Totally forgot to post about this when it finally happened – but I managed to sneak my way past 2500 M+ rating and have got my mount.
Many thanks to my guildies who brought me from a nervous trainwreck when joining a key to playing a +17 relatively casually. I don’t want to say carry, I think I needed about 2 runs per dungeons with detailed instructions (like what is different and important in higher M+ than in low keys where you can ignore everything) and then I felt like doing things in a normal way, in the end actually topping the meters from time to time. Feels good! So I’d say until 1800 rating I was either trained or carried, however you want to phrase it, but the rest of the time I simply played – sometimes helping out when they needed a stronger DPS when going on alts as they’re in the +20 range on their mains now, something I’m currently not really interested in.
It was an interesting experience anyway. In season 1 we were mostly dying our way through finished a single +10/+12/+14 over time for a chance at Vault loot and now for the last 8 weeks or so I’ve managed to do 4 +15s most weeks, at least 1 every week and even doing 8 of them in 2 weeks. I think I’ve never actually been that close to the iLvl cap for a tier/season.
That makes the old Wrath mammoth mount look like a pipsqueak.