Soloer extraordinaire Mione is leaving WoW

Mione has been famous, or infamous depending on who you ask, in the WoW community for a long while now. She’s been behind some feats of soloing most thought impossible, like Mythic+15 Cathedral of Eternal Night, or clearing both Helya and Gul’dan on normal during Legion itself. It used to be that you never heard of raid bosses being solo’d during the expansion they debuted in, but Mione has done it more than once. Her solo of Garrosh Hellscream the week before Warlords of Draenor launched, for example — that’s still one of my favorites.

But all good things come to an end, and that’s the case for Mione and her habit, bordering on obsession, for soloing group content in World of Warcraft. She’s announced that she’s no longer playing the game, which means that we’re going to have to wait for someone else to solo all the dungeons and raids of Battle for Azeroth. The folks over at Icy Veins did a departure interview with her, discussing her likes and dislikes in terms of the game, why she’s leaving now, and what she enjoyed about soloing in the first place.

One of the points Mione made is that the game’s various catch-up mechanics, allowing players to essentially skip whole tiers of raiding, created a power creep that made soloing easier and thus less interesting to her as time went on. Her solos of Helya and Gul’dan and the Mythic+ clears she pulled off in Legion were in part due to this factor. At one time, soloing any current raid boss during an expansion was a far more difficult feat.

However, the game instituted mechanics that let players get up close to the gear needed for the most current raid. This move essentially rendered older raids obsolete. Now, there are good reasons for those catch up mechanics. As a player who ran content back in the old days, let me tell you, nobody wanted to go back to Serpentshrine Cavern to get that new recruit attuned to Hyjal and Black Temple, much less geared enough to contribute.

It’s also interesting to see her thoughts on her favorite soloing classes. Like a lot of DK’s I know, Mione switched to Demon Hunter because of the changes to Death Knights. But she mentioned the old Wrath of the Lich King Death Knight design as her all time favorite, and I have to say I agree. I’ve always been sad that Blizzard backed away from their decision to allow Death Knights to tank in any spec. I loved having separate Frost and Blood tanking specs that I used for specific situations, and I knew a ton of Unholy DK tanks when we were pushing Ulduar.

If you want to see Mione’s thoughts about which bosses were her best achievements, why soloing changed over expansions, or why she’s giving up her title as WoW’s premier solo player, head over to Icy Veins for the full interview.