Nogamara

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.

On Sunday we managed to clear all of Normal in 2h (ok, maybe it was 2h and 10 minutes) for the first time, so Tuesday was all set for Heroic. Eranog was either one-shot or we had one wipe as we need to work on positioning, Terros needed a few tries to get the cooldown usage and spike positioning down but I wouldn’t say it was hard. I was very pessimistic about Council because our tries on Normal were complete madness with everyone running around like headless chicken, but people seemed to get a grip quickly. I think our best try was like 5%, so definitely doable, but unfortunately we ran out of time there, would’ve been nice – but we got 2 bosses on Heroic for the chest, that might help. Also 2nd week of catalyst today, that should hopefully push most people to the tier set bonus at 4 pieces, but we might be a tad overgeared again already. The loot is iLvl 402 and people like me at 390 are kinda at or above Normal level and some of us are at 400 or 402 already.

Also while I had bought a WoW token already a week ago, I did resubscribe for 6 months last night before the raid, because I actually had only a few hours left and might have been disconnected mid raid. I do hope it wasn’t a bad choice and I’ll stop playing again in a bit, but then you only pay for 5 months, I was subscribed for 10 or so months last year, I like the game, so why not. As I’ve seen in the past, with this guild raidlogging and just doing 5h per week is totally fine, if it comes to that – and I “only” brought 7 toons to 70 and have not started an Evoker, so while I’m already paying attention to not burn out on the gear grind in this first raid tier, just collecting a few pieces and actually just playing the game at max level on a few classes has been fun. Our gear threshold for raiding normal was 370 and I beat that with 3 chars (1 more at 369ish) and now I still could choose one of 4 above 380, but the other 3 are between 344 and 368 and I’m not actively hunting gear, or rep. Just doing a WQ here and there and as many weeklies as I’m having fun doing. Anyway, there is lots to do and I haven’t even touched any of the Horde toons, but of course my Orc Rogue must at least get to max level.

Sunday was a quick thing, we killed the first 7 bosses, then went to Heroic for the first and finished just on time, so Tuesday was fully reserved for Raszageth. Unfortunately one of our healers was MIA and two people on the same connection had massive problems (another healer), so I had to jump in. Didn’t show a great performance (how do I raid heal on Shaman in DF again?) but in the end on the typical “LAST TRY!” we did it with a reasonably clean kill. Week two would have been nice, but at least most of the other bosses went down quickly without a wipe. Let’s see what the Great Vault brings today and how good a normal reclear will go. It was fun though.

Nothing groundbreaking. This week we started on Eranog Heroic, then switched to Normal and did 5 bosses, with one wipe on the Kurog rekill, then on Tuesday we killed Kurog quickly and then needed a few tries for Diurna. That took a bit, so in the end we only managed to get in 2 or so tries at Raszageth. M+ went fine with a +11 (non-timed) on the Shammy and another +11 we barely missed on the Warrior.