Apparently Legion opens up at level 98.  WoD ended before I was even halfway done with Shadowmoon Valley.  Yay!

Tank Swap

I swapped to Blood for the last bit of WoD.  It went better in that I finally had the ability to restore my health during combat, but the overall damage went down.  There’s clearly something wrong with the scaling numbers, as every piece I had was within 5 item levels of my heirloom gear.

Let’s just say I won’t be running a cloth-wearing alt through this anytime soon (sorry ‘lock!).

Legion Boost

I guess I should have guess since all the expansions seem to open up 2 levels before the original entryway.  I figured I’d run the Broken Short campaign and test out both real tanking combat with proper numbers, and get a piece of gear from it (~100 item levels upgrade).

Like tearing through wet tissues.  Or rather, exactly like every other tank I’ve leveled.  Clearly, there’s a number issue pre-Legion, since the balance is as expected here.  Tweaks a plenty in the next few months I’m sure.

I had forgotten that DK’s already had a class hall, what with Acherus there since WotLK.  I was disappointed that it wasn’t upgraded a little bit.   Monk’s kept theirs, but it looks neat.  Acherus feels like a teenager’s basement.  Good news is death gate, making travel to/from quite easy.  (Side note – of the halls I can access, my preference from best to worst – Rogue, Monk, Druid, Shaman, Paladin, DH, DK). The tanking weapon – Maw of the Damned – was quite easy to acquire.  It’s neat to see the Lich King again (or the new old one… confusing).

My fingers are crossed that this story line actually plays out.  The DK storyline really closed a long time ago, but since it was the Burning Legion that actually created the entire line…it seems ripe for opportunity.  So far though, underwhelming.

Heirloom Scaling

First, my armory link.

You can see that a) the armory hasn’t been updated since 7.0, since it doesn’t list tier 3 Heirlooms, and b) that the actual items scale at a lower rate than gear drops.  At level 100, they are ilvl 605, compared to some ilvl 700 items I have equipped.  That apparently changes at 101, where the ilvl jumps to 695 and caps at 800 at level 110.  Not really an issue, since I’m doing just fine combat-wise.  Better than fine.

I did spend the 25,000g to upgrade all the items, giving me 45% more experience gains for Legion.  I have no issues with the actual content in Legion, but I’ve leveled enough through the core and have the achievements set that it isn’t needed.  The downside to the ugprade is that one I’m done the DK, the only other plate wearer is my Warrior – whom I will not be leveling any time soon.  Odd enough given that I could use that exp boost on the cloth wearing classes.  Ah well, making that money back won’t be too hard.  I get a gold mission every day that nets a bit more than 2k.

For now though, I can get through the levels without having to worry about rested xp.  And if the timing works out, I should have Legion flying up and ready within a week.