Battle Stance

Sunday raid was uneventful, except for a tank/healer pair missing, so we had to improvise a little, including me healing on Hc Diurna, but it worked, also we didn’t skip. Tuesday was only Raszageth, 14 tries – best ones were 42 and 34%, in the second intermission. Signups for next week look a bit bleak, due to the holidays probably.

For M+, I didn’t plan to push, but I managed to get the Warrior to 9 completed and 2330 rating, so that’s only 70 more for gear upgrades and 170 more (haha) for KSM.

This week the kinda huge 10.0.7 WoW Patch landed. A new zone (that I would have expected in 10.1) with a grindable BiS Ring, some fancy new old Zul’Gurub gear, and Heritage Armor for Humans and Orcs.

There’s one peculiar feature in the new (endgame) zone where you need Bind-to-Account keys and can open doors in a Vault (around 25 per week) with a few easy puzzle elements (e.g. find Fire Ward to be able to go into the fiery room) and you get around 20 special gems that a) clutter your inventory and b) can be upgraded so you’ll have your BiS ring with up to iLvl 424. Anyway, you get 6 keys for free and then you need to grind your way through Rares and chests in the zone, or you run your alts through the story and send your 6 (or maybe 8 if you found a few rares) to your main. Long story short, I managed to open all doors to the vaults (i.e. around 52 keys) on my 2 important chars today around noon by grabbing the extra keys from 4 other toons and doing some rares. The downside is that I maybe can’t complete the weekly Accord quest now on all of them, but I only need to grind out 1 key per toon if I didn’t yet finish it. Maybe that was a little too easy, but why not use the fact that you have 8 max level chars already? Unfortunately Blizzard messed up the tuning a bit so the people who upgraded their gems early in the reset now had to switch, so I’m waiting until shortly before the raid to upgrade – but I already know it’s better than one ring each even before upgrading.

Then I wanted to check out the Zul’Gurub stuff as that was my first proper raid in Vanilla (not Molten Core like for most people), but it seems you need to be 70, so I did the Orc Heritage Armor quest on my Orc Rogue instead. It’s fantastic! And the rewards also look good. Kinda curious how the Human quest line will be, but I guess I’ll not be as involved as I never really mained a Human character.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened, just that we had some problems with Dathea on Sunday and with Diurna on Tuesday, so not many tries on Raszageth, but also one healer down. A bit meh, overall, no AOTC in sight this or next week, but at least we have the skip now.

For M+, I passed 2200 with the Warrior, also timing an 18 SBG, still no decent offhand in sight though. Did only one each on Shaman and Hunter, a deliberate scaling down on time invested.

Today the 10.0.7 patch dropped with the new zone, I’ve explored it a bit, no clue how far I’ve made it so far, it’s decent enough though.

Sunday was a relatively quick clear up to Diurna again but that was a roadblock then. Tuesday had her down after a few tries and we could finally go on to Raszageth. With one of our key healers missing and some unspecified messing up on all parts progress wasn’t too great though. We only reached Phase 2 (back on the main platform after the add platforms) a few times. I wouldn’t call that a successful raid week, but it is what it is.

For M+ stuff, the Hunter did reach 1700 rating and got a bow crafted (no proc, so 402), so it’s time for a short break here. The Shaman reached 2000 rating, so I need to grind a bit of Valor now to upgrade more pieces. Still haven’t gotten a decent 2nd trinket, but I did get an Offhand I could theoretically upgrade now, but it’s expensive. The Warrior has finished around 8 +16s, so very close to getting my 10 tokens to try to upgrade my MH weapon to 418, but still no offhand in sight. Also could upgrade a few things a bit more and slowly making my way to 2200 rating. Finally, the Druid did reach 70 but I am a little overwhelmed by the amount of buttons and I’ll see that I can try to heal something easy now, but 310 iLvl is not a lot and I’m not in the mood for grinding gear.

The Sunday raid started with some nice quick kills of the first three (however you want to count it), then our first kill of Kurog (9th pull), then the two missing “farm” bosses – Council being a complete mess as usual.

Tuesday Diurna died on the 14th pull after we changed our strategy a bit (2 tanks on her, 1 add tank, and 4 good AoE DPS on adds, plus 2 Hunters on standby for some certain adds), also the 2 Enhancement Shamans on egg duty, with a third helping for the third egg. Kinda fun this way. We finished the night with 3 test pulls on Heroic Raszageth, but didn’t reach phase 3. Still kinda happy with our progress now.

For non-raiding, got 8 M+ done on the Warrior, including a few +16s – still looking for an offhand, 16 M+ on the Shaman (still 30ish ranking missing to 2000 and some upgrades) and then some 8 +11s on the Hunter, nearly at 1700, so that’s two goals for next week. Also been casually leveling my Druid as Balance (66 now) because I want to try Resto Druid healing and I’m not bothering before I hit 70.

A very successful week.

Last month WoW got a new feature – the Trading Post. I wouldn’t call it a spectacular idea nor an innovative one, but you get some free currency for being subscribed and there’s a bucket list of things to do (totally too easily achievable by the way, if you play a lot it’s done on day one of the month) and then you collect some nice transmogs or pets or mounts.
It’s a really great addition to the game. That is all.

The Sunday raid saw us killing the first 4 on Heroic and then wiping a few times on Dathea – and on Tuesday we managed to get her down on the 43rd try. Kurog looked much more promising with 1 wipe at 14% and one at 7% on the first night of tries.

For M+, I had a streak of bad luck with Halls of Valor on the Shaman, only the fourth run managed to even get to the third boss. We didn’t time it, but I still got a few points for that +12, in the end pushing me just past 1900 rating and also having done all at +12 or higher on Fortified, and 8 done this week.

On the Warrior I snuck past 2000 rating on Saturday, got my mount and could upgrade most of my gear to 411, with 9 done in total, but only a 14 as the highest, so now I’ll have to see if I manage to get 10 16s done for the (weapon) upgrade drops. Hunter also reached 1400 rating with a few +11s sprinkled in, so that’s another milestone reached (16 in total). So that’s 33 this week, didn’t I say I didn’t plan to do 35 again?

Sunday started a little chaotic because our guild leader wasn’t available and the officers failed at inviting from the calendar. Our raid lead declared Heroic and so we went in without going Normal first – Eranog, Terros, and the spider proved to be no problem but we were a little slow I think, then we wiped on Council for about three times before finishing. As one of our two tanks hadn’t seen the Dathea fight and some overall meh feeling that day we didn’t really progress there, hoping for a return to normal form on Tuesday… which totally didn’t happen, we wiped on Dathea for 2h with hardly any progress. Those adds on the platforms are kicking our butts, no matter which half of the raid we send first… Anyway, let’s see what next week brings, maybe Kurog or just improving 😛

I also really, really, really hate Need or Greed over Personal Loot – I think I’ve won a single roll for a coveted item so far and it feels like some people got the good stuff on Normal and have now replace it with the same thing on Heroic and some of us never got the Normal version. Or maybe I’m simply too quick to pass up stuff because it’s a better upgrade for someone else. M+ is semi fun on Shaman but not as much as on the Warrior, so I’ll probably leave it at 4 runs for 2 chests.

On the other hand in M+ I’ve been rather busy, having timed half of the dungeons on +13 on Tyrannical already (which means the second chest will be a +13 one as well) and hoping to get one or two more in before reset – not sure I’ll manage to break 1900 rating, but I’m over 1850 already. Also I’d really love to get a first 16 in, even if not timed. My old SL S4 semi-consistent team was lacking their fifth on Monday and so we did some stuff, including timing a +16 Halls and that brought me just past 1900 rating, yay. Only 100 to go for the mount, and thus the season goal – then maybe only doing 2000 on the Shammy as well (will be breaking 1700 tomorrow with a single timed +8 or so).

After that Sunday raid I wanted to try out how Beast Mastery feels in M+ and so I started queuing, with a weird 4dps+1tank +2 HoV at first and then going for mostly +5s, anything where they’d invite my 385 Hunter without rating. Was surprisingly fun and I think I made it to 7 completions… at 2am. That brought me to 700 rating and like 1500 Valor but hardly any items to upgrade. The bow from Nokhud Offensive dropped, but at 379 – I already have the 385 Primal Storms bow/gun/whatever and I’m probably not gonna waste my Valor upgrading anything but Tier pieces… if I manage to get something to drop. Also again I’m really fascinated that you’re usually not invited to the key levels where actual upgrades drop. I’m 385 average iLvl but they won’t invite me to +7 or +8 where the end of dungeon drop would be 385 or 389… But in the end I managed to get 1 +8, 3 +7s and then 7 or 8 +5s done, so 3 chests. And finally did a +6 on the DK. That’s 35 M+ runs in one week. No, I don’t plan to go up that far next week.

Sunday was a quick foray into Normal – Eranog, Council, then skipping, Diurna, and Raszageth all before the break after 1h, then Eranog, Terros, and Council on Heroic and even a first kill of the spider, so that’s 4/8 and we have a full raid to work on either Dathea or Kurog. Unfortunately Tuesday only ended up with a ~14% try on Dathea.

In terms of M+, that was a very busy week with the 4-Mythic weekly, which I managed to complete on 5 characters, not only the two mains, but 3 more – Rogue, Hunter, and DK. All of them will also get a reward from the Great Vault tomorrow, the DK will even be able to choose between two because I somehow ended up with 3 +2 and one M0 and so I went to a +3 to round it out. Don’t even remember what the Rogue will get, but the Hunter only got one +2 and 3 M0s. But the Shaman has a +13 chest and a +12 one (4 done in total) and the Warrior will even have one +15, one +12, and one +11, with a total of 9 M+ this week – this is really an outlier, but I’m sooo close to 1700 rating, I “just” need to run a few Tyrannical +11s next week and that should do it, need the crafting mats anyway. Yeah, definitely a busy week that I don’t plan to repeat so soon. Funny story though, the ~370 iLvl DK got a 398 2h weapon either last week or the week before that and now I got a 411 one from the weekly. If only the Warrior had gotten that one, sigh.

Sunday was a moderately clean clear of Normal, and with 5 minutes quicker we could’ve tackled Eranog on Hc as well. Tuesday had a clean kill of Eranog, one wipe on Terros and Council down after a few tries, then 2 or 3 tries on the spider with the name I can’t seem to memorize. 14% or so, so that should work out next week. We’re planning to skip, but still do council, so Eranog, Council, Diurna, Raszageth, then maybe manage to do 2 or 3 on Heroic on Sunday… We’ll see.

Personally, I’ve been working on my M+ rating a bit and should hit 1400 on the Warrior tonight if I find the time. Shaman is lacking a bit behind, but as I get the raid drops in the vault I’m less motivated and it’s also less fun, but I’m around 1200 already as well. This time I’m trying to change my strategy and will try to actively fill out the gaps in dungeons I miss on Tyr/Fort, even if I’m pugging lower. Last week I did a full +5/+6 sweep on the Warrior, maybe I’ll go +8 now on Fort, otherwise +6 is fine for starters.