Well, time got away from me and so here we are, again, on Monday, posting a Sunday Brain Dump. Whoops!
Topic 1: Valeera
I really didn’t think a delve companion could be more annoying than Brann. I really, truly did not think that was possible. AND YET… Not only do I not like her emotes, but she will occasionally (frequently?) run into a room to harvest a node of herbs or ore and PULL THE ROOM. Great. Thanks, Valeera. I was totally ready for that.
Then, because I have been playing this game off and on for 20+ years, I know how to pull mobs back so that we don’t get other mobs, like patrols or whatever. So I will often set my pet to passive, autoshot one mob and then take care of that large and ugly thing in a safe area. Valeera, on the other hand, does not like my pro strat and will leap into the fray, fighting the mob basically where they started. 🙄 This has, on more than one occasion, led to multiple mobs pulling. Thanks, Valeera. Super helpful. 😒
The other thing she does that drives me absolutely bananas is that she yells “STRIKE!” right after something dies. Strike? Strike what? What the hell, dude? Blizzard, tell me you coded Valeera entirely with Copilot without telling me you coded Valeera entirely with Copilot. 😟
And none of that even touches on the fact that she will occasionally just… not fight? She leaps in and out of the fray, seemingly randomly. She also breaks my traps EVERY CHANCE SHE GETS. She is the absolute worst and, I cannot believe I’m saying this, I wish I had Brann as a choice.
I will say this, she is not the worst healer. She’s not the best, but she’s not the worst. With my pet, Fluffy the Turtle as my tank, Kurn as DPS and Valeera as off-DPS/off-heals, I can do a fair amount. It’s just painful is all.
What do you hate most about Valeera?
Topic 2: Gear
Look, I’m glad that we have other ways beyond raiding or even doing dungeons (and mythic dungeons) to get gear. I’m really glad. My characters have traditionally lagged wayyyyy behind in gear. The whole Adventurer to Veteran to Champion to Hero thing is stupid though. IMHO. I miss when you got a piece of gear and it was good and you were like “nice!” and would try to get another piece of gear. Now it’s like “okay, I got a Champion piece so I may as well upgrade it because who knows when I’ll get a Hero piece” and like… what? Really? This is, to be fair, my first real go-around with this. I never really got anything higher than Champion (and on Kurn, at that, no one else) in past expansions. Like I said, I’m glad that we can get good gear from things other than raiding, other than dungeons, etc. But dear God, sometimes I miss the very simple “kill boss, hope item drops, hope the hunter doesn’t ninja it, yay got the item” routine of getting gear.
Also, I am so not into the modifiers that were used at some point, like heroic, but I know things got even weirder somewhere in there, with like half-step upgrades and stuff?
What’s your favourite way to get loot?
Topic 3: Bad Guesses
So when the expansion started, I looked at the skinning tree and thought that the diffuser skill would be useful. After all, motes of everything are used in basically everything, so I thought that was the wise way to go.
In fact, I did not realize just how abundant the motes would be. I enjoy throwing diffusers on virtually everything I skin, but this is not the way to get the big bucks in skinning. I am finally getting close to maxing out the Talented Tracker section. I can make four of the lures and usually end up fishing for all the fish almost every day, and then I go spawn the majestic beasts and often get absolutely zero majestic items for my trouble. Next week, I’ll be able create the Grand Beast Lure, so that’ll be fun.
But it got me thinking about how good I am at predicting some things in-game and how bad I am at predicting others. Many moons ago, there were these green gems, I think it was Talasites, and in a forthcoming patch, a new cut was going to be released with stam and resilience (for PVP) and I was like “OMG, this will make a FORTUNE!”
Reader, it did not, in fact, make a fortune. 😢
I was, however, pretty good at predicting things like nerfs and buffs and stuff when it came to raid encounters.
Honestly, I would take the inverse these days, and I would rather be able to properly predict what’s going to make money versus the meta-like things in the game. 😅
What about you, are you good or bad at predicting in-game things?
And that’s it for Brain Dump 2. Anything you folks want me to discuss next week? Let me know!