World of Warcraft

[Totenkindly]

I met a nice "free booster" yesterday in Discord, I happened on their site and checked out their discord -- and the founder actually reached out and we started to chat. They are a free group who accepts no payment for running raid and mythics to help people get weekly rewards, as their way of "paying it back." They are based on European servers, so not much good for me -- but I enjoyed our conversation.

There are other groups like this (Perky Pugs is another that assisted me once in the past, and I'm still on their site -- you can sign up for free slots based on what they decide to do weekly, and they will also do mount runs like for Invincible, which I assume they just have the guild lock set up for to jump right to end -- Blizz broke the single-player lock trick for that last year, sadly). Groups will also typically do free runs to promote Twitch streams at the end of a patch to get you the raid achievement from final boss and/or the final boss mount drop if it is 100% ensured for participants in mythic.

---

Ended up doing a Perfect level 12 torghast run on one of the six wings the other week (I had only been completing 9's and 10's w/ perfect scores to get into Adamant Vaults and tried a 12 on a lark), so I decided to try others. Two of them are up per week. So I ran both of the ones available this week. I had to adjust my play style a bit but it worked -- I felt like the run was rough, but I managed to get two rounds of Empowered off on 1-2 of the 4 active floors instead of just once at the bosses on floors 1,2, and 5, and that was enough to boost me over. The very last one I did (Upper Reaches, with the Revendreth style mobs and bosses) I didn't think I was going to make because I was getting crap anima powers in my drops and floor 1 was a trap floor rather than having mobs to build up the Empowered bar multiple times -- but I got it, I hit 200 points and 200 is the bar. ROFL. I was shocked, but now I have done 3/6 with Perfect Torghast Level 12 runs. So just three to go before the prize mount.

I don't know if I can do Mort'regar. That wing is da suk.

----

We are slowly struggling forward in our small guild to improve mythic scores. I reached mid 700's last night and can probably squeak over 1000 score if I just finish tormented/fortified runs on every available dungeon in the next week or two. At least that will let me raise my gear up to 262 or something. But then it will become an uphill slog -- the 1000 comes from running in the 5-7 range.

It's frustrating to see so many people running around with the Season mount already (which means they broke 2500). Like, how they they gear so high so quickly, because gearing is part of it? Gearing is very slow, I started the patch about 5 weeks ago at iLvl 248 and I am only on about iLvl 259 right now, and that was with the aid of double 291 legendaries + a lucky 265 sword drop.

It would have been nice if I could get a free 15 run every week to slowly get better gear and then meanwhile claw my way up. It's like Blizz -- to punish blatant offenders and because they were also taking a pounding from their internal issues -- just decided to ban all boosting services altogether. (Even their current guy in charge had blatantly promoted his guild boosting for gold service in the fall, which he took flak for -- hey look, he still gets to be in charge but meanwhile people who weren't abusing it are now punished, thanks.)

I feel like you have to have a really dedicated group (running m+ constantly over each week) to get through 15 level keys, and if you are not one of the glam specs (e.g. ret pally) it's really hard to get into higher level PUGs.

---

Still didn't get Solar Spirehawk. 485 tries and counting.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

I just started doing another rotation through the lower dungeons one by one, and I just did Deadmines again. Again with the changes. Cookie's cauldron is huge, twice as tall as my character. And Cookie only threw rotten food this time. No fresh food. (He used to throw a mixture of both.)

Meantime, everything else about Deadmines was the same as always.

Sorry to be so fixated on that one boss. It doesn't change the fight in any way. But there have definitely been major cosmetic changes to Cookie! So now I'm looking forward to maybe spotting some other changes in other dungeons along the way. It's fun to run into some new stuff in the old, long-familiar dungeons. Hope they keep changing more.

 

[Totenkindly]

Mythic score up to 890 now.

Still don't have scores for Tazavash Streets or De Other Side, and should really run Tyrannical this week for Sanguine Depths to boost that score. That could get me over 1000 and able to do another gear upgrade. Valor caps are really annoying, why are they being so gate-keepy about it?

I might try to run a raid tomorrow just to get that on the board and see if Tier drops. I currently am eligible for a level 262 and two 255's in the vault on Tuesday.

I don't really know how so many people are hitting 2500 already in Mythic, with the difficulty in getting gear up first, unless they are getting carried and/or are running heroic and mythic raid for drops. even if you're really great, as gear can get in the way of success if you're not high enough.

But it's actually been fun just running the dungeons. This week is just a really bad week for most of them -- it's Grievous (killing a monster releases a ghost you have to cc or kill and not let it reach you) and Necrotic. We just ran Plaguefall 8 and didn't make time, but I still got score points for it and a gear bump.

 

[Totenkindly]

Ran the raid, first wing LFR, after watching a few vids. Everyone wiped on the first boss. I totally knew about the "finding cover when boss energy hits 100%" before he emerges from the wall, but the status bar was so small and the same color as everything else on the screen that I never even noticed it until it went off -- and once it goes off, you're dead, you have about 1 sec to get under cover. Usually WoW or DBM will blow up that status bar to make it more obvious, I'm kind of surprised at their design decision here. Anyway, once you know where it is and what it means, it's easy to track. Once we got our shit together, that boss was easy peasy.

Next two bosses were pretty simple too. I feel like we made a lot of mistakes on the Artificer (2nd boss) but on LFR there was a remarkable amount of flex for screwups. The serpent boss (#3) was tank and spank, don't stand in the crap. I had #2 in burst damage for the DPS opening but couldn't keep up with the hunters and mages, etc., for steady output.

Boss #4 is the one that all the Mythic groups got stuck on, the mining robot looking like a crab. We had it down to about 4% and everyone died... which was demoralizing because it's a long fight, and I still have no idea why everyone died. Were people not doing the energy bounce mechanics? One of the tanks started screaming at the raid and then rage quit over it, it was kind of a spectacular burnout.

The new tank didn't know what he was doing (there's two tanks) and the raid wiped again pretty quickly. Then we pushed through on the third attempt and got it pretty easily.

I also snagged the two mount schematics that are hidden in the rooms for Bosses #1 and #4.

Would do again, now that I've been through it. Pretty easy overall, as long as people know the mechanics.

For this week, I currently have a Mythic 262, two Mythic 255's, and a Raid 239 piece of gear coming in my Vault. I just need one more raid boss to get two Raid selections. (I only get one choice, but that would give me five to choose from and Tier armor is what most people are looking for.)

 

[Totenkindly]

The Cost of World First - Gold Spent During the Sepulcher of the First Ones Race

JiTianHong spent approximately 1.1 billion gold in the Sepulcher of the First Ones Race to World First, though due to regional differences, they actually spent less than most of the other competitors. Come take a look at the rising cost of the Race to World First!

www.wowhead.com

Thought this was interesting.

the ranks for that raid completing Mythic Jailer were as follows (with value dollars which can differ based on gold conversion in their native country):

1. Echo - ?
2. Method - 480 million gold spent ~ $41K
3. Skyline - ?
4. SK Pieces - 290 million gold spent ~ $25K
5. Liquid [AKA Complexity/Limit] - 723 million gold spent ~ $93K

This gold is spent in a variety of ways:
- raid consumables
- BoE gear
- Mythic+ and PvP carries
- paying other players to trade their loot drops during split runs

But Blizzard bans even in-game gold booster services. So basically if you're a big-name raiding guild, you have all the contacts and networking you need and ability to borrow gold / spend gold as much as you'd like (Note: I think 300 million of that Method gold spent is "debt" -- they borrowed it and have to pay it back). Also, I guess since they were talking about wiping that debt by offering carries, the guilds are allowed to function as effective boosters although the demand is more than a few big guilds could provide.

it seems pretty lame to me. One set of rules for those with resources and power, another set for individual players without much resourcing.

I still don't get how people are getting top-level gear in the first 4-5 weeks of the season to be completing +15 mythic and higher. Are they just having the same 5-person team, playing non-stop throughout the week? As noted, skill is important and crucial at higher keys, but if you don't have the gear, you don't have the gear, and you only get a big drop once a week, and it's RNG (so you might get stiffed in the 4-5 pieces of gear you got so far) -- and unless you were doing 15's to start with, you're not even getting 272 gear in your vault. So where is this high-level gear coming from in such a short time? You can improve your standing if you are also doing Raid and PVP (and running higher content), but are these people playing WoW 10 hours a day 7 days a week? They still have Mythic power-up caps (in terms of Valor you can earn plus a score-based cap you have to rise above -- I'm about able now to boost my gear to 259.... if I had the gear I needed).

 

[Totenkindly]

Five items in the Vault on Tuesday, and all of them were shite pretty much (items I didn't need or that I can't use, like a belt because my Legendary is forced there) -- although I made the most of it and rearranged / boosted my mythic gear (since I have 1135 rating right now), so my iLvl is 260-261 now.

Ran Theater of Pain M2 last night on my 236 Elemental Shammy, first Mythic I have done with that spec. It definitely was great I know the dungeons so well albeit as melee DPS. My limited experience with Ranged DPS is that it is actually easier in some ways: Melee often has to avoid stuff on the ground and/or effects that preclude or complicate being within range to attack target, whereas ranged can hit from anywhere even if they are also dodging. However, some areas do have mechanics that aggro on ranged characters (esp if you are the one furthest from target) -- plus if there are mechanics involving adds and/or effects that must be soaked to prevent raid/party damage, that's pretty much up to ranged since you have that extra leeway + the ability to see more of the battlefield.

Summarized, melee seems to be VERY target focused -- avoid direct damage from target and nearby effects, interrupt when possible, and otherwise murder the target, while ranged is target focused but also add/battlefield focused. It's the difference between close and personal, versus more scanning the area for various problems.

 

[Totenkindly]

Yesterday I had become aware of a Horde group shooting for the "For the Horde" achievement, which you get for killing all the Alliance leaders in WM On and comes with a War Bear mount reward, which I had never gotten. So I joined, and it was being streamed on a Twitch channel. We went to Exodar and killed Valen, then to Ironforge to kill the three leaders there, then took the train over to Stormwind, where we wiped twice because 12 people just isn't enough with only one tank and one healer. (I was doing a hell of a lot of DPS, but I would invariably get aggro and pop all my CDs just trying to stay alive.)

On the third run, we scrounged up more people so we finally took the High Exarch down with 20 in our group, killing any stray alliance who showed up to see what was happening.

Then we all got on our new War Bears and rode into the center of Stormwind, destroying everyone in our path.

It was glorious.

(eventually we all died, in WM on, since we were fighting to the death in front of the AH roflmao. But it was still a lot of fun.)

 

[Totenkindly]

Ran Mort'rgar in Torghost twice yesterday, just could not break 200 to get the wing achievement -- I got stuck at 184 and 186. resigned to try again before the Wing rotates off on Tues -- but then my guild healer invited me into a Torghast 5-man for Floor 12. Five times the amount of danger, but hopefully your group is good enough to plow through it.

We totally rocked. tank = DH, and we had another DH, a hunter, and me (ret pally) and my friend the healer. It was just absolutely crazy fun chaos. The one DH once peaked at 63K DPS for one encounter, and I think my high was 45K, which is just crazy for not getting many great powers. Twice I got immunity for 1.5 minutes (and the other powers were crap), so I went with it and just ran in and popped everything since I couldn't be hurt.

Despite a wipe in the first minute as we all acclimatized, we ended up hitting 212 and it also randomly doled out the one boss I needed for another achievement, so I got two achievements off that run. I just need Soulforges now at level 12 flawless run to cap the level 12 wings achievement.

One of the demon hunters was really nice and told me he loved my xmog before we started, then told me afterwards I really rocked. I told him he was great too and I'd group anytime. About time I had a decent PUG experience.

---

In other news, I did run Wing 3 of LFR today for Sepulcher. No tier drops, sigh. Disappointing. We wiped once on Lords of Dread (and then nailed the second pass), but otherwise we got through it all. I did watch videos ahead of time but it's another thing to actually do the raid, so now I know what I am doing. I honestly liked Lords of Dread the least, the encounter is just annoying to play. However, I definitely now recognize when people get possessed by the two demons.

 

[Totenkindly]

Got my 2-tier piece set last Tuesday (with a gloves drop + the free upgrade to any piece you own). No luck on additional tier drops this past week, so I will save tomorrow's free boost (since at best it would give me 3 tier pieces) until I run the raid bosses again to try for an additional drop. If I do get it, then I can just go straight to 4. If not, I will wait until the NEXT week to have two free boosts and then make the jump to 4.

Even though the raid pieces are only 239, the DPS output was 5% boost for the 2-tier increase, and another 5% for 4-tier, so it's pretty great regardless and worth using the 239 until the next week arrives and I can just free boost my original 265 mythic piece and swap it back out.

I did a lot of pushing this past week in terms of mythic keys and jacked up my mythic score to 1594, with a few more dungeons I know I can push to a higher key. We did a NW 11 last night, which unfortunately we did not complete the timer for, but on the very last run before we gave up (since we had trouble with final boss), we managed to complete the run, so at least it counts as a +11 in mythic vault. If I do one more +8 today, I'll have a 268, 265, and 258 (?) selection available tomorrow along with the three raid vault picks.

I did get a mythic trinket drop at 252 for one right outside ret pally BIS, but I badly want Phial of Putrefication again from Plaguefall.

I have to say I felt decent about my performance this week as ret pally, even on semi-pugs. I did complete (under timer) a +10 Sanguine Depths run that was absolutely gonzo. This week is Sanguine (so red pools of heal/damage appear under dead mobs temporarily) + Whirlwinds are generated by creatures periodically.... and this is in a series of fairly tight hallways, PLUS the entire color motif of the dungeon is RED so it's hard to see the pools, PLUS the auto-camera zooms in due to tightness of halls if you are on the sides so it's like being at ground zero and you can't see squat. In other words, it was visually difficult to make out anything and not step in the wrong shit, but I managed as a melee to compose myself well.

In favor of the Blood DK tank (who I didn't know), he survived everything (the healer was from my guild, and he said during the run on Disco that the tank always kept himself topped off, which made the healer's life MUCH easier) and managed to hold aggro and literally I spent the whole time just pumping out as much damage as I could. this had been an issue in SD the prior week, when I was just running a +6 and the tank was bitching about me doing too much burst. Apparently if you are a better tank, you can handle pally burst just fine, so it wasn't really me-- although I did learn to ease into fights more and give the tank a few more seconds to establish aggro.

Anyway I made some real progress this past week with my mythic score. There are four of us in my guild who are now in the 1375-1675 range (warrior tank, pally DPS, Hunter DPS, and priest healer), and we are pushing as hard as we can to get the KSM, which you need a 2500 score for. The NW 11 keystone was the first one I owned that was above a 10, and we should have finished it but I guess we just could not put out enough damage. Hopefully that will improve. I did try messing with Weak Auras to improve seeing interrupts across all mobs but no real luck, it looks like I just have to rely on targeting the right mobs and making sure I interrupt as needed.

---

I got my Void Talon this past week. It's a random spawn (with hours between timer) that only lasts about 15 minutes, in one of the WoD zones.... usually Shadowmoon is the best because the zone never resets. I had joined the Mounts group on Facebook plus their Discord, and someone is nice enough to monitor for the mounts and post in discord when one comes up. You just zone in on the right character (Horde or Alliance, WM on or off) after copy-pasting the line from Discord in a whisper to the guy and you will auto-join his raid, and then it's just a mad dash to his location to click first on the portal.

I had four characters stationed in Shadowmoon (one for each possibility), and when a random announcement came I just immediately logged in, posted, and went for it. Didn't get it the first time. I was all over it the second time and got there first. This is a mount that was hard to get because of spawn rarity and how it only lasts 15 min or until someone gets it. This is a mount that mount service groups will charge 450-500K to assist with, and I got it for free. So... done.

---

Had fun running xmog last night for Tomb of Sargeras mythic, with a few guildies. Since we covered almost all the armor types, we also could swap drops. Gotta say this is much better than solo. Maybe we should make this a regular kind of thing for xmog, since we are crushing the content. I had only gotten up to Fallen Avatar on Mythic, solo, in the past.

 

[Totenkindly]

Oh, and the same guys (the guild healer and guild tank) and I wanted to complete the 7 regular dungeon weekly for our guild, so we joined Random Normal dungeons for everything, which we have been running +8 to +10 mythic on. Needless to say, it was crazy. (we're like 258-263 iLvl, and these dungeons drop 210 gear.) The two random PUGs who got dropped in our group were just along for the ride, I hope they weren't trying to learn the dungeon and just were able to enjoy the free carry. Didn't bother with pots or anything, and we didn't even bother with mechanics because we were killing the bosses before they could leave Phase 1 of their routines. In general, nothing could damage us. We plowed through Theater of Pain, Spires, and I think Sanguine Depths in record time, gave away any gear we got, and at least it was fun after having had to work so hard on high-end mythic to show how far we'd come. I think I was pulling 24K or higher DPS at points, but typically 16-18K roflmao.

 

[Totenkindly]

Good week for Mythic + overall, have been trying to push all my tyrannical keys to 10 (the breakpoint where the final affix starts) and then beyond as I am able. Currently at 1808 points and still need to reach 2500 for the mount. I don't know if I will make it. But it's been a good two days into the week, I just need four more dungeons to reach at least a 10 (I have them at 9 and 8's right now) and then I feel like I just won't be kicked / ignored automatically by higher key runners. Having solid 10's past the fourth breakpoint will show I can do it, for PUGs.

I wish I knew more people, we could share keys. Right now I have 2-3 guild mates max I can do some things with but typically have had to pug.

The last run I did last night was to boost my Gambit dungeon run from a 6, and I jumped in a 9 and got invited. We briefly had five people, I was helping summon folks, and suddenly the healer who had just joined either disappeared or got kicked by the DPS leader. Then suddenly I was also removed from the group without explanation. When I went back into the queues for Group Finder, I saw the group was still there and picking more people. Don't ask me why they invited me, they kicked me a few minutes later unless they had a guild thing going (that happens sometimes and is legit). There is a variety of annoying stuff that goes down when pugging.

The Schadenfreude is real though, as I wondered whether they succeeded with their level 9; About two minutes later I signed up for a Gambit 10 (higher than the one I'd been picked for), and we pushed through it without major difficulty and completed it. There might have been two deaths on the final fight, I was too busy surviving so I am not sure, but I think there was a battle rez or two. But yup, did it just fine.

Anyway, my big worry was just about being excluded because I wasn't a "special" class that gets all the attention (hunter, warlock, shaman?). Ret pallies are kind of ignored / overlooked even if level 15 keys and under should work with any team composition. So i am trying to be as well-rounded and successful as I can.

Saelki ‹Village Idiots› @ Sentinels (US)

Retribution Paladin, Item Level 479, Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible Progress 1/9 Heroic.

raider.io

[Been looking at raider.io a lot, I find it interesting after a run to see who i was running with, how they were specced and geared, iLvl, their past dungeon history. From history patterns too, you can also tell who has been boosting or getting carries from guild, etc. If a guy has half of his dungeons at 15 or so, and half at a significantly lower level (5-6 for example), that's a pretty probable sign they have been carried. Then you can check out the team compositions for their high level runs and note that they were running with people with much higher mythic scores. ]

I also had an excellent RNG week (only two days old so far!).

• Was offered a 262 tier helm in the vault unexpectedly, to ditch my 252, and I had been looking at blowing my last tier token upgrade on my pants but that would have made worse stats. So I had the extra token.
• Regardless of which four pieces I had, I now had a 4 tier set so I had the extra boost power on my gear.
• Mythic dungeon weekly this week (265 Heroic raid random loot as reward for 4 dungeons) -- and from the random chest I got a set of gloves from the loot of the penultimate boss of the raid, so it was boosted past 265 to 272 gloves! And I was running a 239 set of gloves because it was tier and badly wanted to upgrade it next but only had 246 and 249 gloves in the bank. So I was able to use that token I had just saved to replace my tier gloves, it was exactly what I was looking for. (Now I just have 252 pants, cloak, and boots that need upgrade. Also, I have a 252 trinket that will outlast its level but maybe I'll get lucky at some point. The pain of Valor cap is real, so I have to focus now on only upgrading mythic gear that makes a difference and earning the rest the hard way.)
• Ran a Halls 10 last night on a lark (after already having Halls 9), to waste time until guildies showed up -- and got the one item I wanted from the dungeon (ring) that would give me a 0.5% dps boost.
• Finished 10K rep on Enlightened (after hitting exalted 10 days ago?) and got the toy drop on the random loot chest open.
• Went back to do old content in Legion, and had just started farming the flaming 2H Taeshalach sword from Aggramar a week or two ago. So this was my third attempt and I got it -- straight to bags. Not sure if they upped the chance or not in recent years because it used to be 0.06% or something ridiculous. But i won't complain.
  
• I also completed Torghast Flawless level 12 wings achievement on Tuesday (soloed it -- sloppy run and a last-second death on the final boss unexpectedly -- but still got a 201!) -- so i got a Mawsworn Charger mount for it.
  
• Better yet, and I did not share this one yet... finally got the Solar Spirehawk drop from Ruhkmar in WoD on attempt #536, I think over the weekend. This has been something I've been farming on and off for some years now, just picking up in recent months to make a serious effort. So that was great.
  

 

[Totenkindly]

Only watched part of this (ran out of time) but yeah...

Also, I guess I can't claim to be a "casual" player by most definitions. With my mythic push and regular dailies and/or doing old content, I easily have averaged 4+ hours a day and likely more, and even fall under "scheduling my life time around WoW". (This week I was like, "I need to take a vacation for a week to burn leave and just get out of here, and I don't want to sit at home for an entire week if I am taking the time off -- but I can't do it before getting my KSM mount.")

 

[Totenkindly]

I was trying to figure out how long i played on each character without having to call each up.

Found a page that I could request "all my account" information -- kind of like a FOIA request for Blizzard. They said it could take up to 30 days to get it, but it arrived in about 30 minutes.

I was looking through it this morning a bit, after unzipping it (since it is huge). I didn't find particular composite times for my characters but there is a helluva lot in there.
- Last six months or longer of login/logouts. (like I said, BIG file!)
- Last six months of in-game chats I made... damn, that's how they investigate issues.
- A list of all payments I ever made to Wow, including my payment methods
- a bunch of hearthstone stuff

It goes on and on.

But I now can track when I was a paying WoW customer despite them having a legacy payment system and the current one.

I started playing Wow on 10/7/2006 -- so I just barely started in the original release of WoW. I probably started my Alliance NE Hunter then.

Burning Crusade released on 1/16/2007, and my primary characters I recall were my BE pally and a Dranaei pally, probably. I remember doing a lot in the BE start zone.

And I actually DID play Lich King for a year, it's why I distinctly recall fighting my way through Northrend with Saelki leveling -- I remember the snowy zone that had the Scarlet temple mobs and church I had to fight through; it was a formative image, of the lone knight struggling through the snow, slowly working her way towards their facility to eradicate their evil. But I guess I didn't do much end game content. I quit playing on 11/2009.

missed Cataclysm.

Popped back in during 9/2012, then quit again.

Played for a few months in 8/2014-1/2015.

Then did not come back until a year into Legion (11/2017) and took about six weeks off in summer 2019 but otherwise had an active subscription.

 

[JocktheMotie]

Only watched part of this (ran out of time) but yeah...

Also, I guess I can't claim to be a "casual" player by most definitions. With my mythic push and regular dailies and/or doing old content, I easily have averaged 4+ hours a day and likely more, and even fall under "scheduling my life time around WoW". (This week I was like, "I need to take a vacation for a week to burn leave and just get out of here, and I don't want to sit at home for an entire week if I am taking the time off -- but I can't do it before getting my KSM mount.")

My complaint continues to be that I cannot realistically progress past a certain point as a solo player/ dungeon finder player. Which is fine, it's an MMO. And if you're doing the work for premade Arena or Mythic you should be rewarded accordingly. But the gap is too far imo, especially if you primarily like BG and WPvP like me.

 

[Totenkindly]

I thought you could boost rating in BG and PvP to buy some really great gear, even though probably Mythic raid is the best out there. (Plus if you rate, you can get GV rewards weekly.) I honestly don't know much about the PvP scene, I dabbled in BGs last fall for a bit to realize that I sucked at it.

---

Talk about my lucky streak this week:

After running three average Mythic dungeons (levels 2-4) + a really awful Mists 2 (I guess they didn't know the mechanics? Uggh... the final boss was SO painful even if I never died), my iLvl 254 Arms Warrior popped open her loot box for the weekly quest [i.e., Complete 4 Mythic Dungeons] and got the BIS weapon in the game for 2H classes (Pally, Warrior, DK):

Gavel of the First Arbiter

This epic two-handed mace has an item level of 233. It is looted and sold by NPCs. In the Two-Handed Maces category. Added in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands.

www.wowhead.com

And because it was a 265 Heroic raid item from the final boss, it is boosted to 272.

I'm just like...

 

[Totenkindly]

I did have a productive mythic run last week and hit 2006 points (with at least 13 runs of 10+) by the reset, so that was a bit crazy in terms of how many dungeons I ran. I actually got a BIS trinket at 272 in the GV on Tuesday (the Energizing Crystal from DOS manastorm/millificent), so that was nice.

But this week is suckier -- Fortified, Grievous (spirits come out of dead creatures and chase you), Necrotic (bad for tank), and then Encrypted. I have felt under the weather and not really excited, and finally forced myself to run a Spires +10 tonight as a test run (I had only had a +7 fortified previously). Most of the people in my pug I could see had already completed 2500 points with their mains and were now running alts, so while my score was higher, they were better players overall -- and of course they are running hunter and warlock, I just can't really compete. I did okay. never died, interrupted more, picked up items appropriately and used them at the right spots, stayed alive when the healer died once due to an AFK -- earlier I looked up Spires, did a print out of all the major kicks I needed. I work really hard to get better. I just usually have performance anxiety and feel like I'm not as good as everyone else, which makes it hard.

I will try to push some more keys this weekend and get all my Fortified dungeons up above 10 at least and then further if I can. It's like I have set this goal of wanting KSM and the mount, and I am willing to endure a lot of psychological pain/stress (with the performance anxiety and having to run PUGs with strangers) to get there. I wish I was having more fun doing it. I mean, it's kind of fun when I can forget about the stress... but the anxiety is really high. Only at 2019 points, so I have a ways to go. I wish I was on a busier server with a busier guild to assist.

 

[Tennessee Jed]

When you're running tank with PUGs, sometimes you get the love and sometimes you get the hate.

Most people love my tanking. I always congratulate the group and thank the healer at the end of the run before taking off (I've got some dialog on macros), and many give me nice compliments in return. But sometimes you can't please 'em: Right from the start they're saying, "Faster, faster" and complaining the whole way.

WoW made everyone sign that new contract about conduct and courtesy after the last update the other day and it seems to have helped, at least temporarily. I was just now tanking in Zul'farrak, and the healer was praising me to the skies after the pyramid fight, 2/3 of the way through. Everyone was passing around compliments. Warmed my cold, dead heart!

 

[Totenkindly]

When you're running tank with PUGs, sometimes you get the love and sometimes you get the hate.

Most people love my tanking. I always congratulate the group and thank the healer at the end of the run before taking off (I've got some dialog on macros), and many give me nice compliments in return. But sometimes you can't please 'em: Right from the start they're saying, "Faster, faster" and complaining the whole way.

Typically unless the tank is just bad and/or doesn't know the dungeon, I figured they're in charge and we do our best to support the route and approach the tank is taking. this is especially important in M+. I mean, tanks are handling much of the mechanics and preventing a wipe, often people who haven't tanked a dungeon or read the tanknotes don't grasp how much is happening. (M+ might be more complex with all the affixes that change weekly as well.)

(Healers too -- it becomes noticeable when either a tank or healer goes down, because then DPS gets to experience what happens without their involvement.)

So yeah, players grief other players too much sometimes.

WoW made everyone sign that new contract about conduct and courtesy after the last update the other day and it seems to have helped, at least temporarily. I was just now tanking in Zul'farrak, and the healer was praising me to the skies after the pyramid fight, 2/3 of the way through. Everyone was passing around compliments. Warmed my cold, dead heart!

well, that's good to hear. I was kind of skeptical on it, because people can click on whatever they want without following it (although Blizz is then setting them up to be reprimanded if reports are made, since they "agreed"). Hoping the effect is to make the appreciative players show their appreciation more often, while the grousers might grouse less openly or be less apt to ruin play by quitting teams or getting abusive.

 

[Totenkindly]

After figuring I wasn't going to get the S3 M+ mount (the only one I really wanted, aside from the PvP mounts this expac which of course I would never get because I don't PvP), I happened to stumble across WoW Market two weeks back. Last season, I had gotten a bit of assistance near end of season from third-party sellers to run some 15's but then WoW shut them down in Jan. There are also some third-party boosters but they take exorbitant amounts of cash and no way am I bothering with that (or with risking an account shut-down.)

It also sucked because my guild (which had done a lot of lower level mythic early on) just kinda bailed, and the only person I usually ran with is on a different time zone and tended to play after I had gone to bed late. So only three of us broke 2000 score and then it all seemed to stall.

I had managed to raise my score up via PUGs to about 2200+ and then just stalled, for various reasons:

• Too much griefing / antagonism. (At least 25-30% of my groups involved people rage-quitting or not bothering to continue after 1-2 wipes, along with snarky comments when someone screws up.)
• People having boosted unofficially or officially, without still putting in time to know the dungeons. There is a big jump from M9 to M10 due to the final affix, and it gets hard enough that you have to know your overall mechanics better. This can happen innocently for example when a player happens to run with some friends with high-levels and their keystone gets boosted beyond what their mythic score suggests they can handle (e.g., someone with a 600-800 score on their main but sporting a +14-16 key); nothing wrong with running with high level friends, but you should educate yourself on the key before running it, even if you are gonna stack the party with PUG ringers. // Despite my struggles, I regularly watched dungeon run vids on YouTube for everything PLUS I actually drew up and printed out stand-up placards for me to recognize which mobs needed interrupts during a particular dungeon. (Yeah, I went all out to learn this!)
• Ret pallies cannot produce the same damage output much of the time, even when maxed, compared to some other classes with medium/maxed DPS. Thanks Blizz.
• being melee can make it harder to get certain interrupts off, etc., you have to be pretty close, dodging a bunch of ground effects, and trying to click on one of 5-10 mobs at times in a tight pack. Dunno, in most cases ranged seems to have an advantage (or a melee with insane AoE like Fury Warrior). My interrupts aren't great to play at a very precise high level. I do my best but feel like I'm under par even with add-ons. Maybe I'm just old, don't have as fast reactions, etc. I do fine with dodging effects, but still feel like I'm not keeping up with interrupts.
• The only way to get really good is to repeatedly run the dungeons up at the edge of your ability, but I always found it stressful in PUGs. If you have a committed team, that helps; but psychologically I was always stressed playing with strangers. (It was viscerally painful for me to be someone who wants to pull their weight and do well, then mess up something / miss an interrupt or mechanic, and then have someone sarcastically say, "You guys even run this dungeon before?" Like, F off dude.)

Since I'm going on vacation later, am tired of playing WoW and might quit later for awhile in the summer once my subscription runs out, and just want to do some other things, I was about to write it off when I found some affordable options to run with established players and not have to deal with all the other shit of PUGs -- and blew through the last bit of mythic to reach 2500 in about a week and a half. I wish I could have just had the time (because it would have taken a LOT more time) and the opportunity to finish it on my own, but with PUGs my only option it just wasn't happening.

Like i said, my official skill level is really in the 2200-2300 at this time, even if I hit 2500. I was able to run M11-13 dungeons comfortably depending on the dungeon and group, but would have needed a lot more time to develop my interrupt precision.

The coolest part about running with some folks who were 2500-3200 mythic range (where 3000+ folks are running Mythic +20's) was seeing what tricks they use to avoid / mitigate issues.

For example, I effin' HATE the opening to Plaguefall and as melee ret pal have a LOT of trouble with putting out DPS while staying alive in that first split path the dungeon starts with, before you reach the first boss room. It just sucks. I thought it was me. Nope. the +15 PF I ran with the elite folks, they just skipped it entirely -- everyone just popped potions, ignored it, and picked up the % kill in other parts of PF. Damn. So it wasn't just me.

Generally, one thing I noticed with the elite groups is that they use skips liberally to avoid things that are just time-syncs or too risky. Lower level groups think more linearly and tackle packs that maybe should just be avoided. The high level groups also use the final affix to help with that, since you can pick up a haste/skip/invisibility power by killing the Wo add versus one of the others -- usually you don't bother with that one, but if you need a skip, it's really helpful. This also happened in the mess of Theater of Pain or DOS -- the elite groups skipped entire sections of dungeon that just really suck to do on certain weeks, and made up the kill % elsewhere. It was kinda eye-opening even if it should have been more obvious.

Anyway, I am done with mythic for S3, I will help friends / others as needed but don't much feel like running anymore at high levels. I get some people like to push keys and they are incredible players, but I'm usually doing it more for (1) rewards I want and (2) then, if it is fun, for the experience. Some of that high level stuff isn't really fun unless you have a committed team.

 

[Skimt]

I think I played the Battle for Azeroth expansion as a female Druid Worgen. The game was fun at high level, and boring at low levels. Got to know nobody in it.

I played mostly SWTOR as a female human Juggernaut tank. Now I don't play MMOs anymore.