The Queue: Just the right amount

What? It’s not like I didn’t warn you guys!

Now let’s get to the remaining seven questions.

It’s probably dangerous to generalize here, but my guess is that people looking to join a PUG are doing so because they want a less commitment-heavy way of experiencing the content. A PUG is nice because you typically don’t have to do anything “serious” to complete a run and get nice gear. The second you make something mandatory, you’re taking the casualness out of the run.

Granted, sometimes hardcore players will join Normal PUGs because they want set bonuses or legendaries or something else. At this end of the spectrum, my guess is they’re likely looking to get things done fast and easy, and don’t really feel like joining Discord to do things they don’t already know how to do.

Honestly, everyone has their own reasons, but a Normal raid sort of falls into that middle-ground between “frustrating LFR” and “hardcore Heroic” — the expectations from Normal PUG-ers can range just as much as the expectations do between LFR and Heroic.

Mitch, because its dad doesn’t want it.

… :'(

I really like it so far. I’d probably give it an 8 right now. The raid design is gorgeous — oh my god, the Sisters of the Moon encounter — but can at times be pretty confusing to navigate. The only complaint I have about the fights is maybe with Goroth, which is primarily a DPS check — and even then, it’s hard to fault Blizzard for putting a basic fight first…especially knowing they’re capable of producing Hellfire Assault as an introductory fight. Ugh.

Could it have more lore figures we’ve previously heard of? Maybe. But between Kil’Jaeden, the Avatar of Sargeras, and the Sisters of the Moon, I’m not exactly complaining.

We have a post outlining all the Necromancer goods and more, but the TL;DR is that you need Reaper of Souls to buy the Necromancer pack, alongside patch 2.6.0 which the game will automatically update to during maintenance. If you don’t by the Necromancer pack, you get patch 2.6.0’s content, which includes Challenge Rifts and three new zones, plus a few miscellaneous changes here and there.

Yes! It’s been a while since I’ve played any Diablo — and, frankly, I’m not sure how much time I’ll realistically have for it — but the Necromancer is exactly my sort of aesthetic and I’m excited to hop back into the game with a class that really feels right.

I don’t think I’m as enthusiastic about them as you are. I appreciate that Emissaries only require four World Quests at most, because it means I don’t have to spend too long for a daily chance at a legendary, but otherwise, I kind of skip World Quests.

{PB} My main has Concordance — which means more Artifact Power is impossible to cap and only marginally useful at best — I have more Resources than I know what to do with, and unless a piece of gear has a high enough base item level, it doesn’t feel worth the time to hope it’ll Titanforge to something stupidly high.

As for alts? Once you hit Artifact Knowledge 40 on one character, you’ve essentially hit it on all your characters. In that case, it’s no time at all to get to 40-some traits. I may stockpile Order-Resource-granting follower gear and chain a bunch of WQs to quickly earn a lot of Order Resources, but that only lasts so long anyhow.

So yeah, I’m not super enthusiastic about them — and Paragon rewards are a bit of a double-edged sword, since I feel like I’m missing out on mount rewards now that I’m tired of doing them — but at the same time, I guess that means the whole “play the way you want” approach Blizzard has taken in Legion is more or less working.

Like I said last week, it seems like we could be ending the expansion at item level 1,000. I have no idea what Blizzard will do — or if this would even work — but this seems like a good idea to introduce a new system for item levels.

Imagine, for a second, everything above 1,000 has some sort of label (“Paragon,” “Exceptional,” “Super Rad,” and so on). Next to the label? An item level — starting at 1. For example, “Paragon Item Level 1” instead of the plain ol’ “Item Level 1,001.”

This would essentially allow Blizzard to scale everything from 110 onward back at item level 1, without worrying as much about needing to jump item levels as much with each player level or raid tier. We’d, in effect, be back to Vanilla scaling without actually needing to change previous item levels. I don’t know if that actually addresses what you said or not, but I think once we pass item level 1,000, things are going to start looking ridiculous, and Blizzard should do something about that without b0rking over the older content.

That’s (really) it for today’s Queue! Tune in next week for a totally freedom-themed Queue to celebrate America Day unless I totally forget and then you’ll probably just get a normal Mitch Queue — and really, isn’t that great in and of itself?