WoW: Battle for Azeroth (8.3)

I kinda expect we are done til august as far as content

Echoes of Ny'alotha currency is indeed live.

Good news: The emissary chests from WQs award 50 tokens.

Bad news: The lvl 3 essences sold by MOTHER in the Chamber of Heart cost 500 each.

Oh, well. Back to grinding (and figuring out how to get more Echoes tokens).

Enix wrote:

Echoes of Ny'alotha currency is indeed live.

Good news: The emissary chests from WQs award 50 tokens.

Bad news: The lvl 3 essences sold by MOTHER in the Chamber of Heart cost 500 each.

Oh, well. Back to grinding (and figuring out how to get more Echoes tokens).

Basically any 8.3 activity. Lesser and Heart Chamber Visions, Invasions, Daily Quests, M+, PVP, Ny'alotha raids (including LFR). Handy for getting Rank 3 Conflict and Strife to my other tanks as I did that once and didn't enjoy it, could not make me do it again. XD

I'm pretty much completely missing any essence that requires pvp you cannot queue fro individually

Demosthenes wrote:
Enix wrote:

Echoes of Ny'alotha currency is indeed live.

Good news: The emissary chests from WQs award 50 tokens.

Bad news: The lvl 3 essences sold by MOTHER in the Chamber of Heart cost 500 each.

Oh, well. Back to grinding (and figuring out how to get more Echoes tokens).

Basically any 8.3 activity. Lesser and Heart Chamber Visions, Invasions, Daily Quests, M+, PVP, Ny'alotha raids (including LFR). Handy for getting Rank 3 Conflict and Strife to my other tanks as I did that once and didn't enjoy it, could not make me do it again. XD

Here's the list (source):

Black Empire Assault – 125 Echoes of Ny’alotha
Aqir/Amathet/Mantid/Mogu Assault – 75 Echoes of Ny’alotha
Horrific Visions – 50 Echoes of Ny’alotha, plus 25 per additional objective completed (i.e. 150 Echoes for a full clear)
Emissary Quest – 50 Echoes of Ny’alotha
Heroic Darkshore Warfront – 75 Echoes of Ny’alotha
Normal/Heroic/Mythic Ny’alotha raid bosses – 15-25 Echoes of Ny’alotha each, once per week per boss
Ny’alotha Raid Finder wings – 25 Echoes of Ny’alotha
Random Battleground wins – 15-25 Echoes of Ny’alotha
Rated Arena wins – 10-25 Echoes of Ny’alotha baseline, scaling up with PvP rank
Rated Battleground wins – 35 Echoes of Ny’alotha baseline, scaling up with PvP rank
Weekly PvP Cache – 175 to 300 Echoes of Ny’alotha, based on PvP rank
Mythic Keystone dungeon end-of-run chest – 3 Echoes of Ny’alotha per Keystone Level (i.e. 30 Echoes of Ny’alotha for a Mythic 10)
Weekly Mythic Keystone Cache – 20 Echoes of Ny’alotha per highest Keystone Level

My choice is to grind out prior content on my alts (Mech, Naz, etc.) or grind out current content on my alts that I'm already grinding out on my main.

My probable solution: Roll another alt!

Yeah, not an ideal solution, but 8.3 stuff does give better gear too so... meh, doing that stuff on a second character isn't that far off from what I'd be doing with an alt anyway. In my case, though, it's weird because I just cannot settle on an alt to play now. My main is Melee DPS and Tanking, my druid was previously my alt because it allowed tanking... but I don't really enjoy the other specs for druid except feral and that's just not really all that competitive... so it's kind of meh.

Maybe I should transform a clothie into an alt, like my priest and do healing and caster DPS with that. Never did get around to getting that Xmog set off Stormsong in Shrine of the Storm.

Not for d3? Boo, Blizzard! Boo!

Anyone else keep getting bugged at the "click two pillars simultaneously to open door" in Stormwind vision? The NPC just wont click one of them. Happened multiple times. Just results in a wasted run.

i had it close back on me, but then clicking the door worked

Shadout wrote:

Anyone else keep getting bugged at the "click two pillars simultaneously to open door" in Stormwind vision? The NPC just wont click one of them. Happened multiple times. Just results in a wasted run.

Had that happen once or twice when she's been stuck in combat with something I skipped past, going back and killing whatever it is seemed to fix it.

Will say this, that experience boost is huge for leveling alts. I went from 81 to 88 in a single playsession last night, finishing Hyjal and then starting on Pandaria. :O Won't be long before I'm in Draenor that gives experience for like EVERYTHING... then Legion where some invasions should clear up at least a level or two... then Kul Tiran will be done for heritage armor, then on to I guess Void Elf as my next highest alt?

Yeah, with timewalking dungeons the leveling speed is nuts. I went from level 111 to 116 in an hour by wearing full heirlooms and running three dungeons. I was tanking, so LFG dungeons popped up pretty instantly, but even on another DPS character, during busy hours on the server it was only taking 15 minutes or less to get in a dungeon.

On my DK with only +15 percent worth of heirlooms, I went from 114 to 116 in about 90 mins last night. Zoooooom.

Yup, with most of the heirlooms (missing a second ring)… I went from 88 to 99 last night over the course of about 2 hours of playtime. Azeroth Auto Pilot, Handy Note for Treasures... and just WoD's hilarious amount of XP are just... bonkers.

Worth noting, as I forgot to mention it... if you're using any kind of waypoint system to help guide you through leveling, Draenor's Garrison does NOT like them, so be ready for some interface errors and a non-functional arrow while within the "phase" section of Shadowmoon Valley/where the Horde start, I forget, for your garrison area. Once you're outside though it pops right back up.

And with my Kul Tiran having been like 80 last week, he's got heritage armor now. That's bonkers. No potions, just my heirlooms. Next up Void Elf, I suppose... then Dark Iron? Not sure I'll get much further than that before the event ends (void elf was 60 when this event started, and Dark Iron, Lightforged, and Mechagnomes are all 20-22).

Has there been any info on the Shadowlands release? Obviously, everything is delayed now but I haven't seen anything.

The only concrete info we have on Shadowlands is the preorder page promises that it will be delivered by December 31, 2020. That's a couple months later than anybody expects it to hit. Or expected. I think we probably won't hear anything unless things get so delayed that it misses that date.

As I understand it, Blizzard has a pretty robust work-from-home infrastructure in place. At least I assume so; I'm extrapolating from tales of folks checking out company laptops to work on the original Starcraft.

If the expansion is delayed, I expect we'll get an early 9.0 release with time to play with the new leveling system and restored abilities, along with the top-tier BFA raid retuned for the new system. They did something similar with the Pandaria > Draenor transition.

I've heard the opposite about Blizzard. That they didnt have any option of working from home before. Due to security concerns. Though I guess it could be different from title to title (was regarding Diablo 4 development).

Supposedly alpha is very close to starting. Which is quite late. Q4 seems like the earliest it could release.

The "delivery before December 31 2020" thing is fairly standard from Blizzard, even if they had planned it to release in the first half of the year, it would still say that.

Vargen wrote:

The only concrete info we have on Shadowlands is the preorder page promises that it will be delivered by December 31, 2020. That's a couple months later than anybody expects it to hit. Or expected. I think we probably won't hear anything unless things get so delayed that it misses that date.

As I understand it, Blizzard has a pretty robust work-from-home infrastructure in place. At least I assume so; I'm extrapolating from tales of folks checking out company laptops to work on the original Starcraft.

If the expansion is delayed, I expect we'll get an early 9.0 release with time to play with the new leveling system and restored abilities, along with the top-tier BFA raid retuned for the new system. They did something similar with the Pandaria > Draenor transition.

Closed Alpha invites are going out this week, according to a blue post on MMO. I have no idea what this means for the release date. My gut feeling says it'll be delayed, mostly because the world has ground to a halt and a little bit because (and I'm way out on a limb here) assuming things are back to normal-ish in the fall there will be a *ton* of stuff (movies, sports, etc) coming out in the fall and maybe Blizzard doesn't want to compete with all that.

Or who knows, right? Blizzard does what Blizzard does. Folks will be tired of BfA by fall, if not already.

A lot of folks are pretty much done with BfA at this point, and folks are basically already doing retrospectives on "which was worse, BfA or WoD?"

For myself, I've still got some mounts missing, etc... and my guild is still working on Heroic, but we're at like 4 bosses left, and Carapace is a joke, so looking at 2 "hard-ish" bosses, 1 easy, and one unknown, as we're doing Vexiona on heroic for the first time tonight (and even then, one of our two hard bosses with Il'gynoth will probably be easier with me back on DPS instead of tanking tonight, hopefully).

But I will say, other than finishing off the raid, I am kind of ready to be out of these zones... and especially looking forward to going somewhere completely different from where we've been for a while now. That and, it sounds stupid, but I can't wait to be out of corrupted gear. Last night, as DPS, I was #1 for every fight we did... and my #1 source of DPS for every single fight was either Infinite Stars or Twilight Devastation. Basically knowing which gear to where when was what caused me to be top DPS, nothing to do with execution after that.

That and dumping some of the BFA systems. As it stands, for my DH, there are 3 pieces of azurite gear that upgrades my 445 shoulders... at 475. And one of those upgrades is a 200 DPS upgrade... and only one that upgrades my 460 helm. Basically all of my remaining upgrades are either tank trinkets, M+ dungeon trinkets, or incredibly lucky rolls on azurite token... then upgrading my cloak more for more corruption... and that last one... yaaaaaaaay, more random procs that give me lots of damage with no real difference in my play. It's so weird to me that we had Blizzard say that class sets were something they wanted to move away from because "locked slots" of gear were bad... so they introduced basically locked items for... basically also 4 slots (3 armor slots and then the neck)… and now we're at 5. So we have MORE locked items now than we did before. XD

Either way, as a lore nerd, going to the Shadowlands, interacting with major NPCs that have been gone for a while or who were only antagonistic towards us sounds super fun... and I am SOOOOO curious about Da Other Side dungeon with Bwon'samdi… and having now gotten to the point where I can 5 mask Visions solo and with my friend, I want to see Torghast and start beating my head against it to go as high as possible.

I need to get flying and unlock mechagnomes, then it's back to leveling alts for transmog, running old raids for mounts, and yeah. Well good thing is I actually like Mechagon, but on the other hand I hate Naz with a burning passion. Midway through honored on Naz and a little over half through revered on Mecha. For those asking why it's so low, i took a break 2 weeks from their release and came back full time a couple weeks ago, though I focused on leveling my void elf (before the xp boost, hit 110 like 2 days before that) and then started mechagon shortly after, and a week or two Naz. Kinda wish I came back earlier, or took a break a little later. I don't like the visions, but -meh- gotta do what you gotta do.

my current long term project is unlocking fox-people. my main is allience, so i'l way behind on horde side, i just got voldunai to the revered yesterday. 21k feels like a long way to go.

on the plus side i did get my void elf from 80 tp 120 in about a day and a half so i got that sweet void armor set.

Demosthenes wrote:

A lot of folks are pretty much done with BfA at this point, and folks are basically already doing retrospectives on "which was worse, BfA or WoD?"

Really? If it's solely a gearing issue, I'll defer to you. I don't raid, so I'm not chasing that particular shiny penny (but I will point out that my main got to ~i450 via WQs and other non-raid means and I'll be damned if I can find better trinkets than the i420 trash he has now).

Otherwise, though, the lore and gameplay have been fine, and I love Boralus. Even the Horde ziggurat is starting to grow on me. Draenor was a real drag, even though it was a gold-making machine at the end.

Enix wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

A lot of folks are pretty much done with BfA at this point, and folks are basically already doing retrospectives on "which was worse, BfA or WoD?"

Really? If it's solely a gearing issue, I'll defer to you. I don't raid, so I'm not chasing that particular shiny penny (but I will point out that my main got to ~i450 via WQs and other non-raid means and I'll be damned if I can find better trinkets than the i420 trash he has now).

Otherwise, though, the lore and gameplay have been fine, and I love Boralus. Even the Horde ziggurat is starting to grow on me. Draenor was a real drag, even though it was a gold-making machine at the end.

Yeah, but a big part of the complaints for BFA do comes down to gearing and "systems". Starting with Azerite Armor basically being a replacement for your artifact weapon... but worse pretty much universally until the last iteration on them... then essences, and spending forever NOT changing those to account wide with half the punishing feeling grinds (hello Blood of the Enemy gated behind something I hate doing) on top of your Azerite pieces... and all of that on top of the usual itemization grinds, but then tossing Corruption gear on top of that plus the cloak systems. The last two raid nights, I was top DPS on every single pull, and a big contributor to that was the RNG of corruption favoring me with an infinite stars item, a Twilight Dev item for AOE pulls/bosses, and a corrupted weapon with Gushing Wounds. On every single one of those pulls, my top 3 sources of damage were Infinite Stars, Gushing Wounds, and my Breath of the Dying azurite trait procs... that's not even really all that rewarding to pull off. :\ I could have button mashed with good uptime and still being in the top half of my raid just based on those.

Well, today was one heck of a day, but I don't see any new thread up yet for Shadowlands, so sticking this in here for now...

Well it started (actually yesterday, but late) with a blog post from Ion about Alpha testing for Shadowlands, which will start this week... so if anyone's opted in, keep an eye on your mailboxes. I may or may not be checking my email more now than I did during my job search after Spectrum closed my office...

Blog Post: Shadowlands Developer Update

And reading through this makes me thing, we may or may not get this before the end of the year. I hope we do because good lord will it be sad still doing Ny'alotha in December, but... ya know... it does sound like they're either a bit more committed on quality, or they've got some decent project management going on and know what they're testing when, and hopefully, based on how it reads, not waiting until the last second for a core expansion feature like Azerite Armor was supposed to be. Torghast being in early is exciting for me as that's the thing I really want to try.

Upcoming Class Updates/Changes for Shadowlands

Have to say, I'm a big fan of the DH Changes. Immolation Aura's been basically the default all expansion for Havoc, so just having that baseline will be nice, and frees up a slot to do something a little different there. And having basically the ability to do a Demonic Build for Vengeance as well? Bonus awesomeness.

First Lore Page for a Covenant is up too: Bastion and the Kyrian

Look cool, but not really my aesthetic, and I feel like being a Kyrian DH would be weird.

And finally (though this was put up first)...

An Overview of the abilities granted to each class by choosing each Covenant (Keeping in mind, plenty of gaps here still)

Well, I was already kind of leaning Venthyr for my DH anyway... but Sinful Brand looks super awesome for tanking (as the only of the 3 known ones providing an actual CD... and technically TWO CDs by making Meta more than just a health and regen boost)... and even if the numbers for DPS aren't the best, having a CD for another tank isn't exactly bad either, especially when I'm DPS in like a dungeon or something *shrug*

A lot of the Monk changes boil down to "that could be really sweet, but it also looks really easy to screw up." Like, technically the tank and dps specs will both get to choose between 2-handed weapons and dual-wielding, but unless they get the math exactly right there's only going to be one correct option there. Touch of Death reads like an interesting ability, but unless the encounters are designed around it the special procs are either going to be wasted at the end of combat or just plain never happen because a group content boss is only a valid target for ToD for about a quarter of a second. I think they should just leave it as a button that makes you feel powerful while out questing and is otherwise ignored.

Resto Druid is getting the old Swiftmend back. I always liked the gameplay of it consuming HOTs, so that's nice. Feral isn't getting much except another way to snapshot buff one of your main bleed effects...

Enhancement Shaman is getting some totems and Shocks back. Oh good. I used to really like that spec because it was a nice blend of melee and caster. The Legion changes stripped out most of the spells that felt like spells, but it looks like they're back in the rotation.

I'm glad Hunter isn't changing much. I've bounced off the class several times over the years, but I just leveled a Mag'har Hunter and have really enjoyed it.

Mage changes look good. Baseline mirror images!

I've been a hunter main since burning crusade, and beats mastry for the last two xpacs and am really happy with where it is, the changes here seem good tweaks without altering what i like about the spec.

Ret and Holy pal won't look all that much different in SL. Which is fine by me. Both seem to be in a pretty good place overall, gameplay-wise.

Disc priest has some interesting stuff going on. Glad to see they're getting some more actual heals.