My Shaman wasn't my first character in WoW.
My first was actually a Night Elf Mage called Ragnarok.
He didn't get too far, about level 21 I think, before my girlfriend stole my account. We had been sharing an account but, when I couldn't get her off the computer so that I could have a go, we bought a laptop and she took that account.
My second char was a Human Rogue called Strigon.
I still enjoy playing him and he is usually the first alt to follow my Shaman into each expansion.
My third char was my Draenei Shaman, Solanar.
He has been my main ever since, despite switching realms a few times and even a brief flirtation as a Tauren towards the end of SoO.
His name has had to change a couple of times with realm changes but only very slightly, so it still feels like the same char to me.
I feel an attachment to my Shaman that is probably quite inappropriate for a character in a computer game but I can't help it.
Since switching to main as Shaman, almost all of my alts have been shadows of him... with their names all starting with "Sol" or "Sola".
This even extended into other games! StarCraft 2... Sola, HotS... Sola,
You name it, I'm probably called Sola in it.
Hell, even my battletag is Sola#
By the end of WoD, I had 14 max level chars and 11 of them were named as some derivative of Sola...
Two exceptions were:
Strigon - Pre-dated the whole naming thing
Gronfire - Hmmm... was part of a whole other naming culture I had going on.
All of my bank alts are from the same family, with the original being Gron and the rest derived from that name. Gronfire (Gnome Warlock) is the only bank alt to ever make it to max level.
The final exception was my Mythic Mage, Carudoc.
You are probably wondering where I am going with all of this?
Well my Mage joined my current guild first and raided the end of HFC there... but there was already somebody there called Sola!
Every time his name was called out, I had to stop myself responding. By the same token, I had to remember to respond whenever my Mage's name was called for whatever reason.
All was fine until I decided to stick with this guild for Legion and moved my Shaman.
Now there were two Sola's!
We've had a laugh about it, I call him Sola 2 as my account is older than his, but I can't help but think that he was here first and I should let him have the name.
He has been with the guild for a lot longer than I have and has all of his "Sola" alts in there too (which I don't).
It feels like he is more Sola in the guild than I am.
So I have been considering a name change, and maybe a race change to go with it. I have even thought of some new names depending on which race/gender I choose.
I just can't pull the trigger though :-s
I like being Sola!
Is anyone else so attached to a name?
Should I change it or fight to keep it?
Do female Draenei look better in transmog than male Draenei? :-)
Thursday 29 December 2016
Wednesday 21 December 2016
More PvP Shenanigans...
I enjoyed completing the 4-BG weekly quest so much that, shock horror, I decided to do some more PvP without the added incentive!
I feel like I'm getting the hang of it a bit more now, at least the tactical element of it anyway.
I do get sucked into some pointless 1v1 battles in the middle of nowhere from time to time and I know that I should just ignore it and help the team with whatever objective we're chasing... but it's so much fun! :-)
Most of my PvP time is spent trying to keep to the edges of big battles, picking off people who are already engaged in a fight so less likely to turn around and go for me.
If I do garner too much attention, I run away :-)
This is quite effective for the most part, against random uncoordinated groups, and is particularly good for peeling attackers from our flag carrier... with the aim to annoy them enough so they turn to attack me and follow as I run away.
There is something about 1v1 combat though that is so much fun... unless it's against a warrior.
Is it just me?
Are they designed to just destroy Shaman?
Is it revenge for Thrall beating Garrosh in WoD?
They jump on me and within seconds I'm dead, lucky if I can get a cast off at them... I don't know what I am doing wrong considering I am not really getting chance to do anything at all... perhaps I am just not running away fast enough :-)
If anyone has any tips for beating warriors, please let me know.
I'm going to level my own warrior up just for some PvP fun and to see if I have the same effect on other shaman in the world (spoiler: I'll be just as rubbish as a Warrior)
Against other classes I seem to hold my own a lot better, I even do quite well against a couple of classes so I'm guessing they are in a terrible state at the moment!
I find dealing with most melee very difficult but put me up against a DK and it's a lot of fun, a constant game of cat and mouse as he tries to close on me while I do everything I can to keep him away.
In a stand up slugfest, the melee seems to virtually always win which kind of makes sense but some seem to have far more ways of keeping on top of me than I have of getting away... I'm looking at you, feral druid!
DK and Paladin have less gap-closing capability and it makes for a more interesting fight, for me anyway.
That cat and mouse game can be a lot of fun, I was in Twin Peaks a few days ago and had three melee attacking me (fighting in mid, of course). I knew I was going to lose the fight but I just wanted to keep them occupied while my team got on with doing something that could actually win us the battle...
Thunderstorm to knock them all away, then I ran. They used various abilities to catch up to me quickly so I jumped off the edge a steep hill, they all followed but I had turned in mid-air and used Gust of Wind to get back to the top!
It was hilarious!
I still couldn't kill any of them and I had nowhere to go, they just ran around and back up the hill then killed me, but it was worth it. I just wish I had thought of hitting /sleep while I waited for them to get back :-)
I think it's that side of PvP which has brought me so much enjoyment lately, the need to be creative with using your spellbook, the terrain and anything else available that you just don't get with PvE. Even mythic raiding and high mythic+ dungeons are more about min-maxing and practice rather than creativity.
I'm not sure how long I will carry on with the PvP but considering it began as just trying to clear a quest in my log, I'm now almost finished with the Honor talent tree and looking at artefact appearances for prestige levels... and I still haven't got the bloody legs for my transmog!
I feel like I'm getting the hang of it a bit more now, at least the tactical element of it anyway.
I do get sucked into some pointless 1v1 battles in the middle of nowhere from time to time and I know that I should just ignore it and help the team with whatever objective we're chasing... but it's so much fun! :-)
Most of my PvP time is spent trying to keep to the edges of big battles, picking off people who are already engaged in a fight so less likely to turn around and go for me.
If I do garner too much attention, I run away :-)
This is quite effective for the most part, against random uncoordinated groups, and is particularly good for peeling attackers from our flag carrier... with the aim to annoy them enough so they turn to attack me and follow as I run away.
There is something about 1v1 combat though that is so much fun... unless it's against a warrior.
Is it just me?
Are they designed to just destroy Shaman?
Is it revenge for Thrall beating Garrosh in WoD?
They jump on me and within seconds I'm dead, lucky if I can get a cast off at them... I don't know what I am doing wrong considering I am not really getting chance to do anything at all... perhaps I am just not running away fast enough :-)
If anyone has any tips for beating warriors, please let me know.
I'm going to level my own warrior up just for some PvP fun and to see if I have the same effect on other shaman in the world (spoiler: I'll be just as rubbish as a Warrior)
Against other classes I seem to hold my own a lot better, I even do quite well against a couple of classes so I'm guessing they are in a terrible state at the moment!
I find dealing with most melee very difficult but put me up against a DK and it's a lot of fun, a constant game of cat and mouse as he tries to close on me while I do everything I can to keep him away.
In a stand up slugfest, the melee seems to virtually always win which kind of makes sense but some seem to have far more ways of keeping on top of me than I have of getting away... I'm looking at you, feral druid!
DK and Paladin have less gap-closing capability and it makes for a more interesting fight, for me anyway.
That cat and mouse game can be a lot of fun, I was in Twin Peaks a few days ago and had three melee attacking me (fighting in mid, of course). I knew I was going to lose the fight but I just wanted to keep them occupied while my team got on with doing something that could actually win us the battle...
Thunderstorm to knock them all away, then I ran. They used various abilities to catch up to me quickly so I jumped off the edge a steep hill, they all followed but I had turned in mid-air and used Gust of Wind to get back to the top!
It was hilarious!
I still couldn't kill any of them and I had nowhere to go, they just ran around and back up the hill then killed me, but it was worth it. I just wish I had thought of hitting /sleep while I waited for them to get back :-)
I think it's that side of PvP which has brought me so much enjoyment lately, the need to be creative with using your spellbook, the terrain and anything else available that you just don't get with PvE. Even mythic raiding and high mythic+ dungeons are more about min-maxing and practice rather than creativity.
I'm not sure how long I will carry on with the PvP but considering it began as just trying to clear a quest in my log, I'm now almost finished with the Honor talent tree and looking at artefact appearances for prestige levels... and I still haven't got the bloody legs for my transmog!
Monday 19 December 2016
Raid Leading Shenanigans...
This week our social raid group will attempt to kill Xavius for the first time.
It will 'only' be on normal mode but the majority of the raid haven't done it before so I'm not looking forward to explaining the mechanics.
It's not that the mechanics are particularly complicated, they just sound complicated when you list them out loud.
The kind of awareness and personal responsibility that I enjoy in fights is often difficult to convey to others... for instance soaking the adds in P1 requires an individual to know they are in the dream state and to see the adds spawn, it's not something the RL can micro-manage - people just have to do it!
In an ideal world, we would just take a couple of attempts to familiarise our team with the different mechanics in each phase. I don't feel like we have that luxury though as around half the team will be made up of pugs that probably won't have the patience for wipes.
I don't blame the pugs to be honest. They haven't signed up for progress and are probably expecting a quick farm kill and a chance at some loot, despite my attempts to give them an idea in the event description (does anyone but me even read it?)
So it puts pressure on us to minimise the wipes which has then led to me switching to my Shaman to boost dps.
It feels like a catch 22...
If I switch to my Shaman, we kill bosses quicker but we learn less about the team and our true position.
If I don't switch, we burn through pugs and spend half the night searching for more people... still not learning much.
It's healers that we are really short of so I tried to come in and heal (in dps gear) on my Shaman... what a disaster that was!
I know how to heal.
I know how to raid lead.
Both at the same time? HAHA... no chance!
I ended up doing neither job particularly well but definitely focused more on the leading, making me a liability to the healing team... I would just forget to heal!
We have no healers at all though so pugging 3 or 4 at a time is a bit of a nightmare.
I can't see any way out of it apart from actively recruiting though, and I am not going down that road again!
My best hope is that the team grows organically, with people attracted back into playing as they see the guild more active again... or that some of our hunters get bored of shooting things ;-)
Regardless of the pugging woes, it's been a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to starting the next tier fresh with the team.
It will 'only' be on normal mode but the majority of the raid haven't done it before so I'm not looking forward to explaining the mechanics.
It's not that the mechanics are particularly complicated, they just sound complicated when you list them out loud.
The kind of awareness and personal responsibility that I enjoy in fights is often difficult to convey to others... for instance soaking the adds in P1 requires an individual to know they are in the dream state and to see the adds spawn, it's not something the RL can micro-manage - people just have to do it!
In an ideal world, we would just take a couple of attempts to familiarise our team with the different mechanics in each phase. I don't feel like we have that luxury though as around half the team will be made up of pugs that probably won't have the patience for wipes.
I don't blame the pugs to be honest. They haven't signed up for progress and are probably expecting a quick farm kill and a chance at some loot, despite my attempts to give them an idea in the event description (does anyone but me even read it?)
So it puts pressure on us to minimise the wipes which has then led to me switching to my Shaman to boost dps.
It feels like a catch 22...
If I switch to my Shaman, we kill bosses quicker but we learn less about the team and our true position.
If I don't switch, we burn through pugs and spend half the night searching for more people... still not learning much.
It's healers that we are really short of so I tried to come in and heal (in dps gear) on my Shaman... what a disaster that was!
I know how to heal.
I know how to raid lead.
Both at the same time? HAHA... no chance!
I ended up doing neither job particularly well but definitely focused more on the leading, making me a liability to the healing team... I would just forget to heal!
We have no healers at all though so pugging 3 or 4 at a time is a bit of a nightmare.
I can't see any way out of it apart from actively recruiting though, and I am not going down that road again!
My best hope is that the team grows organically, with people attracted back into playing as they see the guild more active again... or that some of our hunters get bored of shooting things ;-)
Regardless of the pugging woes, it's been a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to starting the next tier fresh with the team.
Tuesday 13 December 2016
Alterac Valley...
I'm a sucker for a quest.
Want me to do anything outside of my normal comfort zone of World Quests, Dungeons and Raiding?
Just put up one of those shiny, gold exclamation marks and I'm there... just have to turn it into a shiny, gold question mark :-)
Put a reward on the quest, anything except just gold no matter how useless the reward may be, and I can't wait to get started!
And this is how I ended up in Alterac Valley.
The weekly 'event' has been random battlegrounds.
After my last PvP adventures, I had actually been looking forward to going back in for more... not enough to just do it, of course, got to have that quest ;-)
The Shaman PvP set looks pretty cool too so I wanted that for transmog -
Quick aside... How annoying is gearing up in PvP?? I've had about 12 necks and 16 rings but still not got the legs.
Anyway... Alterac Valley.
I didn't play back when AV was a thing, I've only heard the stories of those epic 5-day battles.
My experience of AV is Alliance and Horde waving to each other as they pass in the middle of the map, burning down a tower or two, then killing the boss.
Alliance almost always won, no idea why but there must be some hidden advantage in the map for Alliance... like Silvershard Mines for Horde I assume.
This suited me just fine as I was on Alliance so could complete my PvP without any actual PvP-ing.
So when I zoned in to AV over the weekend, charged downfield and came up against massed defence of the first mini-boss... it was a bit of a surprise.
The entire horde team, all Russian which is apparently important, massed at the top of the ramp up to the first tower and slaughtered us mercilessly as we innocently funnelled into the choke point.
I imagine this is how lemmings feel, particularly the ones at the back.
Ooh ooh, we're going for a run.
Where are we going? Where are we going?
Let's all run together, this is fun
Oh dear.
Amid much swearing about Russians (is this really a thing?), orders were issued about taking towers and graveyards.
We had to win this one properly!
So of course those orders were routinely ignored as everyone charged back into the fray to die again.
Not me by the way, I'm all for listening to someone who knows what they are talking about... so I was busy looking at the map trying to work out what ICB could possibly be, and how to take it.
As even the most hard-headed of our team tired of banging their heads against the Russian wall, and we were spread around the map taking various towers, bunkers and graveyards (and a mine!)... the Horde attacked!
It was like that scene from Return of the King when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli jump off the boat, all the ghosts spawn and they sweep everything before them!
We eventually managed to recover and gather together again but the battle was essentially lost... cue more swearing about Russians.
That wasn't my only trip into Alterac Valley this week though, it seemed to come up more often than all the others.
I would say roughly half of them followed the format I was used to seeing, the run and zerg tactic with an Alliance win.
The rest followed a similar pattern to the first attempt, a defensive Horde holding position then pushing out.
There were some immense battles over towers and bunkers but it also quite often degenerated into a strange stalemate and a war of attrition would ultimately, and inevitably, see the Alliance lose.
I didn't realise it at the time but this battle was being lost long before that point.
Outside the Alliance base is a narrow valley, this falls away on one side but then comes back to another narrow passageway. All this creates one incredibly long chokepoint.
The Horde would push to this position and hold one end but were unable to break the Alliance at the other end.
Likewise, the Alliance could comfortably hold the Horde at bay but couldn't break out at the other end to launch an offensive of their own.
To reach this position required a few specific events...
The Horde had to survive the first wave of attacks comfortably so they were still in quite a cohesive group when they pushed out against the isolated Alliance.
The push out had to happen before the Alliance had finished taking one of the Southern graveyards, forcing reinforcements to run the length of the battlefield and spreading them out even further.
The Horde then needed to take or re-take all of the graveyards in the South whilst moving en masse to the long chokepoint outside the Alliance base.
If the horde reach that chokepoint with sufficient numbers AND control of the graveyards, the battle is essentially over.
Any pockets of Alliance resistance in the south can be taken out at leisure as long as those graveyards are held because the respawn is always at the wrong side of the chokepoint.
The inevitability of defeat dawns on you when you realise that you can't get enough people through the chokepoint alive to re-take another graveyard, while the enemy has taken towers, mines etc. to bolster their reinforcement count.
I can't see any way out of it to be honest...
Can you stealth or "corpse walk" enough people past the chokepoint to start taking objectives?
Or at least enough to force the horde to abandon their entrenched position to deal with the threat?
Maybe, but you don't really get that level of coordination in the random queue.
Some old hands will probably tell me an obvious solution that I haven't even considered but I'm new to all this stuff and still learning how to play, never mind battleground strategy.
Regardless, I won enough BGs to complete my quest and await the next PvP-based event. I am tempted to just do a few... without a quest (!)... I still need those legs after all :-)
Want me to do anything outside of my normal comfort zone of World Quests, Dungeons and Raiding?
Just put up one of those shiny, gold exclamation marks and I'm there... just have to turn it into a shiny, gold question mark :-)
Put a reward on the quest, anything except just gold no matter how useless the reward may be, and I can't wait to get started!
And this is how I ended up in Alterac Valley.
The weekly 'event' has been random battlegrounds.
After my last PvP adventures, I had actually been looking forward to going back in for more... not enough to just do it, of course, got to have that quest ;-)
The Shaman PvP set looks pretty cool too so I wanted that for transmog -
Quick aside... How annoying is gearing up in PvP?? I've had about 12 necks and 16 rings but still not got the legs.
Anyway... Alterac Valley.
I didn't play back when AV was a thing, I've only heard the stories of those epic 5-day battles.
My experience of AV is Alliance and Horde waving to each other as they pass in the middle of the map, burning down a tower or two, then killing the boss.
Alliance almost always won, no idea why but there must be some hidden advantage in the map for Alliance... like Silvershard Mines for Horde I assume.
This suited me just fine as I was on Alliance so could complete my PvP without any actual PvP-ing.
So when I zoned in to AV over the weekend, charged downfield and came up against massed defence of the first mini-boss... it was a bit of a surprise.
The entire horde team, all Russian which is apparently important, massed at the top of the ramp up to the first tower and slaughtered us mercilessly as we innocently funnelled into the choke point.
I imagine this is how lemmings feel, particularly the ones at the back.
Ooh ooh, we're going for a run.
Where are we going? Where are we going?
Let's all run together, this is fun
Oh dear.
Amid much swearing about Russians (is this really a thing?), orders were issued about taking towers and graveyards.
We had to win this one properly!
So of course those orders were routinely ignored as everyone charged back into the fray to die again.
Not me by the way, I'm all for listening to someone who knows what they are talking about... so I was busy looking at the map trying to work out what ICB could possibly be, and how to take it.
As even the most hard-headed of our team tired of banging their heads against the Russian wall, and we were spread around the map taking various towers, bunkers and graveyards (and a mine!)... the Horde attacked!
It was like that scene from Return of the King when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli jump off the boat, all the ghosts spawn and they sweep everything before them!
We eventually managed to recover and gather together again but the battle was essentially lost... cue more swearing about Russians.
That wasn't my only trip into Alterac Valley this week though, it seemed to come up more often than all the others.
I would say roughly half of them followed the format I was used to seeing, the run and zerg tactic with an Alliance win.
The rest followed a similar pattern to the first attempt, a defensive Horde holding position then pushing out.
There were some immense battles over towers and bunkers but it also quite often degenerated into a strange stalemate and a war of attrition would ultimately, and inevitably, see the Alliance lose.
I didn't realise it at the time but this battle was being lost long before that point.
Outside the Alliance base is a narrow valley, this falls away on one side but then comes back to another narrow passageway. All this creates one incredibly long chokepoint.
The Horde would push to this position and hold one end but were unable to break the Alliance at the other end.
Likewise, the Alliance could comfortably hold the Horde at bay but couldn't break out at the other end to launch an offensive of their own.
To reach this position required a few specific events...
The Horde had to survive the first wave of attacks comfortably so they were still in quite a cohesive group when they pushed out against the isolated Alliance.
The push out had to happen before the Alliance had finished taking one of the Southern graveyards, forcing reinforcements to run the length of the battlefield and spreading them out even further.
The Horde then needed to take or re-take all of the graveyards in the South whilst moving en masse to the long chokepoint outside the Alliance base.
If the horde reach that chokepoint with sufficient numbers AND control of the graveyards, the battle is essentially over.
Any pockets of Alliance resistance in the south can be taken out at leisure as long as those graveyards are held because the respawn is always at the wrong side of the chokepoint.
The inevitability of defeat dawns on you when you realise that you can't get enough people through the chokepoint alive to re-take another graveyard, while the enemy has taken towers, mines etc. to bolster their reinforcement count.
I can't see any way out of it to be honest...
Can you stealth or "corpse walk" enough people past the chokepoint to start taking objectives?
Or at least enough to force the horde to abandon their entrenched position to deal with the threat?
Maybe, but you don't really get that level of coordination in the random queue.
Some old hands will probably tell me an obvious solution that I haven't even considered but I'm new to all this stuff and still learning how to play, never mind battleground strategy.
Regardless, I won enough BGs to complete my quest and await the next PvP-based event. I am tempted to just do a few... without a quest (!)... I still need those legs after all :-)
Friday 9 December 2016
Dead Dragons...
There is something about fighting a big dragon that feels... Warcraft-ey, especially when it follows the dragon 'rules' and all of the Dragons of Nightmare follow those rules.
Big breath attack? Check!
Tail Swipe? Check!
You've got yourself a dragon there, son.
A dragon?? I've got 4 of the bloody things!
These dragons are, I assume, English dragons... They politely queue up and wait for their turn to tear the raid to pieces.
And once they have had a go, they just fly to the back of the queue and patiently wait for their next turn.
This is vitally important as, even with only 2 on the ground at a time, there are about a million mechanics to deal with!
I'll be honest, based on our experiences on Heroic, I thought this would be our easiest Mythic kill and we should have gone here first.
I was wrong.
There is just so much going on all the time that you can't lose focus for a second!
When I was leading raids more regularly I used to know every fight inside out, reading up and watching countless guide videos to fully understand every moment of each fight for each role.
I've dialled it back a 'bit' since then...
I've done it on Heroic a few times and watched a guide to show the differences for Mythic. It looked pretty similar to me, same mechanics but more frequently and hit harder blah blah blah.
There is the portal group too but I wasn't expecting to be involved in that... typically I got thrown in there because our DK was getting stuck on the loading screen each time but that was only the first night.
The rest is just like Heroic right?
Stand on the flowers to stop them spawning adds.
Avoid the sleepy clouds of gas.
Interrupt and kill adds.
Dispel the debuff, got to keep those healers busy!
What isn't immediately apparent is how quickly these abilities come at you in Mythic, and how frequently they overlap!
Back in the day, I would have known exactly what was going to hit and when.
Now?
Headless Chicken mode!
I felt like I didn't know what was going to happen at any given moment and just reacted to what was in front of me... constantly for 7+ minutes!
With Mythic in general being quite unforgiving, you can understand why it takes so much concentration to play this way.
Having played Ele Shaman for quite some time now, constantly striving to improve (and had a dps lesson from Preach himself!), I can maximise my dps under pretty much any circumstances so the numbers don't suffer too much.
When I had less skill and practice as a player, the ridiculously in-depth knowledge of the fights must have covered my weaknesses to a certain extent.
Following this train of thought, I have some new-found sympathy for those players who haven't (for whatever reason) put that much effort into improving their play, they don't have that knowledge to cover for them (and I certainly don't expect anyone to go to the lengths I did in learning fights).
It must be incredibly intense to need full concentration on the fight mechanics and your dps rotation, possibly even clicking abilities on your action bar.
I used to just think they were bad players, and maybe they were (hehe), but at least I have a bit more understanding of why they were bad ;-)
Anyway, I digress, back to the dragons!
Despite all of the various abilities making you run around, this fight is surprisingly good for the Elemental Shaman... mainly due to the numerous opportunities to unload with Chain Lightning.
A variety of adds spawn so I quickly learned to save Stormkeeper to coincide with a healthy number of targets and the screen would light up during the 'Shade' spawns.
I think I said at the start of the expansion that the Ele Shaman niche, extended AoE, doesn't occur in current raids... well, here it does and boy do we shine!
Once everyone has learned the fight and you are at that stage of trying to pull the execution together consistently enough in one attempt to get the first kill, it all boils down to one point.
There are gas clouds on the floor, add-sprouting flowers all over the place and purple bombs of corruption dropping all over the raid... when Lethon casts Siphon Spirit and spawns a whole load of adds!
They actually spawn from players so we loosely stacked to group them together, then stunned and slowed them with everything we had to give us maximum uptime.
These adds are the absolute priority in the fight... if they reach the dragons, they heal them for a massive amount!
Enter, the Elemental Shaman!
Lightning blazing everywhere, Earthquakes knocking them to the ground, Earthbind Totems slowing them down, Capacitor Totems... er, capacitating (? incapacitating maybe).
This is our moment!
And once you are through, it is plain sailing to four dead dragons.
Big breath attack? Check!
Tail Swipe? Check!
You've got yourself a dragon there, son.
A dragon?? I've got 4 of the bloody things!
These dragons are, I assume, English dragons... They politely queue up and wait for their turn to tear the raid to pieces.
And once they have had a go, they just fly to the back of the queue and patiently wait for their next turn.
This is vitally important as, even with only 2 on the ground at a time, there are about a million mechanics to deal with!
I'll be honest, based on our experiences on Heroic, I thought this would be our easiest Mythic kill and we should have gone here first.
I was wrong.
There is just so much going on all the time that you can't lose focus for a second!
When I was leading raids more regularly I used to know every fight inside out, reading up and watching countless guide videos to fully understand every moment of each fight for each role.
I've dialled it back a 'bit' since then...
I've done it on Heroic a few times and watched a guide to show the differences for Mythic. It looked pretty similar to me, same mechanics but more frequently and hit harder blah blah blah.
There is the portal group too but I wasn't expecting to be involved in that... typically I got thrown in there because our DK was getting stuck on the loading screen each time but that was only the first night.
The rest is just like Heroic right?
Stand on the flowers to stop them spawning adds.
Avoid the sleepy clouds of gas.
Interrupt and kill adds.
Dispel the debuff, got to keep those healers busy!
What isn't immediately apparent is how quickly these abilities come at you in Mythic, and how frequently they overlap!
Back in the day, I would have known exactly what was going to hit and when.
Now?
Headless Chicken mode!
I felt like I didn't know what was going to happen at any given moment and just reacted to what was in front of me... constantly for 7+ minutes!
With Mythic in general being quite unforgiving, you can understand why it takes so much concentration to play this way.
Having played Ele Shaman for quite some time now, constantly striving to improve (and had a dps lesson from Preach himself!), I can maximise my dps under pretty much any circumstances so the numbers don't suffer too much.
When I had less skill and practice as a player, the ridiculously in-depth knowledge of the fights must have covered my weaknesses to a certain extent.
Following this train of thought, I have some new-found sympathy for those players who haven't (for whatever reason) put that much effort into improving their play, they don't have that knowledge to cover for them (and I certainly don't expect anyone to go to the lengths I did in learning fights).
It must be incredibly intense to need full concentration on the fight mechanics and your dps rotation, possibly even clicking abilities on your action bar.
I used to just think they were bad players, and maybe they were (hehe), but at least I have a bit more understanding of why they were bad ;-)
Anyway, I digress, back to the dragons!
Despite all of the various abilities making you run around, this fight is surprisingly good for the Elemental Shaman... mainly due to the numerous opportunities to unload with Chain Lightning.
A variety of adds spawn so I quickly learned to save Stormkeeper to coincide with a healthy number of targets and the screen would light up during the 'Shade' spawns.
I think I said at the start of the expansion that the Ele Shaman niche, extended AoE, doesn't occur in current raids... well, here it does and boy do we shine!
Once everyone has learned the fight and you are at that stage of trying to pull the execution together consistently enough in one attempt to get the first kill, it all boils down to one point.
There are gas clouds on the floor, add-sprouting flowers all over the place and purple bombs of corruption dropping all over the raid... when Lethon casts Siphon Spirit and spawns a whole load of adds!
They actually spawn from players so we loosely stacked to group them together, then stunned and slowed them with everything we had to give us maximum uptime.
These adds are the absolute priority in the fight... if they reach the dragons, they heal them for a massive amount!
Enter, the Elemental Shaman!
Lightning blazing everywhere, Earthquakes knocking them to the ground, Earthbind Totems slowing them down, Capacitor Totems... er, capacitating (? incapacitating maybe).
This is our moment!
And once you are through, it is plain sailing to four dead dragons.
Wednesday 7 December 2016
Plodding Along...
Everything has slowed down now as we await the burst of content that comes with the next patch.
Not that we have finished with the current patch, just all of the non-raiding content.
Aside form raiding, the Shaman just completes his emissary quests and 1 mythic+ dungeon per week for the weekly cache.
I feel like I should be doing more mythic+ dungeons to bring in the AP and finish my artefact weapon but, to be completely honest, I can't be bothered.
I target the World Quests with AP rewards and raiding rewards decent enough AP to keep it ticking over, plus I'm 1/3 on my last trait which is a very disappointing self-heal even at 3/3.
At 1/3, it heals me for roughly 130k HP if I drop below 35% - amazing, right?
1 million AP to make it a 260k heal hasn't exactly got me rushing around to complete it!
The Paladin tank has geared up nicely and is now at the mythic dungeon/normal raid stage... unfortunately, this means he has to use the groupfinder.
I think the groupfinder is a fantastic tool but it's a constant struggle for me to actually apply to join a group, and it's almost a relief if I get turned down.
I know I know, man up and just get on with it... I'm trying
As if reading my thoughts, Preach has just started a series of videos for learner tanks. Apparently, I'm not alone in my fear of the groupfinder and he has been receiving lots of emails asking how to get into tanking.
I was already following Darkmech's advice, who is hilarious by the way, but it's good to have another point of view and I'm always on the lookout for more if you know any?
When my friend got me into WoW it came as no surprise to him how deeply I went into the game, absorbing as much information as I possibly could about all aspects of Warcraft.
Starting with TotalBiscuit (TotalHalibut?)back in the day and Nobbel more recently as I become more interested in the lore, it has always been the personality and opinions that have kept me interested rather than just the content.
And I still consume wow-related content at an incredible rate so am always looking out for new (or new to me) blogs, podcasts and youtubers.
Apologies for rambling a bit today but it is quite representative of my play at the moment, lacking focus and waiting for something to trigger me into action!
Not that we have finished with the current patch, just all of the non-raiding content.
Aside form raiding, the Shaman just completes his emissary quests and 1 mythic+ dungeon per week for the weekly cache.
I feel like I should be doing more mythic+ dungeons to bring in the AP and finish my artefact weapon but, to be completely honest, I can't be bothered.
I target the World Quests with AP rewards and raiding rewards decent enough AP to keep it ticking over, plus I'm 1/3 on my last trait which is a very disappointing self-heal even at 3/3.
At 1/3, it heals me for roughly 130k HP if I drop below 35% - amazing, right?
1 million AP to make it a 260k heal hasn't exactly got me rushing around to complete it!
The Paladin tank has geared up nicely and is now at the mythic dungeon/normal raid stage... unfortunately, this means he has to use the groupfinder.
I think the groupfinder is a fantastic tool but it's a constant struggle for me to actually apply to join a group, and it's almost a relief if I get turned down.
I know I know, man up and just get on with it... I'm trying
As if reading my thoughts, Preach has just started a series of videos for learner tanks. Apparently, I'm not alone in my fear of the groupfinder and he has been receiving lots of emails asking how to get into tanking.
I was already following Darkmech's advice, who is hilarious by the way, but it's good to have another point of view and I'm always on the lookout for more if you know any?
When my friend got me into WoW it came as no surprise to him how deeply I went into the game, absorbing as much information as I possibly could about all aspects of Warcraft.
Starting with TotalBiscuit (TotalHalibut?)back in the day and Nobbel more recently as I become more interested in the lore, it has always been the personality and opinions that have kept me interested rather than just the content.
And I still consume wow-related content at an incredible rate so am always looking out for new (or new to me) blogs, podcasts and youtubers.
Apologies for rambling a bit today but it is quite representative of my play at the moment, lacking focus and waiting for something to trigger me into action!
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