I logged on this morning and had a notification of a post from Coffee Cakes and Crits that shared the link from a website named Simple Armory. I looked up my main on the armory and noticed I was a bit shy of having completed all scenarios. I went to look, because I was fairly certain I had done all the scenarios and realized it was Proving Grounds.
Yeah, not a fan.
My big complaint? They’re boring! It’s another round room of boredom. [The original place that got that name was Trial of the Crusader, though I didn’t have as much of an issue with that].
Anyway.
I was inspired by finding out I was missing some to do the “You’re Doing it Wrong” achievement. I ran Silver DPS as a Blood DK – super easy. I was actually surprised. I tried it once back in MoP and just shrugged and went on from there. I debated tackling Gold Tank or Gold DPS but the idea of just sitting there fighting that just doesn’t sound interesting to me.
I finally started getting alts through the Broken Shore stuff. Doing just a bit at a time but I’m getting there.
Thanks to invasions, I also finally got my mage leveled, which is the last class to 110 I needed and I’m working on her class hall questline. In fact, I’ve leveled about 5 toons via invasions. I’m just taking 3-4 over each invasion I catch and doing the easier quests [kill one mob, or easy pick ups]. If I can do all 6 quests, it’s about a level per toon. I find the scaling is a bit off for sub 110s. Tanks can manage even so, but dps can run into problems finishing some of the quests [particularly in caves].
I’ve also started a massive new project – collecting all the transmog sets for all the classes. You can see my progress on the Transmog Sets Page up at the top. I’m focused on Death Knights primarily as that’s my main class, but I have most of the sets for them and what I’m missing is mostly single pieces from later sets. I don’t run everything every week [clearly] but I pick and choose – what I feel like running, what class I feel like playing, or what I’m close to finishing. It’s a very long term type project but I’ll get there eventually. I’ve already bought the PVP sets for half the classes. Granted, Death Knights, Monks and Demon Hunters had less sets to contend with in the first place. I’m also done with Paladins, Priests and Warlocks as well for the PVP sets. I think I calculated that it takes 324 Marks of Honor to buy all the sets for a class [presuming you have no sets for said class and that it’s not a later added class]. Running multiple toons through towers when they’re up is rather lucrative in terms of Marks of Honor.
I had a really productive week with mounts. I had decided after finally attaining Ji-Kun, that I would work on the Hatchling mounts next [the questline you get from the little orphaned pets in the Warden quest Swarm areas. After a few days of completing the quests on Askevar, I discovered that I could do more quests if I accepted them on level 110 alts! So I pushed that for a few days and lo and behold, I now have four additional mounts
So I got two mounts today… And these days getting one mount is a big deal.
Well, I was up very late grinding out the last few coins for the fishing mount from Nat Pagle. I finally got it. But I was mumbling how evil the water was when it took nearly 15 minutes to get the very last coin I needed. You can read my insanity on twitter covering it lol.
Crimson Water Strider
I started 23 coins short so that’s not too bad. I know it’s a recolor but it gets me one closer to my goal of 300… Hubby said it looks like an evil version of the water strider and I suppose it does…
After I woke up, I decided to do a few Vortex Pinnacle runs since it’s one of the mounts I’m still missing. I read a little bit on Wowhead and they advised using a hunter/rogue/feral druid just for ease of stealthing through mobs/speed. Monk probably would have worked too as you can just run by most of the mobs, but I went with the hunter and camo’d to the first boss, killed it and just ran to the second. Four or five attempts later, the boss had a purple on it.
Yes, it says 11 attempts there [that’s the Rarity addon – it shows attempts/faux achievements. But that’s a toon I don’t really play much and they had 6-7 attempts when I started. Askevar’s been through that place quite a bit more. So while it seems lucky, I probably have well over 100 attempts on that boss accountwide… and the Rarity addon is a relatively new thing… no idea if it’s counting runs from before either.
But that leaves me 3 mounts shy of the 300 goal. I still need the 5k saberstalker mount… which is a grind I don’t look forward to, the Champion’s Treadblade, and the Mystic Runesaber among others. And there’s my weekly Elegon/Horridon runs that haven’t yielded anything yet.
Well since it’s the end of the expansion, this is of course the time wherein a lot of people scramble to finish long outstanding achievements. I’ve actually managed to finish several the last few weeks.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted and I hate that but Real Life reared it’s head this past month in a very real and scary way. First of all, a month ago, my father in law had a stroke. He survived and just came back home this past week and is improving every single day. He still has some loss of movement in his right hand/arm/leg but it’s coming back little by little. He lives an hour away from us and the hospital he was in was about an hour and 40 minutes away so a lot of traveling ensued. We even had to cancel a raid which hasn’t happened in years but I have the best raiders who are incredibly understanding – I mean Real Life comes first!
And then last week there was a shooting outside our house – something unheard of for our neighborhood, and thankfully no one was hurt… it’s just really disturbing to have that happen twenty feet from where you’re sitting in the living room.
One of the brightest spots this past week was receiving a pet from my friend Navi who literally made my day. It was an expected and welcome Dragon Kite – level 25. I named it Rawr. It seemed appropriate and it CHANGES COLORS. SQUEE!!! And as you can see from the picture below is that I also got my Hearthsteed which I think is just GORGEOUS.
Anyway, I’ll get to more posts later… I have quite a few in mind – including the new Diablo 3 expansion and the new game Heroes of the Storm which is in technical alpha at this point. Ven and I were lucky enough to get invites.
Well this weekend I decided it was high time I sat down and finally got at least one of the warbringer mounts. My experience grouping for those has not been very good. This weekend however was pretty much just me with hubby joining me on a few circuits.
I managed to net two of the three mounts in the process – And while I occasionally saw people farming them or camping the Dread Wastes one, they’re up a lot on my circuits – even on the weekend – so it’s not a horrible time to farm them.
So quite a few things over the weekend in terms and achievements and goals and such. First of all, my bank guild finally hit level 25. Hubby logged on and was helping me run around getting candy buckets on a couple of his alts. One of my major goals for this expansion was to have it leveled to 25 so quite happy it’s done. I’ve had a few friends help out now and again – Endy, Rok, Kan, Black, Ra and I hope I didn’t forget anyone. Ven leveled a couple alts there but most of the work was my own.
Saturday night – just after midnight… well I guess that’d make it Sunday morning… I saw a note on my battlenet about getting a group together for Rabble Rabble Rabble. Naturally, Ven and I jumped in for that! To get the achievement you have to have 20 plus people queued up for a Brawl fight. The portal lasts something like 5 minutes but it was nice to get this!
And this morning I go to run Sunwell, as I do weekly on my hunter [almost forgot it this week] and when I killed Kiljadean I looked away for just a moment only to see something flash across the screen in my peripheral vision.
My husband has like 6-7 paladins… maybe more on his account. Only three of them are max level thus far. He likes paladins. He’s played a paladin since he logged on in vanilla and he’s weathered all the changes the game provided for paladins. Mostly he’s been a Prot pally, sometimes a Ret and very occasionally he’s even been a holy paladin. He likes paladins so much that our son has a level 85 paladin and I have several paladins myself, though my main is my death knight [I always thought the Paladin/Death Knight combo was interesting].
Askevar and Venoym
Anyway here’s Venoym in full transmog:
Like I said, he’s had this toon forever. He exceeds me in total achievement points and has ground things like the Insane. He did contemplate swapping mains once or twice because of some massive paladin changes that came out but has always managed to roll with those punches and enjoy the class once again.
Here’s his smattering of other paladins… I left out his army of lowbies.
Ven’s pally army: Herald toon; Horde and 2 of his main server alt pallies.
Yes, he’s mad about paladins.
So much so that our son’s first toon was a paladin. And yes, it looks very much like Venoym… he is a daddy’s boy.
Little Venoym
He calls it a hunter though… Our son thinks Hunter is part of the toon’s name… so yeah. It’s weird I know 😛 So he’s got the mage on one account and this paladin on the other. If he wants anymore he’ll have to level them. [His third toon appears to be a warlock that just hit level 3 – and he’s very very proud of that].
And for completion’s sake here’s my Paladin Collage:
The dwarf there was the first toon I ever rolled on the account… I leveled her to 40ish in vanilla and then dropped her because while being a Jack of all trades was fun at low levels, it became more complex and weak the higher you went. She’s swapped specs a few times but it currently holy.
The human paladin is my current bank toon… I decked her out in that transmog from Darkmoon Faire at level 10 or 20… I honestly forget which, but I wanted her to look good.
And the horde there is Holykau… the poor thing can’t keep a horde guild on Argent Dawn – she’s had them transferred out from under her four or five times now… and it’s continually someone kicking everyone and ninja-transferring to either have a level 25 guild or to sell it… I’m still not completely sure. She was leveled for the double agent achievement but I enjoy playing horde side on occasion.
Iron Qon is the fight causing said issues. Every week the LFR group has this idea of how it’s supposed to be tanked. Last week the group demanded we basically teleport the boss [ie kite him whilst he’s casting dead zone] away from the spear. The week prior to that the group freaked out at the prospect of tanking him at the back because it could reset and waste their time. Another LFR group essentially demanded he be kited in phase 3 and placed in the middle for the final phase… And these groups are willing to wipe than try another strat. The group this week demanded that we tank him at the back and force the healers to just heal through the aoe. In point of fact we wiped twice because they stood at the back and refused to move. Out of anything. That “isn’t their job”. We finally gave in and tanked it where they said and it was pretty rough on the healers but it got done. Of course it was all entirely our fault because we don’t know how it’s supposed to be done.
Knowing how it’s “supposed to be done” in LFR is hard when every group seems to EXPECT and DEMAND that it be done their way. I’ve seen some pretty far out demands and as a tank it’s better to just go along with it… heck I’m tempted to ask what they want… because they won’t adapt or change for anyone. I have no idea which strat is typical. Most of them work when people are trying. But even if we go in and do what we want there’s always one person who knows how to do it better.
When I position the boss in phase one so that melee can be behind it without being in the fires and half the raid still is… I don’t think that’s a problem with me. Tanks really truly can’t win right now. And I do take the nasty words personally – where I shouldn’t.
Us hitting berserk on the second boss was apparently the tank’s fault too. None of the dps were willing to run the patterns. We had a couple of our ranged try it [their mains are melee however] when we were getting on toward berserk and it was taking forever. But none of them got used.
And apparently it was our fault too that the Lei Shen kill was messy. I mean obviously we’re at fault for people standing in lightning whip and thunderstruck every single time they hit.
You know what?
I honestly don’t need this. My main needs no tanking gear and I don’t need to have a geared DK tank alt. Or heck, I could throw some blue crafted dps gear on her and just dps for the tank gear. Only I feel the need to defend the other tanks when it gets done to them…
Just… the fatigue and stress of the last week have not been pleasant. Add big life changes and then this on top of it… yeah I really don’t need it. And had I not been with guildies, I would have left.
And honestly, at this moment, I never want to tank LFR again. I know I will. I know that’s an emotional overreaction in this moment in time. But seriously… think about it… Why would ANYONE want to deal with this?
You Yank It, You Tank it: Blog of a Tanking Death Knight Lady 