Sunday, December 21, 2014

The Dark Ranger Rises

I started WoW wanting to be a WC3 dark ranger. With Lone Wolf, it's probably the closest I'll ever get.

I do miss my animal companion and try to raid as BM whenever it isn't a hindrance to the raid (here's to you, Tectus!), but Survival is supposedly better DPS, so I figured the switch between "hunter" and "ranger" deserved a new outfit.

Having had to attempt to raid as MM in the first couple of weeks in Highmaul due to the unbelievable discrepancy in DPS between MM and SV/BM (and believe me, I tried all 3 in an attempt to avoid MM - standing still for 3sec may not seem like a big deal to most people, but it is when you've played WoW for 10 years like you're standing on hot sand at the beach), I was extremely glad for the recent round of SV/BM buffs.

I mean, sure, in theory I don't particularly care whether I'm the worst or the best player, but when your mistakes wipe the raid the guilt does tend to kick in. Luckily, my performance this past week has improved a lot from the previous weeks, so I think once everybody's iLvl starts to even out, I'll be OK.

On a related note, my new guild has finally settled on a raiding pace after some rather high expectations that we would be raiding Mythic as soon as it released. Even though it hasn't been quite as fast as our raid leader had wished for, we've cleared Normal, Heroic and the first boss of Mythic already, which to me is still a pretty cracking pace.

As expected, 4 nights a week is a little trying for me - I still haven't finished questing, levelling my secondary professions, exploring all the zones, collecting all the minipets or working out how to use followers in my garrison - but I have to admit that it's a remarkably efficient way of raiding!

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

T Minus 1 Day

This time tomorrow, NCP will have completed our first raid of WoD.

As with everyone else, I haven't had time to do a blog post because I've been too busy levelling and gearing up for it.

Luckily, even my relatively laid back approach to levelling hasn't been affected too much by the new guild's requirements; I finished levelling to 100 in just over 1 week and managed to pick up enough gear from heroics and one challenge mode dungeon to get a 634 ilvl.

I would have preferred an extra couple of weeks just so that I could do what I would normally do at the start of an expansion - max out my professions, finish every single quest (and associated achievements) and explore every single zone on the map - but I'm relatively comfortable with the timing, considering I haven't really played any more than what I usually would.

Things to note on my early expansion experience:

  1. Using alts to access alternative buildings in the Garrison seems to almost be a necessity to be completely independent of the AH; I may need to level my alts a little earlier than I usually would.
  2. The CM dungeon I did, Auchindoun, was about the same difficulty as the level 90 CM dungeons were, and only the last boss gave us a lot of trouble. I would imagine after working out how to maximise gearing and after Blizzard balances all the class abilities, it should be fine.
  3. The Proving Grounds were no trouble at all - I hit these as soon as I dinged 100, knowing that I'd need to run at least Silver DPS to get into heroics. As it turned out, I did Gold DPS and Bronze Tank with only a few wipes and almost all Mythic level 90 SoO gear. Would be interesting to see how Silver Tank and Endless DPS run now that I've shed all the 90 gear, but I have other things higher on my priority list...
  4. Run the level 100 MC with guildies and friends, preferably those who you raided with in Vanilla. It is an absolute SLOG to get through for not much reward (unless you collect pets and mounts), so nostalgia is the only thing that would make it more palatable. Luckily I got what I wanted out of the one run I did - I'm certainly not bothering to go back!
  5. The Southshore vs Tarren Mill BG is quite fun, for a FFA Arena. Not interesting enough to keep as a permanent BG, but I wouldn't mind running it again in the future (if Blizzard decide to bring it back at subsequent anniversaries). I could see how it might be frustrating for melee, however.
  6. I am a hunter. New pet skins/families are frickin' awesome. Carry on. :)