Of Cabals and the Old Guard
As another year winds down I find myself reminiscing about old times. It was prompted by a blurb that the Karazhan raid might be upgraded in the coming Warlords of Draenor expansion. Other than the Molten Core (MC was Wild's "first time" and special), Karazhan is far and away my favorite raid. That got me to thinking about all of Wilds friends during that awesome time. The height of Wild's raiding was in 2007-2008. For example, who would believe that Wildshard was once a guild officer and in charge of all the healers in our raids? No, I'm not making that up. We were actively raiding Ulduar, a complex and challenging fourteen boss raid dungeon. Wild made the decisions about how many healers to carry and what role they would play for each encounter. Wild also provided training and gave advice to raid healers. Ok, you can stop staring at Wild in stunned disbelief now.
Ulduar was a fun and challenging raid dungeon, but as mentioned above, Kara was Wild's absolute favorite. Why? Well, the first reason was that the attunement quest line just to gain access to Kara was extremely time consuming and required a lot of coordination with other guildies (many five man dungeons had to be run as part of the attunement). It took Wild literally months to complete it and has it's own tale to tell that I will collect and include at some point. Then there were the encounters themselves, of which there were twelve. This was a level 70, ten man raid dungeon. Kara was the first and only ten man raid in the game's first expansion, the Burning Crusade. Until Kara, there were no raids of less than twenty raiders.
Running a raid with a small group of ten added a sense of intimacy that the larger raids simply could not match. The encounters were not only fresh and challenging, they were a hell of a lot of fun to do, even after many runs. Sure, a lot of things were new back when the game was young, but even now the encounters in Kara seem somehow more unique and original than most raids that have come after it. That's a personal opinion, of course, and it's heavily weighted by the people and personalities that Wild ran with during those Kara runs. There is just no comparison.
I am assembling a post specifically on Wild's love of Karazhan. If the coming expansion really does update Kara, that alone will be good enough to bring Wild back into the fold as a full fledged raider. That assumes, of course, that there are still friends around to join him. Just for fun, I devised the perfect Karazhan ten man/flex raid: Bloodknuckle (tank/raid leader), Talatiana (#2 and our cheer leader), Guttzes, Goover, Pearla/Odiesim (alt or not?), Ristan, Shibby, Fenn, Shimmi and Wild. Few of these players are active anymore, but they are still around. Like Wild. Wild can hope, can't he?
I also have to give a special nod to Jomamma, the force behind Fate Sealed and the original first cabal member. She is still around but does not play anymore. I should also recognize two players who had a great, positive influence on Wild: Rhonna, Wild's first raid leader, and Frohgurt, who was instrumental in making Wild into a real healer. Both still play, and Frohgurt is still a member of Fate Sealed. Imagine that. In fact, Wild is friends with many players in FS, despite the fact that Wild was forced out of the guild. But that's another story for another day.
Finally, I want to acknowledge Cormyk, a truly wonderful person and friend who in real life was killed in an accident. We all miss him.
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Monday, December 16, 2013
Message From Our Leader
Message From Our Leader
While the real and imagined Bell and Wild families spent the last three weeks on the road visiting with relatives, a long time in game friend reached out to guildies in what may be a last chance for a guild that has fallen into disrepair. Lady Tala has taken the reins of our guild, Meitha, after several officers departed or bowed out for various reasons. Wild hopes to get the full story at some point, as these were good people the guild has lost. Tala and Wild go way back.
Lady Tala recently sent out a series of in game messages that Wild received on Saturday. She was frank about the sad state of the guild, and asked that everyone check in with her. She is hoping to get an idea what guildies want out of the guild and suggestions on how to reinvigorate it. The level of response will also indicate if there are enough guildies still active enough to make a difference. There are few guildies seen in game anymore, despite a roster of 461, most of which are likely alts. There is no raiding or any other guild led activity. The comatose daily guild message is now a plea for help.
I'm not sure that Wild has much encouragement to give her. The cabal is gone. Ok, not totally gone, but down to the fingers of one cloven hand. There isn't enough of us to make a revival on our own. We need new blood to step forward. Here is what I sent back to Lady Tala.
"Hi Tala! Just returned from visiting relatives and saw your post. Raiding with friends has always been my favorite part of WoW. I'm rusty with disuse and time constrained (working on that novel) but am game for fun runs and other events to ease back into things. Sorry to see those that are leaving. Hope things are well with you and yours."
As for Wild, things may be coming full circle. Wild loves his guild (each and every one), and has always been fanatically reluctant to change guilds. Once Tala gets her feedback, if the circumstances really are as dire as they appear, I believe the best option is to establish a new guild aimed at being ready for the coming expansion, with members made up of those still wanting to participate in guild events. Meitha is a bloated guild of members pursuing mostly their own interests. For the first time in his life, Wild WANTS to make a guild change.
Wild's second message to Tala is this (though I am waiting the results before sending it): "I seriously think we should consider starting a new guild. Bring along those who truly want to be involved in guild activities. We are in a deep lull, buried in a stale expansion but still months away from the (to me) exciting next expansion. During this lull I'd love to revisit old content on fun runs, plan an updated Naked Race, do pet combat contests, get reacquainted with old friends, and meet some new ones. The LFR has nearly killed raiding for Wild. Old content raiding and flex raiding with guildies and guild friends is my hope to get that excitement back. I doubt that guild raiding will ever be as good as Kara back in the day (rose colored glasses time), but I do think it can be great fun again. We just have to make it happen. "
While the real and imagined Bell and Wild families spent the last three weeks on the road visiting with relatives, a long time in game friend reached out to guildies in what may be a last chance for a guild that has fallen into disrepair. Lady Tala has taken the reins of our guild, Meitha, after several officers departed or bowed out for various reasons. Wild hopes to get the full story at some point, as these were good people the guild has lost. Tala and Wild go way back.
Lady Tala recently sent out a series of in game messages that Wild received on Saturday. She was frank about the sad state of the guild, and asked that everyone check in with her. She is hoping to get an idea what guildies want out of the guild and suggestions on how to reinvigorate it. The level of response will also indicate if there are enough guildies still active enough to make a difference. There are few guildies seen in game anymore, despite a roster of 461, most of which are likely alts. There is no raiding or any other guild led activity. The comatose daily guild message is now a plea for help.
I'm not sure that Wild has much encouragement to give her. The cabal is gone. Ok, not totally gone, but down to the fingers of one cloven hand. There isn't enough of us to make a revival on our own. We need new blood to step forward. Here is what I sent back to Lady Tala.
"Hi Tala! Just returned from visiting relatives and saw your post. Raiding with friends has always been my favorite part of WoW. I'm rusty with disuse and time constrained (working on that novel) but am game for fun runs and other events to ease back into things. Sorry to see those that are leaving. Hope things are well with you and yours."
As for Wild, things may be coming full circle. Wild loves his guild (each and every one), and has always been fanatically reluctant to change guilds. Once Tala gets her feedback, if the circumstances really are as dire as they appear, I believe the best option is to establish a new guild aimed at being ready for the coming expansion, with members made up of those still wanting to participate in guild events. Meitha is a bloated guild of members pursuing mostly their own interests. For the first time in his life, Wild WANTS to make a guild change.
Wild's second message to Tala is this (though I am waiting the results before sending it): "I seriously think we should consider starting a new guild. Bring along those who truly want to be involved in guild activities. We are in a deep lull, buried in a stale expansion but still months away from the (to me) exciting next expansion. During this lull I'd love to revisit old content on fun runs, plan an updated Naked Race, do pet combat contests, get reacquainted with old friends, and meet some new ones. The LFR has nearly killed raiding for Wild. Old content raiding and flex raiding with guildies and guild friends is my hope to get that excitement back. I doubt that guild raiding will ever be as good as Kara back in the day (rose colored glasses time), but I do think it can be great fun again. We just have to make it happen. "
Monday, November 18, 2013
Downtime Thoughts
Downtime Thoughts
We will be off on a three week auto trek to visit relatives on the far east coast this week. The Wild family will be on their own as both accounts will be suspended until we return. I thought about keeping an account open, but that would only encourage me to attempt a WoW upgrade on Mom's computer to check Auction House prices instead of spending time with my real life family. If I'm going to be on the computer at all, it will be to work on the book, not World of Warcraft.
That said, I am already thinking about the next expansion, Warlords of Draenor (WoD), which I went into exhaustive detail on in the last post. The new expansion is still a ways away. How far away is it? Well, predicting release dates is a dark, arcane art in WOW-land, but that hasn't stopped practitioners from trying.
Did you know that the current expansion, Mists of Pandaria (MoP), was released in September 2012? It's over a year old now, and it's really starting to feel it's age. After reading the tea leaves, the earliest, most wildly optimistic date for the release of WoD is around April 2014. I give that date a zero chance. Maybe that will be when they release the Beta, but even that sounds a bit unrealistic. The most depressing release date is around October 2014. They will lose a lot of subscribers to other games (ie, the next Diablo expansion) if it takes that long.
There will almost certainly be WoD pre-expansion patches to try and keep us interested. One such possible patch involves the Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands that is used to enter Outland which, of course, is a piece of Draenor. The war with Draenor will come from that portal, so be prepared to pitch your battle tents in the Blasted Lands as the expansion nears.
Here's another tip about Blizz's plans for WoD. At Blizzcon they announced that there will not be an MoP patch 5.5 (MoP is currently running patch 5.4). Instead, all their effort is going into the WoD release. That could mean an earlier supposed release in June 2014. However, my prediction is that Beta will begin in June, not the release. My release prediction? WoD will go live on Tuesday, 5 August, 2014.
The Wild Family has their own prediction to make. The first family member to be "boosted" to level 90 in WoD will be . . . drum roll please . . . level 27 paladin Jocelyn. The paladin class is the only healing class that hasn't reached at least level 85. My tentative plan is to make Jocey my main in WoD. On the Alliance side, another paladin, Javajoo (level 63), may get the nod for the second boost. That would give the Wild Family two level 90 paladins, one Horde and one Alliance. Of course, I have an enormous amount of time to change my mind . . .
We will be off on a three week auto trek to visit relatives on the far east coast this week. The Wild family will be on their own as both accounts will be suspended until we return. I thought about keeping an account open, but that would only encourage me to attempt a WoW upgrade on Mom's computer to check Auction House prices instead of spending time with my real life family. If I'm going to be on the computer at all, it will be to work on the book, not World of Warcraft.
That said, I am already thinking about the next expansion, Warlords of Draenor (WoD), which I went into exhaustive detail on in the last post. The new expansion is still a ways away. How far away is it? Well, predicting release dates is a dark, arcane art in WOW-land, but that hasn't stopped practitioners from trying.
Did you know that the current expansion, Mists of Pandaria (MoP), was released in September 2012? It's over a year old now, and it's really starting to feel it's age. After reading the tea leaves, the earliest, most wildly optimistic date for the release of WoD is around April 2014. I give that date a zero chance. Maybe that will be when they release the Beta, but even that sounds a bit unrealistic. The most depressing release date is around October 2014. They will lose a lot of subscribers to other games (ie, the next Diablo expansion) if it takes that long.
There will almost certainly be WoD pre-expansion patches to try and keep us interested. One such possible patch involves the Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands that is used to enter Outland which, of course, is a piece of Draenor. The war with Draenor will come from that portal, so be prepared to pitch your battle tents in the Blasted Lands as the expansion nears.
Here's another tip about Blizz's plans for WoD. At Blizzcon they announced that there will not be an MoP patch 5.5 (MoP is currently running patch 5.4). Instead, all their effort is going into the WoD release. That could mean an earlier supposed release in June 2014. However, my prediction is that Beta will begin in June, not the release. My release prediction? WoD will go live on Tuesday, 5 August, 2014.
The Wild Family has their own prediction to make. The first family member to be "boosted" to level 90 in WoD will be . . . drum roll please . . . level 27 paladin Jocelyn. The paladin class is the only healing class that hasn't reached at least level 85. My tentative plan is to make Jocey my main in WoD. On the Alliance side, another paladin, Javajoo (level 63), may get the nod for the second boost. That would give the Wild Family two level 90 paladins, one Horde and one Alliance. Of course, I have an enormous amount of time to change my mind . . .
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
It's a New World
It's a New World
Blizzard recently announced the next expansion pack for World of Warcraft. It's called Warlords of Draenor. Draenor is an alien world that was blown to bits. A piece of that world called Outland came into the sphere of Azeroth and the horde and alliance descended on it during that expansion. With the new expansion, the Draenor are back. The horde and alliance travel back in time thirty years to the planet Draenor - not just the Outland bit, but the whole world as it was before it was destroyed.
Frankly, when I initially read about it, I wasn't very interested. I figured they did it because they couldn't find room on the Azeroth map for another continent or island. I figured that the world of Azeroth had grown so boringly familiar they had to give us a brand new world to play in, even if that world exists thirty years in the past. Players keen on lore would love the fact that some favorite heroes and villains were back, alive and well, in that past. I don't usually follow that, so it wasn't a big draw, either.
The big news that a great many players have wanted for years is the ability to build and maintain our own place of residence. Instead of hearthing to a central location - ie, an Inn - players will be able to create what is called a Garrison - our own, personal inn, so to speak. If the management of a Garrison is fun and interesting, I might like this. If it is a gold sink and a time sink then I guess I'll be living on the rundown side of town. I'm not sure, though, whether lower level toons will be able to go to a garrison or if they will still be stuck at the inn. I'm willing to wait and see. I'd say that playing the expansion pretty much requires a player to re-base from a traditional base like Orgrimmar to Draenor once they reach level 90. Org and Stormwind may become ghost towns.
Deeper into the weeds, things started to get a little more interesting. This information is coming from the Wowhead site, which seems to have the most complete and easiest to understand information.
Quick Facts:
The new level cap is 100 (prior cap was 90).
Buying the expansion grants one character a "boost" directly to level 90, even if the character is only level 1. I will have to decide whether to boost JB and/or Philly from 85 to 90, or boost a lower level character who has farther to go. I will likely make that decision based on profession needs and other things that would support my mains, Wild and Fist.
Gear Facts:
The "squish" is on. All gear stats will see a compression of the numbers. I compared Fist's ring (i476, +410 haste) with a sample ring in the expansion (i489, +16 haste). Gear stats are going to look very strange for awhile, but I think players will adjust pretty quickly.
Primary stats will automatically change based on spec. For example, when Fist is in Windweaver spec the primary stat on her gear will be agility. When she switches to mistweaver, her primary stat automatically changes to intelligence without having to change gear. That one change immediately halves the number of pieces of gear we have to earn and carry around. Rings and necklaces are the exception. Secondary stats don't change, but then a lot of the secondary stats have been done away with: Hit, Expertise, Dodge, and Parry are all gone, and unmourned I must say. Reforging has also gone bye bye.
The next change to itemization really has me shaking my head. After simplifying the primary stats and eliminating most of the secondary stats, Blizz then adds back new complications by creating a third level of itemization - Tertiary Stats. And there's a BUNCH of them! Like Sturdiness (no durability loss), Movement Speed (will stack), Lifesteal (% of damage converted to health), Avoidance (Absorb % of AE damage), and Cleave (Increased AE damage). I'd give the whole thing a big Sigh, but maybe the learning curve won't be too steep, and we'll all be trying to figure things out together.
Hoarders (it's all about bag space):
As an unrepentant pack rat, Happy and his ilk are drooling over the prospects of increased capacity and more ways to store things without costing a bag space.
Things that no longer take up bag space: (1) quest items! How many times have I lost a quest because I needed bag space and dumped the quest items clogging my bag. (2) Heirloom and vanity items now get their own page like pets and mounts have now. Not only do they not take up bag space, they are all account bound and can be used by any character, and I assume multiple characters can use the same heirlooms at the same time! (3) Not firm, yet, but they are looking to use the same page format for tabards and transmog gear.
A modest upgrade to actual bags is the ability to designate bags by category so that items will be automatically sorted into the correct bags. I see lots of issues with this, like how that will/won't work with specialized bags.
Can I Find a Raid, Please!
There are only two kinds of raids: Flex raids and Mythic raids. Flex raids replace 10/25 man normal and heroic raids. The Mythic raid (note, singular) is twenty person only (no flex) and will be for "cutting-edge progression" raids. Ten man and twenty-five man raiding is Kaput. My suspicion is that flex raids will quickly become the Looking For Raid (LFR) option of plowing through content with strangers in a hurry. I have to wonder how many guilds will go to the trouble to put guild flex raids together when the LFR is just so handy and less troublesome? And if a guild can't muster a truly progression minded raid, the guild won't likely even attempt a Mythic raid. Wild is again feeling pretty left out. Blizz claims not to like the LFR and is offering incentives such as valor point boosts for raiding with friends and additional ways to form groups for all kinds of content. I'll have to wait and see how that works out, though it does seem to take away from the guild model. Are guilds going to become extinct? In my opinion I believe that Blizz intends to phase out guilds all together. Why have a guild when you can have a friends list?
Questing and the New Zones
As expected, we will all be back to ground mounts in Draenor not only for the original expansion but into patch 6.1, regardless of how fast you get to level 100. Pack your flying mounts away. Questing will be less station to station and more random, follow your own path kind of thing. Leveling also has a few new goodies to work toward, with ability buffs as you level and occasional rare/epic drops when completing quests. There are ten, completely new zones to explore, some with familiar titles and some not.
Stuff I Don't Care About:
There's a new PvP Zone where those with that appetite can go kill each other over and over in a Timeless Isle like environment that's sort of like a never-ending Alterac Valley. If you don't know AV, turn in your Pvp gear and slink away in shame. Battlegrounds are spiffied up, too, though it doesn't look like there are any new ones.
Oh yea, there's some new Lore to explore. Having read with interest Sis's and Lao's efforts along these lines, Wild may be more interested in what happens with the likes of Garrosh and Thrall, and newcomers of Draenai lore like Y'rel. I don't know who Aggra is, but apparently neither she or any other women heroes are making the trip back in time. A pity.
No, there is no date as to when the expansion will be released. And that's a Wrap.
PS - Saw "Ender's Game" yesterday. I loved it!
Blizzard recently announced the next expansion pack for World of Warcraft. It's called Warlords of Draenor. Draenor is an alien world that was blown to bits. A piece of that world called Outland came into the sphere of Azeroth and the horde and alliance descended on it during that expansion. With the new expansion, the Draenor are back. The horde and alliance travel back in time thirty years to the planet Draenor - not just the Outland bit, but the whole world as it was before it was destroyed.
Frankly, when I initially read about it, I wasn't very interested. I figured they did it because they couldn't find room on the Azeroth map for another continent or island. I figured that the world of Azeroth had grown so boringly familiar they had to give us a brand new world to play in, even if that world exists thirty years in the past. Players keen on lore would love the fact that some favorite heroes and villains were back, alive and well, in that past. I don't usually follow that, so it wasn't a big draw, either.
The big news that a great many players have wanted for years is the ability to build and maintain our own place of residence. Instead of hearthing to a central location - ie, an Inn - players will be able to create what is called a Garrison - our own, personal inn, so to speak. If the management of a Garrison is fun and interesting, I might like this. If it is a gold sink and a time sink then I guess I'll be living on the rundown side of town. I'm not sure, though, whether lower level toons will be able to go to a garrison or if they will still be stuck at the inn. I'm willing to wait and see. I'd say that playing the expansion pretty much requires a player to re-base from a traditional base like Orgrimmar to Draenor once they reach level 90. Org and Stormwind may become ghost towns.
Deeper into the weeds, things started to get a little more interesting. This information is coming from the Wowhead site, which seems to have the most complete and easiest to understand information.
Quick Facts:
The new level cap is 100 (prior cap was 90).
Buying the expansion grants one character a "boost" directly to level 90, even if the character is only level 1. I will have to decide whether to boost JB and/or Philly from 85 to 90, or boost a lower level character who has farther to go. I will likely make that decision based on profession needs and other things that would support my mains, Wild and Fist.
Gear Facts:
The "squish" is on. All gear stats will see a compression of the numbers. I compared Fist's ring (i476, +410 haste) with a sample ring in the expansion (i489, +16 haste). Gear stats are going to look very strange for awhile, but I think players will adjust pretty quickly.
Primary stats will automatically change based on spec. For example, when Fist is in Windweaver spec the primary stat on her gear will be agility. When she switches to mistweaver, her primary stat automatically changes to intelligence without having to change gear. That one change immediately halves the number of pieces of gear we have to earn and carry around. Rings and necklaces are the exception. Secondary stats don't change, but then a lot of the secondary stats have been done away with: Hit, Expertise, Dodge, and Parry are all gone, and unmourned I must say. Reforging has also gone bye bye.
The next change to itemization really has me shaking my head. After simplifying the primary stats and eliminating most of the secondary stats, Blizz then adds back new complications by creating a third level of itemization - Tertiary Stats. And there's a BUNCH of them! Like Sturdiness (no durability loss), Movement Speed (will stack), Lifesteal (% of damage converted to health), Avoidance (Absorb % of AE damage), and Cleave (Increased AE damage). I'd give the whole thing a big Sigh, but maybe the learning curve won't be too steep, and we'll all be trying to figure things out together.
Hoarders (it's all about bag space):
As an unrepentant pack rat, Happy and his ilk are drooling over the prospects of increased capacity and more ways to store things without costing a bag space.
Things that no longer take up bag space: (1) quest items! How many times have I lost a quest because I needed bag space and dumped the quest items clogging my bag. (2) Heirloom and vanity items now get their own page like pets and mounts have now. Not only do they not take up bag space, they are all account bound and can be used by any character, and I assume multiple characters can use the same heirlooms at the same time! (3) Not firm, yet, but they are looking to use the same page format for tabards and transmog gear.
A modest upgrade to actual bags is the ability to designate bags by category so that items will be automatically sorted into the correct bags. I see lots of issues with this, like how that will/won't work with specialized bags.
Can I Find a Raid, Please!
There are only two kinds of raids: Flex raids and Mythic raids. Flex raids replace 10/25 man normal and heroic raids. The Mythic raid (note, singular) is twenty person only (no flex) and will be for "cutting-edge progression" raids. Ten man and twenty-five man raiding is Kaput. My suspicion is that flex raids will quickly become the Looking For Raid (LFR) option of plowing through content with strangers in a hurry. I have to wonder how many guilds will go to the trouble to put guild flex raids together when the LFR is just so handy and less troublesome? And if a guild can't muster a truly progression minded raid, the guild won't likely even attempt a Mythic raid. Wild is again feeling pretty left out. Blizz claims not to like the LFR and is offering incentives such as valor point boosts for raiding with friends and additional ways to form groups for all kinds of content. I'll have to wait and see how that works out, though it does seem to take away from the guild model. Are guilds going to become extinct? In my opinion I believe that Blizz intends to phase out guilds all together. Why have a guild when you can have a friends list?
Questing and the New Zones
As expected, we will all be back to ground mounts in Draenor not only for the original expansion but into patch 6.1, regardless of how fast you get to level 100. Pack your flying mounts away. Questing will be less station to station and more random, follow your own path kind of thing. Leveling also has a few new goodies to work toward, with ability buffs as you level and occasional rare/epic drops when completing quests. There are ten, completely new zones to explore, some with familiar titles and some not.
Stuff I Don't Care About:
There's a new PvP Zone where those with that appetite can go kill each other over and over in a Timeless Isle like environment that's sort of like a never-ending Alterac Valley. If you don't know AV, turn in your Pvp gear and slink away in shame. Battlegrounds are spiffied up, too, though it doesn't look like there are any new ones.
Oh yea, there's some new Lore to explore. Having read with interest Sis's and Lao's efforts along these lines, Wild may be more interested in what happens with the likes of Garrosh and Thrall, and newcomers of Draenai lore like Y'rel. I don't know who Aggra is, but apparently neither she or any other women heroes are making the trip back in time. A pity.
No, there is no date as to when the expansion will be released. And that's a Wrap.
PS - Saw "Ender's Game" yesterday. I loved it!
Monday, October 28, 2013
The Alliance Family Steps Up
The Alliance Family Steps Up
Wild was feeling his oats over the weekend. Propped up by his new gear, he decided to take on the Ordon troopers - level 91 elites with heavy fire power. These mobs earn Emperor Shaohao reputation, which Wild is not all that interested in, but might come in handy some day. Mostly, though, he just wanted to know if he could kill these Ordon troopers.
He could, and he did. Wild made sure it was one on one, though. Two or more might make it hard to avoid all the fireballs they tend to throw around.
Having proved his manhood on that account, Wild dipped a little deeper into the ranks of those hostile elites. The Burning Berserkers were quite a bit tougher, with Wild having about a 50% success rate against them.
While all of that killing is a lot of fun, Wild is still really primarily a healer. A healer in a guild that no longer raids, and Wild is really not willing to go seek out some new guild to take him in. And, after looking at the LFR raids he could attempt, his heart just isn't into learning the fights without a guild team to share in the successes and challenges. What would be the purpose?
That situation brought the family to take a more serious look at the Alliance side of the Wild family. The family's Teagreen guild is small, but doing well, and there could be opportunities for an up and coming family member . . . someone like Javajoo, for example. The level 61 paladin could be the family's next level 90, to join with Unbleached and Hcab.
I am going to bring Java over to the active account and begin leveling him. Wild has offered to provide enchants for the plate wearing paladin's heirloom gear before sending those heirlooms to him. There is a complication, though. Level 10 worgen Rakta is still in Gineas and in the way. She has a set of heirlooms, and no mail box to send them back. The intent was to remake her on the other account at a later time, because I don't want to spend another $25 transferring her. Right now, though, I don't know how to get that gear from Rakta (at least not without spending another $25), and I can't move Java until Rakta is gone. Sigh. Is there a way for Rakta to get back to the starting zone, where there's a mailbox? Or for another character to go to Gilneas and retrieve them? The only other alliance I have available is Chaitee, but she is only level 21 and in Darnassus.
Once the above gets straightened out somehow, Java's leveling progress is still going to take time. Not only is the Writer's Conference going to consume the rest of this week (to get ready) and the coming weekend (for the conference itself), we are also planning a trip to visit with relatives on the east coast over Thanksgiving. We will be gone three weeks. Once we're back, though, I hope to be able to put some extra time into getting Java to level 90. Maybe, with Java, I'll finally figure out how to get around as an Alliance, though I bet Java mistakenly walks into horde camps now and then. The poor guy has a lot to learn.
A New Wrinkle - I never learn. I extricated Rakta from Gilneas by just finishing the quest line and then sent her to Darnassus where she turned over all her heirlooms and gold to Chaitee. Then, for the second time in her young life, Rakta was sent home. Java was anxious to get started, so I started the character transfer process. The process failed because for some reason he still has mail in his box. Most likely this is some Blizzard thing, since Java hasn't been sent mail in months. But that means I will have to activate the other account once again. Sigh. Life sucks.
Wrinkles Part 2 - In order to get this done, I bought a thirty day game card for $15 and activated the second account. Even though I will be on the east coast for three weeks in November, I can always suspend the account until I come back. With the account activated, Java was able to check his mail. It wasn't from Blizzard. It was from Sinstaar, a character that no longer exists. The good news is that the mail included some pretty nice enchants and other goodies! Once that was cleared up, Java began his journey to the other account. It will take about an hour or so for the change to show up. I wonder what other issues will arise when Java again comes in game?
Wild was feeling his oats over the weekend. Propped up by his new gear, he decided to take on the Ordon troopers - level 91 elites with heavy fire power. These mobs earn Emperor Shaohao reputation, which Wild is not all that interested in, but might come in handy some day. Mostly, though, he just wanted to know if he could kill these Ordon troopers.
He could, and he did. Wild made sure it was one on one, though. Two or more might make it hard to avoid all the fireballs they tend to throw around.
Having proved his manhood on that account, Wild dipped a little deeper into the ranks of those hostile elites. The Burning Berserkers were quite a bit tougher, with Wild having about a 50% success rate against them.
While all of that killing is a lot of fun, Wild is still really primarily a healer. A healer in a guild that no longer raids, and Wild is really not willing to go seek out some new guild to take him in. And, after looking at the LFR raids he could attempt, his heart just isn't into learning the fights without a guild team to share in the successes and challenges. What would be the purpose?
That situation brought the family to take a more serious look at the Alliance side of the Wild family. The family's Teagreen guild is small, but doing well, and there could be opportunities for an up and coming family member . . . someone like Javajoo, for example. The level 61 paladin could be the family's next level 90, to join with Unbleached and Hcab.
I am going to bring Java over to the active account and begin leveling him. Wild has offered to provide enchants for the plate wearing paladin's heirloom gear before sending those heirlooms to him. There is a complication, though. Level 10 worgen Rakta is still in Gineas and in the way. She has a set of heirlooms, and no mail box to send them back. The intent was to remake her on the other account at a later time, because I don't want to spend another $25 transferring her. Right now, though, I don't know how to get that gear from Rakta (at least not without spending another $25), and I can't move Java until Rakta is gone. Sigh. Is there a way for Rakta to get back to the starting zone, where there's a mailbox? Or for another character to go to Gilneas and retrieve them? The only other alliance I have available is Chaitee, but she is only level 21 and in Darnassus.
Once the above gets straightened out somehow, Java's leveling progress is still going to take time. Not only is the Writer's Conference going to consume the rest of this week (to get ready) and the coming weekend (for the conference itself), we are also planning a trip to visit with relatives on the east coast over Thanksgiving. We will be gone three weeks. Once we're back, though, I hope to be able to put some extra time into getting Java to level 90. Maybe, with Java, I'll finally figure out how to get around as an Alliance, though I bet Java mistakenly walks into horde camps now and then. The poor guy has a lot to learn.
A New Wrinkle - I never learn. I extricated Rakta from Gilneas by just finishing the quest line and then sent her to Darnassus where she turned over all her heirlooms and gold to Chaitee. Then, for the second time in her young life, Rakta was sent home. Java was anxious to get started, so I started the character transfer process. The process failed because for some reason he still has mail in his box. Most likely this is some Blizzard thing, since Java hasn't been sent mail in months. But that means I will have to activate the other account once again. Sigh. Life sucks.
Wrinkles Part 2 - In order to get this done, I bought a thirty day game card for $15 and activated the second account. Even though I will be on the east coast for three weeks in November, I can always suspend the account until I come back. With the account activated, Java was able to check his mail. It wasn't from Blizzard. It was from Sinstaar, a character that no longer exists. The good news is that the mail included some pretty nice enchants and other goodies! Once that was cleared up, Java began his journey to the other account. It will take about an hour or so for the change to show up. I wonder what other issues will arise when Java again comes in game?
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Shiny's Part Two
Shiny's Part Two
The WoW gods must have something truly disastrous in mind for Wild. That's the only rational explanation for all of Wild's good fortune over the past couple of days.
The expected new bounty started with Wild earning the 50,000 coins needed to get his i535 trinket, which will replace an i409 trinket. Or will it? On the same morning that Wild earned his 50k coins, he got a drop called a Timeless Curio. This item, when used, creates an i496 trinket. So, let me summarize the trinket scenario:
Old i409 --> New i535
Old i476 --> New i496
Pretty simple math, right? Well, there is a problem. There are only two types of trinkets available from the Isle that casters use, one called Chi-ji used for healing specs, and another called Bite for DPS spec (that would be balance/moonkin for Wild). Wild's plan was to buy the Chi-ji and use the Curio for the other. I can't use two of the same trinkets, as they are "unique-equipped" so only one can be equipped at a time. There is another, worse issue. Players are reporting a bug that even in balance spec, the Curio will still drop the healing trinket, not the DPS one. Complaints to Blizz about that have fallen on deaf ears. I'm not about to blow 50k coins and a curio to discover I can only equip one of them.
This is crazy.
Wild also has another Burden of Eternity, so I thought, ok, I'll take the i496 DPS trinket Curio and upgrade it to i535. Sorry, trinkets can't be upgraded with Burdens of Eternity.
Wild had already bought the 50k coin chi-ji trinket, but I got so confused I sold it back until I could get things figured out. That was a little scary all by itself. What if I sold it back and didn't get back my 50k in coins? The buy back worked, though, thankfully.
Here is my plan. I checked around on Wowhead, and it appears that the DPS trinket bug has been fixed. So, I will use the curio to get the DPS i496 trinket, which will replace the i496. I will go back and buy, again, the i535 healing trinket to replace the i409. Then, since I still have the Burden of Eternity, I intend to upgrade another piece of gear, probably the helm. That will still leave Wild with one piece of gear left under I496 - his necklace, at i476.
Update: The plan worked. Wild has both the i535 and i496 trinkets now. His gear score jumped from i496 to i505.
Oops, Wild can't count to two. He has two pieces of gear now under i496, not just one: his i476 necklace, and his i476 off-hand. Now, the question remains how and when to use Wild's Burden of Eternity. There is no off-hand gear on the Timeless Isle, so take that off the list. If a necklace were to drop on the Isle, upgrading it from i496 to i535 would add +298 int to his gear. However, Wild already has an unused i496 helm piece. If Wild upgraded his helm to i535, he would gain +536 int, close to double that of the necklace. Seems to be a no brainer.
The upgrade of Wild's Helm raised his gear score to i508. Wild is pretty impressed with himself.
The WoW gods must have something truly disastrous in mind for Wild. That's the only rational explanation for all of Wild's good fortune over the past couple of days.
The expected new bounty started with Wild earning the 50,000 coins needed to get his i535 trinket, which will replace an i409 trinket. Or will it? On the same morning that Wild earned his 50k coins, he got a drop called a Timeless Curio. This item, when used, creates an i496 trinket. So, let me summarize the trinket scenario:
Old i409 --> New i535
Old i476 --> New i496
Pretty simple math, right? Well, there is a problem. There are only two types of trinkets available from the Isle that casters use, one called Chi-ji used for healing specs, and another called Bite for DPS spec (that would be balance/moonkin for Wild). Wild's plan was to buy the Chi-ji and use the Curio for the other. I can't use two of the same trinkets, as they are "unique-equipped" so only one can be equipped at a time. There is another, worse issue. Players are reporting a bug that even in balance spec, the Curio will still drop the healing trinket, not the DPS one. Complaints to Blizz about that have fallen on deaf ears. I'm not about to blow 50k coins and a curio to discover I can only equip one of them.
This is crazy.
Wild also has another Burden of Eternity, so I thought, ok, I'll take the i496 DPS trinket Curio and upgrade it to i535. Sorry, trinkets can't be upgraded with Burdens of Eternity.
Wild had already bought the 50k coin chi-ji trinket, but I got so confused I sold it back until I could get things figured out. That was a little scary all by itself. What if I sold it back and didn't get back my 50k in coins? The buy back worked, though, thankfully.
Here is my plan. I checked around on Wowhead, and it appears that the DPS trinket bug has been fixed. So, I will use the curio to get the DPS i496 trinket, which will replace the i496. I will go back and buy, again, the i535 healing trinket to replace the i409. Then, since I still have the Burden of Eternity, I intend to upgrade another piece of gear, probably the helm. That will still leave Wild with one piece of gear left under I496 - his necklace, at i476.
Update: The plan worked. Wild has both the i535 and i496 trinkets now. His gear score jumped from i496 to i505.
Oops, Wild can't count to two. He has two pieces of gear now under i496, not just one: his i476 necklace, and his i476 off-hand. Now, the question remains how and when to use Wild's Burden of Eternity. There is no off-hand gear on the Timeless Isle, so take that off the list. If a necklace were to drop on the Isle, upgrading it from i496 to i535 would add +298 int to his gear. However, Wild already has an unused i496 helm piece. If Wild upgraded his helm to i535, he would gain +536 int, close to double that of the necklace. Seems to be a no brainer.
The upgrade of Wild's Helm raised his gear score to i508. Wild is pretty impressed with himself.
Friday, October 25, 2013
Shiny's! Wild's Bountiful Harvest
Shiny's! Wild's Bountiful Harvest
Wild has been monopolizing the Timeless Isle for the past few days. He continues to collect coins, kill elites, and complete the daily and weekly quests. Despite a complete lack of gear upgrades, Wild has been taking on and killing some of the higher level elites. He admits the reason for it is that the easier elite mobs are often totally cleared out for minutes at a time, giving Wild the opportunity to take on other elites that take more time to kill. Wild has gotten very proficient at killing the snakes, for example. It takes rooting the snake a couple times to heal during the fight, but it gets the job done. Wild has also discovered he can kill the elite crabs along the shore, too. They are actually easier than the turtles, which Wild doesn't much like taking on. He even kills the frogs and tigers when nothing else is available. Slow but steady progress. Wild has over 42k coins now, and at about a thousand coins a day he'll be able to buy the trinket he wants in a week or less.
That brings Wild to last night. A few nights ago Wild got a Signet. Using it would give Wild an i496 ring, and Wild has long been frustrated in his efforts to upgrade his pair of i450 rings. Given how long Wild has been after a ring, he wanted to immediately use it. Wild also figured he might never see another Signet (his luck being that bad), so perhaps he should wait a bit on using the Signet until he could get an even rarer Burden of Eternity, which would upgrade his i496 signet into an i535. Patience, hell! is what Wild really thought, but then the Celestial Court came alive and Wild went after whatever of the four elites of the Court were being stalked and attacked. There is a once a week chance that loot drops from the killing of a Court elite. Most of the time nothing drops, and some of the time minor stuff like motes of harmony drop as a consolation prize. Very, very rarely, loot drops. Fist won an awesome i553 pair of gloves the first time she battled a Court elite. Wild had a few words to say under his breath at that.
Last night it was finally Wild's turn to beat chance. Wild won Grievous Gladiator's Band of Cruelty, an i522 ring. It's a pvp ring, but Wild was ecstatic anyway. One of his i450 rings could now be replaced. Wild briefly thought about going ahead and using his signet, upgrading his other i450 ring to i496, but he got sidetracked. Wild wanted to enchant his new ring, and had to hearth back to Orgrimmar to get the mats he needed. While getting that together he noticed a item in his bags he hadn't noticed before. Low and behold, Wild discovered he had a Burden of Eternity. Wild has no idea when that dropped or how long it has been sitting in his bags.
Who cares! Wild knew exactly what to do. Wild used the Burden to upgrade his signet to i535. Then he used his upgraded signet to make an i535 ring. He now has a pair of shiny new rings.
Wild's gear score bumped up to i496. The trinket, when it's ready, should put Wild over the i500 mark. What a night!
PS - Fist's gear score is i491. Wild has a smile on his face today.
Wild has been monopolizing the Timeless Isle for the past few days. He continues to collect coins, kill elites, and complete the daily and weekly quests. Despite a complete lack of gear upgrades, Wild has been taking on and killing some of the higher level elites. He admits the reason for it is that the easier elite mobs are often totally cleared out for minutes at a time, giving Wild the opportunity to take on other elites that take more time to kill. Wild has gotten very proficient at killing the snakes, for example. It takes rooting the snake a couple times to heal during the fight, but it gets the job done. Wild has also discovered he can kill the elite crabs along the shore, too. They are actually easier than the turtles, which Wild doesn't much like taking on. He even kills the frogs and tigers when nothing else is available. Slow but steady progress. Wild has over 42k coins now, and at about a thousand coins a day he'll be able to buy the trinket he wants in a week or less.
That brings Wild to last night. A few nights ago Wild got a Signet. Using it would give Wild an i496 ring, and Wild has long been frustrated in his efforts to upgrade his pair of i450 rings. Given how long Wild has been after a ring, he wanted to immediately use it. Wild also figured he might never see another Signet (his luck being that bad), so perhaps he should wait a bit on using the Signet until he could get an even rarer Burden of Eternity, which would upgrade his i496 signet into an i535. Patience, hell! is what Wild really thought, but then the Celestial Court came alive and Wild went after whatever of the four elites of the Court were being stalked and attacked. There is a once a week chance that loot drops from the killing of a Court elite. Most of the time nothing drops, and some of the time minor stuff like motes of harmony drop as a consolation prize. Very, very rarely, loot drops. Fist won an awesome i553 pair of gloves the first time she battled a Court elite. Wild had a few words to say under his breath at that.
Last night it was finally Wild's turn to beat chance. Wild won Grievous Gladiator's Band of Cruelty, an i522 ring. It's a pvp ring, but Wild was ecstatic anyway. One of his i450 rings could now be replaced. Wild briefly thought about going ahead and using his signet, upgrading his other i450 ring to i496, but he got sidetracked. Wild wanted to enchant his new ring, and had to hearth back to Orgrimmar to get the mats he needed. While getting that together he noticed a item in his bags he hadn't noticed before. Low and behold, Wild discovered he had a Burden of Eternity. Wild has no idea when that dropped or how long it has been sitting in his bags.
Who cares! Wild knew exactly what to do. Wild used the Burden to upgrade his signet to i535. Then he used his upgraded signet to make an i535 ring. He now has a pair of shiny new rings.
Wild's gear score bumped up to i496. The trinket, when it's ready, should put Wild over the i500 mark. What a night!
PS - Fist's gear score is i491. Wild has a smile on his face today.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Of Coins, Gold, and Gems
Of Coins, Gold, and Gems
Yes, this is one of those "Happyface" posts with Fist as a guest commentator.
Fist doesn't have much real use for the Timeless Isle coins that she gets with every kill and quest completion. Sometimes she gets coins just for picking her nose - but let's not go there. She does have a bit of a gambling habit, though, and her new favorite friend on the Isle lately is Kukuru, who lives in a cave full of treasure chests of every size and description. It would be more challenging if gamblers could try to deduce which chests were likely to have the best loot, but, sadly, every chest has the same chance for loot as any other chest. The odds never change.
Fist brought 17,548 coins to her first visit to Kukuru. Each bet she made cost 500 coins. Every bet returns something. There is a 99.8% chance that the "reward" is in coins ranging from a low of 100 coins (the lowest amount Fist received) to - very rarely - a reward as high as 650 coins. It's pretty obvious that this is a losing proposition, although it can be very addicting, since the coins received back can be fed back in again.
The important aspect of this obsession is the 0.2% chance that the reward isn't coins. Fist made 39 bets. Four rewards were for something other than coins. Three of the rewards were i496 gear, the same gear picked up in the moss-covered treasure chests. Those are mostly useless, since Fist, Wild, Philly, JB and even Tiphaine have nearly full i496 gears sets now. Fist also won a pet named Bonkers to add to the families still growing collection of pets for pet battles. Bonkers rewards are fairly common, though.
The one truly valuable reward is a Burden of Eternity. The explanation for what this does is a little confusing, but this is how I think it works. First, you have to have an i496 piece of gear that has not yet been transformed into an equipable item. Using the Burden on that item upgrades the item from i496 to i535. Now that is a tangible reward. One caveat, though, is that doing this makes the item Soulbound, NOT BOA, so make sure the upgrade is done by the character that you intend to use the gear. Early on, Burdens dropped pretty frequently. Now they are very, very rare.
Math Quiz: Blizz doesn't reveal the odds of winning a Burden from gambling with Kukuru. However, I know that Master Li sells Burdens for 50,000 coins apiece. Wild is still trying to get that many coins, himself, for the trinket he wants to buy (he has about 39,000 now). Many players find it easy to amass that many coins over a short period of time. Wild and Fist, alas, don't have the talent for that. Using that value as the base is how I came up with the percentages, assuming that the gambling odds matched the likelihood of a Burden dropped. The odds of that, by my calculation, is 500 to 1 odds.
Way back at the top of the post I mentioned that Fist started with 17,548 coins. When she stopped betting after the 39th bet, she had 10,748 coins left. I expect that she will gamble away those coins, having nothing better to do with them.
The gem market is going through a period of upheaval. For several weeks, the price of gems has been going up, due largely, Happy believes, to all of the gear being dropped in the Timeless Isle. Golden Lotus is the primary ingredient in making a gem, and the price for them has increased from a pretty stable 50g to 65 gold and up, depending how desperate the buyer is, as shortages of Golden Lotus are common. This increase in cost has driven the price of the gems ever higher. In the extreme example, Vermilion Onyx gems went from around 100g to has high as 198g.
Over the past week plus, however, the bottom seemed to fall out. Gem prices plummeted, and the price of Golden Lotus started jumping all over the place, though usually down. Happy has decided to interpret this as good news to buy up the lower prices gems and Golden Lotus. With gem prices down as far as 49g for some, this has the potential of a windfall for Happy should the prices settle at normal rates. Happy could then make a killing. Or, the price could settle at a lower level not worth selling them off. In that case, Happy will pass the gems to JB so she can learn gem enchants using low cost gems. It's all good. :-)
Yes, this is one of those "Happyface" posts with Fist as a guest commentator.
Fist doesn't have much real use for the Timeless Isle coins that she gets with every kill and quest completion. Sometimes she gets coins just for picking her nose - but let's not go there. She does have a bit of a gambling habit, though, and her new favorite friend on the Isle lately is Kukuru, who lives in a cave full of treasure chests of every size and description. It would be more challenging if gamblers could try to deduce which chests were likely to have the best loot, but, sadly, every chest has the same chance for loot as any other chest. The odds never change.
Fist brought 17,548 coins to her first visit to Kukuru. Each bet she made cost 500 coins. Every bet returns something. There is a 99.8% chance that the "reward" is in coins ranging from a low of 100 coins (the lowest amount Fist received) to - very rarely - a reward as high as 650 coins. It's pretty obvious that this is a losing proposition, although it can be very addicting, since the coins received back can be fed back in again.
The important aspect of this obsession is the 0.2% chance that the reward isn't coins. Fist made 39 bets. Four rewards were for something other than coins. Three of the rewards were i496 gear, the same gear picked up in the moss-covered treasure chests. Those are mostly useless, since Fist, Wild, Philly, JB and even Tiphaine have nearly full i496 gears sets now. Fist also won a pet named Bonkers to add to the families still growing collection of pets for pet battles. Bonkers rewards are fairly common, though.
The one truly valuable reward is a Burden of Eternity. The explanation for what this does is a little confusing, but this is how I think it works. First, you have to have an i496 piece of gear that has not yet been transformed into an equipable item. Using the Burden on that item upgrades the item from i496 to i535. Now that is a tangible reward. One caveat, though, is that doing this makes the item Soulbound, NOT BOA, so make sure the upgrade is done by the character that you intend to use the gear. Early on, Burdens dropped pretty frequently. Now they are very, very rare.
Math Quiz: Blizz doesn't reveal the odds of winning a Burden from gambling with Kukuru. However, I know that Master Li sells Burdens for 50,000 coins apiece. Wild is still trying to get that many coins, himself, for the trinket he wants to buy (he has about 39,000 now). Many players find it easy to amass that many coins over a short period of time. Wild and Fist, alas, don't have the talent for that. Using that value as the base is how I came up with the percentages, assuming that the gambling odds matched the likelihood of a Burden dropped. The odds of that, by my calculation, is 500 to 1 odds.
Way back at the top of the post I mentioned that Fist started with 17,548 coins. When she stopped betting after the 39th bet, she had 10,748 coins left. I expect that she will gamble away those coins, having nothing better to do with them.
The gem market is going through a period of upheaval. For several weeks, the price of gems has been going up, due largely, Happy believes, to all of the gear being dropped in the Timeless Isle. Golden Lotus is the primary ingredient in making a gem, and the price for them has increased from a pretty stable 50g to 65 gold and up, depending how desperate the buyer is, as shortages of Golden Lotus are common. This increase in cost has driven the price of the gems ever higher. In the extreme example, Vermilion Onyx gems went from around 100g to has high as 198g.
Over the past week plus, however, the bottom seemed to fall out. Gem prices plummeted, and the price of Golden Lotus started jumping all over the place, though usually down. Happy has decided to interpret this as good news to buy up the lower prices gems and Golden Lotus. With gem prices down as far as 49g for some, this has the potential of a windfall for Happy should the prices settle at normal rates. Happy could then make a killing. Or, the price could settle at a lower level not worth selling them off. In that case, Happy will pass the gems to JB so she can learn gem enchants using low cost gems. It's all good. :-)
Monday, October 21, 2013
FRAPS!
FRAPS!
Late Saturday night Wild was both drunk and bored, a very bad combination. Wild's first thought was to head over to the Timeless Isle, but in his current condition those level 90 elites would tear him into little pieces. Fist didn't fancy having to put him back together and warned him she'd feed him to the sharks if he turned up at the Isle.
Wild wandered around Orgrimmar looking for trouble, and wound up on a blimp headed - well, he wasn't quite sure. The captain tossed him off his boat in Stranglethorn Vale. Some time later Wild found himself at the entrance to Blackrock Mountain, and once inside, to the entrance to Blackwing Lair. Seeing where he was going, I got the screen video capture program going, but my latest tryout failed miserably. The sample video was terrible using a program called SMRecorder.
Wild didn't really care that much. He just wanted to kill things. He was disappointed that the first boss, Razorgore, was already dead, having forgotten he'd killed the dragon a few days ago. No matter, BWL has lots of dragons. And so it began. The second boss in BWL is Vaelestraz. Wild found the dragon to be whiny and he pleaded with Wild to do the deed and kill him off. In Wild's bleary past he was always up on the second floor overlooking Vael's lair; now he was at ground zero. Vael rambled on so long Wild almost dozed off, but at last the dragon was ready and Wild killed him. Forgetting a little spell called Burning Adrenaline, Wild stayed around a little too long and died of stupidity when the spell fried him.
There are five more encounters Wild faced before getting to the final boss. Wild's favorite was the Broodlord suppression chamber. Saddled with devices that slowed him to a crawl, Wild slow motioned around blasting the thousands of creatures that descended on him. It took a very long time, but he finally came out the other end half buried in goo.
Then there were the mobs guarding three more dragons. The dragons were easy, but there these really pesky mages that had the audacity to be IMMUNE to Wild's ranged attacks. So Wild shifted into cat form and purred as he cut them into ribbons. Those mages weren't immune to claws and teeth.
Wild feared the Chromagous encounter back in his level 60 days. Chromagous is the last boss before meeting the baddest of the dragons, Nefarion. Wild needed maybe ten seconds to kill Chromagous.
Wild entered the area where Nefarian will appear. Wild has been there before, though he never killed Nefarian as a level 60. Wild did get his kill, though, with a group of 13 players. I don't recall what level they were at the time, probably our 70s, but we had a blast tearing through BWL and taking on Nefarian. It wasn't an easy fight, and only two players survived the final encounter, one of which was Wild. I'll have to dig up that post. Anyway, as a level 90 not even Nefarian had a chance. Nefarian did force Wild into cat form several times, but that barely slowed Wild down. Wild got his kill.
On Sunday morning Wild found an old friend. FRAPS is the screen capture program I originally used to capture video footage from the screen. I'd forgotten what that program was called until I stumbled over it looking for similar programs. In some limited testing FRAPS worked great. Very good, crisp video with smooth movement. Even better, the company still had my registration on file and the upgrade to their current edition was free. Can't argue with that.
I may send a hopefully more sober Wild back into BWL after the reset to get the video done. And if anyone would like to come along we could make shorter work of that suppression room.
I still haven't found the original video I shot back in, well, 2007 sometime I think. I don't have the posts before 2009 in the blog. I do have those earlier posts, but finding where I archived them will take some digging. One of these days I'll copy them into the blog . . .
Here is a couple of dates. Wild earned his BWL attunement by completing UBRS on 19 June, 2006. He made his first BWL raid with a group of forty level 60s two months later, on 12 August 2006. I was visiting family on the east coast, and I bought my Mom a new computer for Christmas just so I could use her old one for WoW. How's that for commitment?
In the never say never category, I ran across this quote while looking up those dates: Wildshard, on 19 June 2006: "... I can't see me ever spending enough time to get another toon all the way to 60."
Late Saturday night Wild was both drunk and bored, a very bad combination. Wild's first thought was to head over to the Timeless Isle, but in his current condition those level 90 elites would tear him into little pieces. Fist didn't fancy having to put him back together and warned him she'd feed him to the sharks if he turned up at the Isle.
Wild wandered around Orgrimmar looking for trouble, and wound up on a blimp headed - well, he wasn't quite sure. The captain tossed him off his boat in Stranglethorn Vale. Some time later Wild found himself at the entrance to Blackrock Mountain, and once inside, to the entrance to Blackwing Lair. Seeing where he was going, I got the screen video capture program going, but my latest tryout failed miserably. The sample video was terrible using a program called SMRecorder.
Wild didn't really care that much. He just wanted to kill things. He was disappointed that the first boss, Razorgore, was already dead, having forgotten he'd killed the dragon a few days ago. No matter, BWL has lots of dragons. And so it began. The second boss in BWL is Vaelestraz. Wild found the dragon to be whiny and he pleaded with Wild to do the deed and kill him off. In Wild's bleary past he was always up on the second floor overlooking Vael's lair; now he was at ground zero. Vael rambled on so long Wild almost dozed off, but at last the dragon was ready and Wild killed him. Forgetting a little spell called Burning Adrenaline, Wild stayed around a little too long and died of stupidity when the spell fried him.
There are five more encounters Wild faced before getting to the final boss. Wild's favorite was the Broodlord suppression chamber. Saddled with devices that slowed him to a crawl, Wild slow motioned around blasting the thousands of creatures that descended on him. It took a very long time, but he finally came out the other end half buried in goo.
Then there were the mobs guarding three more dragons. The dragons were easy, but there these really pesky mages that had the audacity to be IMMUNE to Wild's ranged attacks. So Wild shifted into cat form and purred as he cut them into ribbons. Those mages weren't immune to claws and teeth.
Wild feared the Chromagous encounter back in his level 60 days. Chromagous is the last boss before meeting the baddest of the dragons, Nefarion. Wild needed maybe ten seconds to kill Chromagous.
Wild entered the area where Nefarian will appear. Wild has been there before, though he never killed Nefarian as a level 60. Wild did get his kill, though, with a group of 13 players. I don't recall what level they were at the time, probably our 70s, but we had a blast tearing through BWL and taking on Nefarian. It wasn't an easy fight, and only two players survived the final encounter, one of which was Wild. I'll have to dig up that post. Anyway, as a level 90 not even Nefarian had a chance. Nefarian did force Wild into cat form several times, but that barely slowed Wild down. Wild got his kill.
On Sunday morning Wild found an old friend. FRAPS is the screen capture program I originally used to capture video footage from the screen. I'd forgotten what that program was called until I stumbled over it looking for similar programs. In some limited testing FRAPS worked great. Very good, crisp video with smooth movement. Even better, the company still had my registration on file and the upgrade to their current edition was free. Can't argue with that.
I may send a hopefully more sober Wild back into BWL after the reset to get the video done. And if anyone would like to come along we could make shorter work of that suppression room.
I still haven't found the original video I shot back in, well, 2007 sometime I think. I don't have the posts before 2009 in the blog. I do have those earlier posts, but finding where I archived them will take some digging. One of these days I'll copy them into the blog . . .
Here is a couple of dates. Wild earned his BWL attunement by completing UBRS on 19 June, 2006. He made his first BWL raid with a group of forty level 60s two months later, on 12 August 2006. I was visiting family on the east coast, and I bought my Mom a new computer for Christmas just so I could use her old one for WoW. How's that for commitment?
In the never say never category, I ran across this quote while looking up those dates: Wildshard, on 19 June 2006: "... I can't see me ever spending enough time to get another toon all the way to 60."
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Classic Raids - Blackwing Lair
Classic Raids - Blackwing Lair
It all started with a fellow called Jonn-Dar. Wild was feeling nostalgic one morning and was leafing through his journal of past raids, reliving the many conquests from years of raiding. He wondered . . . Wild dragged out a large chest and rummaged around in it, brushing aside the annoying spider webs, and the even more annoying spiders he disturbed. Ah, there it is. Wild pulled out a common looking, book sized leather case. It was frayed at the edges and could have used a coat of oil to soften the dried leather. He read the simple lettering on the cover: Blackwing Lair. Wild opened the case. It was empty. Disappointed, but not surprised, he would just have to dig deeper into the mound of keepsakes and other junk that had piled up over the years.
Wild had the inkling of an idea. The missing tome was a magical rendering of one of the last Blackwing Lair (BWL) raids Wild participated in. Wild made a note to find that entry in the journal. Anyway, after the raid was finished and the other thirty-nine raiders had left, Wild stayed behind. The raid had swept the dungeon clear of hostiles, with the exception of the chamber where Nefarian, the final boss, still waited. We had not been able to take him down. As far as Wild knew, Nefarian waited there still.
BWL is a raid dungeon built for level 60 raiders - forty of them. Thinking back to that time, it was an eery place to be with all of his fellow raiders gone and the hostiles defeated and swept away. Wild shrugged off the feeling. Using the magic of the place, Wild recorded each and every chamber, naming each of the terrifying creatures we'd faced down and dispatched, and recounting special battles. Wild even sought the help of an artist friend who agreed to provide original music to further capture the sense of the place.
Wild wanted to go back there. The magic of the original tome had faded over time. He wanted to make a new one, a better one. Could he?
BWL is one raid that was not upgraded to a higher level difficulty. It has survived intact as a level sixty, forty man raid despite the coming of the many expansions that had altered other great raids. The one change made to BWL is that a "solo" option has been added so a player wanting to go into BWL did not have to be in a raid. This did not mean that the raid was easy, even for a level 90 player. Is one level 90 the equal or better of forty level 60s? In terms of pure power - yes. Those old raids bosses, though, had a lot of tricks up their sleeves, and it was designed such that multiple tasks had to accomplished, often simultaneously. It was doable. There was proof of that. But was it doable for Wild?
The first boss is Razorgore. The encounter was intended to test the coordination and team play of forty raiders, which was essential to conquering BWL. A raid that couldn't work as a team would never get past this first boss. Wild doesn't have a very good memory of the details of most of the raids he's been a part of, but with BWL, Wild still has a good sense of each of the bosses. Razorgore is also the toughest boss to solo, because part of the fight requires keeping Razorgore alive (ie, by killing the dragon's attackers) while at the same time destroying the piles of eggs that litter the floor of the chamber. That's extremely difficult for one player to accomplish.
What has this got to do with Jonn-Dar? This rare level 86 elite in the Valley of Eternal Blossoms drops i410 gloves when killed. At least that's what he drops most of the time. However, there is a 15% chance that Jonn-Dar will cough up an item called a Terracotta Fragment. This is a trinket that summons a warrior to fight for Wild. Players attempting to solo Razorgore use the warrior to keep the mobs attacking Razorgore at bay while the player is destroying eggs.
Jonn-Dar is a "rare," but he always spawns in exactly the same place and re-spawns after a kill in an hour or so. If Wild were patient, and not disturbed by others also after Jonn-Dar, he might have a chance to get that trinket.
Wild was blowing some time clearing out the turtles that congregate in the area that Jonn-Dar spawns, and as luck would have it he popped into existence right on top of Wild, who had been lazy and was only at 65% health. Scrambling, Wild tossed off some attacks and went to work of the level 86 elite. After getting over the surprise, Wild quickly figured out Jonn-Dar's pattern of attack, and after that it was a matter of wearing the guy down. He has over 1.5 million health, so it took Wild some time to bring him down. Wild eventually killed him without too much fuss, but a pair of gloves dropped, not the fragment. Well, Wild knew it might take awhile. Wild parked himself in the area and waited. I spent the afternoon watching the baseball game and killed Jonn-Dar four times. No fragment. The Dodgers won it over the Cardinals, 6-4, and lived to play another game. The Missus and I are hoping that the Los Angeles Dodgers (Judi's pick to win) and the Detroit Tigers (my pick to win) end up in the World Series facing each other. The two teams still need to get past their current opponents, the St Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox. Sorry, all that baseball talk just sort of slipped out.
On Wild's fifth kill of Jonn-dar, the Terracotta Fragment dropped. Wild needs to put together his plan.
It all started with a fellow called Jonn-Dar. Wild was feeling nostalgic one morning and was leafing through his journal of past raids, reliving the many conquests from years of raiding. He wondered . . . Wild dragged out a large chest and rummaged around in it, brushing aside the annoying spider webs, and the even more annoying spiders he disturbed. Ah, there it is. Wild pulled out a common looking, book sized leather case. It was frayed at the edges and could have used a coat of oil to soften the dried leather. He read the simple lettering on the cover: Blackwing Lair. Wild opened the case. It was empty. Disappointed, but not surprised, he would just have to dig deeper into the mound of keepsakes and other junk that had piled up over the years.
Wild had the inkling of an idea. The missing tome was a magical rendering of one of the last Blackwing Lair (BWL) raids Wild participated in. Wild made a note to find that entry in the journal. Anyway, after the raid was finished and the other thirty-nine raiders had left, Wild stayed behind. The raid had swept the dungeon clear of hostiles, with the exception of the chamber where Nefarian, the final boss, still waited. We had not been able to take him down. As far as Wild knew, Nefarian waited there still.
BWL is a raid dungeon built for level 60 raiders - forty of them. Thinking back to that time, it was an eery place to be with all of his fellow raiders gone and the hostiles defeated and swept away. Wild shrugged off the feeling. Using the magic of the place, Wild recorded each and every chamber, naming each of the terrifying creatures we'd faced down and dispatched, and recounting special battles. Wild even sought the help of an artist friend who agreed to provide original music to further capture the sense of the place.
Wild wanted to go back there. The magic of the original tome had faded over time. He wanted to make a new one, a better one. Could he?
BWL is one raid that was not upgraded to a higher level difficulty. It has survived intact as a level sixty, forty man raid despite the coming of the many expansions that had altered other great raids. The one change made to BWL is that a "solo" option has been added so a player wanting to go into BWL did not have to be in a raid. This did not mean that the raid was easy, even for a level 90 player. Is one level 90 the equal or better of forty level 60s? In terms of pure power - yes. Those old raids bosses, though, had a lot of tricks up their sleeves, and it was designed such that multiple tasks had to accomplished, often simultaneously. It was doable. There was proof of that. But was it doable for Wild?
The first boss is Razorgore. The encounter was intended to test the coordination and team play of forty raiders, which was essential to conquering BWL. A raid that couldn't work as a team would never get past this first boss. Wild doesn't have a very good memory of the details of most of the raids he's been a part of, but with BWL, Wild still has a good sense of each of the bosses. Razorgore is also the toughest boss to solo, because part of the fight requires keeping Razorgore alive (ie, by killing the dragon's attackers) while at the same time destroying the piles of eggs that litter the floor of the chamber. That's extremely difficult for one player to accomplish.
What has this got to do with Jonn-Dar? This rare level 86 elite in the Valley of Eternal Blossoms drops i410 gloves when killed. At least that's what he drops most of the time. However, there is a 15% chance that Jonn-Dar will cough up an item called a Terracotta Fragment. This is a trinket that summons a warrior to fight for Wild. Players attempting to solo Razorgore use the warrior to keep the mobs attacking Razorgore at bay while the player is destroying eggs.
Jonn-Dar is a "rare," but he always spawns in exactly the same place and re-spawns after a kill in an hour or so. If Wild were patient, and not disturbed by others also after Jonn-Dar, he might have a chance to get that trinket.
Wild was blowing some time clearing out the turtles that congregate in the area that Jonn-Dar spawns, and as luck would have it he popped into existence right on top of Wild, who had been lazy and was only at 65% health. Scrambling, Wild tossed off some attacks and went to work of the level 86 elite. After getting over the surprise, Wild quickly figured out Jonn-Dar's pattern of attack, and after that it was a matter of wearing the guy down. He has over 1.5 million health, so it took Wild some time to bring him down. Wild eventually killed him without too much fuss, but a pair of gloves dropped, not the fragment. Well, Wild knew it might take awhile. Wild parked himself in the area and waited. I spent the afternoon watching the baseball game and killed Jonn-Dar four times. No fragment. The Dodgers won it over the Cardinals, 6-4, and lived to play another game. The Missus and I are hoping that the Los Angeles Dodgers (Judi's pick to win) and the Detroit Tigers (my pick to win) end up in the World Series facing each other. The two teams still need to get past their current opponents, the St Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox. Sorry, all that baseball talk just sort of slipped out.
On Wild's fifth kill of Jonn-dar, the Terracotta Fragment dropped. Wild needs to put together his plan.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Rolo's Riddle
Rolo's Riddle
Rolo's Riddle is a Timeless Isle quest. There are three parts to it. Like a scavenger hunt, each part requires finding a hidden treasure chest. I kept hearing how hard the quest was, and how awesome the final reward for completing it. Wild was very excited when he found the quest in a pile of dirt. Part one started Wild off easy, and he found the treasure quickly. Wild got a little gold for his effort, and then he was off on part two. Wild had no trouble locating the second treasure chest, either, but there was a catch. There is a spot on the Isle where there is a very concentrated group of level 91/92 elites. They are quite nasty and attack in groups if you wander into their midst. Wild found that out the hard way when he first visited the Isle. The treasure chest was at the far back of that area. Wild thought he was being clever when he first tried to reach the chest by swimming around to the back. Sorry, but the raised area was too steep to climb. So, Wild went back around to the front, shifted into cat form, became invisible, and walked right through the lot of them to the chest. They never suspected a thing. Wild collected a few more gold for finding the second chest. He could have slipped into the water and avoided another walk through the elites . . . no way, Wild brazenly slipped back through their ranks without any problems.
The third and final part of the quest is the most interesting and challenging. That final chest is on the grassy shore of a high mountain lake that can't be reached on foot or ground mount. Since flying mounts aren't allowed on the Isle, that left them out, too. Those who have the means to slow fall or other method of not DYING when falling from high places can use a trick to get there. It involves swimming far enough away from the Isle to be able to fly again, then rise VERY high up and use a slow fall method of some kind to glide close enough to land in or near the lake. Wild tried that method twice, hoping his cat form's built in damage buffer and a spell called barkskin that hardens him against the landing would suffice. Two tries were enough. Wild could not glide well enough to reach the lake. At least he only killed himself once in the two tries.
The other method sounded like the most fun. Here's how it works. Wild took up a position near the Celestial Court where seagulls occasionally fly relatively close to the ground. It took some waiting, but eventually a gull glided past close enough for Wild to attack it. After hitting it, the annoyed bird flew down, grabbed Wild, and carried him up into the sky. Cool! The gull tracked along the Isle, roughly following the path that leads to the higher elevations of the island. There is a treasure chest on two tall spires of rock that the seagull passes over. Wild saw the first chest, and was tempted to try to retrieve it, but instead let the gull continue on it's way. Completing the quest was the first priority. The seagull flies around pretty slowly, so it's a good chance to get a real bird's eye view other parts of the island.
Eventually, the seagull came over the lake. Wild began attacking the gull again, and as long as Wild kept banging on the gull, it stayed in place. Stop hitting it and it would try to fly away. Wild soon killed the gull, and began to fall into the lake. Wild probably didn't need to slip into cat form or use his barkskin, but it didn't hurt, either, and Wild survived the fall with no damage at all. Wild found the third treasure and completed the quest. While up there, Wild found a pet battle pet that he didn't have and captured it. There are some more unique pets up there Wild will be after some other time. A special elite also spawns in that lake, and Wild had a chance to take it on. What the heck, might as well. It didn't go well for Wild, but it was fun trying. After resurrecting, Wild collected his reward - a chest with appropriate gear for the spec - ie, for Wild, a leather healing item. What he got was yet another pair or i496 bracers, which neither Wild nor Fist have any need of. So, very fun quest, very poor reward. That said, Wild went back to the Celestial Court, caught a ride with another seagull, and soon collected two more prizes from the other treasure chests. Lucky Fist. An i496 leather shoulders dropped, and with that equipped Fist's ilevel reached i483, beating Wild's i481.
Wild has just over 21,000 timeless coins. He's still working to get the 50,000 needed for the trinket he wants. Wild is trying to pick up the pace - with the help of the major league baseball playoffs, I can watch the games and play on the Timeless Isle at the same time. Although Wild isn't always certain who is rooting for who when the cheering starts.
Rolo's Riddle is a Timeless Isle quest. There are three parts to it. Like a scavenger hunt, each part requires finding a hidden treasure chest. I kept hearing how hard the quest was, and how awesome the final reward for completing it. Wild was very excited when he found the quest in a pile of dirt. Part one started Wild off easy, and he found the treasure quickly. Wild got a little gold for his effort, and then he was off on part two. Wild had no trouble locating the second treasure chest, either, but there was a catch. There is a spot on the Isle where there is a very concentrated group of level 91/92 elites. They are quite nasty and attack in groups if you wander into their midst. Wild found that out the hard way when he first visited the Isle. The treasure chest was at the far back of that area. Wild thought he was being clever when he first tried to reach the chest by swimming around to the back. Sorry, but the raised area was too steep to climb. So, Wild went back around to the front, shifted into cat form, became invisible, and walked right through the lot of them to the chest. They never suspected a thing. Wild collected a few more gold for finding the second chest. He could have slipped into the water and avoided another walk through the elites . . . no way, Wild brazenly slipped back through their ranks without any problems.
The third and final part of the quest is the most interesting and challenging. That final chest is on the grassy shore of a high mountain lake that can't be reached on foot or ground mount. Since flying mounts aren't allowed on the Isle, that left them out, too. Those who have the means to slow fall or other method of not DYING when falling from high places can use a trick to get there. It involves swimming far enough away from the Isle to be able to fly again, then rise VERY high up and use a slow fall method of some kind to glide close enough to land in or near the lake. Wild tried that method twice, hoping his cat form's built in damage buffer and a spell called barkskin that hardens him against the landing would suffice. Two tries were enough. Wild could not glide well enough to reach the lake. At least he only killed himself once in the two tries.
The other method sounded like the most fun. Here's how it works. Wild took up a position near the Celestial Court where seagulls occasionally fly relatively close to the ground. It took some waiting, but eventually a gull glided past close enough for Wild to attack it. After hitting it, the annoyed bird flew down, grabbed Wild, and carried him up into the sky. Cool! The gull tracked along the Isle, roughly following the path that leads to the higher elevations of the island. There is a treasure chest on two tall spires of rock that the seagull passes over. Wild saw the first chest, and was tempted to try to retrieve it, but instead let the gull continue on it's way. Completing the quest was the first priority. The seagull flies around pretty slowly, so it's a good chance to get a real bird's eye view other parts of the island.
Eventually, the seagull came over the lake. Wild began attacking the gull again, and as long as Wild kept banging on the gull, it stayed in place. Stop hitting it and it would try to fly away. Wild soon killed the gull, and began to fall into the lake. Wild probably didn't need to slip into cat form or use his barkskin, but it didn't hurt, either, and Wild survived the fall with no damage at all. Wild found the third treasure and completed the quest. While up there, Wild found a pet battle pet that he didn't have and captured it. There are some more unique pets up there Wild will be after some other time. A special elite also spawns in that lake, and Wild had a chance to take it on. What the heck, might as well. It didn't go well for Wild, but it was fun trying. After resurrecting, Wild collected his reward - a chest with appropriate gear for the spec - ie, for Wild, a leather healing item. What he got was yet another pair or i496 bracers, which neither Wild nor Fist have any need of. So, very fun quest, very poor reward. That said, Wild went back to the Celestial Court, caught a ride with another seagull, and soon collected two more prizes from the other treasure chests. Lucky Fist. An i496 leather shoulders dropped, and with that equipped Fist's ilevel reached i483, beating Wild's i481.
Wild has just over 21,000 timeless coins. He's still working to get the 50,000 needed for the trinket he wants. Wild is trying to pick up the pace - with the help of the major league baseball playoffs, I can watch the games and play on the Timeless Isle at the same time. Although Wild isn't always certain who is rooting for who when the cheering starts.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Mounting Frustration and General Meanderings
Mounting Frustration and General Meanderings
Wild spent the past two evenings at the Darkmoon Faire, primarily to try and capture a Crow. The combat pet Crow can only be found during the Faire, and are pretty rare even then. Wild never saw a Crow in the wilderness surrounding the Faire, but there were the occasional blowflies (well, I guess they were glowflies, but they're still just bugs). I figured that crows were secondary combat pets, and eventually Wild did capture a poor quality crow (grey), the Speed/Speed version. Wild can upgrade it to a rare, but I'm hoping to get a better power/speed combination and will keep looking until the Faire closes in a week.
Wild's most needed piece of gear is a trinket (i409). He has three overlapping plans to acquire one. (1) Wild is growing tired of the Timeless Isle, and the endless farming of elites and coins. He hasn't seen a treasure chest in days. He'll keep going back, though, to get coins to buy a high powered trinket that can be earned there. Wild needs 50,000 coins, but only has a little over 13,000 so far. (2) Wild has two sets of Darkmoon cards, one of serpents, and one of cranes, both of which make very nice trinkets. However, I am missing one darkmoon card from each set, and without one of them, no trinket. If Wild gets his Darkmoon trinket he might give up on the Isle completely. (3) If Wild gets into an LFR raid, that might also solve his trinket problem, since the bosses in those early Pandaria raids drop trinkets.
Wild is still fussing about, though, dragging his feet and claiming he needed to work on some "things." Wild's ongoing preps for raiding hit another snag when a favored addon went on the fritz. It tracks Lifebloom and Harmony stacks, two critical healing elements that must always be active. It was working (somewhat) last week, but is balking this week. Then, in the middle of trying to work out those kinks, Wild was disconnected from the game. Disconnects are becoming more and more frequent, up to several times a day. I know the drill. If I complain, Blizzard will just link the standard fix-it notes that involve hours upon hours of deleting/scrubbing files and folders. Then there are more hours of rebuilding the destroyed user interface caused by the scrubbing. Even after all that work, the odds that the disconnects were fixed are about 50/50. I'm not sure I want to go through all that.
Fist was embarrassed when she earned an i496 Timeless cloak and forgot to change her spec to get the healing cape. Instead, she got her second DPS cape, which she has no need of. I put in a ticket with Blizzard. Maybe someone will take pity on Fist and swap her a healing cape. We won't mention her two deaths - because she forgot to change back to DPS spec and was battling elites in her healing gear.
Finally, it was something of a pleasure to watch an alliance death knight at work on the Timeless Isle. He had drawn not just one, but two level 91 elites (some kind of moss monster). He was patiently and expertly kiting them across the Isle to the Celestial Court. It was a long, slow slog, and few helped him, which I think is the way he wanted it. It was obvious he wasn't trying to kill them outright, since most of his effort was just to keep himself alive. I soon realized what he was doing. The death knight was kiting the monsters into the path of the non player characters at the Court, who obligingly began attacking the monsters and helping the death knight once he got them close enough. The two elites went down once the npcs came to his aid. Nicely done.
Wild spent the past two evenings at the Darkmoon Faire, primarily to try and capture a Crow. The combat pet Crow can only be found during the Faire, and are pretty rare even then. Wild never saw a Crow in the wilderness surrounding the Faire, but there were the occasional blowflies (well, I guess they were glowflies, but they're still just bugs). I figured that crows were secondary combat pets, and eventually Wild did capture a poor quality crow (grey), the Speed/Speed version. Wild can upgrade it to a rare, but I'm hoping to get a better power/speed combination and will keep looking until the Faire closes in a week.
Wild's most needed piece of gear is a trinket (i409). He has three overlapping plans to acquire one. (1) Wild is growing tired of the Timeless Isle, and the endless farming of elites and coins. He hasn't seen a treasure chest in days. He'll keep going back, though, to get coins to buy a high powered trinket that can be earned there. Wild needs 50,000 coins, but only has a little over 13,000 so far. (2) Wild has two sets of Darkmoon cards, one of serpents, and one of cranes, both of which make very nice trinkets. However, I am missing one darkmoon card from each set, and without one of them, no trinket. If Wild gets his Darkmoon trinket he might give up on the Isle completely. (3) If Wild gets into an LFR raid, that might also solve his trinket problem, since the bosses in those early Pandaria raids drop trinkets.
Wild is still fussing about, though, dragging his feet and claiming he needed to work on some "things." Wild's ongoing preps for raiding hit another snag when a favored addon went on the fritz. It tracks Lifebloom and Harmony stacks, two critical healing elements that must always be active. It was working (somewhat) last week, but is balking this week. Then, in the middle of trying to work out those kinks, Wild was disconnected from the game. Disconnects are becoming more and more frequent, up to several times a day. I know the drill. If I complain, Blizzard will just link the standard fix-it notes that involve hours upon hours of deleting/scrubbing files and folders. Then there are more hours of rebuilding the destroyed user interface caused by the scrubbing. Even after all that work, the odds that the disconnects were fixed are about 50/50. I'm not sure I want to go through all that.
Fist was embarrassed when she earned an i496 Timeless cloak and forgot to change her spec to get the healing cape. Instead, she got her second DPS cape, which she has no need of. I put in a ticket with Blizzard. Maybe someone will take pity on Fist and swap her a healing cape. We won't mention her two deaths - because she forgot to change back to DPS spec and was battling elites in her healing gear.
Finally, it was something of a pleasure to watch an alliance death knight at work on the Timeless Isle. He had drawn not just one, but two level 91 elites (some kind of moss monster). He was patiently and expertly kiting them across the Isle to the Celestial Court. It was a long, slow slog, and few helped him, which I think is the way he wanted it. It was obvious he wasn't trying to kill them outright, since most of his effort was just to keep himself alive. I soon realized what he was doing. The death knight was kiting the monsters into the path of the non player characters at the Court, who obligingly began attacking the monsters and helping the death knight once he got them close enough. The two elites went down once the npcs came to his aid. Nicely done.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Meitha Calls a Flex Raid
Meitha Calls a Flex Raid
Wild's guild, Meitha, scheduled a flex raid for Friday and Saturday. The target is the new Siege of Orgrimmar (SoO). There are fourteen bosses spread across four wings. Since this is a flex raid, I don't think there is hard requirement for a minimum gear score. The raid leader has the flexibility to invite whoever he wants, and how many he wants, regardless of gear. Of course, gear is an important factor in having a successful raid. Raid difficulty scales in a flex raid, so the more players in the raid, the tougher the content. Raiders with poor gear would certainly hurt the raid. I read somewhere that typical gear requirements were at least in the i510+ range. To be sure, I took a look at those players that had already signed up for the raid:
Raid Leader: Hekktor (i486) - I seriously doubt this is the character the raid leader will use in the raid, considering most of his gear has no gems or enchants in place. I don't recognize the name, so he could be a guildie Wild hasn't met yet, or a friend on an alt I didn't know about. With everyone having multiple level 90 alts these days, it's very hard to keep track. In fact, Hekktor is also Porkkchopp (i497), the guild leader.
Shimmi, friend and superb shaman: (i465), not so good, but again, probably has a better alt.
Sho: (i517), ok, that's more like it.
Vareyne: (i528), looks good.
Adrenalin: (i490), some enchant issues.
Goover: (i530), a good friend who looks ready to rock and roll.
Grommash: (i517) and ready.
I probably can't rely on what character they posted for the raid, although not posting the character you intend to raid with would greatly annoy me were I the raid leader. But, at least it's starting to look like a real raid.
Wild is on the invite list. That's a surprise, although the raid leader might just be casting a large net to see who responds. Wild's gear score has improved since the last report, but it's still only i480, lower than almost everyone on the above list. I can't imagine Wild actually getting an invite, unless the intent is just to see SoO, rather than thinking we could defeat even the first boss. Or the trash mobs, for that matter, assuming there are some. Stay tuned for further developments.
Friday Night - A Raidin' We WON'T Go
Over the glare of the Missus, who had dinner almost ready, I had Wild hang out with the guild for about twenty minutes before raid time. I even checked that Teamspeak was up and running. Back when Wild was raiding the Voice over Internet (Voip) software we used was Ventrilo, but for some reason the guild switched to Teamspeak, which I had never used before. I had no problems connecting to the server or hearing the talk of the other guildies. Of course, Wild doesn't ever actually speak, and I didn't even have a mike hooked up. But Wild was ready.
With ten minutes still to go before raid start time, guild leader Porkkchopp called off the raid. I was surprised. I counted six raid ready players, far less than the ten usually needed, but there was still time to see if others showed up. "We'll try again some other time," the guild leader said. No mention of trying again on Saturday. Meitha's attempt at a raid was over. A couple of the old guard lamented the inability to gather up a raid group from among the over four hundred members of the guild. Honestly, though, there was little enthusiasm, and the group quickly broke up to go do other things.
It was a hard thing to see the decayed state of non-raiding that Meitha had sunk to. It seems like another world now, when "Lady Hunter (Tala)" would cajole, tease, and browbeat guildies to sign up and show up for the weekly raids. If we were short at raid start time, Tala would canvass other guilds and friends, looking to fill in the holes, even when it took us past the start time. Most of the time she was successful, too, so those of us who waited were patient, and were rewarded by being able to raid. Wild's last raid was with G2, on April 18th, 2012. At the time Meitha was "officially" running three raids. However, the G3 raid was listed as "still forming," G1 was "rebuilding," and G2 had lost it's raid leader. It was never the same after that.
Wild had hoped that flex raiding would save raiding. That doesn't seem likely anymore, at least not for Meitha.
Wild's guild, Meitha, scheduled a flex raid for Friday and Saturday. The target is the new Siege of Orgrimmar (SoO). There are fourteen bosses spread across four wings. Since this is a flex raid, I don't think there is hard requirement for a minimum gear score. The raid leader has the flexibility to invite whoever he wants, and how many he wants, regardless of gear. Of course, gear is an important factor in having a successful raid. Raid difficulty scales in a flex raid, so the more players in the raid, the tougher the content. Raiders with poor gear would certainly hurt the raid. I read somewhere that typical gear requirements were at least in the i510+ range. To be sure, I took a look at those players that had already signed up for the raid:
Raid Leader: Hekktor (i486) - I seriously doubt this is the character the raid leader will use in the raid, considering most of his gear has no gems or enchants in place. I don't recognize the name, so he could be a guildie Wild hasn't met yet, or a friend on an alt I didn't know about. With everyone having multiple level 90 alts these days, it's very hard to keep track. In fact, Hekktor is also Porkkchopp (i497), the guild leader.
Shimmi, friend and superb shaman: (i465), not so good, but again, probably has a better alt.
Sho: (i517), ok, that's more like it.
Vareyne: (i528), looks good.
Adrenalin: (i490), some enchant issues.
Goover: (i530), a good friend who looks ready to rock and roll.
Grommash: (i517) and ready.
I probably can't rely on what character they posted for the raid, although not posting the character you intend to raid with would greatly annoy me were I the raid leader. But, at least it's starting to look like a real raid.
Wild is on the invite list. That's a surprise, although the raid leader might just be casting a large net to see who responds. Wild's gear score has improved since the last report, but it's still only i480, lower than almost everyone on the above list. I can't imagine Wild actually getting an invite, unless the intent is just to see SoO, rather than thinking we could defeat even the first boss. Or the trash mobs, for that matter, assuming there are some. Stay tuned for further developments.
Friday Night - A Raidin' We WON'T Go
Over the glare of the Missus, who had dinner almost ready, I had Wild hang out with the guild for about twenty minutes before raid time. I even checked that Teamspeak was up and running. Back when Wild was raiding the Voice over Internet (Voip) software we used was Ventrilo, but for some reason the guild switched to Teamspeak, which I had never used before. I had no problems connecting to the server or hearing the talk of the other guildies. Of course, Wild doesn't ever actually speak, and I didn't even have a mike hooked up. But Wild was ready.
With ten minutes still to go before raid start time, guild leader Porkkchopp called off the raid. I was surprised. I counted six raid ready players, far less than the ten usually needed, but there was still time to see if others showed up. "We'll try again some other time," the guild leader said. No mention of trying again on Saturday. Meitha's attempt at a raid was over. A couple of the old guard lamented the inability to gather up a raid group from among the over four hundred members of the guild. Honestly, though, there was little enthusiasm, and the group quickly broke up to go do other things.
It was a hard thing to see the decayed state of non-raiding that Meitha had sunk to. It seems like another world now, when "Lady Hunter (Tala)" would cajole, tease, and browbeat guildies to sign up and show up for the weekly raids. If we were short at raid start time, Tala would canvass other guilds and friends, looking to fill in the holes, even when it took us past the start time. Most of the time she was successful, too, so those of us who waited were patient, and were rewarded by being able to raid. Wild's last raid was with G2, on April 18th, 2012. At the time Meitha was "officially" running three raids. However, the G3 raid was listed as "still forming," G1 was "rebuilding," and G2 had lost it's raid leader. It was never the same after that.
Wild had hoped that flex raiding would save raiding. That doesn't seem likely anymore, at least not for Meitha.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
The Proving Grounds
The Proving Grounds
The Proving Grounds is a new mechanism that allows individual players to practice in a five-man dungeon like atmosphere. Players can practice damage dealing (DPS), healing, and tanking with four other non-player characters. There are four levels of difficulty: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Endless. The battles are very similar to that of a real five man dungeon. The Proving Grounds is an instanced dungeon that Wild entered by talking with his druid trainer.
Wild selected the healing scenario. Four non-player characters were added to make up the five man group: Wild, a tank, and three DPS. Wild's gear was automatically set to a standard set in order to balance the event - in other words, the level of gear didn't matter. All of the normal buffs and debuffs that a dungeon group would be expected to have were provided automatically, except food and flask buffs, which Wild would have to provide for himself, but didn't bother with for this first test. By standardizing all of this, the only non-standard factor was the player.
The dungeon challenge was to defeat several waves of attackers (five waves, I think) while keeping everyone in the group alive. Wild could not use his Rebirth spell (to revive a dead player). A single death would end the battle in failure.
Let me first point out that I knew nothing about the above the first time I entered the Proving Grounds. All Wild knew about it was that he could get there by asking the Druid Trainer, and that Wild could "practice" his healing there.
Wild has not healed anyone but himself in many, many months, but he still had his spell bars and stuff, so how hard could it be? Wild smiled complacently at Trial Master Rotun, and asked for the lowest level of difficulty, the Bronze. The battle started after a ten second countdown. Wild's tank died on the third wave. The poor tank apologized to Wild, promising to train harder and do a better job next time. Ok, the tank is nothing but pixels, but I still felt bad for him and my group. I'd failed them.
So ended my first visit to the Proving Grounds.
I thought Wild's healing reflexes would just automatically kick in once I got started. The sad fact, though, is that Wild has lost those reflexes - the hand/brain reflexes that know what key or button to hit without thinking about it or looking for it on the keyboard. I'm not sure how long it will take to beat the rust off of Wild's healing abilities. I know I won't be putting real players at risk until Wild has re-mastered that art and can defeat the Proving Grounds at least up to Gold.
After licking his wounds and bolstering his confidence with a few days of killing elites on the Timeless Isle, Wild made some adjustments and returned to the Proving Grounds. Wild rebuilt his mouseover spell casting into the same mold he used when raiding. The comfort level went up greatly, although I knew I'd still be checking on spell casts visually for awhile, until it became automatic again. Wild also used his flask and food buffs.
This time things went better. The first two waves of mobs are pretty easy, but Wild was nervous and overhealed, which would bite him later. The third wave, I believe, is where the group started getting hit with AoE assaults and Wild had to really pick up the healing. Still not much to worry about - except that I failed to check Wild's mana pool, which had gone down by half before I noticed it and was at the start of wave four. Wild Innervated on the fourth wave to gain mana and managed to keep everyone alive. Wave five was another large AoE assault that just went on and on. Wild shifted to Tree of Life, but innervate wasn't up again, yet, and Tree of Life isn't much good if you are out of mana. The tank was still hanging in there, bless him, but a DPS died, and that's a fail. The scenario ended.
Things Wild did wrong: Waited too long to innervate (check mana often!), so didn't have it available a second time; did not use Nature's Swiftness, which would have saved mana; didn't use swiftmend, another mana saver; did not use efflorescence effects from wild mushrooms, which also alleviates mana and greatly increases healing; waited too long before shifting into Tree of Life. Wild has a minor excuse for the wild mushrooms. Wild is not used to them, and never had them for healing during his raiding days. Wild had just set up a new glyph so that the powerful efflorescence healing effect was procced by wild mushrooms instead of swiftmend. Wild completely forgot about dropping his mushroom to get that effect.
It's sounds crazy, but Wild was as nervous in the Proving Grounds as he is in a real dungeon with real players. I love it, though. Wild can go back into the Grounds over and over, working on memorizing his spell casting and making use of all the abilities Wild has at his disposal to manage his mana and keep his team alive.
The Proving Grounds is a new mechanism that allows individual players to practice in a five-man dungeon like atmosphere. Players can practice damage dealing (DPS), healing, and tanking with four other non-player characters. There are four levels of difficulty: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Endless. The battles are very similar to that of a real five man dungeon. The Proving Grounds is an instanced dungeon that Wild entered by talking with his druid trainer.
Wild selected the healing scenario. Four non-player characters were added to make up the five man group: Wild, a tank, and three DPS. Wild's gear was automatically set to a standard set in order to balance the event - in other words, the level of gear didn't matter. All of the normal buffs and debuffs that a dungeon group would be expected to have were provided automatically, except food and flask buffs, which Wild would have to provide for himself, but didn't bother with for this first test. By standardizing all of this, the only non-standard factor was the player.
The dungeon challenge was to defeat several waves of attackers (five waves, I think) while keeping everyone in the group alive. Wild could not use his Rebirth spell (to revive a dead player). A single death would end the battle in failure.
Let me first point out that I knew nothing about the above the first time I entered the Proving Grounds. All Wild knew about it was that he could get there by asking the Druid Trainer, and that Wild could "practice" his healing there.
Wild has not healed anyone but himself in many, many months, but he still had his spell bars and stuff, so how hard could it be? Wild smiled complacently at Trial Master Rotun, and asked for the lowest level of difficulty, the Bronze. The battle started after a ten second countdown. Wild's tank died on the third wave. The poor tank apologized to Wild, promising to train harder and do a better job next time. Ok, the tank is nothing but pixels, but I still felt bad for him and my group. I'd failed them.
So ended my first visit to the Proving Grounds.
I thought Wild's healing reflexes would just automatically kick in once I got started. The sad fact, though, is that Wild has lost those reflexes - the hand/brain reflexes that know what key or button to hit without thinking about it or looking for it on the keyboard. I'm not sure how long it will take to beat the rust off of Wild's healing abilities. I know I won't be putting real players at risk until Wild has re-mastered that art and can defeat the Proving Grounds at least up to Gold.
After licking his wounds and bolstering his confidence with a few days of killing elites on the Timeless Isle, Wild made some adjustments and returned to the Proving Grounds. Wild rebuilt his mouseover spell casting into the same mold he used when raiding. The comfort level went up greatly, although I knew I'd still be checking on spell casts visually for awhile, until it became automatic again. Wild also used his flask and food buffs.
This time things went better. The first two waves of mobs are pretty easy, but Wild was nervous and overhealed, which would bite him later. The third wave, I believe, is where the group started getting hit with AoE assaults and Wild had to really pick up the healing. Still not much to worry about - except that I failed to check Wild's mana pool, which had gone down by half before I noticed it and was at the start of wave four. Wild Innervated on the fourth wave to gain mana and managed to keep everyone alive. Wave five was another large AoE assault that just went on and on. Wild shifted to Tree of Life, but innervate wasn't up again, yet, and Tree of Life isn't much good if you are out of mana. The tank was still hanging in there, bless him, but a DPS died, and that's a fail. The scenario ended.
Things Wild did wrong: Waited too long to innervate (check mana often!), so didn't have it available a second time; did not use Nature's Swiftness, which would have saved mana; didn't use swiftmend, another mana saver; did not use efflorescence effects from wild mushrooms, which also alleviates mana and greatly increases healing; waited too long before shifting into Tree of Life. Wild has a minor excuse for the wild mushrooms. Wild is not used to them, and never had them for healing during his raiding days. Wild had just set up a new glyph so that the powerful efflorescence healing effect was procced by wild mushrooms instead of swiftmend. Wild completely forgot about dropping his mushroom to get that effect.
It's sounds crazy, but Wild was as nervous in the Proving Grounds as he is in a real dungeon with real players. I love it, though. Wild can go back into the Grounds over and over, working on memorizing his spell casting and making use of all the abilities Wild has at his disposal to manage his mana and keep his team alive.
Monday, September 30, 2013
The Gear Train Slips off the Track
The Gear Train Slips off the Track
Wild is has been slowly improving his Boomkin DPS on the Isle. He no longer dies every time he tackles an elite mob. His first elite kill was a flightless, level 90 elite bird. That kill was pure joy. Wild later proved he could kill the bison like elites as well. His attempts on the elite snakes and tigers have not yet yielded a kill, but Wild came within 2.4% of killing one of the tigers. Overall, Wild has thirteen elite kills. Wild needs to get to twenty to complete a quest.
Part of Wild's issue with the elites is that moonkin spell rotation is based primarily on two spells, wrath and starfire, which must be used during the proper "eclipse" to maximize the damage done. Starfire is a long cast spell and easily interrupted. If Wild uses wrath instead of starfire during the wrong eclipse, his damage dealing falls off considerably. It's a little frustrating, but that's how moonkin combat works. Lots of entangling roots help, but only a little. These elites all seem to have burst damage, too, which is used near the end of a fight. Wild, seeing an elite nearly dead, hangs in there, blasting away with wrath or starfire and ignoring his own health. Then comes the last gasp burst from the elite, and it's Wild that dies instead. He's getter better, as the thirteen elite kills show.
Wild also had the good fortune of being at the right place at the right time. A rare elite, named Tsava'ka (or something like that), spawned at a cave Wild happened to be near. Trade channel chatter burst open with the news, and players began running toward the spawn. There were five of us already in range of the elite, and we all starting pounding it. Rare elites, I was told, can be tagged without having to be in a group. Wild proved that to be true. When Tsava'ka died (he went down pretty fast), Wild received credit for the kill. Since that kill Wild has gotten two more rare elite kills. The Dread Ship Vazuvious was parked in the shallows near the horde camp. Wild was able hit it with a couple of moonfires before the ship sank, although he nearly died in the fires that roared on the surface of the water. Another elite turned up a day later, the Emerald Gander, which Wild also helped kill.
The gear train seems to have ended, though. The weekend was a complete bust for both Wild and Fist, both stuck at i475. Not a single piece of gear dropped. Even finding a treasure chest has been difficult. Wild and/or Fist has been on at all hours of the day and night and the Timeless Isle is still always overwhelmed with players.
Fist was beset with another kind of indignity. According to the WoW Armory, Fist has no weapons. Her pair of maces are gone, and her gear score is an unappealing i416 instead of the i475 it should be. Fortunately, it's a cosmetic problem. The maces are there when she is in game, and they seem to be working as they are supposed to. The problem boils down to a bug in the Armory program. Blizzard "is aware of the issue" but has no estimate on when, or if, it might be fixed.
Wild is has been slowly improving his Boomkin DPS on the Isle. He no longer dies every time he tackles an elite mob. His first elite kill was a flightless, level 90 elite bird. That kill was pure joy. Wild later proved he could kill the bison like elites as well. His attempts on the elite snakes and tigers have not yet yielded a kill, but Wild came within 2.4% of killing one of the tigers. Overall, Wild has thirteen elite kills. Wild needs to get to twenty to complete a quest.
Part of Wild's issue with the elites is that moonkin spell rotation is based primarily on two spells, wrath and starfire, which must be used during the proper "eclipse" to maximize the damage done. Starfire is a long cast spell and easily interrupted. If Wild uses wrath instead of starfire during the wrong eclipse, his damage dealing falls off considerably. It's a little frustrating, but that's how moonkin combat works. Lots of entangling roots help, but only a little. These elites all seem to have burst damage, too, which is used near the end of a fight. Wild, seeing an elite nearly dead, hangs in there, blasting away with wrath or starfire and ignoring his own health. Then comes the last gasp burst from the elite, and it's Wild that dies instead. He's getter better, as the thirteen elite kills show.
Wild also had the good fortune of being at the right place at the right time. A rare elite, named Tsava'ka (or something like that), spawned at a cave Wild happened to be near. Trade channel chatter burst open with the news, and players began running toward the spawn. There were five of us already in range of the elite, and we all starting pounding it. Rare elites, I was told, can be tagged without having to be in a group. Wild proved that to be true. When Tsava'ka died (he went down pretty fast), Wild received credit for the kill. Since that kill Wild has gotten two more rare elite kills. The Dread Ship Vazuvious was parked in the shallows near the horde camp. Wild was able hit it with a couple of moonfires before the ship sank, although he nearly died in the fires that roared on the surface of the water. Another elite turned up a day later, the Emerald Gander, which Wild also helped kill.
The gear train seems to have ended, though. The weekend was a complete bust for both Wild and Fist, both stuck at i475. Not a single piece of gear dropped. Even finding a treasure chest has been difficult. Wild and/or Fist has been on at all hours of the day and night and the Timeless Isle is still always overwhelmed with players.
Fist was beset with another kind of indignity. According to the WoW Armory, Fist has no weapons. Her pair of maces are gone, and her gear score is an unappealing i416 instead of the i475 it should be. Fortunately, it's a cosmetic problem. The maces are there when she is in game, and they seem to be working as they are supposed to. The problem boils down to a bug in the Armory program. Blizzard "is aware of the issue" but has no estimate on when, or if, it might be fixed.
Friday, September 27, 2013
Reflected Glory
Reflected Glory
Wild has always loved raiding. More specifically, Wild loves to raid with his friends. The names of Wild's raiding guilds have changed a number of times over the years. His core group of friends, though, the ones Wild refers to as his "cabal," are the ones who kept Wild playing. The latest guild incarnation, Meitha, remains a very large guild of close to 400 members. No matter the guild name on the banner, raiding was always an up and down adventure, with earnest successes often eclipsed by long periods when raiding went fallow. The driving force behind the groups that Wild raided with was Bloodknuckle. The best raid leader, ever, he was that rare raid leader that got the best out of his team through encouragement, spirit, and a voluminous knowledge of the raids. Raiding was pure fun with Blood at the helm of a raid, whether we slew the monsters or not. However, real life often intervened in Blood's raiding, and when he wasn't and integral part of our raiding, the raids suffered.
Blood remains absent from raiding at present, and until very recently the guild was not raiding at all. The guild leader, Porkkchopp, announced this week that he is starting up the guild's first flex raid over the weekend. Wild had aspirations of getting geared up well enough to sign up for the raid. Then Wild learned that only the most recent raid, the Siege of Orgrimmar (SoO) was available as a flex raid. For that raid, a gear score over over i500 (closer to i510) was needed to be successful. Wild's gear is at i475, well below where it needs to be to raid.
Wild will have to get his raiding fix another way for the time being. Thanks to Unbleached, a friend on the Alliance side who has been raiding SoO, Wild get can get his fix. Here are the results of the latest raid, as told by Unbleached:
"Last night reminds me of why people can love or hate raids. Unbleached, who people have shortened to Bleached (which would make the name the opposite of what it was, ironically), headed off to SoO (Siege of Org).Last night we had cleared out the Vale portion of the raid and moved onto the Gates. Zaela and her proto-drake Galakras, and the Iron Juggernaut were dispatched and we left off right at the gates of Org.
Org has had marshal law declared, so a lot of people are in cages or hiding themselves in their homes. As we entered we had to clear out the Valley of Strength. Unfortunately civilian casualties are unavoidable. Good thing Happy is in UC, we cleared the AH too. Once the Valley is cleared it is time to draw out the Kor’kron Dark Shaman: Kardris and Haromm who are in the center fort where Hellscream had his seat. This job falls to one fast player to run in and run out, thus pulling them out into the open. This player needs to be quick, we lost three in the effort.
This was a HARD fight. I am looking forwarded to watching strat vids on this one to figure out how to survive it easier. The shamans, who share life, ride out on two wolf/dog mounts, fairly easily killed. Once the mounts are dead the shamans drop all sorts of things forcing you to use the whole valley as a fighting ground. Toxic mists that don’t move, toxic storms that do, foul stream that cuts targets one person and cuts a line of foulness to them (hopefully they run it away from the raid), an ashen wall that forms a line based on positioning, which can cut the area in half and you take damage when are near or cross it. Not to mention falling ash, poison mists (different from toxic), and iron tombs… this is the one that you can roll with it or develop a hate for raiding. I am not sure how many attempts we did before we brought them down, 6-7 maybe. But down he went and a new mace came to a very happy Bleached.
After this we cut are way through to the Cleft of Shadows and in the processes freed a very vengeful Gamon. He swore to kill a thousand orcs for everyone who ever beat him. Considering how many over the years picked on Gamon (previous to him becoming an elite), that could wipe out the race. You can either let him run off to wack at people (and eventually die) or you can help him, he will assist with the general, and if he survives, you get an achievement.
The cleft is also in a very sad state. Signs to it read “heretics will burn” and the entry leading down to the cleft is strung with burning warlocks and warlock trainers. But we worked out way down and got to General Nazgrim. The General is a lot more straight forward then the shaman, thank God. You clear out some Org loyalists and start on the General. He fights a very valiant battle, no reference it not being what he hoped, just that he is the warlords fist and loyal to the Horde to the death. Also I previously mentioned that the Dark Lady and the leader of Silvermoon would be there, must have read that wrong or it changed, no sign of them. Maybe it is the Dark Lady and Thoren for the dock area (for the Horde raid) where we got the SW King and Lady Janica.
The General is a fairly straight forward fight. He has three stances, each he is in for about a minute. Defensive, where you do not hit him. Battle, where you attack as usual, and Berserker stance where you pop heroism because he will take more damage then. The trick is to keep his rage down. Do not hit him when he drops a battle standard, this will give him rage, same if you attack him in defensive stance. Some members of our raid had issues figuring this out, even when it was called out to stop attacking :P At so much rage he will release a battle ax(es) that will swing around the room. If it hits you it does a lot of damage (or kills you) and gives him rage when it hits. Same with his stomp, if you are in the wrong spot when it goes off, it gives him rage. Also at certain points he will call in NPCs who have different abilities and priorities and need to be killed.
Since we did not on shot him, Gamon died and we did not get that achievement. Luckily for us we were able to get him by the 3rd try.
Apparently the next wing is not open like I thought, not until next week. So our raid was called and Bleached happily started to dream up names for her new mace. She thinks she will call it Mace. Not very imaginative, our girl. "
Wild has always loved raiding. More specifically, Wild loves to raid with his friends. The names of Wild's raiding guilds have changed a number of times over the years. His core group of friends, though, the ones Wild refers to as his "cabal," are the ones who kept Wild playing. The latest guild incarnation, Meitha, remains a very large guild of close to 400 members. No matter the guild name on the banner, raiding was always an up and down adventure, with earnest successes often eclipsed by long periods when raiding went fallow. The driving force behind the groups that Wild raided with was Bloodknuckle. The best raid leader, ever, he was that rare raid leader that got the best out of his team through encouragement, spirit, and a voluminous knowledge of the raids. Raiding was pure fun with Blood at the helm of a raid, whether we slew the monsters or not. However, real life often intervened in Blood's raiding, and when he wasn't and integral part of our raiding, the raids suffered.
Blood remains absent from raiding at present, and until very recently the guild was not raiding at all. The guild leader, Porkkchopp, announced this week that he is starting up the guild's first flex raid over the weekend. Wild had aspirations of getting geared up well enough to sign up for the raid. Then Wild learned that only the most recent raid, the Siege of Orgrimmar (SoO) was available as a flex raid. For that raid, a gear score over over i500 (closer to i510) was needed to be successful. Wild's gear is at i475, well below where it needs to be to raid.
Wild will have to get his raiding fix another way for the time being. Thanks to Unbleached, a friend on the Alliance side who has been raiding SoO, Wild get can get his fix. Here are the results of the latest raid, as told by Unbleached:
"Last night reminds me of why people can love or hate raids. Unbleached, who people have shortened to Bleached (which would make the name the opposite of what it was, ironically), headed off to SoO (Siege of Org).Last night we had cleared out the Vale portion of the raid and moved onto the Gates. Zaela and her proto-drake Galakras, and the Iron Juggernaut were dispatched and we left off right at the gates of Org.
Org has had marshal law declared, so a lot of people are in cages or hiding themselves in their homes. As we entered we had to clear out the Valley of Strength. Unfortunately civilian casualties are unavoidable. Good thing Happy is in UC, we cleared the AH too. Once the Valley is cleared it is time to draw out the Kor’kron Dark Shaman: Kardris and Haromm who are in the center fort where Hellscream had his seat. This job falls to one fast player to run in and run out, thus pulling them out into the open. This player needs to be quick, we lost three in the effort.
This was a HARD fight. I am looking forwarded to watching strat vids on this one to figure out how to survive it easier. The shamans, who share life, ride out on two wolf/dog mounts, fairly easily killed. Once the mounts are dead the shamans drop all sorts of things forcing you to use the whole valley as a fighting ground. Toxic mists that don’t move, toxic storms that do, foul stream that cuts targets one person and cuts a line of foulness to them (hopefully they run it away from the raid), an ashen wall that forms a line based on positioning, which can cut the area in half and you take damage when are near or cross it. Not to mention falling ash, poison mists (different from toxic), and iron tombs… this is the one that you can roll with it or develop a hate for raiding. I am not sure how many attempts we did before we brought them down, 6-7 maybe. But down he went and a new mace came to a very happy Bleached.
After this we cut are way through to the Cleft of Shadows and in the processes freed a very vengeful Gamon. He swore to kill a thousand orcs for everyone who ever beat him. Considering how many over the years picked on Gamon (previous to him becoming an elite), that could wipe out the race. You can either let him run off to wack at people (and eventually die) or you can help him, he will assist with the general, and if he survives, you get an achievement.
The cleft is also in a very sad state. Signs to it read “heretics will burn” and the entry leading down to the cleft is strung with burning warlocks and warlock trainers. But we worked out way down and got to General Nazgrim. The General is a lot more straight forward then the shaman, thank God. You clear out some Org loyalists and start on the General. He fights a very valiant battle, no reference it not being what he hoped, just that he is the warlords fist and loyal to the Horde to the death. Also I previously mentioned that the Dark Lady and the leader of Silvermoon would be there, must have read that wrong or it changed, no sign of them. Maybe it is the Dark Lady and Thoren for the dock area (for the Horde raid) where we got the SW King and Lady Janica.
The General is a fairly straight forward fight. He has three stances, each he is in for about a minute. Defensive, where you do not hit him. Battle, where you attack as usual, and Berserker stance where you pop heroism because he will take more damage then. The trick is to keep his rage down. Do not hit him when he drops a battle standard, this will give him rage, same if you attack him in defensive stance. Some members of our raid had issues figuring this out, even when it was called out to stop attacking :P At so much rage he will release a battle ax(es) that will swing around the room. If it hits you it does a lot of damage (or kills you) and gives him rage when it hits. Same with his stomp, if you are in the wrong spot when it goes off, it gives him rage. Also at certain points he will call in NPCs who have different abilities and priorities and need to be killed.
Since we did not on shot him, Gamon died and we did not get that achievement. Luckily for us we were able to get him by the 3rd try.
Apparently the next wing is not open like I thought, not until next week. So our raid was called and Bleached happily started to dream up names for her new mace. She thinks she will call it Mace. Not very imaginative, our girl. "
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Elite Kills Elude Wild Family
Elite Kills Elude Wild Family
Despite improving gear scores for Wild (i475) and Fist (i468), neither have been able to kill an elite mob on the Isle. It's a little embarrassing. Part of the problem is that the poor souls have to live with the genes they inherited from me. Swift of finger and master of the mouse I am not. That said, both know what their combat rotations are and how to use them. It's not the DPS that's the problem - it's the staying alive part they haven't figured out yet. For that I need to use the other skills that both have at their disposal, most of which rarely get used. Raiding as a healer doesn't require much one on one combat, or any combat at all. There is plenty of killing when questing, but generally Wild and Fist have the upper hand there and don't need to get fancy to bring non-elite mobs down.
Another thing that has hindered the pair is the user interface. During the moving of characters around period when I was consolidating characters into one account, a lot of addons got messed up. I didn't realize how badly until Wild took on one the elite snakes on the Isle. I had been going through Wild's spell book and finding interesting spells I didn't even know existed, because I'd stopped paying attention to the changes. That was a problem, all right. So I was excited to try them out on an elite. Imagine my surprise when Wild shifted into Boomkin, attacked the snake, and then realized - too late - that the spells I wanted to use had disappeared from the display! Druids have more facets than any other character: normal healing, Tree of Life healing, boomkin, cat, bear, fish . . . each one of those forms require their own, specific display showing the needed spells and actions.
It took a couple of hours to get that straightened out. I won't pretend that the bear and cat displays are accurate, but at least I got all the spells in there and can refine that should I need those forms. Fist had it a little easier as far as forms go. She's either her usual windwalker form for DPS, or her mistweaver form for healing. Fist's problem is that she's overwhelmed with spells - I swear that there's a spell for picking her nose in there somewhere. I've tried to place the spells in a logical order and will try to remember to use them before I die instead of after.
The Isle has not been forthcoming with more usable gear lately. The last three pieces that dropped were for plate armor users. It's nice that this gear is Bind on Account, so I can send the gear to someone who could use it. However, the highest level plate wearer in the Wild Family is level 72 death knight Tiphaine. She's a long way from level 90, and has little interest in leveling. That gear is likely to be rotted and corroded junk before anyone is going to need it.
There was a surprise on the guild info board this week. The Meitha guild has scheduled a Flex Raid for Saturday and Sunday this week. As I understand it, there is no gear level requirement for flex raids, so, technically, Wild could sign up for it. However, at Wild's current gear level he would be WAY undergeared for it. No specific raid has been named, so I'm guessing the raid leader will see who signs up/shows up before deciding what raid to tackle.
I checked the Raid Finder to see where Wild stood. Of the 13 LFR raids available, Wild is only eligible for two of them. Flex raids are a level tougher than LFR raids - so Wild is really two tiers of raiding short for flex raids. It seems that most flex raid leaders want gear levels to be at least around i510 or better in order to be successful.
The plan, should Wild accept it, is to spend some time in the Proving Grounds getting some healing practice and then giving the two LFR raids a shot. It's highly unlikely Wild will be geared up well enough by the weekend, but it'll be a start.
Despite improving gear scores for Wild (i475) and Fist (i468), neither have been able to kill an elite mob on the Isle. It's a little embarrassing. Part of the problem is that the poor souls have to live with the genes they inherited from me. Swift of finger and master of the mouse I am not. That said, both know what their combat rotations are and how to use them. It's not the DPS that's the problem - it's the staying alive part they haven't figured out yet. For that I need to use the other skills that both have at their disposal, most of which rarely get used. Raiding as a healer doesn't require much one on one combat, or any combat at all. There is plenty of killing when questing, but generally Wild and Fist have the upper hand there and don't need to get fancy to bring non-elite mobs down.
Another thing that has hindered the pair is the user interface. During the moving of characters around period when I was consolidating characters into one account, a lot of addons got messed up. I didn't realize how badly until Wild took on one the elite snakes on the Isle. I had been going through Wild's spell book and finding interesting spells I didn't even know existed, because I'd stopped paying attention to the changes. That was a problem, all right. So I was excited to try them out on an elite. Imagine my surprise when Wild shifted into Boomkin, attacked the snake, and then realized - too late - that the spells I wanted to use had disappeared from the display! Druids have more facets than any other character: normal healing, Tree of Life healing, boomkin, cat, bear, fish . . . each one of those forms require their own, specific display showing the needed spells and actions.
It took a couple of hours to get that straightened out. I won't pretend that the bear and cat displays are accurate, but at least I got all the spells in there and can refine that should I need those forms. Fist had it a little easier as far as forms go. She's either her usual windwalker form for DPS, or her mistweaver form for healing. Fist's problem is that she's overwhelmed with spells - I swear that there's a spell for picking her nose in there somewhere. I've tried to place the spells in a logical order and will try to remember to use them before I die instead of after.
The Isle has not been forthcoming with more usable gear lately. The last three pieces that dropped were for plate armor users. It's nice that this gear is Bind on Account, so I can send the gear to someone who could use it. However, the highest level plate wearer in the Wild Family is level 72 death knight Tiphaine. She's a long way from level 90, and has little interest in leveling. That gear is likely to be rotted and corroded junk before anyone is going to need it.
There was a surprise on the guild info board this week. The Meitha guild has scheduled a Flex Raid for Saturday and Sunday this week. As I understand it, there is no gear level requirement for flex raids, so, technically, Wild could sign up for it. However, at Wild's current gear level he would be WAY undergeared for it. No specific raid has been named, so I'm guessing the raid leader will see who signs up/shows up before deciding what raid to tackle.
I checked the Raid Finder to see where Wild stood. Of the 13 LFR raids available, Wild is only eligible for two of them. Flex raids are a level tougher than LFR raids - so Wild is really two tiers of raiding short for flex raids. It seems that most flex raid leaders want gear levels to be at least around i510 or better in order to be successful.
The plan, should Wild accept it, is to spend some time in the Proving Grounds getting some healing practice and then giving the two LFR raids a shot. It's highly unlikely Wild will be geared up well enough by the weekend, but it'll be a start.
Monday, September 23, 2013
The Timeless Isle - Plumrosefist Makes an Impression
The Timeless Isle - Plumrosefist Makes an Impression
Wild was so busy fooling around on the Timeless Isle Fist had to take him down a peg by reminding him that Fist reached level 90 first. Giving Wild a glower worthy of her mother, Tiphaine, Fist waved Wild to the sidelines so she could see the Isle for herself.
Having learned from Wild's overspending ways, Happy held back his gold from Fist until things got sorted out. In fact, Fist was better geared than Wild from the beginning, and so needed less "propping up" before taking the measure of the island. Frankly, from a combat perspective, Fist is more fun to play. Normal mobs went down pretty quickly, and Fist even tackled a few elites. No elite kills, yet, although Fist did get one down to 15% health. That was without using many of Fist's "save me" spells, which monks have quite a few of - I just don't know how to use them properly or well, yet.
Wild did go one up on Fist, though. Wild's gear haul netted him four i496 pieces, while Fist managed only three. Fist still thinks she got the bargain, though, as she picked up a gorgeous i496 helm and a ring, two gear slots she was in great need of upgrading. Fist had to be reminded, though, that she did not need to buy enchants for her leg or wrist gear, since she could make those for herself as a leather worker. Both Wild and Fist are at the same gear level now - i464.
For the most part both Wild and Fist are still just feeling their way along. Once they run out of obvious things to do, I'll have to dig deeper into the guides in order to get the most out of the Isle.
Update: Wild edged up to i468 on his gear, mostly from questing for Shado-Pan rep, and picking up a nice trinket. Wild needs that rep to buy the new, high end enchanting recipes. Wild's major gear needs are a helm (i415), belt (i417) and trinket (i409). Fist is still at i464. Oh, but wait! Happy just delivered a pair of i470 one-hand maces to Fist. Equipped, she is now at gear level i467. The battle for gear dominance goes on!
Update #2: Fist is annoyed that she didn't get any time Sunday night. We were at the ball game (a loss, 1-0), so only Wild got some time at the Isle. Wild picked up an i496 helm to replace his i415 and jumped to i474 overall gear score. Wild is now theoretically geared well enough for lower end raiding. However, he'll probably milk the Isle for all he can before attempting a raid. Of course, Wild's guild is not raiding, and doesn't seem to have any plans for raiding. IF (big if) Wild decided to go back to raiding, it will probably be with some other guild. Sad but true.
Wild was so busy fooling around on the Timeless Isle Fist had to take him down a peg by reminding him that Fist reached level 90 first. Giving Wild a glower worthy of her mother, Tiphaine, Fist waved Wild to the sidelines so she could see the Isle for herself.
Having learned from Wild's overspending ways, Happy held back his gold from Fist until things got sorted out. In fact, Fist was better geared than Wild from the beginning, and so needed less "propping up" before taking the measure of the island. Frankly, from a combat perspective, Fist is more fun to play. Normal mobs went down pretty quickly, and Fist even tackled a few elites. No elite kills, yet, although Fist did get one down to 15% health. That was without using many of Fist's "save me" spells, which monks have quite a few of - I just don't know how to use them properly or well, yet.
Wild did go one up on Fist, though. Wild's gear haul netted him four i496 pieces, while Fist managed only three. Fist still thinks she got the bargain, though, as she picked up a gorgeous i496 helm and a ring, two gear slots she was in great need of upgrading. Fist had to be reminded, though, that she did not need to buy enchants for her leg or wrist gear, since she could make those for herself as a leather worker. Both Wild and Fist are at the same gear level now - i464.
For the most part both Wild and Fist are still just feeling their way along. Once they run out of obvious things to do, I'll have to dig deeper into the guides in order to get the most out of the Isle.
Update: Wild edged up to i468 on his gear, mostly from questing for Shado-Pan rep, and picking up a nice trinket. Wild needs that rep to buy the new, high end enchanting recipes. Wild's major gear needs are a helm (i415), belt (i417) and trinket (i409). Fist is still at i464. Oh, but wait! Happy just delivered a pair of i470 one-hand maces to Fist. Equipped, she is now at gear level i467. The battle for gear dominance goes on!
Update #2: Fist is annoyed that she didn't get any time Sunday night. We were at the ball game (a loss, 1-0), so only Wild got some time at the Isle. Wild picked up an i496 helm to replace his i415 and jumped to i474 overall gear score. Wild is now theoretically geared well enough for lower end raiding. However, he'll probably milk the Isle for all he can before attempting a raid. Of course, Wild's guild is not raiding, and doesn't seem to have any plans for raiding. IF (big if) Wild decided to go back to raiding, it will probably be with some other guild. Sad but true.
Friday, September 20, 2013
The Timeless Isle - First Impression
The Timeless Isle - First Impression
I think the Timeless Isle is a little over promoted. Maybe a lot over promoted. I'm not sure what Wild was expecting, but what he saw wasn't what he thought he was getting. First off, the island is very small. Second, the island is crawling with hostile mobs, a great many of them level 90+ elites. Wild wandered around for awhile, not sure what to do. There were a lot of players about, too, although most looked as confused as Wild.
Wild did find a familiar event. Wild was offered a pet battle from an npc. Cool, Wild knows all about pet battles. Well, he thought he did. Wild sent three of his best level 25 pets to fight a single opponent, a legendary pet with a very long name. Wild's pet's are rated "Rare quality." A "Legendary" pet is ... well, even better. Wild was happy his pets got in a little damage, but the legendary pet single handedly killed all three of Wild's pets quite easily. Since Wild is unlikely ever to have a legendary pet, that event is not going to be back on Wild's dance card any time soon.
One of the things Wild wanted to do was to make the rounds of the island to collect treasure chests. Wild tried to follow a pattern that wound around to all the spawning points. After more than an hour of that, Wild still couldn't say what a treasure chest looked like, since he'd yet to find one. Wild did his best to avoid the elite mobs. I'm not sure Boomkin Wild could kill one, but he could probably bore it to death. The non-elites were quicker in their dying, and they did drop some of the coins that Wild is after, but overall Wild did not have much to show for his first visit.
Now for the second impression, which is WoW! For Wild's second trip to the island, I decided to pick up the few quests that are available. Doing the quests got Wild started in the right direction. Wild's luck with drops for the various tasks Wild performed were so stunning Happy may have to take the game to court to get back all that gold he spent to upgrade Wild's gear. Wild spent something like 20,000 gold on gear upgrades for his level 90 coming out party. On his first night on the Isle Wild replaced four pieces of that gear with far better (all of it i496). Wild's gear score went from i455 to i464. Philly will get a pair of i496 cloth pants as well. Wild did find a couple of treasure chests this time, and killed a lot of hostiles for coins. Dying is a pretty routine occurrence, and other than having to pay for gear repair (about 80 gold, no worse than from raiding) Wild was quickly back into action. Wild's better gear helped with the kills, but boomkin DPS pretty much sucks.
Not sure I understand how the elite kills work. I keep reading that grouping and tagging aren't required for looting, but Wild can't loot mobs that someone else has tagged. If Wild tags an elite first, Wild usually dies. I just don't have the stamina to stay upright long enough to kill it, even with help. Wild is getting better at kiting and jumping into travel form to avoid those sure death situations, but it's also easy to run straight into another pocket of elites while fleeing from another. Pretty exciting in a "damn, I'm dead again" way. I didn't see a single battle with the elite bosses, but then I don't understand how that works. I suppose it becomes an instanced battle that bystanders can't see? Have to be invited? Lots of questions . . . but the place is growing on Wild.
I think the Timeless Isle is a little over promoted. Maybe a lot over promoted. I'm not sure what Wild was expecting, but what he saw wasn't what he thought he was getting. First off, the island is very small. Second, the island is crawling with hostile mobs, a great many of them level 90+ elites. Wild wandered around for awhile, not sure what to do. There were a lot of players about, too, although most looked as confused as Wild.
Wild did find a familiar event. Wild was offered a pet battle from an npc. Cool, Wild knows all about pet battles. Well, he thought he did. Wild sent three of his best level 25 pets to fight a single opponent, a legendary pet with a very long name. Wild's pet's are rated "Rare quality." A "Legendary" pet is ... well, even better. Wild was happy his pets got in a little damage, but the legendary pet single handedly killed all three of Wild's pets quite easily. Since Wild is unlikely ever to have a legendary pet, that event is not going to be back on Wild's dance card any time soon.
One of the things Wild wanted to do was to make the rounds of the island to collect treasure chests. Wild tried to follow a pattern that wound around to all the spawning points. After more than an hour of that, Wild still couldn't say what a treasure chest looked like, since he'd yet to find one. Wild did his best to avoid the elite mobs. I'm not sure Boomkin Wild could kill one, but he could probably bore it to death. The non-elites were quicker in their dying, and they did drop some of the coins that Wild is after, but overall Wild did not have much to show for his first visit.
Now for the second impression, which is WoW! For Wild's second trip to the island, I decided to pick up the few quests that are available. Doing the quests got Wild started in the right direction. Wild's luck with drops for the various tasks Wild performed were so stunning Happy may have to take the game to court to get back all that gold he spent to upgrade Wild's gear. Wild spent something like 20,000 gold on gear upgrades for his level 90 coming out party. On his first night on the Isle Wild replaced four pieces of that gear with far better (all of it i496). Wild's gear score went from i455 to i464. Philly will get a pair of i496 cloth pants as well. Wild did find a couple of treasure chests this time, and killed a lot of hostiles for coins. Dying is a pretty routine occurrence, and other than having to pay for gear repair (about 80 gold, no worse than from raiding) Wild was quickly back into action. Wild's better gear helped with the kills, but boomkin DPS pretty much sucks.
Not sure I understand how the elite kills work. I keep reading that grouping and tagging aren't required for looting, but Wild can't loot mobs that someone else has tagged. If Wild tags an elite first, Wild usually dies. I just don't have the stamina to stay upright long enough to kill it, even with help. Wild is getting better at kiting and jumping into travel form to avoid those sure death situations, but it's also easy to run straight into another pocket of elites while fleeing from another. Pretty exciting in a "damn, I'm dead again" way. I didn't see a single battle with the elite bosses, but then I don't understand how that works. I suppose it becomes an instanced battle that bystanders can't see? Have to be invited? Lots of questions . . . but the place is growing on Wild.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Wildshard Joins Plumrosefist at Level 90
Wildshard Joins Plumrosefist at Level 90
Wild reached level 90 on Thursday morning, 19 September, 2013. Wild began the effort on September 1st. He was 2% of the way to level 86 at the time, having gotten that little bit of experience doing the initial questing for the Mists of Pandaria expansion. The remaining 98% of the work was done by doing pet battles. It took Wild 19 days to go from level 85 to 90. By way of comparison, Fist's march from 85 to 90 began on November 4th, 2012. It took her 7 days just to reach level 86, taking on the challenge of learning the land of Pandaria. At the time, it marked the first time that Wild was NOT the highest level in the family, since he remained at level 85 while Fist moved on.
Fist made it to level 90 on 7 December, 2012. So, Wild accomplished in 19 days what it took Fist to do in 26 days. Both took a steep commitment in time to make it happen.
Happy had put away several pieces of gear for Wild's level 90 coming out party. The new gear increased his gear level from i427 to i455. Fist's gear level is i453. Wild still has to get all of his enchants and gems, and then it will be time to take a peek at the Timeless Isle!
Wild reached level 90 on Thursday morning, 19 September, 2013. Wild began the effort on September 1st. He was 2% of the way to level 86 at the time, having gotten that little bit of experience doing the initial questing for the Mists of Pandaria expansion. The remaining 98% of the work was done by doing pet battles. It took Wild 19 days to go from level 85 to 90. By way of comparison, Fist's march from 85 to 90 began on November 4th, 2012. It took her 7 days just to reach level 86, taking on the challenge of learning the land of Pandaria. At the time, it marked the first time that Wild was NOT the highest level in the family, since he remained at level 85 while Fist moved on.
Fist made it to level 90 on 7 December, 2012. So, Wild accomplished in 19 days what it took Fist to do in 26 days. Both took a steep commitment in time to make it happen.
Happy had put away several pieces of gear for Wild's level 90 coming out party. The new gear increased his gear level from i427 to i455. Fist's gear level is i453. Wild still has to get all of his enchants and gems, and then it will be time to take a peek at the Timeless Isle!
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
The New/Old Auction House
The New/Old Auction House
Before eyes start to glaze over, Wild wants everyone to know that he is 91% of the way to level 89. Wild might have made it to 89 last night but I started falling asleep at the computer. Expect Wild to get started on grinding toward 90 today (Monday).
San Diego sports had a great weekend. The Chargers football team pulled out a stunning upset, beating the Eagles 33-30 on the last play of the game. The Padres baseball team stunned the team with best record in baseball, the Atlanta Braves, beating them twice in three games and coming within a run of sweeping them. The two games were on at the same time Sunday morning (both east coast games) so I had to keep switching between the football game, the baseball game, and the pet battle game. :-)
Happy was only away from the Auction House about three weeks during the "I quit but not really" period when I thought I was done with the game. That absence didn't have a major impact, but the release of the 5.4 patch certainly has. The Timeless Isle, where players have a new, vast playground to run around in, has completely consumed players. Raiding, which has already been dwindling on our server, seems to be out of favor. Many of the materials that Happy sells are used with gearing up and preparing for raids, and the prices of those items have seriously tanked.
Happy, usually very decisive in making buy/sell decisions, is having trouble gauging the current sell off. The patch didn't introduce another set of new mats, but the falling prices are very like the process when new mats are introduced and the old mats begin to get phased out. For example, a Sha crystal could be sold for close to 300g apiece just a couple of weeks ago. They are selling at under 100g right now. Will that price keep falling, or is this just a bump and prices will start climbing again? Happy, for once, isn't sure. The other prime mats - greater celestial essence, ethereal shards, and mysterious essence, have seen deep cuts in price, particularly the ethereal shards. Older mats, which have always had a modest but consistent level of demand, are not selling at any price.
Happy is still making ends meet, but most of his profit now comes from gems. Gems got a massive boost from the patch. Demand skyrocketed. The price of the key ingredient in making a gem from jewel crafting (JB makes all of Happy's gems) went from 50g each to an average of 70g with spurts as high as 100g. Great day for gem sellers, right? Well, yes and no. The miners out there saw gold in their eyes, too, and they began digging up gems as well. Yes, there was a lot of new demand, but it didn't take long before the supply of gems began to outpace the buying. The big boys who do this for a living started dumping large quantities of gems at cut rate prices. Prices on many gems, usually priced in the 70-100g range, depending on the type, fell to 50g and sometimes lower. At under 50g Happy started buying, since that was less than JB's cost of making them. Happy is still riding that up and down wave and making gold, but it's a feast or famine kind of thing to catch the market in between the big dump fests.
On average, sales are down, but Happy still makes a little from bags, herbs, and healing potions. Healing potions were once not that great sellers, because raiding guilds generally provided them to their members for free. Raiding is mostly LFR and the new flex raids with random players not associated with a guild raid, so they have to make or buy their own healing potions now. It helps that they are very cheap to make and almost always sell.
One surprise seller are the five types of volatiles. These are old mats from an earlier expansion. Happy kept a very large stock of them, and he's now selling them off at a tidy profit. That will last only until the stock is exhausted or Happy's regular price hikes finally dampen demand. It's a finite market, though, since few farm those mats anymore.
Finally, here is a test to see if you read all the way down (you masochist, you).
Wild has collected a few battle-stones during all this leveling and is trying to figure out the best way to use them. Battle-stones can be used to upgrade a lower quality pet to Rare quality, which is the best type to have. Battle-stones are random drops, and they don't drop that often, so I want to get the best value out of them that I can.
Pet battles can include as many as three pets on each side, so having at least three max level pets available is necessary. Out of the ten categories of pets, I have at least three rare, max 25 level pets for all but three categories: Humanoid has just one (Peddlefeet), Undead only two (Lil' K.T. and Lost of Lordaeron), and Magic only two (Arcane Eye and Twilight Fiendling).
Wild isn't quite sure. yet, how he will use the stones. For the moment, anyway, he's still focused on leveling, so the pet battle decisions will have to wait.
Before eyes start to glaze over, Wild wants everyone to know that he is 91% of the way to level 89. Wild might have made it to 89 last night but I started falling asleep at the computer. Expect Wild to get started on grinding toward 90 today (Monday).
San Diego sports had a great weekend. The Chargers football team pulled out a stunning upset, beating the Eagles 33-30 on the last play of the game. The Padres baseball team stunned the team with best record in baseball, the Atlanta Braves, beating them twice in three games and coming within a run of sweeping them. The two games were on at the same time Sunday morning (both east coast games) so I had to keep switching between the football game, the baseball game, and the pet battle game. :-)
Happy was only away from the Auction House about three weeks during the "I quit but not really" period when I thought I was done with the game. That absence didn't have a major impact, but the release of the 5.4 patch certainly has. The Timeless Isle, where players have a new, vast playground to run around in, has completely consumed players. Raiding, which has already been dwindling on our server, seems to be out of favor. Many of the materials that Happy sells are used with gearing up and preparing for raids, and the prices of those items have seriously tanked.
Happy, usually very decisive in making buy/sell decisions, is having trouble gauging the current sell off. The patch didn't introduce another set of new mats, but the falling prices are very like the process when new mats are introduced and the old mats begin to get phased out. For example, a Sha crystal could be sold for close to 300g apiece just a couple of weeks ago. They are selling at under 100g right now. Will that price keep falling, or is this just a bump and prices will start climbing again? Happy, for once, isn't sure. The other prime mats - greater celestial essence, ethereal shards, and mysterious essence, have seen deep cuts in price, particularly the ethereal shards. Older mats, which have always had a modest but consistent level of demand, are not selling at any price.
Happy is still making ends meet, but most of his profit now comes from gems. Gems got a massive boost from the patch. Demand skyrocketed. The price of the key ingredient in making a gem from jewel crafting (JB makes all of Happy's gems) went from 50g each to an average of 70g with spurts as high as 100g. Great day for gem sellers, right? Well, yes and no. The miners out there saw gold in their eyes, too, and they began digging up gems as well. Yes, there was a lot of new demand, but it didn't take long before the supply of gems began to outpace the buying. The big boys who do this for a living started dumping large quantities of gems at cut rate prices. Prices on many gems, usually priced in the 70-100g range, depending on the type, fell to 50g and sometimes lower. At under 50g Happy started buying, since that was less than JB's cost of making them. Happy is still riding that up and down wave and making gold, but it's a feast or famine kind of thing to catch the market in between the big dump fests.
On average, sales are down, but Happy still makes a little from bags, herbs, and healing potions. Healing potions were once not that great sellers, because raiding guilds generally provided them to their members for free. Raiding is mostly LFR and the new flex raids with random players not associated with a guild raid, so they have to make or buy their own healing potions now. It helps that they are very cheap to make and almost always sell.
One surprise seller are the five types of volatiles. These are old mats from an earlier expansion. Happy kept a very large stock of them, and he's now selling them off at a tidy profit. That will last only until the stock is exhausted or Happy's regular price hikes finally dampen demand. It's a finite market, though, since few farm those mats anymore.
Finally, here is a test to see if you read all the way down (you masochist, you).
Wild has collected a few battle-stones during all this leveling and is trying to figure out the best way to use them. Battle-stones can be used to upgrade a lower quality pet to Rare quality, which is the best type to have. Battle-stones are random drops, and they don't drop that often, so I want to get the best value out of them that I can.
Pet battles can include as many as three pets on each side, so having at least three max level pets available is necessary. Out of the ten categories of pets, I have at least three rare, max 25 level pets for all but three categories: Humanoid has just one (Peddlefeet), Undead only two (Lil' K.T. and Lost of Lordaeron), and Magic only two (Arcane Eye and Twilight Fiendling).
Wild isn't quite sure. yet, how he will use the stones. For the moment, anyway, he's still focused on leveling, so the pet battle decisions will have to wait.
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Cheating at Motes
Cheating at Motes
Philly has the Inscription profession, and one of the things she can make is an i476 staff. The staff is Bind on Account (BoA), so it can be passed to any other character that wants to use it. The ticklish part of the process is that Motes of Harmony are required. These motes are soulbound when received so Philly would have to earn them herself. Overall, she'd need 70 motes to make the high end staff.
I thought I could trick the system. Philly hasn't even started the quests at the beginning of the Pandaria expansion. Philly's plan was to get to Pandaria with the entry quests and then simply farm bad guys until enough motes dropped. Well, Philly got to Pandaria just fine. She actually did better than Wild's first trip to panda land. Wild fell off the ship and had no idea where he was! Unfortunately, Philly wasn't that smart, either. Apparently, the mobs Philly can kill in the first zone of Pandaria, the Jade Forest, don't drop any motes. Philly killed quite a few, doing a couple of starter quests. None dropped. Ah, well.
Wild kept himself busy. On 13 September (Don't say it! You know, Friday's not over yet!), Wild went to Outland just to go somewhere different. Over the course of several hours Wild picked up a few more pet achievements:
Zen Pet Hunter (capturing 200 pets in pet battles)
World Pet Mauler (winning battles in 60 different zones)
Grand Master Pet battles (1000+ pet battles)
Win Streak (25 consecutive wins without a loss)
Wild now has 217 unique pets. I've collected a total of 301 pets, so I am almost halfway there (367 to go). My main focus, though, is collecting the 135 still at large pets that I can acquire through pet battles. Oh, and I now have 31 max level 25 pets.
On 12 September Wild reached 59% of the way to level 88. On 13 September, Wild DINGED! to level 88. I really, really, like leveling by doing pet battles. The last two levels take the longest, but I still think Wild can reach level 90 within a week.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
The Vale of Eternal Sorrow
The Vale of Eternal Sorrow
Wild has a bit of news, but this post mostly belongs to Lao, who had a very busy couple of days.
First up is Wild. Wild is leveling to 90 via pet battles, and while he isn't actively chasing achievements, it's nice when one pops up, such as the "Pro Pet Crew," awarded for getting 30 unique pets to level 25. Wild also DINGED! his way to level 87.
Wild may have to alter his gearing approach, though. He's aiming at a minimum ilevel of i460 in order to get into the beginning Looking for Raid (LFR) groups once he's at level 90. However, he needs i490, I believe, to get into normal raids. Based on Unbleach's i496 for flex raiding (see below), Wild will have his work cut out for him. From what I'm hearing about the Patch 5.4 Timeless Isle, a new area of exploration, it's a lot of fun. Wild's guildies are all over it earning great gear, some of it Bind on Account (BoA) so that it can shared by all my characters.
Now for the news from Lao:
The last 24 hours has been eventful for Lao.
I can be an impulsive creature, which usually costs me money. I want to kill Hellscream – this means I need to raid. I laid out the options in the last email: stay put and work it out, or move to another server and join my raid group there. I chose the latter.
So Lao ($55 later) is now Unbleached, a taller goat version of herself, poor lass.
Lao, before the switch, was able to check out the new Isle that popped out of the clouds, as they are want to do. She ran around and got several account bound cloth purples: cloak, gloves, shoulders (2), chest, and pants. She decided to give all the gear, minus the extra gloves and the chest, to Narcissus. Narcissus is in need of gear in a bad way.
*Note: Be sure to “open” the gear while in the spec you want it to complement
Lao then packed up her bags and went on her whirlwind switch. The guild invite was easy, no wait like Wild had to suffer, and she was almost ready for the raid.
Unbleached decided to do healing for the raid. She has only pvp gear for heals, which is fine, but the trinkets (at least impair-movement-remover one) really do not belong in a raid. So she hit the AH and plopped down 12k on a new trinket. This may not have been as painful had it occurred 3 hours before, when she still had 125k in gold, but you are only allowed to transfer toons with a max of 50k gold, and it had to be done.
So, with her new shiny trinket she went off to the Vale of Eternal Sorrows, which is the prelude to the Siege Orgrimmar.
First Boss up: Immerseus. This is a boss who has a corruption bar, at 100. Once he hits 0 health becomes unstable and explodes out in slime balls. These balls need to be either healed to remove corruption (the blue ones) or killed (the black ones). For each ball healed or killed it removes 1 point of corruption and health to his reformed self. This is repeated until he is at 0 corruption and health.
We divided the room up into pie wedges and randomly spread out. It was a wipe. Next we decided to be a bit more logical about it. We did a better distribution of heals and damage. Immerseus went down.
Next up were The Fallen Protectors. These were the Golden Lotus quest givers that became corrupted when Hellscream did his thing. The mechanics of the fight are simple but busy. Each protector at 66% and 33% does a Desperate Measure. You want to avoid having more than one Desperate Measure going on at the same time. Once they are below 33% you want to bring them down about at the same rate. At 1%, if the others are in combat, they will heal up the one at 1% to 20%. The goal is to get them all at 1% at the same time (within 15 seconds). If you are able to bring them down to 1% at the same time they will have Clarity and snap out of it. We were able to, surprisingly, one shot this and Bleach got new 540 bracers.
Next boss is Norushen. This is a boss to prove you cannot be corrupted before moving on. When engaged you start out at 75% corrupted. There are orbs that appear around the boss that you can click on and enter a different realm where you prove your skill. Meaning healers heal ppl, tanks tank, and dps kill things. When you are done you return to the main fight and are fully cleansed of your corruption. The boss spawns adds that need to be killed but when killed they create pools of corruption that damage everyone. To stop the pools from spreading and doing aoe damage someone needs to stand in them and “soak” up the corruption. Once you get too heavy on the corruption you do the orb thing again.
After about 6-7 tries we got him down.
The last boss is the Sha of Pride. Even just clearing out the trash in this area killed a few of us off. This is basically a tank and spank but you have to be quick about it. As you take damage you get 5 Pride. At 100% pride you give massive aoe damage and it triggers other levels of pride to do damage as well; which means pretty much a wipe, as we found. Also, cleanse cannot be cast without getting pride unless you get a Titan buff. We did one attempt and found that 100% pride is deadly quickly. Raid time was up and we will start again tonight on the guy.
Since the patch Lao/Unbleached has gotten a lot of new pve gear: Bracers (from the raid), gloves, chest, trinkets (one bought), chest, and pants (the latter gear from the Isle).
Like I said, it has been a busy 24 hours.
The Second Night:
Last night we started on the fourth and final boss, The Sha Of Pride.
We did several attempts, however many fits in 2 hours, 3 of which were pretty good. We were getting some of the mechanics but had two possible issues, either not enough dps (just guessing this since I have not gotten recount yet) or missing enough of the buffs (falling in if you have the titan buff to get the additional buff it gives) that we kept just missing the mark.
At the last two fights two of the heals, myself included, switched to dps. We finally got him down. No new loot for me but another healing priest in the guild got a very nice staff.
I will have to look at the dungeon breakup. The guild raids Tu, W, Th. Thursday I cannot do because I volunteer at the hospital those evenings. My concern is that they will clear up to Hellscream on Tu, and W, and kill him on Th. I am going to check to see how many bosses will need to be cleared to get to him. If we get close to him I will have to see about maybe swapping my shift if we run into an issue.
Wild has a bit of news, but this post mostly belongs to Lao, who had a very busy couple of days.
First up is Wild. Wild is leveling to 90 via pet battles, and while he isn't actively chasing achievements, it's nice when one pops up, such as the "Pro Pet Crew," awarded for getting 30 unique pets to level 25. Wild also DINGED! his way to level 87.
Wild may have to alter his gearing approach, though. He's aiming at a minimum ilevel of i460 in order to get into the beginning Looking for Raid (LFR) groups once he's at level 90. However, he needs i490, I believe, to get into normal raids. Based on Unbleach's i496 for flex raiding (see below), Wild will have his work cut out for him. From what I'm hearing about the Patch 5.4 Timeless Isle, a new area of exploration, it's a lot of fun. Wild's guildies are all over it earning great gear, some of it Bind on Account (BoA) so that it can shared by all my characters.
Now for the news from Lao:
The last 24 hours has been eventful for Lao.
I can be an impulsive creature, which usually costs me money. I want to kill Hellscream – this means I need to raid. I laid out the options in the last email: stay put and work it out, or move to another server and join my raid group there. I chose the latter.
So Lao ($55 later) is now Unbleached, a taller goat version of herself, poor lass.
Lao, before the switch, was able to check out the new Isle that popped out of the clouds, as they are want to do. She ran around and got several account bound cloth purples: cloak, gloves, shoulders (2), chest, and pants. She decided to give all the gear, minus the extra gloves and the chest, to Narcissus. Narcissus is in need of gear in a bad way.
*Note: Be sure to “open” the gear while in the spec you want it to complement
Lao then packed up her bags and went on her whirlwind switch. The guild invite was easy, no wait like Wild had to suffer, and she was almost ready for the raid.
Unbleached decided to do healing for the raid. She has only pvp gear for heals, which is fine, but the trinkets (at least impair-movement-remover one) really do not belong in a raid. So she hit the AH and plopped down 12k on a new trinket. This may not have been as painful had it occurred 3 hours before, when she still had 125k in gold, but you are only allowed to transfer toons with a max of 50k gold, and it had to be done.
So, with her new shiny trinket she went off to the Vale of Eternal Sorrows, which is the prelude to the Siege Orgrimmar.
First Boss up: Immerseus. This is a boss who has a corruption bar, at 100. Once he hits 0 health becomes unstable and explodes out in slime balls. These balls need to be either healed to remove corruption (the blue ones) or killed (the black ones). For each ball healed or killed it removes 1 point of corruption and health to his reformed self. This is repeated until he is at 0 corruption and health.
We divided the room up into pie wedges and randomly spread out. It was a wipe. Next we decided to be a bit more logical about it. We did a better distribution of heals and damage. Immerseus went down.
Next up were The Fallen Protectors. These were the Golden Lotus quest givers that became corrupted when Hellscream did his thing. The mechanics of the fight are simple but busy. Each protector at 66% and 33% does a Desperate Measure. You want to avoid having more than one Desperate Measure going on at the same time. Once they are below 33% you want to bring them down about at the same rate. At 1%, if the others are in combat, they will heal up the one at 1% to 20%. The goal is to get them all at 1% at the same time (within 15 seconds). If you are able to bring them down to 1% at the same time they will have Clarity and snap out of it. We were able to, surprisingly, one shot this and Bleach got new 540 bracers.
Next boss is Norushen. This is a boss to prove you cannot be corrupted before moving on. When engaged you start out at 75% corrupted. There are orbs that appear around the boss that you can click on and enter a different realm where you prove your skill. Meaning healers heal ppl, tanks tank, and dps kill things. When you are done you return to the main fight and are fully cleansed of your corruption. The boss spawns adds that need to be killed but when killed they create pools of corruption that damage everyone. To stop the pools from spreading and doing aoe damage someone needs to stand in them and “soak” up the corruption. Once you get too heavy on the corruption you do the orb thing again.
After about 6-7 tries we got him down.
The last boss is the Sha of Pride. Even just clearing out the trash in this area killed a few of us off. This is basically a tank and spank but you have to be quick about it. As you take damage you get 5 Pride. At 100% pride you give massive aoe damage and it triggers other levels of pride to do damage as well; which means pretty much a wipe, as we found. Also, cleanse cannot be cast without getting pride unless you get a Titan buff. We did one attempt and found that 100% pride is deadly quickly. Raid time was up and we will start again tonight on the guy.
Since the patch Lao/Unbleached has gotten a lot of new pve gear: Bracers (from the raid), gloves, chest, trinkets (one bought), chest, and pants (the latter gear from the Isle).
Like I said, it has been a busy 24 hours.
The Second Night:
Last night we started on the fourth and final boss, The Sha Of Pride.
We did several attempts, however many fits in 2 hours, 3 of which were pretty good. We were getting some of the mechanics but had two possible issues, either not enough dps (just guessing this since I have not gotten recount yet) or missing enough of the buffs (falling in if you have the titan buff to get the additional buff it gives) that we kept just missing the mark.
At the last two fights two of the heals, myself included, switched to dps. We finally got him down. No new loot for me but another healing priest in the guild got a very nice staff.
I will have to look at the dungeon breakup. The guild raids Tu, W, Th. Thursday I cannot do because I volunteer at the hospital those evenings. My concern is that they will clear up to Hellscream on Tu, and W, and kill him on Th. I am going to check to see how many bosses will need to be cleared to get to him. If we get close to him I will have to see about maybe swapping my shift if we run into an issue.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
A Guildie Once Again
A Guildie Once Again
Wild, at last, is back in the Meitha guild. As I do every time I log in, I send JB out (who is a member of Meitha) to see if anyone in the guild is online. Usually there are no guildies in game, and when there are, it is nearly always Fenn or one of his alts (Fenn can't do guild invites) and once it was Diablessa (who also can't do guild invites).
I got lucky on Saturday, though. Grommash was in game. He knows Wild, so I whispered him and asked if he could guild invites. "Weren't you already in the guild?" he asked. Attempting to explain the process of switching accounts and consolidating toons into one account proved daunting for Gromm. His comments were peppered with Hic! Hic! Well, it was Saturday night, so a few - or maybe many - beers could be excused. The good news was that Gromm was happy to invite Wild back into the guild.
I figured that Wild would have to earn back guild rating, but I was very pleasantly surprised that Wild is still rated as Exalted with the guild. Wild will get all of the guild bonus advantages, including a 10% increase in gaining experience points.
Wild is now 15% of the way to level 87.
Wild has also been accumulating gear to use when he reaches level 90. The plan is to be geared well enough to be useful in flex raids. Once Wild gets to level 90 I'll explain all the mechanics of that. In short, though, flex raiding allows for a varying number of raiders (so there is no forced requirement to have exactly ten) and varying levels of gear (instead of a minimum requirement). The raid leader has complete control over who, and how many, raiders are invited. Wild has purchased eight pieces of gear so far, at pretty good prices. There are three or four other interesting items that are stunningly expensive, and likely worth considering, but Wild is going to wait until getting much closer to level 90 before buying anything too pricey.
As of 8 September, 2013 Wild is 39% of the way to level 87.
Wild, at last, is back in the Meitha guild. As I do every time I log in, I send JB out (who is a member of Meitha) to see if anyone in the guild is online. Usually there are no guildies in game, and when there are, it is nearly always Fenn or one of his alts (Fenn can't do guild invites) and once it was Diablessa (who also can't do guild invites).
I got lucky on Saturday, though. Grommash was in game. He knows Wild, so I whispered him and asked if he could guild invites. "Weren't you already in the guild?" he asked. Attempting to explain the process of switching accounts and consolidating toons into one account proved daunting for Gromm. His comments were peppered with Hic! Hic! Well, it was Saturday night, so a few - or maybe many - beers could be excused. The good news was that Gromm was happy to invite Wild back into the guild.
I figured that Wild would have to earn back guild rating, but I was very pleasantly surprised that Wild is still rated as Exalted with the guild. Wild will get all of the guild bonus advantages, including a 10% increase in gaining experience points.
Wild is now 15% of the way to level 87.
Wild has also been accumulating gear to use when he reaches level 90. The plan is to be geared well enough to be useful in flex raids. Once Wild gets to level 90 I'll explain all the mechanics of that. In short, though, flex raiding allows for a varying number of raiders (so there is no forced requirement to have exactly ten) and varying levels of gear (instead of a minimum requirement). The raid leader has complete control over who, and how many, raiders are invited. Wild has purchased eight pieces of gear so far, at pretty good prices. There are three or four other interesting items that are stunningly expensive, and likely worth considering, but Wild is going to wait until getting much closer to level 90 before buying anything too pricey.
As of 8 September, 2013 Wild is 39% of the way to level 87.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Rules of PVE Pet Battle Engagement
Rules of PVE Pet Battle Engagement
Wild has still not found a Meitha guildie who can invite Wild back into the guild, but he did have a very nice and productive chat with a long time friend, Diablessa, on a Sunday morning. I was on Jezzibael (JB), who is in the Meitha guild. The advantage of having JB in the guild is that I can see which other guildies are online. That's how I tracked down Diablessa. She was the only guildie on and was happy to have someone to chat with. We caught up on the personal news, first, and then I asked about the guild. Is Talatiana and Bloodknuckle (my closest friends in the guild) still active? I hadn't seen them around much, I mentioned. She replied that they were in the process of moving and haven't been in game for some time. That wasn't much of a surprise to me. Real life has thrown them a number of curves over the years and long absences from the game are not unusual. She went on to say that the guild leader, Porkkchopp, has been away from the guild on another server, helping a friend set up her own guild. He is an east coast player and works odd hours, so good luck with finding him in game. Sigh.
There are only six players (and their alts), based on guild rank, that can invite players into the guild. I have yet to see a single one of those players in game since Wildshard returned.
On the PVE pet battle front, Wild ran into problems earning experience from those battles. Apparently, there are have been a lot of back and forth changes in an effort to fine tune the rules. For awhile Wild was getting great gobs of XP for every battle. Then, it seemed that Wild couldn't get any XP at all. It was Erik who came up with the right answer. The rules turned out to be a single rule: When doing PVE pet battles, the pets on the team must all be within five levels of each other. Once Wild started making teams that followed that rule, he started to get XP again.
If Wild was interested primarily on leveling up his battle pets, he would take on high level opponents, with one of his own low level pets on his team. That one low level pet would then level much faster since the pet was facing high level opponents. Wild wouldn't get any personal XP that way, though. The method Wild is using is to maintain teams all within five levels of each other in order for Wild to get XP for every battle he wins. One pet would be five levels below the other two to aid in leveling. His battle pets will advance slower, but they do still advance.
As of September 3rd, Wild is 60% of the way to level 86.
Wild's next test of pet battles was in Tanaris. Wild has been doing battles no higher than around level 12 and has been getting XP of 15-20K per battle. I wanted to know if higher level pet battles will provide more XP. The test was quite a success. For whatever reason, pet battles in Tanaris stayed at around 20k each. In Un Goro Crater, however, the XP jumped into the 67K range and often as high as 83K. The max XP received for one battle so far is 87,150.
As of September 4th, Wild is 71% of the way to level 86. His secret was Dragonbone Hatchlings in Northrend. They were level 21/22, easy to kill, packed in groups with fast re-spawning, and rewards above 70k for each victory. Wild barely had to move.
As of a bit past midnight on September 5th, Wild DINGED to level 86.
Wild has still not found a Meitha guildie who can invite Wild back into the guild, but he did have a very nice and productive chat with a long time friend, Diablessa, on a Sunday morning. I was on Jezzibael (JB), who is in the Meitha guild. The advantage of having JB in the guild is that I can see which other guildies are online. That's how I tracked down Diablessa. She was the only guildie on and was happy to have someone to chat with. We caught up on the personal news, first, and then I asked about the guild. Is Talatiana and Bloodknuckle (my closest friends in the guild) still active? I hadn't seen them around much, I mentioned. She replied that they were in the process of moving and haven't been in game for some time. That wasn't much of a surprise to me. Real life has thrown them a number of curves over the years and long absences from the game are not unusual. She went on to say that the guild leader, Porkkchopp, has been away from the guild on another server, helping a friend set up her own guild. He is an east coast player and works odd hours, so good luck with finding him in game. Sigh.
There are only six players (and their alts), based on guild rank, that can invite players into the guild. I have yet to see a single one of those players in game since Wildshard returned.
On the PVE pet battle front, Wild ran into problems earning experience from those battles. Apparently, there are have been a lot of back and forth changes in an effort to fine tune the rules. For awhile Wild was getting great gobs of XP for every battle. Then, it seemed that Wild couldn't get any XP at all. It was Erik who came up with the right answer. The rules turned out to be a single rule: When doing PVE pet battles, the pets on the team must all be within five levels of each other. Once Wild started making teams that followed that rule, he started to get XP again.
If Wild was interested primarily on leveling up his battle pets, he would take on high level opponents, with one of his own low level pets on his team. That one low level pet would then level much faster since the pet was facing high level opponents. Wild wouldn't get any personal XP that way, though. The method Wild is using is to maintain teams all within five levels of each other in order for Wild to get XP for every battle he wins. One pet would be five levels below the other two to aid in leveling. His battle pets will advance slower, but they do still advance.
As of September 3rd, Wild is 60% of the way to level 86.
Wild's next test of pet battles was in Tanaris. Wild has been doing battles no higher than around level 12 and has been getting XP of 15-20K per battle. I wanted to know if higher level pet battles will provide more XP. The test was quite a success. For whatever reason, pet battles in Tanaris stayed at around 20k each. In Un Goro Crater, however, the XP jumped into the 67K range and often as high as 83K. The max XP received for one battle so far is 87,150.
As of September 4th, Wild is 71% of the way to level 86. His secret was Dragonbone Hatchlings in Northrend. They were level 21/22, easy to kill, packed in groups with fast re-spawning, and rewards above 70k for each victory. Wild barely had to move.
As of a bit past midnight on September 5th, Wild DINGED to level 86.
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