getting both my monk and my deathknight to 100 before Legion comes out. Why are they not already level 100? Well playing on three different servers means my game time is sort of spread all over the place. Plus, nomadic gamer that I am, I don’t usually stick to just one game (I have been lately, which is a bit of an anomaly). Anyway.
That was yesterday, and this is today. The day after the update that turned invasions from something fun and casual into a whole lot of grind work. Yesterday there was an update that changed invasions from a 4h timer to a 2h timer, and increased how many at once there were (from two to three). Basically this means you get slightly more experience per hour – but you have to do a LOT more work. It took me 6 invasions to get the same experience as 2, previously. Since it’s in the same time span (4h) it wasn’t exactly a “nerf” to experience so much as a surefire way to get me to become utterly bored of running them.
Run them I did. My monk was level 96 when the changes came into play. I did all 3 invasions every 2 hours with about an hour break between each round. I noticed not as many people were completing them, and they were taking longer to finish than they were previously. By the end of the night (around 10pm or so) I had 56+ legion chests to open, and had earned around 800 nethershards. My monk was sitting at a comfortable level 100, with an ilevel of 702. I did the opening scenarios to finally get all caught up on that, and spent a bit of time playing around with the various monk specs. My monk was boosted when WoD released, and though I’ve always wanted to play one I never actually got around to it (go figure). It’s nice to have one at level 100 now even if it took me some time.
With the changes to the invasions I don’t see myself leveling up the deathknight in the same way. It was a long grind, and I would have more fun questing or running dungeons or finding some other method of getting to 100 and I’m pretty sure it would have been quicker to quest (I’ve got full heirloom and had rested experience) too. I understand why the change was made, but I wish I had of taken advantage of it for a few more days.
My monk looks adorable in her fel gear, I really love the graphic. Now I just need to figure out what to do with all of these nethershards. I already own all of the appearance sets along with the pet. I guess I could just buy some gear to sell to vendor for a bit of coin. We’ll see I suppose.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!