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!

WoW: It Never Ends

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Or, if not my friend, maybe my ally long enough for us to get out of this.”
Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

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WoW: It Never Ends

And that is good, I like a game that can keep me busy.

Having an (almost) cleared quest log is a trip. One is for taking the battle pet to Legion WQs and I got part way through my third or fourth pet and gave up. Maybe I’ll go back to it.

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My hordie alt is in the LFR now. The horde enjoy fishing while waiting for players to flood in and out after a wipe. This Hyper-Compressed Ocean toy has turned out to be a great toy and a great way to pass the time. I am really glad that I got it. You can fish up any fish in the game including the secret fish and the bobber crates.

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We are still raiding. Our team now rides up around 23 or 24 now that we are doing heroic. I remember well when we had our hardy ten facing the final boss on normal. Our raid leader is really smart and is being very laid back regarding progression, knowing that we will be in this lull state for a long time. We downed the soccer boss and Ra-den for the first time this week. The learned bosses are dropping faster and faster.

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We are all looking at the changes with the Echoes and purchased corruptions that should be arriving today after reset. I have been running a haste proc build (racing pulse) and buying a rank one to add to a ring might be interesting. If we can choose, then we can make builds and try them out — much more fun than reading advice on a webpage.

Peace!

Out and About in Azeroth

“A man may plant a tree for a number of reasons. Perhaps he likes trees. Perhaps he wants shelter. Or perhaps he knows that someday he may need the firewood.”
Joanne Harris

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Out and About in Azeroth

Somehow our raid team ballooned up to 24, at least on the first three bosses on heroic. We can carry them. After the third boss is down, it is understood that some of them will leave. But, only after sticking with us to the dog boss entrance. This is because three mobs drop 200 mentos for a total of 600. Good stuff.

Out of the blue and much to my surprise, the raid leader and one of the fighters began talking parses and damage. Believe it or not, we are running Warcraft Logs again. I was shocked. It has been ages (really probably a year) since we pored and poured over the data. It is believed by me that they like looking at their jacked-up corruption numbers.

I missed the boat entirely on the path to 100 exalted rep. The answer was obvious: horde side. Duh. I sat there feeling like Foghorn Leghorn kept throwing them over my head and I was the fool for comedy. So, I logged into my 120 hordie today to do some emissary rep runs. Didn’t even have a flying mount on the action bar: that is how long it had been since I visited this character!

While the next expansion is a long ways away, I feel like there is a lot to do. I am prepping four characters to cross over, each to his own covenant. Of great interest to me will be the pre-expansion patch when we get squished and all of our new spells. I hope that for a brief time that we are way over-powered but we can still get the AOTC for the mount — will it work that way?

Each morning I alternate between looking at Wowhead and MMO Champs for information that I’m interested in for Shadowlands and reading the daily news on the pandemic. Back and forth, every day. These are some tough times and I’m glad to have WoW to keep from this urge to run and go shopping just to get out.

Blessed be.

 

The Shadowlands Prep

“When you are dealing with an invisible enemy,
use most resources as shield, and a bit as a bait.”
Toba Beta

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The Shadowlands Prep

I saw a picture of a bunch of TSA guys lined up at some airport with their white gowns, masks and face shields. They sure did remind me of the anonymous storm troopers in Star Wars. Just saying.

I agree with Misdirections in The Road to Shadowlands. The difference between four months to the next expansion and eight months is huge. If Blizz would even give us a “best guess” with a long line of qualifiers, it would be helpful.

Several of my friends in WoW told me that they plan on having four characters in Shadowlands. They want to experience each Covenant, like we did in Legion with the class halls. It is good idea and if Shadowlands is really “alt friendly” then why not my hunter profession team? I guess that I’ll keep an eye on the Beta, which isn’t really my thing.

The team is herb/engineering, mining/engineering, inscription/alchemy, skinning/leatherworking. I have a wild-card druid who is herbing/mining too, often a late-comer to the expansions.

My current list of new 120s is short. I had one in 138 gear who had never been to Legion or Boralus. The big deal for me is deciding if I want to do the cloak run. How Blizzard will replace our neck and cloak in the pre-expansion patch would be a good thing to know. In the mean time, my UI really wants me to visit the forge to upgrade the neck but I don’t have a second essence.

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The AP part was easy. Farming the Echoes (500) is a drag and, again, I have to decide how far to take these alts in preparation for Shadowlands. Especially if they are not playing much in BfA.

And there is what to do with my time now in the lull. I could go into running up some gold. The Project Longboi shows that you can earn five million in three months by running old raids. He even lists which raids are the most profitable. I’m guessing Gnomecore with his massive tmog goals is loaded with gold!

Edit: Project Longboi earned 1.7 million gold in three months.

Some things are ticked off of the list:

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And I still have to do the pet battle dungeons, which I have not touched! I’m glad that I saved them for more peaceful times.

WoW: Mindless Gameplay

“Make foes of bowmen if you must,
Never of penmen.”
Tiruvalluvar

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WoW: Mindless Gameplay

Here at the end of an expansion all of the many systems designed for this expansion must come under question. By this I mean, we (really me) got into the habit of running certain things on a daily or weekly basis to earn the end reward. Some rewards appear to be ongoing, like AP, even though the steps earned are really small.

I’m pretty much done with the Horrible Visions. I liked them well enough to earn the rewards in the designed game but to do them on a lark is not for me. So, now I look at my only two characters that have done the cloak business and I see that I’m collecting but not spending:

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Not watching what you are doing will leave you holding a bag full of stuff. I have forgotten what Nethershards and Apexis Crystals and Timeless Coins buy, but I can see that I spent a lot of time at some point collecting but not spending:

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No one will tell us exactly when the next expansion will arrive. The smart people that I know have predictions that are very different from each other. If we did know, then we’d be able to time our activities; like for a raider like me, when would I stop gathering herbs to make flasks so that I’m not stuck holding a ton of materials that I don’t spend.

In about fifteen minutes, the weekly reset will happen. I intend on doing the major assault for the gear reward (as I have said before, the odds are astronomical that I’ll get the piece that I want). I’ll gladly do it just for the chance, it is kind of fun to fill the bar. But, I could easily not do it — it is time to rethink what my rhythm of play has been and adapt it to the end game times.

Of Alts, Rep and XP

“If your enemy offers you two targets, strike at a third.”
Robert Jordan

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Of Alts, Rep and XP

My raiding friends say that I don’t get it. And I don’t. Everyone is leveling up characters with this big XP buff and crowing about their progress. My question is, “What are you going to do with that character?”.

I can understand insurance. If, in the next expansion, there is a favored class and everyone wants to play that class, having a ready-to-go guy would be pretty handy. If they nerfed the resto-druid even more, I would be heart broken. I don’t have a shaman up and ready.

Now, I am no stranger to Alts. My play strategy is exactly what Ion hates; alts feeding their mains. That is my intention and it gets harder to do as Ion puts trip hazards in my way. But, I do want an herbalist who will feed my alchemist who will supply my main with flasks and potions.

Seeing the world through different eyes does have it’s appeal. I have (one) horde character who is 120 and has played (some). Seeing that other side is cool and fills in story and lore.

The rep buff is new but, again, why? I already have the exalted mounts and goodies from the paragon caches. Why would I drag an alt through all of that again? At this point in Wow, I have played every class except Death Knight. I think. Maybe I could look at the list.

For BfA, I dropped my skinner/leatherworker and left him in the garrison making drums of fury. If everyone is doing it, I’d better too; so he is now 120. His ilevel is 411 and can enter the current raid on LFR. But he has no second essence even though the slot is open and he can’t add the extra stamina until that second slot has something in it. So, I guess I have to earn enough to buy from MOTHER on an Alt that will probably go nowhere.

There has to be a strategy. My druid will raid and my hunter will explore. They will choose different covenants … wait, is that it? Everyone wants a max toon in a different covenant? I’d need four for alliance and four for horde to do that.

It has been promised that the next expansion will be more alt-friendly. Odds are that my idea is very different than Ion’s idea of friendly. In Cata, Panda and WoD, I had an army of profession alts – almost all of them hunters or herbing druids. That ran for three full expansions and it was great. I had a JC, blacksmith, engineer, inscription guy and so on.

So, these two buffs are massive. A lot of people are returning. I see players that quit last year. But what about us players who have been here all along? These things do very little for me unless I just don’t get it. If you can explain it, let me know in the comments!