Collect All the Things...

Despite all the negativity of my last few posts, there are some things in game I do actually enjoy.


I've never really been a collector... I've dabbled here and there but it's never been the actual collecting or filling a set that has appealed to me.
For example, back in the day I used to play a bit of Magic: The Gathering.
The collecting aspect only served to facilitate the building of decks for me. I wasn't remotely interested in a card to finish off a set and freely traded away anything I didn't need for whatever deck I was trying to build at that time.


So it is surprising that I find myself captivated by the Collections tab!


Much of my spare time, when not doing laps of Dazar'Alor/Boralus, has been spent in old raids picking up tier pieces for one appearance or another. 
Spread across most of my toons, not even collecting them all on my main or anything, just chasing whatever set I think looks pretty cool or different.


Maybe this was sparked by this awesome little thing in Legion but I also find it incredibly relaxing and love the memories that come flooding back.


Recently I was in Throne of Thunder for the first time in god knows how long, it's been so long I forgot how to get to the Isle of Thunder in the first place :)


I had such a good time in that raid - We didn't pull up any trees progress-wise, barely even touched Heroic iirc (no Mythic back then), but it was so much fun!
Dino-madness on Horridon, crazy turtle kicking on Tortos, flying around nests on Ji-Kun... I had a great time.


I don't think I've ever enjoyed raiding as much as I did in ToT, Mythic progression seems so serious in comparison.
I was the go-to guy back then which made a big difference, job needs doing and I'm there.
I was the one kicking the turtles, I was the one flying to nests (solo, was a nice challenge)... and I loved every minute of it.


Running through again at 120 had me constantly smiling as random moments sprang back into my mind - Didn't get the full set either so I'll be heading back again soon :)

Mythic Progression Coming to an End...?

As we continue to push towards G'Huun's end (8% - Getting there slowly) I still can't shake the malaise that has been hanging over my head for the past few months.


G'Huun itself is quite an interesting fight.  Unfortunately, it is dragged down by the crazy composition requirements that have been a feature throughout Uldir.


This time it is Warlocks... well, mostly Warlocks.
The fight has been nerfed so that you don't actually need 4 Warlocks now, although having less than 4 does restrict what classes you can bring to make up the rest of the team.


Anyway... we're closing in on the kill but held back by sloppy play in the earlier phases of the fight that frustrates me no end.
Why is it so difficult to get 'Mythic Raiders' to actually follow mechanics?
It's a constant struggle, like the default state of the raider is to stand still and shoot the boss (or jump and shoot the boss - BM Hunter) while my task is to convince, cajole, threaten them into doing anything else.


EVERY.
SINGLE.
BOSS.


It drives me insane!


The latest one is Blistering Boils.  They explode and the two nearest people get a debuff, pick up two debuffs (either at the same time or one after the other) and you are mind-controlled leaving your team no choice but to kill you.


So you have a little hokey cokey of people with the debuff moving away from new boils and people without the debuff moving towards them... in theory.
What we get is half the team just stood still regardless of the debuff.  It's blind luck whether or not we get through it half the time.


Why don't they get it??
Just do the f*cking mechanics!!


I know, deep in my heart, that the numbers don't really matter. 
It's the mechanics that win you the fight, get you the kill, but people just seem so absorbed by the numbers that they don't see it.
So they push back against any instruction that might lower their dps, or hps (healers tunnel vision worse than most but usually for better reasons) and we fail.
Then there is silence when I ask why nobody moved, why nobody soaked, why nobody actually did the mechanics.


I can't wait for it to be over.


But how over do I want it to be?


I'll be stepping down as Raid Leader, maybe Officer too, but I still enjoy the raiding.
The problem is... I only enjoy the raiding.
I don't enjoy the dungeons, rarely even doing one for the weekly.
I don't enjoy the islands, haven't done them for months.
World Quests... yeah, right.


My characters drop further and further behind.  It's not important at this stage of the tier but a new tier is on the horizon.
Do I want to force myself to complete that content just to keep up?


I'm sorely tempted by a more casual playstyle, forget the Cutting Edge achievements but only play the content I actually enjoy playing.


Decisions to make...

Freedom...

Had a great raid last night!

I haven't become an amazing Warlock overnight so I was still a bit rubbish.

And we didn't kill anything, just banged our heads against Mythrax for a few hours.

Still had a great night!

Because I wasn't Raid Leading.

I had missed the first two nights of progress on Mythrax plus couldn't get my microphone to work, so there was actually no option for me to be RL.  We've already set up my replacement to lead this boss anyway but it still added to my feeling of relaxation as we entered the raid.

For the first couple of pulls, the fight felt incredibly frantic as I tried to work things out and find my position in the arena.  All Ranged have to be spread for the majority of the fight so you need to find your space, then guard it and shoo away anyway who encroaches.

Once I had found a spot, it all settled down.  There are times when everything points your way and you spend more time running than fighting but usually the abilities are spread around the ranged team.
It's a recent nerf to the fight that has made one key ability only affect ranged which makes it more of a pain for me but thank god, because it would have been a nightmare if it affected the melee.  We had visions of Argus all over again.

Anyway, once I had a feel for the fight and my positioning, it calmed down and I could actually work at improving.  This is not something I feel like I have been able to do before now, leading took precedence over my own performance, I was just muddling through each fight trying to watch everyone else.

I realised that this is an aspect of raiding that I had really missed without even thinking about it, the gameplay min-maxing and the awesome sense of achievement as you improve until you eventually nail the fight... then cock it all up on the actual kill so you look like a moron on the kill vid but whatever.
Of course, that sense of achievement was replaced by the team nailing the fight and us getting the kill and, don't get me wrong, I loved that but I want the other feeling.

Am I just selfish?
Maybe I am, I certainly feel quite selfish at the moment.  I'm not a selfish player though, I'll still be offering to do the dirty jobs in the raid that wreck your dps.
Hmmm... that's not helping, still feel selfish.

I don't care, maybe it's just my time to be selfish.

Over Before It Began...

The tanking dream almost actually happened!

It was agreed, I would take over for the next tier of raiding and I had started to prepare... actually levelling a tank class (female blood elf paladin)!

Got to 120, started to gear up and even ran a couple of LFRs.  Tanking G'Huun, even on lfr, at 317ilvl is not recommended by the way.  The other bosses were all fine although Fetid Devourer hurt a bit, but on G'Huun it was impossible to keep me alive despite me rotating mitigation and cooldowns.
(Personally I think the healers could have done more as I wasn't getting much in the way of direct healing but I knew I was undergeared so left them to find a better tank)

Meanwhile, repeat kills on our Mythic team are proving almost as difficult as the first.  We even wiped on Taloc once, ok so our monk had forgotten to switch to tank spec but we still should have been able to kill it.
Some wipes on Mother that aren't easily explained, maybe too many people crossing at exactly the same moment so Spirit Link doesn't get chance to take effect?  Not sure, it's only ever 1 or 2 wipes anyway so not worth bothering too much.

The next 3 though are erratic to say the least, some weeks they take 1-2 attempts and some weeks it takes 10 or more! 
Except Fetid Devourer that is, which always takes 10+ but that's for another post.

With me falling out of love with the Warlock and the frustration of wiping to silly mistakes on bosses we have already killed multiple times, I've not been enjoying the raids very much.
Leading has been a real drag too, people know what to do on these fights but it is still a constant struggle to get them to do the right thing, to think about more than themselves in any given situation (Again Fetid, will have to do a Fetid post)

Our progress boss in now Zul but we barely get any time on him each week.  It's not a difficult boss for most of the raid but a few people have specific tasks that need some practice to get right, or at least get the timing down.
For the rest of us, it is pure Patchwerk!  Stand still and hit the boss as hard as you can to the exclusion of pretty much everything else, letting some rogues cheese you through the phase so you don't actually have to deal with any mechanics.
I hate it!
If Blizzard released the fight this way by design there would be uproar, yet we reduce it to this to make it easier.  And the more rogues you have, the easier it becomes.

Anyway, again a rant for another day.

We only have 3 rogues (some guilds gather as many as 6 or 7!) and 1 of them is an alt who, by his own admission, is completely shit at it.
'Only' having 3 rogues (2.5 really) means the dps check for our cheese strat is incredibly tight.

My Warlock is the lowest geared char in the raid, poorly itemised gear too as I stopped doing all of the extra-curricular activities needed to keep him up to date quite some time ago.
Give me some mechanics to deal with and I back myself to bridge the gap to higher-geared players but in a straight stand-up dps check? 
I was bottom of the pack quite consistently.
And in a bid to meet this tight dps check, I'm now riding the bench.
Sad times.

At first I wasn't really bothered.  I wasn't enjoying the raids anyway and I knew my dps was the lowest so it made sense.
The more I thought about it, the more bothered I was though.
It was actually poor execution of those few specific tasks that had slowed our progress, not my fractionally lower dps.
At the end of the day though, I just didn't like that I had let myself get into a position where I was the one being benched.

What to do about it?
Well, after a rant in our officer channel about identifying the real issues in a fight and cheese strats in general, I started thinking about what I wanted from the game these days.
Not normally one for introspection, it took me a while to sort through my thoughts...

I still want the challenge and thrill of Mythic raiding.
I also want to be relaxed and enjoy it.
I want to enjoy the extra stuff outside raids.

The answer was obvious and I should have known it from the start... Elemental Shaman!
Why did I ever doubt it?

Is It My Year?

Tap Tap.  Is this thing still on?

After my brief dalliance with the Arcane as Mage, I thought I had returned to my Shaman for good.  But no, this time I went even further and completely betrayed my Shamanistic roots by switching to Warlock for the new expansion!
Even worse... an Orc Warlock!

After such a betrayal, how could I come to post on this Shaman blog?
It just wouldn't be right.

That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it, let's move on :)

So why post now?
Well... I'M BACK!!
Yes, the Shaman is now a troll but he's back ready to take over in 8.1

Dismayed by the constantly poor position of the Shaman and the proposed changes for BfA, I was determined to play something which would be decent no matter what was thrown at it so chose the Warlock.

Demonology was the spec that really interested me so that's how I prepared and levelled, typically it was brokenly poor when the raids opened up (and before) so not really viable.

Affliction was the go-to spec for pretty much every situation so I reluctantly switched over.
The thing with Affliction is that it's all about those DoTs, and keeping those DoTs up takes a fair amount of concentration with all the other stuff going on.

This did not fit very well with me being raid leader...
Learning a new spec/class is one thing
Learning to raid with that spec is another
Learning to raid with that spec in new fights is another
Learning to raid with that spec while raid leading new fights is a whole other thing altogether!

I couldn't do it.

After every raid, I felt disappointed with my performance as both a Warlock and a Raid Leader.
I'm just not good enough to do that, I thought doing it from the start of the expansion might give me the time to become comfortable enough on the Warlock to allow it but it didn't.
I even had to ask for a night off raid-leading on one Heroic clear so I could do some half-decent dps and show the newer people in the guild that I could actually play the game.

It's a shame as I really thought I could do good things with the Warlock but don't really feel like I had the opportunity.
It was similar to the Mage, and a similar reason for switching back.  To be a decent RL, I need to be playing my Shaman!

Thankfully, the 8.1 changes are looking good for Elemental.  As long as the damage balancing is done properly (hahahaha), we should be fine.

That is the really sad part of this... my Shaman is only a few ilvls behind my Warlock now as I prepare for the change but even if I played it perfectly, I would still do more damage playing the Warlock as poorly as I do.

Ah well, I feel like the Warlock ship has sailed now.  It's Shaman time once more, which at least allows me to feel good about my play (and a bit better about my raid leading).

Or is it Shaman time?
The latest rumblings around the guild are that our main tank wants to switch back to his hunter!
Maybe it's time for me to step up!
I've boosted a paladin, sent her to Zuldazar and set her spec to Prot.
Ok, she's still 110 and I have no xp but...

Is it finally my year?

Progress vs Rotation...

The big debate raging among the officers now is how to handle our roster of 25 raiders.


Our old system had a 'core' 20 raiders with 3 or 4 'support' raiders coming in to cover when someone had a night off... this fell down because our core were ultra-reliable and all turned up to every raid for weeks on end, meaning the support never actually got a chance to raid and eventually got bored and left.


When someone did finally need a night off, we were scrabbling around for someone to fill in and even pugging sometimes to avoid cancelling the raid... far from ideal for Mythic progress.


Our GM has recruited a few extra people now so we always have enough people but he hates benching anyone and we have to go through the rather torturous process of picking those benched people each time.


To make it 'fair', our GM decided we needed a rotation system to make sure the same people didn't keep getting benched over and over again.  That would be the same as our old core+support system, just without telling the support that that's what they were.


With this in mind, I figured we could have everyone open for rotation on our farm night then pick the best 20 available for whatever boss we were progressing on at the time for our progress night.


For example, we are currently progressing on Antoran High Command which is mostly an AoE-fest so...  I wanted to bench our lowest AoE dps - 2 BM hunters, 1 Rogue and 1 Frost Mage who are consistently lowest on our Heroic kills - They would get plenty of opportunities for the kill in future but it's a small attempt at min-maxing to get our first kill.


The first fly in the ointment was one of our BM hunters who is extremely resistant to being benched... one of the main reasons she applied to join our guild was our old core raider policy so I have some sympathy for her but ROTATION!
She went on holiday, taking full advantage of our expanded roster, before we implemented the rotation plan anyway but the GM is concerned she will leave.
It turns out she isn't the only fly and a few other people have now spoken up about their dislike for the bench.


One of our officers suggested just not rotating those people that are going to complain but I couldn't see that working particularly well for any length of time.
Another officer suggested complete rotation with making sure all roles are covered being our only consideration, the fairest of fair systems.


The GM was not happy with any of these suggestions... so I came up with a plan to cover ALL of them!
My plan was to have everyone rotate, has to be that way really, as a starting point.  But, beyond that, I set up a new 'core' of raiders that would only be benched on our farm nights with everyone else being benched on our progress nights.
Over a 5 raid period, all of our players would be benched once but we still had our top players available for progress every time.  I won't go into any more detail but it was a solid plan that covered all eventualities.


Submitted it to our GM, we went through some what-if scenarios, and he was happy!
We tentatively (and secretly) put it in place before our progress raid on Monday, benched some people, and went to raid.


Despite our best efforts (4 wipes at <5%), we failed to kill AHC and I should have predicted what happened next...
Wednesday farm night rolls around and our GM wants to push for the AHC kill so refuses to bench any of the new 'core' players.  This throws the whole rota into an absolute mess as we can't fit everyone in now and still keep the core for progress nights.


Personally, I don't really care what system we use but we probably should have a system of some kind in place if only so that people know where they stand... or, more importantly, I know what's going on if they ever ask me!


I thought my initial solution gave us the right balance of rotation and progression.


What do you think?
Any different or better ideas?

Ahead of the Curve - Antorus - Part Three

The raid naturally splits into these three areas and I think this is where the skip mechanism brings you once you've collected your 4 McGuffins.
It's a natural split in difficulty too, Coven shenanigans aside, although the curve is quite gentle over all of the first 9 bosses.

Aggramar

Our plate users were drooling over his sword, Taeshalach, which can actually drop for transmog purposes.  It does look bloody cool!

The fight itself is a lesson in avoiding fire which gets progressively more difficult as the fight continues.  In the final phase, I find myself tending towards the headless chicken routine and still haven't mastered Icefury so my dps is close to non-existent.

There are a couple of really interesting aspects to the fight though...

Taeshalach's Technique is reminiscent of the 'dance' you had to perform for Will of the Emperor back in Mogu'shan Vaults. 
Do you remember that?
It was a series of telegraphed moves you had to avoid for a damage buff.  I remember finding it quite tricky at the time, definitely on the first few attempts at least.
This incarnation is only for the tanks to deal with and doesn't have much depth to it, seems like a missed opportunity to me.

CC all the things!
There are a couple of transitions in the fight where the boss is immune to damage and some adds spawn.  A couple of big adds to keep the tanks busy and a few smaller adds for the rest of us.
These smaller adds just move slowly towards the boss - If they reach him, they explode for raidwide damage and leaves a debuff for more damage from any more explosions.

On Normal, you just kill these adds off before they reach the boss.  It's pretty easy, they don't have much health.
On Heroic, it gets much more interesting!  You can still kill the smaller adds but after a few seconds they just reform and continue their journey to the boss.
You need to CC all of the adds and release them one at a time to reach the boss as the debuff from the previous one runs out.  It's a level of individual responsibility and coordination that isn't needed on any of the other fight.
Having a DK grip each add in at the right time makes it a lot easier but it is still a step up in challenge, particularly with all of the fire-dodging going on.

Argus the Unmaker

Wow, this fight is spectacular!
I'm going to do my best to avoid spoilers here because I really feel like this is a fight you should experience rather than read about in a blog.

I barely know where to begin anyway, so much going on...
Multiple phases
Big buffs to make you OP
Big bombs to blow up the raid
Even a bloody Cone of Death!!!

Visually stunning, it is a superb way to end a raid (and possibly expansion)
Normal mode seems well tuned but I think Heroic is lacking a bit of bite, although reports suggest that is more than made up for in Mythic.

Those 'epic' moments are few and far between when you have been playing the game for a long time but this fight really brought them back, hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Summary

If, as expected, this is the last raid of the expansion, then I can't complain.  The bosses are fun for the most part and although the setting does get a bit 'same-y' after a while, it looks incredible and Eonar/Argus offer a touch of variety.

On Heroic, the bosses were not quite challenging enough for our group but that is probably more down to gear than anything else.  I've been keeping an eye on the progress of some old friends (who didn't raid Mythic ToS) and it seems nicely tuned for them.

We're now pushing on for Cutting Edge after a break for the holidays, I'll keep you posted!

Alt Shenanigans - Arms Warrior??

11 of the 12 classes at 110 now, only Monk to go.

I had some lofty goals of running tem all through invasions each week, gearing them up with Relinquished tokens and eventually collecting all of the class mounts.  It seemed like a better idea than running around Dalaran on my main, looking at the groupfinder (but not applying for any groups).

That didn't last long to be honest, felt like too much of a chore.  It did get me playing all of them though, and sometimes one would grip my attention for a while so I would do some World Quests and LFR on it.

Since abandoning the invasion plan, I just jump on whatever alt I feel like to just go do stuff!
Recently, I've been enjoying the Arms Warrior of all things.
It has the simplest of simple rotations, on par with BM Hunter and Havoc Demon Hunter as the easiest specs to play, but there is a certain satisfaction to be gained from hitting something really hard with a big sword!  :-)

I originally levelled the Warrior because they kept destroying me in PvP... I can't remember why I was doing PvP now but I was doing some random BGs and always struggled when I came up against a Warrior. 
I didn't do any PvP on the Warrior, I stopped doing it on the Shaman and forgot all about it, so he sat around for the last few months without even leaving his order hall until the invasion plan started.

Still not doing any PvP on the Warrior but I'm now playing it on the side, it's up to er... 2nd or 3rd alt, which is high indeed for a class I've pretty much avoided for all of my WoW life.  It has even edged out the Mage, only my pipedreams of one day being a Paladin tank are keeping it from going higher (Timewalking last week, content for making you feel good about your tanking ability :-) ).

A couple of runs through LFR and a few WQs, I'm now considering doing some real content with him!  Maybe run some Mythic plus this week, I doubt I will reach the 975ilvl that pugs want for a normal Antorus run though.  The old guild is gathering to raid once more so maybe some opportunities there.

It's exciting being at this stage with a new class, so much content ahead of me and no rush to clear it... I'm going to have to name-change first though, can't take him seriously at the moment xD