I’ve been talking about some of the individual goals I’ve had throughout season 2 of The War Within, but today, with the Turbo Boost set to launch in a day and the season’s scaling set to ease up through those power gains, I wanted to check in, because I hit a first ever record for myself in the game – short of tertiary goals like leveling a few more alts or gear levels on alts, I’m basically done with my original seasonal goals in their entirety.

In a lot of ways, this season was a chance for me to flex my growth in-game and to push harder than I ever have before – to have confidence and trust in myself that I would rise up to and meet the challenges I set before myself, and I did it. It feels good to have everything done before any added power scaling, new borrowed power, or other mechanisms designed to make the hardest content in the game easier. For the record, I don’t particularly think that is huge in its own right – WoW is a game and what matters is that you enjoy the journey you take – but for me, I wanted to make a serious push this season to confirm that I have indeed been developing as a player.

Six Push Characters to Keystone Master – Complete

This reset, I strolled my Destruction Warlock over the 2000 Mythic rating line for my first-ever Warlock KSM and my 6th KSM for the season. This is the most characters I have pushed over the finish line of KSM in a given season and also saw me hit KSM on two new classes – Warlock as mentioned but also Druid, meaning that of the game’s 13 classes, I have pushed KSM on 9 of them, with only Hunter, Rogue, Mage, and Shaman having not been pushed that high.

The push was a lot of fun and each new class and role pushed through gave me a lot of added understanding and value that made each subsequent push easier, as well as teaching some core mechanics that also made pushing higher on my Monk easier. It’s the first season since Dragonflight Season 1 where I have pushed a tank, healer, melee and ranged DPS all to the level of KSM, which feels pretty neat and gives me a lot of flexibility on geared characters to run with for friend and guild runs.

Keystone Hero – Complete, Almost Twice, Maybe Thrice?

My Monk got KSH relatively early into the season, on the push to her eventual level of attainment. My Guardian Druid has also been teetering closer to it as I have continued doing keys on him with friends, pushing a bit higher each week without really focusing on it. While 194 points is a lot harder in that Master > Hero stretch, it still feels like it would be easily doable if I wanted to try. My Holy Priest is also at 2138, so he could theoretically make the push too if I so desired. What is blowing my mind because I didn’t have it as a goal but have done it anyways is that I have timed a +10 on all 3 holy trinity roles this season across three different characters – my main Monk, obviously, as DPS, my Guardian Druid as tank, and my Holy Priest as a healer. It has made me contemplate trying for a bigger late season push on those characters to test the limits of my skill.

Keystone Legend – Done!

I wrote about this one pretty extensively, both the chase and the attainment, so I won’t rehash too much here, but I am still rather delighted with myself to have pulled this off, especially since a friend is also on this grind just a couple of weeks behind me and the quality of PUGs in that range at this point is seemingly worse from his stories. Pushing this even on just a DPS was an interesting growth experience because it challenged me to do mechanics much more thoroughly and also maintain damage at a high level through them. I will say that I agree generally with the recent Aqual video that damage is not what times keys – it is mechanical comprehension and thorough gameplay from all members of the party, and you can feel that pretty strongly when running a 12 or 13 where even just one player is off their game more than a little bit. I can only imagine what even higher level keys must feel like!

Now that I am at the maximum rewards level the game acknowledges with anything other than rating, I’ve contemplated what my next move would be on my main. So far, the answer has been Vault keys, so just +10s (just) for the sake of maximizing reward tracks. There may come a point before the end of the season in August where I decide to time the remaining +13s I would need to at least get Resilient Keys up to +13s, but I don’t see myself pushing much further beyond that, even as a test for myself. I’m pretty happy with the overall level of accomplishment I’ve reached and until the day where I get a dedicated push team for doing high keys, I’m not invested in pugging that high up, just for the sake of managing my own expectations.

Ahead of the Curve: Chrome King Gallywix and Heroic Liberation of Undermine: Complete

While my guild raid has continued to struggle a bit on Mug’zee and has not even seen Gallywix on Heroic yet (our damage per player is just too low, although Mug’zee is likely to die next week after a real close call this week!), I’ve pugged outside of my main raid and DPSed my way to both Heroic Mug’zee and, as of this weekend, Gallywix, finishing out the raid achievements I planned to get this tier as my primary goals and the one I waited the longest to do.

This tier was interesting and deserves a write-up of its own once my main raid is through it, but it has been interesting to see Blizzard really push on the idea that Normal is basically tuned around PUGs, requiring much less coordination and management while Heroic really ramps the executional difficulty by asking players to do things orderly and quickly. It’s not necessarily difficult per se, but it is a challenge that amplifies if people are not mechanically proficient, which is why I like Stix Bunkjunker in theory but kinda hate doing it, because trash balls are random and if more than 2 iffy-executing/non-communicative players get the ball assigned, brother, it is gonna be a bad time. I find it interesting this tier that Gallywix is, in many ways, simpler and easier than Mug’zee across all difficulties – in the Heroic Mug’zee PUG I ran, it took 9 pulls to get Mug’zee with a skilled group where Gallywix only took 6 pulls total, and that was across 3 different PUG raids I bounced between trying to get the kill. A lot of the mechanics on Gallywix are just more open and freeform, where Mug’zee demands tighter execution and I think that makes a huge difference in perceived difficulty – Mug’zee is about smart play, Gallywix tends to end up being about high throughput.

Overall, I like the skill checks in Heroic reasonably well, although they do illustrate when your raid has sharp differences between skill levels among your players and that can feel pretty bad, but I think it also has helped me as a raid leader to find the gaps in my raid and work on addressing them – a process that is still ongoing, but one that feels like it will pay dividends over time.

As for me pushing some Mythic bosses again this tier? Well…I think I would like to try for 2/8 M just to get a Mythic raid vault slot and see how the fights play out, but I’m not putting that hugely on myself for now because other things I want to do in-game are winning.

Full LFR and Normal Tier Set Appearance Unlocks On Every Class: Done

I promised a guide on this, and here is the TL;DR: you use multiple alts in the same class, playing in War Mode, to farm World Quests for Bloody Tokens, use those to buy open-world PvP gear which starts at maxed LFR level, then catalyze it and upgrade it once and kaboom – LFR and Normal tier in that slot for that class unlocked. Why War Mode? Bloody Token gear is the perfect vessel for the catalyst for these two difficulties and reduces the number of upgrade materials you need to get both looks, plus doing World Quests in War Mode rarely invites actual PvP attention, so it’s like doing scary open world stuff with bigger rewards. Why alts? Early in the season, every character has a very limited number of Catalyst charges and if you main a given class especially, you want to save the main’s charges for actual gear you play with. Could you do it other ways? Sure, Nightfall gear (or whatever future catchup gear brings) can be Catalyzed and is LFR level to start from drops, but then the vendor stuff is Normal/potentially Heroic at a starting 636 ilvl so optimizing around it is harder and requires more upgrades for the Warbound drops to reach Normal ilvl. If you put on your big-boy pants and do War Mode, especially if you do the Sparks of War quests and hit a few crate drops, you can engage in minimal PvP activity but reap huge rewards for it.

At this point, including Heroic and Mythic colorways, I have collected 63% of the total appearances of tier armor this season, including at least half of the higher tier difficulty sets for Priest, Warlock, Druid, Monk, and Paladin. At this point in totality, I have collected more TWW stuff as a percentage of the total available gear looks than I have for any other expansion, including Mists of Pandaria which was helped along massively by Remix. Granted, I have focused on that goal a lot more and been able to collect a lot more thanks to the alt army I raised in Season 1 of this expansion, but hey.

Profession Knowledge: Alchemy and Engineering Complete, All Over 50% Total Knowledge Save One

I took profession leveling a lot more seriously this expansion after seeing how the Dragonflight changes to those systems worked out and the value they had for me as an endgame, multi-character focused player. I can make all my own gear at 5 stars with proper material supplies (and sometimes even without), I’ve accrued a lot of recipes including stuff like the Majestic Jeweler’s Setting and the dropped enchant recipes, and short of a couple of desired items like the Adrenal Surge Clasp belt for Leatherworking, I’m pretty well kitted out on recipes and ability to make them. All of my gathering professions are over 50% save for Skinning, but all of my crafting skills are over 60% knowledge, and of course all at 100 Khaz Algar skill with almost all blue tools and accessories. It has been great to have this done and the benefits in terms of reduced gold spend and increased ability to rely on crafted gear has been great!

With the confirmation of tradeskill-craftable stuff for housing coming in Midnight, I have some tradeskills that will need to circle back to old expansion leveling and cap off those skillsets, but that is a longer-term project I plan to work on over the coming months.

Alts: All to 624 Item Level Minimum, One New 80 Notwithstanding

I have 46 level 80s – a net increase of one over the time when I was world top 100 on max level characters!

Keeping up with alts has been a backburner of mine, but after the KSL grind was complete, I did push some of my alts in ascending item level order through a round of Nightfall each, sometimes cycling back for a second pass per character to at least exceed the base LFR item level (for now). I’ve succeeded at that while investing a pretty small total amount of time thanks to Warbound gear, and I plan to redouble on this a bit once Turbo Boost is out this week and I can really lock in. Some of this also came about because of the Tier appearance farm I mentioned above – 632 gear going to 636 from War Mode is a decent boost in its own right!

While the Winds of Mysterious Fortune event is still running, I want to try to push 3 more alts to max level – an Undead Hunter, a Dracthyr Warlock, and a Goblin Shaman. I probably won’t finish this before the event, but I will likely be able to push them a decent amount and then save the experience potions for Turbulent Timeways in July!

Appearance and Transmog Farming: Nearly 50% of All Appearances Farmed!

I’ve been using DataForAzeroth to track the total appearances I have unlocked and have been diligently farming old content when I get the chance to ensure I get as much viable transmog as possible. I’ve paired it with the WoWThing addon and database site to track where I have the biggest opportunities to farm appearances and so far, it has worked well, as I’ve gained nearly 13% of the game’s total transmog options since the start of The War Within. Currently I am sitting at 46.1% of the game’s total appearance options unlocked which is a pretty good number to offer variety and interesting choices for transmogs. My weak spots are older content prior to Transmog being added to the game and dungeon gear from prior to Shadowlands in particular. With an as-yet-unknown buff coming for transmog farmers in 11.1.7, I am not yet trying to push too hard on this goal, but it is something I can focus on since I have basically rounded out my seasonal goals!

Enjoying The Game – Yes

I put this here last because I always like to look at this when I talk about goals. To some players, the idea of this list of things to accomplish isn’t a fun thing – it sounds like chores or a tedious list of tasks, a Honey-Do list given to me by a fucking video game – and for some people, it can absolutely be that way and not be fun to play as I have described. For me though, I look at it this way – I enjoy playing WoW, and I most enjoy playing WoW when the game has an opportunity to provide me with some benefit – a power gain, a visual upgrade, the feeling of skill and progression, and the renown (not reputation!) of having reached some new heights.

For me, this season has at times been taxing. I’ve often had personal doubts about my raid leading, as it has been more stressful this tier and I’ve had to have tough performance conversations with multiple people which make me often not look forward to raid as much as I would like. I’ve wondered if I would have the skill and perseverance to reach my personal goals with them being higher than ever, especially the goal of Keystone Legend. But it has still, in spite of these things, been fun. Raid nights are still a lot of laughter and fun jokes (just as long as we don’t have to do Heroic Stix too many times). I met my goal in dungeons, reaching a level of play that is higher than I used to think I was capable of.

I get a lot of value out of skill mastery, out of not just doing a thing but being good at it. As I write this, I am the 2,956th best Windwalker Monk in M+ in the world. I spent a lot of this season being in the top 1,000 M+ WW players in the NA region. In M+ across the entire global playerbase of the game, I am in the top 8.3%. If last season was me propping up my enjoyment by being a world top 100 alt player, this season has been me doubling down on the idea that I can actually be quite good at the game if I focus in on it. More than just being able to pour time into it (which does have a benefit to my play, no doubt), I’m not solely held up in early season rankings anymore by having time to dump into keys and other content – I used focused burst of progression and kept my ranking consistently climbing up to the point I got Keystone Legend, and while the season is still young and there will likely be people who push past such that I’ll land outside of the top 10% of players globally in M+, I’m more than happy with my performance and how it has grown over time.

I enjoy WoW for a lot of reasons – the gameplay loop, the collections and ability to constantly acquire new things, the way so much of its gameplay is relatively relaxed and allows you to put on a video on a secondary monitor and just slide into playing it – but I really enjoy the skill expression and the depth of the game in terms of things to learn. I’ve enjoyed this season so much explicitly because the game gave me just enough carrot to chase after, enough reason to tell myself that I was going to commit to the Keystone Legend grind and push for it, to push harder on the raid earlier by doing my best with my guild and then pugging to fill the gaps and scout ahead, and to learn more characters than before and go for new goals. The lesson I think Blizzard learned relatively well from TWW Season 1 was that making the climb too merciless is a deterrent, so while Season 2 is not necessarily easy (there are some rough keys, rough pulls, and huge mechanical checks across the season) it has been enjoyable to journey through explicitly because the onramp, the very thing they needed to fix, is welcoming enough to pull you in and get you started.

In many ways, what I like most is when the game is given a wide swath of different things I can do and I am given enough time and ability to split focus and work on all of them. For the rest of the season I have some freedom to push character gear higher, to maybe push those last 4 classes through their first KSM to say I did KSM on every class in the game, to push Mythic raid bosses in my PUG community, and to gear alts ever higher to prepare for the late-season catchup mechanics and have a strong start and fresh slate for next season. Whatever path I end up taking, I am really enjoying this model for how WoW is being developed and designed and I hope to see it continue.