2018 New Year’s Resolutions

It’s been a few days since the beginning of the year (ok, perhaps more than a few) but Yotaan and Fussypants still want to sit down and go through our New Year’s Resolutions for 2018. So, without further ado, our yearly update to the Goals tab above!

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Fussypants: 2017, as I have previously written about, threw a giant wrench in both my writing and WoW playing time. Because of a million different factors, both in and out of my control, I just didn’t get to dedicate as much time as I would have liked to the game. As such, I didn’t really hit as many of the items on last year’s New Year Resolutions as I planed. Last year, I vowed to…

1) Write consistently and write for myself
On the whole, I did not do a very good job of this. The year before last, I had gone the other way with this type of goal, vowing to write ‘5 blog posts a month’, which was entirely too much and led to a lot of burn out. However, as it turns out, my reactionary goal to that one didn’t do much better. Instead of being too strict, the limit I set for myself this past year was too vague and unbinding. It wasn’t quantifiable, and as a result, it fell by the way side.

Going forward, I definitely need to make sure I’m setting realistic output goals for myself. I’m a pretty deadlines oriented person (as I suspect many people are); I need that hard due date in order to motivate. While the idea of ‘writing for myself’ is a very positive one, it didn’t light the fire under my proverbial butt to go and get typing.

All of this to say, I didn’t write enough this year. I did do a pretty solid job writing for myself, but a couple of blog posts every couple of months just doesn’t cut it, both by my own personal standards and for readers. I recognize that, and I apologize for that.

I will say, there is one exception to this: NaNoWriMo. During the month of November, I managed to get out a blog post almost every single day. It was a challenge, absolutely, but it was also one of the most rewarding things I’ve done in a while. I probably don’t need to go that crazy in the future, but I’ve proven that I can do it, so I should get closer.

2) Post more stories
Alrighty well, this one should probably be chalked up to another big fat X. While I’ve written a ton of stories behind the scenes, a grand total of 0 have been posted here on the blog. However, since this goal still did get me to flex my creative muscles, I don’t think it was all failure. Now I just need to work on editing so I can actually post some of the dozens of stories I’ve written!

3) Integrate my artistic side into the blog more
While I definitely didn’t go as far as I could have, I think I could rightfully say, I did bring a bit more of my artistic side into the blog (if only in the site redesign). However, I wouldn’t disagree that there’s absolutely more I can do, and going forward, this one is definitely going to be a personal goal. Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to tie together stories with some art!

4) Complete Suramar (and whatever max level story follows it)
I have completed the Suramar storyline on two, count ’em, two characters, so I’ll definitely be putting this one in the success category! While Suramar did have it’s moments of frustration (especially on the second time through), overall, I enjoyed the zone immensely. The story was so well done and the city felt like a living, breathing place. It’s just icing on the cake that Nightborne will be playable sometime soon!

5) Participate in more community building projects
This is another one of those where I didn’t get as involved as I would have liked, but I did do a little bit. Unfortunately, both the Running of the Gnomes and the Running of the Trolls occurred when I was either out of town or otherwise unable to play. Both those events were the ones I had in mind when I wrote out this resolution, so I’m a bit bummed that I couldn’t swing by to join them. That being said, I did do a few different things that I’d say did count as community involvement. For one, I participated in the Legion Fanzine (which you can go and preorder here by the way!) as well as joining the Perky Pugs Discord (another link for you!)

Now that we’ve gone through 2017, I think it’s high time we turn to the present year. 2018. On a more real-life level, this coming year is going to hold a lot of huge changes for me, and I don’t know where that will leave my video gaming. I definitely want to keep writing and keep playing, but I truly have no idea what the future will hold, or even where in the country I’ll be living in a year’s time. The goals I come up with might turn out to be unfeasible in 6 months, or I might knock them all out of the part. We shall see!

1) Write 4 blog posts every month
A toned down version of my 2016 resolution, I’m hoping that this will keep me writing but not burn me out. And hopefully, I’ll be able to get more out than just four on some months!

2) Post the stories for my WoW characters
A hold-over from last year, I still want to get some narrative type work out here on the blog, if only so I can point to a place when people ask about my OCs!

3) Re-open my art commission business!
For those who’ve done a bit of snooping around ye olde site, you might have noticed the new tabs up above! I am really, really hoping that I will be able to re-open my art commission business this year as it was both a great challenge and a nice source of income (especially considering I’m quickly approaching the biggest financial burden of my life, haha college debts).

4) Level a Horde-side character to max
Confession time, I have not played on the red side of things in a long while. There are both friends and lore on the Horde side, and I’d like to finally reconnect with that!

5) Help out with Violet Spellwing carry runs
Whether this means to run my own or help out with others, I really want to do my part in paying it forward and helping folks get their Ahead of the Curve mounts for Heroic Argus. What was once done for me, I want to do for others.

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Yotaan: For me, writing is not second nature, or even third or fourth nature! I always admire Fussypant’s interest and enthusiasm to write. Unfortunately, my writing was scant in 2017. But how did I do with my goals?

1) Play on a PvP realm.  I miss the danger.  I will need to find the best one to level up.
This one did not happen at all! While Yotaan PvPed a bunch more, it was entirely in battlegrounds. I think I did not want to start a new character from scratch that was isolated from the rest of my toons. I did start Roy, a disc priest from level 1 in the past few months, but I wanted him in OtQ. Now, as a look to the future, this goal will be unachievable, as PVP and PVE realms, as distinct entities, are going away.

2) Try again to play with Fussypants more.
Definitely achieved this one! We have leveled demonhunters a bit and PvPed a bit. She keeps trying to get me to join her raids, but I just can’t do it. Every time I tried I get sweaty and anxious!

3) Get the Mount Parade achievement
When I set this goal Yotaan was at 153 out of 200 mounts. Goal achieved! (Actually, this is a bit of a cheat, Yotaan got the achievement just a week ago.) Currently at 205 mounts and climbing. This goal was great to have since Yotaan got help. Fussypants picked up a few for the family collection and the middle-child-who-shall-not-be-named-but-is-named-Shorts got a few old school mounts.

4) Figure out Pet Battles. It’s a thing, isn’t it?
I guess it is not a thing for me. Didn’t even open the Pets tab.

5) Really enjoy my time in and out of WoW.
This was a great goal to have and to continue to have. I can honestly say I achieved it. Recently, I had an injury that caused me to be at home for a few days. Because of the nature of the injury, I was able to play WoW. I played for HOURS and HOURS. I have not sat and video gamed for that much since I was a kid. You know what? I really enjoyed my time. WoW continues to surprise me with depth and variety. I continued on storylines. I explored nook and crannies I missed previously. I enjoyed old and new stuff (except pet battles) and was able to be fully distracted from my injury – a wonderful way to spend the days recovering.

So 2017 sped by quickly, what will happen in 2018? Like Fussypants, I really wonder what is in store for the blog. She will be embarking on new challenges and I suspect will be very busy. I still want to help and contribute but I do not want her to be overwhelmed. On to my goals!

1) Work on collections
Last year I was focused on mounts, but recently I have had more interest in gear appearances. I make sure to check the mog appearance of every gear any of my toons pick up. I want that pink typography of an appearance added to my collection to pop up! What is funny about the goal is that I have very little interest in mogging myself – Yotaan always looks like a clown in whatever he picks up!

2) Keep playing with Fussypants
While this may sound like a cop-out goal, it actually might be hard to achieve in the latter half of 2018. She will be someplace else in the country and will become, for the first time, a long distance playing partner.

3) Horde time
It has been too long. I bleed red. Time for moar Horde!

4) Get better at PvP
A long time friend of ours correctly pointed out to Pants that I am very below average in PvP. It’s time to fix that. Already started on this by playing Enhance on Yotaan seriously for the first time since I began playing. Elemental has been a poor PvP choices for years.

5) Have fun
Whether this is in or out of Wow, it is important to slow down and have a good time. Often we need a reminder of this and a goal can serve this purpose. (Right Pants?)

Let’s make 2018 a great one folks!

The Priest Campaign: Second Rate Paladins?

Off to save the priests! …or something like that

A pain-medication addled Pants once said “Priests are like lamer paladins”. While my love of the paladin class is pretty insurmountable, I probably wasn’t being completely fair in my assessment; even I have to admit that Discipline is pretty intriguing and Shadow’s class fantasy can’t be beat. And, I certainly didn’t want Blizzard to agree with me. Unfortunately, it seem like that is exactly what they did.

Over the weekend, I finally sat down and finished up the Priest Order Hall Campaign. I’ve done quite a few of the class hall campaigns now, but I have to say, this one ranked among the… least well done. And that’s putting it generously.

Firstly, there was the artifact quest chains. The Shadow quest chain was fine, I suppose, but having it take place in the same location as the holy paladin one (especially because I did the paladin one first) made it come off as a rehash. However, there was bits of good lore there so, overall, I thought it was the strongest of the three. The Holy quest chain was, quite frankly, forgettable. There was no ‘hoorah, I’m a priest, biyotches!‘ moment; it felt like a run of the mill side quest.

The Discipline quest though, hoo boy. I guess that series was my first warning sign of what was to come. Not only was it poorly done, it didn’t even seem to connect to priest lore in the slightest. Why am I going to the Nexus for a holy weapon? Isn’t the Scarlet Crusade involved in this one? The strange and ill-suited tie-ins to the balance between the Light and the Void, too, were thematically out of place with the rest of that strange, strange questline. The whole experience was just… discombobulated.

I liked the tunnel… that was pretty much it

Alright well, I have my weapons now, maybe it gets better from here? But no, no it doesn’t. What follows was a series of quests in which I flew all around kingdom come, gathering an army of generic and uninspiring “champions” that perhaps were big figures in priest lore, but I’d certainly never heard of them. Something about some void lady? Also, randomly saving a member of the Scarlet Crusade (I guess I finally got my crusade on). And murlocs?? There didn’t seem to be any clear motivation or end goal.

Somewhere in the middle of that mess, Velen pays a visit to the class hall and starts spouting words of wisdom. Now, I’m generally a big Velen fan, him being the leader of the draenei and all, but I don’t think he could have been more unhelpful if he tried. He literally shows up, tells us some run of the mill prophecy, and peaces out again, leaving poor Alonsus Faol to worry about the implications of the predictions. And worry he does, the man spends the rest of the campaign wringing his hands about it.

We haven’t even gotten to the good part yet. No, at this point, as lame as it is, I suppose the priest are still somewhat self sufficient. That very quickly goes out the window.

The Legion, who’s been hunting down our homebase, the Netherlight Temple, for millennia apparently, discover where the priests are hiding out and prepare to launch an all out assault. In anticipation of this, the priests mobilize… and go running straight to the paladins for help.

No, I’m not kidding. Our gung-go, shining moment of class fantasy involves us cowering behind our more heavily armored brothers and sisters in plate.

There’s a couple of rather demeaning quests in which you, the priest, are pretty much an ineffective bystander as the paladin class hall leaders debate if they even want to help out the priests, before deciding, yeah, we should maybe give those guys a hand. The paladins then devise the entire battle plan and effectively lead the charge, with the priest player character tailing behind like a younger sibling.

Don’t leave without me!

The final battle is going pretty well until, surprise, the demons cheat. But never fear, the paladins are here! One of the paladin class champions, Lothraxion, jumps out of nowhere, providing the crucial interrupt, and you quickly finish off the lead demon Balnazzar. Hooray, we’ve saved the day! But really you just hung in the back and cheered as the paladins saved the day!

What a big darned hero.

My favorite was when all the NPCs kept referring to me as a paladin, because the priests never do anything proactive, right? (I do believe this was a bug, but it’s been a long time since this launched and it hasn’t yet been fixed)

Having done that exact same scenario on both my paladin and my priest, I have to say, it’s a wildly different experience. Rather than creating an equal partnership between the two orders, it definitely feels like one comes in to carry the other. On the paladin side, that’s pretty awesome; you go in and get to save your defenseless allies who couldn’t otherwise do so. On the priest side, it’s incredibly belittling; you can’t even defend your own temple so you end up begging your friends for help. Even I, as a die-hard paladin player, can recognize that this was not the best way to go about it. As much as I find priests to be the more boring of the two classes, they deserved a better story than that.

My other big pet peeve was that the priest story pretty much seemed to be all Holy Light-based. There was lots of human and dwaren priest flavor, with a little bit of draenei thrown in there for good measure, and no one else’s. No Loa, no Anshe, no nothing other than plain ol’ light-Light. The campaign would have been a great place to delve into all the different flavors of the class, and that just did not happen. Missed opportunity in my opinion, and I even play a human priest!

Going hand in hand with that, the Shadow side of the priest lore was pretty sorely underdeveloped. There was a lot of emphasis on balance and whatnot, but while it was pretty clear what was going on Light-side, the Void-side of affairs was never fleshed out. How exactly does the Cult of the Forgotten Shadows operate? Are there different flavors of void users out there? I wanted to find more shades of grey but if anything, the priest campaign almost worked to convince me that balance is overrated and the Light should be unequivocally embraced.

I don’t know what happened with the priest class campaign. Did Blizzard run out of time? Did they have this grand idea that didn’t work so well in execution? Does Blizzard just hate priests? In any case, the result was pretty clear, even to me as someone who’s more of a tourist priest than anything; in an expansion based around class fantasy, priests got the short end of the stick.

But hey, priest gameplay is actually pretty solid, so there is that.

Where did all the furniture go?

NaNoWriMo Wrap Up

Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month.

One month. Twenty four blog posts. Over 20,000 words. And one writing challenge successfully completed.

I am proud to announce that after thirty days of hard work, I’ve completed the NaNoWriMo Writing Challenge ‘Pants-Style’! You can find all of the posts under the NaNoWriMo2017 tag here on the blog, but right now, I really want to talk about the journey.

I’ll be brutally honest; when I first started this challenge, I didn’t expect to finish. I predicted that I’d write for maybe a week before running out of inspiration. Or I’d get to my vacation in the middle of the month and lose all motivation. From previous experience, I know that I sometimes struggle with writers block when I set a quantity goal on writing, and I thought I would run into that for sure. But instead, I surprised even myself.

Once I started writing though, I kept coming up with more and more topics I wanted to address. It totally helped that Blizzcon came out right as I enacted this challenge as it gave me boatloads of new content to cover, but even without that, I still think I could have filled the month. I had forgotten, but there are so many factors in this game and the community surrounding the game that I want to talk about long form. Heck, I still have a list of blog ideas left over from the month!

The only thing I found myself short on was time. I won’t lie, quite a few of the posts you can now read were written in the small hours of the night. I was writing in between classes or working out paragraphs in my head at extracurriculars. The tight requirement (a post every day with only two breaks per week) combined with my already busy real-life schedule meant that almost every spare moment was spent writing or preparing to write. It was exhilarating!

Unfortunately, it was also unsustainable. As you can see by the fact that this post is coming out several days into December, I’m just too busy to write a blog post almost every single day for a period of time longer than a month. I’d have to give up sleep if that were the case. I may eventually reach a stage in my life where that is a realistic goal, but for now, the rapid-fire posting of November will probably be a once in a blue moon thing.

I have to say it – and usually I don’t say it – but I am so incredibly proud of what I accomplished. I wrote a blog post per day for a month, an entire month, and I didn’t cop out. I didn’t take the easy road, I didn’t quit when the going got tough, I didn’t shirk away. That is pretty gosh darn awesome! Being the perfectionist that I am, it’s not often that I come out of something feeling like I performed to the best of my ability. There’s usually always that little something that I felt I could have done better, or that one area that I slacked. But today, looking back on the month of November, I can truly say that I gave this my all. And that is all I could have ever wanted.

Now what do we do now? Well, write of course! I’ll probably settle back into a once or maybe twice a week posting schedule, depending on what’s happening in the World of Warcraft and the World of Pants. I want to get out some more narrative style stuff (one of the few goals I had during NaNoWriMo which did not occur) along with the editorial pieces I typically write. But really, I just want to keep doing this at a much more relaxed pace. After the sprint, it’s time for the leisurely jog.

Before I wrap up for today, I want to quickly highlight some of the best things that Yotaan and I posted over the crazy month of November. There’s been a ton of content in the past thirty days so, no doubt, some of this was probably lost in the flood. Here’s some of my favorite works!

Tin Foil Hat: Battle for Azeroth
My working theory on what Battle for Azeroth will hold. I still don’t buy it that we’re just going to be fighting each other the entire time!

Leveling Guide: Legion Invasions
A quick guide on how to effectively level up from 100-110! One of my guildies has already gotten an alt up by this method and he thoroughly endorses it!

Four Year Anniversary!
We celebrated our four year blogiversary!

I am a Rose: A Visual Story
A visual story out in Val’sharah… I won’t spoil any more.

Crazy Raid Tales: The Mysterious Monk
One of the crazier raiding tales I’ve collected over the years, involving a monk who may or may not be Batman (or the Joker).

 

And of course, the pieces written by my wonderful father!

Legion or How I Learned to Love PvP Again
A write-up on how Legion PvP has been treating Yotaan. (Check out my response post here!)

Better Long Term Legion Goals
Yotaan showing up my goals by posting his own Better Long Term Legion Goals.

Antorus First Impressions

Today was the day! With rosy cheeks and bright eyes, the raid teams of <of The Queue> descended upon Antorus the Burning Throne in a quest to save all of Azeroth (and also get some sweet, sweet loots). After a two hour raid night tonight, my team got through seven of the eleven bosses in normal difficulty, meaning that I’ve now seen a good chunk of the instance. Despite my lack of sleep (life has gotten very busy!), I absorbed a lot of information during those two hours of pulls!

The biggest thing I noticed right off the bat was that Blizzard definitely learned their lesson from Tomb; the first couple bosses of Antorus were much more in-line with the expected difficulty level. It wasn’t until Kin’garoth that my group wiped, and even there we only got stuck for a couple of pulls.

I will admit that my raid team is overgeared for this difficulty but this only goes to prove that, unlike Tomb, Antorus encounters can be outgeared. That was definitely a problem in Tomb – no matter how good your gear was, mechanics still had to be executed perfectly to avoid some sort of raid wipe mechanic. While I don’t think better gear should allow a group to totally roflstomp a zone, gear should definitely make an encounter easier and smooth over any minor mistakes. Antorus has done a much better job of balancing these two forces.

Partly due to my own bleary exhaustion and partly due to the fact that we tore through them so quickly, I honestly don’t remember a lot of the details from most of the bosses. The general impression that I got though, was definitely a raid with a lot of movement. As a holy paladin who’s built herself around Light of the Martyr instant casts, I was totally digging it! But, I can see more stationary classes not enjoying that as much.

One fight that did stick out to me though, was the Eonar fight. First of all, the room was absolutely gorgeous. Titan glowing technology everywhere mixed with plants and green, it was truly a beautiful room! Unfortunately, the fight itself felt… weird. There was a lot of running around to fight different groups of adds (presumably to stop them from attacking Eonar’s spirit or somesuch like that) and then, very suddenly, an achievement flashes up and we win. No boss, no final adds wave (that I could tell), just finish off this pack and we’re all done here. I suspect that this fight will be a lot more involved in Heroic because in Normal, it definitely felt very “LFR Desolate Host, but there’s actually no Desolate Host”. I honestly spent more time enjoying the scenery and tracking down the group than I did executing mechanics, and everyone’s health was totally fine.

Later on was Kin’garoth, who, as I’ve previously touched on, was definitely a step up from everything preceding him. Dubbed the Soup Boss by a sleep-deprived Pants, Kin’garoth featured not only a beam of death, but also balls of raid-wide AoE, an immunity phase, and two large adds which needed to be burned down as fast as possible. It definitely took us a pull or two to figure out that we needed to focus down the purple construct first as well as how to effectively avoid his almost instant kill zap. Once we got those two things down though, we were all set.

I did notice that there was a little big of awkward mechanics overlap (throwback to Fallen Avatar), but unlike the bosses in Tomb of Sargeras, we could actively control which mechanics overlapped by prioritizing a different add over another. I like that a lot; it gives teams the ability to tailor the fights to the mechanics they can better counter, making for a more engaging experience.

We got one quick pull in on Varimathras before the two hours was up, wiping at about 50% health and lots of mechanics still to work out (I’m looking at you, Misery), but I’m pretty confident that the team will be able to get him down at our second raid night of the week. Unfortunately, due to a metric ton of conflicts, I won’t be able to attend that raid so I’ve got a week to wait before I can jump back in. That just gives me plenty of time to get all excited again, right?

All in all, I’m super stoked for the new raid! Raiding is, by far, my favorite aspect of the game, and as much as I like having familiar fights down to a science, I also really love experiencing new ones! I have good feelings about my raid team’s progression in this tier, and I can’t wait to unlock that final cut scene for the first time (I always try to avoid spoiling it until I can see it myself). Bring on the Burning Throne!

Legion or How I Learned I’ll Never Love PvP (the way I Love PvE)

As you can see, my Honor Level is super high

Yotaan wrote up a post a couple of days ago about how the changes to PvP in Legion had rekindled a love for that style of gameplay. I have to agree with a lot of the points he made: PvP talents and the equalized gear really did make PvP both a lot more approachable and a lot more fun. However, my takeaway from our little jaunt into the battlefield was radically different than my father’s.

No matter how accessible and even the playing field may be, I don’t think PvP will ever be my jam.

That’s not to say that I don’t find the occasional battleground exciting. On the contrary, the PvP that I did with Yotaan and my guildie proved that I do still find enjoyment in the competitive person to person fight. I like going up against players of the enemy faction, capturing bases, and stealing flags. And, after years of raiding at a pretty high level, my reaction times are super fast so that’s not the issue.

The problem, for me, is I don’t feel the same pull of the rewards.

Legion PvP, at the casual level in which I participate, offers two big rewards that I am interested in. The first is the wealth of old gear appearances, purchased by Marks of Honor. The second is the artifact weapons locked behind Prestige levels, the sort of Paragon leveling of PvP. Of these two rewards, the first is definitely the more appealing (as the Marks of Honor are Bind on Account), but I will admit, I have solely run battlegrounds on my paladin in order to gain Prestige on only one character.

This gear though, for as much as a transmog junkie as I might be, isn’t enough of a pull. While I absolutely love dressing up my characters like barbie dolls, I also love earning new gear and becoming more powerful. I love progressing through increasingly difficult trials and I love the challenges of teamwork. In Random Battlegrounds, there is none of that. I suppose I could go and find a Rated Battleground team if I was really invested in that style of play, but the jump from Random to Rated Battlegrounds feels a lot steeper than the jump from LFR to, say, Normal raids. PvP is all about standings and competition against players, whereas PvE is about progression and competition against oneself and an encounter. Of the two, I find the latter much more rewarding.

Since that reward factor isn’t there, my engagement in PvP almost always comes in small fits and spurts. I get really into running battlegrounds for a couple of days, mostly to farm up a specific set or because I happened to join in a particularly engaging match, but then the excitement wears off and I move away. I’ll always be down for running battlegrounds with Yotaan, but I highly doubt that I’ll run very many without him by my side.

Swinging back a bit to something I’d touched on earlier, there is one aspect of Legion PvP that I do think went too far and that is the gear equalizing. While I am all on board for giving everyone relatively the same power level, I do wish we had some more control over the allocation of those stats. If I’m running a shockadin build on my holy paladin for some battlegrounds, it would be awesome to maybe trade out a few percentage points from mastery into haste so I can do higher DPS. Giving players a little more control over their stat allocation shouldn’t unbalance the playing field too much, but would allow players a bit more customization than we currently have in PvP.

Other than that one factor I mentioned though, I have to agree with Yotaan. Legion PvP is in a really good spot. It finally feels separated enough from PvE that neither realm is messing with the tuning of the other (something that has been the bane of raiders and I’m sure hardcore PvPers for many expansions). At the same time though, Legion PvP has a low entry barrier. Any ol’ schmoe, even some washed up Holy Paladin with a predisposition for pants, can join in without feeling horribly behind. I really hope that the trend started in Legion continues into Battle for Azeroth because it’s a great path for PvP.

It’s just probably never going to be mine.

Tomb of Sargeras Recap

It’s Antorus Eve guys! Come tomorrow’s reset (for US realms, at least), the next raid tier will be upon us, bringing us new baddies, mechanics, and, of course, loot! However, before we entirely dive into the next raid, I want to take a moment to reflect upon the retiring giant, Tomb of Sargeras.

While the Tomb of Sargeras did perhaps have one too many soak mechanic and five too many RNG raid-wiper, I have to say, it was a pretty entertaining raid. The instance pretty adeptly avoided the issue of being ‘all demon’ like it threatened to be when announced. Each boss fight was different enough from each other so as to be memorable and independent. There were some spots that were perhaps tuned too tightly and a few mechanics that were incredibly unforgiving, but all in all, I thoroughly enjoyed my time closing the portal to Azeroth.

However, no raid review is complete without a blow by blow analysis of each raid boss, right?

Goroth

Difficulties Downed: Normal, Heroic, Mythic
Best Known For: Nothing. This boss was a literal cakewalk
Attributes: +5 to Bowling
            +3 to Hide and Seek 
            +2 to Nap Time

I’ll be honest, Goroth was the boss I have the least number of kills on. Not because he’s super hard or anything – actually, quite the reverse is true. My raid team would often kill him before I was even able to get online to raid, that’s just how simple the mechanics were. While I did enjoy bowling for spikes the few times I did fight this boss, overall, he was pretty forgettable. But, as the first boss in an instance, that is just the perfect warm up.

Demonic Inquisition

Difficulties Downed: Normal, Heroic
Best Known For: Annoying Target Switching (even I, as a healer, knew this)
Attributes: +4 to Dispel Mechanic 
            +2 to Belly Realm 
            +3 to Torment

After the faceroll that was Goroth, Inquisition was definitely a rude awakening. There was some sort of interrupt thing (look, I heal this stuff, ok?) and an annoying target swap along with the classic balancing act of accruing Torment vs DPSing, a lot to juggle while also getting your Calcified Quills out of the raid group so you don’t spike your friends up into the air. There wasn’t anything particularly unique or compelling about the bosses’ models or dialogues, which all in all, made the whole encounter rather bland. Definitely not one of my favorites.

Harjatan

Difficulties Downed: Normal, Heroic
Best Known For: HUG THE TANK
Attributes: +7 to Murlocs 
            +4 to Water Puddles 
            +3 to Stacking

While he wasn’t the most original of bosses, I quite liked the Harjatan fight (except for the fact that the druid and shaman healers on my team always whooped my butt on the meters with all the stacking). I liked the fact that everyone took one of the boss’s massive blows to the face, don’t ask me why, I just liked it. The panicked spreading during the frosty bit too, was awesome fun from a healer perspective to drop some massive numbers, before we all got back together to hug the tanks. It was a simple fight, for sures, but gratifying!

Mistress Sassz’ine

Nickname: Mistress Splashyfrass
Difficulties Downed: Normal, Heroic
Best Known For: Get in the Green Beams! and The Best Healing Trinket of the Tier ™
Attributes: +13 to Save Your Friends 
            +5 to WHALE 
            +2 to Run around and Panic

I will be honest: the first couple times I did this fight, I absolutely hated it. The mechanics were completely unforgiving in comparison to what had come before. The Hydra Shot damage was immense and very, very spikey. And there was just so. much. going. on! But, as time went on and I got better at the fight, I found myself falling in love with Mistress Splashyfrass. As a holy paladin, I discovered an awesome rhythm to the fight which resulted in that being one of my best bosses performance-wise. The chaos in the last phase was insane, but manageable, and the only person I could kill was myself. And did I mention, there were whales??

However, one piece of loot that the Mistress drops deserves a paragraph all to itself. Sea Star of the Depthmother. For every single healer on our team, and perhaps in the universe, this was the trinket to have. The proc rate was insane, and often off of frequently used spells. It was god-mode. And, unfortunately, I had terrible luck rolling for it. I spent months farming for this trinket. Months. I saved a coin every raid reset, and would consistently pug it when our raid was progressing elsewhere in the instance.

And then finally, one fateful evening, I got it to drop.

(Actually, I didn’t at all, a friend who was with me on the run did and he passed it to me.)

But I got it.

And from that day, everything changed.

Just like the beloved Cake! from last tier, I suspect I’ll be hanging onto my Sea Star for many moons to come.

Sisters of the Moon

Difficulties Downed: Normal, Heroic
Best Known For: Being a Single Target Fight, Despite Looking like a Multi-Target Fight
Attributes: +3 to Moons! 
            +4 to Absorption Shields 
            +18 to Kill Your Framerates

The room of this boss was gorgeous. Hands down, I think this was one of the prettiest rooms of the instance. The floor… the floor was a moon that changed throughout the fight! Unfortunately though, this beautiful room very quickly would kill my poor ol’ computer, which meant I frequently did this boss with 15 frames per second or less. Not exactly the best experience! On a mechanics level, the Sisters had a healthy balance of fun mechanics and finicky ones. Clearing your stacks of Moon or Shadow debuffs on the floor was fun in theory but bothersome in practice. The pink beam of “Split this with your friends!” was very rarely split with friends because of when it came up in the fight. On the flip side though, I really enjoyed the absorption shield that needed to be healed off (really, any healer specific mechanics are a lot of fun!). Any excuse for big burst numbers is a win in my book!

The Desolate Host

Difficulties Downed: Normal, Heroic
Best Known For: Split Realms
Attributes: +2 to Adds 
            +1 to Ancient Night Elven Burial Ground 
            +6 to The Hokey Pokey

While this boss was a total maze to get to (and a pain to leave from), I quite liked the Desolate Host. The change in mechanics from Normal to Heroic completely changed the way our raid team did the fight, making it much more interesting from a progression point of view. And I really dug the split realms since it put a lot more personal responsibility on each member of the raid. The fight did seem a bit long, but, on the bright side, once you got to the actual boss, you were pretty much golden. Oh, and Spirit Side is the Best Side!

Maiden of Vigilance

Difficulties Downed: Normal, Heroic
Best Known For: COLORS. MOTHER OF PEARL, COLORS.
Attributes: +8 to Identifying Colors 
            +3 to Catching Balls 
            +5 to JUMP IN THE HOLE

Maiden was a boss that was either awesome… or awful. Who woulda thought that identifying colors would have turned out to be one of the most difficult mechanics Blizzard added in this tier? (For those of you who are colorblind, I have nothing but respect because I have no idea how you folks could do this fight.) At first, I really loved the idea of purposefully jumping into the hole at the center of the room, but the novelty of that quickly wore off after a few bugged explosions that resulted in a very, very long fall. Maiden, when it was going well, felt like a well oiled machine of stacking and spreading, running on the rails and collecting the same colors. When she was going poorly, it was a hot mess where one accident led to another, led to another, led to an explosion, and ended in a wipe. The best part: not even when we had her on farm were we safe!

Fallen Avatar

Nickname: Grunty (the Maiden) and Smashy (the Avatar)
Difficulties Downed: Normal, Heroic
Best Known For: Terrible Mechanics Overlaps
Attributes: +5 to Grunting 
            +5 to Smashing 
            +9 to RNG

Avatar… was not a fun boss. I’ll go ahead and say it. The fight was tuned rather tightly and the mechanics often overlapped in the most unfortunate ways. You have to run across the room to converge onto one point to burst through the Maiden’s shiel- but oh wait! It’s Unbound Chaos so instead you need to run away from all your allies or they will kill you! The bottom phase was just as aggravating with its Dark Marks throwing people every which way and the tornadoes which always seem to be headed straight for you and just- ugh! Not a ton of fun! There was just too much going on: far too many instant death, and, worse still, raid wipe mechanics. Adding to this, the Maiden’s grunts were just so danged loud! C’mon woman, I know you’re fighting and all that, but could you keep it down?

Kil’jaeden

Gotta get that boss kill shot in for this guy!

Nickname: The Guild Breaker
Difficulties Downed: Normal, Heroic
Best Known For: Being Absolutely and Completely Awful
Attributes: +9999 to Soaking Swirlies 
            +9999 to Burning Adds 
            +9999 to Knockbacks 
            +9999 to Darkness 
            +9999 to Weeping

I completely accept that the final boss of a raid tier needs to be difficult. I absolutely understand that the final boss must include challenging mechanics. I 100% buy that the final boss will require a lot of wipes before it is downed.

But Kil’jaeden? That was just mean.

The Deceiver rightfully earned his reputation as the Guild Breaker. The mechanics were unyielding. The timers could so easily go wrong. And even one Armageddon swirl missed pretty much meant a wipe, if not right away, then some point later due to healer mana loss. Kil’jaeden was tuned way too tightly, to the point of being painful rather than challenging. Progressing on him often felt like throwing oneself against a brick wall over and over while praying for change.

I still don’t understand why Illidan made us go find him in that darkness (what a jerk!). I still don’t understand which way the obelisks would do their zap. I still don’t understand why Fel Claws needed to hit like a dump truck going down a steep hill.

Luckily, after tomorrow, I won’t have to.

Despite a very brutal ending, I still have to say, Tomb of Sargeras was a decent raid. The bosses each felt different from the preceding, and with a variety of themes and designs, there was far less ‘demon burn-out’ than I feared. While not my favorite raid of all times, I definitely think that Tomb of Sargeras will be ranked pretty solidly up there due to a number of strong features. Just please, no more Kil’jaedens any time soon!

Onwards, to Argus!

Crazy Raid Tales: The Mysterious Monk

Not pictured: Zong

When you do a thing for a long enough amount of time, you start collecting stories about it. There’s a lot of odd people in the world after all, so you’re bound to run into one at some point. Today, I’m going to share one of my favorite crazy raid tales, one that to this day remains shrouded in mystery. Gather round, gather round and listen to my tale.

A long time ago in an expansion far, far away….

He was a monk tank. Recruited from trade chat, no other connection to the guild, quiet but seemed like a pretty nice guy. Our raid team was consistently attracting more than 30 bodies a night, which meant it was time for the Great Raid Split of Warlords of Draenor. The team that I was to raid lead was in need of a tank. In stepped the newcomer monk, Zong.

Zong obviously had another main guild on a different server and he mentioned as much. But that wasn’t so unusual in itself – many of our members still called a different guild home. No, this wasn’t what made Zong strange at all.

Nor was it his behavior at raid. With strong mitigation and a good grasp on his class, Zong made a fine tank. He was chipper in Mumble and seemed to a pretty nice, normal guy. The only thing you could maybe find against him was his habit of showing up exactly when raid was scheduled to start. But still, nothing out of the ordinary.

Then one day, I get a message from him.

“Hey Pants, just wanted to let you know I might be out the next coming weeks.”

“Oh ok, any particular reason?”

“Yeah, I’m going to be in court.”

Thinking nothing of it, I asked when he expected to return.

“Well, I could either be back in time for next raid night or you may not see me for a very long time.”

“How long is a very long time?”

“Months, years maybe.”

At this point, I was a touch nervous. Did I need to find a completely new tank? And what exactly was going on that would take him away from game for potentially years?

“Mind if I ask why you might be out for so long?”

“Well I can’t really access my laptop in jail.”

“Oh….kay?”

“Yeah so it just depends on how the trial does tomorrow.”

“Well, good luck!”

“Thanks!”

So our main tank was more than just a quiet nice guy, he was also in trouble with the law. Judging by the description of months or maybe years, this wasn’t something silly like parking in the handicapped space. Whatever he had done, it must have been bad enough to land him in jail for years. And yet, he’s been so chipper and open about it. Just who was Zong??

A few days later, I heard from Zong again in an in game mail.

“Hey Pants, just wanted to let you know that the trial went well and I will be able to raid with you guys! See you next raid night.”

I was… torn. On one side, yay! I don’t have to frantically find a new tank in time for the next raid. On the other side, was this really a good thing for society? Was Zong some sort of master criminal just released to break the law again? Who was Zong??

Unfortunately, I never got to answer that question. Zong joined us again for one more raid before suddenly and unexpectedly leaving the guild and cutting all communication. And being me, all I can imagine is that he is now out there, somewhere in the world, mixing martial arts and crime as some super-villan sort of figure. Or maybe he’s sitting somewhere behind bars, digging behind a poster with a pick.

Or maybe he just went back to his old guild.

All I know is he ain’t smashing kegs for us anymore.

Happy Thanksgiving!

From our family to yours, we hope you have a fun and food filled Thanksgiving, whether it be with family, friends, or anyone else. If you’re not celebrating today, we still hope you have a wonderful day regardless!

Legion or How I Learned to Love PvP Again

A couple of days ago, Fussypants and I played the PvP brawl Temple of Hotmogu.  I have played this PvP battleground the day before and had a great time, and even got some achievements!  Sadly when we played together she got quite frustrated as the opposing team was very coordinated and was excellent at focusing firing her down.  Totally did not help that she was the only healer on our team either!  Afterwards, Pants was more than happy to move on to a different PvP battleground for the next go, just not the PvP Brawl.  We also had a guildie friend along who had no clue what they were as he told us he simply never PvPs.

So here we are, joining a battleground, muddling along fighting the bad guys.  Our mini team was 2 tanks and a healer, an unusual trio for battlegrounds.  Of course the first Battleground we get is the Temple of Kotmogu  but this time, we did a lot better.  While the team overall was not as coordinated as Fussypants, the other tank, and I were, the experience was a lot smoother.  And it certainly helped that Pants and I used voice communication with each other – we were in the same room!  We focused on picking up the orbs and holding onto them, particularly in the courtyard.   Pants made sure that she healed herself and me when needed, and I went after a few of the problem players on the other side to try to keep them focused on me rather than her.  There was on vengeance demon hunter I particularly disliked – I loved taking him down.

We both had a lot of fun and we won the Battleground!

Legion has made a lot of changes to PvP.  Frankly, I think overall for the better.  One big example for me is separating out talents that work just in PvP and talents that work just PvE.  The “leveling up” of the PvP talents as opposed to PvE talents makes it more interesting in my mind.  They added value to the play.  It is no longer just a grind.  Game play is always better when meaningful choices are available.  While there is not a lot of choices initially in PvP leveling up, they do appear later in the process.  You have a decision once you meet max level by getting to choose between different PvP options within a grouping of 3.  Of course, everyone is familiar with this from the talents from the PvE side.  Once you move far enough in level you have some interesting options to choose, they can really affect your game play.

Additionally, they evened the playing field for all the types and specs.  By tuning the damage, mitigation, and healing of all the different abilities, they gave everyone a better chance of survival and completing objectives.  Gear no longer determines your success rate, how well you play does.

The PvP aspect of the game now is even more interesting to me than it was in recent expansions.  When I first started playing WoW, I played exclusively on PvP server.  I transferred to a PvE server in order to play with Fussypants.  Now as I learn from the upcoming expansion news, Battle for Azeroth, it will not matter which server, I can PvP just about anywhere.  That makes me excited!  I might even go Horde again!

 

P.S. Seething Shore Battleground preview in 7.3.5?  Sign me up!

This blog post was written entirely by Yotaan. Thanks Dad ❤

I am a Rose: A Visual Story

There is a little house in Val’sharah with a story to tell. Tucked away under a corrupted tree, this house appears to be like any other unfortunate structure caught in the Nightmare – hastily abandoned and then ransacked. Except… in this house, the previous inhabitants left notes.

This is one of those things that I think is far cooler to experience in game rather than read about later, so I’d highly recommend you guys check this structure and the surrounding areas out for yourself! I unfortunately don’t have the exact coordinates, but it is located across the bridge from Starsong Refuge and to the left once you reach the branching of the trail. However, if you want to know the story now, keep reading after the cut!