The hunter has made it out of the old world and started her journey through the expansions. Levels 64-78 (ish) have always been very slow for me and are always a slog before I speed up again as I near the current content.
Not much has changed in Outland or Northrend, they did feel marginally quicker than previous runs but nothing really remarkable.
I always seem to power through the Cata zones incredibly quickly so I was interested to see if there had been any more XP nerfs since the last time I was here, and also how quickly I would get through the MoP zones now they weren't current content.
Cata zones...
I had a pretty much set plan for Cata in the past.
Do the whole of Mt Hyjal, which would take me to roughly 82.5
Quick jaunt to Deepholm to finish up level 83.
Almost all of Uldum, avoiding Schottz in the deep south, to reach roughly 84.5
Open up Twilight Highlands and the portal back to SW, this would almost exactly get me to level 85.
So I set off with the same plan in mind...
Around two-thirds of the way through Mt. Hyjal I reached 83 and realised this was going to be much quicker than expected!
Straight to Uldum where roughly half (if not less) of the quests took me to 85.
Wow, that was fast.
Without doubt being able to wear the heirlooms for the whole journey made a big difference but I barely completed 1 full zone's worth of quests before I was finished with the whole expansion!
On to Pandaria!
Heirlooms all the way up to 90 so this could be fast too!
Again, I have a plan for MoP...
2/3 of Jade Forest, 1/2 of Valley, 2/3 Kun Lai, virtually all of Townlong Steppes then finishing off in Dread Wastes.
I wasn't expecting to do all of those quests, that was the plan when it was current content so it will definitely have been nerfed for the new expansion. Plus, I had the heirlooms to help me now.
So, how fast would it be?
Jade Forest - Roughly 1/4 of the quests
Valley of the Four Winds - Passed through it on my way to Kun Lai, zero quests
Kun Lai Summit - Around 1/2 of the quests
Townlong Steppes - At most 1/3 of the quests
Ding! Level 90!
It all went by so quickly I hadn't even moved my Hearthstone from Dalaran!
I looked back on my journey through the game and it was just a series of 1-shotting mobs while I quickly out-levelled any storyline (I've been through them all before so wasn't that bothered anyway but that's not the point).
A total of 3 deaths in the whole process, 2 of them were from falling before I worked out I could Disengage to avoid taking the damage. (The other death was from a big dinosaur in Un'Goro Crater... if you were interested)
I'm not convinced the levelling process adds anything to the game these days (but maybe that is just from the jaded view of an 11th alt running through with full heirlooms.)
Would it be more engaging without them?
More importantly, would a new player still enjoy it as much as I did on my first time through?
Now heading to Draenor, and current content, still wearing two pieces of gear from WotLK!
No heirlooms to carry me through now, and no gold support, so it should be a little more interesting anyway.
Khadgar! Hold that portal for me...
Sunday, 17 May 2015
Tuesday, 12 May 2015
Blackhand... We're coming for you!
After an enjoyable week's break in Spain, it was back on the progress trail with Iron Maidens Heroic!
This fight is wonderfully set up for Elemental Shaman... 3 bosses all stacked up just waiting for super-powered Earthquake after super-powered Earthquake, the rest of the raid just doesn't stand a chance :-)
Even the movement, with a bit of good luck, can fit in nicely for us. The duration of Glyph of Spiritwalker's Focus is perfect for Rapid Fire and can help out a bit on the second (for us) boat.
I am routinely sent up to the boat, generally so I can coordinate the group up there for more than any other reason. I am quite glad because I think I would find trying to dps during the bomb phase quite frustrating. And it adds a bit of variety to the fight.
It took a night, or slightly more, of wipes to get us into a position where we could start thinking about the kill.
The bomb phase seemed to confuse a few people, the usual people who seem to be confused by any and every type of fire that we need to avoid.
I had only done it on lfr but it seemed easy enough, bit of Hokey Cokey and you're all good. I know lfr is lfr but the mechanic is the same, it's just the penalty for failure that changes.
As the night went on, we either got better at the bomb phases or we moved those failing on to boat duty, finally beginning to reach the hectic burn phase at the end.
To AoE or not to AoE...
When one of the bosses reaches 20% HP, all hell breaks loose!
Damage ramps up dramatically and it's a race to kill one of them to relieve the pressure on the healers before people start dying.
We choose Marak to die first. He does massive, mostly unavoidable, raid-wide damage so it makes sense to get rid of him as quickly as possible.
Here is the crux of the issue...
We ask our dps players to stop AoE/Cleave and just focus down Marak single target to get him down as quickly as possible.
The problem is... nobody wants to do it! :-)
All that potential dps lost by not cleaving, who can blame them?
It's all about Recount after all!
Our RL tells the raid to single target but some people just don't listen and beyond repeating the instruction to the whole raid again, he does nothing else.
What can he do?
Should he start kicking people out of the raid?
I don't think that's the answer but there has to be some way to make these people understand, make them want to put the raid before their own dps.
Is there a way?
The worst culprit is a combat rogue who point blank refuses to turn off Blade Flurry.
I don't know whether he doesn't believe that we need to single target, or just doesn't care, but Blade Flurry stays on in all possible cleave situations.
His refusal to go single target even made me question the need for it at all so I looked at the logs...
Marak has roughly 20M HP at 20% with our raid comp but, by the time we had killed him, we had done a total of 28M damage. That's 8M damage on things we weren't supposed to be hitting at all.
Well, not 8M, as 2.5M was done to the turrets which were still the priority of the ranged players so 5.5M 'wasted' damage. That's about 20 seconds he was alive for longer than necessary after allowing an arbitrary amount for passive cleave.
Did it make any difference though?
Well, in that 20 seconds, Marak does 4M+ more damage so it's nothing to be sniffed at. On a couple of occasions, we lost 3 or more people during that 20 seconds and then wiped.
On the third occasion... even more died but the rest of the raid managed to continue on to get the kill!
Iron Maidens down! Only 2 more to go!
It still doesn't solve my dilemma though. We killed the boss so was the rogue right to stick with Blade Flurry?
Personally, I think it was a riskier strategy, more in line with an overgeared farm boss than progress.
Should I even care? I'm not the RL after all, I'm just another raider.
What would have happened if we all stuck to our AoE/Cleave?
I think we would still be running round avoiding bombs instead of looking at Blast Furnace
This fight is wonderfully set up for Elemental Shaman... 3 bosses all stacked up just waiting for super-powered Earthquake after super-powered Earthquake, the rest of the raid just doesn't stand a chance :-)
Even the movement, with a bit of good luck, can fit in nicely for us. The duration of Glyph of Spiritwalker's Focus is perfect for Rapid Fire and can help out a bit on the second (for us) boat.
I am routinely sent up to the boat, generally so I can coordinate the group up there for more than any other reason. I am quite glad because I think I would find trying to dps during the bomb phase quite frustrating. And it adds a bit of variety to the fight.
It took a night, or slightly more, of wipes to get us into a position where we could start thinking about the kill.
The bomb phase seemed to confuse a few people, the usual people who seem to be confused by any and every type of fire that we need to avoid.
I had only done it on lfr but it seemed easy enough, bit of Hokey Cokey and you're all good. I know lfr is lfr but the mechanic is the same, it's just the penalty for failure that changes.
As the night went on, we either got better at the bomb phases or we moved those failing on to boat duty, finally beginning to reach the hectic burn phase at the end.
To AoE or not to AoE...
When one of the bosses reaches 20% HP, all hell breaks loose!
Damage ramps up dramatically and it's a race to kill one of them to relieve the pressure on the healers before people start dying.
We choose Marak to die first. He does massive, mostly unavoidable, raid-wide damage so it makes sense to get rid of him as quickly as possible.
Here is the crux of the issue...
We ask our dps players to stop AoE/Cleave and just focus down Marak single target to get him down as quickly as possible.
The problem is... nobody wants to do it! :-)
All that potential dps lost by not cleaving, who can blame them?
It's all about Recount after all!
Our RL tells the raid to single target but some people just don't listen and beyond repeating the instruction to the whole raid again, he does nothing else.
What can he do?
Should he start kicking people out of the raid?
I don't think that's the answer but there has to be some way to make these people understand, make them want to put the raid before their own dps.
Is there a way?
The worst culprit is a combat rogue who point blank refuses to turn off Blade Flurry.
I don't know whether he doesn't believe that we need to single target, or just doesn't care, but Blade Flurry stays on in all possible cleave situations.
His refusal to go single target even made me question the need for it at all so I looked at the logs...
Marak has roughly 20M HP at 20% with our raid comp but, by the time we had killed him, we had done a total of 28M damage. That's 8M damage on things we weren't supposed to be hitting at all.
Well, not 8M, as 2.5M was done to the turrets which were still the priority of the ranged players so 5.5M 'wasted' damage. That's about 20 seconds he was alive for longer than necessary after allowing an arbitrary amount for passive cleave.
Did it make any difference though?
Well, in that 20 seconds, Marak does 4M+ more damage so it's nothing to be sniffed at. On a couple of occasions, we lost 3 or more people during that 20 seconds and then wiped.
On the third occasion... even more died but the rest of the raid managed to continue on to get the kill!
Iron Maidens down! Only 2 more to go!
It still doesn't solve my dilemma though. We killed the boss so was the rogue right to stick with Blade Flurry?
Personally, I think it was a riskier strategy, more in line with an overgeared farm boss than progress.
Should I even care? I'm not the RL after all, I'm just another raider.
What would have happened if we all stuck to our AoE/Cleave?
I think we would still be running round avoiding bombs instead of looking at Blast Furnace
Thursday, 16 April 2015
United by...
Fate?
The joint raiding trial is now over and it has been a huge success. We've made some nice progress and we've had a lot of fun doing it.
A meeting was held between the chiefs and they have come up with a plan to bring the two guilds together permanently under one banner.
I'll be honest... as well as the raiding had gone, I was expecting the worst from the meeting and it to all end in ruins. I'm not normally this negative or pessimistic but I have lost a lot of confidence in the current leadership and our absent GM.
My fears were unfounded though and the guilds will officially come together this weekend! We are having a mini-event to commemorate the union but I'm not sure if I will be able to make it which is a shame.
Dawn of a new era...
We'll be in an excellent position roster-wise with 20+ raiders, setting us up nicely for Mythic should we prove capable.
From what I have seen so far, quite a large number of the raiders will be capable of making the step up while some will still need to make improvements in their play.
It's the usual indicators I'm looking at... dancing the presses on Hans and Franz, negotiating the maze on Oregorger, avoiding the spears on Darmac etc etc.
The basic awareness and movement stuff, not the numbers, are what's important in my opinion. Once you have that stuff sorted, then it's the numbers :-)
I have been top of the dps charts in most fights lately but it's that part of my game that I'm most pleased with, dealing with the mechanics and avoiding the avoidable.
One worry I do have is about the loot system. We've always used a DKP system which has it's flaws but works well for us, zero loot drama.
They want to continue with the DKP for most loot but introduce a Loot Council for tier pieces.
I am guessing that the thinking behind this is that they can fill out sets and make the raid as a whole stronger, rather than have the whole raid having parts of the set but no bonus.
It's an admirable aim but I have doubts about their (or anyone's) ability to implement it properly and fairly without causing loot drama. Loot drama is probably the biggest danger to a successful guild and I don't think it's worth the risk.
I also don't think it's necessary these days. We have normal mode to blast through a few times and pick up tier pieces, fill out our sets.
It basically comes down to trust though... I trust our DKP system more than I trust any of the officers from either guild to get the Loot Council right.
Raiding this week...
Another excellent week for us with 2 more progress bosses down!
Kromog...
We were making real headway on the fight but it was incredibly difficult, health bars spiking low over and over again putting massive pressure on the healers.
A quick calculation said we could afford an extra healer and still beat the enrage so I hearthed back to my garrison to dust off my healing gear! It's certainly been a while, and no doubt I made a few mistakes, but it turned out to be a great decision.
The extra healing stabilised us and kept people out of those risk areas, and the extra healing cooldowns certainly helped.
Next attempt he was down!
Personally, I was well out of practice as a healer but I really enjoyed it as a change of pace. My gear had been gathering dust in the bank for a while and was far from optimised so I ended up using a combination of my dps and healing gear.
My talents were all over the place too so, to be honest, I'm just glad I was able to get the numbers out to hold my own. Hopefully it bought the other healers some breathing space so they could show off their skills and do all the fancy stuff to get us the kill.
Operator Thogar...
Back to dps for this one as we could immediately tell it was a lot less punishing on the healers.
Despite it being our first time on heroic we were high on confidence after the Kromog kill so hunting another kill right from the start.
I figured that, apart from the trains, meter-whoring would be our biggest problem. Men-at-Arms and Flamemenders staying alive too long as our dps went full AoE, I tried to stress it before and during the fight that these adds needed to die as fast as possible.
It worked to a certain extent, enough anyway, as we made good progress through the fight up until the second split.
In that split we seemed to suddenly lose traction and a few people would go down.
This happened on 2 or 3 attempts in a row and we knew that the fight was basically ours if we could come through that phase in good shape.
Ix made a great call to use Heroism in that split to help healing and the reduced number of dps burn down the major targets.
It was a masterstroke! Just what we needed, and we flowed through that phase comfortably and into the final stretch.
It all seemed easy from that point onwards as we strolled to the finish line, barely breaking sweat.
Thogar was down!
Two progress bosses in one night, fantastic!
I couldn't record the kills as I was getting a bit of lag which was a shame but Vorosh managed to capture the Thogar kill. Whether the embarrassment of being hit by a train will stop him sharing it with the rest of the guild remains to be seen :-)
I had a fantastic week for loot...
Tier helm from Kromog allowed me to shuffle a few things around and replace both my 670ilvl legs and ring, great result!
Trinket from Darmac and Mythic shield from my follower missions and now I only have tier pieces at 670ilvl!
All that's left to do now is upgrade my tier pieces from normal to heroic (which I'll be trying to do with Seals so others can fill their sets) and a couple of itemisation upgrades (which, again, I'll only take if nobody else needs them).
The trinket from Blackhand would be nice though :-)
Side Projects...
I braved the lfr as tank over the weekend. I made a couple of mistakes but was generally fine. I may even do it again this weekend!
Slowly levelling a hunter towards max level. She's currently at level 50 which is much further than I've ever managed on any other hunter.
The heirlooms make it mindless but messing around with Disengage keeps it fun.
The big test, as always for me, will be when I hit 'old' Nagrand at around level 64.
I always hit a wall there and it's a struggle for me until I reach level 78 and go to Icecrown.
It's very strange I know, and I have no idea why I don't like those levels/zones, but it always follows the same pattern.
If I make it through, I will probably use this char to test the 'no gold' gearing method.
Wish me luck!
The joint raiding trial is now over and it has been a huge success. We've made some nice progress and we've had a lot of fun doing it.
A meeting was held between the chiefs and they have come up with a plan to bring the two guilds together permanently under one banner.
I'll be honest... as well as the raiding had gone, I was expecting the worst from the meeting and it to all end in ruins. I'm not normally this negative or pessimistic but I have lost a lot of confidence in the current leadership and our absent GM.
My fears were unfounded though and the guilds will officially come together this weekend! We are having a mini-event to commemorate the union but I'm not sure if I will be able to make it which is a shame.
Dawn of a new era...
We'll be in an excellent position roster-wise with 20+ raiders, setting us up nicely for Mythic should we prove capable.
From what I have seen so far, quite a large number of the raiders will be capable of making the step up while some will still need to make improvements in their play.
It's the usual indicators I'm looking at... dancing the presses on Hans and Franz, negotiating the maze on Oregorger, avoiding the spears on Darmac etc etc.
The basic awareness and movement stuff, not the numbers, are what's important in my opinion. Once you have that stuff sorted, then it's the numbers :-)
I have been top of the dps charts in most fights lately but it's that part of my game that I'm most pleased with, dealing with the mechanics and avoiding the avoidable.
One worry I do have is about the loot system. We've always used a DKP system which has it's flaws but works well for us, zero loot drama.
They want to continue with the DKP for most loot but introduce a Loot Council for tier pieces.
I am guessing that the thinking behind this is that they can fill out sets and make the raid as a whole stronger, rather than have the whole raid having parts of the set but no bonus.
It's an admirable aim but I have doubts about their (or anyone's) ability to implement it properly and fairly without causing loot drama. Loot drama is probably the biggest danger to a successful guild and I don't think it's worth the risk.
I also don't think it's necessary these days. We have normal mode to blast through a few times and pick up tier pieces, fill out our sets.
It basically comes down to trust though... I trust our DKP system more than I trust any of the officers from either guild to get the Loot Council right.
Raiding this week...
Another excellent week for us with 2 more progress bosses down!
Kromog...
We were making real headway on the fight but it was incredibly difficult, health bars spiking low over and over again putting massive pressure on the healers.
A quick calculation said we could afford an extra healer and still beat the enrage so I hearthed back to my garrison to dust off my healing gear! It's certainly been a while, and no doubt I made a few mistakes, but it turned out to be a great decision.
The extra healing stabilised us and kept people out of those risk areas, and the extra healing cooldowns certainly helped.
Next attempt he was down!
Personally, I was well out of practice as a healer but I really enjoyed it as a change of pace. My gear had been gathering dust in the bank for a while and was far from optimised so I ended up using a combination of my dps and healing gear.
My talents were all over the place too so, to be honest, I'm just glad I was able to get the numbers out to hold my own. Hopefully it bought the other healers some breathing space so they could show off their skills and do all the fancy stuff to get us the kill.
Operator Thogar...
Back to dps for this one as we could immediately tell it was a lot less punishing on the healers.
Despite it being our first time on heroic we were high on confidence after the Kromog kill so hunting another kill right from the start.
I figured that, apart from the trains, meter-whoring would be our biggest problem. Men-at-Arms and Flamemenders staying alive too long as our dps went full AoE, I tried to stress it before and during the fight that these adds needed to die as fast as possible.
It worked to a certain extent, enough anyway, as we made good progress through the fight up until the second split.
In that split we seemed to suddenly lose traction and a few people would go down.
This happened on 2 or 3 attempts in a row and we knew that the fight was basically ours if we could come through that phase in good shape.
Ix made a great call to use Heroism in that split to help healing and the reduced number of dps burn down the major targets.
It was a masterstroke! Just what we needed, and we flowed through that phase comfortably and into the final stretch.
It all seemed easy from that point onwards as we strolled to the finish line, barely breaking sweat.
Thogar was down!
Two progress bosses in one night, fantastic!
I couldn't record the kills as I was getting a bit of lag which was a shame but Vorosh managed to capture the Thogar kill. Whether the embarrassment of being hit by a train will stop him sharing it with the rest of the guild remains to be seen :-)
I had a fantastic week for loot...
Tier helm from Kromog allowed me to shuffle a few things around and replace both my 670ilvl legs and ring, great result!
Trinket from Darmac and Mythic shield from my follower missions and now I only have tier pieces at 670ilvl!
All that's left to do now is upgrade my tier pieces from normal to heroic (which I'll be trying to do with Seals so others can fill their sets) and a couple of itemisation upgrades (which, again, I'll only take if nobody else needs them).
The trinket from Blackhand would be nice though :-)
Side Projects...
I braved the lfr as tank over the weekend. I made a couple of mistakes but was generally fine. I may even do it again this weekend!
Slowly levelling a hunter towards max level. She's currently at level 50 which is much further than I've ever managed on any other hunter.
The heirlooms make it mindless but messing around with Disengage keeps it fun.
The big test, as always for me, will be when I hit 'old' Nagrand at around level 64.
I always hit a wall there and it's a struggle for me until I reach level 78 and go to Icecrown.
It's very strange I know, and I have no idea why I don't like those levels/zones, but it always follows the same pattern.
If I make it through, I will probably use this char to test the 'no gold' gearing method.
Wish me luck!
Thursday, 9 April 2015
Raiding and.... well, at least there's Raiding.
There is an incredible 'end of expansion' feeling to the game at the moment, just logging in to raid and finding no enthusiasm for any other parts of the game.
I feel like I am just killing time until... until what? A new expansion? A new raid?
I'm not really sure to be honest but probably not a new raid as I'm still really enjoying Blackrock Foundry.
The raiding has been going exceptionally well, I'm loving raiding in a bigger group again. And we've been killing more bosses too!
Following on from our first night with our sister guild, we killed the Iron Maidens on normal and had a good look at Blackhand. What a great fight! Loving the huge arena with loads of stuff going on, it's an absolute blast!
We didn't actually kill him that night, best attempt was around 11% I think, but it was great fun. There was noticeable progress on the fight as the night went on, and I think it would only have taken a few more attempts to get the kill but we haven't been back since.
We have been back in normal but it was a fresh run, more hoping than expecting to reach Blackhand. We actually made good time but a few wipes on Blast Furnace ruined our chances. That fight is still hard for us on normal but it didn't help that the Bellows Operators bugged out and kept spawning in phase 2! :-)
We killed 9/10 that night but had no time for any attempts on Blackhand - I've now suggested that we boost an Alt through most of normal and keep him saved late into the raid, then we can use that save instead of doing a fresh run each week.
There isn't much reason for us to go into normal mode anyway... personally, I want the Blackhand kill but that's it for me. I have the gear, the 4-set tier bonus so I'm fine, it's now just a case of building those tier sets for the rest of the raid.
That's why I thought boosting the alt was a good idea. My first thought was to kill 9 and just leave Blackhand open.
Imagine, we could walk in, kill one trash mob, kill Blackhand and walk out with 2 tier tokens. The whole thing could be done in about 20 minutes leaving the rest of the night for heroic bosses. And Blackhand drops those special tokens that can be exchanged for any of the tier slots, none would be wasted.
I'm coming round to the idea of leaving a couple more bosses open, maybe Iron Maidens and Blast Furnace as well as Blackhand. They both drop tier tokens too and Vorosh insists we could use the practice on them. Considering the amount he stands in fire, and how quick he is to point out other's mistakes, I think he is talking about himself more than anyone else. :-)
More tier sets would definitely give us a boost to our heroic progress anyway. I don't think anyone else actually has the 4-set at the moment so it can't hurt.
Having said that, the heroics are going well anyway. Gruul, H&F and Oregorger don't cause any problems now. We repeated our kill on Flamebender Ka'graz without feeling lucky about it either, and then went on to 1-shot Beastlord Darmac!
I've always thought we were good enough to kill Darmac but it surpassed my expectations. It didn't feel lucky either, we just kind of got on with it and he died.
Let's hope we can repeat that this week.
Outside of raiding... well, nothing much is happening at all. Absolutely nothing is grabbing my interest. Aside from the raids, I log in to:
Send followers on missions
Restock my Barn
Use whatever gadget comes out of the workshop that day
...and that's about it.
I have started recruiting treasure hunter followers, mainly just to see how much gold it makes as it requires so little effort.
Harrison Jones is a god-send for this. As well as being a Treasure Hunter himself, he has the Mentor trait which must be the most overpowered trait of any follower.
The Mentor trait raises the level and gear of any follower that goes on a mission with Harrison up to his level. So, a fresh 90 recruit from the Inn can enter and contribute fully towards a 675ilvl 100 mission... and reap all the rewards!
That means it only takes 3 (yes, 3!!) missions to go from 90 to 100 with Harrison Jones. Amazing!
So, aside from raiding and the laziest gold-making attempts of all time, I'm looking for something to keep my attention... a new project!
Options...
1. Tanking.
My prot pala is at 657ilvl after a couple of lucky drops one night in heroic Highmaul and a lot of gold. It's still one aspect of the game (along with PvP) I feel that I haven't mastered to at least a decent level and that really irritates me.
I want to be good at tanking.
Unfortunately, I'm held back for some reason by a crippling lack of confidence and just can't bring myself to tick that tank box for an lfr or dungeon run.
Man up ffs.
2. Gearing
I've read so much about how poor the gearing system is in WoD. I disagreed, as I often do, and put it down to whining and entitlement. The options for gearing appear plentiful and varied to me but maybe my opinion was coloured by my ability to use gold to bypass any gearing issues that arose.
So, how would I do on a different char without that gold? Would my opinion change?
I have a selection of chars at 90 left behind on various realms without those resources to draw from, or I could just boost a brand new char to 90 and see it from a new player pov.
3. Play FFXIV
I picked it up a couple of weeks ago as I had heard good things about it. I haven't made it very far into the game as yet, level 16 Thaumaturge (that's a mage to you and me), but I have been enjoying it immensely. There is an expansion arriving soon and it would be nice to 'finish' this story before it arrives, I'm not sure I will have time though.
I could really do with some more options...
I feel like I am just killing time until... until what? A new expansion? A new raid?
I'm not really sure to be honest but probably not a new raid as I'm still really enjoying Blackrock Foundry.
The raiding has been going exceptionally well, I'm loving raiding in a bigger group again. And we've been killing more bosses too!
Following on from our first night with our sister guild, we killed the Iron Maidens on normal and had a good look at Blackhand. What a great fight! Loving the huge arena with loads of stuff going on, it's an absolute blast!
We didn't actually kill him that night, best attempt was around 11% I think, but it was great fun. There was noticeable progress on the fight as the night went on, and I think it would only have taken a few more attempts to get the kill but we haven't been back since.
We have been back in normal but it was a fresh run, more hoping than expecting to reach Blackhand. We actually made good time but a few wipes on Blast Furnace ruined our chances. That fight is still hard for us on normal but it didn't help that the Bellows Operators bugged out and kept spawning in phase 2! :-)
We killed 9/10 that night but had no time for any attempts on Blackhand - I've now suggested that we boost an Alt through most of normal and keep him saved late into the raid, then we can use that save instead of doing a fresh run each week.
There isn't much reason for us to go into normal mode anyway... personally, I want the Blackhand kill but that's it for me. I have the gear, the 4-set tier bonus so I'm fine, it's now just a case of building those tier sets for the rest of the raid.
That's why I thought boosting the alt was a good idea. My first thought was to kill 9 and just leave Blackhand open.
Imagine, we could walk in, kill one trash mob, kill Blackhand and walk out with 2 tier tokens. The whole thing could be done in about 20 minutes leaving the rest of the night for heroic bosses. And Blackhand drops those special tokens that can be exchanged for any of the tier slots, none would be wasted.
I'm coming round to the idea of leaving a couple more bosses open, maybe Iron Maidens and Blast Furnace as well as Blackhand. They both drop tier tokens too and Vorosh insists we could use the practice on them. Considering the amount he stands in fire, and how quick he is to point out other's mistakes, I think he is talking about himself more than anyone else. :-)
More tier sets would definitely give us a boost to our heroic progress anyway. I don't think anyone else actually has the 4-set at the moment so it can't hurt.
Having said that, the heroics are going well anyway. Gruul, H&F and Oregorger don't cause any problems now. We repeated our kill on Flamebender Ka'graz without feeling lucky about it either, and then went on to 1-shot Beastlord Darmac!
I've always thought we were good enough to kill Darmac but it surpassed my expectations. It didn't feel lucky either, we just kind of got on with it and he died.
Let's hope we can repeat that this week.
Outside of raiding... well, nothing much is happening at all. Absolutely nothing is grabbing my interest. Aside from the raids, I log in to:
Send followers on missions
Restock my Barn
Use whatever gadget comes out of the workshop that day
...and that's about it.
I have started recruiting treasure hunter followers, mainly just to see how much gold it makes as it requires so little effort.
Harrison Jones is a god-send for this. As well as being a Treasure Hunter himself, he has the Mentor trait which must be the most overpowered trait of any follower.
The Mentor trait raises the level and gear of any follower that goes on a mission with Harrison up to his level. So, a fresh 90 recruit from the Inn can enter and contribute fully towards a 675ilvl 100 mission... and reap all the rewards!
That means it only takes 3 (yes, 3!!) missions to go from 90 to 100 with Harrison Jones. Amazing!
So, aside from raiding and the laziest gold-making attempts of all time, I'm looking for something to keep my attention... a new project!
Options...
1. Tanking.
My prot pala is at 657ilvl after a couple of lucky drops one night in heroic Highmaul and a lot of gold. It's still one aspect of the game (along with PvP) I feel that I haven't mastered to at least a decent level and that really irritates me.
I want to be good at tanking.
Unfortunately, I'm held back for some reason by a crippling lack of confidence and just can't bring myself to tick that tank box for an lfr or dungeon run.
Man up ffs.
2. Gearing
I've read so much about how poor the gearing system is in WoD. I disagreed, as I often do, and put it down to whining and entitlement. The options for gearing appear plentiful and varied to me but maybe my opinion was coloured by my ability to use gold to bypass any gearing issues that arose.
So, how would I do on a different char without that gold? Would my opinion change?
I have a selection of chars at 90 left behind on various realms without those resources to draw from, or I could just boost a brand new char to 90 and see it from a new player pov.
3. Play FFXIV
I picked it up a couple of weeks ago as I had heard good things about it. I haven't made it very far into the game as yet, level 16 Thaumaturge (that's a mage to you and me), but I have been enjoying it immensely. There is an expansion arriving soon and it would be nice to 'finish' this story before it arrives, I'm not sure I will have time though.
I could really do with some more options...
Tuesday, 31 March 2015
The Times They are a Changing
With the practice (and the ilvl boost) we are finally making progress in heroics.
A couple more first kills, Orgegorger and Ka'graz (bit of a fluke), and we are now up to 4/10HC.
Ix was away one night and we had an excellent night of wipes on Oregorger (George) with Kissez leading the raid.
No kill but it was a lot of fun and we came very close on a couple of occasions, with one agonising wipe at 200k HP. That's Touch of Death territory but alas, we don't have a monk.
We played around with a few different tactics for the rolling phase but found our best to be splitting into two groups, melee and ranged. Melee would concentrate on the inside while ranged focussed on the outer boxes, following me to keep safe.
Now, I am normally fine with avoiding the giant rolling Goren and it was even my suggestion that people could follow me if they weren't too sure themselves... cue a succession of attempts with me making poor decisions, getting hit, running down blind alleys etc.
Bloody typical! I say people can follow me then fall to pieces and get them all killed... repeatedly.
Of course, I was the butt of a few jokes for a while. Follow Sol... to your death!
It was all good fun though and we all improved to the point that we were seeing the later phases a lot more often.
The kill didn't come that night but we knew it was close. Next raid night Ix wanted to have another go at Imperator Mar'gok but was convinced to go back into BRF for another go at George.
The decision paid off immediately! First pull of the night and George was no more.
I expected us to go to Darmac next, we had been making some decent progress on the fight and didn't look too far away from a kill. Instead, Ix took us to Flamebender Ka'graz...
We had a few looks at the fight, adjusted positioning etc and made small improvements but didn't really look very close to a kill... until, on the final attempt of the night, it just died!
It was quite incredible, none of our other attempts made it past 50% but everything just came together on that one attempt.
So, two new bosses down in one night. One with the first pull, one with the last.
The team selection decisions are finally paying off in terms of progress, the team always feels capable of killing something even if we don't always manage it.
But, as Artosis would say... At what cost?
Sign-ups have been dropping gradually, those on the periphery of the team knowing they aren't going to be picked are just not bothering to turn up.
We need to be more inclusive, find a balance between pushing progression and playing as a guild rather than a 10-man team within a guild. Or so I thought...
In the past week there has been talk of a merger with another guild on Arathor, bringing the two raid rosters together to form one team capable of clearing content and with the numbers to eventually attempt Mythic should we get that far.
A trial raid was arranged, a run through BRF normal, and all available raiders from both sides joined in.
It was a fun night, we killed 8/10 including a kill on Blast Furnace which was progress for both guilds. We even had a follow-up night, killing Iron Maidens and making excellent progress on Blackhand himself (11% was our best attempt, closing in on the kill)
Both nights have been very positive and we are planning joint raids for the next two weeks to see how things go. We seem like a very good match in both skill and attitude so I'm hopeful it will become something more permanent.
I love raiding is a bigger group, the atmosphere is great and the fights just feel more epic. It really made me realise how much I've missed the 25-man raids of my former horde guild.
To be honest, it just feels like this is the way it was meant to be done.
A couple more first kills, Orgegorger and Ka'graz (bit of a fluke), and we are now up to 4/10HC.
Ix was away one night and we had an excellent night of wipes on Oregorger (George) with Kissez leading the raid.
No kill but it was a lot of fun and we came very close on a couple of occasions, with one agonising wipe at 200k HP. That's Touch of Death territory but alas, we don't have a monk.
We played around with a few different tactics for the rolling phase but found our best to be splitting into two groups, melee and ranged. Melee would concentrate on the inside while ranged focussed on the outer boxes, following me to keep safe.
Now, I am normally fine with avoiding the giant rolling Goren and it was even my suggestion that people could follow me if they weren't too sure themselves... cue a succession of attempts with me making poor decisions, getting hit, running down blind alleys etc.
Bloody typical! I say people can follow me then fall to pieces and get them all killed... repeatedly.
Of course, I was the butt of a few jokes for a while. Follow Sol... to your death!
It was all good fun though and we all improved to the point that we were seeing the later phases a lot more often.
The kill didn't come that night but we knew it was close. Next raid night Ix wanted to have another go at Imperator Mar'gok but was convinced to go back into BRF for another go at George.
The decision paid off immediately! First pull of the night and George was no more.
I expected us to go to Darmac next, we had been making some decent progress on the fight and didn't look too far away from a kill. Instead, Ix took us to Flamebender Ka'graz...
We had a few looks at the fight, adjusted positioning etc and made small improvements but didn't really look very close to a kill... until, on the final attempt of the night, it just died!
It was quite incredible, none of our other attempts made it past 50% but everything just came together on that one attempt.
So, two new bosses down in one night. One with the first pull, one with the last.
The team selection decisions are finally paying off in terms of progress, the team always feels capable of killing something even if we don't always manage it.
But, as Artosis would say... At what cost?
Sign-ups have been dropping gradually, those on the periphery of the team knowing they aren't going to be picked are just not bothering to turn up.
We need to be more inclusive, find a balance between pushing progression and playing as a guild rather than a 10-man team within a guild. Or so I thought...
In the past week there has been talk of a merger with another guild on Arathor, bringing the two raid rosters together to form one team capable of clearing content and with the numbers to eventually attempt Mythic should we get that far.
A trial raid was arranged, a run through BRF normal, and all available raiders from both sides joined in.
It was a fun night, we killed 8/10 including a kill on Blast Furnace which was progress for both guilds. We even had a follow-up night, killing Iron Maidens and making excellent progress on Blackhand himself (11% was our best attempt, closing in on the kill)
Both nights have been very positive and we are planning joint raids for the next two weeks to see how things go. We seem like a very good match in both skill and attitude so I'm hopeful it will become something more permanent.
I love raiding is a bigger group, the atmosphere is great and the fights just feel more epic. It really made me realise how much I've missed the 25-man raids of my former horde guild.
To be honest, it just feels like this is the way it was meant to be done.
Thursday, 19 March 2015
BRF heroic this week
The 5 ilvl boost kicks in for our raid tonight... I'm hoping the extra 5 ilvls magically makes us able to avoid the fire or, more accurately, a giant rolling Goren.
Last night's raid saw us making heavy going of Hans and Franz, taking up almost 2 hours of our raid night. Familiar issues, cooldowns missed on the suplex and far too many hits from the stamps during Pulverise.
We did have a couple of people in there that hadn't killed it on heroic so a few more mistakes were to be expected I suppose.
It is a very frustrating time for our raids at the moment though, progress is very hard to come by and it seemed like we were taking a step backwards on a boss we had comfortably killed (much quicker) for the last couple of weeks. Time spent wiping on this was time we wanted to be spending on much-needed practice on our progress bosses.
To make it worse, my BiS mace dropped. Yes, I know that should make it better but I passed on it because our other shaman was still using a dungeon blue weapon.
If it had been any other player I wouldn't have thought twice about it, I'm happy to pass if it's a huge upgrade for someone else, but the shaman is very unreliable and flaky.
(It doesn't help that I crafted her some gear for her monk just before she decided to switch to shaman)
It was haste/multi as well, which are not good stats for Resto. so she will swap it out the first opportunity she gets. To add insult to injury, I rolled the chest which is the second time I've rolled something useless on this boss. Haha, I'm even more bitter about this than I thought!
It's the first boss on our kill list each week though so I'm hoping it will drop again at some point.
I was generally happy with my performance on the fight itself. First attempt I was hit by a couple of the presses but wasn't hit again all night so I'm just putting that first one down to rustiness :-)
Finished second on dps behind Kissez, our hunter, which should be expected given the amount of movement in the fight but she hadn't got close before so I was a little surprised.
On to Gruul, much less movement so should be back on top...
After taking so long on H&F I wasn't overly confident as we headed to Gruul.
It's easy for one of the tanks to make a mistake and cause a wipe, or our raiders to be slow to move, so I was ready for the long haul and kill on the last attempt of the night (like the previous week).
You've guessed it, 1-shot.
Incredibly smooth kill, way inside the enrage timer for the first time. Can we officially designate this boss as our first heroic to be 'on farm'? Too late, I've done it. Gruul hc is on farm.
DPS check... Second again behind Kissez! Hmmm... she seems to have stepped up her game here, I wasn't even close. Will have to take a look at how I can improve for our next attempts.
Caught up a bit on Gruul so we had time for a look at Oregorger again...
Before the raid I was talking to Ix (our RL) about the LOS gaming tactic, where you all run in a group and kill the boxes one by one. Ix decided to give it a go but I don't think he was really prepared for it, it didn't seem like he had thought it through.
We had enough problems even getting to that phase though. I'm not even sure what was going wrong most of the time, people just kept dying.
And when we did make it to the rolling phase there were lots of deaths there too.
Another boss we seem to be going backwards on :-s
I think our best chance of a new kill lies with Darmac.
Tighten up the tanks' positioning, avoid the spears, and we should make it deep into the fight.
Team Selection...
Ix is persisting with the 10-man team to push progression.
This seems to have come from the recap meetings when a number of people said there were no consequences for people failing on mechanics or performing poorly.
I'm all for picking the best possible team, giving us the best chance of killing a boss, but why restrict it to 10-man? If an extra player would not weaken the team, would in fact strengthen the team, why not take them?
We are running 2/3/5 now every night which puts us heavy on healers. Back in the day our only option would be to swap that third healer for a dps, putting a lot of pressure on the two remaining healers.
These days we can just add an extra dps, go with 2/3/6 and the team is stronger over all.
Flex gives us a huge advantage and I can't see any reason not to use it.
Tonight is likely to be Flamebinder Ka'graz to give us a break from our struggles on Oregorger and Darmac.
It will be the first time we have attempted it on heroic and it might be worthwhile to take as many people as possible so they can see the fight.
It will probably be 10-man though, attempting to 1-shot him.
Wish us luck!
Last night's raid saw us making heavy going of Hans and Franz, taking up almost 2 hours of our raid night. Familiar issues, cooldowns missed on the suplex and far too many hits from the stamps during Pulverise.
We did have a couple of people in there that hadn't killed it on heroic so a few more mistakes were to be expected I suppose.
It is a very frustrating time for our raids at the moment though, progress is very hard to come by and it seemed like we were taking a step backwards on a boss we had comfortably killed (much quicker) for the last couple of weeks. Time spent wiping on this was time we wanted to be spending on much-needed practice on our progress bosses.
To make it worse, my BiS mace dropped. Yes, I know that should make it better but I passed on it because our other shaman was still using a dungeon blue weapon.
If it had been any other player I wouldn't have thought twice about it, I'm happy to pass if it's a huge upgrade for someone else, but the shaman is very unreliable and flaky.
(It doesn't help that I crafted her some gear for her monk just before she decided to switch to shaman)
It was haste/multi as well, which are not good stats for Resto. so she will swap it out the first opportunity she gets. To add insult to injury, I rolled the chest which is the second time I've rolled something useless on this boss. Haha, I'm even more bitter about this than I thought!
It's the first boss on our kill list each week though so I'm hoping it will drop again at some point.
I was generally happy with my performance on the fight itself. First attempt I was hit by a couple of the presses but wasn't hit again all night so I'm just putting that first one down to rustiness :-)
Finished second on dps behind Kissez, our hunter, which should be expected given the amount of movement in the fight but she hadn't got close before so I was a little surprised.
On to Gruul, much less movement so should be back on top...
After taking so long on H&F I wasn't overly confident as we headed to Gruul.
It's easy for one of the tanks to make a mistake and cause a wipe, or our raiders to be slow to move, so I was ready for the long haul and kill on the last attempt of the night (like the previous week).
You've guessed it, 1-shot.
Incredibly smooth kill, way inside the enrage timer for the first time. Can we officially designate this boss as our first heroic to be 'on farm'? Too late, I've done it. Gruul hc is on farm.
DPS check... Second again behind Kissez! Hmmm... she seems to have stepped up her game here, I wasn't even close. Will have to take a look at how I can improve for our next attempts.
Caught up a bit on Gruul so we had time for a look at Oregorger again...
Before the raid I was talking to Ix (our RL) about the LOS gaming tactic, where you all run in a group and kill the boxes one by one. Ix decided to give it a go but I don't think he was really prepared for it, it didn't seem like he had thought it through.
We had enough problems even getting to that phase though. I'm not even sure what was going wrong most of the time, people just kept dying.
And when we did make it to the rolling phase there were lots of deaths there too.
Another boss we seem to be going backwards on :-s
I think our best chance of a new kill lies with Darmac.
Tighten up the tanks' positioning, avoid the spears, and we should make it deep into the fight.
Team Selection...
Ix is persisting with the 10-man team to push progression.
This seems to have come from the recap meetings when a number of people said there were no consequences for people failing on mechanics or performing poorly.
I'm all for picking the best possible team, giving us the best chance of killing a boss, but why restrict it to 10-man? If an extra player would not weaken the team, would in fact strengthen the team, why not take them?
We are running 2/3/5 now every night which puts us heavy on healers. Back in the day our only option would be to swap that third healer for a dps, putting a lot of pressure on the two remaining healers.
These days we can just add an extra dps, go with 2/3/6 and the team is stronger over all.
Flex gives us a huge advantage and I can't see any reason not to use it.
Tonight is likely to be Flamebinder Ka'graz to give us a break from our struggles on Oregorger and Darmac.
It will be the first time we have attempted it on heroic and it might be worthwhile to take as many people as possible so they can see the fight.
It will probably be 10-man though, attempting to 1-shot him.
Wish us luck!
Monday, 9 March 2015
It's About Time...
If I had a readership this is the point at which I would apologise for my absence and lack of posts.
Given the lack of said readership I will just head straight into what I've been up to since I last posted but promise to post more often just in case some lost soul lands on these shores and needs something to read.
So, where were we...?
I left you having just transferred my shaman over to horde for some heroic progression in Siege of Orgrimmar.
It didn't take long to overtake the progress I had made on my rogue and I was quickly up to speed with the rest of the guild.
We then quickly made it to 8/13HC and were progressing on Spoils when the sign-ups started to drop a little, the malaise was spreading here too.
It turns out it was only a blip and the sign-ups came back strongly with the pre-expansion patch but I was already considering what I wanted to do in WoD and making preparations.
It was a great deal of fun running 25-man heroics and the number of players at a very similar standard to myself mean there was some fantastic competition in the team.
This wasn't enough though, I wanted to be raiding with friends again.
The horde guild was full of good people and I'm sure I would have made friends there anyway but I missed my old friends and decided to move back to my old guild.
Of course, when I got there, most people were taking a break or just chilling out waiting for the expansion to arrive. So we just ran a few raids to finish off achievements for people and have some fun while we waited.
Warlords of Draenor
Much excitement with the launch of the new expansion, new content at long last!
Unfortunately, the launch was pretty much a disaster.
Getting into Draenor was difficult enough with Khadgar absolutely swamped with people trying to talk him into leading them, one by one, through the portal.
Thankfully, he quickly remembered he was a mage, cast Mirror Image and sent those images off to the major cities of Azeroth. The crowds dispersed and we could make our way through the portal.
The opening scenes are fantastic, setting the scene perfectly for what we will be facing (at least initially) in this alternate Draenor.
There was some dubious decision-making along the way though, setting Gul'dan free is bound to come back to bite us at some point.
Welcome to Draenor achievements flashed up almost constantly in guild chat but this is the point it really fell to pieces.
The flagship feature of the expansion, Garrisons, just didn't work. Well, not the garrisons themselves but the Instancing technology that they were built on. It was overloaded by the massive demand and couldn't cope.
To make it worse, virtually all of the opening quests required the garrison in one way or another. And the final nail in the coffin was the fact that all of the flightpaths passed through the garrison too.
Chaos and frustration ensued as the whole server spent the best part of a week trying to go into/out of/over/under/round their garrisons and failing miserably.
The issues were finally sorted out and we were all free to enjoy questing through one of the best levelling experiences I have ever witnessed.
Beautifully crafted zones, varied and interesting questlines, NPCs with character and depth, all contributed to me almost regretting hitting 100. I didn't want it to end so quickly, I didn't really want it to end at all.
I frequently (and gleefully) allowed myself to be distracted by the numerous rares and treasures around the zones, so much glorious content to do.
But hit 100 I did and began the gearing ready for our first raid. This led me into the heroic dungeons which I also enjoyed immensely, much higher in difficulty that their MoP equivalents and challenging once more in our questing greens.
Posts on gearing up, dungeons and raiding to come "soon"
Note to self: Soon < 6 months.
Given the lack of said readership I will just head straight into what I've been up to since I last posted but promise to post more often just in case some lost soul lands on these shores and needs something to read.
So, where were we...?
I left you having just transferred my shaman over to horde for some heroic progression in Siege of Orgrimmar.
It didn't take long to overtake the progress I had made on my rogue and I was quickly up to speed with the rest of the guild.
We then quickly made it to 8/13HC and were progressing on Spoils when the sign-ups started to drop a little, the malaise was spreading here too.
It turns out it was only a blip and the sign-ups came back strongly with the pre-expansion patch but I was already considering what I wanted to do in WoD and making preparations.
It was a great deal of fun running 25-man heroics and the number of players at a very similar standard to myself mean there was some fantastic competition in the team.
This wasn't enough though, I wanted to be raiding with friends again.
The horde guild was full of good people and I'm sure I would have made friends there anyway but I missed my old friends and decided to move back to my old guild.
Of course, when I got there, most people were taking a break or just chilling out waiting for the expansion to arrive. So we just ran a few raids to finish off achievements for people and have some fun while we waited.
Warlords of Draenor
Much excitement with the launch of the new expansion, new content at long last!
Unfortunately, the launch was pretty much a disaster.
Getting into Draenor was difficult enough with Khadgar absolutely swamped with people trying to talk him into leading them, one by one, through the portal.
Thankfully, he quickly remembered he was a mage, cast Mirror Image and sent those images off to the major cities of Azeroth. The crowds dispersed and we could make our way through the portal.
The opening scenes are fantastic, setting the scene perfectly for what we will be facing (at least initially) in this alternate Draenor.
There was some dubious decision-making along the way though, setting Gul'dan free is bound to come back to bite us at some point.
Welcome to Draenor achievements flashed up almost constantly in guild chat but this is the point it really fell to pieces.
The flagship feature of the expansion, Garrisons, just didn't work. Well, not the garrisons themselves but the Instancing technology that they were built on. It was overloaded by the massive demand and couldn't cope.
To make it worse, virtually all of the opening quests required the garrison in one way or another. And the final nail in the coffin was the fact that all of the flightpaths passed through the garrison too.
Chaos and frustration ensued as the whole server spent the best part of a week trying to go into/out of/over/under/round their garrisons and failing miserably.
The issues were finally sorted out and we were all free to enjoy questing through one of the best levelling experiences I have ever witnessed.
Beautifully crafted zones, varied and interesting questlines, NPCs with character and depth, all contributed to me almost regretting hitting 100. I didn't want it to end so quickly, I didn't really want it to end at all.
I frequently (and gleefully) allowed myself to be distracted by the numerous rares and treasures around the zones, so much glorious content to do.
But hit 100 I did and began the gearing ready for our first raid. This led me into the heroic dungeons which I also enjoyed immensely, much higher in difficulty that their MoP equivalents and challenging once more in our questing greens.
Posts on gearing up, dungeons and raiding to come "soon"
Note to self: Soon < 6 months.
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