Called it. So the bloom fell off the rose when I discovered that the very final Jaina mission, the Siege of Boralus, was a mythic-only dungeon you can't queue for. SERIOUSLY, BLIZZARD? Gating story content behind MYTHIC dungeons---whargarbl. Fine. I figured "How bad could it be?" and spent about 30 minutes in LFG finding other kindred souls who just wanted the stupid thing done for the story.
The long and the short of it was we wound up with a skilled healer, an incredible tank who took the time to explain what he was doing and why, and a couple of other DPS who .. well, tried really hard and were nice people who cared enough to watch strat videos on the fights beforehand.
All things being equal, the boss fights were actually quite enjoyable and the map was really fun. I took one death because of not fully understanding the first boss' fight mechanics, but after a battle rez, I quickly clued in on what to do (drag boss into bombs when he fixates on you) and how to do it (run to the other side of the bomb, not through it). To our credit, although we lost people in every fight, we never wiped. I tell you, I have never seen people gush at the end of a dungeon run like that. Best of all, I got to put the Jaina plot to rest.
I'm now revered with all of the factions except the Tortilla Seekers (yes, I know that's not the turtle faction's actual name but now it is the only thing I see), which allowed me to finish off the artifact necklace upgrades (which itself is now level 30) and finish the rest of the "war campaign" story… which wrapped up all of the current available content, sort of. Technically I still need revered with that last faction for the Pathfinder achievement and getting exalted with 7th Legion gives me access to another race of dwarves I will never play. As an aside, I wish I had known about the Contracts a few days earlier-- Inscriptionists can make "Contracts" that give a week-long buff that gives a bonus 10 rep for a specific faction per world quest completed. You can get them on the AH for under 100g, so that's nice.
I dropped inscription, which I had just picked up for Legion, and went back to my old reliable skinning. A few minutes yields hundreds of gold worth of materials and that gets me by. All told, after wasting about 30k on very short-term gear upgrades and another 6k on pets, I have a bank full of enchanting materials and have broken even on gold.
So, with BfA effectively "done", I can say that they seriously phoned it in this expansion. I enjoyed the ride, but there's nothing they didn't do better in previous expansions and certain changes with professions just seem petty. Example: They removed First Aid skill from the game, although tailors can still make bandages. Fishing goes from 1-150, but there's no difference between any of it. No related achievements; the fish from pools can be caught consistently without pools. There's no real 'trash fish' and even if you catch gray junk it is 3+ gold a cast. I'm just disappointed, really, at the total lack of effort.
Looking at the 8.1 preview, I'm hopeful. Well, not for fishing, of course, but I'm looking to see where they go with the story. In the meantime I have two months left on the sub, so I'm achievement hunting and solo clearing old 25-man heroic raids for transmog skins.
Skimming over some of my older posts, here's a couple of things I got wrong:
- The amazing world quest map layouts and buttons to auto-join groups isn't part of the base game. It's an AddOn called "World Quest Tracker" and I highly recommend it.
- With Warfronts doesn't matter who wins...it may be like a pve tol barad, but it will ALWAYS switch sides. If your side holds the zone, you get to farm it for stuff for a week. After a few days, the other side contributes enough raw materials to "fight for it", where they can play the mini-game for a few days then control it for a week.
Quite finally, I broke down and joined a guild just because I liked their name: "Heathens Aplenty". They are doing heroic raiding-- maybe I'll see about tagging along for one of those rides.
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