8th Anniversary Gaffes

Normally I'm not one of those people who jump on the "Blizzard and WoW are really going downhill" bandwagon, but I just couldn't ignore this.

Evidently today is WoW's 8th Anniversary.  That's tremendous.  I for one still enjoy this game quite a lot, so I'm always happy to observe milestones like this.  From year to year the festivities surrounding this even have varied.  For several years (it seems,) Blizzard was in the habit of handing out vanity pets, as a thank you to players who were around to log in on the anniversary.  This year it seems they just didn't give any shits.  Negative shits were given even.  See below:

Oh, no pet? :(

And then I noticed:

Uh, what?  A certain very large dragon? A shattered world? Did they just re-use the letter from last year?

And, the cherry on top:

Oh, SQEEEE a rep item that is of little to no use to a level 90 toon.

At first I thought, "oh okay, at least it's a rep bonus item, I can dig that.  I need lots of rep still." Then I read the green text. -.-

People who play this game generally act like they're entitled to a lot from Blizzard.  We pay monthly for this service and sort of expect certain things.  Maybe Blizzard was just spoiling us those years we got the pets.  I just can't stomach this though.  Re-using the thank you letter from last year is just a tacky slap in the face to players.  What it really says is "Oh, it's our 8th anniversary already?  Uh, sure we remembered!  Here's this, uh, thing we whipped up just special for all of you people who have been with us all this time.  We hope you don't notice the apparent apathy in our lack of effort!  Stay subscribed!"

So lame.

Soloing with a Guardian Druid in Ulduar 10

I just wanted to do a summary post about my first foray into soloing 10 man Ulduar on my druid, Lifehack.

Screenshots of MoP So Far

I've been doing a lot of blog posts without pictures since MoP came out.  The reason for that is because I've actually been blogging a lot at work.  What this means is that I actually just type up a thought, email it to my personal email, and I post it through the Blogger app on my phone.  I don't have access to any images, nor do I have the ability to link items when I post this way.  Hopefully I can produce some more fully formed posts soon.  Life has been busy lately.

Anyhow, here is a collection of some of the screenshots I've taken throughout MoP.  Some are guild first kill shots, some are just fun things I wanted to be able to remember.  I hope you enjoy.

That's all.  I hope you enjoyed :)

Key Bindings

This post is mostly a way to share my current keybinding set with a guildie.  He was complaining on Twitter earlier about having issues with too many binds on his feral druid alt.  My keybindings are universal across all alts.  I think they're pretty easy to remember, and none of them require any advanced finger-yoga.  Here's what I use for my feral:

Etiquette

Dungeon Etiquette 101:

Even before starting, this post feels somewhat redundant. Preaching to the choir, if you will. I do hope that, possibly through retweets, this post makes it to somebody who might actually change a few bad habits.

The inspiration for this entry comes from a dungeon run I did the other night on my druid tank. I was in the midst of a fairly smooth Heroic Shado Pan Monastery run, enjoying tanking things with my face, when one of the pugs said something exceedingly rude to me. We had just killed the Sha of whirlwinds, random add spawns, and ground spikes (Sha of doubt? I’m not sure :P,) and loot was done. The boss dropped a healing neckpiece, which I was hoping to pick up for a resto set I’m building. Prior to needing, I simply watched the roll frame (not the /loot frame) for any other need rolls. I waited a good 15 seconds, saw none, assumed the healer was one of the other rolls, so I went ahead and needed. I won the drop and ambled on out the door to maul some more mobs into submission.

That brings me back to the rude thing the pug said. I responded, asking if there was a problem. He proceeded to say more rude things on the way to informing me that the healer actually needed that neck. I explained that I’d waited for other need rolls and saw none, so I went for it. While I was explaining, I went over to the healer and traded them the neck. I’m not about to be that guy stealing loot from people filling other roles. I guess the healer must have just waited longer than I did to roll. The rude pugger and I exchanged a few more choice words, we killed the last boss, and that was the end. All the healer ever said was “thanks.”

The whole experience made me think of how many spoken and unspoken common courtesies there are to observe in a simple pug dungeon group. Truth be told, there’s a good amount of little things you can do to make a run either great, or horrible. I’ve decided to take it upon myself to hash out a list of do’s and don’ts, from each of the three possible roles you can fill in a dungeon. These are, of course, my opinion. Please take the lists with a grain of salt. Throughout this blog post, the word “dungeon” can be used interchangeably with “LFR” or “Raid.”

DPS Do’s:
-As much DPS as possible without getting yourself or others killed.
-Attack the tank’s primary target.
-Use threat dropping abilities if available/if you pull threat.
-Ask questions about fights you don’t know or don’t understand them.
-Provide courteous tips when you observe a group member who requires knowledge.
-Roll need on gear you absolutely need, greed or pass if you don’t.
-Minimize the amount of damage you take from avoidable sources (i.e. the same as “don’t stand in bad.”)
-Obey fight mechanics
-Utilize your interrupts

DPS Don’ts:
-Stand in bad.
-Pull for the tank (unless you’re a hunter and you have been instructed to pull.)
-Need on gear that is, black and white, for a role you’re not filling unless nobody else needs it (see rude pugger story above.)
-Need on gear inappropriate for your class and/or spec (i.e. a death knight needing on an agility polearm just because it’s a 2 hander with more weapon DPS.)
-Say abusive things to players for underperforming or any other reason.
-Drop group after getting the item you came to the dungeon for.

DPS do’s and don’ts make up the majority of dungeon grievances I’ve witnessed. Learning to heal and/or tank dungeons is something I encourage everybody to do at some point. Seeing things from all perspectives can make certain things in these lists make a lot more sense. Things like “don’t say abusive things” apply to all roles, so just assume that’s in every one of these lists. Same goes for standing in bad or being a greedy little loot pig. Healers and tanks aren’t perfect little angels either, so here are their lists:

Healer Do’s:
-Use the cooldowns Blizzard gave you. Don’t save them for a rainy day, they’re there to save people when you need them. I don’t care if its trash or that you won’t have archangel up in time to smite the crap out of the boss.
-Know the fights beforehand, where possible (“where possible” really only applies at the start of expansions when stuff is totally new to the majority, imo.)
-Ask questions if you’re uncertain of a fight’s mechanics. It’s much harder for the healer to cheese certain things.
-Come prepared to be a healer. Don’t heal in DPS gear or come wildly undergeared for heroics.
-Communicate with your group/tank if you need mana or time for some reason.

Healer Don’ts:
-Go AFK without announcing it
-Be stingy with cooldowns (see above.)
-Show up without out-of-combat mana replenishment. If I have to wait for you to regenerate 300k mana before the next pull, I’ll flip all the tables.
-Be wasteful or overly conservative with your mana. Most fights should be short enough that, if needed, you can use all of your healing tools. Even the mana inefficient ones. Just don’t use them exclusively

As the healer, you have an extremely important job. If you suck, the entire run will most likely suck. This is one of the things you might have to prepare for a little bit beforehand. I like to arm myself with knowledge so I don’t feel entirely unprepared. Sometimes I will do a dungeon as a DPS before I go heal it just so I know a little bit more about the place.

Tank Do’s:
-Observe the importance of your role and come prepared with tank gear and tank knowledge.
-Use your survival cooldowns, even on trash. A dead tank is usually a dead group. Your main job is to live.
-Be mindful of how fast you do pulls. Watch your healer’s mana. Pay attention to group chat and stop if/when you’re asked.
-Avoid standing in bad. This is doubly true because you’re already taking damage others aren’t. Also, if you’re keeping mobs in bad, you’re probably keeping melee DPS in there too.
-Use interrupts, stuns, and other CC to smooth out incoming damage.
-Watch for casters you don’t have threat on. They’re probably attacking your healer.
-Come prepared with addons that help you make sure you have threat on everything. Tidyplates is great for this.
-Keybinds. Make sure you can quickly taunt or blow survival cooldowns. Tank deaths can happen rapidly.
-Assume the DPS in your group don’t know about these lists.

Tank Don’ts”
-Chain pull if your healer’s mana can’t keep up
-Play like a DPS. Be observant, watch threat on groups of mobs. Don’t hump the DPS meter, even when you have 80k attack power from vengeance. You’re probably going to need to target swap and actively manage certain groups. You aren’t in the group to top the DPS meter.
-Tank in DPS or PVP gear. If you’re a guardian druid or a brewmaster monk, you still need to gear appropriately.
-Ignore mechanics you think your healer should just heal through. One of your jobs is minimizing the amount of damage you take.
-Ignore a bad healer. Communicate with people to see if there is something going inhibiting their performance. If you know you have a bad healer, play conservatively.


These lists aren’t always going to be simple to put into practice. There are all kinds of people who play the game, so you may just have to tolerate certain kinds of bad. If you are new to the game or to dungeons in general, observing these rules will make dungeon runs a much happier place. Pug is a pejorative term, but it doesn’t have to be.

This Was An Email To a Friend

He's trying to get a Darkmoon trinket. Poor guy asked what DMF stands for.

DMF stands for Darkmoon Fair. The fair has to be going on for you to actually be able to get the trinket. Otherwise, you just have the deck. Prices can go up or down depending on whether or not the DMF is going, or how soon it will start/end.
*WARNING THIS TURNED INTO A WALL OF TEXT RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN*

Here’s the breakdown for how many herbs you need to make 8 cards. The thing with these decks is that when the scribe makes the card, you get a totally random one each time. The deck you’re after uses serpents cards, ace through eight. If you look at the AH, the deck is just called Serpents Deck, and the trinket you can get from the deck is called Relic of Yu’lon. Additionally, the individual cards can be found by searching for “of serpents.”

Anyway, the last time I milled herbs for 2 cards, I had exactly 400 herbs. When you mill a stack of herbs you get two different pigments. One is a common pigment (Ink of Dreams) and the other is uncommon (Starlight Ink.) You need 20 of the green pigments to make the 10 Starlight inks the card requires. The thing is you can trade 10 Ink of dreams for 1 Starlight Ink. A full deck worth of Darkmoon cards takes 80 Starlight Ink and 24 Ink of Dreams. Or just 824 Ink of dreams if you’re using the ink trader vendor.

You get *about* 10 Starlight Ink and 70-ish Ink of Dreams per 200 herbs.

Bento’s request for 1000 herbs is about right because that should make 85 Starlight Inks. Warning…math inc. From that 1000 you get roughly 350 Ink of Dreams and 50 Starlight Ink. Enough for 8.5 cards.

Skip to the bottom for the punch line.

These are actual prices from the Kael’Thas Alliance AH:

Starlight InkX10 (102g per)
Ink of DreamsX3 (8g per)
Per card= 10 SI+3 IoD= 102X10+8X3= 1044g per card just from ink.

Fool’s cap=90g per stack

The raw cost of making 8 cards, just buying stuff from the AH is as follows:
Only buying herbs:
-Potentially 4500g

Only buying inks:
-8352g (buying 80 SI/24IoD)
-7900 (buying 50 SI/350 IoD) This is the AH value of your 1000 fool’s cap, by the way.
-6592g (buying 824 IoD)

Relic of Yu’lon (67500g per)
Serpent Deck (45500g per)

Aw, you skipped my math.

SO, (LOL TOO MUCH INFO) you have a few options here. The most cost effective way of doing this is just farming your own herbs and having Bento mill them. It’s much more expensive to buy the inks from the AH, so don’t do it unless you have to. If you have the means, I would probably just buy 1000 herbs from the AH, assuming you can get them for around 90g/stack or less. If Bento says he can get you a complete deck for 1000 herbs, that’s a pretty damn good deal, considering how each time you make a card you have a 1 in 36 chance of getting what you want. Even though you’re spending 4500g for those herbs, you’re getting a trinket worth 10x that much. If you have the money, just buy the herbs as they come up. Don’t spend over 90g per 20 and you’ll stay within that figure.

Technically you could buy 1000 herbs, have somebody mill them and make them into inks, sell the inks on the AH, then buy ANOTHER 1000 herbs to make your cards and you’d (by the numbers above) only be out of pocket 1100g total for a 67500g trinket. This is heavily dependent on there being a LOT of fool’s cap on you AH, which there is not.

After November’s Darkmoon Fair, prices for individual cards and trinkets should come down. Your server is selling decks and completed trinkets for a lot more money than mine. Demand won’t sustain prices like that. Still, the cheapest way of getting the deck will be farming yourself. 1000 herbs represents hours of farming though, so if you have the money, just buy them.

It’s been a slow morning.

Turtles All the Way Down

Farming Ironpaw Tokens

I’m one of those players who actually enjoy repetitive farming. For some reason the simplicity and repetition appeals to me. I also enjoy the prospect of random drop chances. Yesterday I spent a couple of hours farming for turtle meat on my warlock, Illex. The spot I was in isn’t totally unknown. During the time I spent there I saw a few people try to come in and start farming themselves. I like to think my prodigious warlock multi-dotting skills scared some would-be farmers off. Anyway, here’s some info on the spot and what it’s good for.

The spot in question is at the north end of the Pools of Purity in the Valley of the Four Winds. I certainly wasn’t the first person to find this gem, but I think it’s worth sharing regardless. These pools are apparently a congregation point for level 86 turtles in the zone. They have pretty low health (around 110k) and don’t do anything particularly obnoxious. As a clothie, it’s important to stay out of melee range as (if you’re doing it right) it’s pretty easy to have your health drop when you get converged on by a crowd of turtles. When they’re out of melee range they have some kind of instant cast ranged ability that shoots water bubbles. Don’t concern yourself with this; it does minimal damage.

What’s the point of farming these mobs? Well, there are a couple of good ones. As a farmer, I like there to be multiple reasons for committing myself to something like this. First, my warlock started the process as a level 85, brand new to Pandaria. Illex has an average item level around 372, which any fresh 85 can get from the gear vendor at Halfhill. I wanted to get some XP out of the deal (one of the reasons I didn’t use my paladin,) and I got plenty. By the time I was done, I ended up about 38% into level 86. The main reason people farm this area is for motes of harmony. The mobs have a ridiculously high respawn rate and a pretty decent chance of dropping motes. Spirits of Harmony aren’t of any use to my lock right now, but the 56 motes I rounded up may come in handy at some point in the future. The primary reason I had for culling the turtle population was for their meat. Stacks of various Pandaria meats, fish, and veggies can be turned in at Halfhill in exchange for Ironpaw tokens. The sheer quantity of potential meat drops makes this a viable way of amassing tokens much faster than normal. Over the course of two days of fairly light farming, I got 40 tokens, enough for that flippable table I was after. I’m going to take a look at whether or not this will be an efficient way of power leveling different ways of cooking. 40 tokens could buy a lot of different types of cooking ingredients.

In summary, 2-3 hours at the pools of purity isn’t going to have a crazy gold per hour return unless you’re utilizing the Spirits of Harmony with a crafting profession. However, this spot is still extremely useful. My efforts got me 401 turtle meat, around 280g in gray trash drops (the turtles drop a 6g gray shell fragment,) 56 motes of harmony, two blue 410-425 ilevel items, about 90g in repair costs and 36(!) green items. Prior to moving my lock to Halfhill, I considered utilizing a potion of luck during my farming. Given the volume of stuff I got from normal drops, I don’t feel it would have been worth it to burn 3 potions (9 golden lotus, or more than half of the SoH I ended up with.) Having a dot class (affliction locks are beastly for this, trust me) makes this easy and fun. I could dot up and kite around as many as 12 level 86 mobs at a time. Classes without a couple of ranged instants can obviously do this, but it’ll be a little less fluid. All in all, this was a fantastic way for me to land a flippable table in a very short period of time. The Pools of Purity have multiple uses, so keep them in mind for your farming needs.

Silence isn't Golden

It’s been some time since I’ve done a blog post. I have quite a few reasons for that, most of which end up sounding lame. This blog is something I enjoy doing. I don’t believe I ever had a huge reader base, but I certainly have some level of guilt for just falling off the face of the earth. Generally speaking, putting out blog posts is (obviously) fairly low on my list of real and virtual priorities.

I’d like to take a few moments to wrap up Cataclysm and to make a few statements about my impression of MoP so far. I’m posting this from work, so there won’t be any fun pictures at first. I’ll make a note and add some things later tonight when I’m home. Personifying my characters is fun and I feel that including image content is a vital component to the entertainment value of a blog. For now though you’re just going to have to enjoy what I’m writing.

Cataclysm:
Cataclysm was an enormously fun expansion for me. I won’t rehash my chronicle too much, so if you’re a new reader just go skim some of my other posts. The bulk of my Cata time was enjoyed under the banner of my current guild, Apotheosis. As a member of the guild’s 25 man (and woman) raid team, I had a blast. We went 8/8 in heroic Dragon Soul, got the raid meta-achievement mount, and did so with style.

As a player, Cataclysm brought me a lot of really cool “firsts.” I got my first heroic boss kill, my first piece of heroic loot, my first raid mount, and lots of other stuff. I was able to get a full best in slot ret set and turn it into a couple of rankings (H Morchok and H Spine.) I consider myself so fortunate to have been brought on with Apotheosis. Cataclysm was a fantastic time because of the great members and officers I get to play this game with.

Now that Mists of Pandaria has been out for a few weeks, I feel like I have a decent idea of what the expansion has to offer. A lot of fuss is being made about the quantity of “required” tasks raiding folks have at hand. I’ll get into that as well as my initial impressions on raiding, and even a little bit of gold making.

Dailies:
The snarky pseudonym “World of Dailycraft” has popped up numerous times throughout Twitter and the bloggersphere. Mists did indeed bring forth a bounty of reputation factions and corresponding dailies. I’ve voiced my opinion on this topic a few times via Twitter. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. To start with the main positive, I think it’s great that Blizzard has given players such a wealth of content to enjoy. Most people, however, probably feel that is beside the point. Due to the fact that several of the factions are the sources of valor point gear, raiders are up in arms about issues of time investment. I won’t lie; I’ve felt a lot of that same frustration. Upon hitting 90, I immediately went to work on Golden Lotus rep. That’s probably a good first step because the GL dailies are right at your front door if you’re hearth is set at Shrine in Vale. Other rep factions aren’t so close, but none are particularly far either. Distance isn’t the issue anyway.

When you’re looking at the big picture of what you could potentially do, every day, the volume of work is staggering. Assuming you cleared the appropriate zones, once you hit 90 you can immediately start working on Golden Lotus and Klaxxi rep. Between those two, depending on your rep level, there’s probably 5-15 dailies available per faction. That may be an underestimation because I’m not currently working on Klaxxi rep. I’m revered with Golden Lotus, so I feel I have a decent feel there. Upon hitting Revered with GL, you can then go work on Shado-Pan and August Celestials rep (which I haven’t touched yet.) I don’t really think I need to hash out the numbers here. It’s a lot of dailies. Add to that the fact that you can do daily quests for The Tillers and Anglers, and you might never have time for dungeons, pvp, farming, eating, sleeping, etc.

Now, it’s really easy to just look at all this stuff and throw your hands up in exasperation. Daily quest farming isn’t very fun. In an expansion with gorgeous vistas, new dungeon and raid content (that is actually fun and engaging,) pet battles, and a new PVP season, you really just have to prioritize. Unless you’re unemployed, you probably don’t have time to do everything, every day. I obviously can’t speak for everybody out there, but I think that’s a fair statement. If you’re a raider, you’re probably going to have some desire to acquire the valor point gear that’s available. One limiting factor that I think ZOMG DAILYCRAFT haters overlook is the fact that VP isn’t exactly growing on trees. You can cap out and gain only 1,000 valor points a week. Since items cost between 1250 and 2200 (right?) VP each, I don’t think it would be very reasonable to just rush to get these reps ALL maxed out immediately. Keep that in mind and just work on the ones you want. Hopefully the gating enforced by the VP cap can help people smooth out the race to rep acquisition. Hardcore progression raiders probably have a different opinion on this topic, but they’re limited by VP just like the rest of us.

Raiding:
So far I’ve done a few raids in MoP. As you know, there are two world bosses. I’ve done both the Sha of Anger and Galleon. I have mixed feelings about world bosses because of griefing. I just think it’s annoying that PVP flagged horde can (and do) show up to my raid to try to get hit by AOE. It’s obnoxious and it’s probably why Sha and Galleon aren’t currently scheduled official raids for my guild.

Elsewhere, in the relative safety of Mogu’shan Vaults, Apotheosis has been deftly chipping away at encounters. As a retribution paladin, I’ve enjoyed all of the fights immensely so far. I feel they’re engaging without being gimmicky. My favorite is probably Spirit Kings. I enjoy the pace of the fight as well as the variety of mechanics to contend with. Apoth is currently 4/6 and has a lot of momentum toward getting our first Elegon kill.

Ret DPS feels strong at this point in the expansion. I like the changes made to holy power generation a lot. Not having a lot of open GCD’s makes the spec feel a lot more entertaining. I’ve mostly gotten over how stacking haste makes me feel dirty. I love our level 90 talents (although I haven’t really used holy prism.) Both Execution Sentence and Light’s hammer have bad ass spell effects AND great damage. I think they’re fun talents that have the perfect amount of paladin flavor.

Gold:
Finally, I just wanted to share some thoughts on gold making. I haven’t ever really been successful at making what I would consider “large” amounts of gold in Warcraft. Back in Wrath I remember I went through a phase where I successfully farmed and sold herbs. Unfortunately, that was somewhat short lived. I think I made around 10k when the market shifted and my stuff stopped selling. I had no income to speak of in Cataclysm. The only thing that really propelled me was a large sale I made to a guildie when I moved servers to raid with Apotheosis.

I’ve kind of gotten tired of this habit of acquiring gold and just sitting on it like I’m afraid of being broke. Mists has inspired an adventurous (sort of) spirit in me concerning gold making. So far I’ve had what I would consider a moderate level of success. I’m still sort of backward, from the point of view of *real* success, because I still farm most of my mats. However, there are always multiple ends for which it makes the means worth it. My adventure started when I decided to make myself a Darkmoon Card trinket. My scribe was on an alt I had been thinking about moving to Eldre’Thalas anyway, so I just went ahead and pulled the trigger. From there, I leveled from 525 to 600 (which Blizzard has made amazingly easy) with herbs farmed by another alt, my druid. Inspired by Team Brofist co-founder and ret paladin pal Ilumiqt, I decided to make a second scribe. My transferred alt had a bunch of low level inks that made the 1-600 process a breeze. In the end, I made myself a trinket and netted around 20k selling cards.

On top of that, during the process of farming herbs for my inscription, my druid leveled from 85 to almost 88. She also acquired an enormous amount of ghost iron, which my alchemist has had a grand time turning into trillium and living steel. Almost all of this stuff sells. One thing I learned along the way, with help from my friend/guildie/healer Serrinne is that persistence pays off. Posting, reposting, adjusting my approach, sitting on inventory, it doesn’t really matter what I do, as long as I’m doing something. Since MoP came out I’ve added about 50k to my coffers. I’ve set a personal goal of hitting 100k, which I should be able to do pretty soon. There’s something fun about the success of an auction. I’ve tried to flip a few things, which isn’t always successful, but that’s just part of the game. Since the market is so active right now, it’s a fun time to get involved. I don’t really have a plan for my 100k. I may just end up sitting on it, but who knows. I’d like to continue making gold so that I can enjoy stuff like that ridiculous yak or maybe even one of the engineering mounts. Who knows?

Anyway, thanks to those who came back to this blog. I’ll do my best to keep it updated from time to time. I think I will work on a new banner as well. Stay tuned for some updates, guides, and hopefully just some good fun reading.

Conflicted

For those of you who follow this blog at all, it’s been made apparent that I place some value on the acquisition of gear.

Savior of Azeroth

Tonight we finally killed Heroic Madness of Deathwing.  The kill was ridiculously clean.

Cataclysm Bucket List

I’m hoping today will continue being a slow workday. @Druidmain just reminded me of a blog post I’ve wanted to do for a while now. Bucket lists have become rather popular of late, which makes sense since we’re nearing the end of this expansion.

As a person, I’ve been called a completionist. I know that’s not a real word, but I think it’s easy to see what the label entails. I love tangible progress and completion in life and gaming. It’s probably why I enjoy mowing lawns. You can stand back and see exactly where you’ve been, where you’re going, and how much you have left. I also enjoy the simplicity of putting in my earphones and taking a walk out on the lawn for a while. Despite being a fairly avid gamer, spending time outside is still extremely important to me.

Anyway, as a completionist, World of Warcraft is an extremely suitable game for my personality. I have all these neat tangible modes of progression and achievement right at my fingertips. Completion is at the core of my WoW bucket list. If you’ve played WoW long enough, you understand that there really isn’t a way to “beat the game” in a literal sense. MMO’s just aren’t wired that way. Still, as a player I have some goals in my sights that will go a long way in making me feel that I’ve completed, or “won” in this expansion. A few of the other goals are just things I’d like to do before the world of MoP opens up for me to explore. The fact that they’re secondary goals doesn’t devalue them in any serious way. They’re just not in the same vein as my “beating the game” aspirations.

-The first, and probably most predictable item on the list, is to kill Heroic Madness of Deathwing. This is far and away my most important bucket list item. In all the years I’ve played this game, I haven’t ever achieved something akin to clearing content to the highest level. To any of my readers who aren’t familiar with what content is, here’s a grossly simplified synopsis:

In WoW you make a character that you use to travel the world with. This character has an age of sorts, based on how much you’ve done in the game. The maximum age or level is currently 85. Once your character is at level 85, one of the ways you can play the game involves a progressive ladder of encounters that are generally referred to as “content” or “raid content.” These encounters serve to be the means through which your character acquires progressively better items. The better the items your character has, the stronger they are. As such, the further you get into raid content, the more enabled you are to move onto the next tier of more difficult encounters. It is also worth noting that within the game is also a story line. These encounters serve as a way for you to interact with and destroy key villains in the story.

These villains are called “bosses” in the context of raiding. My girlfriend likes to refer to bosses as “dragons” as it simplifies the concept to her when I talk about raids. They’re obviously not all dragon, although many ares. Each tier or level of content is a group of raids, or “encounters” where you and a group of players venture into a place in WoW to kill these dragons. Again, the (literal) end goal of raiding is the acquisition of items for your character. Once a boss dies, the group receives several items that can be distributed to the players in that group.

Content, as a concept, is finite. In the current expansion of WoW, there are three tiers of raid content. Heroic Madness of Deathwing is the name of the last encounter in the last tier of raiding for this expansion. It is, ironically, not the most challenging boss fight, but it is in fact the end of the tier. Deathwing is a dragon who is considered to be one of the biggest bad guys in the game. He used to be a trusted guardian of nature, but he was corrupted by ancient evil and has been trying to more or less destroy the world ever since. He’s a dick and when you kill him your character gets a title (that displays next to their name as they walk about the “world”) that says “Savior of Azeroth.” Azeroth is the name of the planet in game. I’ll be Jacklalanne, Savior of Azeroth.

Now, although I noted the literal goal (gear acquisition) of completing content, that isn’t why I want to kill Deathwing. Aside from the tangible benefits (the title, and potentially a giant purple sword that spawns tentacles that destroy your foes,) I want to do this for the personal achievement. Prior to a few months ago, I haven’t ever been the caliber of player who clears all the content in the game. Ever. To be able to do that is cool. It serves, for me, to validate the time and effort that goes into playing this game. I also can’t understate the importance of being able to be a part of my guild’s first Heroic Madness kill. I love the group I’m in and it’s important to me to feel like I contributed to this grand achievement.

-My second, and far less important goal, actually goes hand in hand with the first. I’d really like to have an actual “best in slot” set of items from this expansion. I haven’t ever, and I just think it would be cool to have the best gear I can possibly obtain. I’m well on my way at the moment, and I’m looking forward to hopefully achieving my goal.

-Thirdly, I’d like to be good at pvp. Actually, let me rephrase that. I’d like to find one of my characters where I feel at home when I pvp. I don’t currently have that on my druid. I’m actually hoping that my elemental/resto shaman ends up filling this gap, but we’ll see. Pvp is extremely fun for me, but it almost has endless potential for frustration. Feeling like I’m “good” at something in pvp is definitely a bucket list item.

-Finally, I hope I can get my main, Jack, a cool high level mount before the end of the xpac. Up to this point, I haven’t acquired any rare or difficult to obtain mounts for him. Mounts serve as somewhat of a status symbol and it makes me a bit sad that Jack doesn’t have anything cool to ride around on yet. Hopefully we can do the Dragon Soul meta achievement soon. You get a fancy dragon from that, which will suffice.

I think this is a pretty simple and attainable bucket list. My guild, Apotheosis, is amazing. We might kill Heroic Madness tonight. I think, excluding goal 3, the others will come in time for MoP. I’m definitely hopeful. This expansion has been fun and even if I don’t get any of the above things done, I’ll still feel like my time was well spent.

Apotheosis goes 4/8 in H Dragon Soul! H Zon'Ozz Down!

This will be a quickie.  Tonight was a solid progression night for my new guild, Apotheosis.  I had a good feeling we'd get heroic Zon'Ozz down tonight, but I figured there was also a fair chance that we'd spend some quality time wiping.

Wait, Where Did That Other "n" Come From?

Oh my a lot has happened since my words last graced this blog.  My last post was my non-heroic BIS Ret list.  Lol.  Non-heroic.