Exploring Broken Shore: Patch 7.2. – Day 2

I had a proper game session yesterday to explore all the new interesting things about 7.2. gameplay.

Alt Management

A pair of toons followed Micromantica’s footsteps yesterday. Aurinko the Shadow Priest went as far as doing scenario, opening flight points and doing the artifact quest to unlock further research. Lizgun the Hunter did the first scenario only.

All in all it’s imperative to devote some time to open at least artifact research for my toons. They give you artifact knowledge of 26, which boosts all the AP rewards x4, and further research starts ticking. So in the coming week I’m gonna complete the enter part for every alt.

Meanwhile Micromantica is dedicated to Broken Shore quests. As of Day 2 morning she did every WQ available, and is at 2160/6000 Friendly (maybe a bit more).

The coolest addition to Order Hall missions are Legionfall rep tokens: Aurinko got a mission with a 2-token award which means +500 Legionfall. Too bad they are not account bound, but it would be unfair for players with less toons. If my whole batch of 12 alts started sending their tokens for Micromantica, I’d be there Revered and Exalted much faster than the others.

Your bread and butter are submitting the new Legionfall resources into construction. It gives you 150 rep per submission, and also very nice rewards as a side dish: works like emissary chest. So emissary quests are basically built in here. Either way there’s not many options to collect resources other than WQ awards.

My region is actively building Mage Tower: in the morning it was 17% (while other buildings were 5% and 4%). I guess everyone wants the new weapons appearance, so obviously this is done to unlock weapon trials. I admit the new looks are pretty cool, and I’m craving for the Frost Mage weapon appearance myself.

Questing

Dailies are quite easy and fun. Yet the brand new scaling is a disaster of course. Mobs are overwhelming, and tend to resurrect and attack you in numbers. It’s a disaster for my mage. If you can’t kill a mob quick, which is exactly what Blizzard intended and did, you must be kiting. And kiting in Broken Shore ends up in your death by aggroing more mobs – and respawned ones too.

I was dead and running at least for 5 times during Broken Shore world quests.

The yesterday’s rant and howl all over the WoW-related world wide web is totally justified. My verdict is: NO. I’m pissed off as the others. There were plenty of perfect points, and I agree with all of them. To scrape the surface:

• I’ve earned my right to one-shot enemies in the open because I’ve been to harder challenges like raids and all – and it was never one-shots in most cases;
• I should kill enemies of older WQ quickly because I’ve been struggling with them during leveling – and then during multiple returns for WQ;
• WoW is gear-driven game, and I want my gear to matter otherwise it’s just cosmetic;
• I don’t want to feel like a newcomer from Draenor in green items if I equip The Nighthold’s garments;
• The intention to make me use a whole range of spells in my rotation must not include Conjure Food and eating it after every mob.
• It is freaking unfair to classes. I predict my Demon Hunter, Shaman and Mage will suffer, and suffer a lot, while a tanking Warrior won’t even notice.

Their excuses are just hypocritic, and the real reason is by all means artificially prolonging the playtime. We already have the extra rep runs for faction mounts through the world quests that are tiresome, now let’s make them even more exhausting.

I hope Blizzard listens to the storm of unhappiness and either cancels or seriously nerfs the thing. Meanwhile I just dread to enter Broken Shore with my shaman, and my mage is having some very hard times. It’s like at the start of the expansion when Frost was undertuned, and I was crying and very exhausted with leveling.

I’ve yet to discover multiple things on Broken Shore like: how to get to that floating Legion ship? I’ve found a portal to it near the Illidari flight point, but it was not active for me.

I wonder what was the goblin archaeologist quest I completed. It was marked with a big, big ! on the world map – like it’s a very important plot thing. Yet it was a pleasant stroll, loot and stroll back for a AP item, and it wasn’t a world quest. I didn’t kill anything on the way, and no quests followed. What’s with the big ! sign?

Cathedral of Eternal Night

I joined the guildies for a heroic testing run and to complete Khadgar’s quest. It was pretty fast, the bosses have inventive but understandable mechanics.

The bad thing was that I was dying and dying. Mark you, our tank was good to keep the mobs from us, I was quick to avoid the things I should avoid, I didn’t stand in the fire and all. And I was far from the skirmishes because I was a mage. It’s just some trash abilities hit you because they must, and boom, I’m dead from unavoided stuff – basically one-shots.

My other guildies were dying sometimes too, but not as often – maybe due to armor type (plates and mails).

We wiped only at Mephistroph – but five times. In the middle of encounter he disappears in shadows, and Illidan starts to extract him from there in the middle of the room. Spectres of Mephistroph appear on the sides of the ground, so tank should protect Illidan’s channeling from their projectiles with Aegis, and DPS should kill the spectres.

Our tank tried to catch every projectile, and we were chaotically running and killing every spectre on sight, but somehow they managed to overwhelm us and interrupt Illidan’s cast.

Finally I’ve asked how the Aegis works (I didn’t hold it), and upon learning that it’s invincible, I’ve worked out a piece of tactics. The tank holds the Aegis and doesn’t turn it anywhere – it effectively covers 3/4 of the area, while we concentrate our efforts ONLY on spectres that appear at his unprotected butt, and kill them fast. Then channeling took Illidan very little time, and Mephistroph reappeared and died in seconds. The quest and achievements are ours!

Btw, I was pleased to hear Illidan’s and Maiev’s bickering during the dungeon. It was a sort of dialogues when the tension is at the verge of turning from hate peak to passion. It is obvious they will marry in the end of all – no kidding. But I guess we should defeat Legion first :)

Lore is cool here, so it was definitely worth a run. The rewards are 1000 rep for Khadgar’s quest, but loot was a 845 ring for me. I think it’s single runs on every toon, and I’m done with the dungeon – I don’t run any Mythics, they’re tiresome and boring.

Artifact Weapon Trait Quests

As far as I’ve read, your quests to open extra traits would repeat among classes – much like it was with acquiring artifact weapons. For example, same spots in Tirisfal Glades, Stormheim or Nexus were revisited by different specs and classes.

And yet these were the coolest lore experiences – I’ve even overdosed with lore in September. This time I won’t squeeze all the weapons in one day, no sir! One or two alts in a day is quite enough.

Micromantica ran the quests for all three weapons – they were awesome. Fire sends you to investigate a story of a mage girl who was corrupted by a succubus – first in Dalaran, and then to Azsuna. Frost sends you to find a knight’s corrupted brother – some sort of death cult. Arcane is about accompanying Skovald’s daughter which is claimed to unite Vrykul tribes – obviously happening in Stormheim.

It is interesting how every questline ends up in a cliffhanger: the villain escapes, and you will deal with him/her later. I presume it would happen during the weapon trials when we build the Mage Tower. For now, the Council of Six wants to reward you for your efforts, and they open new traits for you through a spectacular ritual:

Obviously you should do these quests asap after Broken Shore scenario.

I’ve invested in the first extra trait which is a flat 10% bonus to my DPS. There are 4 new traits opened (with an endless Paragon one), and there also appears a 4th level for the previous 3/3 traits.

So much to do!

But please cancel the mob scaling with ilvl :)

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