Grinding halts and expectations. (Raid update week of 01/19/2015)

This wasn't a bad week.

      Tuesday we hopped in with the goal of getting the five bosses down that we had already downed in the raid.  We were close, but didn't get the cigar on this.  We managed four bosses but no Tectus.  I'm O.K. with this.  It is one more boss then we downed on Tuesday last week, and if we keep up this trend we should be able to get our five on Tuesday next week.

      Wednesday we went in, and downed Tectus fairly quickly.  I believe it took us two pulls, but we managed to take him down and move on to boss number six.  Kor'agh is proving to be a little difficult for us so far.  He has a lot of random crap going on, and we never managed to get him down beyond about fifty-one percent.  I still believe if people take the time to figure out the mechanics and watch the videos etc... he's going to be a fight that could take us a while.  I still think there is a good chance we will down him next week and get to work on Imperator Mar'gok.

      This brings up another thought.  Next week is the last week before they open up the Blackrock Foundry raid.  (Woot!)  The question then becomes how do I split our focus, or do I bother to split our focus?  I would like to get all the bosses in Highmaul down before doing Blackrock Foundry, but at the same time we are close enough I am debating sticking my toe into the new raid the week it drops.  Depending on how we handle it I could see doing Highmaul on Tuesday and Foundry on Wednesday until people don't need gear from Highmaul.  Since the gear in Foundry is supposed to be better, if we are getting a couple pieces from there it should help us just finish Highmaul off that much quicker.

    I do worry that Blizzard is making the same mistake they made with Pandaria with how quick this is dropping.  While it is technically the first tier of raiding (we finally get tier gear, yaya!)  I'm hoping that there is a better pacing of content this time around.  I know I'm not the only one who has said it, but if they had spaced all the raid tiers in Pandaria by an extra month or two, the dead time between Xpacks wouldn't have been so long, or felt so painful.  Now, I will say since we didn't actually down Garrosh until the last month or so, that worked to our benifit.  There was a large amount of the player base though looking for stuff to do, and wandering off to greener pastures due to this stretch of no content.

     The counter argument is that this is the second half of the first tier and a natural place for progression.  It is the other half of what is considered the first raid tier,   By getting it now, it feels more a piece of this first round of content and not a completely new event/raid tier being released.  This should be essentially the heart of fear to our Mogu'shan vaults for this expansion.  If it's not released quickly enough if will feel like it's own thing and not the natural progression of this story.

     I also worry with how quickly we have been killing the Warlords.  By my count we have killed Kargath, Ner'zhul, with Blackhand dropping soon in the foundry.  That is three of the baddies down before the second raid tier.  You could argue that makes 50% with one raid tier to go, but I'm betting there is still a surprise to be sprung here.  Grommosh and Kilrog are obviously going to be on the table soon, but since Gul'dan seems to be doing his own thing, I'm not sure I can see him in the same raid with the other too.  As a matter of fact I am betting on him for the Big Bad at the end of this expansion (as I've mentioned previously) due to the fact the legendary quest seems to be based around opposing him.

But what do you all think?

Lag/Lazyeye.

     

Tectus has multiple personality disorder.

One more week down....

     Tuesday went well.  We one shot all the ones we had already downed, and the mood was pretty good.   We hunkered down and prepared to take on Brackenspore.  After a few tries and a little frustration we managed to kill him dead.  On the last pull of the night.  Happiness and joy abounded.

    Wednesday started out with us almost not raiding.  After the group had gathered we went to knock on the door and Highmaul seemed to be not at home.  Trying to get into the entrance just resulted in a long loading screen that kicked you back out after a couple of minutes.  After a half hour of this I was starting to call the raid when one member dropped from the group and got in.  We disbanded, handed him temporary leadership and moved in together.  From there we went to work on Tectus, and after a few pulls we swapped Saberlynn to disc and with the extra healing he went down pretty well.  Then it was on to Kor'gath.  That is where our night ended, we did a couple of pulls and then went our merry ways to re-convene next week.

       Now, for the news part of this week, 6.1 is now live on the PTR and Blackrock Foundry opens on February 3rd.  Both of these are big deals.

      First of all, it is nice to know when the next raid is opening other then "Sometime in February."  I honestly suspected with the vagueness of Blizzard's answer that we wouldn't be seeing the next raid until close to the end of the month.  It was a pleasant surprise to know we can traipse our way in three weeks from now.  There is hope that we can be 7/7 in Highmaul by then.  At the rate of progress we have had, I believe we may get there on opening week.  That is, if we can get the first five bosses down on Tuesday from here on out.  I think there is a chance we could pull that off.

        As far as 6.1 is concerned.  We are already seeing spoilers and data-mined content.  As always anything you hear about the next patch from anyone but Blizzard must be taken with a grain of salt.  A lot of the information gained is stuff that never makes it into the game and people get butt hurt when their expectations don't become realized.

        We are getting an legendary follower.  I'm not going to spoil who it is, but I am very excited.  And no, it's not Varian Wrynn.

        New blood elf models are on their way.  Looks like there is a good chance we will have them with this patch, who is happy about there finally being male blood elves to play?

      Heirlooms tab!  That's right!  If this feature makes it in, you can just create and equip the heirlooms you already own from a tab.   When your done, just throw those suckers away.  No more mailing between realms.  No more re-buying the heirlooms that have dissipated along the way...

      And much more!  This is a content patch so far.  No raids, just fun little quality of life additions.  6.2 should be the next raid, and then 6.3 may be the last patch of the expansion?  If they stick to the two raid tier plan it will probably be.  Then again, maybe Blizzard will have a change of heart.  I believe they said that the final raid boss will be a surprise this time around.  (This after someone slipped and said it was going to be Grommosh Hellscream right after Blizzcon)  I am personally hoping for Gul'dan and the Shadow Council as that would fit into that last big bad nicely.  This would really fit into the current legendary quest for our ring.

     That is it for this week.  Next week I'm hoping to have something more opiniony.  Like, NO FLYING IN WARLORDS EVAH!  Or at least not looking like it in 6.1.

Lag/Lazyeye.

Smacked right in the Kisser! (raid update week of 01/04/2014)

So... been a week of raiding.

     Tuesday was a little rough.  We went in and managed to down Kargath, Twin Ogron, and The Butcher again.  We did have a few wipes which made the fights last pretty much the whole night.  It was a little frustrating but it just seemed a rougher night.

     Wednesday was equally frustrating.  We started on Brackenspore and worked on him for a while before giving up and switching to Tectus.  We made some progress on Tectus but eventually raid ended and we called it for the night with no new bosses downed this week.

      I am going to openly say I am frustrated at this moment.  Not with our progress, there are nights where no new bosses or downed or we spend time working on one boss and that is raiding.  It happens a lot for some teams and you get used to the idea that there are some nights you may spend and hour or two just trying to make some progress against a baddie.  This I can live with.

    However, if anyone noticed I grew very quiet in Vent this week.  Why? You may ask, well I will tell you.

     I am tired of grown ass men not being able to put on their big boy pants and bringing down the team.  Not just one person too.  In a moment where we should have been focusing on working together and figuring out how to down a boss there was loud whining, and whispers and lots of other frustrating things that almost made me go off in a rant on vent.  Instead I decided to keep my mouth shut rather then end raid halfway through because the raid leader had an emotional melt down.  Emotional melt downs don't fix anything.  But neither does silence.  This is a problem that may need fixing.  In a raid where we were discussing that the youngest member is about twenty five years old, I should feel like I'm playing with a couple of Kindergartners. Seriously.

     So here is my warning shot.  I will have people muted on vent.  I will ask people to shut their cake hole if they can't contribute anything positive.  Failing that, I will start cutting people.  I don't want to, the majority of people playing with us have been here a couple years and while I have been entertained by antics between a couple of players, it turned pretty damn toxic this week.

     The thing that kills me is that in a world of adults we should be able to take and give some good natured ribbing.  We should be thicker skinned and give each other the benefit of the doubt when someone speaks to us.  Instead I feel I am babysitting a bunch of children.  If I wanted that I would just work the nights we raid.

    Either way, it's been building, and soon something is going to have to give.

Lag.

Rockin' on up. (raid update week of 12/28/2014)

Holidays are over, now we can get to business!

      We only raided Tuesday because of Holidays again.  (As opposed to the week before where we didn't raid, as I got stuck at work) That was fine, even with a late start (my fault this time for not planning things better) We downed three bosses.  The butcher of Kardize.. oh, I mean Kargath.  The actual Butcher (non-Diablo style)  and Twin's from Full House...errr Ogron all died to our group.  We took a couple more wacks at Brackenspore and called it a night.

      I realized this night what the biggest problem I have with Highmaul is.  I think it's a great raid, looks cool.  Has some neat bosses, but the fights themselves just feel like they last forever.  Once you have a fight like Twin Ogron down and no one is dying, it just seems to take forever to kill you enemies.   Out of the three we have killed they seem to be very simple 1 phase fights with repetitive mechanics.  That's fine and all, but I am hoping there is a little variance down the road to make the fights feel a little more Epic.

     As things stand now, it looks like I'm back to tanking.  (Grumble, grumble)  Apparently, things were said, someone was offended and here we are.  I don't think either party is 100% to blame on this one, and I am just rolling my eyes and moving on.  I am debating leveling my DK up though to take over tanking to give me a break from Pally tanking.  I have enjoyed Lag as DPS this time round and it might be nice to try something new.

    Other then that, people continue to ding 100 and get geared.  I'm looking forward to new friendly faces showing up in raid as they get ready and I hope that we are fielding a team of about 16 people by the end of the day.  A couple with a tank/healer off spec would be nice too.  I would love to find another tank outright, but I need someone who is dependable and will be around every raid.  I made some choices at the end of last expansion that might have made this easier, but I put my eggs in one basket and now I find I'm short.  My fault, I will pick up that slack for now.

   Still enjoying the Expansion, but I'm starting to feel it is not alt friendly with the time that I have.  I feel what time I have is stuck working on my main character, but at this point if I want to get my garrison and daily stuff done on him, I don't have time for much after.  This isn't a big problem and it may keep my to a main for the near future for the most part.  I just wish I could get more characters leveled up for variety's sake.  My hunter I am working with my wife when she plays... the rest.  We will see.

That's pretty much it then.  This week should be our first two day raid week in about 3 weeks.  I am looking forward to downing a new boss or two.

Lag/Lazyeye

Butchered in Highmaul (Raid update week of 12/14/2014)

We have officially started raiding in Warlords.

     Tuesday we went in and tried Kargoth Bladefist.  Strangely, despite his name he seems to be a very violent fella.  It took us two or three tries, but he went down.  Honestly, I wasn't prepared for this, so we went forward into fights I had not looked up yet.  Next on our list we decided to try the Twin Ogron.  We got mushed, and then there was a DC from a healer.  Our night ended there.

      Wednesday we went in and started on the Twin Ogrons again.  This time after a couple of attempts they went down and we were able to chalk off two of the bosses on our first night of raiding.  We decided to try Brackenspore next, which we were making progress until we had another issue with DCing.  Deciding that we couldn't do this boss with two healers, we moved over to the Butcher.  We only managed a couple of attempts, but we got him down to 15%.  Very happy with our first week.  I'm also Dissapointed that the butcher wasn't a big pig demon.  (Diablo I-III have ruined me for villains named "The Butcher.")

      Still having issues with 2 things in raids.  One is DCing/ending early.  I know when I raid I plan on staying until the end of the 2 hours.  When someone has to leave it's not as big a deal with the flex system, but it can impact the raid if you are a tank or healer a lot more then if your are a DPS.  I know people have busy lives and it's a busy time a year, but I'm going to be a lot less happy come January if we have to swap out a major roll early.

      Second is timelyness.  Both nights we have started a half hour later or better.  That means there is a whole hour we have wasted, and I'm pretty sure, had we used that time, we could have killed the Butcher this week.  If not something else. I normally try to get invites and that rolling at 10 server, and when I have to hunt people down, or wait on people it bogs everything down.  Once again real life happens and I'm O.K. with that.  However, I want to make sure this is a week 1 trend and doesn't continue on.

       So far Highmaul seems good to me.  I ponder that if we have downed two out of seven bosses already, that it might be tuned a little easy, but at the same time I am hopeful we might down them all before Blackrock Foundry opens sometime in February.  (Blizzard hasn't said when yet)  It would be nice to be even with the raid content this time around and as more people get geared and hop in, I look forward to some pretty good progress.

      Warlords still seems to be fine.  Now that people have gotten gear Heroics seem alright to run, and I'm enjoying a few of them.  Hijacking a train in Grimrail Depot is just fun.  I have my Legendary ring to 680, and I'm working on the next part of the quest.  I am also determined to find all the treasures in Warlords now that I have bought the maps from the archaeology vendor in Ashran.

     I have also dipped into LFR.  It's not a bad pre-emptive gearing spot, as everything in it is insanely easy.  It does get kind of boring but as far as what it is intended for I'm with the group that thinks it's perfect.  If you are just in it to see the content and story and your not worried about raiding it's perfect.  I don't see myself running it once all my gear has hit that 640 spot, but until then it's a way to get some OK gear before I start getting raid drops.  I am happy that most of what I'm seeing in there is already lower geared then what I need.  Of course the legendary quest might have me running through there a bit for now.

     Next couple of weeks are holiday driven.  I only plan on raiding on Tuesdays for both weeks so it's important people are on time and ready to rock.  I would love to get a new boss down each night.

Lag/Lazyeye.

Invasive Gearing.

I think this is the easiest time I've had getting geared for raid.

         Seriously.  Between garrison raids, Apex crystals, heroics, and having a blacksmith on my garrison it hasn't been that hard to get to ilevel 632 where I'm sitting right now.  My Pally seems to be doing good dps and I'm feeling happy with him.  I have only finished two or three heroics and I'm doing fine and happy.

        Legendary ring is going to be my focus this week.  I still need to get a couple of bands to pop it up to the 680 ilevel.  This will also be my last week off as I'm going to throw us into the frying pan next week and start raiding.  Mwha ha ha.

      At this point only my hands and one trinket are not ilevel 630 or higher.  I still need a couple of enchants, but those are coming along and I will buy the ones my mage can't make by next week.  As much as I don't like the profession system this time round, I do have to mention that you can just pull your alts up and through to about halfway through Shadowmoon valley, and then have a decent profession base to work with.  My shaman has made the 640 neckpiece I'm wearing, and she is only level 91 as of yet.  I've had to mail her some ore, but I get so freaking much from my level 3 mine I normally have a ton to spare.

      Other then that, I can't say enough about doing the daily Apex crystal grind.  It normally takes an hour or so, even quicker if you get in a group. (Group finder list is great for this.)  But there are a ton of 630 pieces you can get in Ashran by trading in 4000, or 3000 of those crystals.  After you buy the piece you can even get the upgrade for even more Apex crystals... then there is yet another upgrade you can get for the piece for, you got it, even more Apex crystals.  You can through the apex grind get a bunch of gear up to the 665 (I may be off a little on that) ilevel pieces.  Basically, 3rd tier level purples for a little work.

     I can't say how much I love garrison invasions.  So far I've earned about one a week by doing my crystal dailies.  These are awesome because you can invite a couple of guildies in, go crazy blowing baddies up, and if you can get gold rating (which I have 2 out of 3 times) you get a bag with a chance at a purple in it.  I'm sporting a ilevel 645 helm from one of these.  Gold doesn't seem to hard to get either, as long as the people you invite in are consistent on blowing crap up, it's attainable.  Honestly the only time I didn't get it, I dc'd a couple times at the beginning of the fight and wasn't able to be there for a bit of it.  I am not sure if these adjust difficulty to the amount of people you have present or not, but there is no reason not to give a couple of guildies or friends a chance to get some gear.

     Level up your followers too, I haven't gotten any pieces worth replacing what I'm wearing yet, but the heroic mission you put them on can score you some ilevel 630 gear as well.  Don't just get one follower, but get a few up past ilevel 615, and then you can start getting stuffs there.

     Really, there is not much reason to not get your gear up past 630 to start raiding.  There are so many paths they have given us, including heroics, to get the stuff you need.  Heroics themselves seem a little tougher this time round.  As long as you pay attention though, it doesn't seem so bad.  I won't lie, I think Blizzard will give the heroics a nerf eventually, just ever so slightly.  I have a lot of groups just falling apart and not making the end.  Not because it can't be done, but because people are impatient and tend to jump ship after one wipe.  You get people constantly jumping in and out, and it makes life a bit harder.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on this week.

Lag/Lazyeye

Take a breath, It's not that bad.

Seriously, the freak outs are getting to me.

      So we are by my count about 3 weeks into this new expansion.  In that time we have had a rough launch, (Due to large amounts of people coming back and DDoS attacks) and several time when service had been disrupted as well.  Today, I imagine we will find out there was a whole new round of DDoS attacks because it was the opening day of the Highmaul raid.  Hackers aren't stupid, they target the times they know that the populations of different games are going to be on in force and excitement.  They get their kicks ruining the fun for other people.  Same reason Mac's don't tend to get viruses.  It's not that they aren't susceptible, it's the fact that hackers are going to focus a large group, and Mac users tend to be a minority.

       I will admit.  I am as frustrated as the next guy when I can't get on and play.  Sometimes, after a long day at work, I feed the kids and then look forward to that little bit of me time.  When I can't do that because authentication servers are having issues, well it can make me kinda grumpy.

     Or like tonight, I shrug and finish that book I've been meaning to finish while trying to log in.  Why? Because there are other things then World of Warcraft.

      Other then nights like this I am enjoying the new expansion still.  I am having connection issues when doing dungeons and group events that may make me swap ISP providers here soon.  But even there I am doing OK when I run, and I'm enjoying the new content.  Lazyeye, and Shimmer have both started their quests in Draenor, along with Leesill over on the horde side of Hellscream.  I'm not in a hurry to have a second level 100 toon, but I won't complain when it happens.

      My plan here is still to hold off raiding for another week or two.  I am about ready, and I know several people are, but I don't want to rush back into things quite yet.  I am enjoying my little break from such things and know it will be over soon enough.  When it's time to lock and load and blow stuff up I'll be happy to do so.  Until then, I enjoy the peace and quiet of just running around and exploring the new lands.

See you all in game soon.

Lag/Lazyeye