Story Progression in Pandaria

Patch 5.3 is here. We've got a bunch of new things. Heroic Scenarios, entirely new Scenarios, new battle ground, and new story.

I've tried a few heroic scenarios so far. As one guildie put it, we're just killing raid trash. They don't seem particularly difficult, as long as you know what you're doing. The heroic scenarios easier to do if you have either a tank or a healer in the group, but you'll have a harder time getting the timed extra Valor Points if you don't go with three dps. Basically the heroic scenarios are now a pretty speedy way to get your Valor.

I've done all four of the new scenarios on heroic. They are interesting in terms of the story they advance. It's nice to see the Alliance get some character development, both for King Varian and for Moira Bronzebeard, regent of the Darkirons. Conversely it's both sad and enlightening to see the way that the Horde is being driven apart. Garrosh is after power for the Horde and the orcs from any source. And not only that but he is trying to apply the orcs' cultural values to the other races.

The new story is all about Vol'jin finally being over Garrosh. Well, he was over Garrosh at the start of Cata, but now he's recovered from the assassination attempt. Now Vol'jin has organized the trolls and is actively rebelling against Garrosh. He fully intends to carry out his threat to shoot Garrosh in the back once everyone sees what a terrible leader he is.

Garrosh is, of course, trying to suppress this rebellion. He's got the Troll section of Orgrimmar under martial law. There are Kor'kron enforcers stationed everywhere. If you try to buy anything the vendor they will suggest you go else where, and glance meaningfully at the enforcers.

There is also a set of battles happening in the Northern Barrens and Sen'jin Village. Garrosh is trying to amass supplies to fortify Org, and Vol'jin is trying to get those supplies instead. The player is sent to help Vol'jin's efforts. The Horde get to defend Sen'jin and raid Northern Barrens.

The Alliance also have the Northern Barrens raiding going on. They are basically there because it's sound strategy. Either they help overthrow Garrosh and the Horde is nicer to deal with and peace (or at least a cease-fire) is possible. Or they help weaken Garrosh who has to put more effort into putting down his rebellion. Either way the Horde is weakened by their civil war.

Troll Council Dead

This past Tuesday Darkfall had a pretty good raid in Throne of Thunder. Our work-beleaguered holy priest has finally gotten a better boss and managed to change his schedule so he can raid with us again. Also the OT has gone through several bouts of indecision and after going through the first set of raids in Pandaria on his pally he is now swapped through monk, warlock, and druid, and back to pally. I also managed to pull in a nicely balanced set of high-powered dps.

Anyway we marched into ToT and proceeded to one-shot Jin'rokh as we've done for a while now. We then had a nice two-shot of Horridon. I was impressed that we actually got him down on the second try, especially since right at the end of the fight the OT, monk healer, and our hunter all DC'd. Fortunately the OT had already used bubble on me to clear my Puncture stacks so I was good to go for staying alive while the angry dino attempted to gore me.

Killing Horridon so quickly left us with plenty of time to bash our heads against the Troll Council. We'd had several attempts against them in the past couple of weeks. And had a pretty good grasp of the strategy we were using, which was to zerg (within reason) Sul the Sandcrawler. We put two melee on him and everyone else was supposed to multi-dot Sul but still kill the current empowered target and both flavors of annoying Loa Spirits.

We had a couple of wipes where Frost King ate the tanks. We had been taunting him back and forth during his stacking tank debuff, but that was leading to death as the tank healer couldn't keep up or keep track of who needed more heals. So then the pally OT wanted to try taking Frost King the whole time. His brother then tank healer, thought this was a good idea so... I figured we'd try it at least once. If it failed horribly, we'd swap back and be more careful about tank heals and CDs. Surprisingly it actually worked out pretty well. We also changed it so that the monk healer was ONLY healing the pally tank, so the two of them could coordinate their CDs. This left the holy priest dealing with the raid and my health, but since I never had Frost King on me I didn't take all that much damage from Mar'li, and if there was a big spike I popped a CD.

It was more than a little hairy, but with Death Grip always available (because I never accidentally got popsicled) the Loa spirits were never even close to being an issue. It also helped that our monk healer and our OT are brothers and so were quite good at coordinating their CDs. So the tank always had his own or a monk CD to live through getting frozen.

Anyway, the first time we killed Sul we killed the whole group of them. The entire fight becomes an order of magnitude easier without him around. No sand traps, less tank damage, more dps on the loa spirits and whoever is empowered; it was pretty much cake after Sul was dead.



I had made a handy dandy macro and bound it to my Razer Naga keypad when we first encountered the Troll Council. Once the Loa spirit appeared I hit the macro for a nice slow. Only when it'd slooowly gone a ways did I death grip it back to me.

/target Blessed Loa Spirit
/target Shadowed Loa Spirit
/cast Chains of Ice


I'm enjoying both the Throne of Thunder and the Darkspear Rebellion. But there is one issue. One huge issue.

I have been playing wow for almost eight years now. Most of that time has been spent as part of the Horde. I've been playing Mornara since Wrath, with her as my main and tanking roughly since the Argent Tournament came out. Before that I mostly played my Troll mage Viljo, but did a bunch of dabbling with my Belf priestess Teltanara from the time that Burning Crusade came out.

I've learned through many years of repetition that there certain sounds that mean I've failed. I strongly associate failure with the sound of any member of the Horde dying. But it is worst with Orcs, Trolls, Undead, and Blood Elf death cries. Since DraNgNon plays Kuan, the male Troll Shaman, as her main I'm really sensitized to look around and try to figure out what messed up whenever I hear a male troll die.

Back to Throne of Thunder and the Darkspear Rebellion. ToT has the first three bosses entirely Troll themed. Technically they are Zandalari Trolls, but I still remember raiding Zul'Gurub when it was a 20man. The Zandalari are supposed to be our friends! It hurts that after all the help I gave them destroying Hakkar they are now working with the Thunder King to kill me.

Meanwhile the Darkspear Rebellion is part rebellion but mostly civil war within the Horde. I'm out in the Northern Barrens cutting down Orcs and Goblins. I absolutely flinch every time an Orc dies by my hand.

Horridon Dead!

Almost two weeks ago Darkfall killed Horridon. I'm so pleased. He's such an annoying goddamn dino. Actually the most annoying part is the seemingly endless waves of trolls. Anyway, giant dino dead!

We started off the night by having a nice one-shot of Jin'rokh. He was dead before the 3rd lightning storm. Which was super fortunate, because someone had dropped a lightning fissure or two where the 4th puddle would have spawned.

Last night we also had our regular OT back. He dabbled with playing a lock and not tanking, but I think he's back to tanking. He's leveling up a druid to be his tank, but is currently playing his monk. It was great to have him back. Though I must say that the massive AoE threat the monks generate with their beer throwing is annoying.

Also, I was mean or lazy (take your pick) and made our returned OT gather the spirits on the windy bridges. This usually worked pretty well. The Monk Roll ability will get him safely through the floating punting spirits so he never got punted off the bridge and could speedily bring back the spirit we needed to kill. However, that same Roll did get him killed on three different times as he rolled his way off the edge of the bridge. The first time was funny, but by the third time he was doing this I needed a breather to catch my breath from laughing so hard I was crying.

Once we got through the trash and were at Horridon we had a relatively speedy kill. We had a couple of goofy wipes and then a wipe where both tanks died to heavy dino trampling. But once the healers had seen the whole fight we got it on the next try.

Jeweled Onyx Panther

When Mists of Pandaria came out I took a cursory look over the different professions. I looked a bit more closely at the ones that I have, and my eye was caught by Jewelcrafting. At various levels of rep with the Order of the Cloud Serpent you could buy recipes for different panther mounts. Jade and Sunstone panthers were available at Honored. Ruby and Sapphire panthers could be bought at revered. And once you were exalted with them you could make a Jeweled Onyx Panther.

Each of these colored panther mounts is a bunch of expensive materials, and the Onyx is all 4 of them combined. It's a ridiculously expensive mount. The vendor mats alone are 72k for the Onyx mount.

My main way of making gold with characters is to buy ghost iron ore. Mornara prospects the ore and turns the green quality ones into jewelry that Telt DEs. My banker sells the blue quality gems and enchanting mats. Once I saw the panther mounts, I changed that up a bit to save stacks of the necessary gems for the crafted mounts. DraNgNon and I also pool our skills and my other banker buys and sells herbs for flasks and glyphs that Kuan and Ikoli make. We've been accumulating gold on that banker and every time we have enough to buy an Orb of Mystery I've been having Mornara make a panther mount. And then I immediately have her mail it back to the banker so I don't accidentally learn the mount...

Anyway we finally got four of the colored mounts made. I tried to insist that DraNgNon get the first mount. But she pointed out that I'd been the one so excited about this. So here is Morn riding on an absolutely fabulous Jeweled Onyx Panther.



It really looks awesome. And it'll adjust to whatever speed you can fly or ride.

Gotta Catch'em all

I'm actually pretty close to catching all the various battle pets for the different continental capture acheevements. I've already captured (and gotten the achievements for) all the pets on Eastern Kingdoms, Outland, and Pandaria.

In Northrend I'm only missing the Arctic Fox Kit. And I currently have an alt parked in Storm Peaks waiting and waiting for the snow to blow in. I suspect that like the Baby Ape this will take months. There is no schedule that I've been able to find so it's all up to luck if I log in when there is snow falling.

I have two pets left to capture in Kalimdor for the Kalimdor continental catch'em all achieve. One of these pets is the Minfernal. The other is the Qiraji Guardling.

I had been missing the Giraffe Calf from Southern Barrens. However, a lucky capture just outside of Dominance Hold netted me one. It is grey quality, but I totally don't care. This is the exact situation that Battle Stones were invented for. Next Flawless Critter Stone I get it'll be upgraded.

I have an alt stationed in Felwood for the Minfernal. I check every so often to see if there is one up. Possibly I need to take drastic late night/early morning action there. But I do enjoy sleep and I'll catch it eventually.

The Qiraji Guardling however is a "summer pet". It spawns in Silithus, allegedly near the Scarab Wall in Southern Silithus, but it only does so during summer. Whenever that is. There has been massive speculation about when that is. After March 21st. After May 1st. After the summer solstice in June.

I checked last night, and regrettably it appears that it is likely after summer solstice. Or at least it wasn't after May 1st. And, yes, the various blue posts that I've looked up today have confirmed that it's not going to be around until late June at earliest.

Once I get the Continental achieves I'll go back and be super OCD about getting the newer capturable pets added after the achieves were in there. I just can't force myself to park an alt waiting for the Stunted Yeti or Infinite Whelp, for example, when the Minfernal is roaming free and taunting me.

Red Panda

With the 5.2 patch there were many new things introduced into WoW. Aside from the new islands and their denizens and daily quests and the Throne of Thunder raid there was also some other fun stuff. The players got the farm from Yoon if they were exalted with the Tillers. Alliance and Horde got access to the opposite faction's scenario. There was also a new set of pet battles added.

The new pet battles added in the idea of solo battle pets. Not for players to have, but for players to fight. They are the Beasts of Fable. (Dun Dun DUN!) These mythical creatures live around Pandaria, and if you defeat all of them you get a Red Panda. The red panda is quite simply adorable! Not necessarily top of the adorable scale, that goes to Baby Blizzard Bear, but it's pretty far up there.

So Mornara set out to thrash the Beasts of Fable. Being creatures native to Pandaria they were all beast, critter, flying, or aquatic. Most of the fights were relatively easy. In fact only Gorespine was any trouble, but his Spiked Skin really was an issue until I remembered that my Clockwork Gnome had a missile instead of turrets.


And then I flew back to the Shrine of Two Moons and acquired my absolutely adorable Red Panda.