Nighthold - First Impressions

I successfully avoided all spoilers for the upcoming raid so I could go in completely blind with only the Dungeon Journal to help with tactics.


I fully expected the RL to give us the lowdown on each boss anyway so didn't feel too guilty about not reading up... at least not until after the raid when there was a conversation about how little some people had prepared.  They weren't talking about me specifically so I just kept quiet...


I wonder if my RL knows about/reads this blog, I guess I'll find out soon  :-)


Anyway... to the Nighthold!


The elven theme continues from Suramar and is just as gorgeous, the whole place is very reminiscent of Sunwell Plateau which makes a lot of sense.
We started on Normal to get a feel for the place and have a look at a few bosses on the first night.


As we overgeared it quite substantially with an average ilvl of 884 in the raid, the early bosses didn't provide much of a challenge although there was one hilarious wipe on Krosus as the main tank rolled off the edge of the bridge.
We were probably going to wipe anyway as half of the team was already in the water because they didn't move when the bridge was smashed.


We made our way to 8/10 on the first night with only High Botanist Tel'arn causing us problems.
That is one messy fight!
There is so much going on all the time, danger coming from all sides, it reminds me of pug killers in the past.
Fights like Horridon in ToT where, if you are not on point, the fight just degenerates into an absolute mess.


I love the variety of bosses though.  Some bring back familiar mechanics and some are quite innovative, but they all look fantastic!
The time dilation on Chromatic Anomaly is particularly interesting but those cast times are painful in the 'slow' phase.


The arenas for the fights also vary quite substantially with the highlight undoubtedly being Star Augur Etraeus... I won't spoil it if you haven't seen it yet... it's a shame that this is the dullest fight though. 
At least it gives you time to appreciate the scenery I suppose.


After much discussion, we returned to Normal on our second night. 
The team was split on whether to finish normal or jump into heroic so I wasn't sure which way we would go... I'm glad Normal was chosen as I wanted to finish the raid as a team, we had no idea how long it would be until we reached and killed Gul'dan on heroic.


It would also help with pugging which, given that half the raid is on my tier token, I will probably need to do to complete the set.


So we returned to face the menace of Suramar, Grand Magistrix Elisande.
More time-bending shenanigans in this fun fight which I am looking forward to immensely on heroic, she fell a little too easily on normal.


Which brought us to Gul'dan, could we finally bring justice to this villain of villains?
This was one of the major doubts about continuing with normal, we could get stuck on a challenging last boss (Imperator Mar'gok?) while there was potentially lower-hanging fruit available in early heroics.


The doubts were unfounded though as we only took a couple of learning wipes before overpowering him.  It was only gear that got us through the fight, we didn't handle the mechanics particularly well, and I'm looking forward to this fight on Heroic even more than Elisande!


Gul'dan looks like a final boss worthy of the name, a big step up from Xavius, and I can see this fight being a major challenge at the appropriate gear level. 
Good luck to those World First guilds going at it with only a smattering of Heroic gear!


The switch to Heroic was expected to bring a bit more of a challenge, we had been joking about how many of our normal kills would have been wipes, so I was slightly surprised when we 1-shot the first two bosses!


Skorpyron is your typical entry boss so I wasn't expecting many issues but it was extremely forgiving, even on Heroic.  A number of people were knocked back and spawned extra adds but we handled them comfortably.
We do have an insane amount of AoE in our team so that probably carried us through.


As this continued on the other bosses though, I was more surprised.


Trilliax was only one wipe as a few people failed the big central beam... although, to be completely honest, our warlock was an absolute hero on the kill and covered half of the mechanics on his own.


Two wipes on Spellblade Aluriel due to too many people (me, for one) getting frozen.  The frost circle pushes you back and you freeze if you hit the edge... easy enough to run against it but that means no dps so I was trying (and failing) to get out of the circle before it fully spawned.


Another silly wipe with a drowning tank on Krosus before he fell too, lots of laughing at people failing the beam on this boss :-)


10/10 normal and 5/10 heroic in our first week!


Nighthold looks like a sparkling return to form after the rather lacklustre Emerald Nightmare and I can't wait to hit the mythics!

2017 - Plans for the Year

Slightly later than is traditional but I thought I would set out some goals for 2017.


1.  Complete all 12 class order hall campaigns.
Every year I tell myself that I am going to slow down with the alts, maybe just focus on one character for the whole expansion.
Not this time!
I want them all!
I am going to spread the levelling out, there are only 4 zones so it can get boring very quickly, but I want to have all 12 classes at 110 and all 36 artefact weapons by the end of the year.
The trade-off will be not planning to raid on all these alts for a change.
Current progress: 5/12 classes at 110 with 4 campaigns completed, 10/36 weapons.


2.  Mythic Raiding.
I've been in guilds pushing for mythic clears before but it has never been a personal goal... my goal has just been to find the right guild for me.
Now I feel like I am in the right guild and I want that mythic progress!
I want to kill all the bosses and get those Cutting Edge achievements.


3.  Join in more
I've found an excellent guild full of like-minded people but I stay on the periphery too much.  I'm not sure what holds me back but I should volunteer more for the frequent group activities in the guild.
It isn't a big guild but there is always something going on, I want to be part of it and the only thing stopping me is myself.


4.  More PvP!
I've taken the first steps, usually only taken during the end of expansion lull, and I want to keep going.  Blizzard has my attention with the season armour sets, my followers prod me from time to time with quests, there's no excuse not to do it!


5.  Less Faffing!
Way too much of my time in-game is spent doing nothing.
Looking for groups to join (then not joining them), laps around Dalaran while talking on TS, or just stood in my order hall thinking of what to do next.
Less faffing, more doing!


6.  Play More (some) StarCraft
I love watching pro SC2 but I am terrible at actually playing it. 
When I was younger I used to be pretty good at RTS games but, even then, I was better at the macro than the micro.  Now all micro just goes out of the window...and the macro isn't far behind it!
I get too hung up on being rubbish at the game when I should just be enjoying playing (same for WoW PvP) - there is a league for me and, if it is Bronze league, then so be it!


7.  Play more games
I have a few games on Steam that I just never get round to playing, usually because I am faffing in WoW.  Reduced faffing time should mean more free time to play the best other games... usually 3 years after release when they are on sale... still haven't got round to playing Portal 2.


8.  Lose Weight/ Do More Exercise.
This has to go on the list, right?


9.  More Blogging.
I've already been a bit slow after the Christmas break.  So many half-written posts left abandoned, need to finish them at the time and get them published!


10.  Learn to Tank.
This is the year.
Definitely this time.
Yes, I know I said that last year.
I mean it this time.
Yes, I do realise I also said that last year.
This time I really mean it though.
Yes, I know... Oh, just leave me alone.

Big Kick at the Bell...

With the first raid coming to a close, we returned from our Christmas break ready to bash through some more bosses.

We were 4/7M in Emerald Nightmare but hadn't even looked at Trial of Valor since the first week when it was heavily overtuned.
Some of the guild had been pugging it here and there but I'm not interested in pugging progress, I don't mind it much for farm bosses but I like to learn fights with my guild.

So...we decided to have a look at ToV on Heroic.
At this stage, the first two fights were not much of a challenge.  The raid is sat at around 880ilvl and pure numbers overcame any issues we may have had.

Helya, on the other hand, was much more resilient!  A true 'end of raid' boss!
Even comfortably out-gearing it as we did on Heroic it proved difficult and took us about 20 pulls to get the kill.  Another achievement for the guild though and, with around two and a half raid nights to go, we went back to Emerald Nightmare.

I was hoping we would jump straight in at Il'gynoth, our progress boss, but we started a fresh run.  Our rustiness showed with some silly wipes on each boss so it was probably a sensibly decision as we limped to 3 boss kills.

Now entering the final week before Nighthold was released, we had one last chance to push for more progress, one last chance to improve on our 4 Mythic kills... so I was astounded when we reset and went for another fresh run!

I think everyone gave up at that point... we might get one extra boss down but clearing our farm bosses then killing three progress bosses all in one week was asking too much.
Oh well, at least it would give me chance to try out the (amazing!) Elemental Shaman changes.

The sloppy play from our last raid continued as we scraped through a 1-shot of Nythendra with only 5 or 6 people alive at the end.
Elerethe has never really caused us any issues since the first kill and we cruised to another one whilst laughing at Coatsy, our Ret Pala, as he tried to fly across the platforms without picking up any wings.
Likewise, we laughed as someone hearthstoned to avoid a repair bill from an accidental pull of Ursoc.
Val (GM, RL, Boomkin) decided we should have a go at Il'gynoth... partly to see how far we would get and partly because he was a bit worried about Dragons.

The class balancing, plus the fact that most of us had reached that 35th artefact, had definitely left us with a net dps gain but I like to think it was the relaxed atmosphere that then allowed us to lift our performance on EyeTree boss.

Our first attempt was hilarious as we just had a go without refreshing tactics or anything, to see how much people remembered.
This boss reminds me of Mythic Gorefiend in HFC... it's as much about not hitting the wrong target as it is about hitting the right one. 
We struggled with it in HFC and we struggled with it here but we finally convinced all of the dps not to AoE.
From there we made amazing progress on each successive attempt!

It was after only 5 more attempts that we saw the second heart phase, and only 3 more for us to be celebrating another Mythic kill!
5/7 Mythic! 
And the legendary ring (the good Shaman one, not the rubbish universal one) for me!

There wasn't much time left in the raid but we headed off to Dragons buoyed by our success.  Val's fears were unfounded as they crashed to the ground at the second attempt!
It was back on! 
We only had one night left and two bosses to go but could it be done?

The final fling...
I've never seen the guild so pumped up for a raid, chat was flowing with tactics discussions, buying runes, helping with pots/flasks etc. as we felt that we had a big chance.

Everyone 'knew' it would be all about Cenarius with top guilds laughing at Xavius from day one.  OK, we are not one of those top guilds but they didn't have all the gear in the world for their first kills.

Using our gear advantage, we decided on the zerg tactic of blow everything on the pull and push into phase 2 before the third set of adds.
In practice, we had an astounding amount of dps and were slowing down at times to make for a cleaner transition or to help healers manage certain high-damage moments.

Fatboss stresses over and over again... Don't be shit at brambles!
And, if you have the dps for this tactic, it is without doubt the only thing standing between you and the kill!

Silly mistakes aside, almost every wipe was down to brambles being out of control but we improved our positioning and refined our cleaning tactics and improved a bit more until we were hitting phase 2 with a clear platform.

I'd like to tell you that we were perfectly composed as we repeated what is essentially the heroic strategy for P2 on our way to a kill. 
I'd like to tell you that.
Nah, it was a clusterfuck!  :-)

All of the neat positioning of brambles, the controlled cleaning, the resetting stacks and everything else just went out of the window as everyone just tried to pour as much damage as possible into the boss.
Luckily, after a couple of attempts, a few people remembered the tactics and kept the rampant brambles under control buying us the breathing space we needed to get the kill!

Xavius up and an hour left to get the kill, plans were already being made to extend the raid if needed.
I remember the top guilds finding Xavius easy and underwhelming... unfortunately, they were right.
A total of 10 attempts needed to kill the final boss, even if we do overgear it, is a little disappointing but it didn't stop the nerdscreams as "Cutting Edge: Xavius" flashed all over the screen!

On to Nighthold!

What's In a Name?

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?  :-)

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!

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.

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 :-)