One Fun Week in WoW

“We’re so busy watching out for what’s just ahead of us that we don’t take time to enjoy where we are.”
Bill Watterson

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One Fun Week in WoW

This has been a good week in WoW. Our raid team blazed through bosses and we got our second Heroic N’zoth kill on Wednesday. Which means (I hope, I hope) an achievement run!

I’m still fiddling with my new Heartsbane toy:

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This is my little level one night elf in Darnassus.

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The poor thing is corrupted already! Or witched maybe? She is an elf, after all, and gets green glowy fairies around her feet. I’m not quite happy with the macro build but this is a start.

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The Arachnoid Harvester is a rare in Mechagon who can rarely drop a mount. I spent plenty of time camping this boss on my main and three Alts. With about a half-an-hour spawn time, you can show up about ten minutes before and then time the next kills so you don’t spent all of your time camping.

But, there is time to kill. I learned that Mr. Smite writes over your druid forms. So: why not go tree form and stand in a camp fire and burn Mr. Smite?

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Yep, easily amused here in the wild World of Warcraft. Also, if you are a little shy to dance in the Brazier of Dancing Flames, you can use the Doomsayer’s toys to cover your naughty bits and still join in the party.

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The big bronto mount deserves some flavor, especially camping for a rare mob with other players. Everyone is showing off and making train noises. Here is my current macro. Central to this build is the Mr. Smite’s Compass which makes the Bronto mount massive and it dwarves the other players.

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Sometimes you can be rewarded and surprised.

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Yep, it is time for my alts to hearth out of Mechagon. Here is my hunter strutting and clanking around Boralus.

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I bitterly and utterly failed at the pet dungeon in Blackrock Depths yesterday. Those fights can be complicated and demand a very wide range of pets. I’ll probably get it done today though and get the toy that gives you “eyes of the beast” on your battle pet and run around some. I have already read that the toy wipes out your magical biscuit and Narcissa’s Mirror toy and I’m slowly, with Hallmark tissues, getting over it before I’ve even earned it.

In all, a fun week in WoW.

Adventuring and Treasuring the World of Warcraft

“Take your army to the Haunted Forest and bring me that girl and her dog. Do what you want with the others, but I want her alive and unharmed. They’ll give you no trouble, I promise you that.”
The Wicked Witch of the West

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Adventuring and Treasuring the World of Warcraft

No matter how great those words are in the title, the reality is that it is a list of achievements under the Exploration tab for this expansion. Look up Treasures of Vol’dun, for example, and then track it and look each one up on Wowhead!

I’m not kidding, these caches, crates, boxes and chests are well hidden or need a code or candles lit, so Wowhead is the way to go. It is kind of fun and satisfying. And, Elune have mercy, there are a bunch of ’em.

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The Adventurer ones were the easiest because I’d already stumbled upon many of them in all of the zones, fill in the final few and ding the achieve. The Treasures ones were harder and better hidden, often in caves or on some boat way over there or … right in the capital of the Horde. It is good to go looking around the game.

It is a bag filler, opening all of those chests over and over. You’ll collect some toys and gizmos that might come in handy. I am very pleased with the Heartsbane Grimoire. It is from one of the treasures in Drustvar.

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Use: Places the user under the spell of the Heartsbane Coven.
“Filled with the forbidden charms and cantrips of the Heartsbane Coven.”

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I think it looks cool. It has all this witch animated stuff floating around you. It is up for one hour with a one hour cooldown, so; why not all of the time? Adding another toy like the locket looks cool and not quite as dark as my regular night elf.

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The spell is channeled, so it can’t be macro’d with a hearthstone or mount. But, I might try a stand-alone macro. It looks cool!

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AOTC: N’Zoth

“Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.”
Dorothy Parker

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AOTC: N’Zoth

I had a neighbor who moved away a few months ago. She was a die-hard Trump fan from Texas. Passionate, angry, defensive; she was furious that she was losing friends and she was fighting back by deleting people on her friends list on Facebook. Like I said, she moved away and I’m sure she never thinks of me, a neighbor who chatted in passing.

I think about her now and then.

Do you ever wonder if there are people out there who think about you while they are long gone from your own mind? What are they remembering?

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Last night we downed N’Zoth! Attendance was high because this would be the night of “the kill”. We had our Vantus runes and did runs and wipes learning the fight and our roles and duties.

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It is one of the better designed fights in my opinion. Once you enter the final stage, you are almost sure of the kill. No very nasty mechanic in the twelfth minute of the fight. For this fight, you know that you are failing early (enough) on and players can jump off the edge and suicide to save the repair bill. And once you enter the final stage, you stack and focus and get the goods.

There is nothing very hard in this fight except for two things. One is the Paranoid phase where you have to race to your buddy and stand by him or her. The second is that the raid has to split. Dividing the raid team on two different realms puts the onus on each individual player to perform.

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For a cynical and tired raid team, we celebrated! We all collected our new mounts and went down to the Goldshire Inn to park on the roof and show off our new mounts. That was pretty fun with much laughter.

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Then, just outside Stormwind, we made a circle of our new mounts so everyone could get a screen shot of our victorious moment.

I’m glad that it is over. And we are sure to return for more of the same, probably with Alts. There is hope for an Achievement Run on Normal at some point. But we are sure to lose some players now that “the kill” has been successful, for them there are other games to play and activities to do in this game.

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The achievement goes on the Feats of Strength list. The glaring and bitter missing one is the Eternal Palace – that is when everyone was leaving WoW and raid teams were falling apart and we called it quits until the next patch came out.

So, my friends, done and done!

WoW: I Enjoy Being a Girl

“It’s not that I don’t like reading about myself. But I get unhappy with the kind of things that are written about me. For instance, after ‘Suzie Wong’ . . . I was being written up as a kind of sex kitten. I’m not really at all like that.”
Nancy Kwan

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WoW: I Enjoy Being a Girl

When I first started playing the World of Warcraft, my character was male. This is because I am male and it made perfect sense to play a male. Being female would have felt like a lie, I think. Since then, almost all of my Alts are male!

With the big spike in online blogging during the Wrath of the Lich King, I read a lot about WoW. One thing that interested me was a statistic (don’t trust it) that said that 80% of the female characters in the game are men (don’t believe it, how could anyone know). The motive, they said, was that a girl character would get random presents and carrys and more.

Well, I can be as girl crazy as the next guy. But I had zero interest in throwing gold at a girl character to impress him/her. Nor would I take that step to be a female character to try to gain some kind of advantage. It feels all wrong.

In the Cataclysm expansion, as I recall, a new toy came out called Kalytha’s Haunted Locket. It turned me into a female night elf with blue vagueness around me. I liked it because it was different. And then, and then, I noticed that the animations were very different and that they were my animations!

Well then, I decided to level a female character; my profession alt with alchemy and inscription. Yes, a night elf for the flip animation. And then, a female gnome and what a character she is! Feisty, determined, zeal for life; this is a very well animation-and-sound-designed character. And I love her, she is so much fun.

Now, there is talk of a gender change coming to the Barber Shop. And, I dunno. My male characters have always been male and mercenaries and adventurers with, well, I’d not call them back stories so much as attitude stories. Doing a gender change on my established toons would make no sense at all unless it was to do it just because I can.

Gender change is now a paid service. I’m guessing that if it will be shuttled to the Barber Shop that it would cost beaucoup bux.

So, I like being a male with a male character but I also enjoy being a girl.

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Finally, if it is ringing a bell, I Enjoy Being a Girl is a song from Flower Drum Song. And if it is not ringing a bell, I’d not be surprised; the movie came out in 1961 and you’d have to be a kind of a fan of musicals to watch it.

Still, all learning is good and why not enjoy the terrific Nancy Kwan sing about being an Asian young woman in America in the time period.

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Whoa, early 60s!

WoW: Farming in the Lull

“Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.”
Will Rogers

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Farming in the Lull

Hi-ho, the derry-o I find myself farming, of all things! Like many players, I am interested in collecting the Echoes to buy corruption tokens. My logic is that if I am going to run the LFR for Echoes and fun, I might as well earn a satchel with about 900 gold.

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And if I have to contend with 45 minute queue times, I might as well do some herbing even though the prices are tanking in a lull. The thing that I found out is that you can’t just leave the panel open and expect a satchel run to pop up. You have to open and close the panel again and again, hoping for it to show.

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I should do a full feature on my favorite toy, the one from Killsaw. This is from Mr. Smite’s Compass and the toy looks marvelous. One of his animations is scratching himself and using a spinning saw blade must hurt!

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Lull farming has found me finally leveling up the follower in Nazjatar. I’ll do the other two also, I suppose.

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The next is a horrible screen shot! It is a player who is multi-boxing. There are four Sky Golems all tied together at one keyboard. I’d hate it truly but the player is not on my realm. Personally, it looks like a little bit of fun but I can’t imagine paying for four accounts, especially if I relied on farming during a lull to pay for them!

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Lock Outs.

Blizzard offers the choice to save a lock out and not have it reset at the beginning of the week. This is so that you can continue. However, once you get to the next-to-the-last-boss, Wrathion is there with the quest to kill Ra-dan, Vex and the other guy four times and you can earn a portal that will jump you forward.

So, we anticipated this and carried an alt to save the lock out before those three end-wing bosses. And, that guy with an alt swapped to his main to kill the three and reach Wrathion for the quest. But when we zoned in on Sunday, all of the early bosses were up. So now we are doing a new set of lock outs and re-clearing everything for another person to extend a different lock out.

Sound confusing? It is. We were frustrated and angry last night trying to figure out the lock out mechanic designed by Blizzard. And we spent our night trying different combinations with other people and using rogues to sneak to see if the doors were open; and the catch is that you have to kill the first boss no matter what (I think)(you can’t get down the hallways if Wrathion is up)(the whole design is a disaster).

So, this coming Wednesday we’ll finish killing the early bosses and building a new lock out until we have two separate lock outs with running out and resetting the raiding in the middle of the evening and, someday eventually, we’ll actually face the final boss.

Egads.

One thing we clear, we are very much stronger than when we started. The Soccer Boss only sees two ball runs instead of three, that sort of thing. So, ever optimistic am I!

Happy hunting.

A Hasty Game

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
Oscar Wilde”

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A Hasty Game

Nope, we have not killed N’zoth on heroic yet. I think our lockout will be used now. We get newer players to gear up and others drop out. Our main tank has a different job and job hours and so: we train a new tank.

For me as a resto-druid, I had two choices. Either stack Haste for more ticks on my heal-over-time spells or Mastery for more bang-for-the-buck. I chose Haste because it also reduces my cast times. Small reason but it tipped the choice.

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With the Expedience effects of corruption, I watch as my haste rolls up and down while I play. I’ve seen it get up to 125%. This is kind of fun when this happens.

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Okay, I’ll admit it. I’ll watch my haste panel while fighting a boss! No, not ALL of the time; but it is a bit of flavor to add to the treat of raiding.

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It is summer. We are in a lull. Players are restless because of the pandemic. We have to be forgiving when people act up. In the LFR, I always make a case to never kick anyone; even the AFK guys. I’ll say in chat that after a 30 minute wait to play the game, getting kicked really sucks and you don’t want to go to the bathroom in case the queue pops up; so you wait until you get into the raid.

And if a tank pulls before a player can run back. I heap the guilt! Maybe I have a little mother in me but not enough, I just don’t have those skills.

I’ll continue to say that the toy drop off of Killsaw continues to amuse me. I have it macro’d to my hearthstone and recommend that you do too.

As you can see, with this toy that fishing can be a dangerous business!

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A Heroic Lockout

“[A] quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business.”
A.A. Milne

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A Heroic Lockout

Our Raid Leader posted a spreadsheet in Discord last week. Players were to mark which bosses they still needed to down to get the gear drop. This week, we carried our Raid Leader Alt and Off-Tank Alt to make a lock out. This means that we don’t have to spend time on things that we don’t need to do anymore.

So, starting next week, we’ll have the last bosses of Ra-Den The Despoiled, Vexiona and Il’gynoth, Corruption Reborn to start our week! We’ve downed these guys before. And then we’ll finally make a run at the final wing.

A few of our players run Mythic Plus and they might get stronger, but the bulk of our raiders have the gear that we want and it is all that we need to earn the kills.

I hope that this takes some weeks to do. Then we’ll start Achievement Runs and Alt Runs until the pre-expansion patch, earning a break for a short while.

Good game.

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The Eye of Corruption is a battle pet that drops off of the final boss in the raid. I earned mine in the LFR.

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This pet is tenacious! Take a flight path? It will still show up and follow you around. It is not a flyer but manages to keep up on the ground.

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The Eye broadcasts the creepy sounds from the raid. Wind blowing through an empty cave or an empty room is what it sounds like to me. There are plenty of pets that chirp or bonestorm but this one might be the one that will creep you out the most. Unnerving, I tell ya.

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And it is the Eye theme that we see on all of the raid gear. Try not to pay too close attention: the eye is always looking at you!

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Today in WoW

“All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.”
H. L. Mencken

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Today in WoW

Today in WoW finds me happy. Gone are the horrible days in November and December when players were leaving and raid teams were falling apart. Now, in June, our raid team is solid and I look forward to new kills and new heroic bosses tonight.

With war- and titan-forging gone, the ways to get stronger are harder to do. Stacking corruption pieces is my only way since I have been avoiding Mythic+ and PvP. Here’s hoping for a decent piece to buy from Mother. We cannot corrupt the azerite armor, neck or cloak; so the ten availables could fill up. I am at five right now and wanting more.

There is only one thing that I hate about WoW:

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Yep, that is about it.

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The daily business of farming Echoes can be tedious. Players are so strong now that when many are gathered around a spawn, a very selfish player might one-shot the objective and cackle at the others left to wait for another spawn.

Of course, I have a macro for that.

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As I see this happen, I add the name to the list. It was a once quickly-made macro, named by banging my fingers on the keyboard. But, I have a button to spam for an instant moonfire and rarely miss a spawn. It is a ticking DoT, others can get a tag too.

The Dark Moon Faire is up and my Alts are visiting for some easy XP. I really like leaping off of the cliff and using a goblin glider kit to sail down to the carousel. Try it!

Smokin’ Hot Raid Team

“Silent gratitude isn’t very much use to anyone.”
Gertrude Stein

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Smokin’ Hot Raid Team

What happened on Wednesday? Did we collectively sober up? Why and how did we all show up on time? How is it that we raced through the current raid on heroic as a smashing celebration of our own amazing talents and skills?

Sure enough, we did:

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We really began to notice on some of the later bosses. For example on the Dog boss, healers are well aware of this stacking debuff in phase two. Typically it gets up to seven stacks on the entire raid and we really grit our teeth to muster out the heals and really want the relief of phase three. On Wednesday, we changed phases at five stacks, not the usual seven.

Candidly, our raid team was not any more amazing (or lacking) than ever. With the available purchase of specific corruption tokens starting on Tuesday; the raid is now simply nerfed. I don’t know about the others but I certainly am pointing towards the desired corruption pieces instead of running with the best that I could find.

On Tuesday, I put together a Haste build. I had two haste-proc corruptions and one percentage-based corruption. The percentage is my desired piece and I’d want one proc piece because that’d positively effect the overall percentage.

Tonight, when we face new bosses for the first time, I am confident! This is because I’ll have my wish in place of one proc-piece and THREE percentage pieces!

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I’ve been told that “it is better to have three rank ones than one rank three”. So, hopefully, my healing will have a nice jump and hopefully the rest of the raid also got their optimal pieces and we can move forward with confidence. And, in my future, I will gather Echoes to at some point earn yet another low corruption percentage piece.

We are smokin’ hot, I tell ya.

12 Quests in 45 Minutes

“The swagger is not a strategy.”
Prof. Salam Al Shereida

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12 Quests in 45 Minutes

Like many others, I’m leveling Alts. My current is a mechagnome named Tinkersome who is at level 63 today. Best guess is finishing in about a month or so.

Unlike many others, I do the pet tamer rounds in the Eastern Kingdoms. With a hearth in Goldshire, it is quick stuff to work down to Booty Bay and then hearth back for a straight shot at Lakeshire, Redridge and the longer flight paths eventually up to Light’s Hope Chapel.

Two are skipped until flying at 60. In general I use the Rotten Little Helper for the Booby-Trapped Presents which is a one-shot on the middle pet. The Infernal Pyreclaw and Blightbreath are also great pets on these low-level opponents when it has gotten so boring that you are trying to reduce the number of clicks!

12 Quest turn-ins at a 45 minute span is pretty good with heirlooms and the XP buff and plenty of time to read blogs or make coffee. Reduced to mindless is really good at the break of dawn and groggy with the morning’s rise.

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I don’t look at my stats on this blog too often. Now and then I am surprised at what brought readers to this humble site. Lately I’ve been a little sad to see “How to Quit a Guild in WoW”.

We bloggers have left a trail, no doubt. Odd things (to me) are picked up and led to a visit. You can wonder why but also how because if I go look at their search terms, my post could be buried many pages deep in Google. Obviously, Google isn’t the only search engine.

So, I did look up the How To and I found out that I wrote that five years ago! Now that is some perspective. So, grats to me, I’ve been blogging for five years!