2016

That’s a Lot of Money Sinks

stargrace August 19, 2016 0Comment

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

stargrace August 18, 2016 2Comments

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

stargrace August 17, 2016 1Comment

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!

Giving Alts a Chance

stargrace August 16, 2016 0Comment

Invasions. That’s pretty much all I’ve been doing in World of Warcraft these days, but for one very good reason. You may remember (but probably don’t remember / don’t really care) that I already have 5 level 100 characters. Needless to say, that meant that I’ve been VERY reluctant to go through 85-100 content again. As it turns out, invasions are a great way to level up your alts, so long as you don’t mind the wait between invasions. Right now (I believe) they’re still occurring every 4 hours, with people on my server (Area 52 at the moment) saying they’ll be increasing to every hour. I have two level 91 characters, a monk and a DK and I’d love to see them reach 100 before Legion hits, and since I can’t afford to boost them, invasions are the next best thing. I get 1.5 levels for every 2 invasions. My monk is already sitting at level 94 after my foray into 6 invasions (basically 3 sets) yesterday and this morning. It’s not a lot of work, you get neat chests you can open at 100, and I don’t have to quest grind through content. It does mean that by the time Legion rolls around I’ll just be running through that content a bunch of times to level up alts, but because invasions are a time sensitive thing, it makes sense to do them now.

Belghast brought up a good point about Blizzard wanting people to use these invasions for their alts to help them level up. The more people who are 100 and doing Legion content or ready for Legion content, the better. It also gives people more incentive to purchase Legion if they hadn’t yet. I do find that invasions are “cheating” a bit when it comes to experience. I don’t even have to hit anything between the phases in order to level up or to get the chests, I can just sit around and soak it all in. Of course you do earn extra nethershards if you choose to actually go out and attack the encounters, but it’s not required. I believe I should be able to reach level 100 on my monk before Legion without too much issue, whether or not I manage to tough out enough invasions to level anyone else up is yet to be seen. I’m thinking perhaps the DK, but it will depend on whether or not I can stomach more invasions.

If you’re attempting to level up lowbie characters through this method my advice is to run as many LFG dungeons as you can until you reach level 60 and then go purchase flying for 250g. You’ll be able to make your way through Azeroth much easier that way, especially if you haven’t unlocked many flight paths and don’t want to run all across the continents.

The break between invasions is also a nice cool down period. You don’t feel like you’ve been gaming the entire time (because you haven’t been) and you have space to do other things. It may take a bit of time (I’m looking at 14+ invasions to reach level 100 from 93) but over all it still feels like less “grind” to me.

Thoughts? Let me know in comments!