Fiery Warhorse: Check

With the release of patch 5.1, I once again rationed my available alts to "camp" out the locations of all the various new battle pets.

I was quite distracted as were doing our weekly MV, and was creating a priority list of which pets to catch. I had narrowed it down to the new mechanical animals, the infinite whelp and also the kun lai yeti.

I was lucky to see a spawn of the Anodized Cub and decided to check out the Arcane Eyes near Karazhan. Again, my lucky paladin managed to find one stray eye, a poor quality, but an eye nonetheless and realized her hearth was down.

"Well, I might as well go kill the horseman while I'm here" I thought. About 100 stuns later I looted the horseman's corpse and amongst the mess was...The Fiery Warhorse Reins!

Ack! Well that's one check off my Very Long Term Bucket List. I had given up on farming Kara for this mount as the fight was relatively trivial and that the mount has only ever dropped twice in our guild.

Truby the Horse Hunter

MoP LFR Tips: Terrace of Endless Spring

Hello reader! I totally forgot that I was supposed to finish up my MoP LFR Tips pages!

We have been making slow progression in the real raiding-land, with Garalon successfully dead, we are now beginning to work on bosses that drop real T14 tokens for real tier items. Exciting! (But not really)

Anyways, to get into ToES, one must have completed the HoF achievements by having killed all the bosses.

ToES is relatively easy except for Tsulong. Tsulong is another fight that requires RAID WIDE co-ordination and from what DS has taught us, is that it taught us to tunnel vision and ignore mechanics.

SO here we go!

The First Guardian Bosses

I have no freaking clue what these are called in game, but essentially they are 3 Jinyu guardians who have been corrupted. This fight is almost idiot-proof and the only thing I see that you can do is:

• Dispel/purge the heal effect that the healer dude puts on the other fishes.
• Prepare yourself for lightning rings, stand out, then run in to avoid the multi-step lightning AOE, it hurts, but not too hurtful, but come on, just try to stay out. You'll see.

Tsulong

Tsulong either goes really great, or really bad.

I think Tsulong deserves a srs bsns paragraph to describe the intentions of his mechanics.

Tsulong is a DPS and healer race. Ignoring all other mechanics for now, essentially Tsulong shifts between two different phases, day and night. During the night, you DPS him hard while avoiding damage. During the day, you heal him hard and protect him.

Why?

Ok, the reason is that during each phase, his health inverses to whatever you put it at. Say at the end of the first night phase you get him to 60% health. When day flips over, he'll be at 40% health that you have to heal up. Say at the end of this day phase you heal him up to 60%, at the next night phase, he'll be down to 40% health.

Got it?

SO the key is to do lots of damage, and lots of healing.

Now I shall explain the phases.

• Night Phase: There is a sunbeam on the ground. The main purpose of this beam is to eliminate his stacking AOE debuff that ticks for something like 20k. I recommend building up about 10-15 stacks of this debuff based on your ability to survive, then dip into the sunbeam to remove the debuff and spread out.
• Spread Out for Night Phase: Why? During this phase he summons random purple circles on the ground, where if you stay in them you get feared. And the circle is big. If everyone is grouped up, everyone will get feared. This is a HUGE dps uptime loss. And we want lots of DPS.
• Day Phase: Healers, stand in front of him and wait for him to do a cone attack. You want to be hit by this as you regen mana and do 500% healing. Heal the fuck out of him. When he gets debuffed, DISPEL this immediately. I believe it's called Nightmares. Nightmare ticks for 2% of his health, which is a lot. Think about it this way, for each 2% tick, you have to either heal back 2% more or do 2% more of his health in damage. If this ticks for its full duration, you might as well wipe or kill yourselves.
• Kill Adds in Day Phase: Focus on the unstabale adds that spawn on the outer ring, if they reach Tsulong, he takes 2 million damage. 2M damage that you either have to heal back or dish out in damage.

That's it. If you hit the enrage, either heals sucked, or dps sucked or stacking sucked. You'll know.

Lei Shi

The 2 bosses after Tsulong are snoozefests. When Leishi hides, AOE the corners to reveal her, then if she summons guardians, focus fire on one and if she pushes you back, run towards her for reduced damage. Blah.

Sha of Fear

Sha of Fear is relatively easy but still requires slight explanation.

Tanks should take turns standing in the golden light, which generates a wall behind them preventing his big fear attack and reducing damage taken.

Occasionally he'll send a group off to the side platforms. Kill the add, then click the portal in the middle to return to the fight. Healers make sure to heal hard and touch the little orbs around the add to get mana back.

The Sha also summons adds that'll wreak havoc outside of the light wall, you must run behind them to DPS them. The thing is, if you are outside of the wall, you are susceptible to his high damage fear, which the Sha casts when he is full energy. Run back in the wall when he is at around 80 energy.

Easy sneezy!

Truny the Tipper

MoP LFR Tips: Heart of Fear

Welcome to my continuing post on LFR tips for the new raid finder encounters in MoP, today I will provide some quick tips for the Heart of Fear.

I am too lazy to open up a new tab to research what the names of the bosses are so just bear with me.

Imperial Vizier Vorlok

It could be Zorlok. He consists of 2 phases, with phase 1 being a "preview" of each of his cool abilities, and the 2nd phase being an amalgamation of all the abilities until he is dead.

• Attenuation: If the boss flies to the left side of the room first, he will cast spirals of DEATH that you must dodge or you will DIE. Well you only take 50k damage in LFR mode but don't touch them for good practise. A nice trick we've noticed is that these shoot out in a spiral so you can just run around the empty spots. Or dodge!
• Verve and Swerve: This may or may not be called that, but if he flies to the RIGHT side of the room, STAND UNDER THE SHELLS that he summons to reduce his yelling ability's damage by 40%. Last time I caught 5/6 healers standing outside on the brink of death. DO NOT wipe the raid and waste everyone's time.
• MC: His last ability occurs when he flies to the top of the room and will MC random people. DPS them to 50%.

Blade Lord Tayak

This boss is much easier than his real counterpart and can be done with a couple healers and five sane DPS left alive. You'll see what I mean.

For this boss you want to spread out around him as he'll throw out tornadoes and also "hit" random person with a debuff that ticks for high damage every 3 seconds. If you get hit and you are near someone, they get debuffed as well.

His most important ability is when he disappears and a magic arrow appears on someone's head. At this point, as this is raid finder I recommend stacking onto the TANK and melee as he'll do a huge cleave that does split damage to everyone in the cleave. Most likely you'll have a lot of people die to this since his cleave is hard to control anyways.

Once he hits 20%, you get to have fun with tornadoes. I recommend that at 11%, most DPS should slip into the slip stream that has formed and blast to the other end of the room to await the boss's demise.

Garalon

This either goes great, or not so great.

1. Assign at least 2 people to be the Pheramone bitches. One person, preferrably ranged will pull the boss, and EVERYONE must be patient. They have to wait for this ranged person, who should run up real close to the boss to receive a debuff, and this person should kite the boss slowly around the outside ring of the room.

If an impatient warrior charges in on pull, he will most likely get the debuff and spread it to everyone wiping the raid.

 Everyone else should stay near the middle, away from the person who is kiting. Once this person has 20 stacks of debuff, the 2nd person should pick up the debuff by "touching" the debuffed person. Hence why everyone should be away from the original kiter, in case pheramone jumps. That's peramones, and most likely some people are familiar with this but are too lazy to do the kiting. Though I'm not sure if LFR stacks the debuff any higher than 20. If so, only one person needs to kite unless you really want to reset stacks.

Pheramones do I think 10k damage every 2 seconds to the entire raid, with increasing damage every stack that the kiter has. So if 4 people accidentally get pheramoned, you have 4 x damage going out. Dead.

2. Everyone DPS his legs. If possible, try to stand within the little circle around his leg to get a damage buff against his legs. This does the leg's total health in damage to the boss and slows him down to save the kiters.

3. If all the legs are dead, hit his body.

4. STAY OUT FROM UNDER HIM. This is denoted by a purple circle. If you touch his no-no spot he will cast Crush which does huge damage to the entire raid and stuns everyone.

Wind Lord Mekalajak

Who the hell knows what his name is. This boss is rather simple. Pick up the spears around his room and on the initial pull, CC one of each type of add that he has. 

Now burn down the healer add.

Then burn down the other add.

And burn down the 3rd kind of add.

Do not use any external CC's other than the ones provided by the mechanic.

Burn the boss. Collect your gold and complain.

Amber Shaper Unsok

The reason amber shaper unsok can potentially be a difficult encounter is that it puts the onus of keeping everyone alive, and doing things right to so many people. Here's a quick list of priorities for your success.

1. Ranged focus on amber slime adds. Make sure the entire area is clean of them and kill them when they spawn.

2. Everyone focused on MC'd people. Mind controlled people in this encounter turn into Amber Monsters, you will see these yellow golem like people running around. DPS them to 20% to free them since once they run out of "control", they die.

Now the important part.

Anyone who is transformed has 2 important roles. If you are in Phase 1, stack your "1" ability on Amber Shaper, this does 250k damage to him and stacks a +10% damage taken debuff on the boss so he'll die faster.

Also, pay attention to where your cast bar is. Occasionally the controlled people will "explode" hit your "2" button to stop it.

That's it.

In Phase 2, the boss goes IMMUNE, so anyone who is controlled should stack their "1" button on the giant amber monstrosity. You can't miss it.

Also if you are running out of control and no one is DPSIng you, go use "3" to eat a slime pool. You gain back 2M damage but it may delay your death.

Once the monstrosity is dead, continue to kill adds and stack the "1" button on the boss who is active again.

Grand Empress Shek'zeer

She is quite simple (phew) luckily. Tank and spank. Tank and spank her adds, then dispel anyone who is running in fear in P3. No seriously, that's about it.

For healers if you want to be picky, you can track her wind bombs and prepare any cooldowns for when their energy is running low since they explode for moderately high damage.

Feel free to ask for clarification or additional tips that I have missed.

Truny the Impatient

MoP LFR Tips: Mogu'shan Vaults

Now now calm down, I know I said I'd stop writing tips and reviews but let's face it, the more knowledge we have out there the better it is for all. In order to facilitate a smooth run where everyone can get their gold, item (yeah right), and VP as quickly as possible and never see each other again I am going to provide my Quick Tips for LFR.

And honestly you should not be wiping in LFR. That is just sad.

First off is Mogu'shan Vaults (MV).

Stone Guards

This is the first boss in MV and consists of 3 random dogs with varying abilities. From what I've seen in raid finder, the tanks just hold them all together and everyone just AOE's them down while the healers heal through everything. With that said, here are the abilities to take note of to save your healers some stress.

• Cobalt Mines: Activates with the cobalt guardian and is a crystal that will deal damage and root you when it explodes. Move out of the blue circle.
• Jasper Chains: If you are chained to someone, run close to them or you will burn to death. Ideally ranged would run to melee so the melee can keep poking.
• Amethyst Pools: Stay out of shit.

Feng the Accursed

The second boss has 3 main abilities that I would like to highlight.

• Earthquake: I think it's called something else but it's an earthquake. Stack up to heal through it if the tanks don't know how to use a shield. Make sure to spread out in case the boss casts a lightning fist onto the ground.
• Wildfire Spark: In P2, just keep doing what you are doing but pay attention to Wildfire Spark. If you get this debuff, run out of the group and will drop some fire onto the ground. DO NOT drop a pool of fire into the melee or ranged groups. Most likely people won't see this and you'll kill them.
• Arcane Resonance: This is probably the most important ability which occurs at P3. If you get a debuff on you and you start pulsating arcane energy, run away from everyone so no one is inside that little circle. For every person in that circle the damage increases. So if you are in melee with EVERYONE...yeah.

Garajal the Spiritbinder

This is the last boss of the 1st half of MV and probably the easiest.

• Healers take note of anyone with Voodoo doll debuff on them. They take damage with the tank.
• DPS make sure to click the totems around the room which are spawned periodically and go into the spirit realm to kill spirits, they do damage to players in the real world. ALSO click the special button you see once you are done to come back to the real world or else you die. You ALSO get a nice damage debuff aftewards. Healers can also go in to refill all their mana when they come back out.

Spirit Kings

The first boss of the 2nd half of MV. He consists of 4 "phases", which get more and more "complex" as the fight goes on.

• Qiang: PLEASE stack with the tank in FRONT of the boss to absorb his huge cleave attack, then run through the boss for his huge smash attack (denoted by a very obvious animation)
• Xian: Kite shadows and kill them as necessary.
• Meng: Group up to lightly AOE each other, and when he starts running away he will stack a debuff on himself that will slowly reflect more and more damage going from 0 to 100%. This is when you will see lots of people die.
• Subetai: Dodge his volley and free anyone stuck under his pinning arrows.

Elegon

Elegon would make a nice mount. He also deserves a real paragraph.

In P1, everyone will be inside the celestialy looking area for a 50% damage and healing received buff and pew pew pew. Elegon will spawn an add that should be nuked down.

Elegon will then begin to "Draw Power". This part is crucial. Once he is finished casting, he will send 6 orbs to the various pillars around his platform. The raid should split up and make sure each orb gets killed before it reaches the pillar. For each successful wave of orbs dead, Elegon receives a +% damage received buff, which is great for burning him down faster in P3.

IF THE ORBS don't get killed, PAY ATTENTION. If an orb reaches a pillar, you will see a pillar pop up and this is your queue to get out of the middle since the floor will completely disappear and you will fall to your death and people will call you very mean things.

Once the pillars are up, kill the pillars, stay out of lightning pools and kill the adds.

That's it. Rinse and repeat until he does this a 2nd time. After the 2nd time, stack on Elegon and burn him down.

Will of the Emperor

This is the final encounter in MV and has a lot of tank dancing and add control. I will provide tips for individual roles.

• Tanks: Your only goal here is to survive and also dodge the giant construct's "combos". They will either slash to their left or right, or do a smash. When you see them winding up to slash left, dodge right and you get a buff. If you see them raise their leg, they are about to stomp, so move back. Each time you dodge you gain a buff and once this buff reaches 5 points you get a special "opportunistic strike" ability that hits for 500k. This should be a steady source of damage for the raid since...
• DPS: Your main goal is to kill all the adds before even touching the big emperor constructs. CC rages, keep Strengths out of the raid as they stomp, and burn down Courages from behind. You are allowed to DPS the boss only when ALL the adds are dead.

Ideally, you will know if your group is good or a fail by telling how many adds are up by the time Titan Gas, a mass AOE damage phase, hits. If only one mob is just dying as this phase hits, you should be good as long as everyone is consistent. Also, anyone comfortable in melee, including hunters or healers can also deal with opportunistic strikes.

So that's my short run-down of MV.

Truny the Impatient

Time To Induce Change!

Instead of bitching and moaning like an old person about doing dailies, I have decided to enrich my own experience along with anyone else who cares.

When I do dailies on my warlock, who does them either with guildies or solo, I like to help anyone else, be it horde or ally to kill their mobs. Why? Because we are so damn efficient and seeing those poor souls kill so slowly makes me anxious. I've received many a cheer/bow/thanks.

Thus, the next time I do dailies, and everytime I do so onwards, I will send a quick message into general chat saying:

"Starting an open group for [Reputation] dailies, send me a tell and feel free to join and leave as you please, we just want our rep and VP so let's get these done faster!"

The group won't do dailies "together" but will be "grouped up" "together" with a similar goal, regardless of our progress. This may take a while to work out some kinks, but essentially my goal is to do this consistently enough that perhaps other people will start adopting the same thing: Guild Wars 2 style questing. This also might not work on the warlock since she's usually done any given hub in 3 minutes, perhaps even before the other party members arrive on scene for the slaughter.

The overall sense is that you show up, kill something/do something and you contribute to your own progress and maybe even someone else's progress. The only downfall is that there is a 5 person limit to this and depending on how spread out we are this could get weird.

But it's a start! This is also a really good way to alleviate the woes of "Fatty Goat Steak"...right?

Turny the Fat Goat

Weekly Progress and Ranting: Squish More Bugs

Welcome folks and folkettes,

Monday was a good day. Monday was the day where we killed Blade Lord Tayak. His tornadoes are really annoying. We changed up our moving strategy to spread around him while we tanked him in the middle, and switch to the various sides of the room rather than physically move him each time he did his thingamabob. This made stacking easier and also tornado avoidance. 25 VP and no upgrades. Yay.

Tuesday is always a good day for us, Tuesday is the day where we do our full clear of MV and then fly on over to squish some bugs. This is it for the good news by the way. If you're familiar with my humble abode, this is about the time where I begin my ranting.

So. The good news was that we downed 7 bosses in 90 minutes. 150 VP. The bad? 0 upgrades for the 2nd week in a row. I sort of lie, I did win an Offhand that I can not use as I have not run LFR for a chance at the main hand yet, and the Wills don't seem to want to drop anything useful for anyone.

LFR? Do I need LFR? Oh god this question again. Well, not really. MV has gotten to the point where I can go back to healing while not really paying full attention to anything. Am I being entitled to loot? Should one feel that after three weeks of raiding that they should see an upgrade? Maybe not. Perhaps we're supposed to be in our heroic 463s and even the crappy 458 JP gear has held us through for this long. Perhaps the kill is the real reward and upgrades are just icing on the cake...as it should be!

I will still refuse to do LFR on my druid until my warlock has capped off VP for everyone to receive the bonus. Yes, a good plan indeed.

I know it all boils down to RNG and luck, but seriously? My heals are definitely not lacking but....well you know what I mean right? Double gold. Double gold!!

On the other hand, my off-off spec, yes not even my off spec, but the spec in which I am attempting to work on, kitty, has more upgrades than my main spec. All 496s. Wtf? This shows you how many items are dropping that no one needs and yes I am looking at YOU spirit plate. /growl

Yes yes, the extra 2% stats isn't going to REALLY make or break the game, and perhaps this is a secret message that is being sent out. A message that is meant to erase the wrongdoings of the past, more specifically the Loot Rain of T9. You don't "need" gear to succeed (beyond a certain threshold of course), but just go in and have fun, and that is totally working! (And pay attention, make sure you are prepared, pay attention, and also maximize your spells, but that is standard practise)

Also I now feel compelled, not feeling forced, to start doing Shado-Pan dailies on my druid. At the very get-go I refused to do anything but raid, and this proved to be a tough situation to augment any off-pieces that won't drop in raid (aka all pieces, every week). Had I felt "forced" to do Shado-Pan perhaps I'd already have bought 2 pieces off of them and won't be as frustrated from the lack of upgrades.

Blame the Warlock

This is one point that I am going to hit home everytime. I blame the changes to the Warlock class. We are just so good.

When you have a toon who can mow down entire quest hubs in mere seconds, playing anything else just feels slow and tedious.

We have a demon who can tank and has excellent threat and rarely needs mending, and also enough burst to eviscerate regular mobs in one or two spells.

Compare this to a boomkin who has to apply both dots then stand around and nuke for 10 seconds.

Ok fine, 10 seconds is not THAT bad, but over the long run. But compare this to 3.

Or a hunter, who has to cast like what.....50 arcane shots to kill a mob? It's gotten better since my hunter has replaced all his slots with heroics gear, but...is it just me or do hunters not have that OOMPH anymore?

Turny the Angry Tree

Which Sha's Face is This?

Sha of Rage!

My lucky charms have proven once again that they only work on my warlock!

I was peeking around the loot tables of the bosses in Heart of Fear and saw the Warlock T14 lookalike helm and HAD to use it! A chance to look sha-like before the actual helm is released with the Terrace!

I queued up for Garalon the giant bug, the 3rd boss in HoF and won this helm with my token along with some gold. The fight itself is pretty simple, stand in his leg circles and pew pew, otherwise stay out of his face!

Pretty cool stuff, alas, the T14 shoulders or its lookalike are not available yet!

Truny the Sha Face

Battle Pets for Warlocks

Now for a happy post that I have been meaning to setup for several weeks: Battle Pets for Warlocks!

You would be delighted to know that there are two rare-ish pets that have been added out in the wild that I believe are perfect for warlocks, especially warlocks who choose to specialize in Grimoire of Sacrifice and are used to having a buddy beside them.

Green + Fire = Win!

 Meet the Fel Flame. The Fel Flame can be found in Shadowmoon Valley in Outlands and they spawn in any "green fire" pool around the Hand of Gul'dan. Expect a LOT of other assholes (including yourself) flying around hunting or camping them out as they seem to have a fairly long respawn rate. These pets are about level 20 if I remember correctly so come prepared!

So mini!

The second pet that I would to introduce is the Minfernal. The Minfernal can be found in Felwood in Kalimdor. They spawn in the area with the big infernals just south of Whisperwind Grove where you will see a bunch of craters on your map. These seem to have an even worse spawn rate than the Fel Flames and again, expect TONS of people in the area. I believe due to CRZ you will have to fight your way to the first spawn.


Also, please note that in 5.1 we will be able to upgrade our pets and unless you are DESPERATE to use these two pets RIGHT AWAY, just catch one, and be on your way to save people a lot of grief. (Or if no one is around...I guess you can catch two)

Truny the Moar Demons!

Should I Run LFR?

We made great progress yesterday, clearing all of MV and the first boss in HoF in a record breaking 90 minutes. Everyone brought their A game and it was highly appreciated, I even ranked on the healing charts for Stone Dogs. Imagine that, ranking for just sitting around watching tv and pushing rejuv every 10 seconds.

Despite all the good and fast, out of our seven boss kills, not a single piece of upgrade dropped for several of us, and that is including using our lucky charms. Zero. Zilch.

On a personal level, this was an absolute waste of time. Regular MV is old content and so is HoF pretty much (anyone worth their salt is already full heroic cleared right?
. For the guild, this was great, we have a head start towards the empress tomorrow and I have a feeling we will one shot Blade Lord Tauralak or whatever the fck the 2nd boss' name is.
Back to selfish loot drama.

Did I need an upgrade? We cleared in record time, and ranked with a pvp blue helm, and the crappy elementium dragonling trinket. Probably not. I know it's just a week of bad luck, but clearing an entire raid and something with not just no upgrades but also a pittance of VP feels pretty shitty. Whoop-dee-fuckity-doo 150 VP that makes my 200 VP from last week go up to 350.

Also, I have completely boycotted playing my druid outside of raid times. No dailies. No heroics/scenarios/LFR. LFR...the only other place where I can *twitch* replace my blue helm with a sub-par purple helm *twitch*. Boomkins just take too long to kill things and I can't be bothered with building a kitty set, as..this all takes time, which we have none of. He's the only one with a maxed out farm but....seriously who the hell has time to kill critters and clear out weeds? Why can't we hire a farm hand to do this for us?

Honestly, getting an upgrade feels...good. Sure sure you can argue that back in the day it would take MONTHS to even upgrade your ilvl 55 blue item to an ilvl 58 blue item and that was an epic excuse, but the game has changed where gear is being rained down and I am just bitching about being unlucky enough to have stayed dry.

Would a 489 helm vs a 458 helm make a significant push towards my mana regen, which has no issues at the moment? Not really. Does the 0.2% extra healing really help when our burst AOE is already kind of crappy? Not really. But......

/whisper: It's blue and ugly.

Then again, it did take me over a YEAR to finally see and win a Fandral's Flamescythe.

It's okay.

Turny the Lootless

The Bug is Dead

This may not be a big deal to anyone since Heart of Fear has already been out for so many weeks and all the top guilds have cleared it on heroic, but we have shuffled our three raiding days to fit in both MV and HoF and I am pleased to say the first boss is dead. I apologize as I do not know the name of this boss, I believe his name is Grand Vizier Maloriak. No wait, Maloriak was in T11....well anyhoo he is the first boss and he has some deadly abilities and some...*cough* fun mechanics that I am actually quite impressed by.

As a resto druid, I spent most of my time DPS'ing and we effectively 2.25 healed this. I jumped in and helped in P2 when the boss did his Hard Hitting Stand Under The Shell Yell ability that ticked for 60k a second. The spiral dancing and MC control were all great mechanics.

Alas, we have not seen any spellpower leather or healer items for several weeks and my Lucky Tokens have been really shitty on the druid. My warlock seems to win something everytime she uses those??

 I do believe HoF is being released in LFR today...that should be a blast.

We then proceeded to get the 2nd boss all the way down to 40% before everyone started falling asleep. I shall update you on our Thursday run when we revisit HoF. I do remember his name, it was Blade Lord Talaraiak or something like that.

Turny the DPSing Tree

No More Horror Stories

Remember the time when a lot of us had an intimate connection with heroic dungeon bosses? Before the JP/VP acquisition change, we spent a lot of times in dungeons and we had a lot of horror stories regarding these dungeons.

Alas, this is no more. How much do you want to bet that you can't even name 5 of the heroics, and at least 2 of the bosses in them? You can? Well...I can't...

How many "defend this wall" type dungeons are there? Setting Sun, Cow Temple, That One In The Tree, and all of the heroic bosses' mechanics don't really matter. These mechanics were put in place for challenge mode and challenge mode only.

I think the extent of our horror stories nowadays amounts to "oh, this person is only doing 30k dps", or "this person is crazy". There aren't any particular bosses that I can think of with a deadly mechanic except for that Spinny of Doom guy in Scarlet Whatever.

Is this a good change of culture? Having us spend less time grinding heroics, and more time out in the world? I think it is, rather than working together, we can complain about other things such as tagged mobs/tagged rares and over-crowded daily zones.

Speaking of rares, why are people so rude?

Here's the deal: no one has any claim on any mob. If you want it, you tag it and you fight it. As a courtesy, you either help the person, ask for an invite to get credit, or sit around quietly and wait for them to die, if they die. If you are on a PVP server, go ahead and try to gank them, if you are on a PVE server, go ahead and flag yourself and hope their AOE hits you. This is all fair play, but as of late, I have been getting a lot of "rude gestures", being spat on, being cursed at.

Really? It's all a game of speed, if you're slow you lose. Though to be fair I do scan the area to make sure no one is ABOUT to tag it then swoop in for the kill. Though this is limited to latency and LoS. My hunter got spat on after having tracked down a rare crane, by an opposing faction hunter going the opposite way. I guess technically I am supposed to "hate" the alliance, but I don't. My latest encounter was some panda lady that I killed, with 2 flagged ally standing on her hoping that I would tag them. Why would you want a level 90 destro lock to flag you especially when your HP is lower than what chaos bolt could hit for?

In these cases, all you can do is /spit back, say "fuck you, have a good day", /wave or /bow then leave.

Truny the Horrorless

Slow Down

I bet you read the title of this post in that male Pandaren voice didn't you?

No?

Well, eat poo!

The very first time I heard this utterance in Jade Forest while I was rushing my way to 90, I knew exactly what he meant. This statement does not provide any lexical hints or subtleties to the Pandaren culture, but it's an early hint of MoP's new gating system. It's not a suggestion to slow down, it's saying "you are going to slow down, whether you like it or not!"

Think about it, VP is now acquired at a snail's pace. To max VP you would have to do 200 dailies, or 2 LFRs and dozens of dailies and a dozen heroics. Apparently all you have to do is just stroll into Challenge Mode and clear everything a few times to cap VP. Easy peasy cause Challenge Modes are just so easy. *Cough* Or if you're not heroic world first raiders, no one even cares about what your gearing strat is because you're not even going to get the world/realm first so you are non-important anyways. (I agree with this point, yet also disagree)

Reputation is now based on dailies and the few basic quests, but you can pretty much calculate the exact day that you will hit revered/exalted with any given faction.

I am not stating any opinion on this gating (yet), but that's how it is. To appease us, the ones who said there was "nothing to do" at end-game, now there's LOTS to do, however, it's also a lot to do spread out over time whether we like it or not.

Think of how it was, we would equip our tabards, grind out reputations and do dailies until exalted and then never pay attention to that faction again once we've bought our ware (many many wares). As with VP, 2LFR halves would net you half of your weekly total and a few easy heroics could finish that up in ONE day. Then you would never run heroics or do LFR again for the rest of the week.

It's a fine delicate balance, a balance that might have been tipped awry due to everything being tied to VP. We are used to capping our weekly VP in a couple hours, not slowly drip feeding it over the course of an entire week. Heck I usually hit 800/1000 every Monday and fail to even cap. But that's fine. Cata VP items turned out to have lots of BiS items (right?) and actually just a LOT of items that we could buy since they would never ever ever drop in real raids. Perhaps my hunter is a special case, having only received 2/3 pieces of "real" gear while raiding T11 and 12.

On a side note, why does LFR reward more VP than the actual raid on a per-boss-capita? 25 VP for a boss kill...really? Has that been ninja-changed, I don't even pay attention anymore.

See, the issue with collecting ALL the VP in one day so we won't have to do anything, only to complain about having nothing to do. See the deadly evil cycle? Let's say dailies rewarded 20 VP each, we would still do them, and cap out much faster. Would we be compelled to do dailies for any excess factions? Maybe. Perhaps less. We would probably find it redundant and tedious to do Klaxxi after we've valor capped and again go back to the "we are forced to do this for rep" argument.

I use that phrase with heavy irony, but it seems some people find this to be true. No one is forcing you to do anything. Did they hold you at gun point? No. Is an upgrade going to help you stay out of fire faster? No. Do you have absolutely no way of obtaining a similar piece of gear? Aha. There's always LFR? No, too tedious? Well, you can uhhh...hmm.

See, I still think we should utilize a secondary currency to purchase random things for those who don't raid- oh wait, those who don't raid don't "need" gear. Bah. You see the dilemma?

With the release of Heart of Fear, valor gear is starting to look rather unattractive and actually slowly grinding out VP to fill any missing pieces is a much more enjoyable experience than facerolling LFR for a chance of loot.

Ideally, what everyone wants is probably for their VP to slowly accumulate at 100 per hour, and their rep with all factions to accumulate at 1000 per hour..while they are offline so they can log in, be "done", then complain about having nothing to do. The end. (I gotta get back to work)

Turny the Slow Tree