Just a quick update on my World of Warcraft journey. My subscription has just run out after a month of playing through the new Curse of Ula’tek content and grinding for the latest tier of gear. My thoughts on the patch itself can be found over on Massively if you haven’t read them yet.

This was a bit of an unusual month because for once I actually made a serious effort towards getting high end gear. As I said recently, a lot of what I play these days is dictated by which class’s tier sets I like best, and this season that’s monk and warlock. However, the only monk colour tint I like is the mythic one, and the warlock’s mythic tint is also pretty good (with heroic being my overall favourite). I had gotten a few pieces of myth gear* in previous patch cycles since delves were introduced, but I’d never set out to actively pursue a mythic set before. Could I do it?

Yes, I could.

*(The pedant in my requires I point out you can’t technically get mythic gear from delves, but you can fully upgrade heroic gear, which is equivalent in item level to the lowest mythic items and unlocks mythic colour tints where applicable.)

I haven’t gotten the full mythic set for either character, but I’ve got the main pieces I wanted. I’ll also probably do another month or two of sub at some point before the season ends, during which I can likely get the remaining pieces. My biggest goal was to get the absolutely sick new warlock gloves, and I now have both the heroic and mythic versions of those. Ironically the LFR tint continues to elude me — like I said over on Massively, we’re now in a weird world where the easy mode looks may be the hardest to get.

What the end of a T11 delve with every possible bonus looks like.

I wouldn’t want to make a habit of grinding this hard, but as a temporary thing it was a fun challenge. I’ve pretty much got tier 11 delves on farm now, but as I was gearing up pushing into the higher tiers definitely required some sweating. It’s probably still not as hard as mythic dungeons or raids, but you can’t sleep walk through it, and that’s really all I want from MMO difficulty.

Mostly I think it’s just nice to know this is something I can do if I want to. I’ve paid my dues, I’m a reel tuff WoW guy, or something.

This was the first time in a long time I’ve really had my focus on the warlock. I never stopped playing her, but she’s been more of a side character since Legion gutted the class. In some ways it was nice to give her the spotlight once again, but in others it did remind me why I don’t play warlock as much anymore. There’s nothing in particular wrong with it, but it also doesn’t stand out in any particular way. It’s a pretty generic caster class these days. I wouldn’t necessarily want it to return to the Rube Goldberg complexity it’s had in the past, but it does feel like something is missing considering its history of being a very idiosyncratic class.

It also doesn’t help that casters struggle a bit in delves because there’s so much mobility required. While I’ve tended to favour Destruction since Demonology lost Meta, this time around I’ve mostly been playing Affliction simply because it isn’t as reliant on hard casts.

Literally dancing on Azta’rec’s grave.

I also killed these season’s delve nemesis (on my monk) because I wanted the wings transmog. That was a lot harder than last season’s, entirely because of the memory game mechanic, but I got it done after about half a dozen attempts. I ended up switching to brewmaster and keeping Valeera in heal spec in the hopes I could just eat the damage if I didn’t perfectly execute the memory game.

I was able to survive one missed dodge in brewmaster, but not more than that. On the run I finally completed it, I ended up executing the memory game perfectly, but I think the extra forgiveness of being in tank spec helped me learn the mechanics and calmed my nerves, so I think it was still ultimately worth it.

My other characters were also played, but to a lesser degree. I kind of wish I’d had more time to put toward my paladin as I’m still enjoying that class a lot, but it’s not like I completely dropped her. I even ran a few LFR wings on the death knight. Wasn’t really planning to pick that character back up, but I kept getting warbound plate gear after my paladin was already geared, so… might as well.

No new alts leveled up, but I have been dusting off my old Pandaren hunter for a few timewalking runs. After so many failed attempts to learn to like being a hunter, I don’t think this presages any serious investment in the character; I’m just enjoying fooling around with a race I don’t play much. lol pandas

Also on the Warcraft front, I have of course been playing the new Forsaken Kingdom expansion for Warcraft III, but that deserves a post of its own either here or on Massively (not sure which it will be yet). I have had a lot of other things on my plate both in terms of games and Real Life, and I have also encountered some fairly severe bugs unfortunately, so I haven’t gotten that far into it yet. I can say it’s not all I hoped it would be, but I also can’t be unhappy to have actual new Warcraft III content after so long.