The Queue: It isn’t Friday (I’m only imagining it)

It can’t possibly be Friday (again). I must be imagining it. I’m just filling in on the Queue for…. someone. Probably. Because it’s definitely not Friday.

There’s a point every patch cycle where you hit a wall, and there’s no more gear that’s within reach of your time, effort, or ability — and as it is, it shall always be. Even with Dragonflight’s extremely speedy content schedule, we’re only going to see one more Dragonflight Season this year, with a raid, a new PVP season, and an updated pool of Mythic+ dungeons. Dragonflight Season 2 is going to mark a big leap forward in gear, but until then pickings are likely to be sparse.

Patch 10.0.7 will have some new gear, though I don’t actually know how good it will be. You can get new Primordial Stones from the  Zskera Vault, which can be socketed into the Onyx Annulet ring that can be upgraded to ilevel 424. The stones have unique effects, so you could get some interesting upgrades there. There should also be new catchup gear… but it won’t outlive anything you already have.

As you’ve said, you can get items through crafting… but also as you’ve said, to get them higher than 405 or so, and thus actually get gear upgrades, you’d need to run higher level content than you’re running. You could run low-level Mythics and upgrade any gear you get with Valor: you get Valor every run, and it doesn’t matter what level it is or whether you beat the timer. This would be slow going to get gear over 409, but it is something you could work at while waiting for the next big content tier.

Unfortunately, I think this is just the cycle. At ilevel 400 I’m near the same place — I do have more I can do with crafting, and there are upgrades I can still get, but at this point they’re all small upgrades. But this is where we are in the cycle. This month we should get a bit to do in 10.0.7, and in about two months I expect we’ll get Dragonflight Season 2 which should offer a plethora of new gearing opportunities.

Until then, we wait, finish out other content goals, level and gear alts, or do anything else we might feel like. We are near the end of this particular gear grind, so at the moment WoW does not have a hold over our time.

Sometimes that’s nice.

This is the realm of inspiration, my friend.

Molten Core.

I didn’t go into Molten Core when it first released — I was behind the curve, and only started shortly before Blackwing Lair released. I recall being in awe of this massive dungeon, packed dangers beyond anything I’d seen in dungeons or the open world. I wasn’t a seasoned raider, and the rest of my guild found my reaction amusing — to them this was old hat, another day ending in Y. To me it was still exciting and new… though it became old hat eventually, and the lengthy runs back, the endless soul shard farming, the endless trash farming for crafting materials… all of it got old after a while. (And that’s not even mentioning the DKP.)

Thinking about it is like stepping into a time machine, back into another life. It was 17 or 18 years ago, and I was a different person. But some things I remember quite clearly. I was a Gnome Demonology Warlock doing big group content in a game for the first time ever. Collecting crummy fire resist gear to survive Ragnaros (and not surviving because I always had trouble jumping the lava). Jumping outside during raid breaks to stock up on Soul Shards. Managing curses and being careful about the number of debuffs I applied (because there was a maximum number back then, and if one too many were there, you could knock sunder off). Fighting with the Mages and the Paladins for a particular int sword, though I don’t recall what it was anymore. Collecting the full Felheart and Nemesis sets and learning the true lesson of the game: fashion improves DPS.

Those were good times, long lost, that won’t come again.

We’re guaranteed to see the patch before the end of the month, and I expect an announcement within a week, possibly two. I’m pinning my hopes on March 14, but I don’t think it will be any later than March 21.

I can’t wait for the patch’s Paladin buffs to go live, and for some reason my raid leader doesn’t want to just take a break from Vault of the Incarnates until the patch launches. So I’ll just have to hope it arrives sooner rather than later.

And that’s all for today, my friends. I hope to see you at the Darkmoon Faire when it comes around on Sunday. Which is, what, a week away? A month? Because today is definitely not Friday. I am eager for those few points of profession knowledge I can pick up, so I’ll be rushing over as soon as I crash into the appropriate date on the calendar.

But until then, have a good not!Friday, a good weekend, and a good week to come. Take care everybody.