impostor syndrome

I haven’t listened to the Legion lead-in audiodrama that came out this week, but something in one of the BW posts about it made me wonder just what happened to Cordana Felsong, and why she’s going to be a dungeon boss in Legion. So I hopped over to Wowpedia to read up on her. Because Cordana is so closely associated with Khadgar, the article also provided a nice synopsis of the Legendary Ring questline.

Reading about what “the Commander” did made me feel even more like my characters are not really qualified to be the heads of their class Orders in Legion.

I only progressed in the Ring questline far enough to discover the fate of Kairoz in the Time-Lost Glade. Most of the things that “the Commander” is supposed to have done, I didn’t do.

I didn’t LFR during Warlords, not even running through them once in “tourist mode”. I made a choice not to bother with it at the beginning of the expansion, and I stuck with that decision. The only time I set foot in LFR this whole expansion was to get the Shipyard equipment blueprint for the Gyro-whatsit that drops from the Fel Reaver. On a Real Life basis, I don’t regret not raiding.

Sitting in my Garrison running Follower missions and doing profession CDs and farming old raids for Mog gear, though, I wasn’t “the Commander”, the great Hero of three worlds (counting Outland and Draenor separately)… I was more like the 2nd Lieutenant in charge of Logistics, or something.

And so I feel like my characters don’t quite deserve the accolades with which they will be greeted and treated as they undertake the Artifact questlines in Legion.

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time to start farming Dragon Soul…

When the method for obtaining an Emerald Drake to complete the set of mounts representing the five Classic/Aspect dragonflights was first announced, I was glad that a) no PvP would be required, b) I already had all but three of them, and c) the ones I didn’t have yet were from soloable places.

I promptly assigned my Draenei Mage to camp out at Onyxia’s Lair. I’d KO Onyxia every week for a few months, then get bored and leave her alone for a month or two.

I didn’t have a character whom I wanted to just leave camped out at the Nexus, so I only poked at Malygos occasionally (when I wanted something else that he dropped). I saw the Blue Drake — which I bought on the BMAH during Mists — drop, but not the Azure one.

Occasionally, I contemplated taking all my capable characters to Onyxia’s Lair and the Eye of Eternity… I’d get through two or three and then get tired of Malygos’s spiel and quit.

The Onyxian and Azure Drakes are drops from one-boss raids. The Blazing Drake, however, drops from the last boss of a long raid, and the penultimate boss of that particular raid is a real pain to do. So I didn’t even bother with that one at all.

I was getting pretty discouraged by never seeing the Onyxian Drake, feeling like by the time I managed to get the achievement, I’d be done with the game entirely and wouldn’t be able to enjoy having the green drake.

In the past couple of weeks, though, I’ve found myself wanting something to do until the Demon Invasions begin. So why not, I thought, go biff Ony and Maly with all my active alts?

The Azure Drake dropped for my Monk last week. The Onyxian Drake dropped for my Rogue this week.

Guess I’d better start farming Dragon Soul… Now, who to do it with? Probably the Rogue, for the Wrathion lore of the Fangs of the Father questline more than for the weapons themselves.

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cute is as K’ute does; done with the Shipyard

A minipost double-header!

~*~*~

During the past several months, I’ve been running Sunwell and Black Temple with a series of alts for a laundry list of items for Transmogrification. I’ve spent some time in the Battle of Mount Hyjal, too — not nearly as much, but enough that this happened a few weeks ago without me even having to try for it specifically:


Not sure she’s as cute as my kitten, though:

(if you’ll pardon the terrible Photoshopping of a low-quality selfie…)

~*~*~

The third Heirloom ring mission was for me also the last of the six special reward bearing rare Shipyard missions, so when it popped up last week (or thereabouts), I got an Achievement, too.

I said I’d keep playing the Shipyard until I got all three Heirloom rings, so I guess I’m done with it now. I dunno, there might be a Baleful token or two of which I haven’t got enough for all of my active alts quite yet.

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Tuesday night is (still) Raid Night

I haven’t danced to the guild raiding tune since mid-Cataclysm. In Mists, I tried to get my weekly LFRing done on Tuesday nights when the groups would be the best and freshest, but in Warlords, I haven’t even done that. And yet, my WoW routine still revolves around the weekly raid reset. These days, though, I’m “raiding” solo, smashing old raids with a rotating roster of alts farming for a grocery list of Transmogrification pieces.

Strikeouts indicate items I’ve obtained; brackets [] indicate things I want to do, eventually… after I cross a few more items off the rest of the list and maybe take a break from old raid farming for a while.

With the amount of time I have to play, getting through all of this takes me most of the week.

Karazhan is a grand old place with a wonderful ambiance… but I am so, so sick of it. I’ve been farming it with two characters for about four months now. Having decided that she needs to have Gorehowl on her back when she meets Grommash in Nagrand, my Warrior finally got it two weeks ago; the Armory tells me that it took her 16 Prince Malchezzar kills to do it. Meanwhile, my Priest has been trying to get the boots that match the T4 Priest set from Shade of Aran, and he kept dropping them for my Warrior instead and dropping the boots that match the T4 Warlock set for her.

Now that I’m running Sunwell on three characters a week — my Paladin has been running it for about two months now, but my Death Knight and Blood Elf Mage only started doing it a few weeks ago — I’ll probably be heartily sick of that place, too, pretty soon.

Update: I crossed Naxxramas off the list with both Ketura and Kaylynda tonight, but I’m still running Karazhan…

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Tag-teaming the Firelands

That Big Bear Butt fellow sure knows how to have fun in WoW — and he always seems to have the most fun when he’s making his own fun. Most recently, he’s discovered a way to use the Custom Group finder to juggle multiple alts into the same raid group/lockout without needing a second person. What a terrific idea! I knew immediately just who to try it with.

Last week, I decided to take my level 94 Fury Warrior into 10N Firelands to see if she could snag the Spaulders of Manifold Eyes off of Beth’tilac for that awesome regal crimson kit that Silverblade designed for my Savage Blood mog event. I was pleasantly surprised by how easily she smashed stuff. My Disc Priest, who is also level 94, has been wanting the Mantle of Closed Doors from Baleroc pretty much forever… but I wasn’t sure she could smash Cataclysm raids with quite the same ease as my Warrior. After I read about BBB’s clever shimmy this afternoon, I decided to clear up to Baleroc with my Warrior, bring my Priest in to do Baleroc, and then go back to my Warrior for Majordomo and Rags. It worked like a charm! It did take my Priest two tries to kill Baleroc — and then, to my great delight, the Mantle of Closed Doors dropped! My streak of good luck continued; when my Warrior got to Rags, he dropped Sulfuras, the Extinguished Hand for her!

Thanks for the tip, Bear!

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but sometimes, I miss healing

At this point in Warlords, I’ve more or less given up on getting myself into LFR. Perhaps I burned myself out doing LFR with so many characters in Mists; whatever the reason, I just don’t feel like doing LFR. I don’t care about seeing the boss fights just to see them, and with LFR now in a separate loot tier, with loot that so far has not been attractive to me for Transmogrification, loot isn’t motivating me, either. I think I’m pretty squarely in the “Voracious Termite” playstyle camp, with Tome, by now.

Sometimes, though, I miss healing. I enjoy filling the green bars up. When I think about that, I wonder if I should run some LFR just to be able to play as a healer again. LFR, I think to myself, would probably be less stressful than running Heroics because I wouldn’t be the only healer there. I always get a bit traumatized at the beginning of a new expansion by how the dungeons are hard again. The last time I went to run a few Heroics, though, enough time had passed for gearing and dissemination of dungeon knowledge to begin making them easier. I shouldn’t be afraid of Heroics anymore.

Even so, there are some dungeon fights — and some dungeons in general — that I just loathe. Generally, they are the ones that involve lots of movement — the fire elemental boss with the magma balls in Slag Mines, Warlord Zaela, all of Grimrail Depot but especially the second boss with its terrible LOS issues. I guess the one in Slag Mines wasn’t so bad the last time I went there, and I suppose that I can suffer through Zaela with my Mages to get Millhouse for their Garrisons. Grimrail Depot, though? The fear that that might be the one that pops up is a big reason why I haven’t run a lot of Heroics this expansion. Then again, the rewards for queueing randomly aren’t really all that exciting, so I might as well just queue for specific dungeons (all the ones I actually like) when I want to play as a healer…

And the elitists who would look down their noses at me and call me a bad player, a lazy player, for choosing not to play the dungeons that I don’t like because they are more of a challenge than I think is fun, and scornfully scoff and sneer that I should suck it up and L2P? They can go fly a kite.

ETA: Or, you know, I could go do the group Apexis dailies. I just did one of those for the first time, signed up as a healer, and it scratched the itch.

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Flash in the Pan(daria)

So, Patch 6.2 is coming, and with it, the conclusion of this expansion’s Legendary questline.

This news prompted me to look up what it would take just to get far enough along in the Legendary questline to have Garona as a Follower in Kamalia’s Garrison. When I saw that I’d have to get all the way through the Blackrock Foundry chapter, my desire to continue pursuing the Legendary questline crumbled. I haven’t set foot in LFR even once so far this expansion, partly due to not having as much time for the game anymore and partly due to the official relegation of LFR-only raiders to second-class status (yes, I’m still smarting about no Tier in LFR). Although my faithful Followers bring me Abrogator Stones as often as they have the opportunity, and I on very rare occasions find them in my Work Order crates, I still only have 55 out of the 145 gubbins required for the Highmaul chapter. The thought of collecting 900 — NINE HUNDRED — gubbins for the Blackrock Foundry chapter is overwhelming.

After Kamalia builds her Shipyard and sees what there is to see in Tanaan, I would much rather spend my remaining playtime in this expansion with my alts, getting them leveled up and personalizing their Garrisons as much as I can by their choices of buildings, guards from the Level 3 Barracks, favored Music Rolls in the jukebox, and selection of Followers, than collecting heaps of pebbles for Khadgar for week after tedious week of LFR.

It seems that Kamalia actually managing to acquire a Legendary item when it was still more-or-less current (though not cutting-edge) content during Mists is going to be a one-time accomplishment. Circumstances in the game and (more importantly) in my real life were such as to make Mists something of a “golden age of gaming” for me. That time is gone, and you know what? I’m okay with that.

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