2 Weeks of Legion

Tonight marks the second reset of Legion, and I can so far say I'm really enjoying the expansion. Yesterday, on the Hunting Party Podcast, we were talking about how we might have felt at this point in previous expansions; so just in case I'm looking for this info in the future, I thought I'd jot down some notes on how the expansion has been so far.  For anyone who might stop by this site on occasion for theorycrafting, you may want to skip this post.

Gearing

As of last night, I'm sitting at an item level of 847 equipped, with 848 in my bags. Four of my pieces of gear are crafted, with full 7/7 obliterum upgrades to make them 850 ilvl.  I only have one titanforged mythic piece of gear that is currently 850 ilvl, but, if I understand correctly, will jump up to a higher ilvl after raids open next week. I have several Mythic warforged pieces, and one titanforged heroic piece, which are all at 850 ilvl and will remain so.  Both of my rings are regular mythic, 840 ilvl, and my cloak and one trinket are heroic warforged, but just the boring kind, with the trinket at 830 ilvl and the cloak at 835.  As of writing this, I still have two 825 ilvl relics, and one 840 ilvl relic, which all combine to give me a 862 ilvl artifact weapon.  

Gearing has been relatively easy, so far. Because my main is a leatherworker, I had a much easier time getting into random heroics than what I've heard most people did.  I haven't gotten tons of drops, and have gone through quite a lot of dungeons without getting any drops, but there's been enough, and now with two full clears of all of the Mythic dungeons (except Arcway and Court of Stars, which I only unlocked a few days ago) I'm sitting at a fairly good place, to where if raiding started tomorrow, I could handle it.  That has the fortunate side effect of giving me a week to focus a bit more on alts and professions.  

I got my 19th artifact trait last night, which, if people on internet message boards are to be believed, is actually a little bit behind compared to the more hardcore folk.  It's gotten very slow, even as the artifact knowledge starts to stack up, but I suppose that was to be expected.  

I'm not sure how I'll feel about it later in the expansion, but so far, I really like being able to use crafted gear to fill in for any slot, and being able to have as much as I want.  It also gives me a lot of opportunity to really customize my stats to my liking, and not have to try to find that one piece out of 11 dungeons that has the stat priority I want.  

Dungeons

I've enjoyed a lot of the dungeons so far in legion. Most of what I've enjoyed is the artwork, but a few of the bosses have interesting mechanics.  They still aren't on the level of the 4.1, or 5.0 dungeons, all of which I really enjoyed.  I think these are fairly similar in quality to 4.3. (I hope I'm remembering my patches correctly, 4.3 was dragon soul, right?)

I'm not sure if I missed something, but I hadn't realized they were shifting the difficulty levels of dungeons similarly to how the shifted raid difficulties.  Mythic dungeons feel similar in difficulty to heroic dungeons from MoP or prior.  Really, they might be even easier.  I've only done one mythic dungeon with a random pug, and it was everyone's in the group first time doing that dungeon. I think we wiped to trash once, but otherwise it was fairly uneventful.  A few deaths, but nothing major.  Most likely, folks who were doing mythic dungeons on the first reset are probably the type of player who puts a lot of effort into the game, so it might not be all that comparable to using the dungeon finder in MoP, but I recall wiping a lot to some of those heroic dungeons in the early days.  Same goes for 4.3.  And 4.1 was significantly harder.  

I imagine that's about what they were going for, though.  Heroic dungeons are similar to the old max level normal dungeons, and mythics are the new heroics.  Hopefully the Mythic+ levels will be similar in difficulty to the mythic dungeons from WoD, but with more interesting mechanics, and the higher level mythic+ dungeons will be more similar to the MoP Challenge Mode dungeons.  

World Quests

I'm having trouble imagining World Quests are really going to stay relevant for very long.  I'm already at the point where the vast majority of those I get are repeats, and they're getting quite easy. The only way to keep them difficult for people in mythic dungeon gear or higher, will be to add a lot more group quests, so low ilvl folks can do those with a tank and a healer, and geared folk can do them solo.  Actually, that might be a good idea regardless, as it sounds like healers are not having much fun trying to do the world quests, as killing is really slow for them.  

My favorites so far have all been up on that small island northeast of Stormheim.  There were a few where I had to be very careful with planning out my kiting route, as if I pulled a second mob, I would die fairly quickly.  

This isn't actually a world quest, but I couldn't think of a section to put this bit in.  I've really had a lot of fun trying to farm at the Eye of Azshara.  To be clear, I'm referring to the island south of Dalaran, not inside the dungeon instance.  The mobs there hit really hard, and are fairly packed in, so there are (at this gear level, at least), some pretty tricky fights. Also, pet taunts don't seem to work there. So the black arrow pet does absolutely no good. As BM, your pets can take enough aggro to hold a mob, but for me, with my BM artifact fairly neglected, I just can't put out enough damage as BM to make having a pet tank worth it.  So I'm stuck with MM, and kiting forever, which is always lots of fun, for me.  I haven't gotten any of the rank 3 leatherworking patterns that I'm really looking for to drop, but I have gotten a few enchanting and alchemy rank 3 recipes, which I've been happy to be able to hand over to some guildies.  

Professions and Gold

I'm finding it difficult to tell if I'm doing well with gold making, or if inflation is just going up a lot. So far, I've been making some pretty decent cash from leatherworking. The wrists that are required for the obliterum quest have been selling really well, even though the Leather and Mail versions go for a quarter of what the plate version goes for, but it's still pretty decent stream of gold coming in. And of course, Obliterum is a sold seller at the moment. I keep expecting the price of it to go down, as more people buy up my wrists for the obliterum quest, I keep thinking the market will soon flood with obliterum, but it seems to be at a fairly stable price for the last week or so.  

The biggest money makers for me so far, however, have been BoE drops. For some reason, I've gotten tons of plate BoE drops, including an 850 plate helm, and 845 plate legs, as well as a seemingly endless supply of 825 and 830 BoEs. I had actually been planning on giving the helm to a guildie of mine who hasn't had a lot of time to gear up yet, but I thought I'd try a ridiculous price on the AH, just to see what would happen. There was a similar plate helm up that was only 840 ilvl, and it was listed at 85,000g, so I figured I'd use that as a starting point, and sure enough, a few hours later it had sold.  I have no idea why anyone would pay that much for a helm, when they could have bought 7 obliterum for 35,000g less and upgraded a crafted piece, but I'm not gonna complain about it.  

Unfortunately, on my fairly small server, I haven't been able to find much to spend the gold on.  I'm really hoping I can buy a good trinket, assuming I don't get anything else in mythics this week, but so far there's been nothing on the AH.

Suramar

I love Suramar.  I have no idea how long it will remain relevant, but I've had a lot of fun exploring the city, with both regular quests and world quests. This is by far the best city they've ever created in WoW; I'm not sure if it's the largest or not, but its scope and detail leaves me very impressed. I like that I can either move around very carefully, avoiding the people who pop you out of your disguise, or you can just go through like a wrecking ball. I'm not sure what they've technically done with aggro in Suramar, but it seems like they've greatly reduced the aggro radius, which allows them to have a city that feels like a city, but without making it impossible to play in; though that does require a bit of suspension of disbelief, as I murder people just a few yards away from a guard who doesn't seem to mind. 

Hunter Thoughts

Everyone has been talking about the Barrage change, which I found fairly confusing myself.  From my perspective, Sidewinders is a much bigger problem than Barrage, though they're both fairly harsh in Legion dungeons.  They're both, however, a fairly huge part of doing good DPS, especially in dungeons where AoE is so important. 

Darkbrew made some pretty good points about the "fantasy" of marks hunters. With the current spec, there is no semblance of the precise, long range sniper with deadly accuracy, shooting from the shadows.  Instead we get a Spray and Pray spec.  If any of you haven't seen it yet, either finish your Stormheim story-line quests, or google "Sylvanas and greymane cutscene".  Sylvanas shows the perfect example of what the Marks Hunter fantasy should be: agile and precise. 

While I really loved that cutscene, and the entire Sylvanas story in Stormheim, I would like to point out that they made her shoot backwards, with her bow in the wrong hand, so that they could show her face while she was upside down.  Really should have had her flip to the other side of greymane, but oh well.  Perhaps we can pretend that she's just so good of an archer that she can shoot well with either hand, and neither eye is more dominant than the other.