Shadowlands' Odd Timeline and In-Game Spoilers

 The ultimate timeline of Shadowlands is a little odd. While it happened relatively early in the campaign, there was a good period in the Kyrian campaign in which Devos is chilling out at Elysian Hold, and everyone's wondering who is leading the Forsworn, despite the fact that we players had been clearing Spires of Ascension for weeks at that point.

Oddly, there's also a world quest in Maldraxxus whose intro speech by Draka spoils not only some major developments of the story in that zone, but also the reveal of a secret villain who's been pulling strings all this time.

Because this is literally a post about spoilers, obviously, here's a cut:

The Runecarver, the Jailer, and the Burning Legion

 The Jailer is new lore for the Warcraft cosmos, but so far, the whole deal of Shadowlands is the awesome kind of new lore that opens doors to interesting possibilities for the future.

I'd always hoped that there was something more than just Kil'jaeden wielding demonic magic to make the Lich King, and this expansion has revealed that there is - that the Helm of Domination as well as Frostmourne (possibly the rest of the Lich King armor, but I think mainly those two) were created by the Runecarver, who has been imprisoned by the Jailer, all his memories drained from him.

Who the Runecarver is remains something of a mystery, though a popular theory (which I think is mostly based on narrative efficiency) is that he might be the Primus, the eternal one who is the rightful ruler of Maldraxxus.

Upon giving the Runecarver a certain number of memories (which we use to allow him to make us legendary items) we get a cutscene - one that, sadly, for me had a checkered box where I think the Helm of Domination was supposed to be. (And given that these memories are account-wide, I don't know that I'll be able to see it again, at least in-game.)

In it, the Jailer mentions that he has made a crown fit for the King of the Damned, as well as the finest of his "Mourneblades." Surely, then, that implies that Frostmourne is of a certain type of weapon (what does this mean for Shadowmourne, then, the legendary two-handed axe that Warriors, Paladins, and Death Knights could get in Icecrown Citadel, made as a sort of safer-to-use equivalent to Frostmourne?)

The massive lore-expansion coming with this game expansion is very cool. But I'm always curious to see how this stuff gets tied back into the existing lore.

After all, we do know that the Lich King's artifacts were taken by the Burning Legion and bent to their use.

Kil'jaeden was the one to put Ner'zhul's soul into the armor and make him the first Lich King. But I believe more recent lore suggests that it was the Nathrezim (aka Dreadlords) who retrieved them for him.

Now, the Nathrezim are complicated.

Following the BC-era ret-con, in which it was the Dreadlords rather than the Eredar whose depravity drove Sargeras to madness (thus allowing the Eredar to exist in their uncorrupted form as Draenei, rather than just being demons from the get-go) we later got in Chronicle that the Nathrezim had particularly perturbed Sargeras by channeling the power of the Void and seeming to work with the Old Gods on a different planet with a World Soul. Sargeras destroyed that world (that I'll refer to as Telogrus, as it's more or less stated that the broken world where the Void Elves were transformed was the one that Sargeras destroyed) and then embarked on his Burning Crusade.

Found in-game somewhere in Revendreth, there's a series of missives that seem to link Sire Denathrius with the Dreadlords - as if the Dreadlords, far from being loyal to the Legion, or the Old Gods, or even the Light (specifically Lothraxion) that instead, they are all actually working for the Sire, and the force of Death (and thus probably the Jailer.)

That the Nathrezim could be connected to Sire Denathrius seems quite possible - they look a bit like Venthyr and Stoneborn, and of course their names share some distinctive syllables. The missives that were found (I don't know exactly where in-game) I believe was found in both the beta and the live game. We also have what counts for subtle lines in WoW like the Accuser telling Denathrius that he "was once the lord of dread," which cannot have been phrased that way accidentally.

But at this point, people have completed the Castle Nathria raid, and while the Sire is not entirely gone at the end of it, there haven't been any huge reveals regarding the Nathrezim.

Given that the past few expansions have hinted at major themes and powers coming next, I think the only thing I've really noticed in Shadowlands is the incursions of Light and Void into the Shadowlands - the Void attacked Bastion, which you can witness in a little side quest chain, and the Light, of course, scours the Ember Ward of Revendreth - we even rescue one of the Naaru who took part in the attack from the Sanguine Depths dungeon.

I think Legion was too recent an expansion for us to jump right back in to them as major foes, but I do really wonder when, exactly, we're going to learn more about the connection between the Burning Legion and the forces of the Maw.

Those Really Out-There Covenant Class Abilities

 I've now taken my Rogue over to the Shadowlands, which should be the last of the "alts I really play" to do so. The Bastion leg of the main story campaign (my Warrior alt is going Threads of Fate, but I think everyone else is going to stick to the story - I realized too late that if you just don't pick a covenant to start, you can try out all the abilities if you just go to their zones, so my Warrior perhaps prematurely chose Night Fae, in large part because, well, wooden armor seems cool. Also, I like the ability even if tanks aren't always so cooperative about making use of it.)

Anyway, as I see it, the class covenant abilities come in a few varieties. A lot of them are dull, but useful, like Sinful Brand, the Venthyr Demon Hunter ability, which is certainly good but not exactly revolutionary, or Divine Toll, the Kyrian Paladin ability that is an absolute lifesaver for a tank (especially when some DPS pulls another trash mob in your mythic dungeon) but is also not exactly mind-blowing.

But then there are the out-there, and kind of garbage abilities. But, like ambitious garbage.

Fodder for the Flame is the Necrolord Demon Hunter ability. It is bananas, and also borderline unusable. You summon a demon from the Theater of Pain that is hostile to you - if you kill it, its soul shard is extra powerful, increasing your damage done and reducing your damage taken by a big chunk for the next 20 seconds. Also, your Throw Glaive does extra damage to the demon.

But, like, if you don't get to the soul shard in time, it's wasted. And you've just added another monster to the fight (granted, one you can take down fairly easily.)

I also want to talk about Echoing Reprimand, the Rogue Kyrian ability.

So, on a 45 second cooldown and for 10 energy, you strike the target for a good chunk of arcane damage. Then, one of your combo points is animacharged - meaning that if you use a finishing move while you have precisely that many combo points, it treats it as if you had 7 combo points (it might be only 6 if you don't have Deeper Stratagem, though I could be wrong.)

While cool in theory, I can tell you that at least as a subtlety rogue, it's nearly impossible to actually hit that combo point, because so many of our CPs come from Honor Among Thieves, which means we're generating them constantly without control.

Anyway, clearly not all of these can be winners, but I do have to hand it to Blizzard - they came up with some interesting and outside-the-box ideas here.

New Alts and Qualifying for LFR

 My Demon Hunter took a back seat to some other alts who he'd normally level up ahead of, due to the fact that my Death Knight was already in the Venthyr covenant, and that's where I wanted the DH to go. So, a few weeks after the release of the expansion, I got him to 60 and started working on the gear treadmill.

The good news is that it's way easier to get into heroic dungeons now. By working through the covenant campaign, you can get 171 pieces for your covenant set - which then allows you to upgrade all your previous pieces.

This isn't actually a widely publicized system, but it's a crucial one given that you'll be able to, eventually, have a full set of Epic gear for the price of going through the quests and spending increasing amounts of anima.

There is a pair of NPCs in each covenant sanctum, one of whom can sell you any pieces you might have vendored back for anima, and the other can upgrade your older pieces to keep them in line with whatever your most recent pieces are, item-level wise. As such, a Venthyr by this week can have I believe 5 item level 171 pieces through this system, which takes them a long way toward getting them geared for heroics, and even mythics.

At the moment, my Demon Hunter is stuck at 168, two points too low to queue for LFR - I think I might just chain-run Sanguine Depths for two shots per run at a weapon upgrade, given that his off-hand is currently his lowest level piece of gear.

Without bonus rolls, there's basically zero agency players have over getting drops they want, which is something I find very frustrating. The days of Need or Greed were problematic, to be sure, and so I understand why they went with personal loot. But I think there needs to be some interactivity to make the system feel slightly less like a slot machine.

The truth is, I miss Badge gear. I don't know why they got rid of it. Indeed, once Wrath introduced and Cataclysm formalized the distinction between current-content versus old-content currencies, there was an easy way to keep people from feeling that they had to run content they were done with. Today, if you run a dungeon and don't get loot - or worse, you get loot that is useless to you and anyone in your group - the entire exercise feels like a waste - you got nothing out of it (other than the fun of running a dungeon, which, you know, is fun, after all).

Additionally, I took my first character into the Threads of Fate leveling system. Unfortunately, I did not realize that if you went to the various zones before picking your covenant, you'd get a chance to try out all the abilities - I had thought you'd just talk to the representatives and be able to use the ability until you came back, but when you leave the Enclave, you lose it. So after I'd committed my Warrior to the Night Fae (gotta get that wooden armor!) my friend explained how one could try out the various abilities. Oh well.

I wonder if this version of leveling is truly slower than the main story, or if it's just that the story provides a sense of momentum and propulsion - leveling this way (and I've only done a little - I mainly wanted to get the Warrior up there to work on his Blacksmithing so he can make legendary pieces for my Paladin and Death Knight) I've done a couple bonus objectives and some side quests in Ardenweald. Each zone, you get a slowly-filling bar that tracks your progress through the zone. I think the general idea of it is that once you fill it up, you can feel free to move onto another zone, so I assume you'll get roughly 2.25 levels doing each of these quests, given that you finish the Maw intro at more or less level 51.

Oh, and by the way: at least for the intro, Worgen can use Running Wild in the Maw, which is a game-changer.

Covenants and the Asynchronicity of Rewards and Plot

 This morning, I got my Warlock caught up in his Necrolord covenant campaign. With what appears to be a 3-renown-per-week rate for those who are fully caught up, we're on week four.

The odd thing here is that the point in the plot where my Warlock is is behind where my Paladin is in the Kyrian campaign - there's an arc surrounding the Maldraxxi assault on the Temple of Courage (aka the Necrotic Wake dungeon,) which both the Kyrians and the Necrolords wish to retaliate against. But my Necrolord Warlock is still in the preparatory phases of that plot while my Kyrian Paladin has... well, landed a decisive blow in the fight to defeat the traitors of Maldraxxus.

My Warlock, who I don't think has run a dungeon since hitting 60, is actually by this point in decent enough gear to start heroics, thanks to the covenant armor set. Oddly, my Mage, who is also at 12 renown and thus just as caught up with his Night Fae campaign, has only like three pieces of that set to the Warlock's 5.

Meanwhile, my Death Knight cannot catch a break when it comes to weapon drops.

To recap, here's where the various plots for the different covenants are for week 4:

Spoilers ahead:

Renown, Catching Up, and Campaign Gear

While my Paladin and Death Knight are nearly always my #1 and #2 characters to level up in a new expansion (last time I had my Horde Shaman go second so I could see Zandalar) my other characters in the alt-priority list have been shuffled a little this time, to make sure that I can see each covenant story. That being said, yesterday I got my Demon Hunter to 60 and had him join the Death Knight in the Venthyr (I'm a little concerned that, at least in player-power levels, I might wind up going Venthyr with, like, the vast majority of my characters, as it seems favored for Enhancement, Arms, and Havoc, and while Night Fae is apparently the recommended one for Subtlety, there's no way in hell my Undead Rogue, who I've always conceived of as being obsessed with courtly intrigue, gothic opulence, and spooky places with big castles, ain't going to join the bitey boys.)

My Mage is with the Night Fae, and while he's not done this week's story chapter, he's done the previous ones. In fact, I think both the Warlock (Necrolords) and Demon Hunter (Venthyr, as stated above) are caught up to last week.

One thing I'm really interested to see is that the campaign gear set actually has 7 ranks. While the first rank is ilevel 155, which is basically only attractive to a freshly-60 character, by this point, the gear level is 171 (and you can upgrade the older pieces for a modest fee of anima in your covenant sanctum.) Given that three of my level 60 characters have done 0-1 max-level dungeons each, being able to get several pieces of 171 gear just by doing the campaign is very appealing.

It also suggests that the end-state for these campaign gear sets (which will cover every armor slot) should eventually be pretty decent gear - even if we only go up half-steps, that means that by rank 5, we'll have a bunch of mythic dungeon quality gear, and maybe by rank 7 we'll have Normal Nathria gear.

Now, sure, in the long run that'll seem like trash, but who knows? Maybe they'll even add more ranks to them over the course of the expansion? At the very least, it'll be a big leg up to get characters at least geared for LFR.

Sadly, I haven't done much of the Ember Court, and just a bit of the Path of Ascension (and I haven't unlocked the mini-game things for the other covenants yet.) But I think that's just a consequence of having too much to do for all the characters I want doing good stuff.

At the moment, the biggest hurdle I have is getting my Enchanter skilled up to 115 so I can pump out legendary base items. I was grateful to find that leveling leatherworking was not a terribly difficult task, and while my Blacksmith is sitting queued up to start leveling after my Shaman gets a little higher and my Rogue starts, I've been stockpiling ore for him to use when he gets to Oribos.

LFR Castle Nathria Wing One

 The first wing of LFR's Castle Nathria is pretty odd - as you actually go past the room with the real first boss of the raid (on Normal/Heroic/Mythic) and go through a side passage to fight what I believe would most likely be the second boss you face.

So, we have Huntsman Altimor, the Hungering Devourer, and Lady Inerva Darkvein (the latter being the one you faced in the Revendreth quests when you entered the Castle briefly.)

After watching some Fatboss.tv guides for the higher difficulties, I was relieved to find that LFR simplifies these fights significantly - only Altimor gave us any real trouble.

This was from a tank perspective, so my rundown might skew a bit that way.

Huntsman Altimor:

This boss has three gargons that come out to fight you sequentially - he gets a damage buff when the last is killed, so you'll want to try to make sure he's going down as you kill his dogs. Each gargon comes with its own mechanics, and these are actually the big ones to pay attention to.

The first gargon has a stacking bleed that will require, or at least encourage, a tank-swap. Kyrian tanks can, of course, clear this when the stacks get too high.

The second tank is the raid-wiper - the gargon will sever the soul of the tank tanking it and that soul will start to walk toward the boss. If it reaches the boss, the raid takes massive damage. The soul is friendly, though, so the way you deal with it is that healers need to top it off, which will cause it to disappear. For this phase, make sure to tank the boss away from the add (well, and the add away from the boss) to give healers time to do so.

The third will gain a stacking buff to its damage with each hit. However, by moving it, you can cause it to lose these stacks. But also however, each time it moves, it does damage to the raid. So you'll want to move it every few stacks but then generally let it sit still. This is made harder by all the aoe crap on the ground.

The boss himself will shoot at three random players, hitting anyone in his shots' paths. It's easier for people to move out of the way of it, which is indicated by an arrow over the target's head. Fatboss recommends having ranged on one side and melee on the other so that melee never has to look behind them to see if they're in the path of the projectile.

Hungering Devourer:

A bit closer to tank-and-spank on LFR, the main things to look out for are a big AOE that everyone including tanks needs to run away from. Random raid members will get debuffed, losing all healing, but also leeching health from nearby raid members, so for this, you'll want to stacks up. However, there's also a burst damage ability that causes everyone to do damage to people near them - the lower their health percentage, the bigger the aoe splash zone is, so you'll want to spread for that.

The boss will also sometimes do a big burst to anyone nearby, so everyone needs to run away (including tanks.)

There are also some line-attacks that radiate from the boss, hitting I believe one targeted raid member, so other should get out of the way for that.

Lady Inerva Darkvein:

This fight is way simpler on LFR than it seems to be on higher difficulties. Basically, there's a taunt-swap, and I believe you want to drop your debuff off far from the raid. Then, there are adds that you need to run up to to tank (even with threat, they'll spam a raid-wide aoe unless you get in melee with them).

There's also an ability that non-tanks will need to look out for, where you have these lines form between you and other raid members, and you want to make sure that the lines cross the red anima orbs to dispel them.

As usual, the first week of LFR for a new raid in a new expansion is pretty simple and easy, given that most people are running their mains through it. I'm hoping my guild can get back into gear so I can see this place on Normal, because so far, it's had some very cool boss mechanics. (Though, man, I've gotta say, WoW raid boss fights have gotten insanely complicated.)

Catching Up in Shadowlands

 While I got my Paladin to 60 asap and my Death Knight followed shortly after - and both of them are rocking at the point probably over half mythic dungeon gear, eager to hit Castle Nathria when LFR starts next week - I've been taking longer on my other alts. Normally, I'd make sure my Demon Hunter, then my Horde Shaman and Rogue, would be the next up, but I wanted to take characters who I was confident would go into the covenants I haven't done yet, so I took the Mage and the Warlock next - Paladin going Kyrian, Death Knight Venthyr, Mage Night Fae, and Warlock Necrolords.

The Warlock is one or two quest chains into Ardenweald, sitting at 57 (likely to hit 58 well before the point where you have to be to progress in the main campaign) while the Mage is at 60, and I've thus had my first experiences of the catch-up mechanics for Renown.

Running in to do the world boss Mortanis (funny story, my Warlock's name is Morcanis) I got a Renown, and then another from a Calling, another from the intro "save 5 souls from the Maw" and then the weekly version of it. I'm at 6 renown now, still needing to do the 1000 anima weekly quest, and I think (if my math isn't off - it feels like there might be a missing one in there) I could be caught up if I dedicated myself to doing so by next Tuesday.

This is pretty heartening. Granted, there's not a ton of stuff to catch up on, Renown-wise, but I imagine that if you hit 60 on a new character several months into the expansion, you're going to be getting bombarded with Renown so that you can get up to speed without too much pain.

Also, as the first character who can actually make rune vessel pieces (the Mage is a Jewelcrafter) I finally got the quest where such recipes are unlocked - it's just the normal "unlock legendaries" quest chain, but with a special addition for, I assume, jewelcrafters, leatherworkers, tailors, and blacksmiths (guess my awesome goggles aren't good enough for your runes, Runecarver?) You still need 100 in your given profession to unlock them, so while the Warlock will be ready to make cloth pieces as soon as he gets that quest, the Jewelcrafter is just 8 skill points away (though I think I have the Solenium he'd need on my main.)

This does make me a little more eager to level my Warrior, as he's my Blacksmith, though I suppose I could spend some of the massive amounts of gold that my callings are earning me. (Also, I sold some Missives made by the Death Knight and got an obscene amount for them.)

So, the Warlock is working on Ardenweald (the Warlock Night Fae ability once again feels tailored for Affliction, like the Kyrian one, though I'm sure it's good - just not as tied into the rest of the spec as the Necrolord one, which makes me feel I'll be happy going with that.) Meanwhile, my Demon Hunter has made it through Bastion, and boy had I forgotten how fun Havoc is. Indeed, the Kyrian Demon Hunter ability is actually pretty potent (and devastating in AoE) even if it's a tad non-interactive - it feels much better for Vengeance, given its massive generation of Soul Shards. Given what I've read in Icy-Veins and such, I believe I'll be going Venthyr on him, which also fits RP-wise (to be honest, I think as a relentless demon-fighter, he might fit more personality-wise with the Necrolords, but unless there's a totally different ability from the Beta, I don't think the Demon Hunter ability is one I'll want to take, and Fleshcrafting is my least favorite signature ability of all the covenants - especially for a melee class.)

I'm glad to see that most profession seem simple enough to level. I managed to get my Warlock's tailoring to 100 purely on the cloth he'd gotten from my other characters. While I don't necessarily want every profession to need to do a million rep grinds to be able to make anything useful, I also think that a skill grind isn't too fun either. Being able to get most of the way to the skill cap while leveling seems fair. I'm hoping Blacksmithing is comparable to the other professions in this regard - it's always seemed like they've made it harder than other professions to skill up. But the Warrior is on the back burner - probably in line behind the Warlock, Demon Hunter, Shaman, and Rogue in my leveling plan.

Anyway, the expansion is still fun! I'm eager to check out Castle Nathria next week, and I'm very happy to know that I've got a new computer coming in January - my current one was new in the first weeks of Warlords of Draenor, and is starting to show its age - Ardenweald in particular forces me to set my graphics to low settings.

Why I'm Avoiding Threads of Fate

 For the first time since Warlords of Draenor, the leveling process in Shadowlands is a linear one - taking you from Bastion to Maldraxxus to Ardenweald to Revendreth, with a couple of side-trips to the Maw sprinkled in. To experience the story of the expansion's first chapters, you do these in order, and there's really not much in the way of branching (in Maldraxxus you can choose the order in which you do its three "Act Two" quest chains, but for the most part it's a strictly linear experience).

There are benefits to this: the narrative ties the zones together. For example, the attack on the Temple of Courage and the resultant Necrotic Wake dungeon lead directly into the events of Maldraxxus - and then the message left by the Primus sends you to Ardenweald and then Revendreth.

In the past two expansions, instead we've typically arrived at a hub and then been told about the various crisis locations (aka leveling zones) to pick from.

However, once you get through the experience once, all your alts then get an option - after you get through the Maw intro (which is not insignificant - it takes you nearly all the way to 51) - to choose the "Threads of Fate" option instead of replaying the campaign. Doing this allows you to choose your covenant immediately and then start working on it while you level through side quests, world quests, and any content that isn't just the main storyline.

Indeed, the quests for that main storyline are unavailable if you choose this option.

I have not chosen this option on any characters. You can do so any time you're still working on the main campaign, but you can't go back.

I'm also given to understand that leveling is slower - while it makes sense that the vast number of quests you do over the course of the main story campaign would be a huge chunk of experience all in all, I suppose that the alternate sources of XP, such as world quests, don't make up for it.

The real problem that I'd have with the system is that leveling through the campaign gives you plenty of time to try out the various covenant abilities. While Soulbinds and their features are sure to be an important factor to consider moving forward, getting a feel for those abilities seems really important. I've now taken my Warlock through Maldraxxus, and was happy to find that the Necrolord ability for them (Decimating Bolt) is easy enough to work into a rotation and decently fun to use.

(Sidenote: it's freaky to me how many of the classes I play have Venthyr as their recommended covenant. I've leveled up the Mage and the Warlock so that I can check out the Night Fae and Necrolords, respectively - though even that required a little bit of creative reading of Icy-Veins; they actually recommend Night Fae for Demonology; actually, there's a whole post to be written about the trickiness of reconciling character vibe with covenant. Point is, I want to get my Warlock leveled in part so that I can get my Demon Hunter next, who will share Venthyr with my Death Knight.)

You can change covenants - something I wonder if I'll feel compelled to do later in the expansion on any of my characters - but I'd prefer to make the right choice now. While you do get a chance to try out all of the abilities in the Enclave in Oribos before making your decision, getting a full (or at least most of a) zone to try them out first seems preferable.

Alts in Shadowlands

 We're now over two weeks into the expansion, and I only have two max-level characters.

I don't recall precisely when I got various characters up in previous expansions, but it's pretty clear to me that there's so much to do on each character that I've got my hands mostly full with just the Paladin and Death Knight. In a break with tradition (largely based on which covenants I'm intending for them to join - trying to cover all four before I do repeats) my Mage is next in line, to be followed by my Warlock - after which I'll get my Demon Hunter, Shaman, and Rogue.

The massive amount of content is welcome, though - WoW thrives when there's a lot to do. The real question, though, is what, of this content, will feel particularly important.

My daily routine on my main, the Paladin, is this:

Make sure I do my Anima Conduit.

Go to the Maw and do my dailies for Ve'nari.

Try to run a Mythic Dungeon or two (I'm not really in a place guild-wise where we're anywhere close to hitting Castle Nathria, so I'll be seeing it for the first time in LFR.)

Do the Calling for the day.

Weekly, add in:

Torghast (clearing both wings at the highest layer I can - I've actually found layer 4, the current max, to be perfectly doable in a tank spec with a healthy selection of Mythic dungeon gear).

Any Renown-based stuff (anima collection and souls in the Maw)

The two weekly dungeon quests.

And if I have time, doing some of my Covenant mini-game (though that's been very back-burner.)

And the World Boss now.

So doing that on two characters is quite a lot.

I think over time we'll start to get a sense of which of these are really important to do if you want a character to be "caught up" and which you can let slide. I'm also really curious to see what kind of catch-up mechanics they'll have.

I know that Renown can drop in Calling boxes and from dungeons if you're behind the curve, but when it comes to stuff like anima, especially looking at how much the higher-level version of your various covenant sanctum bonuses cost, I do wonder if we'll see some sort of inflation of anima rewards (I might imagine that world quests and such start dropping more of the anima-items.)

Anyway, it's only two weeks into an expansion that should last us two years, but there is my usual altoholic (see name of blog) impulse to feel like some of my characters are missing out.

Once I get my Mage to 60 (he's a little into Ardenweald and is at 56) I'll start to get a sense of what sort of catch-up mechanics there are. For now, he's gotten to that point in leveling where the deprecation of secondary stats has really started to hit him - his Ice Lances are far from guaranteed to crit even with Fingers of Frost.

One other thing I've been thinking about is upgrading legendary items. I actually did craft a legendary belt for my Paladin (the effect that makes Avenger's Shield sometimes not have a cooldown, which seems to often chain several times in a row, which is excellent) but it seems as if, should I drop a few tens of thousands of gold on the AH (not as much as that used to seem, given that I'm making about 2k a day from Callings) I could, in theory, push that belt from 190 to 225 item level. I have not yet made one for my Death Knight, especially because I don't really know if he's going to be maining Blood or 2H Frost this go around (while I'm overjoyed to see that 2HF is back, it's also about 1000% easier to get a mythic dungeon group if you're a tank, and I do enjoy Blood as a spec, even if it was a little scary the first few mythics, as Blood needs a bit of ramp up time to get its defensive stuff going and that made those first pulls pretty nerve-wracking.)

Still, I sometimes feel as if my Demon Hunter is looking very sad to be waiting in Stormwind while alts he was ahead of in the priority in most situations get to start earlier, all because he wants to go Venthyr and the DK got there first (my Rogue is also probably going that way). My Mage is likely going Night Fae (I just got the ability, which is... weirder than I expected, but could be good) and my Warlock is probably going Necrolords (I actually don't know what the ability is, but if it's fun to use, I'll feel very good having the 'Lock go with the jock-bros of the Shadowlands.)

Still, that seems far on the horizon. I don't think my Mage or Warlock will be prioritized quite as much as the Paladin and DK were (I've always thought of them as kind of Main and Vice Main) which might make it a bit easier to spare some time to work on the other alts. Still, I want to keep up with renown so that I can see the stories in each of the covenants. I just hope that I'll also be able to keep them geared enough to do the content the covenant stories entail.

Crafter's Marks, Callings, and a Need for Deterministic Rewards

 By this point, it's actually been a long time since we had such a system, but back in the day, there was something called Badge gear.

In Burning Crusade, vendors were introduced who would sell high-quality gear for a currency called Badges of Justice. You could get these badges by beating Heroic Dungeon bosses (Heroics in BC were considered quite difficult, at least by those days' standards.) New gear was introduced to these vendors with the release of new raids like Zul'Aman and Sunwell Plateau, and so players were incentivized to keep running heroic dungeons in order to earn the badges to purchase that gear. Later, they made it so that raid bosses would drop these badges (2 at a time for every raid beyond Karazhan, the intro raid).

In Wrath of the Lich King, they introduced new Emblems which served a similar purpose. However, Emblems came in various varieties. Emblems of Heroism would drop in Heroic dungeons and the easier 10-player version of Naxxramas, Eye of Eternity, and Obsidian Sanctum, while Emblems of Valor would drop in the 25-player versions.

When Ulduar was introduced in 3.1, the 10-player version gave Emblems of Valor while the 25-player one gave Emblems of Conquest. Then, in 3.2, with the introduction of Trial of the Crusade, the system got streamlined - now, every bit of old content that could drop Emblems would give Emblems of Conquest, and the new Heroic mode of raiding for Trial of the Crusader gave Emblems of Triumph (I'll be honest, I might have some of this wrong - effectively there were three raid difficulties at that point, because 10-player heroic was seen as equivalent to 25-player normal.) Finally, when 3.3 brought Icecrown Citadel, the final Emblem was introduced - Emblem of Frost - which was used to purchase, among other things, the tier 10 raid set (Triumph had also been the way you got tier 9.)

In Cataclysm, they came up with a much more elegant system for this - "Old Content" would give a currency called Justice Points, which could be spent on any of the older gear (there was also some initial Justice Point gear you could get when you were starting heroics) while Valor Points were introduced as the always-cutting-edge currency - something you could acquire a limited amount of per week, but which you could get from doing both raids and random heroic dungeons.

And while Cataclysm was sort of the first disappointment of an expansion (other than heroics or raiding, there was practically nothing to do at the level cap - though I still think the old-world revamp was a great change, even though what had been an update after 6 years is now 10 years old) I think this system was really great.

But Blizzard has moved farther and farther away from deterministic gearing. To define the term: deterministic gearing is the idea that if you complete the content you intend to, kill the raid bosses or clear the dungeons that you need to, you will be guaranteed after a certain number of successes to get the piece you're aiming for. Random drops are not deterministic - you can run a dungeon over and over and just get unlucky and never get the thing you want.

I think there's an argument for random drops - it makes it more exciting when you kill something to see if this time you'll get the thing. And I think that's been Blizzard's argument in favor of it. (The cynical view could be that they figure this will make content last longer and thus get people to stay subscribed longer, but I'll be honest, I don't really believe that - I think Blizzard understands that what gets people to keep playing is that the game is fun, and if I ever find myself with everything I want on a main character while I'm still enjoying myself, I'll just play one of my million alts.)

But we never lost those random drops when we had a currency-based deterministic system. And given that these systems generally require well over a single dungeon run to get loot equivalent to what might drop in it, the big benefit to a currency system is that no run feels wasted. These days, if I take a character through a mythic dungeon and I don't get a single piece of gear, it feels like my time was wasted and in fact, I've lost opportunity given the weekly lockout. But if I were also getting a Badge of Justice off of each of those bosses, and that for 15 of those I could get a decent trinket, helmet, or even a weapon to fill in that last bit of questing gear I still have, I'd feel much better about having succeeded in that dungeon run.

So, I do think that we need to bring back a system like we had in Wrath and Cataclysm (Mists of Pandaria also had Valor gear, but it was locked behind reputations that could only be attained after months of daily quests, which was a major pain.) This is especially true given that Callings are not nearly as useful for gearing as Emissaries were in Legion and BFA. Indeed, even world quests themselves seem to be far less gear-oriented in terms of rewards.

Furthermore, I've talked before about Crafter's Marks. In theory, these are a fantastic system that allows any professional recipe to continue to be relevant as long as new Crafter's Marks are made available. The problem right now is that the absolute pinnacle of Crafter's Marks are A: only enough to raise the piece's item level to 161 - which is 10 points below heroic dungeon gear - and B: locked behind a reputation that will likely take a few more weeks for anyone to get to the level needed to attain it. (Don't get me wrong, I love Ve'nari and think that making that rep grind a slow one is fine.)

Crafting gear is supposed to be the original deterministic gear acquisition method. But it's always been hamstrung I think a bit by Blizzard worrying that it'll be too pay-to-win (especially given that they resorted in Warlords to selling gold - kind of the video game economy version of parents letting their kids smoke pot as long as they only do so safe at home.) And I think that's fair - WoW would be in terrible shape if they had to balance around people just buying player power, and I think they've been very wise in avoiding some of the pitfalls of F2P MMOs.

The ecstasy and the agony of random loot drops is something we've always had in WoW, and I don't think we'll ever lose it entirely. But I do feel that giving players a sense that their time isn't totally wasted if they don't get the loot they want out of an instance is a really great way to make the game feel better.

First Ones, Eternals, and the Shadowlands' Ties to the Material World

 When Warcraft: Chronicle came out, they mentioned the Shadowlands only briefly, basically showing up in their cosmic chart opposite the Emerald Dream just outside of "Reality."

Death, as a primal force, occupied one of the six major spots on the outside of the chart. I don't know whether the existence of the Light and the Void as the top and bottom of that chart are meant to be more significant than Order, Disorder, Life, and Death, but it does seem that Death has its own realm of existence in the Shadowlands.

As a D&D fan (albeit a relatively recent one - though I guess it's now been five years) this immediately recalled their planes of the Feywild and the Shadowfell. The former is your classic Faerie Otherworld, home to beautiful but treacherous archfey (who aren't so much good or evil as... playing with a different set of rules) as well as a lot of mischievous tricksters who might not appreciate how mortal you are. The Shadowfell is a dreary and dark realm where emotions and color are sapped, and the undead are very common - tending toward a sort of gothic horror reality without necessarily being inherently evil.

Cosmologically, though, the Shadowlands in WoW are closer to the Outer Planes. These are realms that are sort of physical manifestations of the game's iconic alignments (Lawful Good, Chaotic Neutral, Chaotic Evil, etc.) As sort of conceptual realms, the Outer Planes are home to most gods in its cosmos, and are also where the souls of the dead go when they die.

In fact, there's a whole campaign setting that takes place entirely within those outer planes called Planescape - where humanoids are categorized as "Planar" meaning that they're originally from the Outer Planes, "Petitioner" meaning they're the soul of a person who died and has been reborn in the Outer Planes to go to their afterlife, or "Prime" meaning someone from the Prime Material Plane who has traveled to the Outer Planes while still alive (and are treated like the dumb hicks of the multiverse by most Planars.)

What's interesting is that, given that most of the mortal souls that travel to the Shadowlands on death stay there (even if someone like Draka gets assignments that take her elsewhere) in many ways, the leaders of each realm there are arguably the really important gods of the Warcraft cosmos. You spend one lifetime in the Material World, but the rest of eternity in the Shadowlands.

But up until this point, the closest we've gotten to a true pantheon of deities was the Titans. Indeed, we've literally referred to the Titans as the Pantheon.

But the Eternals - the leaders of the various realms of the Shadowlands - are also, at one point, called a pantheon.

There are parallels between the Eternals and the Titans, perhaps most notably in the traitor amongst them.

Sargeras had been the paragon of the Titans, but when faced with the horror of the void, he went down a path of madness. When he rebelled, he struck down his fellow Titans, and it was unknown eons before the rest of the Pantheon was restored, and able to trap Sargeras within their Olympus-like Seat.

In the case of Zovaal, though, it looks as if his initial rebellion was a failure, leaving him trapped int he Maw.

We don't have any real idea of whether the Eternals are on the same level of power as the Titans. My suspicion is that they're meant to be of roughly equivalent power, though the Eternals are masters of the Shadowlands, while the Titans are powers either of "Reality" (i.e. the material plane) or some as-yet-undiscovered realm of the Arcane, as we're told that they are beings of Order, whose signature magic is Arcane.

One thing that also intrigues me is that we hear mentions of the First Ones in Shadowlands. Are the First Ones just another name for the Eternals? Or was there some group of creators who built the Shadowlands? If these were the Titans, that would seem to put them a step up from the Eternals.

Indeed, I'll be honest, I'm a little sad that we only got to see the Titans briefly in Legion. Built up through all of WoW's lifespan, we ultimately only got to see several of them sitting in chairs during the final boss fight. I still don't really know the difference between Norgannon, Golganneth, and Khaz'goroth.

I know that a lot of the stuff we're getting in the Shadowlands is just new lore - though at the same time, it's using elements that were introduced long ago. The fact that Mueh'zalla turns out to have been behind a lot of bad stuff that's been happening is pretty interesting, given that we've had that name since Zul'farrak. I also like how they managed to imply that the Val'kyr are a weirdly bastardized version of the Kyrians, which also manages to draw a connection between a Norse mythological being and a Greek word associated with Christianity.

Of course, if we're talking Gods, there's none more mysterious than Elune, who seems to be tied into a lot of things in Shadowlands, but also defies categorization, with deep connections to the Titans (Tears of Elune, Eonar found on "Elunaria") the Wild Gods (Cenarius is her son) and the Naaru (Khadgar claims a book in Karazhan says that she created the Naaru). Now, we've also got the Winter Queen possibly referring to her as her "sister" (though I'll admit there are other candidates for whom she's referring to - though not a ton of them) and once again I find myself wondering what the hell Elune is.

While a lot of Shadowlands is adding brand new lore to the Warcraft cosmos, not only is it really interesting and cool lore, but I also suspect we're going to get some major reveals that will resonate even after we leave this realm behind.

Crafter's Marks and Missive Might Save Professions

 Professions, in WoW, were actually one of the first things that drew me to the game - the idea that I could craft my own gear was pretty cool. Of course, that was 14 years ago, and while I'll never let go of Engineering on my main (the best profession, obviously) in general, it's a game system that has struggled.

On one hand, they want it to be worthwhile, but on the other, they don't want to make the game a case of "who has enough gold to buy this on the Auction House" - especially given that they are, effectively, selling gold at this point.

Now, I'll confess that I'm not sure that the new systems fix this. But I do think that the actual appeal of crafted gear could be way better in Shadowlands, depending on how much they use Crafter's Marks in future patches.

Most professions (at least Engineering and Inscription, so I'd guess all the production ones) can make various ranks of Crafter's Marks with their own typical professional materials. When used as one of the optional ingredients in a recipe, this will change the item level (and required level).

Scribes can also create Missives, which can be applied to a piece of gear one is crafted as another optional ingredient to guarantee that a particular secondary stat will show up on it.

And as such, Blizzard doesn't actually need to add any new crafted recipes beyond new Crafter's Marks for the rest of the expansion.

Basically, item level and secondary stats are what defines a piece of gear these days (well, and armor type/slot). Item level tells you the amount of primary stats on it and its armor, and how much of its secondary stats you get. So if I can make, for example, some plate engineering goggles with Haste and Mastery, I'd be happy to keep making those at higher item levels because that'd give me all I want out of a helmet.

Rather than having to make tons of new items for every profession with each patch, they can just add a new Crafter's Mark recipe - one that will probably get harder to attain (maybe requiring some raiding) and perhaps some more difficult to acquire materials (perhaps that drop in said raid) to keep the gear locked behind the content. But it will make it much easier to make sure every profession's stuff gets updated.

I also like that it gives Inscription a key niche in the professional landscape - something they've lacked since Glyphs stopped being a major player-power mechanic.

Now, as of right now, the highest Crafter's Mark A: requires that you be at Cordial reputation with Ve'nari and B: only raises an item level to 161, which is only going to be useful if you don't have heroic dungeon gear.

I hope that we'll see this system expanded, as I think it's pretty elegant.

Pre-Raid Endgame and Systems on Top of Systems

 Ah, it's that odd part of the expansion where I'm not far behind the mythic raiders in terms of gearing. My Death Knight, who got to 60 in week one as well, is having absolutely rotten loot luck (of the four heroics I ran today on him, only one dropped a single piece of loot for him - thankfully the tank gave me a pair of boots - with top Frost stats - from Spires of Ascension, so it wasn't a total loss). The main paladin has had much better luck (so far) and now has a decent number of epics from Mythics, including a shield.

Hitting the level cap on your main often comes with a big blast of stuff to do, especially with the many systems they've been introducing in new expansions these past few years.

Shadowlands might take the cake for the most. Let's go through all the things you'll want to do to progress your character in terms of power and story.

Weekly:

Get your 1000 anima.

Get your 5 souls from the Maw.

Run as high up in the two open wings of Torghast as you can to maximize the Soul Ash you're getting.

Daily:

Do Maw content - as much as you can before your Eye of the Jailer level is too high to do so safely.

Do your Callings.

Farm up supplies for your covenant's special minigame. (Actually not sure if this is a weekly or daily thing).

Do your anima-conductor thing and go kill the rare or get the treasure.

Manage your adventure table (I mean - you don't have to).

Now, I'm sure that as the expansion goes on, some of these things will be more or less "completed," or we'll get to a point where we don't really need to work so diligently on them. For instance, once we've fully upgraded our covenant sanctums, and once we've finished our covenant campaigns, the weekly quests will probably be a lot less important.

I'm also really curious to see how things scale up. It's interesting to see that world quests often reward a stack of 2-4 of an item with 35 anima - rather than just a single item with 70-140. I wonder if the plan is that as the expansion goes on, we'll see quests and such giving us bigger stacks.

My roommate didn't finish his weekly 1000 anima quest in the first week, but he got a renown badge out of his calling quest, which suggests this will be a way to catch up if you fall behind. Clearly, given the way that soulbinds work, renown is going to be a major thing that every character's got to work on.

So, I believe that conduits drop for every spec, even if it's not your loot spec, which is why I've been getting retribution ones while tanking. I'm wondering if the same is true for the legendary "memories" needed to craft legendary items. Basically, my DK is 2H Frost (and yes, I went Venthyr even though that's apparently the "worst" choice for it, but A: it just seems right and B: it's actually one of the recommended ones for Blood (even if Kyrian seems to be ideal for both in single-target situations) and C: who knows how things will shift over time?

I do find myself wondering about which alt to level - normally my Demon Hunter would follow the DK, but he's also likely to go Venthyr (I tried out the Necrolord DH ability on the beta and kind of hate it) so I'm wondering if I just want to level a character who's likely to go Night Fae or Necrolords just so I can actually see those experiences.

Of course, my sense is that Kyrian and Venthyr are actually the top covenants for a lot of specs.

The alt-spec thing is a bit of a concern, although it currently kind of helps me justify what might be an un-optimized pick for my Death Knight - Blood and Venthyr go well together (and shouldn't they, thematically?) And I genuinely like using the Venthyr ability (Swarming Mist, which does aoe damage around you for a few seconds, increases your dodge chance, and gives you Runic Power when it does damage) even if it's perhaps not quite tuned as well as some others. (I'll actually admit that I'm getting used to once again actually using Death and Decay as a Frost Death Knight, but I also think that the Night Fae are possibly the least Death-Knight-y of the covenants.)

Blizzard is taking a risk here, creating a major tension between player power and the preferred story/aesthetic they wish to play with. Naturally, I'm sure all the hardcore raiders will go with the best simmed covenant regardless of aesthetic, but I also think that the vast majority of players will probably be ok. I mean, my DK is doing respectable damage so far, often topping the damage meter in boss fights (though I'd love for him to actually get some freaking gear drops.)

The Winter Queen's Sister

 Oddly, when I first did the Ardenweald quests on my main, I missed out on the climactic cutscene in which...

It's a new expansion, let's put a spoiler cut here.

SPOILERS AHEAD

An Alt in the Shadowlands

 Having blazed through leveling up and now running heroic dungeons and waiting for daily callings and world quests to let me progress other systems, I decided it was time to bring in my first alt - by tradition, it's my Death Knight (who has been, since Wrath, my sort of "Vice Main," even outgearing the tankadin in Mists of Pandaria.) I think my Demon Hunter will come next, and then I'll probably let one of my Horde characters come (though faction divide seems like it will be immensely less significant than it was last time - indeed, I think I might have leveled my Shaman prior to the DK in BFA just so I could see Zandalar).

While it looks like every character must go through the introductory quests in the Maw (which gets you most of the way to 51, actually) when you arrive in Oribos on a character after the first has hit 60 and chosen a covenant (I assume that's the criterion) time actually freezes while a special NPC shows up to let you choose - do you play through the main story again or go into a free-form mode?

Now, actually, for all of my characters, the Death Knight makes the most sense to play in this free-mode (which I'll detail below) given that I leveled him up to 60 in the beta, and thus have actually gotten to try out all the covenant abilities. You can actually switch over from story mode to this free-form mode later if you want to skip ahead, but you cannot go the other way.

While I'm tempted to try that on him, I'm also sort of hesitant to do so, given the vast number of quests I'd be missing out on - though there's obviously some content (lots of bonus objectives, I believe) that open up. The key advantage to the free-form is that you get to do the zones in any order, and can choose your covenant at 50, getting to start work on stuff like renown from the get-go.

But given that I've only played through the leveling story once on beta and once on live, I'm not exactly sick of it yet. A conundrum. Of course, every other class I play I'll probably want to get a chance to use the four covenant abilities outside of some training dummies in that room in Oribos, which the linear questing experience really gives you tons of opportunity to do.

For the DK, I think I want to go Venthyr, which is seen, I think, as a kinda ok option for Frost, though it's also seen as pretty good for Blood, so I think I'll probably be ok with that.

I do want to be able to play all four covenant campaigns, but at the same time, the min-maxer in me wants to make sure that I get my characters the best stuff, so... hm. And as it happens, it looks like I'm going to have a ton of Venthyr characters among my most-played ones (I might elevate my Frost Mage a bit early so I have someone to go Night Fae.)

Also, I'll be honest, I kind of hate Fleshcrafting, the universal Necrolord ability. If the channel time were half as long, I might like it a whole lot more.

Anyway, the DK is sitting in Oribos, having gotten his professions upgraded to Shadowlands level and chilling for the time being. I'll probably return to the paladin main tomorrow and get daily content done. (Naturally, his worst piece of gear is his weapon - haven't had much luck with drops. But heroics don't seem to be a massive difficulty jump, so I'll just give it time.)

What Hit the Arbiter?

 Shortly after we arrive in Oribos, before we're sent to Bastion to start our little mystery investigation through the Shadowlands, we get a cutscene that explains why the afterlife is broken, and all souls are currently going directly to the Maw.

But one explanation just raises other questions.

What we know is that when things are working correctly, the Arbiter sees every soul and understands it immediately, then sends it on its way to the proper afterlife. But in the midst of the stream of incoming souls, there was some red (in contrast to the tranquil bluish-white of the others) missile that struck her, knocking her out and causing the entire stream to go directly down (which, ok, bad design, guys.)

As I see it, there are two possibilities: the red projectile was either a soul or some kind of magical attack.

Now, the latter case leaves a ton of possibilities open - basically, anyone who can aim something into the Shadowlands could pull it off. This could still totally be the case, but I think it's more interesting if one individual's demise was what caused this.

But who?

Ok, let's talk timing.

Thanks to the tearjerkingly tragic Ardenweald Afterlives cinematic, we know that the system was still functioning when we did the Emerald Nightmare raid. Ursoc's demise there led to his arrival as a spirit in Ardenweald, ready to undergo the long hibernation that would bring his eventual rebirth - only for the anima drought to deny him the chance to be reborn or even live on in Ardenweald (oof, still hurts).

So we have a moment it could not have happened before (even accepting that time works differently in the Shadowlands, we're talking causality here, and if the story is to make sense, it has to at least respect that a little, unless we find out the Infinite Dragonflight is behind all of this (which... sign me up?)

Now, I believe that there's been mentions of the souls that burned in Teldrassil going to the Maw (which makes Elune's putting them to sleep before they could die feel like less of an effective act of mercy). That would suggest that this violation of the system happened before the War of Thorns.

So that means that something happened during Legion or in the between-expansion period after it. If my hypothesis that the red thing is a soul, whose might it be?

My initial guess would be Argus. Frankly, there are a lot of things we have yet to really understand about Argus. When we arrived on his planet, he was still just a World-Soul like Azeroth - which seems to be a kind of formless essence at the heart of the planet. The Legion had worked Argus over like crazy, as we saw that a giant chunk of the planet had been carved away, and it had been profoundly corrupted by fel magic.

But in the very last moments of the raid, Argus manifests as a true Titanic form within the Seat of the Pantheon, and we fight him while the uncorrupted (and in the case of Aggramar de-corrupted) Titans watch. It's his defeat that seems to empower the Pantheon to capture Sargeras and seal him on his throne (though again, we really don't know what exactly happened next - the one kinda-sorta mortal there hasn't been able to call home.)

But here's a question: do Titans go to the Shadowlands?

I believe there was either an answer from a Blizzard person in an interview or possibly a line in Shadowlands that suggests that the Titans are beings of Order, and that the material world is their realm (which is kind of interesting - if each of the 6 primordial forces has its own plane, with the Shadowlands being that of Death and the Twisting Nether being that of Disorder, is "Reality" the realm of Order?) Though Sargeras had slain Aggramar and the rest of the Pantheon way back in the distant past, they lived on, and while their essences were (with the exception of Eonar) recaptured by the Legion (as we saw in Antorus,) they were able to return to their Titanic forms by the Argus fight.

Man, it's a shame we didn't get more time to spend with them, because there were a lot of questions I'd have wanted to ask them. Also, I'd have really liked to be reminded what the difference between Norgannon and Golganeth was - after so long building up the ultimate divine pantheon of the Warcraft universe, we didn't really get any time to see them do anything individually.

Anyway, if Argus hasn't just been annihilated like Telogrus was (I maintain that that's the name of the World-Soul that Sargeras first destroyed when he found that the planet was corrupted with Old Gods, because it's heavily implied that the Void Elf starting zone is that world) would his soul go to the Shadowlands? Or would it persist, maybe in the Seat of the Pantheon?

Let's set him aside for a moment, though.

What about Kil'jaeden? Killy J even had a connection to the Shadowlands, as it was he who built the Lich King (out of, I believe we'll discover, pieces made by the Runecarver, plus one Orc soul). But that's also an interesting question: given that Kil'jaeden had spent 25,000 years as a demon (and a particularly powerful one at that, meaning he must have been saturated with fel energy - which is probably why he exploded and took out his whole flagship when he died) can he even go to the Shadowlands? My read of his death was that he faced true extinction, dying in the Twisting Nether as he did. It made his last words all the more tragic - that he had given up his humanity (er... Draenanity? No, hold on, Eredaranity?) thinking that Sargeras could not be opposed, and that it would be better for him and his people to be on the winning side, only to face oblivion.

Like Argus, I'm not sure that there is a soul of Kil'jaeden's to even go to the Shadowlands.

But here's, perhaps, an interesting option:

What about Gul'dan?

See, there's a problem with Gul'dan. His soul had already been sent to the Shadowlands.

Now, take this with a boulder of rock salt, because even in Warlords of Draenor - the literal time travel expansion - Blizzard was resolute in not actually making use of the time-travel elements in the story. As someone who has been fascinated by the Infinite Dragonflight since they were introduced in Burning Crusade, it felt criminal that they never actually made use of them within Warlords - the only tiny reference to them being Kairozdormu claiming he would "become infinite" right before Garrosh strangled him to death.

While I think there's a lot of merit to the theory that no one is supposed to go directly to the Maw - that everyone's supposed to get a chance in Revendreth - if there's any character in Warcraft who seems 100% suited for the Maw, it's Gul'dan (Cho'gall's another possibility).

(As a side note, in the Gul'dan Harbingers cinematic from Legion, I think most people would read, and perhaps the intended read is, that the gruff warrior guy who exiles Gul'dan from his home is just another toxic "warrior culture" orc who can't understand the value of people without physical strength, and that the shaman who shows him mercy is the wise one, even if it gets him killed. I kind of like the possibility that the warrior guy doesn't exile him for being weak, but because he understands the darkness within what was then a young man, and that the shaman is just being naive.)

So Gul'dan might have just gone to the Maw immediately. But what if, when we killed the second Gul'dan, it caused an error?

The inhabitants of Bastion have a vaguely mechanical vibe to them (same with the Brokers, who, by the way, I'm convinced are up to something profoundly shady, and also feel like they would get along well with the Ethereals) and so I could understand Gul'dan Mk. II showing up for judgment causing a major error.

Now, on the other hand, plenty of invading orcs from Alt-Draenor died before he did well before Legion. And I also wonder if the Shadowlands transcends timelines the way that the Legion does (which... I'm about 95% convinced was the Blizzard lore team just wanting to get Warlords over with and let Archimonde die for real-real).

So I'm not 100% convinced that it's him either.

Of all the things that happened in Legion, the one most closely associated with the force of Death was Helya and her Kvaldir. We now know that Helya is one of the many figures in league with the Jailer (likewise Mueh'zalla, who I think is the hardest dungeon boss in the expansion, at least on normal and when we're still learning the fights) and we were told during BFA (if you got a particular drop from an island expedition) that even in death, she's been more powerful than ever.

Naturally, I think we'll find out more over the course of this expansion. But I am happy to have some major lore to speculate about.

Kyrian Covenant, Level 60, Almost All the Dungeons Run

 The one dungeon I have left is De Other Side, which is actually the one I've been most excited for (so it's kind of fun to have it saved for last.)

I hit 60 yesterday - while I always try to stop and read the quest text when an expansion goes live, having done the whole 50-60 climb on my Death Knight in the beta, I wasn't exactly poring over every detail, and so my ascent was rather quick.

Thankfully, since that time of the Beta, they've fixed the experience required for the last few levels, so I was 60 before I tried the final scenario in Revendreth (I had been about halfway through 67 on the Beta, and it was unforgiving - they also fixed it so that your Stoneborn allies are a buff rather than NPCs you can lose - and dying doesn't remove said buff.)

Playing through with all the cutscenes has of course clarified some things. The quests here are very good.

There are a ton of things to do at the level cap, which the game walks you through individually. I've capped my renown for the week.

I guess I'll go through the dungeons and my general impressions (just a paragraph a piece.)

Necrotic Wake:

This will be the first dungeon you run if you do that while leveling. Fighting through the evil Maldraxxi who are invading Bastion, I'd say most of the fights are rather straightforward except for the third one - as a PSA: IF YOU GET THE MEAT HOOK ON YOU, AIM IT AT THE BOSS. I anticipate the first few weeks of this expansion that fight's going to be a pain, but people will figure it out eventually.

Plaguefall:

I think the oddest thing about this dungeon is that I'm not sure you can clear all the trash before you get the second boss. The other thing is that those tentacles are real nasty on the final boss - remember to treat it as a series of void zones, not something that can be out-ranged (actually, it's a bit like King Dazar.) I will say I think it's slightly cheating that Maldraxxus effectively has three dungeons (including the Necrotic Wake in Bastion,) but it earns that thanks to the level-cap one, which is really cool - and we'll get to that.

Mists of Tirna Scithe:

It feels like each dungeon so far has a "you really need to know this before you start" hint. Here's the key: the puzzles before and during the second boss are all about finding the one thing that doesn't fit - There'll be an element that everything else has, and you want to go with the passage or clone that doesn't have it. Again, this is going to be a pain for the first couple weeks. I will say that I hope there's a little more depth to the Drust - they were one of the cooler minor villains in BFA, but there's no personality like Gorak Tul to give the Drust in Ardenweald a real identity beyond "these guys are bad."

Halls of Atonement:

While I had done this on the Beta, and it is a level-up dungeon, I cannot seem to find a quest for it, so I actually only ran it live after doing three of the level-cap dungeons. There's nothing terribly obscure about this (though I do like how the Stoneborn boss smashes out of the doors when you try to open them.) I'm sure there will be some strategies that develop for the first part to most efficiently kill the three golems to empower the boss.

Spires of Acension:

This is a remarkably large dungeon, but one in which much of the ground is covered on the wings of Kyrians. Most is rather straightforward, but the final boss is actually pretty tough - and I can only imagine what it'll be like on Mythic. Basically, collect those globes while dodging (if you possibly can) the patches of nasty stuff, and toss that spear as soon as possible. As a sidenote: I find the Forsworn to be a really interesting quasi-villain group. While their leadership has made a deal with a seriously bad dude, the cause for their rebellion is, like, reasonable. And it's nice to see that the Archon recognizes that when you finish the dungeon and hints that reforms are coming.

Theater of Pain:

I did not expect this dungeon to be so cool. After a rather easy first boss (which feels more like a major trash pull) you get sucked into the arena's depths, where the middle three bosses are (or is it four?) Anyway, you can do these bosses in any order, and each has their own little short old-school Scarlet Monastery wing-sized mini dungeon. Once the bosses at the bottom are defeated, you can fight the final boss.

De Other Side:

Haven't run this one yet!

Sanguine Depths:

This one is almost all tight quarters. A couple things - first, the second boss took me by surprise, as it's in a really narrow part of a long hallway, so I pulled without realizing I was targeting a boss (we were fine.) The second thing is that the player that's carrying the escaped prisoner, and thus gets a special ability, is apparently supposed to save it for a particular attack the final boss does, which screwed up because I used it too early.

Now, this is a point in the game (like, two days an a couple hours since launch) where more or less everyone's playing their mains, so we're cutting through these dungeons like butter. I suspect they'll feel a bit more challenging later on. Still, I think the difficulty's about right - not so hard that it's a constant wipe-fest, but tough enough that you need to pay attention to most of the boss mechanics.

Of course, this is all normal mode. I'm not geared enough for heroics yet (I wonder who is) and I'm sure there will be some new wrinkles to deal with.

Anyway, I want to run De Other Side and then finish out what I imagine is my weekly Torghast Soul Ash quest. I'm looking forward to my roommate getting to that point, as I hope to do some Torghast runs as a pair. It's pretty fun solo, but I actually don't know how anima powers and such work with multiple people.

Shadowlands has a really great aesthetic and a ton of interesting lore - and I'm really eager to see how that lore ties into ongoing stories. The quest you get in Sanguine Depths (which seems to be unique among the level cap dungeons - unless De Other Side has one) remind us that while the Shadowlands are sort of their own universe, it's still part of the larger Warcraft multiverse. I'm reminded of Mists of Pandaria, when everything felt so new and almost disconnected from what we had already seen - but then we found out that there was some really major lore surrounding the Titans and the Old Gods to be found there.

I will also suggest that people keep an ear out for mentions of mysterious new figures in the Shadowlands - having done the Venthyr campaign on the Beta, I'm pretty sure that I know who they're talking about, but there are some nice, subtle "blink and you'll miss it" mentions that seem to refer to this, well, established lore figure.

Oh, and we need to talk about that cinematic showing the Arbiter getting shut down. What was that? Was it a direct attack, or was it a particular soul? And in the former case, fired by whom? And in the latter case, who was it?

Big questions posed, and big answers to look forward to!

Also, we're all agreed that the Brokers are up to something really sketchy, right?

PSA: An Armorer Artificer by Level 20 is Nigh-Unkillable

While doing some planning for an AL character, I came up with a 1-20 plan.

And I discovered that things get utterly crazy if you actually make it to level 20.

In AL, you generally either take the Standard Array or the Point Buy system for your stats - you can't roll them, because basically everything has to be replicable and not just "trust me, I rolled really well when I made this character." But with the new racial rules, you can reassign ability score improvements. Any race with +2 to one stat and +1 to another can thus achieve the model I'm using.

So, with the Standard Array, you give the 14 to Intelligence and the 15 to Constitution, and then grant the +2 to Int and the +1 to Con (or vice versa - the idea is to get yourself both to 16 at level 1.) Eventually, you'll be getting Int and Con both maxed, with one leftover ASI for a feat.

By level 9, an Armorer can infuse two extra items, as long as they're part of the four elements of their armor that can be infused. This isn't strictly relevant, but you want to make sure you've got all your attunement slots filled by 20 - something that this will help with.

Now, Armorers can get heavy armor, and as long as it's their Arcane Armor, they don't need any Strength to move at full speed in it. So you want to get a set of plate as soon as you can.

Next, you'll also want a shield - while Artificers don't start with one, they can use them, and there's no reason I know of that an Armorer wouldn't want to use one (especially since your weapons aren't even going to occupy your dominant hand.)

Putting Repulsion Shield on your shield and Enhanced Defense on your armor means that, if you have a set of plate, by level 10 (when Enhanced Defense upgrades) you'll have 23 AC.

Also at level 10, you can learn to replicate Cloak of Protection, which increases AC and your saving throws by 1. So now, you've actually got 24 AC.

At level 14, you can learn to replicate Ring of Protection, which does the same thing but is a higher rarity for some reason. But now, you have that and you have 25 AC - which is the same AC as Tiamat and the Tarrasque, the highest CR monsters in the game, have.

Making sure that you have every attunement slot filled (which you can do regardless of what the DM is giving you thanks to your infusions,) you'll eventually have six items.

So, with the standard array, you'll have gotten Int and Con both up to +5. These are also the saving throws you're proficient in as an Artificer, which by level 20 is a +6 bonus.

Artificers also get +1 to their saving throws for every item they are attuned to once they hit level 20. Which means that you will have +5 for the ability, +6 for proficiency, +6 for your attunements, and +2 for the ring and the cloak.

And thus have a +19 to your Intelligence and Constitution saving throws.

Now, your other stats will have two +1s, a +0, and a -1. But that still gets the +6 and the +2 bonuses from attunements and the ring and cloak, which comes out to two +9s, a +8, and a +7.

(Team up with a level 20 Paladin with maxed Charisma for extra fun!)

25 AC. And +19 to Con saves. Which then means that concentration saves are going to be a bit easier, right?

Man, I want to play one of these.

Shadowlands Tomorrow!

 Shadowlands, WoW's 8th (!) expansion launches tomorrow (or today if it's the 23rd in your time zone.) So while we're all hoping for Bronjahm to drop his freaking bag (I really can't complain, as I've gotten it on 4 characters now, but I want to get it for my Rogue, dammit, and I missed two spawns today because I remembered he was coming about two minutes after he did) the pre-expansion event will come to a close an hour before the expansion goes live. That is set to occur at 3 PM Pacific time, at which point you should get a quest sending you to your faction capital before getting a ride to Acherus, and from there to Icecrown Citadel.

Your first character will have to complete the campaign quests, which will take you first into the Maw, and then to the capital city of Oribos, and then through the main quest lines in Bastion, Maldraxxus, Ardenweald, and then Revendreth. At level 60, you'll pick your Covenant, which will lock in the two abilities and your options for things like soulbinds and such.

There is a ton of theorycrafting on Covenants, but I think I'm going to try to ignore that and just pick the ones that fit the personalities and characters of my various characters - my theory being that ideal covenant might shift over the course of the expansion. Is this a terrible idea? I hope not!

I'm given to understand that they've nerfed the amount of XP you need to get from 50-60, which was very necessary, as I finished the final story quests in the Beta before that change at about halfway through 57, which meant I eventually needed to dungeon grind after finishing all the side quests in... I think every zone. The intention now is that you should be able to hit the cap with the four leveling dungeons and the campaign, but I'd say do some side quests just to be safe (especially in the early zones, as these will not scale up, and thus their XP will be deprecated when you outlevel them.)

Now, subsequent characters can choose to either go through the same linear path or pick their covenant immediately and then level up through side quests and bonus objectives. Beware: the entire main campaign quests (other than the Maw intro, which you need to get through to make this choice) is unavailable if you choose this, so make sure you really don't want to do any of those story quests. Side quest chains should still be available, and you'll have bonus objectives in the regions where the main story quests would otherwise be in order to make up for the lost XP.

Personally, I'd recommend doing the main campaign at least on the first couple characters, particularly because this will give you a chance to try out all the covenant abilities before you commit to a choice. If you put your full trust in Icy-Veins or Noxxic or whatever the kids are using these days, then feel free to just pick the best-simmed one, but I'm going to try them all out (note that before you commit even in this version of the leveling experience, you do get to try out the various abilities on combat dummies before you make a choice).

I'm given to understand that the first raid, Castle Nathria (which is actually the only announced raid at this point) opens up just two weeks after launch. I don't know how easy it will be to gear up for that in time, but that of course depends on your playstyle (given the year we're in, I imagine people will have more time to power-level.) Castle Nathria is the home of Sire Denathrius, the main villain of Revendreth, and is a massive gothic castle (insert Arrested Development joke here) where Denathrius has been stockpiling anima while the lower classes of Revendreth suffer, not to mention the souls there that are supposed to be getting rehabilitated but are instead just being squeezed for every last drop of anima.

Anyway, it's a brand new day in WoW, and we'll be leaving behind Azerite Armor and Heart of Azeroth essences the moment we enter the Shadowlands (well, the armor will stay, but we won't get the azerite powers anymore.)

I think the big question is whether the Soulbind system will feel as intrusive on the gameplay as Azerite was - I'm hopeful it won't, but we'll see. (Personally, I'd love to see the next expansion ditch these "borrowed power" systems and just go back to straight gear - artifact weapons were cool, but I don't think we need another version of them in every expansion.)

There is plenty of story left to be revealed, and apparently some bits that were missing from the beta (such as the cinematic that shows how and when the system of death got broken - something we know happened after Ursoc died but before Teldrassil burned - was it the death of Argus?) that I'm eager to see.

Anyway, it's a big day for WoW tomorrow!

Comparing PHB vs Tasha's Ranger

 More than any other class, the Ranger got a profound rework with Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. Given the reputation for the poor state of the Ranger over the last 6 years, I thought I'd go through feature-by-feature and consider how the new ones stack up against the old ones.

Note that I'll be ignoring the Beast Master changes. While certainly good (you sort of just have Summon Beast up at all times, though the stat blocks are a bit different) I'm looking at universal Ranger features.

Level 1: Favored Enemy vs. Favored Foe.

Favored Enemy: This lets you choose a creature type (or two humanoid races) and designate them as your favored enemies. You learn a language associated with them, and you get advantage on Survival checks to track them, as well as any Intelligence checks to recall information about them. You get additional favored enemies at 6th and 14th level, with all the perks.

Favored Foe: When you hit an enemy, you can mark them for 1 minute while maintaining concentration (as if on a spell) as your foe, dealing an extra d4 of damage to them once per turn (including when you mark them.) You can do this a number of times equal to your PB, getting all uses back on a long rest. The damage bonus goes up to a d6 at level 6, and a d8 at level 14. (The marked target also counts for your Foe Slayer feature at level 20.)

    So, I'll be honest, I think I like the original better in this case. The fact that Favored Foe both requires concentration and is also limited by your PB - and you can't move it to other targets while it's up - means that it's basically a worse, albeit spell-slot free version of Hunter's Mark, which you're probably going to pick up at level 2 anyway. Just take Hunter's Mark instead and enjoy the flavorful element of Favored Enemy.

Level 1: Natural Explorer vs Deft Explorer.

Natural Explorer: This lets you choose a favored terrain, with an array of examples from which you can choose. When making an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to that terrain, your proficiency is doubled if you're using a skill that you're proficient with (wow, guess I've been doing that wrong - honestly, I think part of the reason to swap this one out is that it's so complicated.) If you travel for an hour or more in that terrain, you get the following benefits:

Difficult terrain doesn't slow your travel. You can't be come lost except by magical means. While engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking) you remain alert to danger. If traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace. When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would. While tracking other creatures, you learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area.

And you pick additional terrain types at 6th and 10th level.

Deft Explorer: You get the following benefits at levels 1, 6, and 10: Level 1: Canny: Choose one of your skill proficiencies. You double your proficiency when you make a check that uses that skill (basically expertise, right?) Level 6: Roving: Your movement speed increases by 5 and you gain a climbing speed and a swimming speed equal to your walking speed. Level 10: Tireless: As an action, you can give yourself temp HP equal to 1d8+Wis (minimum of 1.) You can do this a number of times equal to your PB per long rest. Also, if you finish a short rest, your exhaustion level, if any, decreases by 1.

    So, in this case, I'd actually lean toward the newer one. While the former has some great sort of immunities, unless your adventure is focusing a lot on long-distance travel, it's basically fluff, while the Deft Explorer features are all very clearly useful in any campaign. So in this case, I'd go with the new feature (though I'm debating if I'd want to swap it out in my Tomb of Annihilation group, where I'm playing a Ranger - having Forest as his favored terrain has been very useful, though it'll abruptly not be when we get to the dungeon itself.)

Level 3: Primeval Awareness vs Primal Awareness

Primeval Awareness: You can expend a Ranger spell slot to sense (for 1 minute per spell level) whether there are any aberrations, celestials, dragons, elementals, fey, fiends, or undead within 1 mile (or 6 miles if you're in your favored terrain.)

Primal Awareness: You learn additional spells that don't count against your spells known, each at a different level. 3rd level: Speak with Animals. 5th level: Beast Sense. 9th level: Speak with Plants. 13th level: Locate Creature. 17th level: Commune with Nature. You can cast each of these spells once without expending a spell slot, regaining this use on a long rest.

    Going to hand it to the new one, Primal Awareness. While Primeval Awareness can be nice, the RP potential and general usefulness of the other spells feels way cooler.

10th level: Hide in Plain Sight vs. Nature's Veil:

Hide in Plain Sight: You can spend 1 minute creating camouflage for yourself. You must have access to fresh mud, dirt, plants, soot, and other naturally occurring materials with which to create your camouflage. Once camouflaged this way, you can try to hide by pressing yourself up to a solid surface, such as a tree or a wall, that is at least as tall and wide as you are. You gain a +10 bonus to Dexterity (Stealth) checks as long are you remain there without moving or taking actions. Once you move or take an action or reaction, you must camouflage yourself again to gain this benefit.

Nature's Veil: As a bonus action, you can magically become invisible, along with any equipment you're wearing or carrying, until the start of your next turn. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your PB, regaining all uses when you finish a long rest.

    Oh man. On one hand, I adore the absurd flavor baked into Hide in Plain Sight. On the other hand, it's so over the top impractical unless the situation is built for it (and useless in dungeon environments.) Frankly, this is the kind of thing I'd let a Ranger do if they sold me on the RP and maybe succeeded on a Survival check. But Nature's Veil is clearly going to be far more useful in almost every situation.

    And there we have it. Half of the Ranger's unique class features can be swapped out for others. I don't know how most people will choose to play this - whether a player can pick and choose each of them or if they have to take the full suite. I really like the new ones except for Favored Foe, which I really think just doesn't seem worth it (if it weren't a concentration effect, that would salvage it for me.)

    I think you do lose some of the Ranger's really idiosyncratic specificity by taking the new options, but if it makes the class feel less like it's being held back in comparison to, say, a ranged fighter, I'm all for players who want to play that fantasy feeling like they aren't handicapping themselves by playing a broken class. And what's nice about this being simply new optional rules instead of a whole new edition is that if you preferred the original Ranger, there's nothing stopping you from playing it that way.

Tasha's, Class by Class - Artificer

 Finally, we come to the newest but also alphabetically first class in 5e D&D. Tasha's includes a full reprint (with just a couple changes) from Eberron, Rising from the Last War, which first gave us the Artificer. Given that it's kinda-sorta a new class but also not, there aren't really any big class changes that come with it. I'd have to go through their spell lists in each book to see if there are any changes, other than some spells that are found in Tasha's itself (while nearly all Artificers have some major use for their Bonus Action, I still think Summon Construct would be a lot of fun to play with.)

Notably, some of the Replicate Magic Item infusions have been removed, as they had items found only in the Eberron book (though Prosthetic Limb is reprinted in Tasha's and no longer requires attunement!) I don't believe there are any brand-new infusions, though there might be some subtle changes, for example to the Homunculus Servant, that I haven't caught.

However, there is the new subclass, Armorer, which is printed here along with the established Alchemist, Artillerist, and Battle-Smith (man, you know there are 24 other letters in the alphabet, Artificer subclasses!)

New Subclass:

Armorer:

As I've written about here before, the Armorer is more or less your Iron Man subclass. You get proficiency in heavy armor and smith's tools. You can then work with a set of armor (not just heavy) and turn it, with an action, into a suit of Arcane Armor, which removes its Strength requirement, lets you use it as a spellcasting focus, makes it so the armor can't be removed against your will (though you can retract or deploy the helmet as a bonus action) and the armor also replaces any limbs you're missing with prosthetics of the same functionality, and finally, allows you to doff or don the armor as an action (great if you need to recover hit dice on a long rest but are worried about nighttime fights - just suit up with a single action!

You also get to switch your set of armor between Guardian and Infiltrator mode. The former is tanky, with some special weapons that encourage foes to attack you instead of your allies, while the Infiltrator lets you make ranged lightning attacks and also gives you advantage on Stealth checks.

This is an interesting change from UA, which simply removed the disadvantage on Stealth from certain types of armor (notably all heavy armor.) By giving you advantage instead, on one hand, it means you'll never be able to get true advantage on stealth checks while wearing non-mithril heavy armor, but it also means that you'll never get any sort of disadvantage, and if you use light armor or a breastplate (or have Medium Armor master and use any Medium armor) you'll always be extra-sneaky, which is darned cool. I think overall this probably actually comes out to be a buff.

    The Artificer has been a very well-received addition to the game, and rightly so, and I think the Armorer manages to introduce a new flavor of Artificer that simultaneously feels very on-brand for the class while feeling very distinct from the other subclasses.

Tasha's, Class by Class - Barbarians

 Ah, the Barbarian, the little-to-no-armor tank. Barbarians are the big beefy warriors of D&D, with their unmatched HP and their Rage fueling extra damage and greater survival. Let's look at what they get, starting with class features:

Primal Knowledge (3rd level):

When you reach 3rd level, and again at 10th, you can learn one additional skill proficiency from the Barbarian skill list.

Instinctive Pounce (7th level):

As part of the bonus action to enter your rage, you can move up to half your speed.

    I really like this feature, as it's always kind of frustrating for a Barbarian to feel like they can't Rage because they're too far from the foes at the beginning of the fight - only for the bad guys to then get some nasty attack on them before they have their resistances running. Making it a bit easier to get to the foe is great.

Subclasses:

Path of the Beast:

I've already written about how much I like this subclass, but let's break it down: you sort of take on a bestial aspect when you rage in this subclass, which can either be flavored as a sort of mystical connection to nature or maybe you've literally been affected by some kind of lycanthrope. If I get to play one of these, I'd just flavor it as being a full-on werewolf.

You get a selection of natural weapons while raging, and later you get bonuses you can swap out on rests that include stuff like swim speed and water breathing, being able to spider-climb, or just being able to jump much farther.

The feral ferocity of this class seems like it could be a ton of fun, and the damage potential (particularly with the claws) is quite high.

Path of Wild Magic:

You ever see a Wild Magic Sorcerer and think "what if that were a Barbarian subclass?" Well, this is more or less that. When you rage, you roll on a table, getting a random ability that goes off immediately and then generally can be used for the rest of your rage. The wild magic effects are fewer than the Sorcerer, but they're also pretty much all beneficial.

This is a high-chaos subclass, and brings a lot of whimsy to a class that tends to skew more metal.

    Again, these subclasses pass my big aesthetic test, as both feel very unique compared to the ones that came before, and very distinct from one another. While Beast feels like a great subclass for a Ravenloft campaign, Wild Magic could be in something with weird planar magic of the Feywild or Limbo.

    Ironically, while the Barbarian class itself is not my typical tastes, there are now several subclasses that I really want to try - Beast might be pushing out Storm Herald as the one I'm most into at this point.

Tasha's, Class by Class - Bard

 Bards are such a weird and idiosyncratic class - really powerful in their group synergy, but generally underpowered in terms of personal power. We get some interesting ideas here in Tasha's. Let's look at class features first:

New Spells:

Like all the casters, the options for PHB spells are expanded, as well as getting new spells out of Tasha's. The new PHB spells are: Color Spray, Command, Aid, Enlarge/Reduce, Mirror Image, Mass Healing Word, Slow, Phantasmal Killer, Rary's Telepathic Bond, Heroes' Feast, Prismatic Spray, Antipathy/Sympathy, and Prismatic Wall.

Magical Inspiration (2nd level):

If a creature has a Bardic Inspiration die from you and casts a spell that restores hit points or deals damage, the creature can roll that die and choose a target affected by the spell. Add the number rolled as a bonus to the hit points regained or damage dealt. The Bardic Inspiration die is then lost.

    This gives BI another potential use, though limiting it to a single target keeps it from getting crazy. Still, being able to toss in a bit of extra healing or damage is pretty great.

Bardic Versatility (4th level):

Whenever you get the Ability Score Improvement feature, you can either replace one of the skills you chose for the Expertise feature with another skill proficiency you have that doesn't have Expertise already, or you can replace a Bard cantrip with a different Bard cantrip.

Subclasses:

College of Creation:

This can be flavored as either whimsical, primal, or both, allowing you to basically sing or play things into existence. In addition to granting bonus effects for the normal uses of your Bardic Inspiration (with a cool visual to represent it) you can also just sing into being nonmagical objects of a certain value, which scales up in both value and potential size with your bard level. The objects are temporary, and obviously made by magic (as they glimmer and there's faint music that can be heard by anyone touching it,) but if you need anything in a jiffy, this is a great way to provide it.

Also, you can turn any large or smaller object into a friendly construct that can fight alongside you, and while it uses your bonus action to command it, you can also command it when you use Bardic Inspiration, so you'll generally always be able to direct it.

College of Eloquence:

Reprinted from Mythic Odysseys of Theros, what is ostensibly a much drier flavor of Bard is actually quite powerful, focusing on the idea of being a great orator. You essentially get reliable talent for Persuasion and Deception right there at level 3, and eventually your Bardic Inspiration sticks around until it actually causes a success, which is, frankly, amazing.

With that and other features, you essentially become extremely efficient with your Bardic Inspiration - this is a fantastic subclass if you want to be your group's "face."

    So, overall, we only get one brand new subclass, though the one we do is really quite excellent. Eloquence, while a reprint, is also pretty fantastic, and again, what I think always seems to be a good sign is that I can really visualize the different subclasses and their aesthetics. College of Creation has a major whimsical, feywild aspect to it, while it feels like everything an Eloquence bard says should feel like the inspiring, climactic speech of a legal drama.

    I'll be honest, what little I've played of Bards, I've not been that into them, but these both feel like they could be fun in their own ways.

Tasha's, Class by Class - Cleric

 Ah, yes, officially and intentionally the most powerful class in D&D, Clerics are the most iconic healers in the game, but they also come with a lot of other tools to make them quite powerful in other aspects. Let's get into class features:

New Spells:

Clerics already have a rather unique and powerful set of spells, and I'll be honest, some of the ones added here I really assumed they already had. But in addition to a couple from Tasha's, the PHB spells they now also get are: Aura of Vitality, Aura of Life, Aura of Purity, Sunbeam, Sunburst, and Power Word Heal.

Harness Divine Power (2nd level):

You can expend a use of your Channel Divinity to fuel your spells. As a bonus action, you touch your holy symbol, utter a prayer, and regain one expended spell slot, the level of which can be no higher than half your PB. You can use this once per long rest, or twice at level 6 or higher or thrice at level 18 or higher.

Cantrip Versatility (4th level):

Any time you get an Ability Score Improvement, you can swap out a cleric cantrip you know for a different cleric cantrip.

Blessed Strikes (8th level, replaces Divine Strike or Potent Spellcasting from your subclass):

When a creature takes damage form one of your cantrips or weapon attacks, you can also deal 1d8 radiant damage to that creature. Once you use this feature, you can't again until the start of your next turn.

    My sense is that this is actually generally worse than the features it replaces, though it does mean you can use it as an opportunity attack, and radiant damage does sometimes disrupt particular foes like vampires. Still, it doesn't scale up like Divine Strike and Potent Spellcasting, which will be a +5 after you've gotten your Wisdom capped, will be on average a little better than a d8.

Subclasses:

Order Domain:

This is another reprint from GGtR, which seemed primarily built for the Azorius Senate (though it also works a bit for the Orzhov Syndicate.) Generally, there's a teamwork and enchantment theme to this subclass, allowing you to really enforce your will upon your foes and get your allies to hit harder and more often.

I don't think this one took off quite like Circle of Spores, but it's a solid subclass.

Peace Domain:

Ultimately, this domain is really focused on teamwork and synergy, creating bonds between allies that protects them. You can basically turn your party into a super-team that can constantly help one another out.

I imagine this could prove pretty powerful in a group that uses all these features, spreading the damage out and assisting one another on various rolls.

Twilight Domain:

The theme here is all about lighting - in addition to getting a freaking 300-ft darkvision, you can also create a kind of sanctuary of dim light around you that bolsters allies and cures charms and fear effects. You can even fly while in dim light or darkness.

    Personally, I think Twilight wins in terms of flavor and fun factor for its abilities. Both Peace and Order domains seem good from a mechanical standpoint, but require some heavy lifting on the part of the player to make the idea of their domain interesting.

    I think Clerics have a bit of the Wizard issue - the main thing that's powerful about the class is its spell list, and while that's certainly nothing to be scoffed at, it does mean that the actual class and subclass features are generally less flashy than, say, that of a Paladin or a Rogue.