First few days spamming legion dungeons leveling to 20 on priest and DK. Snagged both an Heart of Azeroth neck and I had nearly a full set of the ilvl44 legion dungeon armor filled in with Shattrath gear only to log in the next day and see everything was back to 25 and/or red. I was out some gold for buying the Shattrath pieces but biggest loss was missing the sockets on artifact weapons.
After that change went through I decided to grab Heart of Azeroth on the rest of my toons, which involved pushing another DK through the starting zone and two demon hunters to balance both factions. I was multiboxing through the BFA dungeons to grab Azurite pieces to trade to alts, and had most of the bosses down to a science with a few others proving more difficult for my team comp (
@Childishgankino witnessed "acceptable" losses in Atal'Dazar). After a day or two of this I had completed the HoA quest on 24 toons, each class on both factions.
Anticipating nerfs, I decided to level everyone to 20 while the neck was still active, so I assembled my multi-box teams to grind levels 10-20 through Hellfire Ramparts on repeat. I think I had something like 14 characters done when they finally hit the necklace. The absence of the necklace didn't cause too much of a problem and I completed leveling the rest of my toons over the course of a day or two. During this time I created a full set garrisons and also collected Pandaria, Northrend and BFA engineering on everyone.
Now that everyone was 20, and still anticipating nerfs, I decided to check if the azurite gear was still obtainable. Starting with Alliance , I run through the quest line for shoulders on my priest. About an hour later, I had my shoulders, no active traits but stats that would be considered BiS for that moment. Fast forward and I have 12 alliance toons with Azurite shoulders. By the end of it I had the entire quest line down to about 35 minutes. I followed that with the helm quest which took longer, but nonetheless I was able to persevere and complete my scroll gathering on everyone.
The Horde experience mostly mirrors the methods I used with Alliance, perhaps taking 20 minutes longer per toon. I had to race the server reset on Tuesday to complete my last toons which added a fun time crunch element. Goblin Gliders saved me a ton of time as I could get from quest hub to quest hub without having to collect flight paths beforehand. When I saw the yellow "Server Shutdown" notice go out as I was gliding to the last quest hub, I got a nice little jab of adrenaline. Finished with like 8 minutes left on the clock, a job well done.
Logging in the next day, Azurite pieces were all still there so I had to decide what I would do next. Figuring the Legion Pillars of Creation were likely to get the nerf bat (I was thinking by Thursday like they did with HoA the week previous), I decided to hold off and instead assembled yet a few more boosting teams at Hellfire Ramparts, this time with the idea that I'd level a toon with each armor type on my 2nd paid account to accompany my vet through TBC dungeons in order to trade desirable gear drops. So another round of level grinding and I've got cloth, mail, leather and plate alts at level 20 on both factions, all capable of trading gear to my main account.
At this point its the weekend, I still see Pillars hasn't been touched, but rather than jump into that I decide to kit out all my horde toons with their artifact weapons and complete all classes and all specs in a day or two, at the end of which I learn that the Wintergrasp vendor is selling BoA pieces that scale to ilvl45. Thinking it might be the answer to the ilvl49 artifacts that I missed, I pool together all my marks of honor and haul my level 50 over to Wintergrasp and start to purchase en masse.
I had multiple copies of weapons on each toon to allow for gear swaps and whatnot, and while I hadn't completely shot my bankroll of marks, I had taken in enough BoA weapon pieces to equip everyone and a few trinkets on classes that would potentially use them. From there I ground out a few dozen Strathholm live-side runs on a 50 to juice up my shiny new BoA's with Crusader. Slapped those puppies on my Horde warrior and I was ready to rock.
So it's Monday and now that I've got these BoA's in hand, I'm not keen to do all the artifact weapons on my Alliance toons. I decide to take a look at the Pillars questlines with the Horde warrior. Running through mobs like they're not even there, double crusader whirl-winding my way to victory, I had instance groups exclaim "Fury warriors are OP". I even managed to solo Eye of Azshara. I finished the Pillars and casually make my way over to WoD to check out the WoD rare scene.
I don't like waiting for spawns. Never have, never will. I've spent a lot of time in this game and over the course of BFA I made a full arsenal of low population RP realm-hopping toons to assist in that matter. Don't see a spawn? Load up a hopper and boom, there's Hoarfrost right in-front of me. No Demidos? No problem! I scouted these spawns, set up my realm hops, bagged a few pieces of ilvl44 and decided to start Pillars on the Horde mage.
I might have been halfway through the Pillars on the mage when the news came over the wire:
"Policy Update for Input Broadcasting Software"
This one hurts, not gonna lie. Even before knowing about the upcoming nerf to Pillars and WoD rares, multi-boxing was going to be a crucial part of my TBC gearing strategy. RNG is a bitch as it is, but now I'm looking at random LFG people that don't know mechanics and long queue times. I know I can group with you fine lads, but being able to instantly load up a 5 man team any time of day to grind through these TBC dungeons and trade items to myself would have been clutch for gearing my DPS classes relatively quickly. ISBoxer software still had like 15 months on the subscription so I'm out roughly $75 USD. I can put a positive spin on it, I did manage to level all my vets already so at least they won't be able to take that from me.
Forward thinking, I decide to get the Steady Talasite recipe. Burning Crusade, Nagrand..Halaa. Easy enough to attain on a 50 alt, just takes a bit of time to get the requisite items off random mobs in the zone. Time to skill up JC to 50. Oh wait, I need skill 25 jewel crafting to prospect ore to get the gems to begin crafting? I cursed the shitty game design as I hit the auction house, which was very slim on jewels to get to that 25 skill. Make it to 23, out of gems. BIG F. Log for the night. Next morning I luck out and get a few more gems from the auction house, skill to 25 and start prospecting. 1000+ Adamantite ore later and I have prospected 6 talasite gems. Six. This RNG is a killer boys.
From there I finished Pillars on my mage and made it 3/4 of the way through my horde druid which takes us to the PTR news update where we learn Pillars will no longer have the prestige, nor will the WoD rares be useable. Slightly dejected, I think to myself "OK, less repetitive questing, not entirely terrible. I can swap to my TBC gem strategy, that'll be fine."
I spent most of last night soloing Sethekk Halls on my Warrior trying to snag a set of the two hander from the last boss, I'm maybe 20 runs in and have one axe in the bag when the BoA nerf comes through. Post-nerf I can still cruise through it, although I do need to pop drums to finish off the last boss.
TLDR: Lotta twists and turns to this pre-patch for me and I won't be surprised if we see more changes down the line.
It's a journey, not a destination. Enjoy it while it lasts.
