Wonderful Monday!

We had such a fantastic time tonight!  Monday night is when we run our retro stuff and tonight we were in Firelands.  We finished Glory of the Firelands Raider for 8 people in the raid… just needing to finish “Do a Barrel Roll”.

 

Glory of the Firelands Raider!

 

We cleared the rest of the heroic modes for the other two who needed them and ended up calling it early to take screen shots of us on our new mounts at Shrine.  Apparently created a little stir too… had a couple people standing on top of us and asking about the guild so all in all, not too bad

 

 

 

After that, I got a note from Endyme of Unholy Randomness [whom I happen to know in Real Life] and got invited on her guild’s alt run of Mogushun.  We cleared the first three bosses on heroic mode and ended up doing a few attempts at Spirit Kings.  Ven and I both ended up getting heroic Jasper Clawfeet for our offsets but the look at the four heroic modes was fantastic… can’t wait to bring that back to our raid.  Endyme’s guildies are completely psychotic… but in a fun kind of way.

 

Apparently I’m not the only one who likes the in game toys!

A Tank Through and Through

So I queued up and zoned into a Terrace run earlier on my warlock… I’m attempting to get her geared enough to do the green fire questline.  Anyway, we get to Sha rather easily and the first tank is fine on Sha… and then the second tank won’t step in the light…

The first tank died once from reaching attacks… I rezzed him on the platform.

He died again.  Someone else rezzed him.

He died again.  Someone else rezzed him.

They finally convinced the other tank to stand in the light but we were out of battle rezzes.

“IT’S A WIPE!”

I’m sitting there thinking that I absolutely do NOT feel like wiping, throw on Dark Apotheosis and step into the light when the other tank is crackled.  To my amazement… I didn’t die.  In fact, I tanked the boss until the other tank came back and stepped into the light… he then got crackled again.  So I tanked the last 50% of Sha of Fear on LFR… as a lock.  Props to the healers for the amazing heals

That is Carlyn in tier 4… [which I got at level and was so proud of!  I couldn't mog her in anything else ]

A Treasure Trove of Gear for Alts:

I’ve found a few methods of maximizing my ability to gear my alts and thought I’d share.  Some of this is probably obvious but was something that didn’t occur to me the first week.

1. Treasure trove keys drop like candy off the rares.  Bring your alt over and kill a rare [took 2 rares on a few alts] and get a weekly easy treasure trove key.  Run the solo dungeon and focus on looting every chest in the first room for Elder Coins.  A bad run nets me 10 Elder Coins.  A good run gives me at or near 20.  These are fantastic to gear up your alts through the old raid finders!

2. Run the island progression scenarios!  These net 25 valor straight up.  If you still aim to cap a toon, wait until you have as you will then get 37-38 valor on alts.  That may not seem like much, but I know it can make a difference between getting a piece and having to grind one more dungeon/scenario, so well worth it.  Also, if you die in these scenarios due to lack of gear or practice on the alt?  It doesn’t reset!  You can literally die through the scenarios, though that’s obviously not the ideal way

3. Treasure trove runs also net historical documents that you can use to buy BoA Kirin Tor Rep insignias and the Burial chests can often contain BoA Shado Pan Assault insignias that you could send to your main!  Besides, getting Honored with Kirin Tor Assault can provide a 476 ilevel belt for one or both of your specs with the only cost being gold!  A fantastic way to gear up an offset or an alt who hasn’t managed to get a belt yet.  Simply doing the progression scenarios and Treasure trove for a couple weeks has gotten several of my alts over halfway through friendly [having bought the commendation for double rep on my main].  A little questing and you can easily hit honored in a day or two.

4. One other thing… they increased the time you have to spend a coin in a raid.  You DO have time to swap specs and blow a coin.  If you’re having a bit less time and have the ability and gear to queue as a tank or healer, consider it!  You will still be able to swap specs after the boss dies and roll for offspec.  I realize that’s not as attractive to queue in an offspec, but when I have extra coin rolls on my healers, I’ve actually been swapping to try and get gear for my off-set and I’ve won a few things so it does work!

Wherein I Refuse to PVP Flag and I Don’t Feel Bad About Leaving Comrades Who Did to Die…

Last night we went Warbringer hunting… four people from our guild .  Ven had crashed and I totally got sucked into it…  but we did get two mount drops over the course of the night…  I just didn’t get one  Yet.

 

Anywho, favorite part of the night… we end up waiting at a Warbringer spawn with another ally group and at least one horde group.  Randomly, the horde group PVP flags.  The other ally group then begins to do battle with them and eventually the ally group gets stomped.

Warbringer spawns, horde has the tag… and they’re still flagged.  I figure that they’ll probably be toast, so I put an icy touch on the mob and watch and wait while the other ally group and the rest of my group goes to town on the horde.  Horde dies.  Big shock.  Not sure why you would PVP flag while hunting these mounts… just sounds like a bad idea to me [of course I believe that PVP flagging ever is not a good thing].  Next thing I know, the warbringer runs over and says “HAI!  I like you now!” and I realize that we have the tag.

Everyone else is still battling each other like crazy… but the tag was ours and since I wouldn’t PVP flag… well… they couldn’t exactly kill me.  Did I mention we’d been running without a healer on the warbringer hunting?  And I instructed the rest of my group to not heal me [windwalker monk, feral druid, dps warrior].

So we got it… all because I refuse to PVP flag.

For once I didn’t feel too bad about leaving comrades to die who chose to PVP flag.

The Path to 90 for Alts:

Here’s the path I use for leveling alts:

 

1. Jade Forest to 86.  If DPS sit in queue for the 2 lower level dungeons while I quest.  If tank or heals, queue when I want to do them.

2. At 86 go to Valley, remain in queue if I haven’t completed both dungeons.

3. At 87 get the quest in Halfhill to go to Kun-lai.  Do the quests on the Veiled Stair to get there.  Quest through Kun-lai until completion [I love this zone].  Should get me well into 88 but perhaps to 89 depending on how many instances I do. Queue once again for the two new instances available at 87.

4. Once Kun-lai is done or at 89, hit Dread Wastes till 90.

 

I have varied on this once, finishing Jade forest to completion and then hitting Krasarang, but I typically like the familiar path to do it more expediently.

Because I Can… Brag Post

 

 

My son is the mage [the blue line].  I’m Askevar [tank] and a friend was healing on his pally [Thanks again Kan!].  I’m not bragging so much on my son’s dps [which did come up by 1k since his foray into the Valentine's dungeon yesterday] but the fact that he did such a stellar job of staying out of “bad” [and he wasn't using either the perfume or cologne]B.

Mini-Ven learns how to raid

My son has killed the Sha of Anger on his gnome mage a few times…  he even has 2 piece tier off Sha and since that’s as much raiding as he’ll be doing… that’s more than he needs.  Yesterday I was grouping for a Sha run on an alt and he sees the bad guy on my screen.

 

Mini-Ven:  Can I come Mommy?

Me: Sure *sends him an invite*

 

My son then promptly flew up to where people were gathered near the Sha – all by himself, put out a table and did the mage buff on the raid that was there.  When that table disappeared, he did the same thing again.  He also sat down at one of the banquet tables and ate the food for a buff.  I was very very impressed!  He did all that without my direction meaning he’s listening to my advice when he plays.  The first time he killed the sha with me, he got scared because the guy was soooo much bigger than his gnome that he ran out of the room. Now he’s starting to understand that he’s part of a team and that the team together can do it!

 

He also asked if he could do the special instance with me this morning [aka the Valentine's instance].  I’ve never let him queue with other people before but I figured that if I were on Askevar, I could probably pick up any slack [and it IS a holiday boss].  He got a little flustered getting out of the puddles and lost some dps but ended up with 15k overall… which isn’t bad for a four year old on a fire mage where he’s mainly hitting one button [Fireball].  Yeah, I know, that’s not the rotation but he’s four!

 

Ven and I also occasionally do a scenario with him [yup, I get kicked off my computer to the laptop for it] so he’s learning how to do group content pretty well… though his attention span isn’t super great.  But again – four years old!

 

Oh, and he’s learned to read a map already.  Anywhere I go in game, he can find me between looking at the terrain on my screen and the maps on his.  As someone who was an anthropology major with quite a few geography classes taken, I approve.