Battle Pet Obsession

I really don't think I'd have done nearly as many pet battles if I didn't have the addon PetBattle Teams. Being able to make teams for every occasion is super handy. I currently have 50 teams. I've got carry teams set up for every Pandaria tamer. I've got teams to quickly kill the various Beasts of Fable. I have teams for each of the battles in the Celestial Tournament. I usually have six or seven PvP teams set up, but those evolve over time. I have a bunch of leveling teams set up as well, both for carrying a pet in Pandaria, and for lowbie leveling in cities and the rest of the world. In short I have far too many teams set up, but I do use all of them pretty regularly.

However, the most important teams are the Pandaria Master Tamers. Each of the teams for the Pandaria tamers and Spirit tamers consists of two level 25s and an empty slot for a lowbie that is getting XP. I'll use a Lesser Pet Treat and then follow a route from the Pandaren Earth Spirit west to Courageous Yon, then South through Townlong and Dread Wastes. The East and North through Krasarang and Jade Forest before heading West again to go to Grand Master Aki and then South to finish up at Farmer Nishi. From there I'll also do a quick blast through Beasts of Fable 2: Lucky Yi, Greyhoof, and Skitter Xi. That route will get the equivalent XP of 2 pets from 1 to 25. And doing Beasts of Fable 2 will get a Lesser Pet Treat to use for the next day.

I'm not actually sure how many unique pets I own at the moment. I think I've got 537, but Hyjal armory has been messed up since the server merge. Last I was able to upload to WarcraftPets I also only had 30 pets left that weren't blue. All of the non-blue pets are also only available through pet battles. So I'm trying to speed up my pet blue-ing by doing a bit of wild capturing as well. Of course the non-blue pets I have left are the ones that are only available in one zone, and often in one sub-area of that zone.

My goal is to have all my pets blue and level 25 by the time that Warlords of Draenor comes out. I've heard that the pet max level will still be 25 in the new expansion. I'm not sure if I trust that, but I'll be ready either way. I'm hoping that they don't bump the max pet level. I'd really like to be able to have all my pets leveled up and only need to level up new pets that I get or capture in Draenor. I'd also like to buildup a stockpile of flawless battle stones, so that I have extras when I capture new pets or when I get a pet that isn't from battles that only starts out as green rarity.

Once I have all my pets to 25 and blue, I might go even more obsessive. I'm currently trying very hard not to obsess on the "best" breed for each pet. Mostly because with 18 different moths with the same set of abilities I don't need them all to be the 'best' breed, if I have one of each breed and can choose the breed for the occasion. I do admit that when I started getting extra dragonkin battlestones I couldn't resist and went to get myself a destruction emerald protodrake whelp.

Even if I manage to restrain myself from going full on OCD with pet breeds I'm not going to try to stop myself from trying to acquire all the different pets. I've been working steadily on the various pets that I'm missing. In fact most of my gold this expansion has gone straight into buying pets that I don't have. Sadly I'm still missing a lot of pets, but most of them are from the later parts of this expansion. I'm missing most of the pets that drop from Throne of Thunder and Siege of Orgrimmar. I am also missing several pets from Timeless Isle. There are also various pets that I need from archaeology, and a few older scattered achieves here and there.

I am really wondering how the pet stable in the garrison will work. I think the current plan is that you're able to breed two pets of the same family to be able to pick the breed and get a chance at an epic pet. Who knows if that will be the plan by the time the expansion is released. However, given that is a possibility I am sticking with my plan to make sure I've got all my pets blue and leveled up.

Current Progression

 

This past week we had a pretty good set of raids. I decided to pug even though we only had 5 people online. We actually had heals and tanks so we just needed to get some dps. It worked out, we had different pugs every day of our three raid nights, but they were all pretty good. Oddly, the pugs we picked up on Sunday night were better quality, both gear and skill, then the ones that we had on Tuesday. I can't tell if that was because people weren't busy on Sunday night, or if better people respond when I say we're starting on Malkorok.

Either way, after a rough start on Tuesday we killed Nazgrim on Thursday. On Sunday night we got some pretty well geared people who were done with their guild raids for the week. It took us a bunch of wipes to get the coordination to cover all the purple puddles, but once everyone knew the plan we were good.

We also had a really easy time killing Spoils of Pandaria. It took us one wipe and then we annihilated it. I think a big part of that was that I and the other tank had practiced it when we ran it on Flex three the week before. Both of us had the crate opening rhythm down. Despite that I was still afraid that it would be a wipe when I had trouble opening the first couple of crates on the Mogu side. Fortunately we were able to recover and get everything opened up and then dead in time.

We headed to Thok after knocking over Spoils, and had a couple of good pulls on him. I am confident that we'd have gotten him the next pull, but we ran out of raid time and people had to go to sleep. Sadly our last wipe was my over-aggro fault. Turns out that I'm really looking forward to the removal of Vengeance in the Warlords expansion. Right now it's a bit of a clunky mechanic that can make tank swaps, especially the initial tank swap, really hairy.

It was a pretty good raid. I know that several Darkfall people hadn't been there when we first killed Malkorok, so they got a new kill for that. I was lucky enough to get the nice tanking boots that Malk drops: the Malkorok's Giant Stompers, but warforged for extra awesomeness. And I remain pleased with our speedy kill of Spoils. 

Burnout? Not Today!

 

I had been feeling more than a bit burned out lately. It's the end of the expansion, and it felt like Darkfall was falling apart like it did at the end of Wrath. A bunch of people have stopped logging on and other people have gquit or stealth server transferred. I'd been super stressed and worrying about attrition and progression and generally dreading logging on to raid.

At the end of Wrath of the Lich King, Darkfall had a lot of attrition and turnover and, both personally and as a guild, didn't end up killing the Lich King until much later. It was pretty rough, but DraNgNon and I ended up having a good time by pugging our way through Ulduar to get the achieves and fast protodrake. That was a tremendous amount of fun. It also facilitated the swap of my main to Mornara and polishing my tanking skills. Additionally I honed my raid leading skills, by getting us and a half-regular merry band through Ulduar.

Fortunately I was recently reminded that despite the guild issues the end of Wrath was a lot of fun. I still have many fond memories of Ulduar. And I actually don't mind pugging, even if every so often there is someone who is all "zomg a female tank!!!" I'm pretty good at shrugging that off as long as there are no sexist comments following on to it.  

So I'm feeling revitalized and ready to raid. I'd prefer to have a full Darkfall raid to run with, however, if people aren't going to be around I'm cool with pugging and killing bosses. 

Transmog

As much as I adore the Valorous Scourgeborne look, with all it's black spikes and red accents, it was time for a new transmog for Morn. However I was unpleased with all my options. A lot of the DK sets are far too monochromatic: all blue or rusty red or horrible poisonous green. I was considering the heroic set from Dragon Soul, but I am missing the matching boots, and don't have a pair that wouldn't clash horribly. I was sad and resigned myself to keeping my Valorous Scourgeborne, which wasn't really such a bad thought.

Fortunately I was running DraNgNon's not-so-little-anymore boomkin through the ICC 5mans and I picked up the Pauldrons of the Souleater from the last boss in Forge of Souls. They are pretty striking shoulders. The understated spikes and fiery runes look pretty awesome. So I took a look through Wowhead and the looked at the loot drops from the various ICC 5man bosses, and eventually figured out that the set I now wanted was the Scourgelords's Frigid Battleplate recolor. I went with the Sollerets of Suffering rather than the boots suggested on that page and I think it looks pretty spiffy:

For a weapon I went with the Pit Lord's Destroyer, from the final pair of bosses in the Well of Eternity.

Rascal-Bot

I was chatting with a few people in guild the other day and one of them was asking for suggestions of things to do. Honestly I don't know how anyone gets bored in WoW, there are so many different things to do. So I suggested a few options, but mostly I suggested he try out pet battles!

He was dubious at first, about the fun value in pet battles, and worried that he didn't have enough pets to battle with. I gave a few basic tips and suggestions, and then he was worried that he'd get too addicted to pet battles. So score one for pet battles!

Anyway after he logged off for the evening I sent him a present. I had a couple extra Sunfur and Snowy Pandas so I sent him one of each. I also shipped over a Pandaren Water Spirit. I get so many of the Panda and Pandaren Spirit pets from my daily rounds of the Pandaria Master Tamers, it can be hard to sell them all.

Imagine my surprise when I logged in the next day and had a mail in return from him! A mail containing a Rascal Bot!

After leveling him I took a closer look at the little guy and his abilities. And then immediately renamed him Bad Robot.

All these abilities are awesome references to JJ Abrahams works. Having just recently rewatched Star Trek Into Darkness, I'm most amused by Phaser, Lens Flare and Reboot.

I was doing a bit of WoW Insider reading this morning while I ate breakfast and I happened to see this article about probable changes to Warlords of Draenor racial abilities. Mixed in with all the news about nerfs and buffs was a tidbit about what is happening for Night Elves racials:

Night elves see a bonus to Quickness that adds a 2% passive buff to movement speed and a completely new racial, Touch of Elune, which adds 1% haste at night and 1% crit during the day. Shadowmeld is unchanged.

I was trying to come up with something pithy about a buff that changes based on time of day and how that would be a pain to try to get haste breakpoints correct, but the first comment I read said it so very concisely:

I think raid leaders should be able to make whoever came up with Touch of Elune take a drink whenever someone asks them if they can move the raid forward or backward an hour to get the better buff. Let the true min/maxing begin!

Let me just take a moment and be thankful that I am part of the Horde, and all raids I lead are Horde raids.

Thoughts On Tanking and Role Models

 

For most of this expansion I've been tanking with a pally co-tank. It has been pretty nice. My pally co-tank is excellent and fun to tank beside. We've been tanking together long enough that we only need a minimum of vent communication to deal with most issues that arise.

However, the other night the pally was out and our dps warrior was convinced to strap on a sword and board. It was odd, but not in a bad way. It was odd because this warrior used to be the main tank of Darkfall back in Burning Crusade.  

When I first started tanking, there were several tanks that I really looked up to. I watched these tanks to try to learn how they were so awesome.  At that time in BC and early Wrath they were warriors and a few bears. At that time Ironspike was a big burly Tauren Warrior.  He's since changed race and gender (and character name) and is a little Blood Elf girl. It's odd that not only is Morn more burly, but since he does dps most of the time now Morn's tanking gear is better, too.  

It was odd and gratifying to be tanking next to Iron. I'd looked up to him a lot in BC and now I was tanking next to him.  It was really weird though, because we hadn't tanked together before.  We both knew the boss fights and did perfectly fine with the mechanics. However, the flow wasn't there. He is currently used to tanking with his monk, and we don't know each other's rhythm.  

Yes, there is a rhythm to tanking. Making sure your CDs are used at the right times for the boss abilities is basic. Rhythm is more about choosing when to use minor defensive abilities vs threat abilities. If you've not tanked with your co-tank before you don't know how much relative threat they put out. Or just when they will taunt, so you have to save an extra CD or threat ability in case they taunt early or late or in case they drop lots of threat at the start of the fight. It's nothing serious, but it is a learning curve.  

More recently our warlock's pally has been filling in for our missing OT. It's interesting to tank with a different pally. It's also fun to watch someone relearn the fights with a different class and spec. I was amused when he did Norushen for the first time on normal; he had an unpleasant surprise with how much stronger normal Norushen purity test realm is than flex. Fortunately I had a battle rez ready for just that situation. 

I've also been tanking next to Hellbovine, and have been having fun with that too. Warrior charge is so annoyingly OP for getting initial aggro on trash packs. It's sometimes hard to not feel useless when he has all the Vengeance. Still it's a lot of fun to tank with him, though.