Hearthstone and HotS

The pre-patch is loaded and it can't come soon enough. It is hard to believe that it has been nearly 9 months since we first killed heroic archimonde. We've been finding things to do to pass the time but I think we'd all rather have moved on at this point.

It's also been 2 months since my last post, roughly around which time I burnt out on doing battlegrounds. I rejoined the alt raids just for some variety, so I now have the legendary ring on 2 alts. Otherwise I've been playing other games, including Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm, both of which I was drawn into because of WoW rewards - the Hearthsteed mount and the Graves pet - but will probably keep playing to some extent. A success for cross promotion - at least for free to play games. More on those later.

I've now got 9 characters at max level, another handful 80+, and a preorder boost to spare. But that is barely even noteworthy nowadays. In fact, observing other people that have stuck it out, it seems a full complement of alts is closer to the norm now. Even my GM who has an alt allergy has now got a max level alt and another on the way.

After recently getting the Grey Riding Camel from Uldum, I turned my attention to the seahorse mount from Vash'jir. There I found, among others, a resident multiboxer was camping every spawn point, and subsequently listing the mount on the AH for near gold cap. So I resigned that hunt pretty much immediately - I'm unlikely to "out-camp" them, and I'm not going to drop that much gold on a mount that I can't even use due to its zone limitation. But I looked the multiboxer up and found he has (at least) 50 level 100 characters!

Obviously not everyone is at this level, and hopefully Legion will bring an injection of new and returning players, but it does seem the bar has been raised amongst the players who have remained through this content lull. This is demonstrated through major gold inflation, which in turn is necessitating massive new gold sinks (ahem spider mount) and a raising of the gold cap. As an example, I'd seen TCG mounts under 100k a year ago that are now averaging well above 600k listing price. Hopefully the expansion reset and the removal of the garrison gold factories will see a shift back towards the norm.

Onto Hearthstone, it really presents well; it looks good and feels fun, but it doesn't take long to feel like you've hit a massive grind wall. The expectation for a new player appears to be that you either spend money to catch up, or spend a couple of months losing a lot before you can build the decks that will help you progress. Rewards come slowly when you aren't winning much, and cards received are randomly spread when you may want to focus on one class. Enchanting is glacially slow when you aren't receiving duplicates so that isn't much of an option either. Anddd dailies are often targeted at a particular class, which doesn't help if you haven't levelled them and unlocked the basics.

You can easily google a basic deck but they will generally only beat other basic decks. My experience seems to be, whether I play a standard deck or a C'thun deck (the free legendary card from the latest set, The Old Gods) I can keep up until the opponent plays a strong rare or legendary - and they usually do. For example, I had a chance to go up to rank 18 today on a win streak, and I appeared to be winning soundly against a paladin, until he played deathwing, and I lost from 30hp in 3 turns. I've been instantly spending all my earned gold on card packs in the hope of attaining one to complement my primary class decks, but so far I have had nothing at all. But I'm not going to buy into it, because I am generally averse to dropping money on free to play games, as I'm not a fan of the model, especially when they are not cosmetic purchases.

When they play a weak C'thun against a Gurubashi Berserker

It's not so much pay to win, as it is pay to start winning more often, much sooner. I understand that is how trading card games work - as do things like sports cards and pogs (I never got into them either) - the more you buy, you more complete your set is and the more extras you have to trade (or disenchant) to complete it. It feels different when it is attached to a free to play game, with digital representations of cards that will only depreciate in value as they are retired or when you stop playing. Physical collections at least have some chance of retaining or growing in value. Then again, digital cards can't get damaged...

It comes down to what value I would get out of the purchase. And the big problem is, I don't know. The only guarantee that you are going to get things of value to you are to keep spending. There are rare guarantees, bad luck rolls, and the enchanting system so you can't go indefinitely without a good quality card, but the whole system is just prompting you to buy more. It is easier to make one small purchase than one big one (the bait), but it is also easy to make many small purchases summing more than one big one. There is obviously a ceiling where it would no longer be beneficial to continue purchasing, as each additional pack has less value the more cards you collect. You could also 'get by' at a certain price point by making up the difference through earned in-game currency. But what are these price points? Is it approximately the same as any other retail game? Or is it $6-700? You find out by committing.

What would buying $30 worth of cards get me? Would it save me 2 weeks worth of effort and time grinding losses to reach my natural level of competitiveness? Would I enjoy the game more as a result, or simply bore of it quicker, rendering that money spent inert? Is it purely about winning - am I buying wins? If I look at it that way, it is not something I value and therefore loses worth.

All of this is really hard to quantify and basically gambling in my eyes - I don't know what I'm buying, and I can't determine the relative worth, so I choose not to participate.

Apart from that, I recognise the positives in free to play, in that it lets people try before they buy, and people who otherwise wouldn't play it, may. I also recognise that the developers need to make money. I just think the game might feel less predatory if there was something like a cap on the amount of card packs you could buy (eg set at a full retail price). The Hero DLC - now that's the type of DLC I can support, purely cosmetic. I personally think it is terrible value for money ($13 au), they should be priced a lot lower relative to the effort required to make those assets versus the base game, but as it is cosmetic I don't care at all, I simply won't buy them. It does no harm to me that they exist or if other people purchase them. Moar!

After talking to some people and reading advice it appears the way forward is to pick one relatively cheap (in dust cost) but competitive deck from google that doesn't use legendaries, craft those cards and stick with it. This usually involves disenchanting cards from classes you aren't playing to pay for it - but I like collecting them, dust is a 4:1 proposition, and I have relatively few cards as it is, so I'm not sure I'll take that option.

I have also considered buying the solo adventures. Those have a fixed price, but much like most DLC, I don't think they are good value for money, and cards from these adventures will likely get retired from standard mode at some point. We'll see.

Moving on to Heroes of the Storm. I have only briefly played other MOBAs (LoL and DotA) and they aren't really my thing. I think I enjoy HotS more just because of familiarity with the universe and many of the characters. Trying to get into LoL is completely overwhelming, HotS... not so much. I appreciate that there is a bit more variety in maps, and most of the characters I have tried have been enjoyable. One thing I have noted is that the result of the match is usually evident by the time you are half way through it, at least in random unranked matches. The lanes seem to matter far less than what I recall from other games, everyone seems to largely ignore creep and focus on hero kills as that allows you to better control the map objective (eg doubloons, seeds, tributes) to win that way. Here's the difference from Hearthstone, the payment model is great, with the rotating free character pool, and the in game currency earning rate seems balanced. All up it is "good", it's just not very exciting, and the premise is kinda dorky, kinda like those discussions kids have about whose favourite superhero is stronger. Looks like something for the odd casual game with friends, but I'm not eager to play competitively or level all the heroes by myself.

Finally, back to WoW. Finished 100 arena wins on my hunter for the season reward, then did a handful on my shaman, as LSD, immediately surpassing the best arena rating I'd ever achieved on my hunter, which was satisfying. I also got the Pureblood Fire Hawk off of Ragnaros, and reached 250 mounts.

There's still things to finish off in WoD:

• Heirloom trinkets from mythic dungeons - 3 down, 2 to go. These are high priority as they are being removed, might have to pull out the alts over the next 2 weeks.
• 1 more garrison boss to kill - groups for these are uber-rare as it is. I'm using an addon to alert whenever they come up but only had 1 bite in over a month.
• 2 elusive pets and 1 mount from Tanaan.
• Another 150-200 pet battles in Draenor for the monument.
• Collect the music rolls for the garrison jukebox.

We're also hoping to attempt mythic blackhand and herald of the titans before the patch - but we may not be able to get the groups for that in time. It would be nice if mythic Hellfire Citadel becomes easier to go back and clear that if we have the people, even with the removal of the Cutting Edge feat of strength. The mount drop will still be 100% until Legion lands, so it would be good to have a 1/20 chance of getting it, before it becomes a 1% drop item.

Neglected content

It was encouraging to see Blizzard in their Legion Dev Update admitting to their neglect of old world levelling. They have previously brushed off any questions relating to improving it by saying 'we have new stories to tell', focusing on end-game and expansion content. But when what gets delivered there is not up to the standards set in the past, or takes an exorbitant amount of time to deliver, the excuse doesn't hold water and the whole game looks lacklustre.

I haven't had any desire to play vanilla servers, so the whole episode regarding Nostalrius and pristine servers didn't really pique my interest. But it looks like that has helped put the spotlight on what is now a terrible levelling experience, so I'm glad people are fighting for it, and hopefully some good can come from it on the live servers.

Whether you like levelling now or not, it was where so many of us first fell in love with the game. When introducing a new player to the game now, you have to make so many excuses for it, with the promise of it getting better once you reach the current expansion. Blizzard appeared to focus on the boosted experience, but WoD did not deliver enough to justify it. The same player base won't keep playing the game forever, it has to get new blood to persist, and it is hard to see a new generation of players coming through and falling in love with what exists post boost, or the mess that exists before it.

Watcher summed it up well when he said that the pacing is off, that you spend more time running around than anything else. The XP nerfs and bonuses are both a blessing and a curse; if you want to get to end game asap, levelling is an obstacle and the reduced XP makes it quick, but it is also a large part of what makes levelling so bad. Most people that want to level quickly will spam queue dungeons, where (particularly before Cataclysm) they are so easy they can just be rushed through, requiring no coordination or communication - it's just a power grind. If you don't take this path, you'll find a disjointed mess of zones that are outlevelled after a handful of quests, story arcs that never get finished as you are moved on quickly, time travelling back and forth as you traverse expansions, the rewards are mediocre to non-existent, and the whole experience is lonely and unchallenging. On one character I levelled from 85 to 90 in the first half of The Jade Forest, after which I discovered I was still wearing vanilla gear in a number of slots, including white ilvl ~30 boots.

There is so much once-great content in the old world that could continue to be enjoyed by players, with a little love. This extends to old dungeons and raids. I have long held the opinion that allowing old instances to become completely trivial is not a positive thing. I am not flatly against the idea of dungeons and raids becoming soloable, but bosses should not fall over before they can even complete their pull emote. All the effort that went into making a cool boss fight, the mechanics, animations and effects, voice acting, everything goes to waste. You cannot experience them again, just like you cannot experience the levelling zones like you did in the past.  It is no wonder people want vanilla servers.

Timewalking dungeons have provided a glimpse of what could be possible, to experience at least some semblance of the original encounters, and the zone scaling in Legion also shows promise. If these could be expanded game-wide in some fashion, it would go a long way to improving the dormant parts of the game. I am looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

I personally wonder whether there could be a tradeoff for using XP boosts. For example, heirloom pieces could either have strong stats, OR have XP bonuses. Perhaps if the amount of XP required was returned to old levels, you could make a deal with a goblin to sacrifice all of your non-XP quest rewards for an XP multiplier. Not really a punishment for the first 60-70 levels, but again, rewards could be tweaked. In the days of 10 million gold cap, a handful of silver for low level quest completion could probably be bumped up a bit.

I also think that if you want to power level through dungeons that's fine, dungeons could even have increased XP over questing... if they were challenging. That would go hand in hand with a foundation concept of MMOs, grouping up with others to defeat difficult objectives for better rewards. Perhaps as a start, heirlooms should not scale beyond an instance's base level. For example, if you can queue for RFD at 40, heirlooms should function as if you were level 40 in that instance, regardless of your actual level.

Uphill battle(grounds)

Another three weeks of mostly battlegrounds. A quick update on my status: up to 40+ wins in each of the 5 battlegrounds, with the following win ratio:

	Full games	Part games	Overall
Win	122	8	130
Loss	85	29	114

40% of the way in, and I am losing enthusiasm. I'm still really enjoying doing battlegrounds when queueing with other people, but not so much when solo queueing, so my progress has definitely slowed down. I even did a raid on my alt just to break the monotony. But I am happy with the win/loss ratio even if - as per my last post - it is definitely influenced by winning/losing streak bias.

I'm considering trying enhancement again to see if that reinvigorates the motivation. I calculated that I'd need 10250 conquest to swap my weapons and intellect pieces for agility gear, and I've got just over that much banked. But I'm not confident it will change anything.

As elemental, I constantly need to remind myself that the people I'm beating soundly are most likely ungeared. In many situations, ele can be useful - for example, if you are lucky to get instant empowered earthquakes around large flag fights, they can turn the battle - but geared, skilled players of other classes can make you look silly at current damage levels. I think the most frustrating comparison is lack of escapes, even temporary ones. If you get set upon by a number of people, your defenses are inadequate, compared to the effectiveness of immunities or stealths that other classes can utilise to escape death, receive heals and reset the fight. The primary defensive you have is kiting, which just doesn't work with the abundance of slows, or when trying to defend a flag out in the open.

From what I've read elemental continues to be fragile in Legion, but may get some more damage potential, numbers pass pending. If it is bottom of the heap again, I'd be really disappointed, but would definitely prioritise changing spec over changing class, as I did in WoD.

Between queues I have been camping the Timeless Isle, hoping to collect the remaining pets and finish off the bigger bag achievement. I'm happy to say I've finally got the Gu'chi Swarmling, Ashleaf Spriteling, and Death Adder Hatchling, and I am down to one item left for the achievement: the Rain Stone from Zesqua. Hopefully I will get that very shortly, because I'm tired of camping that too.

With those pet gets, I'm sitting at 676 unique pets, 25th on the server on Warcraft Pets. I still have a few to obtain or level, but even with those I won't be able to get much higher on the ranking without dropping a lot of money, which I am not willing to do, unlike some as Dark Legacy illustrated well this week.

Battleground progress

I started keeping track of wins and losses after my last post to see how I was faring. It has been two weeks. I'm now up to ~23 wins in all 5 battlegrounds. Doesn't sound like a lot but I've added about 50 wins, or an average of at least 3 wins a day - which is probably more than what I can sustain if that takes 6 battlegrounds to achieve.

I've been separately recording win/loss for full games, and for games that I enter part way through - and I have only been recording games where I queue by myself. This will highlight the benefit of queueing with at least one person, because you effectively always get fresh games.

	Full games	Part games	Overall
Win	37	3	40
Loss	31	17	48

So it looks like 1 in 5 games I might get put into an in progress loss. That's not too bad - it was worse early on, with an overall win rate of roughly 25%, but it's balanced up since. There is definitely a trend where Horde and Alliance do better at different times. It isn't clear what drives that, but for example I won 7 from 9 before shutdown on Tuesday, couldn't win anything the same time the next night, but won most the night after. Generally though, if I play during the day (Oceanic time) it is pretty bad for Horde. Fortunately my usual play time is nights, due to work.

The stats might be biased by these trends, in that if I lose 4 or 5 in a row I might say to myself 'today is not a good day' and quit, whereas if I win 4 or 5 games I'll keep going if possible.

Battleground binge

I only played WoW for a short time at the start of Cataclysm, and returned half way through the last patch of Mists of Pandaria, so I had a big hole in my progression, almost the size of two expansions. Catching up PvE content like dungeons, quests and raids is pretty easy, because they don't scale. I've done most of that, short of some difficult achievements like Getting Hot in Here and Show Me Your Moves! Catching up archaeology, fishing, and pet battles was a massive grind, but I have done 95% on those fronts as well. The area where I am still largely lacking progress, is in battlegrounds, but specifically those from Cata/MoP as I had completed Battlemaster back in Wrath.

I don't know why, perhaps just boredom, but over the past couple of weeks, my desire to do battlegrounds has come back with a vengeance.

I've previously gone back and finished off Tol Barad, but for the 5 battlegrounds since Cata (Battle for Gilneas, Twin Peaks, Silvershard Mines, Temple of Kotmogu, and Deepwind Gorge) my tally of wins was effectively zero. I've got up to a dozen wins for each on my hunter, as I've been PvPing on it this expansion, but I'm now back on my shaman, committed to earning achievements on my main.

I first did Ashran and the Gladiator Sanctum nemesis quests on my hunter, which I still believe was the right decision at the time, but I've since gone and done them again on my shaman, so perhaps it was not the best decision. I feel these battleground achievements are an even bigger task so it's not one I'd want to repeat later - 550 battleground wins = 1100 battlegrounds at 50% win rate. Doing 3 battlegrounds a day, it would take a year to complete.

I quickly realised that queueing for random battlegrounds just wasn't going to cut it. When you don't need half of them, but can only blacklist two - inevitably AV and IoC - then any benefit of faster queues or bonus rewards goes out the window. Queueing specific battlegrounds is better, but sometimes the queues for particular bgs just won't pop, and it is harder to convince people to come with you if you are cutting the rewards. Not that there's anyone in my guild at the moment with a tenth of the fervour I currently have for battlegrounds. My GM can't say no, but I'm not at the top of a long queue of people she can't say no to. And it is hard for me to find other like-minded people, so I'm just solo queueing it. The problem with that is, every 2nd queue pop is putting you into an in-progress game, replacing someone who quit because it's going to be a loss. After a few of those, my patience starts dissipating.

I was expecting a pretty bad time, from personal experiences to community perception, of Alliance dominance and shaman (elemental in particular) weakness. I toyed with switching to enhancement for PvP, as that is the generally better rounded dps spec, but decided against it for various reasons. The reality is... it all seems true, but it's somewhat muted.

Faction wise, Alliance do still seem stronger, but it ebbs and flows. If I ignore the games I enter that are already losses, my WL record improves significantly. There absolutely are times when you will be lucky to win one at all, but tonight for example, I entered 6-7 fresh battlegrounds in a row, and won most of them, before things started to turn sour.

Same goes for playing elemental, there absolutely are players who make the spec feel completely broken. Feral druids are the worst; but they aren't the only class I've seen competent players negate or passively heal my damage, and/or out-damage my healing surge spam. On the other hand, the strength of the team, and present numbers, matters more, and sometimes I get to be quite tanky, and sometimes I put out lots of damage. I recognise this is likely down to gear, but the point is, I usually only do terribly when the team does, and that is fine. I don't feel like a hindrance, which is more than I can say for elemental at the start of WoD, and why I can get enjoyment out of it.

So after a couple of weeks, my progress is 12-13 wins in each of the 5 battlegrounds. My shaman has caught up to where my hunter is, and I think I will be able to keep up this kinda pace until the Legion pre-patch hits - from there who knows. But if you are Oceanic/US and happen to see this and want a reliable evening bg partner, hit me up in the comments.

Tracer's butt

Yeah I'm going there. I haven't been following Overwatch's development closely. It seems to me like a modern TF2, which I never felt compelled to play even after it went free to play. The player characters, however, were strong, one of the key factors to its success, and as a result have found their way into all sorts of other games and media.

One thing they weren't, as has been highlighted on numerous occasions since its release, was significantly diverse; despite a range of backgrounds and accents, they were all male, and mostly white. This is not a problem for me, it is not what I look for in a game, in the same way it wouldn't concern me if they were all female, and/or all non-white. Equally, a diverse cast is fine by me. Irrelevant, even. The only issue I see for developers is falling into the 'characters you can identify with' trap, where in trying to deliver identifiable characters for a broader range of people, you simply highlight the minorities that you don't cater for. Taking this approach, you cannot please everyone.

But I digress; for Blizzard, in [current year], I don't think there was any option but commitment to diversity for Overwatch.

And so we come to Tracer, the unofficial poster girl of Overwatch's diversity, and specifically, her tooshie. A number of people have found they identify with Tracer, and one such person came across a pose accentuating her rear end, that conflicts with their found identity. Rather than accept it as an insignificant point of difference, choosing to use a different victory pose, or dis-identifying with that character, they call for it to change. Blizzard, having been burnt by these type of people and their demands in the past, appear to capitulate by ignoring all the negative comments, approving the OP's request, and closing the discussion.

The community erupts, naturally, and we go from a situation where almost nobody was thinking about Tracer's butt, or considering her in a hyper-sexualised context, and now everybody is, examining it to the nth degree. She is now a sexual character - you have put her in the box that you didn't want her in. People are now actively debating whether, as a 26 year old, this fictional female would ever flaunt her sexuality. Congratulations.

I admit it is almost entirely down to how Blizzard handled it, and not the OP. If they had decided internally that the pose didn't suit her and replaced it with something else, rather than bringing attention to the request, there would have been no issue. Or at least nothing for the community to grasp onto.

Instead, the response, an unreserved apology and change of position, left the impression that they were at fault, that issues hold more weight if they are PC, and as a result, that the community holds sway over Blizzard on such matters. Unlike far more substantial controversies such as RealID, Diablo's RMAH, and removal of flying in WoW, where they stood fast. Kaplan's follow up explanation, and reopening of the discussion, helped - but it was forced by the community reaction. They had to own the decision to prevent future repercussions, but it was largely seen as PR and the damage was far from undone. Oops.

And so, the debate rages on. Is it a sexual pose? I don't know, is it when another character does it?

Probably not. Is it because of what she's wearing? Should figure hugging clothing be replaced? For all characters, or just females? Can large tattoed biceps and pectorals not be sexualised?

Compare the following: on the left the normal stance from behind, in the centre, the 'problematic' pose, and on the right, the same pose but from a slightly different angle.

Splitting hairs here. Why is only the centre inappropriate? This argument could, and inevitably will, go on for days. That's as far as I'm going to participate, as someone with no emotional investment in the character, or even the game. It certainly isn't going to influence my decision to purchase, and I think anyone who states they won't purchase on the back of this alone, are either overreacting or pulling their own leg. Either way, it's an idle threat, one that would not concern Blizzard one bit.

It's unfortunate that increasingly, in all walks of life, threats from the PC crowd are not treated in the same manner.

I'll leave with the following relevant video from Maddox, recalled when I read a comment or two that stated Tracer was 'presenting' /lol

Off season

Obviously not finding much to write about at the moment. My WoW time has been decreasing and not particularly interesting; completing nemesis in Ashran again, this time on my shaman, and a lot of pet collecting and levelling. I've finally caught all the old world pets, and there's now less than 100 pets I don't have, but most of those are store bought, promotional, recruit-a-friend rewards, and collector's edition pets that I simply won't be getting. So I'm waiting for the next pet bonus week to get back to pet levelling, and in the meantime I've run into a progression brick wall. Most of what I need to do is in battlegrounds, and trying to accomplish anything there solo is not enjoyable (especially as Horde), so I'm sticking to our one PvP night a week.

In the meantime I've been playing a fair bit of Pinball FX2 - I simply love this game. I'm not brilliant at it, but with persistence and time, can get respectable scores. I've also played a bit of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for the first time in a couple of years. By the time I'd ranked up in freeplay (as I found out, now required to play competitive games) and played ~15 matches, I'd started losing interest. You need to play a lot to improve and rank up, and playing the same few maps with (at my skill level) a fair share of unpleasant people, it gets boring.

Draenor Curator

Finally finished up archaeology in Draenor today, getting the last Pristine artifact. Such a relief, and not quite as arduous as I was dreading - but still a big commitment. A newish player in our guild asked what the reward was, to which we answered nothing but achievement points. They then asked what do achievement points get you - an innocent question, but one which puts the whole task in perspective :p

At first I was spending my solved crates on Explorer's Notebooks for the missions, even after completing Arakkoa, but once I had also completed Ogre I switched to using Draenor Archaeologist's Maps and ignored any dig sites that weren't Draenor Clans, using the Archy addon. I saved the remaining crates for the Pandaria artifacts I still haven't completed.

Total number of solves required were as follows:

• Arakkoa 82 (126 all up by the time I switched to Draenor Clans only)
• Ogre 217
• Draenor Clans 333
• Total 632 (676 including surplus Arakkoa)

The macro to count the number of solves for you is here, you must have the completed artifacts pane open, and if you wish to see all races, not just Draenor, change the 13 to a 1:

/run for r=13,15 do local c,t=GetNumArtifactsByRace(r),0 for i=1,c do local _,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,n=GetArtifactInfoByRace(r,i) if n>0 then t=t+n end end print(GetArchaeologyRaceInfo(r)..": "..t) end

Whilst grinding this out, I was looking for an image that showed the location of all the digsites in Draenor and wasn't able to find one, so I started taking screenshots and sliced them together. This may not be absolute, but it contains all the sites I got for the last ~250 solves.

Location of most/all Draenor archaeology dig sites.

Last week I also finally got round to finding a decent image for a background to brighten up the blog look a bit. The image credit may not show depending on screen resolution, in which case it is by Tontokawa.

WoD pet levelling circuit

This is the circuit I take when levelling pets on the Draenor and Pandaria trainers. It is intended to take a maximum of 1 hour, to match the length of the pet food buffs, and because 1 hour is a nice, fixed time commitment. It is possible even with mistakes or lucky crits requiring restarts, to complete the circuit within an hour. It doesn't include the western Pandaria trainers (Burning, Flowing, Zusshi and Shu), which I have found to either be less reliable or take longer, but of course you can go on to them if you wish.

That makes 13 trainers per day. On a normal week, this will raise a level 1 pet to 14, and a level 14 pet to 20. On a bonus week, this will raise a level 1 pet to 19, and anything 14 and above to 25. So, it is possible to level a pet in 2 dailies, 1 to 14 at any time, and 14 to 25 in a bonus week. I have done this at times, but generally your pet levels are all over the place, so I just get them close to 25 (say 21 and above) and finish them off with battle stones. Some prerequisites:

• Safari Hat and 1 of each pet food - you easily get enough Pet Charms to buy them every day.
• Hearth set to Shrine in Pandaria.
• Admiral's Compass (could also use Vivianne follower).
• Spirit Lodge with portals to SMV and Spires.
• Rematch addon with teams saved.

Starting off at the Horde garrison (sorry Alliance, but easily adapted):

• Fly to Gargra (use pet food buffs here prior to battle).
• Fly on to Cymre.
• Garrison hearth.
• Portal to SMV, do Ashlei and portal back.
• Portal to spires, fly to Vesharr.
• Fly to Taralune.
• Admiral's Compass to Shipyard, Fly to Tarr.
• Hearth.

This can be done in 20 minutes so if you are short on time you can stop here.

Then just fly around the Pandaria trainers as indicated by the red arrow. If you have the Path of the Jade Serpent CM portal, you could start there instead and follow the blue arrow, avoiding the longest flight segment.

There are plenty of guides as to how to level off these trainers so I haven't gone into that detail here but feel free to ask, or offer improvements below.

Alpha avoidance

It's hard to keep a good balance when it comes to being informed about the alpha. I don't want to be completely out of the loop, as that can result in uninformed decisions you later regret, but I also don't want to spoil the game for the playing once it arrives. It's hard because that's all people are talking about - perfectly understandable, but I've already read or seen a couple of things I wish I hadn't. If I need to choose between one of two extremes on Legion alpha/beta, I'm starting to lean towards crawling under a rock for a while. I've got other things to focus on without getting caught up in all the speculation and worry that accompanies an alpha, and that will allow me to enjoy exploring the game live, even if that makes me a slow leveller.

I'm glad to say that I've now got all of the Draenor rare spawn mounts - completed over 4 weeks with Poundfist obviously taking the longest. I also got the Ashes of A'lar from Tempest Keep (43 kills in WoD, unsure beforehand as I wasn't tracking. Estimate 120 total). The guild has been doing Highmaul and BRF achievement and mythic runs, whilst raiding Mythic HFC 2 hours a week, getting the first 3 down. I've been doing a lot of Ashran again, finishing the 2000 bloody coins achievement, and I started doing nemesis a second time (this time on my main) to help out others and have been sucked into completing it again.

But what I've been doing more than anything is levelling pets. This has seen me go from 238th to 72nd on wowprogress pet score, although it doesn't update reliably so I've started using warcraftpets.com instead. I've still a lot to go, but after seeing how effective it is to level during pet bonus week, I'm doing the bare minimum until that comes around again (17th Feb) so I don't burn out. I'll post a follow up explaining my circuit.

It's also a good time to be levelling alts. Not that I really need more alts or that I'm enjoying the levelling process, both topics I should write about. But I took a self-RAF during the sale so I'm taking advantage of it. There's always reasons cropping up to have alts on the opposite faction/another server/another account.

Ashran tides

A while back I commented on Ashran and the changes made after 6.2 that included the removal of entering as a raid group. I thought that the problems largely came down to PvP population imbalance, and hoped that further changes in 6.2.2, including mercenary mode, would help this.

In the weeks following that patch, I didn't notice any real changes, but as stated at the time I enjoyed it whenever it wasn't being dominated by one side, and hoped it had reached a point where people might start looking past its bad reputation. So I visited the Ashran forums to see if there had been any change in mood, but unfortunately it was persistently flooded with complaints about premades, specifically by a group called Hydra. As far as I've seen, they don't seem to have a presence or be a problem on Oceanic realms. So I didn't get anything useful out of that, and after getting full conquest gear, I stopped doing Ashran regularly. I'm back in it now, so time for another look.

The biggest trend I've noticed is that winning seems to come in waves that turn around every couple of hours. If you get in at the right time, you can win everything for quite a while, which is great, but eventually there will be a moment where the tide will turn, and then you'll start losing everything. On the face of it, as long as both sides have an opportunity to succeed, this is not a bad thing. But it is not enticing gameplay, it is purely rewards driven. Something we need to do, rather than want to do.

Tide goes in, tide goes out. You can't explain that. Image source: wowhead

The invisible buff to the event losing side obviously contributes to this swing, but it's more than that. It is still possible for a team to continue winning even when the other side has a significant buff. This is due to the losing side also having a numbers deficiency, as player numbers constantly bleed and many choose not to participate as a group. When things aren't going so well, you frequently see new joiners ask 'are we winning?' and then leave immediately, unless you lie to them. This is compounded by the delay upon leaving the group - if you run or even hearth out of Ashran, your spot is retained for 30 seconds.

People on the winning side are more likely to hang around while succeeding, and then leave en masse. This is often due to the weekly quest reward system, which requires 4 events and 1 faction leader kill. Usually, with a constant flow of players, different people will finish the weekly and leave at different times. But let's say one side has had 7-8 event wins without a faction leader kill. Everyone in the group will be calling for it, and when the kill happens, a large number of people leave at once, the threshold is passed, and the pendulum swings the other way. I'm not sure what the right reward structure is to prevent this, perhaps one where points are earned individually for completing objectives on a diminishing basis.

When your side is down, and there is high player turnover, the reinforcements come in dribs and drabs. Players entering to outnumbered battles get discouraged and leave, reinforcing the cycle. To help minimise this, players could be entered in waves. This could be as simple as spawning new players as ghosts in the graveyard, so that they are released together with the dead as a larger group, or as a new group spawning mechanism of some sort, that release a wave of reinforcements every couple of minutes. The goal being to resemble the start of battlegrounds.

Another part of the problem is putting in large numbers of players and then encouraging them all to be in the same spot at the same time. Tol Barad at least had 3 control points to capture, and 3 towers to attack/defend. Battlegrounds like Arathi Basin and Eye of the Storm work well because players need to split effectively between different objectives. Both have 30 players, but you'd seldom see them all at the one objective. In Ashran, the only real group decision is to whether to pursue the next event, or pursue the faction leader. Much of the time this results in no contest, the rest of the time a clearly defined loser (no reward).

They can't hold multiple concurrent events with equal rewards, as that too would discourage PvP. Instead, 'events' could be boosts to ongoing objectives. For example, the fires at Brute's Rise could be always active capture points, providing an ongoing reward, but the Brute's Rise special event could reset this and provide a greater reward to the winner. Teams could commit everyone to the active objective, but they would potentially lose the other objectives in the process. The ongoing reward could be somewhat less than the event reward, balanced over time to how often events occur.

Finally, there should be a comeback/catch-up mechanism that doesn't reward losing. Buffing losing sides may inevitably be necessary, but it should be an active objective, rather than just waiting for the other team to win more. This could be in the form of faction specific objectives that increment the invisible buff, but only whilst 'losing' (or are more frequent whilst losing). For example, the faction leader could demand blood (20 PvP kills) or a rarespawn kill, or running an artifact back to base (like the carts in Deepwind - no flying or town portals). This would give players incentive to pursue minor objectives when they don't have the large, coordinated group to contest the main objectives.

TL:DR:

• Spawn players in waves.
• Instantly remove deserters.
• Change reward structure to no longer encourage mass desertion.
• Implement concurrent, secondary objectives to spread the combat.
• Don't reward losing; provide incentive catchup mechanisms to losing side.

Taralune

I hadn't had much luck with other people's 2 pet teams for Taralune. Then I saw this post from a blue, and thought surely it would be more successful. Unfortunately it seemed unreliable like the rest of them. But this helped me actually come up with something that works for me.

The problem with starting with your leveller is you switch into a cocoon, and cop a second effective counterspell in round 4. For example, using the Azure Whelping goes like this:

2: switch in, Cocoon strike
3: Breath to remove cocoon
4: Get Counterspelled
5: Arcane Storm, 197 damage
6: Another cocoon, so Breath
7: Counterspelled, but ineffective. Surge of Power. Does not kill.

You only get 2 rounds of damage in 7, so I went defensive with a mech instead. The Sunreaver Micro-Sentry (1 1 2) is perfect for this.

1. Extra plating, Counterspelled
2. Extra plating, Cocoon strike
3. Ignore Cocoon and Supercharge
4. Laser until dead.

This will easily defeat Serendipity, and you can switch your leveller in when Atonement enters, as it will always buff itself the first round. But even doing it this way, I'd be defeated by lightning storm and moth balls.

Nether Faerie Dragon (2 2 1) can moonfire to change the weather, and life exchange to recover after switching back in to moth balls. I'm sure it's not 100% reliable but it works best for me, and seems quicker than Emerald Proto Whelp healing.

TL:DR - Rematch import string: Taralune:87125:1178:482:392:208:0:0:0:0:557:421:277:595:

Keeping busy

On the one hand there's a whole heap of games I've never touched that I feel I should. On the other there's so much I want to get done in WoW, which a reduced raid schedule will allow. I can sort of do both, by rarespawn mount camping in the background.

Whilst on the home stretch of 100 arena wins, I was flying around Frostfire mining between games, and chanced upon the portal for the Voidtalon of the Dark Star. No camping required for that one - sweet. Since then I've also got the Swift Breezestrider from Pathrunner in SMV, but unfortunately I foresee a lot of camping in my future if I want to find Poundfist. I've already experienced 2 occasions where people kill these rare mobs in 10 seconds without announcing or waiting.

For now I persist with the garrison mine and herb garden as much as possible, because I've yet to see the Nightshade Sproutling and Ore Eater drop. They can be bought for 2-3k on the AH, but I am persisting, as a test of my luck but also because of the steady income.

My addon to track kill numbers but was giving confusingly low numbers for the Disturbed Podling until I realised there are actually 7 different mobs with that name, each for a different herb type. In total I've killed 633 of them. There's only one Goren Protector from mines, and I've killed 246 of them. At some point though I'll call it quits on these just as I did with the salvage yard.

I've been looking out for Blackfang claw groups whenever I can, for I Came, I Clawed, I Conquered and in turn, Rumble in the Jungle. A tank is necessary if you want to make any decent progress, but often the tank will either finish his rep or get tired/bored within 10 minutes, and the group dies as a result. End is in sight however - I'm currently at 4400/5000. Should only take another hour or two.

Archaeology... I am attempting to make progress, currently sitting at 35/49 pristines. Cymre recently posted stats on how many solves she needed to completion - a total of 1072 for Draenor. I've only done 245 - this completely demotivates me. Seems like too much effort for 70 achievement points.

Similarly for Pandaria, Cymre needed 1230 solves. I have done 782, and am only missing 5 normal and 1 Pristine solve. Working on this can feel like the biggest waste of time, because you get nothing out of it otherwise.

I am trying to manage archaeology motivation by aiming for 5 crates a day, so I can always complete an archaeology mission. This usually means only 3 or 4 dig sites, but at that rate, I won't be done by Legion unless I can do it every day.

I'm finding motivation for battle pets a lot easier currently. Wowprogress pet battle rankings helps, I'm currently sitting at 238th realm, which feels about right, but I'd like to be a lot higher so I'm putting more effort into it lately. Still only 382/2000 battles done in Draenor, however.

I also got my warlock to 100, which makes 7 at max level. This was primarily to help establish income on a 2nd server, to go towards TCG pet and mount purchases. I haven't pre-ordered Legion, yet, but there's another one there if I need it.

Finally, the new arena season and PvP gear has made Ashran relevant for me again. I've been playing BM since 6.1 but it feels weak in large scale combat, even with the Ancient Artifact. Not sure whether I want to go back to Survival, or try Marksman for the first time in many years. 1630/2000 bloody coins, I would love to finish this before Legion which will allow me to switch back to my shaman if, hopefully, elemental is in a better place then.

6.2.3

The last patch of Warlords is upon us.

The availability of the moose mount item will get me back in for at least one more raid. Mythic going cross realm has opened it up to us, but I'm just not interested, unfortunately. Maybe this is because I'd already come to peace with it being out of reach for our guild, maybe it's because we are forced to run with another guild to make numbers, or that combined we won't take it seriously enough, just to pass the time. But probably just because running the 3 prior difficulties for 5 months expended my interest.

The mythic dungeon gear changes, reintroduction of valor upgrades, and the fact all balance changes were buffs, are all a clear leg up for Hellfire Citadel completion and sound great for those still working on it. But without new content, I don't need them. Maybe my mind will change if I see some activity come back into the guild and people earning achievements without me. :P

The arena season has also wrapped up. My rating won't be worth anything, but fortunately I finished my goal of 100 arena wins for the saddle about a week ago. When I found out the mount is not account/server wide, I sent the saddle to my shaman and bought the Vicious War Kodo. Unfortunately the horde flag sticking out of its back wobbles back and forth rapidly with every step. It's distracting and looks silly, at least on a tauren, so I won't be using it. I'm definitely considering that next saddle, so the patch keeps arena relevant to me.

I appreciate more timewalking dungeons to keep that fresh, but on the flipside there's also more things to collect. I have to say at this point, I like that it is an event held every few weeks, rather than weekly or ongoing. It definitely gives motivation to do them regularly without overloading on them.

So that's that, until the Broken Shore then. The busy work to keep occupied has already started, I'll follow this post up with another to talk about that in more detail.

Legion class preview

The shaman class preview blog went up yesterday. The changes are few and largely quality of life related, and based on a lot of the comments, people seemed to be hoping for something more. I normally think shaman reaction is justified, and while there were some truths remarked, I felt the reaction was a bit overblown, almost self fulfilling. Not to worry, here are some thoughts.

Maelstrom power

Maelstrom power is replacing both mana and lightning shield charges. This delineates our rotation more into generators and spenders - with the spenders revealed so far as earth shock (single target, as per current), earthquake (aoe) and healing surge. As I suggested the other day, I think this is partly aimed at limiting offhealing.

We'll be able to cast healing surge with 0 maelstrom, to enable out of combat regen, but it would have to be less effective than it is currently, otherwise there is no point in making it consume maelstrom. This won't really matter in PvE, our healing is already incidental, but the concerns remain for PvP. Healing will now actively decrease damage output (ie consuming maelstrom) in addition to passively reducing it by consuming cast time otherwise spent dpsing. Fine in isolation, terrible when compared to the passive healing you see from other classes.

Shock cooldowns

Shocks limited by maelstrom has allowed the removal of the shared cooldown, finally. Earth shock requires at least 10 maelstrom and consumes all maelstrom (assuming a maximum of 100) so cannot be spammed, but flame shock doesn't require maelstrom, but uses some if available to extend its duration. So it can be spammed, and supposedly will function as our movement dps. No mention of frost shock. I sincerely hope fulmination and its lightning bolt effect remain, because the shocks are dull by themselves. The description suggests the damage is just being loaded into Earth shock :(

Totems

• Searing totem (and magma totem?) are being removed
• Totems have more health, are no longer type limited, and can be placed without needing a talented cooldown.
• Elementals are not bound to totems.

These are all positive changes that people have been wanting for a long time. However, it is still dependent on us having useful totems to use. The only totems that regularly get used in PvE right now are being removed, and in their place we are getting Maelstrom totem, a 15 second ability on a 30 second cooldown. It generates maelstrom as well as doing damage, so it's not quite as bland as searing, but it's double the maintenance. And current estimations suggest maelstrom will not be hard to come by, so we can't yet tell what place it will have.

We need more, better totems for these changes to be meaningful. The best part of these changes is probably the freeing up of talent spots, hopefully we get some great replacements.

Rotation

Not much changing here before talents, lava burst still has its flame shock dependency, and earthquake (maelstrom spender) effectively depends on chain lightning - no word on whether enhanced earthquake is remaining. If it isn't, then earthquake should become instant cast baseline, which will have the side effect of making it far more useful in PvP.

Expectation is that unleash flame will be removed, as it probably should have in the WoD purge.

Identity

Blizzard believe elemental has a strong identity: "Through the body of the shaman flows bolts of lightning, as if from storm, and bursts of fire, as if from molten earth". Lightning and lava, that's what we're about. The theme is there, and it is hard to argue that our abilities don't reflect that. A lot of the complaints I've read seem to conflate spec identity with implementation - not liking the spells we have, or the rotation that results in, is a different issue. We also get elemental overload back as multistrike is removed, which should help reaffirm our identity - but I hope molten earth remains in some form, possibly as a talent. It does look cool and complements earthquake well.

If there is an area we are lacking, that is in the frost school - only reflected in frost shock and partially in elemental blast, both barely used as elemental. If frost should be part of our identity, we need abilities to better reflect that. If not, frost shock should be replaced with something thematically relevant. Water is reserved for restorative powers, but no reason frost couldn't reflect water used offensively. The problem here is frost mages - we barely differentiate from fire mages with 'lava' based abilities, but frost mages seem to have everything icy wrapped up. There's a dozen things they could do to incorporate frost and spice up our rotation, but I don't see it happening due to frost mages, and I think that's a real pity.

Perhaps the removal of frostfire bolt presents an opportunity... imagine a water totem cooldown that changes spells like lightning bolt and/or lava burst into frosty variants, that have synergy with the spells they replace. In fact, it'd be fun to explore the idea of one totem for each school, effectively giving us short lived 'stances' with higher attunements to each element. If I get time one day...

Enhancement in my eyes has had the bigger problem with identity, which Blizzard have attempted to clarify; they are not 'enhancing' others in battle (as they did prior to WotLK), but fighting with weapons/attacks enhanced with the power of the elements. I don't know enough about enhance, but if this new multi-spec feature eventuates, I'd love to try it again.

Blizzcon '15

Not a lot to take out of Blizzcon on shaman. The artifact weapons were revealed, but functionality aside, everyone gets one, so at this point it is just a type, a name and a paragraph of lore. The one tidbit we got was that both elemental and enhancement are losing mana as a resource, to be replaced by maelstrom charges. This has the potential to be a cosmetic change, or a complete overhaul, so there's little point speculating just yet, apart from to say that I suspect it will limit dps shaman offhealing capability further than past attempts have done.

Only need to wait another two days for the shaman class blog so there should be some good information then, if today's hunter blog was an indication. They did however admit on one of the panels that the classes getting the bulk of the attention are hunter, rogue, priest and warlock, so reigning in my expectations.

Elsewhere, there's a lot to look forward to, but I'm a wait and see kinda guy, particularly after WoD. The cinematic for Legion was typical Blizzard quality, but of course does not represent the final product. There was some hype and some ridicule for the movie, but all those people will probably see it anyway. When you slow down the trailer, there's a lot of detail in there, and this is the stuff that got me interested more than anything. This video by HeelvsBabyface shows a lot of the cool details but beware there are some big potential spoilers in there.

I'm not big on transmogging, but I am a hoarder, and big on bag space issues, so the new system will be great. I'll also be drawn into it if they add in achievements for completing your wardrobe. But, I put this change in the same box as the model updates for WoD, both quality of life, 'modernisations' that were probably necessary in a 10 year old game, and, like the models, I can definitely foresee parts of this not being ready for launch and being sold as patch content.

Of course, the launch date being as late as September, but likely mid year next year, is not good news, and neither is Legion having only two raids. There is already a big concern with retaining players - once the Blizzcon hype dies down, this won't help. If this were in that mythical faster expansion cycle then it might be okay, but then the price probably wouldn't be. At $70 AU for the standard or $95 AU for digital deluxe, it's still good value for money with the amount of play you and I get out of it, but WoD definitely delivered less for more. At that price, on a subscription model, Legion can't afford to do the same.

Wrapping up

We've recently got our first couple of guild heroic Archimonde kills and are not considering mythic, so raiding feels like it is starting to wrap up. Our numbers were already a bit low and while others are starting to raid with alts, I figured I would get more enjoyment playing other games in the meantime.

In terms of raiding, I'd still love to grab the heroic class trinket from Archimonde, do some achievement runs, and take another look at mythic highmaul if there is enough interest.

Outside of that, looks like I'm entering boring, grinding territory. I'm currently trying to reach 100 arena wins for the mount before the end of the season, availability being a factor, but if we've got more than a week we should make it. There's archaeology, fishing and pet battling to be done, in small doses. And continuing to hunt down old mounts and pets. It doesn't take long before that feels completely unproductive though, especially when considering mounts like the camel spawn in Uldum.

A couple of guildies are taking advantage of a quick levelling method that involves near completion of bonus areas in WoD, using the Elixir of the Rapid Mind, and then quickly finishing them all off. I've got at least 7 of the things, unfortunately the only characters I want to level are on another server, and they are not BoA. They sell for a couple of thousand gold now, but I wonder how that will change in the future.

Blizzcon in 10 days, expecting the Legion beta, and hopefully with it some information on what is in store for shaman.

LFR, fun and rambling

LFR is getting a bit of attention since the normal HFC nerfs. I've read opinions from various sides of the argument and few seem to be happy with it. Today I read Casually Odd's contribution which got me thinking and a comment turned into a bit of a ramble so I decided to rework it into a post here instead.

Despite being a heroic raider, I can appreciate the point of view of a non-raider. That is, you are happy LFR exists as a means to see the raid zones and to finalise storylines, you are focused on enjoyment and not improvement, playing what you want to play, how you want to play it.

But it comes as no surprise to me that you wouldn't find LFR fun. When mechanics are removed or nullified to the point they can be ignored, fights devolve to the point where the only thing that's different about them are the boss models and the yell emotes. The whole instance just blurs into a bland experience.

Image courtesy wowhead

As an example, Iskar, the fight with a hot potato (Eye of Anzu) where mistakes can see your poor raid members slowly, amusingly blown off the edge, becomes just another tank and spank on LFR, where it is practically impossible to get blown off the edge as the wind is so slow. (I suggested in guild they should have kept it at the same speed, but have players blown off being a temporary effect, like Ji-Kun in ToT. Same mechanics, less punishing).

So the fights become a simple exercise in using your abilities, but the difficulty level means there is no requirement to execute them well - so you are not motivated to improve over multiple runs. You don't care about spec or rotation. You just want to get in there, see the content, collect your rewards and get out. Once.

That leads us to legendaries - all tied into the expansion story. To experience it, you have to get the legendary, and therefore you have to raid. There is no 'legendary grind' for normal+ raiders (ignoring the shipyard, but I won't go there), it just comes eventually, in the process of gearing up and boss progression. But it becomes a grind for you, because you don't really want to be there. You want to do LFR once, maybe twice per character, not every week for 6+ weeks. But it has to be a grind, because otherwise all raiders can also do it once and instantly get their legendaries.

In doing this, you are lumped into the same basket as people with varying levels of skill and motivation. The ex-raiders who are skilled and think performance matters, but are low on time to commit to higher raiding difficulties. The main raiders playing catchup, or playing their alts. This is part of the problem - the audience for LFR is not cohesive. The other part is the reward for participation, so to speak, but I'll get to that.

This is where I start drifting away from the non-raiders problems with LFR and more towards mine.

For normal to heroic raiders like me, the fun of raiding is at its peak when you are presented with a challenge, and with some effort, you overcome it. Not when bosses are so hard that you are just getting stomped on, wipe after wipe, but also not when you outgear the boss and it becomes trivial. LFR starts at this level, a level that sets expectations that you can succeed without putting in effort, without coordinating and communicating with the other people in the raid, without understanding mechanics or rotations. So people don't - and some even AFK their way to victory.

The fact most people consider two wipes on an LFR boss to be completely unacceptable, and one barely tolerable, means they expect not to wipe (read 'fail'), they expect to succeed, regardless.

This isn't to say that Blizzard always gets the balance right, that they don't overtune bosses for LFR. But we know that is where the bar is set because they have said so.

On the one hand I see people rejoicing LFR as this 'tourist mode', that they get to see things they wouldn't otherwise, but on the other hand they will equally talk about rewards. I've seen all the remarks, from not being able to upgrade your legendary ring from an LFR Archimonde kill, to the LFR tier sets, and even as far as complaining that you don't get the achievement and the garrison monument. Imagine the shitstorm if LFR were only to give Baleful level gear (650) - and yet, that is probably the level of reward that the effort warrants.

If LFR is meant to be so easy anyone can participate and succeed, make it so, but don't reward people for participating. Unfortunately, I think if you reduce or even take away the reward, no-one will actually want to do it, despite what people say otherwise. This is why I don't hold much hope for LFR, and have leant in the direction of 'remove it'.

Someone, somewhere, is going to have to draw a line and say, yes, there is a success state in this game, this is it, and no you are not good enough/not dedicated enough/don't have enough time to reach it, yet. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I'm not trying to push an anti-casual agenda, just that few people are happy with the current situation and there are better solutions. I maintain the problem is one of lack of content, not lack of access or excessive difficulty. Bellular made some good points in his video on WotLK Casual Content Done Right? - including differentiating between time and skill, and championing a return of mid expansion dungeons and the old weekly raid quests. Currently, casuals are simply railroaded into LFR. There are a lot of ideas to improve the end game experience for non-raiders (explicitly, non current tier raiders), and with more of that, there would not be a need for LFR.

I hinted at the idea in my previous post, but I think yesterday's raid should be today's LFR. There is no reason to make older content so irrelevant. There just needs to be a shift in mindset from the players, and Blizzard could do some things to assist this. For example, enable the ability to queue for last expansions raids as a dungeon group (5 man for a 10 man raid, in wings), instead of removing all mention of it from the queue interface - heck do the opposite and shove the idea in their face via the adventure guide. And implement level downscaling, like all the other MMOs are doing, to keep even older content interesting. I'll probably expand on this in another post, but it is not 'fun' to be able to clear entire instances with one button press (eg barrage, starfall).

Ele timewalking set

I wasn't planning on timewalking more than once, then they chucked a whole lot of worthwhile rewards behind them. With some egging on from one of our tanks who was also interested, I put together a timewalking set to make the grinding as quick and painless as possible.

There's a great guide I recommend reading if you want to know the hows and whys, but it comes down to maximising the number of sockets, preferably red for primary stats, using all available enchants and taking advantage of legendaries and set bonuses where applicable. There's a bit of research involved but not many optimal options in the end, so this might save someone some work?

One thing to note for elemental is that we want multistrike as our first secondary, but multistrike is not available on anything before WoD, and sockets are harder to come by on WoD gear. Sockets definitely take priority so the main multistrike source will be enchants. Haste is the best secondary, but with how much I used earthquake, a bit of mastery didn't hurt.

I read a recommendation for the Tier 15 (ToT) set bonuses so I started with 4 pieces of that. The 2-set did 2-3% damage overall but the 4-set bonus I didn't find that useful, as Ascendance usually felt wasted on anything but bosses with how quick everything died, and the cooldown is only 2 minutes now anyway. Tier 16 has more red sockets, but again the 4-set is not very useful. So I'm changing to 2-set from each tier, and the best option to maximise red sockets and socket bonuses seems to be Shoulders and Legs from Tier 15.

As always, if you are missing an item, eg the legendaries, not a massive deal, make do with what options are available to you.

Helm
Headpiece of Celestial Harmony Tier 16 (SoO) with Sinister Primal Diamond.
The legendary metagem requires a helm with base ilvl 502+ so for helms with a meta and red socket, it's that or Cowl of Smoking Dreams from Garrosh Hellscream.

Neck
Flowform Choker with Gift of Multistrike.
There's also Necklace of the Terra-Cotta Invoker but that is BoP zone drop so much harder to come by.

Shoulder
Shoulderwraps of the Witch Doctor Tier 15 (ToT) with Greater Crane Wing Inscription.

Back
Xing-ho, Legendary cloak with Gift of Multistrike.

Chest
Hauberk of Celestial Harmony Tier 16 (SoO) with Glorious Stats.

Wrist
Thundering Deathscale Wristguards (crafted) with Super Intellect.
These bracers have spirit, and took some effort to craft, but they are the only option with two sockets, red ones at that. The other options generally also have spirit, or 1 yellow socket.

Hands
Gloves of Celestial Harmony Tier 16 (SoO) with Superior Haste.

Waist
Girdle of Shattered Stone (DS) with Ebonsteel Belt Buckle.
The other option here is Krasari Prowler Belt (crafted) with Living Steel Belt Buckle.

Legs
Kilt of the Witch Doctor Tier 15 (ToT) with Greater Cerulean Spellthread.

Feet
Cloud Serpent Sabatons (crafted) with Greater Haste.

Rings
Legendary ring.
Ashen Band of Endless Destruction (ICC rep) with Gift of Multistrike. There are other options with red sockets, but the proc from this ring is a bonus worth seeking.

Weapon
Dragonwrath with Mark of the Frostwolf.

Trinkets
Touch of the Void (garrison mission) is supposed to be really strong on bosses.
There are many options for trinkets, just check Wowhead for how they scale down. Some trinkets become next to useless. I went with Will of Unbinding (DS) - easy to keep the buff up.

For me, that adds up to 23 sockets (excluding meta), 19 of which are red. The best option to fill these are WotLK and BC epic gems, as they have the highest stats and do not have gear ilvl requirements. The red varieties are pretty rare at this point and can go for as much as 500g on the AH. If you wish to farm some yourself, you can run Battle for Mount Hyjal with a miner to mine the gem veins, and kill Onyxia and Magtheridon for their gem bags. The gem cuts you want are:

• Brilliant Cardinal Ruby / Brilliant Crimson Spinel
• Reckless Ametrine / Reckless Pyrestone
• Veiled Dreadstone / Veiled Shadowsong Amethyst

So after all that, is it worth the bag space? I believe so, output increased substantially and we will be running 5 timewalks every time they come up for the foreseeable future. It is an effort to out dps my equally geared paladin tank, as melee can kill things before you can even rampup, but we were both eclipsing the pugs in our groups.

HFC normal nerfs

I found the the normal difficulty Hellfire Citadel nerfs that went out yesterday - removal of mechanics - confusing at best. Someone in raid referred to Archimonde normal without Wrought Chaos and Living Shadows as baby's first raid boss, which was an amusing take even if exaggerating. I wanted to see the other side of the argument, so I sat back and waited for the inevitable reaction and blue response.

Image credit: wowhead

Watcher stated that normal difficulty should be suited to Friends and Family groups, where people won't be dropped/punished for performance reasons. So it should cater for those that can not (or will not) get out of the fire or provide sufficient output. I thought that was what LFR was for, but the distinction is obviously solo queuing via the UI versus premade/pug groups.

I continue to believe 4 difficulties of raiding are too many - they make up too much of end game content, and force people who otherwise don't want to raid, into raiding. The solution would be to consolidate LFR and normal into the one difficulty, harder than current LFR and easier than current normal, and provide the means to run it both as a closed group and an open queue. If this is the direction they are headed for Legion, then I can buy into it, and will accept the nerfs for what they are. Not aimed at me, for starters.

There was also the declaration that if they are nerfing mechanics to the point where they can be effectively ignored, then they might as well remove them. A symbolism for LFR as it stands, if you will...

Difficulty in raiding can involve compounding mechanics. A good example is on Socrethar, where Gift of the Man'ari by itself, you can deal with - have the player stand out of the group and heal them. But throw in a Shadow Word Agony and an Apocalypse, and death will occur if mishandled.

So whilst these removed mechanics might have otherwise been reduced to insignificant damage, it could have still caused lethal damage in combination with other abilities. With it removed, that is simply not possible.

Removal of mechanics is a pure difficulty reduction, as opposed to number reductions that allow a greater margin for error.

They also seem intent on reducing personal responsibility, targeting abilities where one player's mistake can wipe the raid.

If this is all aimed at difficulty consolidation, like I said above I can accept that. But I have not seen any indication that this is the case, just community (and my own) speculation. In isolation, I don't like the idea of dumbing down for the sake of access. I don't think LFR provides an accurate representation of the raiding experience, and therefore I'm not in favour of moving normal difficulty towards LFR.

I've always preferred the idea of access/progression through a combination of gear and zone buffs. If normal Hellfire Assault is too hard for a particular guild on release, give them options to obtain better gear over the coming weeks through other end game content, and it will get easier. Then, half way through the raid tier, introduce an increasing HP/damage/healing zone buff, as was done in Icecrown Citadel.

But why should casual players have to wait, we pay the same subscription, we deserve to have access to the same content. But we shouldn't have to work for it, so provide it in tourist mode, now, thanks.

If HFC is initially too hard for a group, they can do BRF or Highmaul. Right now, they don't want to, because they did it all in LFR the week it was released. There's nothing new for them to experience.

The problem is not lack of access to raids, but lack of other end game content.

Put the effort currently put into LFR into non-raid content, that provides trickled gear upgrades that will in turn increase access to raid content.

This will give everyone more things to do, reduce the hardline distinction between raiders and casuals, and raid content won't become (as) redundant the moment the next tier comes out.

Original image credit: hyperbole and a half

I'll leave it there for now. But I do think there is a problem with this new paradigm of 3 tier difficulty via additional mechanics, where normal + more mechanics = heroic, and heroic + more mechanics = mythic. That is difficulty via complexity, which is fine for some bosses, but it can feel like a clusterfuck when every boss throws a bazillion mechanics at at you. Half the battle is then reading about abilities and relying on addons.