2020 still feels very timewarpy, in that it feels like it was a long time since the last time I wrote one of these, but hey! It’s only been seven days, so here is a hype train!
Horrific Visions: I’m gonna claim a tiny bit of credit for the changes to currency for HVs being announced within a couple of days of my blog post detailing how annoying the system was! Sure, other people also complained, but it was I that pushed Blizzard over the edge!
Kidding. (Maybe.)
I’m eager to do more runs in Orgrimmar, arguably the easier of the two instances, especially since last night, I two-masked a full clear of Stormwind. Knowing there are people already doing 5 mask runs gets me, but in my guild, I’m close to a cutting edge of running these solo, and the new reward scaling means that it will be much easier to get into HVs more frequently and with fewer runs needed for the quest items allowing you to spend a few runs a week just playing around in HVs figuring things out and farming Corrupted Mementos. If my early runs go well enough, I might try a 3 mask run! Overall, I am very glad for the changes to the entry gating (it’s now possible to get 6-7 runs a week if you do the dailies, assaults, and mini-visions) and for my alts, glad that full progress runs on my Hunter won’t be in vain!
N’Zoth: Yes, I know, he’s been on here pretty much since I brought this feature back, but man, we are getting close. Last week we finally had a few back-to-back pulls where we made it to the last phase, with our first one being an agonizing 3% wipe that would have worked out if people calmed down and executed mechanics correctly. With the rank 12 cloak upgrades this week giving the big main stat proc effect, I fully expect that we’ll have enough power to really push through this fight this week (hopefully!).
FFXIV Patch 5.2 Content: The patch really pushed me hard back into the waiting arms of FFXIV, with an excellent series of story quests, 4 fun new raid encounters (and 3 excellent new music tracks!), and a fun new trial (with its own excellent music). I’ve been farming tomestones (it might be the first or second time I’ve ever hit the weekly cap on the current-tier raid tomestone) and gearing my White Mage. I’ll probably shift focus to another job shortly, although which, I’m not sure. It might be nice to gear my Samurai further, or Red Mage, or Dancer, or maybe Gunbreaker? There are a ton of choices and the thing here that is good is that I don’t feel choice paralysis yet. The new story content is really great, and interestingly beginning to weave the narrative more deftly between worlds, compared with the launch content and 5.1, which focused quite heavily on the issues in the First specifically.
Chapo Trap House Live Show: On Friday, I’ll be attending the live show for Chapo Trap House, one of my favorite podcasts. I’ve been listening to them since late 2017 (they started the show in early 2016) and their live shows seem to be a good amount of fun, so I am excited to go! Plus, it is a road trip for me and the fiancee, driving over the mountains into California for the show! While I avoid talking about my own politics on this blog, revealing that alone should give you a fair idea of where I find myself aligned (as if my comments on ethical consumption under capitalism didn’t already lampshade it!).
AEW Revolution: Still debating if I can fit the pay per view price into my budget, but this Saturday’s AEW PPV (their second since starting weekly TV on TNT) looks like a banger of a show, with a strong world title match between Chris Jericho and Jon Moxley (nee Dean Ambrose), a good blood feud payoff between Cody Rhodes and MJF, and a solid undercard with some great matches.
That is about it for this week – a solid week with plenty of stuff to get hyped about!
Kaylriene 