The Queue: Let’s play Artifact scenario NPCs or worst PUG ever!

It’s not that healer Artifact scenarios are bad. It’s just that the NPCs are bad. So bad. Remember the days when you had to sit in a major city and spam trade with “LF1M LBRS” for hours to find someone, anyone willing to fill that last spot so you could just run a dungeon already? So you would take absolutely anyone who whispered you?

Artifact scenario NPCs are like that. But more on that in a minute.

With Legion just behind us, there are some spoilers in this post — I think they’re pretty minor, but your opinion may differ.

Liz: Healer scenarios are weird, because most of them require you to heal a party of completely incompetent NPCs. In the Mistweaver Monk scenario, Taran Zhu, a Windwalker, insists on tanking. In the Holy Paladin scenario, you are forced to heal a party of one Protection and two to three Retribution Paladins. The Retadins run ahead of the group, run out of line of sight, pull aggro, and generally flail around causing as much annoyance as possible. (At the end of the scenario, when I did it on live, said Retadins ran down a tunnel to the boss while the tank stayed behind waiting for the boss to come out. Which he didn’t, because he was fighting noob Retadins.) It feels like the healing quests have been tuned down a bit since beta, though, which definitely helps. That said, in my experience so far, Holy Paladin has been the easiest and Restoration Druid has been the hardest. I haven’t tried Holy Priest, however.

Mitch: I did the Holy Priest Artifact quest as Shadow.

Liz: Choosing who to level has become really tough, in part because each class has such an interesting story. On top of the artifact quests, everyone has a unique class hall chain — and I don’t know what they’re all like, but I’ve been working my way through the Monk one and I have a lot of feelings about this. Which makes me want to take an alt of each class and level them… but then I’ll never ever get my main leveled. It’s a conundrum.

Mitch: I agree with this sentiment. In Warlords, I leveled alts more because it was easier than ever and I was bored… but that still didn’t happen until a month+ after release. In Legion, I have this growing urge to level all my alts as quickly as possible because I want to see everything the classes’ stories have to offer.

Liz: I want to do every single artifact quest. And the class hall quests… an early Monk quest sends you to Tian Monastery. The Legion has attacked and the ground is just… covered in dead students. Almost everyone you find fighting the Legion is a student. They stayed and fought. They stayed and fought and died. It just kills me.

Mitch: That’s terrifying and great and exactly what I love about Legion’s class quests — they take you out into the world you’ve been in before.

Liz: Mythics arrived right after Legion’s launch, actually, but Mythic+ — which is sort of like Challenge Modes — won’t be playable until September 20. On the 20th, keystones will drop in normal Mythic dungeons that will give you access to Mythic+. Dang, that’s a lot of Mythic-ness. Mythic!

Mitch: What Liz said! But also because I like to contribute: Mythic dungeons seem tuned for a minimal ilvl of 820, but I’d aim for a little higher. Additionally, The Arcway and Court of Stars of Mythic-only dungeons that are also gated behind Nightfallen reputation. They’re both gorgeous, so I’d give them a try if you get the chance and a competent group.

Liz: As long as you’re if you’re level 90+, head to Draenor, get a Garrison, start collecting resources to buy XP potions (you’ll need a level 2 Garrison, though, so you won’t have potions immediately) and start treasure hunting and doing bonus objectives. For treasure, grab HandyNotes and HandyNotes_DraenorTreasures. That addon combo will put treasures on your map so you can jump from treasure to treasure and rack up the XP. Bonus objectives are also very high XP and good stops between treasure jumps. However, this works best if you have flying. Without it, you’ll probably spend too much time running around for treasure hunting, on its own, to really be effective, in which case I’d recommend questing and picking up treasures and bonus objectives near your quest areas.

Mitch: Unfortunately, you missed the best leveling window the game’s ever offered (invasions) but Liz is right — grab that addon and collect treasures. Oh! Actually, if you can afford it, grab a 300% XP potion. If you do all the bonus objectives in Gorgrond *but don’t actually finish them 100%*, pop the XP potion, and then go kill that one mob or whatever is remaining in each, you’ll be able to jump several levels. The prep time can take 30-60 minutes, but it’s worth it when you jump from 94 to 98 or so in less than 15 minutes.

Mitch: They only appear as World Quests only, which is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s nice to not have to do pet battles every single day. Plus, you get several Pet Charms at once. On the other hand, you can’t do them until 110 and there aren’t all that many that will appear in a given day.

Liz: I checked with Anna, who says there are 30 new encounters but you can only ever do 3 a day. And only at 110.