The End/Redemption - Fresh Account 

After all this time, did it never occur to you that you could have easily increased your dps by 10% if you went and farmed some transmog for a decent mog? disappointed

I wish they'd just remove the need of a tome to respec your talents when its obvious that you should be changing them for most bosses. It might even make many players understand that you're supposed to instead of keeping it one way. Blizzard wants us to change talents to optimize for each fight , why are they making it more annoying than it needs to be.

Fantastic series. Very insightful, and I know it took a lot of time and effort into producing. Thanks.

This has been a really good series. I don't really know why, but I've never once done an M+. I've done maybe all the dungeons on M-0 difficulty, but likely not more than once each. After this series, I'm going to give it a spin. I got stuck in the LFR cycle back in Dragon Soul, and honestly haven't done much outside of the easiest faceroll content since. I can't agree more with your comments earlier - why would anyone want to do such a pointless grind?! The truth is, being stuck in that routine has caused me to play less of WoW lately than ever. Honestly, this series has been more motivating to push for something higher than anything else. They said "Oh, LFR will make people want to push because they'll get a taste, exposure, and will be able to learn the basics in a stress-free environment." Nah, that's BS. My thinking was, "Well, I've seen all the content now. What's next..." So thanks Mike - gonna try to push outside the comfort zone a bit and, I dunno, actually enjoy parts of the game I've not tried in years again!

Hey preach, I'm a long time viewer of this channel. Just dropping in to say that I felt that this was one of the best pieces of content you have created on this channel. I would love to see more content like this, even if not the same thing!

Gonna miss this series. Gratz big man

This series was so good

LOL at chat at 11:12. Preach: "I'm going to give my 2 cents to try and help out...... Nah, no one is listening to anyone anyway, so why bother." I feel this soooo much. lol

@preach now you need to go back onto your main account, with the guild, make a boosted character, immediatly join the guild and have the exact same goals as this run through, and show people the comparrison. your saying 0.8 ilvl per hour. show them how useful a guild can be.

10:20 oh yeah my favorite boss, Kin'Gorothi Worldbreaker

Next serie, how to find a guild :D

As an affliction warlock, I can confirm that we have to respec all the time and it is extremely annoying. It is, however, less annoying than bottoming out the meters and being a burden to the group.

Great series. I was sitting on a 940 hunter for the longest time, turned off by mythic plus from what I had seen before and unmotivated to try and fit my way into looking for raids in Antorus. The series, along with the get good for christmas stuff, helped motivate me into not only getting mythic +15 done, but also managing to get my way into heroic. I snagged AoTC on a Monday before reset and now I'm rocking a sweet 950 hunter. Thanks for helping motivate me with the series, even if it's supposed to be an experience for someone brand new to the game. Definitely got me where I was wanting to be!

I don't even play World of Warcraft, but I enjoy all of your videos. This series has been my favorite. Thanks so much for all of your hard work.

Hey Preach, long time watcher, first time commenter here. I really enjoyed this series. It reminded me how fun and rewarding truly playing with friends is, which I think is the point here. Find friends and play with them. You will accomplish more and have more fun doing it even at higher content levels. Thanks for the reminder mate and cheers!

Loved this, it was a really refreshing perspective to hear and see. To understand how everything is currently working and why it is that way. I've noticed from time to time that my shit geared characters would be top of the board and I later figured out it was simply because I wasn't dying to easy mechanics. Perhaps another project you could tackle for fun, maybe a bit more relaxing is exploring the world of Role Play in WoW and the communities for it. It's one of the #1 reasons I still play WoW, even DnD style out of game but with the Warcraft lore.

As a complete noob in WoW who just joined at the middle of Legion I greatly enjoyed these videos.

Would loved to have seen this series done by Emma to truly show how it's like coming in all new and fresh, and seeing how quickly and easily she could have done it.. that way you can have an unlearned experience..

You're a good man Mike, better than the community deserves. There won't be enough people who gain the value of your experiences here, but there will be some. Just another small reminder that there ARE people who care, people who are tired of excuses, who want to get better that you've directly inspired. Keep on fighting the good fight, your fellows on this journey are with you every step of the way.

Thank you SO MUCH, Preach, for putting in the time, effort, and patience to do this challenge. It was super interesting to me and I really liked the breakdown of ilvl gained per hour in different contexts. Personally, I wish Blizzard would increase the base ilvl of items that drop in M+ to higher levels for higher keys. For any decently geared player, 940 items are just instant Chaos Crystals, and considering you have to farm M+ for some BiS gear that you can’t get in raid (for some classes), you’re forced to basically spend hours of time just for a rare titanforge of and item with good stats. Once you’re geared in Heroic or higher gear, doing M+ is basically pointless unless you’re working on your Raider.io score or farming a specific item (which will probably not WT/TF anyway) other than the weekly chest (which can yield unusable garbage as well). I hope anyone that’s in this pug life situation takes your advice and joins a guild. Personally I wouldn’t be playing if guilds didn’t exist. Also: Preach, I know you said you’re not playing your Lock anymore, but with your newfound prowess at Affliction, would you consider doing a guide of how to play Affliction well? I just picked one up as an alt a few weeks ago, and I’d love to hear some of the finer points of how’re you’re getting those pretty, orange parses for your ilvl. Just a suggestion/request, and thanks again for the series- super interesting to watch.

What a damn fine series. I was enthralled from beginning to end and I have this series saved in my watch list. I have previously levelled 110's but I recently resubbed and I haven't pre-purchased BfA yet so I still have a boost coming. I am in a newly formed guild already so I might stick with them I reckon and work on the background stuff when they're not doing anything. Can't for another series because this is seriously good viewing.

This really was a great series. Really brought home a lot of things I've felt about the game for a while now. If you don't have any friends in this game, make some. You can bypass so much frustration if you do. This is why I don't touch the pug world on a new character until I've completely exhausted as much solo content as I can. From MoP until now I've played this way. You can completely bypass the LFR tier without even touching it. It's been an undisputed waste of time for years. By the time you've grinded the solo content, got your veiled Argunite gear, your leggos, and bought your raid mats, all of a sudden you can destroy most content and you've passed a majority of player characters in terms of power and you are ready to start the Normal-Heroic grind. The same was true for WoD and MoP. You don't need runes, the satchel, or wakening essence. You'll get more wakening essence from Normal then you would from LFR. I know some people like to run their daily heroic, but even that I find to be a waste of time. Everything you can get from this content, you can get better from other sources with not much more initiative. You're better off spending the least amount of time running frustrating content and starting on your next character then you are to fall into the pug world trap. Just keep up on your 15 or the highest you can get into, Normal, and Emmisary quests and spend the rest of your time doing whatever you want.

TLDR: Join a guild.

Loved this series. Preach, seriously, major kudos for this. I did not want to comment on this until I finished the series. I haven't lived in the full pug world in quite some time. Heck I don't really know if I ever really lived in a pug world from when I started playing back in TBC. I was extremely fortunate to get into a guild almost immediately and make friends almost right away, many of which after 11yrs I still play and talk to today. However, pugging back then is nowhere near what it is today because it goes into the whole server community and so on and so forth. Toxicity definitely dose exist in the game and within the player base, and truthfully it's always been there. I think it's smaller than what people like to claim it to be, because we all know a negative experience far outweighs a positive one. I fully agree with you that "bad" comes nowhere near to and accurate description to some of these players. To be honest I find this very sad. Quite frankly I blame systems like LFR where mechanics are so cheesed that you gain no real learning benefit for it. In my experience LFR is so bad in comparison with toxicity and just general cheese I think this sets a bad example of what organized group content actually looks like in the game. I also think it sets up a false narrative that you can just smash and grab through the entire game. Quite honestly I really do blame Blizzard and the scenario it's created with the community. Ilvls have become ever increasingly important. However, with the caches and other ways to gear up your character the community now no longer relies on ilvl alone. You have raider.io and logs. These are great tools, but now have become another step in the gating process. Thus as you stated the players that logged while you were raiding. If these didn't exist, would you have gotten into the group? Do I think it's possible, absolutely. Why people choose to go through the game "solo style" is beyond me, because you will have to at some point interact with people in some form or fashion if you wish to do any of the harder content. I could place theory after theory on the dichotomy of guilded players vs the solo mentality from my personal experiences over the years, but that would seriously make up a novel.

First off, loved this series preach. I have recently moved relms and boosted a new character to play with some friends. I am an avid pvp'er. But dont have the time or flexibility with my job to commit to a raid schedule so i find myself often in this "pug world" if i want to try to do a M+ or the occational raid to boost my ilev. As we all know gearing through pvp is impossible these days. This video series has given me a lot of insight with respect to how I should spend my limited pve time in order to maximize my +ilev/hour. Thanks for posting this it has been a pleasure to watch all the vids in this series.

So I just got my Ahead of the curve last night with my guild (shout out to my amazing guild :D), the coincidence of your timing is impeccable. Grats to you on the achieve though, feels good :D

This series has been one of the best pieces of content I've ever seen on RU-vid. Thank you.

Way to walk the walk Preach.

Word Preach! Well done buddy and an awesome investigation of the pug life!

I've been living in this same spot for ages. Started watching your vids, especially this series. Thought fuck it, push out. Ended up smashing out a +16 yesterday on my Paladin tank, first plus over 11 i've done. Got a guild invite from one of the guys. Great series Preach thanks very much!

Incredibly useful video(s) for a returning player (i.e. me!). Really appreciate the time you took to do this series.

Binge watched this entire series. Really good watch. Preach preaching truth about the pug world.

I like the comment that if you're in this pug world, you're choosing to be in there. There is nothing stopping anyone from finding even a casual heroic raiding guild to get what you need each week. You don't have to be their best friends, just a guild where you can show up every week at a certain time and you can all reach your personal goals together. Very interesting series Preach, Well done. Thank you for all the suffering you went thru to bring it to us.

Great series, Preacher. I'm really impressed by the constraints you gave yourself and the way you reflected on your conclusions. To the latter, I'd like to propose that you look into the guild scene in WoW. Imagine what a new player or a reforming "solo hero" player following your advice from this series would encounter: guild types, guild "shopping," do's and don'ts, preparation and application, getting on a raid schedule, how to handle drama, and when to leave. I'm one of those players who has been a guilded raider before - always very middle of the pack, admittedly - and the experiences I've had have been so bad that I outright quit in MoP and didn't come back until Legion, and even then I remained ardently guildless. I know that Drama Time covers the funny cases that sometimes come up, but just the everyday social games and politics of a guild are something I've never seen handled well by any guild, ever, and I'd really like to know what I should do. What I'm trying to say is that there are reasons why a person plays WoW this way, and I'd really like to see you look into them and give your advice on how to get past those reasons and get out of this swamp.

That is fucking awesome, that in the end skill payed off for you in this experiment. And the skill demonstrated carried over even though you didnt demonstrate your skill to anyone in the raid that got you curve. At the end of TBC I was doing PUG raids with people from the top guilds on the server and many months later when I applied to one of those guild in Wrath part of what got me invited to the guild was how I played in those PUGs. I am glad this aspect of the game is not completely dead in spite of everything Blizzard has done.

get emma to do it

the intro, the first 15 seconds... so fkin good. cant really tell what i like about it, but man

I really liked this series! I used to be part of this pug world for the entirety of Legion before I joined a guild when Uldir launched and I'm honestly not sure if I'd still be playing if I had not made that change. Besides the fact that I'm progressing through raid content drastically faster while spending only a fraction of the time that I used to (maybe excluding the first week or two of new m+ seasons) I think the best part about it is that I actually enjoy spending time with the people I'm raiding with.

Preach, I gotta hand it to you, doing all this research has been incredibly enlightening and I hope blizzard is paying attention to make some positive changes.

I started playing this game a year ago and this is not how it closely even went... I knew about WoW for a long time ago but a year was the first time I stepped into subbing to play. This series was very nice, but it was nice to the examination of the pug world, that's it. No excuses Preacher.

I can see your aff-lock rotation is getting better. Thank you for the series, was very entertaining

Congratulations on curve!! This is a goal for so many. What I see is this series is also a guide. You should do a last video with "go to this site, click here, you can here look at what talents your class and spec are using for this fight" I know it's warcraftlogs, but does the big mass that? A guide for new players to learn HOW TO IMPROVE your raiding. I know of weak auras and CD-managment video that you did 3 months ago. It helped me to the degree that I today usually have between 70-95% on Garothi and Varimathras. It's worse on Felhounds, Antoran high command and Aggramar.

Awesome, awesome series! Thanks the amount of legitimate research you put into this. I’ve always pretty much felt your conclusion to be true so definitely interesting to see the evidence to back it. I’m about as casual as you can get and have a very irregular schedule so I cant even be there on the same night of the week each week yet I almost always get aotc before the current content becomes stale (I truly have no desire to delve into mythic raiding whatsoever). I took the time and effort to eventually find a casual guild with a good raid leader who isn’t afraid to sit under-performers if we’re stuck on a boss. When I am available on raid night, I sign up in advance, come prepared, and pull my weight. If I’m unable to raid with my guild a certain week, I can almost always get into pugs to down at least a few bosses so I’m still giving myself a chance to increase my power and that’s because, again I come prepared and play my class properly. When there are bad wipes, I’m not the one getting kicked. Bottom line I think you nailed it, bad players are bad BECAUSE they’re basically lazy; if they’re not willing to spend time finding a guild and learn fights through progression, they’re probably not willing to spend the time to learn to play their class properly either. Of course it doesn’t stop there as they’re too lazy to acknowledge their shortcomings and blame their performance on bad legendaries, bad trinkets, or item level. Maybe you should do an experiment where you and some competent friends create “pugs” and allow people with suboptimal item level and no aotc to join...smash your way through the first 10 bosses and then kick everyone below 1 million dps (or some other indicator of being a bad player) before Argus...just to see how many people in the pug world still looking for the aotc are actually contributing to the pugs they join. Keep the exceptional videos coming!

I'd like to share a little story that, I feel, supplements this series very well. I have since quit WoW (again), but during Cataclysm I started playing WoW after having taken a 1-2 year break. I came back when the Dragon Soul patch was released. I leveled up 4 characters; my main alliance Druid, and then a horde mage, warlock, and death knight. I am an experienced raider from Vanilla/TBC, so as soon as I capped my characters and got the appropriate ilvl from heroic dungeons, I immediately started forming PUG Dragon Soul runs. I had been out of the game for a long time and remember the clown fiesta that most guilds were. So I formed my own guild and only invited my own characters to it. I would form a group 5 nights out of the week with 1 of my 3 horde characters. I began attracting attention and it wasn't long before I had a group of 5-10 guys that would regularly came to my runs on their alts. I used voice chat, but didn't require everyone to join it as long as they weren't consistently fucking things up. I always formed the group and acted as raid leader. Within about 2 months I had cleared DS Heroic on all my horde characters, and even beaten my alliance guild to my first Deathwing kill. I also gotten the rare mount from Deathwing. I won the roll fair and square as I refused to loot it for myself, though only 4 people in that group rolled against me with the rest agreeing that I deserved it. I always think back on this experience whenever people talk about how bad WoW has gotten if you aren't part of a community. Granted, I was much more experienced at the game than most people at the time. I was also dedicated enough to my own gaming experience that I watched countless hours of PreachGaming class guides and FatBoss raid boss guides to make sure that I understood as much as I could. My stance with WoW when it comes to raiding is "If I need it explained to me, then I haven't done enough research." This approach was instilled in me by my first ever guild which was a hardcore vanilla raiding guild. Was top 100 in the world at one point during the first year of WoW's release. If you didn't understand the fights, and needed more than just an explanation as to which strategy we would be using, you were immediately kicked from the raid and replaced by someone who was prepared. I guess the point is, the PUG world is really only in the state that its in because all the newer players are used to having everything spoon fed to them. Then entire game has been dumbed down and simplified to point of almost mindlessness until you reach the raiding/mythic+ level. And even then there are levels within those tiers that spoon feed you even more. Lets be honest with ourselves, WoW is not a mechanically intensive game and does not take a lot of skill to play. The most complicated characters top out at about 60 APM (at least last I checked). What truly separates most people in this game is knowledge and anticipation, and the gameplay itself has stripped people of the drive to learn things for themselves. I believe I had a leg up on people when it came to my PUG raiding DS because of my background, but ultimately it is because I cared about knowing what I needed to know in order to lead and direct people that was the key to success. So many PUG raid leaders now-a-days expect to invite 19 (or however many) other players with a minimum item level that rivals gear you get in the raid and that already understand every aspect of every boss fight. Its just not going to happen, and the logic behind why you would expect such a thing is so backwards its crazy to me. You can't always expect to be taught everything, sometimes you have to learn it on your own. And you can't always expect things to go the way you want if you aren't taking control and directing them to the destination you desire.

I watched all episodes of this and it really confirmed my early experiences back when WoW first came out. This play style isn't fun! I didn't want to be in a hardcore guild because it required more time and dedication than I wanted to give. I was in a guild with friends I met PLAYING THE GAME and we did all the Late game 5 man Dungeons together. We glitched into the Sands of Time and glitched into Mount Hyjal. The world is worth exploring! That's what I loved in the game. Having a team that worked well together. We didn't have legendaries. We didn't have loads of alts and every spec and profession covered. But We each had a role, and friendship on forums and MySpace. Anyone who decides to be a loner and just kinda show up to a raid with selfish intention is missing more than just what it is to play World of Warcraft. They're missing the best part of being human.

Hey preach, I gave up on wow in warlords (no surprise there) but still kept an eye on your vids. This series made me want to give Legion a go. I know it was personally expensive for you to set up (in both time and money), but really appreciated it. Thanks very much for your time and trouble :)

Ideally this game is played in a guild with friends, that's the best experience. Hopefully with the new expansion coming out there'll be more guilds at all levels recruiting. Thanks for all the effort you put in.

This was the best series I've seen in a long time. Hopefully you find another mystery or adventure to unravel in future !

As a decently successful mythic raider, (Cutting edge on all content I played) that stopped playing before tomb mythic came out, I believed the weekly chest was fantastic. It was a great way to supplement the very specific gear that you get from raids. I played an Enhancement shaman and for some slots of gear I had no optimal secondary stat drops form the raids. So having that potential each week to get a piece of gear in a slot that did not drop in the current raid tier in any combination of good secondary stats, was great.

I have really enjoyed this series Preach, more than you I suspect. I would really appreciate a contradictory series where you either start a new toon, or take this one and show the process of choosing and integrating into a guild and how mythic + and raiding differs. If that is possible that ok would be incredible. Grats on curve btw

Ty, for this series Preach! It really inspired me to put myself out there more and start looking for a guild!

As a guy who used to do HC raiding in Wrath, this has been eyeopening for me. I don't have the time to do that anymore, full time job, other obligations. This has certainly revealed to me why I don't enjoy the game anymore, something that puzzled me for the longest time. The game was getting better for me, LFR made me able to experience raids on my timeschedule, but in reality it was just getting worse and worse. I might have to find a guild that is willing to just raid Normal or HC now :P

great series man! really nice to see all options available respectively. also you showed me how to play and have more fun, thanks again :)

If this was this hellish for Preach imagine what it'd be like for someone that has no idea what they're doing in the game xD Be that as it may, awesome series Preach! Of course we'll never get someone's real perspective on what it's like to be a total noob unless it was like, your wife playing and no one told her what to do or helped, but your insight into each situation really trumped having that be the case

I can't imagine any of this was worth the cost of the new account, the name changes, time spent etc. If this was youtube from a couple years ago, maybe, but these days. I expect if not for the patreon, this wouldn't have happened. All credit for doing it and sticking with it. The results and closing remarks are not surprising, people on the internet lie. Why? because they want attention and to be the voice that they can't be in real life.

Nice project, I really enjoyed following it and I am glad you were successful with it even if it was very painful.

I genuinly enjoyed following this seies. Thank you for the great content!

Fantastic work on this project Preach. Really well fucking done. I would easily put this in my top 10 favorite videos/video series on RU-vid, and that's coming from someone who watches RU-vid as someone else would watch Netflix/Hulu/Cable TV. Not only was this series so enjoyable for me to watch because I connected with it being that I am a returning Emerald Nightmare raider who had missed ALL Legion content between EN and Antorus, but it was also so enjoyable to watch because you struck such a fantastic balance in this video. You didn't just spit a bunch of information at us and say "Well here's what's most efficient, I'm not going to tell you why, but trust me. Don't forget to smash that mother fucking like button." you explained in perfect detail your experience with the entirety of this project/journey. It was educational, it was funny, it was interesting, it was damn near perfect in my opinion. You nailed this video project and this is why I follow your videos so religiously. I find it hard now-a-days to find well produced and coherent content, but I am never disappointed with yours. Alright enough sucking your dick, just keep this shit up man. Great work.

Recommended this series to couple of friends. Good job!

Joining a guild doesn't fix the problem for most when it comes to mythic+ as there is still the in crowd when trying to form up for anything. If you're not in that group, you're still pugging. At least preach came down from his ivory tower and found out how the game is for most people. Nice series. I was entertained.

Just watched this series, and its exactly the same at the end of BFA now. Without a nice guild its very hard, and to find a nice guild is also very hard.

11:20 Watching Preach tell himself "They aren't worth it, keep your cool man!" wrestling with his inner demons as some one in chat probably says something wildly incorrect about the boss strategy.

It is good to see you kept to your word and achieved both Mythic 15 and AotC. I have little doubt you will be happy to leave the Hotel California we call PUG life.

The excuse makers are strong today

Really enjoyed this series. I was sorely tempted to resub after the first video but watching the rest reinforced why i no longer play ; RL commitments mean I cant commit to raid guild times - not willing to put myself through this just to keep playing for nostalgias sake.

Thank you for the great series. Really enjoyed it. Well done.

Preach if you want, I can give you a detailed mindset of something who was actually new. I played a couple of times in MoP and Draenor(prolly 2-3 months), but I barely made it past heroic Dungeons. Right now, I cancelled my subscription because it left me burned out. BUT, I managed to achieve AotC for both Antorus and ToS. I also managed to get into M+ dungeons, and get into +15 regularly and finish them as well. Again, I had little to no knowledge prior to getting into legion. Niforia-Aggramar who started 2-3 weeks prior to killing KJ. NOTE: I killed both KJ and Argus on HC with pugs.(first kill). After that I was able to do it with the guild

Thank you Preach for this Video Series it was Great Fun to Watch

Best video you've done (and I've seen fully) thanks!

Well I enjoyed the series I hope you enjoyed making it Preach.

Best serious since legacy vids. Well done mate

For me I’m in a heroic raiding guild but I don’t have the time or freedom in my personal life to commit to a schedule raid week in a video game anymore so I just pug when I get free time to play. Although I don’t care about the gear I get from pugs I’m really just here to see the content on my own time. I did enjoy this series though only thing that separates you from me and probably a few others in my situation is the amount of time we can put into the game. I can’t sit in que looking for that odd chance of getting lucky and getting an inv to a curve run so mostly I’m either in a reg raid group or LFR.

I don't mind the cache having a high ilvl. Once you've cleared heroic regularly a few times, you'll have maybe one or two heroic warforges/titanforges that are around 960. Your pantheon trinket (if you have it) will be around 960. Besides, for the last 6 weeks or so, I've had mythic cache loot that I would have to drop a tier piece for, or it's a ring with awful stats, with the result that I was actively excited this week to get a piece of loot that was worth simming and not just an automatic disenchant.

This was very cool and as someone who was in this world for several years, it's a PITA. I like the comment about 4/5 people being terrible and feel it's pretty accurate lol.

Brilliant series, thanks for this. As someone who used to raid in previous years I only pugged in legion thus far so won't be doing that for bfa

Glad to see Preach could get shit on by the pub world for a bit. Sad he couldn't get every boss, but it also makes me chuckle.

People do appreciate skilled players over geared ones. My guild is a very casual heroic raiding guild and they took leave for Legion before we got Coven down, so I headed into a PuG to get my Friendship Birb before the end of the expansion. Did some pretty crazy healing numbers on Coven/Aggramar/Argus with my Disc priest as well as some shenanigan Shining Force/Life Grips and they'd said I carried and thanked me. lol (was a guild group) I feel it was somewhat in jest, but still a nod of appreciation.

This has been some great videos. Thank you!

Where did you get 8 honorable kills from? Also, btw, I think this is why people are so hyped for the whole community idea blizz proposed at blizzcon for BFA. Seriously, the best thing I can say about it is like being able to join 2 guilds. Also let's say you find this awesome dude well pugging like Antrous normal, but he's guildless on another server. You could add him to comminity. Also, if your like me and enjoy RP but your RP guild dosn't raid, you can actually RAID without having to deal with....this....

I learned a lot from this series.

That is absolutely the truth about time spent in dungeon vs. time spent killing things. BUT that being said, I would STILL rather slog through that than being a tool for some other guy’s guild with his vision and a raid leader with his agenda and a class leader trying to tell me how to spec and play my Frost DK. The freedom to be my own boss is the most desirable aspect of wow for me.

Brilliant series. Looking forward to season 2, where ghosty will boost a character, buy a wow token and buy a Curve boost while still at 870, and season 3, where emma levels a character that hits 120 in mid-bfa, and OOPS, Ahead of the Curve is now soloable by BM Hunters, Havoc DHs and Affli Locks + All tanks :D Just kidding of course, and people need to keep in mind that on something like a monk you can also tank, or heal, and the ilvl requirement is way lower, but the skillcap matters more at low ilvl. Looking forward to the mmo-champ thread, already got the popcorn :)

Love this series, good job dude :D Props to the RL too!

I just don't understand why people would put themselves through this. Why would you invest so many hours, so much time into getting a more powerful character in a game you don't even play hardcore? As someone not currently in a raiding guild due to college and life commitments, sure I do a couple M+'s a week, but why would I put so much effort and anguish just in order to do it further? My advice to anyone in the pug world is just play the game for fun, but forget about this endless chase for gear that is only going to reward you in some arbitrary, item level sense. Just find a group that isn't toxic and go live your life.

dude..congrats on conquering lfg. I hope blizzard is watching this series and learn from it. Also I hope the ppl watching also learn from ur experience and start working towards getting better help improve the gameplay of not only themselves but others. Quite honestly blizzard should post ur channel and a few other experienced players who post up vids on guides to playing classes and specs on their battlenet. At least it will hopefully give ppl an idea on how wow is currently being played and can possibly compete with the vets. As always bro nice job. I mainly pvp but ur channel definitely opens my eyes to new possibilities and I feel I'm not the only one going thru the growing pains when I try to do my 1 m+ a week and get blamed for morons dying to nonsense...lol.

Really enjoyed this series, thank you!

Do the same thing but try and get into a guild ASAP so there is a somewhat clear comparrison on what a guild helps you out with? :D Really enjoyed this series even though i havent played WoW since cataclysm :D

it may be that I was raised (so to speak) in a raid environment but I always look at class guides and sites like icy veins so I understand why my talents are chosen and things that work together as well as figuring out why things need to be used together

Idea for follow up project: Do the same thing but this time with ability to get into guild. Still need to be fresh character (you can turn on "show only achievements of this character"), nobody knows you, you have no raiding history to put into application apart from pugs. The main point to showcase 1/ how ridiculousely faster it is to achieve all of those goals if you are in guild (ties up nicely to your long time preaching to get ppl into guilds) 2/ to show that even trade chat guilds are way better than pure pugs (or not, who knows...) 3/ how hard it actually is to get into proper raiding guild if you don´t have proper raiding history already.

Thanks for doing this, Preach. If you're feeling particularly masochistic, you should show the other side of things to provide a comparison and contrast. Make another anonymous boosted warlock, and work out how long it would take to get into a guild and geared up that way. I suggest this because the act of finding a spot in a high tier guild without a reputation to back you up is perhaps not as easy as people in guilds believe. As you said, it's been 10+ years since you had to start from scratch with a guild.

Lovely post Preach....i gave up wow at Mists..wish i could start again in vanilla wow in Teldrassil on my lvl 5 hunter when a lvl 60 warlock ran past me on a burning mount...holy feck ,this was the game for me !

Great end to a great series, Preach!

Holy, when you described the aggramar, I saw night and day eu vs na. If a lead said that shit in na, 7-8 times out of 10 the group might have just died right there.

Loved this series, Thank you! .... Now do it again as alliance ;)

Raiding is a job. Applying to a raiding guild is similar to applying for a job. A guild's online website application process you have to go through.

Warlock needed to respec for single target/multi target cost about 5-6 respecs per run in this tier. Then decide according to guild how you were going to approach Argus, portal keeper etc.

Preach, i just did a very similar thing. bumped a warlock to 110, first thing i did was buy the crafted lego, and then the 2 items that bump up to 935 (with primal oblit/sargerite). then i did LFR ABT and tried to get in a few normals until ~930 gear level. after the first reset got my hands on some shitty legos and ended up buying a heroic run for 250k. this was intended to be my main im swapping to so felt no need not to buy one, especially when i had 2 other warlocks in full mythic funneling me gear. after the run i was mid 950's then hit the inevitable wall. even linking Cutting Edge i was declined from Heroic after Heroic, the Heroic groups that did accept me were groups that were stuck on PK, HC, Vari, Coven (seems these are the primary heroic stumbling blocks). so my 2nd week at 955ish i was stuck only going 9/11 Heroic since it wasn't very cost effective for me to buy another run. after getting lucky with my M+15 chest 2 weeks in a row i hit 958 and got into my guilds Alt mythic run (960 min ilevel required, so people dont bring undergeared alts). everything went well and now i can get into pretty much whatever group i que for. My main take away's are 1. getting in those initial non-fail heroics was a pain, even being able to link cutting edge i was turned down from 9 out of 10 times and the ones that do accept you have to remember you are going back to progression mode on those fights, its frustrating that people leave after 1 wipe and you basically spend a lot of time reforming group after group. 2. people have a clear lack of knowledge of fights 3. I was toasting people on DPS being 10-15 ilevels above me by respec'ing and researching the class more - even with inferior legos (argus ring and affliction bracers) 4. Raider.io is a terrible system, my main is a 3200 tank (BrM) but not a DK/DH so i don't really push above 21+ but even with that score showing i got declined for hours until i found a decent M+ i understand why its used and its not terrible in theory, but the creep is real. 5. an issue with logs is only smart people look at % by ilevel, most people just look at overall, i pulled 99's on a few bosses for ilevel but only 30-40% overall so that looks bad when people are looking at logs in general. Congrats on getting curve on a new character =p

Best intro of 2018

hell yeah, preach preaching the preach

I've been pugging heroic raids since early WoD and this is a pretty accurate video. It does bother me that you are claiming we choose this play style because I believe most of us who pug have crazy work schedules and we do not fit into any guild's raid schedules. It's just a fact of life that we have to deal with and to be honest I think at the end of the day it makes us better players having to struggle so much.