It’s all about context…
At the time of writing we are about 6 weeks into patch 7.2, and so far there’s been very little content.
Due to the gating of the storyline leading up to the release of Tomb of Sargeras in mid to late June, people have been complaining that “WoW’s Biggest Patch Ever!” has next to nothing in it.
And whilst there was some content released off the bat with 7.2, like the Broken Shore stuff and Legionfall Rep to grind, artifact challenges to conquer and of course flying to unlock, so far the story has been meted out in very drip-drip fashion.
More so for Horde players who miss out entirely on the recent storyline where you retrieve the locket Varian dropped in the Legion cinematic and return it to his son, Anduin.
But the lack of storyline, or mandatory content for me is something that is very much welcome!
Unlocking the new artifact traits only takes about 30 minutes or so, but beyond that the necessary content starts to fade into the background very swiftly. The rapid rise in AP required for new traits past trait 36 or so mean that realistically you’ll be waiting for Artifact Knowledge level 30 and over on alts in order to be able to pick up enough AP for new traits in a reasonable time-scale.
On my Druid I have both my Balance and Resto weapons loaded with over 40 traits (43/41 respectively), and the gains in AP required for more than this at AK 32 are pretty grindy, so I think, like most players and like Blizzard I think intended, I’ll just let the further acquisition of traits fade into the natural collection of AP now, so no more World Quest/Dungeon grinding specifically for AP to acquire new traits.
This means of course, with the AP grind falling back into a natural collection status, and with a lack of any other “mandatory” content needing done in order to keep abreast of raiding character progress, I can spend a bit of time with my growing army of alts.
Prime example being this recent bank holiday weekend I was able to spend the 3 days with my Alliance Demon Hunter, pictured throughout this post. I picked her up again at level 103 during the week, got her to 106 by mid-week, then over the weekend:
Got her from 106 to 110.
Geared her from ilevel 792 where levelling finished off, to ilevel 868 and ready for normal mode Nighthold.
Then finally, completed the Demon Hunter Order Hall campaign and unlocked the 3rd Artifact relic slot and DH title, .
I’ll do an individual post on the Vengeance DH, but suffice it to say I’m loving how it plays so far.
Havoc less so, but that’s for the other post for more detail…
Back to 7.2 in general, and this for me is the much needed pause in the avalanche of content Blizzard has released in Legion. Typical Blizzard though, absolute 180 on the content schedule we saw in Warlords, and as per usual, Blizzard lack any self-moderation in response to previous issues, which has seen them go whole hog in the opposite direction to Warlord’s content drought.
So for me, this chance to take a breath and take stock of alts, and get round to putting some serious time in on them is a very welcome opportunity. It’s given me a chance to level and gear my Demon Hunter, complete her Order Hall campaign, and discover how enjoyable Vengeance is as a spec.
It will also give me the chance to level an alt Horde-side. After moving my main character Alliance side, I was left with no max level Horde characters at this point in an expansion for the first time in 8 years since I came back to the game. I’m still deciding if it’ll be my Hunter or Priest, but Hunter’s looking like a likely bet at the moment.
