It’s time for a relaxing week
Posted: June 11, 2013 Filed under: Raiding & Dungeons | Tags: hunter, Mists of Pandaria, progression, questing, raiding, warrior, World of Warcraft, WoW 2 Comments »The last couple of weeks have been busy.
Toward the end of the first of those weeks – during which I VP-capped three toons – our guild downed both Megaera and Ji-Kun for the first time. Then last week, I capped 2 toons (and got a third to 750 VP), and we re-killed the first six bosses in ToT this past weekend.
Then, on Monday night, Squido and I jumped into a raid with our friends in a much more progressed guild to help them clear the last several bosses (they spent all week working on early heroic modes). They hadn’t killed Ji-Kun yet, so I had to off-tank that with the warrior, and Squido brought his shaman. It was fun to bring the warrior into something current.
Downing Ji-Kun
Once that was over, Squido and I switched to our mains for the rest of the instance. We only had one wipe, on Iron Qon, prior to stalling out late in the evening on Lei Shen. It wasn’t a bad run for a group with four people who hadn’t really seen the fights aside from LFR, and was a lot of fun.
And this is nice to see…
Mushan’s kill record at WoWProgress
It’s not necessarily impressive, but it still feels good! :)
I didn’t get any significant loot – I rolled with all my might on Durumu for the crossbow, but no dice (all puns aside, or something…) – but that’s ok. It was just a lot of fun to a) successfully defeat those five bosses, and b) be an important part of it (meaning that I held my own on the charts and generally performed well, all things considered).
At any rate, the net result was that two busy weeks culminated with three normal-length / normal-intensity raid nights in a row, and I’m tired. As in, both my body and my mind could do without another week like that right now. So with that in mind, I’ve decided that this will be a “one-toon-capped” week.
While I’m glad that I had a geared warrior to plug into a necessary spot, I generally don’t need to work very hard to gear the warrior and the druid. They’re toons of secondary importance in the raiding sense, and it still does take a lot of time to cap them when I’m also capping the hunter.
Therefore, this week I will only cap the hunter, and I will do so at a relaxed, leisurely pace. And I may do some cooking dailies and so forth on other toons, but I will purposefully be avoiding playing them with any urgency. In the end, I think my arms – and my brain – will be grateful.
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Trying a different strategy on the route to the ‘Valor of the Ancients’ buff
Posted: June 8, 2013 Filed under: Gear, Raiding & Dungeons, Reputation | Tags: druid, gear, guardian, hunter, Mists of Pandaria, questing, raiding, reputation, resto, Throne of Thunder, World of Warcraft, WoW 1 Comment »Last week, I managed to get all three of my favorite toons Valor-capped. Not only that, but they were all capped by early Sunday.
I want to say that I don’t know how that happened, but I do. Basically, I raced to the cap on Mushan: weekly Barrens quest, heroic scenario (A Brewing Storm can bite it, by the way), some dailies, a heroic dungeon, and a section of LFR, and I had 605 points by Tuesday night. Tuesday night! Soon after that, he was capped, and my druid and warrior were also on their respective ways to the cap.
Saturday night and Sunday night, we raided. But on Monday, I was completely bored; as such, in addition to writing the bulk of three blog posts – two of which were posted on Monday and Tuesday, and the other one is slated for sometime in the not-so-near future – I took Mushan out to the Barrens again and quickly farmed up all the items needed to turn in the weekly Barrens quest for this week. Yes, I was that bored.
Then on Tuesday, I had a weird day at work that caused me to have a massive headache all night. So once again, I didn’t want to do too much. I farmed my Barrens stuff on the warrior, did Sha and Galleon on the druid with a couple of guildies, and called it an early night.
Wednesday, I woke up without a headache, thankfully. But I found myself still not interested in doing Isle of Thunder on the hunter, or waiting in long queues for LFR. I need exactly zero pieces in LFR. The only things I need from there are the Titan Runestones that drop from the final six ToT bosses (supposedly – apparently they are hard to come by, and I saw zero last week).
It’s a very different feeling from last week. For some reason, I just don’t have the energy. So I decided to take a different tack, one that I didn’t ever think I would want to take: cap on the druid first this time.
So, as of this writing, I’ve done just that. On Wednesday, a guildie and I ran three wings of ToT. I turned in my Barrens weekly that night. Thursday night, I did some quests after work, but when Squido asked me to run some LFR with his shaman, I just had to take the hunter in there, because it was likely to be the only chance I had to get relatively quick queues as a DPS. The rest of the evening was dedicated to running the final three wings of ToT with him, and that was about all that I had in me, so the druid got no more attention.
Friday, I finally capped. Some dailies in the morning, and four wings of T14 LFR at night, brought me to 1,000 VP on Anacrusa. Meanwhile, Mushan is at 597 going into the weekend.
He’ll cap – there’s no question there. No problem.
…
“Now, why would you do that,” you might ask?
The reason I decided to try this different tack is because we raid on weekends. With the reset on Tuesday, capping on Mushan before we raid means that I get exactly zero VP from our normal kills. This normally doesn’t bother me; I just wanted to see if I liked doing it better this way.
Additionally, since all that I need from ToT is the chance at Titan Runestones on Mushan, it seemed like a novel idea to try to be more fervent about getting gear for toons that can actually use it. It makes sense, in theory… in general…
…
However, now that I’m here, I don’t know if this is something I will repeat any time soon.
Granted, because of the flexible nature of my work schedule, no two weeks are exactly alike. And this week has been somewhat busy, between work and real life responsibilities. So it’s not a truly equal contrast or comparison between situations, but nevertheless, I think I actually like my usual way of going about this better than this experimental week.
There are several reasons…
1) Everything goes better with the hunter. While the queue times can be longer if I don’t go with a healer or tank, the play just flows. And questing is a breeze. I can be farming the Barrens or doing dailies while sitting in queues for heroics and LFR, and make a seamless transition whenever the queue pops.
2) In comparison, the druid, which I quest with as a guardian, is slower. There are advantages to going this route with her: as a tank, I can round up several mobs, build up a lot of vengeance, and survive while I complete quest objectives. However, given the approximately 50-ilevel difference between the hunter and the druid quest-spec gear that I have, there’s still no contest: the hunter blows stuff away with all deliberate speed; the druid plows through it slowly and methodically, like an ox.
3) Healing. Healing is great, and I have a lot of fun with it. However, it comes with its own set of stresses. I’ve already got that ‘I can’t let him die, even if he’s doing something really really stupid’ mentality that healers have, which can lead one to a point where it feels like it’s time to take a break. So while chain-queuing as a healer sounds like a great idea, it doesn’t always turn out to be the most enjoyable option.
4) Bottom line: compared to last week, I’m behind. My warrior has… zero VP. The hunter will be fine, but the warrior is not going to have the kind of Valor I want for him by the time Monday night rolls around. He’s usually the hardest for me to cap anyway, because the way I play him (prot) can get a bit slow and intense. But a week with almost nothing to show for it on that toon isn’t all that fun for me, even though it looks like this could be one of those weeks with him. We’ll have to see.
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Maybe “wasting” raid VP isn’t a bad thing when I think about it this way: if I’m going to grind, I’d rather do the lion’s share of it on the hunter – raid VP be damned. Doing it my normal way makes the other toons feel 30% less grindy, which helps me enjoy them more.
As I said, this week and last week aren’t ‘apples to apples,’ but I won’t be surprised if I go back to my normal Valor Point Acquisition Strategy when next week rolls around. However, that doesn’t mean I won’t use take this road again, some other time. I’m just not going to make it my main path.
She isn’t my hunter, after all.
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So… alts?
Posted: May 17, 2013 Filed under: Gear, Raiding & Dungeons, Reputation, Transmogrification | Tags: druid, gear, Mists of Pandaria, questing, raiding, reputation, resto, transmogrification, World of Warcraft, WoW 3 Comments »This past Monday, Bashiok let us all know, via a Twitter response, that 5.3 would not be dropping this (current) week.
On the surface, this was bad news for some people. People like me, who have been Valor capped on their mains and/or basically done with Isle of Thunder for a little while now, without much meaningful to do without getting into some avenue of the game that they enjoy less (like PvP, pet battles, etc., etc.).
On the other hand, there are people who feel that things are moving too fast, that there is not enough time to do everything they want, who play lots of alts and want more time for them, who want an extra week or two to hit the VP cap before Item Upgrading becomes available, etc. For these folks, it was great news.
I’m among those in the first group, with Mushan. I’ve been max-VP capped since the 3rd or 4th of May, have nothing to spend VP on, have been done with the Isle of Thunder story for a while, and so on. For me, the wait has been frustrating. I went from trying to let go of the grind to having almost nothing in the game that has real progressive meaning without killing new raid bosses. So I was disappointed when 5.3 didn’t happen this week.
So… alts?
For me, the answer is yes. And, this past weekend, I had a certain alt in mind…
Anacrusa!
Yes folks! I shook a boatload of dust off my druid last Saturday.
This is the same druid that has largely remained parked at the Stormwind Auction House selling leg enchants, or at Halfhill farming motes to make those leg enchants with.
Now why, you might ask, would I want to do such a thing?
Well, you can’t discount aesthetics, for one thing. I mean, just look at that killer transmog she has going on. It’s one of my favorites! (And it took some serious farming to put those pieces together back in the day, too!) Plus, she’s a female night elf, and they look pretty badass anyway, especially with the particular tattooing/facial structure combo that I chose for her at the character creation screen.
Plus, fire trees.
So anyway, that’s settled… it’s been a joy to get to see that gear in action this week.
Aside from aesthetic appeal, playing Anacrusa represented some very new territory for me in MoP. Thus far, I’d leveled two tanks (including this toon), two hunters, and a mage to level 90. Now, this is not necessarily one-dimensional play – I know several people who have four or five max-level DPS toons and nothing else, and that is certainly not me. With those toons, I have three of the four bases covered (yes, I finally put together a Fury spec for the warrior… and it’s NOT pretty, folks): tank, ranged DPS, melee DPS. Additionally, I have my Prot pally and Blood DK in the wings… so in some ways, that’s more of the same. It’s probably also part of the reason the DK is still waiting for me in Grizzly Hills…
Lately, though, I’ve been wanting to do something different. And I may have known that subconsciously, but it took me a while to conjure up an active realization – along with some balls* – that I wanted to do something related to healing.
*I have a rough time jumping feet-first into certain things that require some responsibility that I might fail to live up to, and it’s always been that way. Takes me some internal argument to take a new toon into PvP, for instance. To heal. To tank important stuff. It’s just my nature – I am a timid one at heart, I suppose.
For a while, I thought about my options. I could finish leveling my pally, but I don’t really feel like doing that right now (and haven’t for some time). I could level a priest or shaman, but I really don’t feel like doing that either. Same with a monk. So that left the druid.
Finally, last weekend, I dug her out of the mothballs. I put together something of a really bad PvP set, thinking to myself that I could do some BGs and get some gear. But I never made it into a BG, or at least I have yet to do so. She had over 2000 Valor stored up from doing cooking dailies over the last several months, and was well on the way to some nice reputation with certain factions, so I started working on that a little bit, with the idea that I could build up a set and step into LFR to try things out. Along the way, I made her the 496 crafted pieces, along with the 502 Reborn mace, and I bought her the 476 off-hand, the Darkmoon trinket, and the 522 Valor necklace. I made some more “Crafted Gladiator’s” pieces, and soon stepped into Mogu’shan Vaults.
Over the past seven days, I’ve gotten her ilevel up from sub-450 to 481! All but three pieces are epics as of this writing. Other than a couple of bad experiences (along with the bosses in ToES being very stingy), the T14 Raid Finder raids were fun and rewarding. I grew leaps and bounds as a healer throughout the week – which is good, because I was starting at about as close to the bottom as someone can be without not having actually healed before**.
**I’ve healed before. Not much, though, and not for quite a long time. And never in raids.
The goal, once I got into it, was to be eligible to run some ToT LFR by this weekend. As of this morning, mission accomplished. I ‘stayed Klaxxi’ consistently enough this week to get the Exalted (Shadows of the Empire) ring today, and I also hit Revered with the Kirin Tor Offensive, which enabled me to grab the cloak from their vendor. And getting a couple of Keys to the Palace of Lei Shen enabled me to stay well-stocked in coins, so I was able to roll on every relevant T14 boss and get a few nice pieces that way.
So Anacrusa is now a Resto druid, for the time being. Awesome!
I quested as Guardian, which may seem odd, except for the fact that I already had a full set of guardian gear from when I was leveling, etc. that was good enough to be daily quest-worthy. I found that I was able to pull multiple mobs at once on Isle of Thunder with little problem. It was also much more enjoyable than doing it as a boomkin would have been.
Overall, I’ve had fun with her this week. It was a very fun diversion from the norm and the tedium, and brought new life into my enjoyment of the game. Plus, it was great to get back on my old main and have fun playing her for the first time in many, many months.
Tomorrow, it’s back to the hunter, as we attempt to make some progress in ToT for reals this weekend. I do hope to get Anacrusa through a couple of wings of ToT LFR before the reset, though, because there are a couple of Shado-Pan Assault items that I’d like to purchase for her, but I need to be Friendly with them to do so. We’ll see how that goes. Meanwhile, I need to make sure that I can still remember how to play Mushan!
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Walking with the Forsaken for a while
Posted: May 7, 2013 Filed under: Leveling, Lore | Tags: hunter, leveling, lore, questing, World of Warcraft, WoW 1 Comment »
As a diversion from end-game burnout, I decided last week to explore an area of the game that has long fascinated me from a distance: the Forsaken starting zone story in Tirisfal Glades, Silverpine Forest, and Hillsbrad Foothills.
I’ve only ever played an Undead character once before. Back in early 2007, when my better half and I were just starting to play WoW, we made several little toons in different areas. We made humans and night elves, and then we branched out and made little Draenei. Eventually we tried out the Undead area – I made a warrior, can’t recall what she made – and played it for a few levels, but we didn’t really enjoy it much, so those toons were soon deleted. We were basically Alliance, and have remained so all this time.
However, with Cataclysm, almost all of the zones were revamped, and the results were sometimes extremely compelling. The Undead zones were particularly so, as they represented an intersection between the Aftermath of the Lich King, conflict with the ‘new race’ Gilneans/Worgen, and their own territorial expansion into Hillsbrad Foothills and so on. And Sylvanas. Etc.
My connection to the Forsaken has been by way of disgust and revulsion, for the most part. During Cataclysm, I spent a not-insignificant amount of time in modern Hillsbrad while engaged in both Archaeology and farming herbs. Beginning in 4.2 with the announcement that transmogrification was coming in 4.3, I also found myself in the Old Hillsbrad Foothills instance via the Caverns of Time, chasing a couple of elusive pieces to complete sets that I would eventually wear. It’s a place I still like to revisit from time to time, because it’s like a Sanctuary from what eventually happened… but it’s also not, really.
One of the things that I liked about Archaeology was that it brought me to places that I didn’t normally visit – or, in this case, a place that I didn’t have reason to visit any more. And while I’m not someone who has been with the game since the original beta, I’ve been around for six years. As such, I spent a fair amount of time in Hillsbrad before the Shattering, and really, REALLY enjoyed that entire zone, as well as Alterac Mountains.
There are places that the Shattering destroyed that are sad, like the destructions of Auberdine or the dam in Loch Modan. But nothing approaches anything close to the emotions that I’ve felt while exploring every nook and cranny of the new, forsaken-controlled Hillsbrad Foothills.
I’ve mentioned these feelings before, in the following post: Of Southshore and Oakvale: the complete and utter destruction of something good.
Well, this time, I’m playing the other side of the story, doing all the quests; reading all the quests. Not because I am shallow and forgetful of my feelings on the genocide at Southshore etc., but because I want to see it for myself. I’ve finished the quests in Tirisfal, and I’ve just started Silverpine at this point. The plan is to play through the culmination of the Gilnean story and into Hillsbrad, get that under my belt, and then possibly abandon the character for the most part.
It has taken me years, obviously, to get to the point where I am interested enough to explore the morbid reality that is present-day Hillsbrad and have time to do so, and now seems to be that time.
It feels weird to be playing something just for the lore, and to explore my fascination with the Undead situation. It’s a unique one, in my opinion, because – and maybe this is just me – this will be a time, and possibly the only time, where I don’t feel any connection at all with my character. This has nothing to do with Alliance or Horde. I love Tauren, for instance… except in PvP, of course. I’m not much of a fan of most Orcs, Trolls, or Goblins, but I’d still put them a few ticks above the Undead on the “I might actually care about you and your cause” list. But, while I’ll acknowledge feeling a smidgen of ‘sorry for (my toon) the guy’s situation,’ that’s all. In this case far more than any other, he’s simply and solely a means to an end; that end being discovery and experience, and that’s it. This isn’t to say that I’m not enjoying my time. But that connection isn’t there, and that’s fine.
The Forsaken experience is different from others I’ve experienced. There’s a grimness to every aspect of it, from the “we just resurrected/birthed these new Undead, but some of them aren’t with us and need to die – make that happen” situation, to the blinders-on focus that they have for building their armies and developing their plague, to the icy coldness that the decrepit old undead lady is feeling when you gather pelts to make a covering for her. It’s definitely a different feel from the zones of other races. I do like that.
…
It’s early to definitively say this, but I’m nonetheless certain that playing this set of zones isn’t going to change either my general apathy toward the Undead or make me feel any better about any justifications for their actions in Hillsbrad – the logic for them can be damned, as far as I concerned.
And when it’s all over, I’m still going to mourn the Hillsbrad Foothills of years past. Nothing can rip that from me.
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Pet taunts on the Isle of Thunder
Posted: April 1, 2013 Filed under: Reputation | Tags: hunter, Mists of Pandaria, questing, talents, tanking, warrior, World of Warcraft, WoW 8 Comments »With Patch 5.2, I got rid of my rarely-used PvP off-spec and set up a questing/soloing SV spec, glyphed and talented for pet healing and a little bit more utility. With the Isle of Thunder containing clusters of mobs with higher health levels, quest “bosses,” rares, solo scenarios, and so on, I felt that it would make my life a little bit easier, and it definitely has.
Pet Growl is great in MoP – very effective in situations like this. Because I’m a lazy hunter, I usually just leave Growl on. Lots of other hunters do the same thing, which makes it kind of humorous when you’re fighting a rare with two hunters on it and the pets keep taunting off one another.
However, I’ve been learning (again) that, when hunters do this in certain situations, it’s not as funny on the other side of the ball.
While the knowledge has always been there, this was really brought home to me over the past week with my warrior tank. Stage 4 opened last week, bringing more “boss” quests per day, and more rares to kill. A couple of these bosses, including Itoka, Master of the Forge, and Metal Lord Mono-han, put a lot of bad on the ground in the form of energized metal, roaming electric sparks, electrified water, and so on. These things are obviously good to get out of, and likewise, kiting the boss out of or away from them is imperative.
As a prot warrior – and hence, on the other side of the ball with regard to the relationship with tanking pets in these situations – I’ve repeatedly been frustrated when hunters keep Growl on when it’s pretty obvious that I’m tanking the boss. It’s pretty annoying when, as a tank, you can’t kite the boss out of persistent bad because the pet is taunting him immediately after you do, every time.
With Itoka, the roaming sparks are a constant nuisance, and Metal Lord’s “Toss Energized Metal” is similar, although in his case the danger circles are static. In either case, constant re-positioning is fairly mandatory, and, as someone who enjoys tanking, I like moving the boss around to give everyone the best chance to do damage and to take a minimum of damage themselves. This is virtually impossible when the hunter either ignores this concept or is completely unaware that it’s a problem.
I do take solace from the fact that, on several occasions, hunter pets have died during these fights, and I’ve been able to resume controlling the boss’s position. But here’s the bottom line about hunter pets constantly taunting off the tank and standing stationary in bad stuff, regardless of whether hunters care about their pets dying:
IT TAKES LONGER TO KILL THE BOSS THAT WAY.
Potentially a lot longer.
When the pet has either of these bosses, and the hunter isn’t spending any time re-positioning it like a normal tank should, the original tank and any other melee DPS cannot do their normal damage to the mob. They could, theoretically – but that would involve taking boatloads of damage due to spending way too much time being hit by electrical charges of one form or another, and likely dying if they didn’t get out in time. The AoE damage on these fights is no joke; even as a decently geared tank, it’s virtually impossible to stand in one of these circles for the entire fight and survive. And even if there is no AoE around for the moment, a tank taking no damage is building up zero vengeance, so his/her damage for that time period is going to be pretty anemic.
And pets don’t have a vengeance mechanic, so there’s absolutely no “win” in pet tanking when there’s someone else there that wants to tank the boss for you.
There have been several occasions over the past week where a hunter pet has taken control of the boss, and I’ve been forced to stand outside the circle, telling the hunter to “please turn off Growl” (if the hunter is Alliance) and tossing Heroic Throw because I can’t otherwise reach the boss. I try to make it obvious, without resorting to being unpleasant, that I. can’t. do. anything. And neither can that ret pally or DK or rogue standing next to me. And the boss loses health at a much slower rate, and it’s just a huge pain in the ass, because nobody can do what they would normally be doing in that situation, other than the hunter.
So, a word to wise hunters: please keep the Growl button on your pet bar. Know when to turn it off – and if you don’t know when to turn it off, it’s any time you don’t need to be the tank on a rare or a quest “boss.” And use Glyph of Stampede, so that it turns off Growl on all of your stampeding pets as well. Because if you don’t, you’re needlessly making your own dailies – not to mention others’ – take a bit longer to complete. Which sucks, because dailies take enough time as it is. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.
Bad pun intended.
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An in-game excuse to slack off
Posted: March 28, 2013 Filed under: Gear, Professions, Raiding & Dungeons, Reputation | Tags: Blacksmithing, gear, hunter, Leatherworking, Mists of Pandaria, progression, questing, raiding, reputation, stats, Tailoring, warrior, World of Warcraft, WoW Leave a comment »(Writing this on Wednesday evening.)
This past week-plus has been spent not doing quite as much as I normally do over the course of a day or week in WoW, following my previously detailed realization that I am suffering burnout due to over-exposure to the Valor grind(s).
While I continue to cap my hunter, I’ve been purposely slacking on every other toon. I spent a good deal less time doing just about everything that I normally do last week, except for raiding, than I have in a long time, and that was good.
Raiding
We skipped last week’s Friday night alt raid due to some absences, which was totally fine by me. The main group finally stepped back into Terrace and cleared that for the first time, which was nice. We downed Garalon. We’re planning on finishing up HoF this Friday if we can get enough people (Easter this weekend means, for good reason, that our weekend raid is cancelled). We can clear Jin’rokh every week, basically, so that’s good, because many of us need the gear he drops. But Horridon will wait until April, which is fine.
Isle of Thunder and The Thunder Forge
This raid lockout – while still “young” – has been kind of fun, since Stage 4 of the assault on the Isle of the Thunder Throne is now open. While doing my dailies on my hunter on Tues., I finally got to see The Thunder Forge, get my quest to learn how to make Lightning Steel Ingots, and start working on building up a store of such ingots to put toward creating some cool “reborn” weapons.
For some reason, I got all excited about this – perhaps it’s because I’ve been learning recipes for gear from making Magnificence of Leather and Imperial Silk since 5.2 Day One, so it’s nice that my two Blacksmiths (hunter and warrior) can finally start doing the same. Not sure why Blizzard made Blacksmithing this way, since the weapons that can be made after 29 days look like they will cap out at 489, which is hardly current raid levels. I imagine that this might be their reasoning – which I think is flawed, since there’s really no grounds for the penalty – but even if it’s not, I don’t have the interest or energy to hunt for an official answer. At any rate, I’m happy to be able to do those “transmutes” now, since I have a couple of toons that can use weapons of that level – appreciating that, at this point, my interest in gearing up alts via Raid Finder is at something of an absolute all-time low.
Shado-pan Assault rep and 5.2 Valor gear
Last week’s announcement that Patch 5.3 will see the Item Upgrade NPCs returning from their respective vacations was one that, at the time, merely sparked my interest. The reduced costs (500 VP for an 8-ilvl increase per item) mean that upgrades will be more flexible and user-friendly – more like putting a gem in a piece of gear (although not exactly like it) and less like buying an entire new item. Easier to commit to.
That kind of thing, I find interesting, whether it’s the old model or the new one.
However, things were thrown into a different light this evening as I neared the “Honored” threshold (of my ongoing quest to gain rep with the Shado-pan Assault) on Mushan.
When the Valor gear was initially revealed, I glanced at it. Wow, nice trinket. Lot of Hit, but nice proc. Other pieces… most of them upgrades. Nice. No helm or boots… but those can be crafted at a later date. That’s good. Etc.
I bought the neck immediately, and shortly thereafter I purchased the trinket, then the ring and the bracers. Everything was good there – my Hit Rating was a little high for a short while, but it’s under control at the moment.
In the meantime, however, I’ve had some decent luck with a couple of other slots. I got the Thunderforged legs (528) on our very first Jin’rokh kill. Our third kill resulted in the shoulders (522) on a bonus roll. I’ve gotten several pieces in Raid Finder, but the only piece I’m able to use right now is the cloak (502) from Ji-Kun. Nevertheless, I’ve got some decent gear going for me right now, which is helping me stay competitive and contributing to our team.
However, the combination of gear that I’ve acquired from Valor and drops means that I’ve suddenly run into a weird wall. Because of the fact that I still have the T14 2p bonus going on (helm and gloves), and the legs I got are so good, and there’s so much hit (or blue sockets) on the gear that is available to me, I’ve reached a point where my need for Valor Points is rapidly diminishing. Having just reached SPA-honored, I’m seeing a small upgrade with the cloak, which I’ll buy on Thursday. However, the legs are a direct downgrade from my 528s, while the gloves would break my set bonus. So for the next month or so, I really do not need much in the way of VP.
This looks to continue to be the case once I hit revered. At that point, the belt is totally sweet – and will be a must-buy – but the chest is loaded with Hit, Expertise, and two blue sockets with a +120 Agility socket bonus. For real, Blizzard? Beg pardon, but… are you shitting me?? So that’s a big kick in the sack – although it’s still a minor upgrade as things stand with my gear right now, believe it or not, because of the Agility bump. I’ll have to reevaluate when I get there, but I can see myself going “no thanks” when the time comes. And at exalted, the shoulders (with a 700g cost?) are a slight downgrade from Jin’rokh’s, so I’ll probably pass on those too.
All of that to say that my need for VP is likely to diminish rapidly, and is likely to stay that way until 5.3 arrives and upgrades return. I’ll be hitting those babies hard when the opportunity to use them finally arrives.
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A side-note about all of this – and, incidentally, the title-theme of this post – is that this could possibly go a long way toward momentarily easing my demand for VP on my hunter. With no demand for Valor – and I’m talking almost no demand for several weeks – I could possibly just forego questing on that toon for a while. This would open up more time to play other toons for fun, or to simply not play them much at all. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing at this point. I’ve got a strong desire to dig into that copy of Kingdoms of Amalur that’s been staring at me for a while from the shelf.
All I have to do is make sure that I have enough VP to buy the cloak, buy the belt, and be capped for upgrading purposes when 5.3 arrives, and I will be all set. Depending on when that happens, I could conceivably have that taken care of just from raiding, which would be nice. That’s my favorite end-game thing to do on my hunter anyway.
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Letting go of the grind(s)
Posted: March 20, 2013 Filed under: Gear, Professions, Raiding & Dungeons, Reputation | Tags: Alchemy, Enchanting, gear, hunter, Leatherworking, leveling, Mists of Pandaria, questing, raiding, reputation, Tailoring, warrior 12 Comments »
Ha ha ha… achievements.
Early last week, I got a call from my mom, letting me know that my grandma was not doing well, and that she and my dad were driving across the state to see her later that day.
I hadn’t seen my grandma in so long, I’d be embarrassed to admit it here. So I won’t. The tough part was that it was Tuesday, the first of five scheduled work days in a row, because my boss was on vacation (so I was taking up some of that payroll). It really stressed me out, because when my grandfather died in 2008, I had never made it up to visit him in his last years.
Fortunately, I was able to find some schedule flexibility at the end of the week, and after a short shift on Friday morning I made the 315-mile trip to see her. She was, by that time, doing better, and we had a very nice time visiting and talking, watching a baseball game together, and so on. I left mid-afternoon on Saturday, blessed by the experience, and was home in time to raid at 9:30 pm.
It was a hectic week, all told.
…
This, of course, affected my weekly race to the Valor cap. Or, more than one Valor cap. See, not only have I maintaining a capped-pace on my hunter every week since I hit 90, but I’ve also been trying to cap on my warrior, who tanks for our new alt run on Friday nights.
With patch 5.2 having dropped, here is a short list of the stuff I “have” to do:
- Isle of Thunder dailies (etc.) on the hunter, warrior, and maybe another toon each day.
- Run Throne of Thunder (Raid Finder) on the hunter, at least.
- Run heroics / RF / scenarios and/or do dailies to cap on the hunter and warrior.
- Saturday and Sunday night raids with the main team (hunter).
- Friday night alt raid with the warrior.
- Tillers: 5 level 90s at 16 plots per, plus a level 88 toon with four plots, that I try to hit each day.
- Living Steel, cloth, Sha Crystal, and Magnificence of (—) daily cooldowns.
- Somewhat consistent AH activity, although that doesn’t take much time.
This does not include having fun with alts – and right now, that mostly means playing my DK in Outland from time to time.
At any rate, the above list represents a lot of grind. And grind equals time spent, and grind doesn’t always mean fun. And time spent neither making real money nor having fun can become time wasted.
So last Friday, for the first time since I took a trip to visit with family last October, I completely ignored all of those grinds. I didn’t log in at all, because I had to go to work and then drive for more than five hours afterward. Part of me felt a smidgen of “but I need to make time for that before work!” while the rational side of me dismissed that notion as completely ridiculous.
Because it was completely ridiculous.
This may be a relatively alt-unfriendly expansion, but I have six toons in Pandaria in spite of that. I farm 84 plots per day. The Isle of Thunder can be a time sink when you get quests that are negatively affected by long re-spawn timers – or are just dumb quests, like “squash 150 roaches for 5 VP and the chance to kill the final quest boss if you actually do it.” Plus, the rares are fun, but I can’t always afford to let time get away from me while waiting for them to spawn.
I’ve been religiously farming those plots. Religiously doing those dailies. Religiously hitting up Raid Finder. Religiously capping on the hunter, and sometimes the warrior. It has felt like a duty that I was always going to be glad that I completed when I did, each week and with each positive raid result.
However, as I began my drive north last Friday, I had to chuckle to myself. I was free! No dailies today! No raid tonight! It’s sad to say, but it was actually nice to have that time off from raiding, even though it was just one day and I’d only raided twice before on the warrior.
…
Since Saturday night, when I came back, I’ve slacked off on some of that grind, and I think I will be better for it.
Despite new content with the recent patch, I have been starting to grow… I don’t know… bored? tired? of the game. This is probably a sign that I’ve been playing it too much, for too long. While the content is new, the game is basically the same, the way that I have been playing it: lots of grinds.
However, whereas I’ve usually spent days off playing WoW all day when there was nothing else pressing to do, lately I’ve been finding something else to do with some of that time. This is definitely a good thing.
But the best thing is that I am letting go of some of the grinds. I am not going to bust my butt – and test my own patience in the process – by putting my warrior through the same paces that I put my hunter through each week, just to ensure that I can get that next piece of gear as soon as possible. I’m not going to concern myself with getting that sixth toon to 90 unless I feel like it, even if it will help me gather herbs more easily with flying, and will get me the Quintessential Quintet achievement (yes, yes… I have two level 90 hunters). I’m not going to go out of my way to make sure that I have enough mats to use each cooldown, every day, without exception. I’ll still use my cooldowns when I can, but I won’t fret if they go un-used for a day or two, or three. I won’t let myself be bothered if I list auctions each and every day, because I have plenty of gold.
I’ll still play my hunter like I do, getting those dailies done and running RF and raiding and so on. And I’ll still farm my plots most days. But I need to take a break from the job that keeping a well-rounded stable of max level alts has become. I want to spend more time enjoying other aspects of the game – like leveling my DK or other toons, and working on my low-level hunter soloing project some more (sadly, he’s still 19). I also have other games I want to play, and books to read, and guitars to play, and good weather to enjoy, and spring cleaning to do, and… so on.
…
I’m super glad that I made the time to see my beloved grandma last week. I’m also relieved to have been forced to abandon the game and the grind for a couple of days. I think that letting go of some of the job-like aspects of MoP will allow me to enjoy the game more when I do play, and will make me happier overall.
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Throne of Thunder: One week, one kill – Jin’rokh down! (with bonus…)
Posted: March 11, 2013 Filed under: Gear, Raiding & Dungeons, Reputation | Tags: gear, hunter, Mists of Pandaria, questing, reputation, Throne of Thunder, World of Warcraft, WoW 1 Comment »Saturday night was a good night.
After waiting all week (and for weeks before that) to get cracking on Patch 5.2, I was growing extremely bored and restless. The Isle of Thunder seems to be a place where people are having fun, killing rares, etc. For me, it has been an experience akin to the Molten Front progression experience.
And certainly, since I play a hunter, there’s nothing about it that’s really all that difficult… except for the extreme tiresomeness of hunting for those last few, elusive Grave Guardians to destroy, or corpses to burn, or whatever. The place is really cool – especially since Stage 2 opened today – but it’s also a cluster, crawling with people, which is great, and is also a curse. In fact, a few days ago I was so bored with the experience that I found myself writing a long, stupid post about it at 4am. That one’s going in the trash – you’re welcome.
So anyway, why do I do it, then?
Well, I’m doing it for the gear. And it is a cool place, and it is somewhere new to earn Valor.
It’s not because I need the Kirin Tor’s VP offerings. They sell a few pieces of 496 rep gear, but even for slots where I’m sporting a 489 item, the value of any of those upgrades per VP is ridiculously small.
No, it’s because of the infrequent – but hardly insignificant – opportunities to get reputation with the Shado-Pan Assault (which does have the good gear). And after seven days, I find myself in a good position to be Friendly very soon (2999/3000, in fact). I’ve run the treasure room scenario, done a few other quests for them… and then, on Saturday, we entered, as Bensen put it, The Thunder Dome.
Into the Thunder Throne!… wait, what? Aw yeah, Orb of the Sin’dorei… yeah. I went there.
After the trash, some discussion, and Mushan accidentally initiating the first pull of Jin’rokh the Breaker because I had a keyboard miscue (learn 2 type, and/or don’t have the boss targeted when typing, man!), and eleven more pulls… we got him!
I have to say – and this may surprise some – but this is the first time I’ve gotten a first-week boss kill since at least Icecrown, and maybe earlier. I’m not sure… I can’t remember back that far. So it’s pretty exciting, for me personally, to be involved in a first week / first kill situation.
Unfortunately, for some reason my screenshot addon did not take a screenie of the kill. However, I did have the presence of mind to take the above shot during some down time in Jin’rokh’s room. You know, for giggles.
Overall, I’m very proud of our team. There’s such a huge difference between being here on the first week of a patch and waiting until six and a half weeks after the new content arrives to even enter a raid with a patchwork group, like we did in 5.0. And it’s nice to be in the top 20 on our server for once (not that the server is what it once was, but still…).
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After that, and again on Sunday night, we made a bunch of pulls on Horridon. It’s a much tougher fight, and we may have a gear issue on our team, as far as surviving and, in particular, burning down adds. However, at the end of the night we got to experience the wonder of Oondasta, the heroic world boss on the Isle of Giants.
Here’s the screenshot from our server’s kill. Yes, I died more times than I can remember…
Oondasta died… and killed a lot, too!
For this shot, which was taken by the Multishot addon, my resurrection timer was literally at 1 second when the boss died, but this one looks pretty sick anyway, so I went with it!
But yeah… Oondasta… is pretty hard core. The damage she dishes out is ridiculous.
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During the week leading up to Saturday, I was having concerns about our group. One of our healers was slated to be out for part of the raid, and the replacement was away for the weekend. I was wondering if it would merely be a trash-farming night. However, I was pretty amped for it on Saturday, and spirits were generally high going in. Due to some technical issues, our other healer was able to join us in time for our fourth or fifth pull, and things progressed from there.
My expectations for our group are modest, based on recent experience, and as such, I tend to generally be skeptical of our collective ability to make progress. However, when it’s game time, I’m prepared, hepped up, and ready to kick some ass, and Saturday really proved to be a winner for us. It made for a good raid night, as I mentioned earlier.
Looking forward to killing more bosses and equipping better gear!
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I pretty much don’t do WoW holidays any more
Posted: February 9, 2013 Filed under: Leveling, Off Topic | Tags: achievements, holiday, Mists of Pandaria, questing, World of Warcraft, WoW 4 Comments »So we’re almost six months into the post-5.0, account-wide achievements era, and I have to admit something…
Ok, I guess I already admitted it in the title of this post.
Occasionally, I see people on Twitter talking about working on holiday stuff, and it occurs to me that I would like to work on some holiday stuff too. And then I remember that I’ve completed everything that I want to complete, achievement-wise, for that holiday – which, to be honest, for some holidays like Love is in the air, is “nothing at all” – and I decide to do something else instead.
I’m not a mount-chaser, so I’m not after the meta. There are so many mounts in the game, and I have enough that I’m completely content with what I’m riding (which, at this point, is some type of gryphon or hippogryph on virtually all of my toons – and the reasons for that would make up another short post altogether).
The Lunar Festival is ending today, and I realize that it’s been about two weeks long, and I haven’t even bothered to check it out. Since there was really nothing new, and I have the achievement for completing it, and have done it several times over several years/toons, I had no desire to get involved.
At first, I blamed this personal trend of omission on the account-wide achievements. Stupid account-wide achievements; whereas, in the past, my pals and I would faithfully work on holiday achievements on multiple toons, driven by the achievement bug or whatever, now we all already have it, and so there’s no point from that perspective. (Stupid account-wide achievements. Mumble-mumble-mumble.)
However, while the change to achievements is certainly partly to blame for my apathy toward holidays now, there’s also the fact that not much has changed when it comes to the holidays themselves. Perhaps that’s just the nature of holidays – we have our traditions at Christmas or Easter or Thanksgiving or Halloween, and part of the fun is living those traditions each year. But I guess it doesn’t really feel the same way in-game. I have no desire to visit the all of elders again. If I see one, I will generally honor him or her, and it’s a small, special occasion. But I’m not going to trek all over Azeroth and Outland to honor the elders for the Xth time.
I guess the big problem for me is that, after so many years, most of the holidays haven’t changed much at all. For Winter Veil, they changed Metzen the Reindeer, and the Greench so that I don’t even care to try to kill him anymore. The only thing that is remotely interesting is opening the presents under the Winter Veil tree to see what this year’s cool gift will be. And yes, I have the footballs. They are fun to use in short spurts. Freezle and I always like using them after we kill the Spirit Kings, when Loremaster Cho starts going on about how “these halls have not seen footfalls in many years” or whatever. It really, really sounds like he’s saying “these halls have not seen footballs…” and so we get out the footballs and start rapidly kicking/passing them back and forth between each other for a couple of minutes before the trash pulls to Elegon. That’s fun.
But almost everything else is the same. There aren’t lots of new holiday activities to do from year to year, and my desire to revisit the same old same old seems to diminish each year as well.
The other factor is something that Blizzard probably considers a success: there is so much to do in Mists of Pandaria that holidays fall by the wayside, particularly if you have alts. I have three toons that I play regularly: Mushan, Modhriel, and Droignon. Each is generally raid-ready to varying degrees, and that has taken a lot of time to accomplish. With little-to-no new holiday content, there is little incentive to interrupt my regularly-scheduled gearing/dungeoning/raiding program to revisit (what feels like) stale holiday content. Since Pandaria, the only non-Darkmoon holiday activities I’ve participated in have been Direbrew-farming and opening my new footballs.
Perhaps that’s intended. Perhaps the holidays are new and exciting for newer players, and not intended to be a big deal for veterans or raiders. That doesn’t seem 100% correct, though. At a time where the developers are concentrating on keeping us busy, holidays seem to have taken a back seat, but I don’t necessarily believe that they intend for us to forget about holidays.
But generally, I do just that.
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Just when I thought I was out – Part two! Jumping back into PvP
Posted: February 5, 2013 Filed under: Gear, PvP, Reputation | Tags: gear, hunter, Mists of Pandaria, PvP, questing, reputation, World of Warcraft, WoW Leave a comment »If I remember correctly, patch 5.0 hit servers on August 28th. Around that time, I stopped doing battlegounds on my hunter, and I haven’t entered one since.
I’ve generally been content with that omission*. Raiding is my main passion – that, and raid prep – and I haven’t missed PvP very much at all.
*I don’t want to say “decision” because, while I decided not to PvP in patch 5.0 (pre-MoP), I never decided not to PvP anymore on the hunter. I just didn’t decide to PvP on the hunter after that, due to laziness, lack of interest, preoccupation with PvE content, or something.
In fact, now that I think about it, the major time sink that dailies/reputation grinds brought to WoW with Mists of Pandaria likely killed my desire to PvP. After leveling the hunter, I also leveled my bear to 90, then my warrior, then mage. I also have another hunter at 89, and my pally is 88. So it wasn’t necessarily a conscious choice, but PvP became “this thing that I don’t have time for, really.”
However, a singular set of circumstances has forced me to reconsider PvP, and the main circumstance is the quest from the Wrathion legendary questline entitled The Lion Roars, which requires a win in each of the new-for-MoP battlegrounds. When I got the quest, because I’ve reserved my knowledge of the legendary questline to in-game discovery for the most part, my reaction was “are you kidding me?”
My first thought was to go ahead and try the new BGs in my PvE gear, but with implementation of PvP Power and PvP Resilience, I decided that I didn’t want to go into BGs as something to be completely mowed down by the opposition.
In addition to this, I’ve also found myself at an odd point in the expansion. Raiding progress has been slow, and – since I have alts that I enjoy in addition to the hunter – I usually race to the VP cap on Mushan in order to get the Valorous bonus for those other toons. Since we raid on weekends, this means that, other than raiding, there isn’t all that much for the hunter to do from Friday night on, once I cap Valor.
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I’ve slowly started putting together a PvP set anyway, ever since I started JP capping, so I’ve been converting JP to Honor and occasionally buying the Honor gear as I get the opportunity. I have five pieces as of the end of the last raid lockout, and I may begin to actively pursue Honor points this week, if I have the time. Tol Barad seems like a pretty good place to do this, particularly if I hit up several battles this weekend, and I’m hoping to add a couple more pieces to what will be a motley combination of PvE and PvP armor.
I’m actually kind of excited about PvPing again on Mushan, although I have no illusions about my abilities. It’s been so long, and I was never that great anyway. I’m not excited about ripping up my off-spec, which I use for questing and raid soloing, and rearranging my UI for PvP, but I don’t really have a choice if I want to keep up with the questline. And I think I’ll enjoy having something different to do with my hunter on weekends. This should bring some life back to the game for me, something old that’s new again.
I may not write about PvP much after this – particularly if it ends up being a disaster – even if I start doing it regularly, but when it comes to raiding, the show must go on. I really want to move forward with Wrathion on this character, so I will be doing some PvP in the very near future. For better or for worse. :D
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