Good Mythical Morning (and Evening and Weekend)

Over the weekend, we downed the first raid boss on Heroic on the third attempt, then the GM chickened out of the rest, opting instead to clear the whole place on Normal… which we did handily. We even did Azshara with a full guild group, earning the guild some achievement, which was nice. Unfortunately, while it's great we can clear normal, it does absolutely jack for bolstering my personal gear. Unless an item drop randomly titanforges, it's pretty much guaranteed to be a serious downgrade.

So what's an up-and-coming arcane mage to do? Why, run mythical dungeons!

I've mostly avoided mythic+ for several reasons. One, the "job interview" trap. Unless you're leading the group itself (something I'm loathe to do), you have to have the experience in order to be invited to groups. Mythics are races against the clock with 5 second time penalties for every death your team takes (plus the time it takes to recover and regroup), and mechanic screw-ups are usually rewarded with insta-kills. As a result, sane people want to make sure you're capable before you're allowed in. I can't fault them for that. Second, you can't queue for them. That's just a lazy factor on my part. Flying to the dungeon, summoning party members. Finally, they're expensive. You're going to be buffing yourself with flasks and food like it's a raid. You HAVE to be operating at peak if you're "pushing keys".

(Apologies if any of the following is repeated in other posts.) A keystone placed in a receptacle by the dungeon entrance turns a dungeon into a mythic plus. A helpfully intimidating UI element shows a stopwatch and the number of deaths your group has accrued. Nothing drops loot until a chest at the end of the dungeon. Beating the dungeon in the time limit replaces your key with a higher level key for a randomly-chosen new dungeon, plus you get bonus loot. Beating the dungeon outside of time replaces your key with another key of the same level for a randomly-chosen dungeon. Bailing on a dungeon = no rewards and the key gets dropped in level. As dungeons get harder, they get "affixes" which makes your life hell in special ways. For example, "bolstering" gives all enemies a stacking +20% health and damage boost when a non-boss critter dies near them. Others do things like give you constant damage when you're wounded less than 90% or have extra mobs, etc. There's a LOT of variety in the pain you can suffer.

So, long story short, one of the guildies says "Hey, anyone interested in running [some dungeon I've been in once 9 months ago]? Mythic 2." He's one of our raiders and I reply "If you'd like a slightly drunk mage with moderate dps, shoot me an invite. If you're sane, grab someone else." In seconds I had an invite and a few minutes later, my intoxicated ass was delving into the Underrot. It went REALLY well and at the end, his key advanced by 2 levels, and I got a nice gear downgrade for my own part. (Like with most other things, harder stuff has higher rewards and this was a pretty low-level mythic. I think I'd need level 7s and higher to have a chance at upgrades.)

But most importantly, this gave me experience and a shot of confidence and began a long, strange trip for me over the weekend. My mythic buddy invited me back again and again and with a rotating cast of other guildies and pugged tanks, we ran another 5 dungeons along the way (sober), ending the game week with a couple of mythic 8s. We didn't meet clock time on the 8s (the "bolstering" makes pushing keys nearly impossible this week), but otherwise they are mostly smooth runs. There's never a time to pause, as one fight almost immediately leads to another. This poses a challenge for arcane, since it means virtually zero time to regain mana outside of combat. I've started treating them as single 30-35 minute fights, frantic and challenging, but fun.

Along the way I experienced at least one totally new (to me) dungeon and often it had been so long since I ran others, I had to read the dungeon journal on the fly to remind myself of basic fight mechanics. For me, it was a relief when we ran the otherwise universally-hated Siege of Boralus, simply because I knew those fights so well. As a nice touch, each dungeon makes me more "invitable" to pugs. "Gearscore" has long since gone by the wayside. Now it is all about your Raider.io score. Feel free to check it out. It's terrifyingly detailed information about how bad you suck and checked by the people who want to be successful.

Otherwise, I somehow I found the time to cap my pvp Conquest rewards, hit 850 unique pets, make another 100k on the AH through cornering the gloom dust market, and utterly failed to get Invincible from the Lich King for the 30th time.

Today, however is Tuesday. A new week of raid lockouts (31st failure incoming!) and for the first time I'll get to loot both a weekly mythic rewards chest and conquest chest that potentially hold upgrades.

It's a me, Strevnor!

To say Azeroth Inc is an active guild doesn’t quite do it justice. Due to very aggressive churn, we stay at around 950-1000 members, with 25 or so being replaced every day. At any given time we’ll have between 45 and 100 online. Everyone does their own thing, but we have guild event of various flavors to cater to the masses. Tuesdays are RP events and Social Gatherings. I had nothing pressing after clearing out my daily pet battles, no I signed up for the event: a costume party.
No other criteria was mentioned. So, I figured “what the hell”. I’d treat it like a Halloween costume party and decided to make myself a Mario mog. A half hour and 2k gold later, I have a look I like that’s ‘good enough’. Just in case someone didn’t get it, I named a baby raptor Yoshì because OF COURSE the proper “Yoshi” was a reserved name. I had a few pet biscuits in the bank that doubled the size of the pet “as long as it remains by your side”, so I was all set for a party.

[So, sorry-- blog readers. This is a placeholder for now!]

Long story short, about 15 of us chilled out in voice chat and played around drinking and admiring each other’s mogs. I was the only one who went ‘full theme’, with most attendees dressing up in various fancy dress attire.
Apparently my Mario was a hit. I was declared “winner”—and was showered with a ridiculous amount of prizes: 10k in gold, 40k worth of mounts, 200k worth of transmog gear, and a few pieces of assorted clothing.
Definitely worth shaving the beard for.

Sew what?

One of the things I neglected to mention was that I went "99% Zyrial" late last week (Never, ever go 'full Zyrial') and dropped Skinning for Tailoring. This is simply so I can conveniently turn the vast quantities of cheap AH linen into Tidestone Bracers (Kul Tiran Tailoring level 1).

This is the equivalent of taking 22g worth of materials and (assuming it doesn’t crit) turning it into a 21g trash vendor item. Naturally, I then bought 20k worth of linen, because the solution here is to make up for it in volume.

So what does one do with literally a thousand bracers? Why, disenchant them of course for that sweet, sweet dust. Having ground out the Enchantment Rod that gives bonus mats, each green bracer yields between 8 and 13 dust, averaging about 10. With dust selling reliably between 4.8-7g each, this becomes a windfall in and of itself. The rare and epic shards from the blue disenchants are pure gravy.

So how much dust we talkin' here? It really comes down to "how much time am I willing to spend pushing my 'disenchant' macro. (read: 1.5 hours) …yielding in the neighborhood of 40k gold profit for minimal work while I watch youtube videos.
Read: between 40-60 kilodust.

While this could have been a third of another month's game time, I instead plowed the ill-gotten wealth back into feeding the pet addiction, which has now finally broken the 800 mark.

Naga! Hide!

I'm delighted to say after 11 wipes total, our guild downed the final raid boss, Queen Azshara. It seems disingenuous to say "killed", since she was rescued at the last moment by the N'zoth, the Elder God we accidentally freed in the process, but, you know, you take your victories where you can. The fact it was on my birthday was just gravy.

I mentioned earlier the fight had a ridiculous number of mechanics. Trying to list them all won't give the fight justice, but I'll try to link the video of the kill later to give a sense of the controlled chaos. It begins with a pair of minibosses that must be tanked separately or together (depending on their current mood) and killed together, before the REAL fight begins. The main highlights are wards around the room that have to be empowered and one that gives a damage boost to the boss that has to be depowered. Everyone has to manage these (Doing so gives a 2 minute debuff reducing your max health by 10% a stack) and there are many adds and things happening that drain energy from the first and boost the latter. Each person must follow decrees to stand apart, soak damaging orbs, stack on other people, and the like. A number of different types of adds have to be burned down, including a couple of mini-bosses that shield themselves from all damage. The shield can be broken by a spear thrown by a different add at a player, who must position themselves to have the spear (which passes through the player) pop the shield, but not any of the pillars in the room or a control console. The control console has to be periodically depowered during the last phase of the fight, and each depowering will kill a DPS (after giving them a 40 second damage buff) or drain wards by 30% or something else horrible. It's totally nuts.

We're going to try heroics next week and they'll be DPS auditions on Thursday. I may not make the cut, but that's ok-- I've now been part of successful boss kills well before they hit LFR. Speaking of, I wound up leading a LFR raid over the weekend, because it was painfully clear most people had no idea what was going on. I think there's usually 1/3rd of the players who have a clue or at least watched a video or read the dungeon journal and 2/3rds that will just try to 'wing it', trusting to be carried. When it was painfully clear we weren't going to survive the fights with 2/3rds dead, I stepped up, summarized mechanics, and called out during the fights. By god, it worked. We wiped once on one boss, but otherwise it was a smooth, smooth run that wound up with only 2 people dead on the same boss we wiped on the first time.

Otherwise, I've been feeding my pet addiction. I've caught just about every pet I can in the wilds (there's a couple left in Pandaria I just haven't gotten to yet) and have been steadily adding from the Auction House when I see them drop well below the average prices. Currently at 792 unique pets (which is a ridiculous number), with the next achievement at 800. The final (!) achieve is at 1000 pets, but I don't see myself getting to that point. The last 50 or so have been challenging and it is just getting more and more expensive at 2k+ each.