Elkagorasa the Casual

Checking this blog, I noticed that I hadn't posted anything in over 6 months now. So how about a quick update to dust things off.  In all the (14+) years, I've played WoW there are actually a couple of classes that I've never played and even more that have never made it to max level. While under the Winds of Wisdom  buff, I've decided to play through a few of the other classes.  First off was to finish leveling a paladin on my current server. Eraalii (in honor of friend's mage "Oh Really? Ya") was a fun class to go back and revisit. She was my BFA boost and my first allied race (light forged draneii). I had forgotten how much fun tanking was, especially while wearing all heirlooms in those early dungeons. " Hold on let me pull a large pack, we got this ".  Next, I finally gave in to the aesthetic of the Worgen heritage armor and leveled a Worgen mage. Erleoniance  (the random name generator gave me that one, "Erl" + "brilliance...

Based on the 77 day turn around that Blizzard has been demonstrating on their patch release cycle, 7.3.5 should be dropping into production next Tuesday. With this patch comes the much anticipated content leveling (aka zoneless). BlizzWatch has a great breakdown of the various zones.. from mmo-champion Wit this, a few things are going to be a little harder when the patches drop. That 20 minute run through BT or Karazhan (BC) is going to get a lot longer. Unstead of these dungeons being level 70 content, starting with this patch, they will go to being level 80 level content. While still not a big deal for a max level character, it will mean a slightly longer dungeon run. Farming Transmogrification Outfits While trying to build an interesting Holy Paladin xmog, I found that I had the shoulders from the Judgement Armor recolor set. This BC dungeon tier set is dropped from many of the BC dungeons. My priority for this outfit will be the legs and chest. I am not so concerned wi...

We've completed Karazhan, multiple times over now. Last week, we managed to work on killing the 40 spiders for Clearing out the Cobwebs  (while helping our pugged DPS get the shard in Servant's quarters) for one player and I picked up Little Red's cape . Sadly, with Karazhan completed, I can see the end coming very soon. Our healer is getting harder and harder to keep engaged. He's way behind on the achievements required for flying. Since 7.2, he's having a harder time surviving during fights in both healer and tank spec (monk), so behind the curve on gear. Finally, he hasn't completed the Suramar quest chain, so Arcway is still locked out for him. I've achieved flight! With that I bought my first WoW token as I saw the Vial of the Sands on sale for 98k gold (i.e. 2,000g less than I sold token for). I was a little frustrated by the token sale. I bet this is due to the changes in tokens, but it seemed overly complicated. Go to WoW store in-game, b...

Over the last 2 weeks, we've made 2 attempts at Return to Karazhan. Two of our six are currently working to move into a new house, so we were short one DPS. We've brought along a non-guild friend, Shamwise, as our 3rd DPS. As a rather casual player, I only ran Karazhan the raid, only once, but the rest of the party was enjoying the nostalgia of the entire run. "I love the music in this place (opera hall)." "Oh look you can talk to the big-bad wolf and get him to say "Run! little girl run!". So far we've successfully downed 7 of the 8 bosses. Some of the bosses we've managed to one-shot, while other times, we died over and over to the trash. With the reset Tuesday (today), we'll have to start over again for a third time. Attempt One:  Start Friday, around 10PM local, complete Opera (westside story), Lots of  dancing, both by boss and team to avoid all the various spells they cast. So far, the corpse run is decent, but do-able. Mai...

This weekend, " What Bombs at Midnight " stepped into our first mythic level dungeons. We did remarkably well on each of them, which really surprised us due to our gear score at start was an average i-level of 830. The Team: Day 1: Friday Day 2: Sunday ElPlato  - Tank Vyrial  - Healer Orlya Vànní Rys ElPlato  - Tank Vyrial  - Healer Orlya Vànní DarkFiberMan With the intention of Karazhan attunement, we started with Khadgar's quest the [ Edict of the God-King ]. Edict has you run Halls of Valor on mythic difficulty. As we've found out, mythic (or as those leet players would like to call, mythic+0), is not that different than a heroic dungeon. As their 6 of us, we had to run the dungeon two times, swapping out DPS. Our first attempt on included 4 wipes on Hymdall due to learning the dragon-flame mechanic, and 6 wipes on Odyn to learn the  stormforged obliterator  mechanic. The Day 2 run of Halls of Valor ended early (and 4 of us go...

Teddi continues his adventures in Azeroth, trying to reach 100 before Legion drops. Last night was the first time in about a week that Teddi ventured out of Orgrimmar. His compatriots have logged in to repost auction items and spin the garrison gold wheel. Looking at a little over 30k gold just doing this weekly. It's nice to finally be fluid in the game again. Tempted to have a guildie build me the mechano-hog, but then again.. Teddi has reached 83 now (oddly armory hasn't caught up from last night's game play). Found a tank and healer that kept queueing up for random dungeons; we ended up doing about 6 dungeons. At 81, I was prompted by a fellow DPS for the ' monk buff '. ?? I hadn't realized that it was a thing, even a thing that I could do. I had always assumed the monk buff (bong bong) was a Brewmaster thing. Teddi ( Armory ) at level 80 Looking at existing armory, I realized that 1) I need to upgrade the heirloom agility ring. It's currently...

Previously on The Adventures of Teddi , he was 80% completed with Vanilla content, just about to start working through BC. In all heirloom gear, plus the " Enlightenment " bonus, he was getting 1.8 levels per dungeon. He was considering running as a brewmaster tank. Leveling is still going extremely fast. It's going at about 30 minutes per level, solely running dungeons (and waiting in queue). Teddi has managed to reach level 75 and just picked the level 75 talent and equipped a level 75 glyph . Ran a few timewalking dungeons with Teddi. They have one advantage of providing about triple the XP for low level toons (30k vs 10k) per dungeon completion. It was fun running with a bunch of 100s and to see how many people were hanging out in Shattrath. #Warcraft , timewalking sure has reinvigorated the old areas for leveling. pic.twitter.com/LAOYUPgJwj — Elkagorasa (@elkagorasa) May 4, 2016 Sadly, Cupri (BC TW vendor) didn't really have any upgrades for me. Exce...

Had the most awesome experience last night running Northrend dungeons. I ran with a pug, which appeared to be 4 guildies (tank + 3 DPS) and me. During the night, we ran through 4 different dungeons (1 of them twice). Out of all 4, we only had one full wipe and a 2-3 deaths. Ahn'kahet - My least favorite of all the TW dungeons. Spiders that fear causing cascading pulls, large room with groups of wandering mobs (before Jedoga ) that also cause cascading pulls. Pit of Saron - Ran this one twice. Lots of wandering mobs in starting area, but biggest complaint was there is a mob that causes a stun. I'd get hit by this probably each fight. The first boss, likes to 'freeze' players so lots of dispels.  The Nexus - Only real issue is the first boss (collection of Alliance frozen in mage ice blocks), is easy for tank to pull entire room.  Utgarde Pinnacle - Our full wipe was in this dungeon. The trash right before King Ymiron. Tank pulled one too many of the group...

With Time Walking dungeons coming to WoW in 6.2, there are a number of people calling for tw raids! I'd like to propose a slight variation. Ok, so as I recently posted that I am working on mount gathering, both from reputation rewards like Netherwing, but also legacy raids, like ICC and Ulduar. Running these raids at 100 is menial. In fact, with these raids, it's detrimental to run many with a minion as they will often kill the adds and boss too fast. I may have to attempt a few achievements naked or with a different, lower level toon in order to kill them slow enough. So, I'd like to propose variable dungeons and raids. Let's call them Normal and heroic. Normal would be tuned a so that your group is at, or even little op. You could potentially solo the content, but not easily. 3-man group would be ideal. Whereas Heroic level would be tuned 3 tw levels lower. You'd do about 5-10% less. It would be similar to running a heroic version of the content. (I suppos...

Sunday, I had a few minutes, so I completed a speed run of Zul'Aman. During this speed run, I did successfully get the Bear-ly Made It achievement. Sadly, I didn't realized I needed to loot the bear. I thought (like this commenter) it would come in the mail, or immediately drop into my mounts (like ICC Raider achievement). The mount is in  Kasha's Bag , which drops from Halazzi’s prisoner. The bag is in a corner of the room, and is not immediately obvious. You have to loot the bag. I thought maybe the mount would come in the mail, or become automatically known. Not so. Loot the bag. Thinking about it now, MAYBE it's in my bags.. Geesh, hate when I think of this at work. On the otherhand, my druid may need to run this dungeon soon.. Soloing this dungeons is effortless at 100. I ran straight to each of the bosses and was able to engage them. Sure I aggro'd mobs along the way, but I could AOE them down. Now, they are all level 85, so those 15 levels meant they di...

The other night (before Black Temple), I was trying to get into a few dungeons. To avoid the stress of tanking, I jumped into the DPS (i.e. werecat) queue. Sadly after 45 minutes in queue, I check the 'queue status' to see 0/1 Tank 1/1 Healer 3/3 DPS. OMG, go figure.. It's all my fault no dungeon... I hop on YouTube and watch the Grimrail video to get an idea of what to do on boss 2 (1 and 3 are fairly straight forward). I queue up and happily drop into this very dungeon. Managing to get through with me dying (to trash of all things). Yeah over-pulled coming up to the boss 2. Happily no wipes. Sadly no loots worth anything for me (i615 replacement of existing i630 crafted item).. In fact, the Tavern quest netted me only the ' bloody bandanna ' which sparked the run into BT. Salts includes how to get the differences between normal and heroic, plus the achievements in the dungeon. Here are each of his videos for the level 100 dungeons.. Everbloom: Grimrail...

One more to 100... The other night, I got my guardian druid, Esha, up to 100. Happily was in the middle of the Nagrand quest chain, dropping traps and gathering leathery animals. As with Elk, I ran the proving grounds and got my 610 staff. I was able to one-shot it, because of a mechanics difference. As a tank, if you don't finish the last mob before the timer, it lets you slide... As long as your healer doesn't die, you're good. I haven't tried running Silver yet as I still don't have the 610 to get into Heroics, so no hurry. Looking at Arielle's video, it looks more than do-able.  I managed to get into a random Everbloom. What a mess. Problem number one, IMO, the DPS didn't know the fights. Sure, it was my first run as tank, but still. On spider boss, DPS was leaving the Pale One alone, he'd inhale the goo, enrage and then start attacking. Spider boss gets a big tasty snack! Mages we pulled while healer was OOM. On Yalnu, we had tons of flo...

face via armory. Last night I explored patch 6 and all it's glory. First off, I went through each of my toons and purchased my reagents tab. 100g well spent. My oldest characters gained the least. Elkagorasa gained about 3 open bag slots. Haven't made any alchemy recipies in quite some time, so bags fairly empty of herbs. Eride had a bunch of tailoring mats, but not a lot. She's been working on the cloth healer pants. Alliance druid gained almost 2 whole bags free of skinning / leatherworking mats. (time delay - break for dinner and finish assisting with homework) Next, Elk went to the void storage and moved all his old gear into the new storage slot. A few more runs back and for to the bank would really help, but not last night. I had a world to save. Old face from wowhead model viewer. Maybe it's just the expression? Queue up for the new UBRS dungeon. 45 minute wait as DPS. Oh well, moving on. Trip to the barber to get a new 'face'. Yeah, f...

Last night I saw my first Holiday mount! The Swift Brewfest Ram dropped for my priest. Maybe, just maybe this is the year I get all the holiday mounts! Next Horseman's! I am a little disappointed that Brewfest is still dropping 470 items . It would be awesome if instead, 496-510 level items dropped. It does appear that next that will happen.. @Muffinus @gamedale @sporebat @TheCrafticus In 6.0 we can balance power items from holidays to be appropriate without a patch. Wish granted! — Owen Landgren (@olandgren) September 21, 2014

Based on this interview at GamesCom, it appears that Blizzard may be excited about bringing 5-man dungeons coming back a bit more. With MoP, I personally was disappointed that the scenarios tended to be more useful (while at max level) than dungeons . It sounds like the focus will be moved back to dungeons (regular, heroic, timewalker dungeons (aka downscaled older TBC dungeons)). Personally, I loved the dungeon experience in Wrath. You'd level up a little bit, then end the zone with a quest to run a dungeon. In Wrath this was hard because you had to spam chat to gather people for the dungeon. Remember, no Random Dungeon Finder back then. Looking at some of the beta videos, it looks like that is what's going on. For example: What do you think? Are you going to miss the quick scenarios?

Taking a page from Cynwise , I thought it would be interesting to do some basic analysis of my leveling so far of my Druid alt. Considerations : I am leveling her using all pieces of heirloom gear available (except for the ring). All +xp, in addition to two trinkets for +health regen. I am leveling as a tank, so it means instant queue times for all random dungeons. I do not play every day, more like every other day, so I have a fair amount of rested bonus to burn between play sessions.    I found it really interesting that for the most part, I am averaging a level every 30 minutes. Dungeons like Gnomregan, it seemed like 2 levels a run due to the amount of trash, last night it was only 1 level in Uldaman due to the amount of running back and forth to the quest givers. It appears, based on casual observation, that the average time to finish a level, increases by a few minutes each 5 levels. Most likely due to the amount of XP required to reach the nex...

With the 5.3 patch, Blizzard started along the war of Vol'jin against Garrosh. This series of 'quests' details why the war is going on (alliance and horde) and then what we need to do about it. Start quest line from Lorewalker Cho , and listen to his stories, which lead into the 2 new scenarios Blood in the Snow . Ride between skulls and you can avoid wiping on large fights. and Darkheart of Pandaria . Kill off some adds around the first boss to get 'shield buff' on group. Collect 1 of (3) each relic for an achievement. Fly to Senjin village (horde), talk to Vol'jin. Raid the Kor'kron camps around the Barrens . I found this easier if I simply killed two commanders . They show up as little huts on your barrens map. As DPS, I could simply sit there and kill the boss, I'd get some splash healing. (I wasn't able to solo the one elite I tried by myself, they are all level 92.) You don't have to tag the boss, even grey I got drops from him. Even ...

I dread the moments running through my daily scenario. It typically is quick and easy now that Elk is running in 490+ gear. Only when we have someone who's never ran the specific scenario is there typically any chance of a wipe (typically due to over pulling). So when I was reading through the PTR notes, I got excited AND disappointed: Heroic Scenarios A heroic difficulty for Scenarios have been added and are designed to provide challenging content for small groups of well-seasoned adventurers. Completing a Heroic Scenario awards Valor points, and a chance to obtain Raid Finder quality items. Heroic scenarios require a pre-made group to join. Heroic scenarios offer bonus objectives that will reward additional valor if completed. An option to run a random heroic scenario has been added as a drop-down in the scenario tab in Dungeon Finder. Players can complete a normal or heroic scenario for bonus valor each day, but not both. Six heroic scenarios will be avai...