How has it been a month since Battle for Azeroth launched? Holy moly time passes quickly. I suppose a bit part of that is about how completely flat out I’ve been in game. Which leads me in to the topic of this post, and the last Blog Challenge topic (I know I’m late!!) How do you level in Battle for Azeroth?
After raiding, levelling is one of my favourite things to do in game. Seeing new worlds, new NPCs, new secrets and adventures really tickles the explorer in me (and the screenshot nerd!) I love taking my time to follow random paths, hunting down treasures, killing rares, seeing new things and helping out a whole new bunch of people. And this is where we start facing some issues – the time I take to level is not conducive to being raid ready.
Being in a raid team (especially a team that wants to work on mythic bosses) means there are certain expectations. Characters are required to meet a number of requirements in time for going in to raid to make sure we are able to beat dps checks and heal all the damage going out. For our raid team, we expected everyone to have an ilvl of 340 and Azerite neck at 18 before stepping in to Uldir for the first time. (Keep in mind, 340 is the ilvl that drops from mythic 0 dungeons).
I am all for making sure that I’m raid ready. But I’m also not going to sacrifice what I think is important to me about the game. I’m in WoW to have a good time, and new expansions are a really special time for me. So I had to find a happy medium. This is what I did.
1. I levelled alone. Our guild had a few groups of people who were levelling together to help speed up the process. They were also generally in War Mode, which meant they could all help each other stay alive in pvp situations. I didn’t do this for a few reasons, the most important being that I hate feeling beholden to a group. I want to go *my* way, and read all the quest text and stay for all the dialogue and take a million screen shots and visit all the new NPCs in the cities. I want to be able to travel down those random paths and explore every corner of the caves. I also don’t want to hold up a group by doing all those things. I don’t expect anyone else to want to do this (and to be brutally honest, I prefer doing these things on my own).
So solo it was. Levelling solo takes longer, simply because there’s only one of you to kill all the mobs and collect all the things. But I accepted this and knew it would be the case. Which is one of the reasons I took a week of work for the launch. It meant that, even though I would take a lot longer to level up, I’d still have plenty of time to do all the things I needed to make sure I could step in to raid in a strong position.
2. I started in War Mode… but turned it off when I got killed the first time. (For those who don’t know – War Mode turns on world pvp, meaning people can come along and kill you out in the world. It’s not able to be turned on or off no matter what server you’re on, which is pretty awesome!!) The experience gains were too good to ignore, so I tolerated it for awhile. I ended up getting killed in Boralus, though, which made me super mad because that was my home turf! So turned it off shortly after. I managed to make it to about 118 before I turned War Mode off. Regular readers will know that I am terrible pvp, so it’s no surprise I did this.
3. I picked a zone and stayed until I was done… mostly. I started in Drustvar, and stayed until I finished it. The main reason for starting in Drustvar is that it was suggested as a good place to start if you have mining. Which turned out to be true. My mining got maxed out very quickly indeed, which was great.
Another reason I stuck around in the zone was because of how dungeons were baked in to Legion – once you finished a zone, there was a dungeon to help wrap that zone up. It helped make the story feel more complete, and gave a much better context for the dungeons overall. This turned out to be the case for Battle for Azeroth as well, with Waycrest Manor being the dungeon at the end of the zone. Knowing the story that took me there really helps me appreciate the dungeon so much more.
The second zone I went to was Tiragarde Sound. By the time I got here a whole bunch of guildies were already at 120, which started getting me a bit nervous, but I continued on my merry way (though I did miss a couple of side quests in this zone.)
I had about a level and a half left to get to 120, and the pressure was on. Stepping in to Stormsong Valley I made the decision to just do the main storyline so the dungeon would make sense. I dinged before I finished the zone, however kept going so that I could unlock world quests.
Also, all the zones are STUNNING, so of course I wanted to stay as long as I could!!!
Post-levelling
After all that, I think it did alright with my levelling journey. I had a wonderful time levelling, I truly did. I am absolutely adoring the expansion, and being able to take my time with it all, to read all the quests and understand what’s going made the whole experience so much better.
Now, my focus is on raiding. So I’m running dungeons and doing island expeditions and allllll the world quests to get my reputation up and collect azerite for my neck.
I’m honestly having a fabulous time in Battle for Azeroth. I know there are a lot of people out there who are not having the best time, and are unhappy with all the bugs… I’m trying to keep my head down. I don’t want to get weighed down with the negativity. For me, things are great! And the bugs don’t ruin my enjoyment of the game. I’m hoping with a bit of time, peoples’ frustrations will die down.
Last night, the first raid of Battle for Azeroth opened. Uldir is here! It’s a great looking raid. But more on that in a moment.
Before we headed off, I wanted to get a team picture of our starting team for the expansion (and thankfully my GM entertains my annoying screenshot-taking habits!). So we all got together for our first pre-raid pic. 🙂
You might notice that’s a lot of people. Well, you’d be right. One of the biggest challenges that we have as an officer team at the moment is reducing the team numbers down to a more manageable level. Mythic only needs 20, and normal and heroic cap at 30. We have almost 40 people. Thankfully I don’t have a lot to do with really choosing who makes it to mythic and who doesn’t (other than personal observations).
But on to the raid itself!!
Uldir is in Nazmir, on the Horde island of Zandalar. According to Blizz, it was an old Titan facility, where they were experimenting with the void energies that bound the Old Gods. Things did not go well, so they literally shut the door on the place and hoped no-one would notice. Genius!
I tried to get pics of all the bosses, but wasn’t always successful (darn rogues stealthing in front of the bosses!!), but here are some of them.
The overall aesthetic of the place is pretty cool. It has the titan feel that you would want and expect from something that the titans were involved with. It feels massive, but it’s designed in such a way that it doesn’t take a super long time to get from boss A to boss B.
Interestingly, the exit of the Underrot raid is apparently the entrance to this raid, so many of the Underrot aesthics are there, too. Lots of blood and decay. It really looks amazing.
So for our first night, our goal was to at least clear normal with as many people as we could. We managed to do this relatively easily, with the only real challenge being G’huun. That is a chaotic fight that did a bucket load of damage, even on normal. But it was a lot of fun, with some interesting mechanics.
Tonight we go back in to do it all again on heroic. Our goal is to clear out the whole raid on heroic to get Ahead of the Curve by the end of the lock out. I should be do-able… but we’ll see 🙂
Hope those of you stepping in to Uldir this week have a fantastic time. Let me know how you go!
Here’s where you will find the complete collection of screen shots and videos of Realm’s raiding adventures in Battle for Azeroth.
Stream VoDs can be found at https://www.twitch.tv/cinder_streams/videos/all
ready to raid Uldir!
Uldir
[2] Mythic MOTHER
Mythic MOTHER
[1] Mythic Taloc
Mythic Taloc
[0] Ahead of the Curve: G’huun (first week!!)
Ahead of the Curve: G’huun – huzzah!
There’s nothing better than getting your guild mates together and taking down some bosses.
Here’s a collection of Realm’s team kill shots and videos for each of the raids.
Antorus
[11] Mythic Argus the Unmaker – CUTTING EDGE!
[10] Mythic Aggramar
[9] Mythic Coven of Shivarra
Mythic Coven of Shivarra
[8] Mythic Varimathras
Mythic Varimathras
[7] Mythic Kin’garoth
Mythic Kin’Garoth
[6] Mythic Imonar the Soulhunter
Mythic Imonar the Soulhunter
[5] Mythic Portal Keeper Hasabel
Mythic Portal Keeper Hasabel
[4] Mythic Eonar the Life-Binder
Mythic Eonar
[3] Mythic Antoran High Command
Mythic Antoran High Command
[2] Mythic Felhounds of Sargeras
Mythic Hounds of Sargeras
[1] Mythic Garothi Worldbreaker
Mythic Garothi Worldbreaker
Tomb of Sargeras
Here’s a collection of Pit Crew’s team kill shots for each of the raids.
Nighthold
Trial of Valor
I’ve been wanting to do something for my guild for quite some time. Sure, we’ve only been together (in this form) since the end of Tomb of Sargeras (so since around November/December last year? And to be fair, I’ve been raiding with some of them for the whole of Legion. ), but in that time I’ve grown so fond of my guildies. And I wanted to say thank you.
Thing is, the past few months have been a bit rubbish. Well, truth be told, the past year hasn’t been the greatest (work situations are just the worst for making you feel crap!) and raiding with these folks has been one of the few things that has kept me sane (that, and of course, Thor). Raiding with Realm is something I look forward to each week. I love these guys to bits. Even when we yell at each other. Even when we’re apes (ok, maybe especially when we’re apes). When we’re killing bosses together, or playing hide and seek in Dalaran, or fudging our way through mythic+ dungeons & bgs… it’s all just been so much fun. Pulling together and getting our Cutting Edge on mythic Argus the other week really was the icing on the cake of what was already an amazing expansion.
So I’ve been wracking my brains for what to do. And for the longest time I knew precisely what I wanted to do. But… well, I don’t have the talent to do it. (I maaaaaaayy have re-written the lyrics to ‘Part of your World’ from The Little Mermaid to tell the story of someone who wants to raid with us 😀 But I can’t sing for shit!) So I was back to square one.
Then the other day, when I was doing my WoW screenshots archiving, it occurred to me that I have a lot of screenshots. (Seriously… a LOT). And I had already been asking guildies for pics of themselves for me… so I decided to make a mosaic of all of us (and a whooooole bunch of pics from Antorus) into a wallpaper using our guild logo.
And so with the help of AndreaMosaic I made this…
UPDATED: added some more raider pics to it cos some people were missing in the first one 🙂
The original is big enough that you can zoom in and see all the individual pictures pretty well (not perfect, but well enough!). If you want to have a look, check out the fullsize version of the wallpaper here. Here are some snippets:
I know I’m a giant sap, but I’m an older lady now, and I’m very fond of the people that I chose to spend so much time with each week. I just want them to know how appreciative I am that they put up with my cranky moods and my nagging for screen shots and silly wee wee songs and inappropriate jokes (though, I’m the tamest of them all, I swear it!). I am so thankful for these people who have stood up for me and come to my defence when trolls came to my stream; who have become facebook friends and not run away screaming when they see pics of me; who don’t make fun of my terrible kill videos; who are there for a chat in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep; who are just good fun people to be around (even when I’m not).
So Realm – thank you for being amazing. I am so looking forward to kicking ass with you all in Battle for Azeroth. ❤
xo
P.S. Here are some closeups of the guildies who sent me selfies ❤ (All the pics below are in the mosaic)
Well, we have officially “finished” Legion. Last weekend our guild finally killed mythic Argus, giving us the Cutting Edge achievement. It took over 600 pulls and countless frustrations, but we made it. We are now Titanslayers (a title we now use to brush off dozens of wipes during re-clear…)
I’m proud of our team, though. Even though it took us longer to get this than expected, we got through it all with no rage quits. Sure there was bickering and frustrations and nagging and complaining, but we didn’t have to cancel any raids because we didn’t have enough people show up, and we didn’t have massive blow ups or people leaving. We came out the other side of this still a team, and I’m extremely thankful for that.
I put together the kill video for the fight. We had FOUR points of view for this one, which was really awesome! I still have so much to learn when putting these things together, but hopefully this still managed to capture the heart of it all. (The chimp sounds at the start are because we eventually became apes during this progression… 🙂
Now we are just going back and trying to get people the mythic kills they are missing, and getting out as many mounts as we can to people.
I’m proud of our little team. Here’s to new bosses to defeat in Battle for Azeroth!
For the past few weeks/months a few people in guild have been trying to get a group together to work on getting The Chosen achievement. For this achievement, you need to complete the Trial of Valor on mythic difficulty without dying. That is, defeating Odyn, Guarm and Helya on mythic, and still being alive at the end of it to tell the tale.
We decided to try this when we outgeared it a fair bit, to give us a better chance of succeeding. Which brings us to today. Tonight was the 3rd night we had tried to complete (my second night, as I missed the first one). Most of the time people died to silly mechanics like orbs on Helya which, even with loads of gear, can one-shot people if they’re not careful.
Tonight, we lost one person to Guarm (I believe they just got a bit too close to the boss and got one-shot), and we lost another to Helya (got hit by an orb that hurt for a bucket load). 18/20 isn’t too bad, though!
From this achievement, we received the title “… the Chosen” and a transmog set. I’m not the biggest fan of the transmog set, to be honest. But you know me and transmog- got to have them all!
For me, it was more about getting that title. I’ve wanted it since I heard it, and am awfully glad to have gotten it. There will be more runs in the future for alts to get the transmog sets on other armour types… I’ve just got to decide which one I want next! 🙂
Content from cindersays.net.
How is it that a month has passed since I wrote in here? Usually this happens when I’ve spent a lot of time out of the game and have just been busy with work, but that’s not the case this time (although the being busy with work is definitely true!).
Anyways, it’s been awhile, so I thought I’d best do a catch-up post to let you know what I’ve been up to and what I have planned.
Alpha
So first up, probably the biggest reason I’ve been writing less in here is that I have been streaming quite a bit. It initially started to stream our raid nights, which was fun and all. But then this happened:
For reals! This was me at work when I got the email. Followed shortly after by tears.
I’ve been spending a bit of time in the Alpha running around and seeing how things are, reporting bugs and typos in quests and what not. And I’ve been streaming it, which has been quite fun. I don’t have a lot of viewers on raid nights because it’s a silly time in the US, but when I stream on weekends there are more people around, and it’s really enjoyable. I’m not a great streamer; I don’t show my face (because no-one needs to see that!) and I ramble a lot and get distracted, but hopefully it’s a little entertaining to people.
The other weekend I had a great time hanging out in alpha with some lovely friends in chat. We go to experience a terrifying quest line that just freaked me out so badly. It was scary and hilarious. I made a video about it, which was fun! It’s over here on YouTube if you’re interested. (WARNING: contains Alpha spoilers).
Streaming
Between streaming all the raids and now the Alpha as well, I’ve been clocking up a decent amount of streaming time. And somehow have managed to get a reasonable number of followers and viewers… enough that this ended up happening the other day:
This basically means I’m able to have subscribers and stuff, which is kinda cool! I don’t actually expect this to go anywhere, but it is kinda fun 🙂 I celebrated by setting up a new overlay for my stream and making some new panels to match. I’m trying to get better at streaming, but I know I’ll never be anything interesting. I’m just doing it for the fun 🙂 If you want to stop by I’m over at twitch.tv/cinder_streams. (note: I will always say if I’m streaming Alpha so that if you’re not wanting spoilers, you can avoid them).
Podcasting
I KNOW! This was completely random, but we’ve started up Battletagged again. This time it’s going to be a lot more casual, with episodes being recorded when we have something to say (rather than trying to stick to a strict schedule). It’s just me and Neuro at the moment. We talk about it a bit more in our first episode back. We’ve got a new website address – Battletagged.com.au – but everything else should be the same. We’re back up on Stitcher and iTunes. Have a listen! And if there’s anything you’d like us to talk about on the show, let us know. 🙂
Raiding
Raiding has been going ok. We had a rough time with Kin’garoth as well… for awhile we just weren’t really using a strat that worked for us (one of the challenges of there being so many different strats available for a boss!) In the end we got there though, with a strat that seems weird, but it’s what works for us, so that’s good!
After that it was Varimathras which we managed to get down really quickly actually. (I still need to make a kill video for it- oops!!) This week we went back to do a re-clear which took us awhile, but we do have a whole night to work on Coven tonight, which is going to drive us up the wall, but should be do-able either this week or next week.
Work
So real-life stuff. Well, I got a promotion- huzzah! That was nice. But I has also meant that my workload has increased quite substantially. At the moment I don’t mind tooooo much.. it’s been really great the past week actually because part of my work requires us to do public consultation to get feedback on what we’re doing, and then check in again with everyone at the end to make sure we did what people wanted. I’m at that end part now, with checking in, and I’ve been getting some really lovely messages back, saying how impressed they are with our work etc. It makes all the extra hours worth it, you know? (That and I do honestly feel like the work I do has the ability to do some good in a small way, so that’s great too). Anyway, all of this has meant super busy days at work, which some people have noticed because I’ve also been neglecting twitter!
Anyways, that’s where things are at at the moment. I have to finish off my bucket list blog post (which is part way written… but might be December by the time I finish writing it! lol) I also want to do some posts about the alpha and the class changes and things like that… I just keep running out of time to do all the things I want to do. Gah! Why is sleep a thing, eh? Or maybe I could just be younger so I could deal with having less sleep. I hope everyone reading is doing well. I promise to keep trying to write more often!
xo
I mentioned in my 2017 wrap up post that raiding had gone a bit weird for awhile with yet another guild disruption and shifting and all that. I’m not going to dwell on it- the past is in the past. And since Antorus opened, I’ve been trying to keep a positive attitude towards everything, because I just want to have a good bunch of people to play this awesome game with.
So far, things are going really well.
As of tonight, we are 6/11 mythic bosses down. Tonight especially was amazing. We have been working on Mythic Imonar, and were kinda in a slump. People were feeling a bit crap, and were getting tired so making silly mistakes. It wasn’t looking great. But somehow, on the last pull of the night, magic happened. Somehow, everything came together, and not only did we get further than we had gone before, we completely winged it for the whole last section and killed the guy. It was amazing. And even better- I was streaming when we got the kill.
Hey by the way, I stream now hehe I decided with Antorus opening and the new guild happening that I would start streaming. I have a good computer that can handle it, decent internet connection- why the hell not? So I stream our raid nights. I don’t really have many viewers because most of the time it’s stupid o’clock in the US, and Aussies are usually raiding themselves. But I do have some lovely people who come along now and then who I am extremely grateful for. And when people sit mythic fights, they sometimes pop in to watch how we’re going and how we’re doing a fight in case they get called in to do it. So it’s not always too quiet.
So anyway tonight, I somehow managed to have about 5 people in my stream cheering us on while we got the kill. It was really great. 😀 I can understand how people get addicted to the streaming thing. It’s a great feeling having an audience to cheer you on while you do these things. Really helps with the whole buzz.
Anyways, I just wanted to say that I’m really loving my guild. We seem to have a really good bunch of people who can all be really stupid together (like, really bloody stupid) but still get along really well and pull our shit together when it comes to raiding. And we can be cross with each other for awhile without it resulting in people leaving or getting too fed up. It’s hard to stay cross in this team when you’ve people being Pokemon’s and what not (thanks Advo!)
All of our kill shots are up on my raiding gallery (and below for now). And if you happen to want to come along one night while I’m streaming, I’m usually on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday nights, 8pm-11pm AEDT (so Melbourne time) over at twitch.tv/cinder_streams.
~*~*~*~*~SPOILERS AHEAD!! This post contains images and discussion about bosses in the new Antorus raid. If you do not want to know anything about this raid, please turn back now. ~*~*~*~*~
Anyone who has been reading my blog for awhile that I love a new raid. There’s always something so exciting about it. There’s a buzz that you can feel in the days leading up to it. I’m no different. Whilst I’m not as tired of Tomb of Sargeras as other people are, I have been looking forward to seeing some new bosses.
So you can imagine my disappointment in missing the first night of the new raid. You’ll have noticed I’ve been quiet here again lately, and that’s because for the past few weeks I’ve been travelling for work. It’s been busy and extremely tiring (I’m not a good flyer, so the anxiety really makes it exhausting!). I was on a flight from Perth back to Melbourne when my guild walked in to Antorus for the first time on Wednesday night. It was an odd feeling. It was the first raid for the new guild (more things I haven’t talked about here…) and I was really looking forward to it. But it is what it is.
I was, however, fortunate enough to step into Antorus on Thursday night, when we started the Heroic run. We managed to clear 8 heroic bosses for the first time on Thursday night, which I was really excited about. I had been terrified for most of the night because, due to being so busy with work, I had only really had a very basic look at each of the fights. But I actually did ok. My healing was trash (also didn’t help that we were overhealing things by a bucketload!!) but I didn’t die to mechanics, so that’s good.
Anyway, we went back in last night for our alt run on normal. Except I took my shaman so she had a chance at some more gear. And more importantly, so she could take some screenshots.
When I say Antorus is epic, I genuinely mean it. This is a level of epic that I think most people haven’t really felt since Ulduar. The raid itself spans from Antorus into space and the twisting nether. It’s incredible. It’s done brilliantly, so it doesn’t feel like you’re running for a long time to get to bosses (ground mounts are allowed for a lot of the raid, which is so helpful!). Instead, you get to use the Vindicaar and the portals you see on Argus to get around.
And the scenary. Holy moly. When you go in there yourself, look up. It’s just… amazing.
The bosses themselves are a lot of fun. I really like all of them. I haven’t had a look at mythic mechanics yet (which I will need to do given we will start mythics next week!) so my thoughts are based on normal and heroic at this stage.
~*~*~*~*~SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!!!!!!~*~*~*~*~
Yes, I’m going to talk about each of the bosses, INCLUDING ARGUS AND THE PHASES IN THE FIGHT AND WHAT HAPPENS AFTERWARDS. You’ve been warned!!!
Garothi Worldbreaker
This is a great little fight, and I think a nice way to start the raid as a whole. The fight is straight forward, but ramps up in damage over time, which helps speed things up a bit. The way we do it has ranged and melee stacks, which means I always have somewhere to drop my healing rain, which I’m always excited about (this will be even more important when I get my 2 and 4 piece sets from this tier). It’s good fun, though! I like it a lot.
Felhounds
I LOVE how these guys look! And what’s even better- the firey hound drops as a mount from this fight. One of my guildies was extremely lucky and got it on the first night. I’m very jealous. It’s not usually a mount type that I would go for, but I love the glowing colours.
This fight is another one that is quite straight forward, however the difficulty comes in when the abilities overlap in weird ways. For example one mechanic requires you to all stack up together, but then a different mechanic needs you to all spread out. And sometimes, those two mechanics overlap. So it makes for a really interesting fight. I think this one will be quite chaotic in mythic- I can’t wait!
Antoran High Command
This fight actually consists of 3 bosses. Only 1 is active at a time, with the two hanging out in their little pods bombarding us with random abilities. Because the active boss has vacated their pod, one of us can pop in there and use it to our advantage. It’s a great concept. We move around the room and deal with all the abilities. This is another one that ramps up in damage to the raid. It also requires a good amount of dps so you don’t run out of “death-saving” abilities. I like it a lot. I have a feeling this one will be a bit bananas on mythic too, though!
Portal Keeper Hasabel
This is another awesome fight (I’m sensing a theme here…). It’s got some great mechanics- being a portal keeper, Hasabel has a bunch of portals that open up, so the group needs to be split up to help deal with what’s in them. It’s a little like the Dragons of Nightmare fight in that way. Inside the portals there are orbs and things that look like they’re going to play a big part in mythic… we’ll see how that pans out. Again, another great fight with some simple mechanics that are easily botched.
Essence of Eonar
It’s no surprise here that I have lots of pics for this fight…
Eonar is a life-binder, so of course wherever she is, it’s going to be beautiful. This fight is quite different- there’s no one boss. We just need to defend Eonar from the onslaught of demons coming in. Because the room is massive, the team needs to split up. There’s a great ability that you get when you run into the room, that gives you wings. When you use them, you get shot straight up into the air. You can then glide around with your beautiful green wings, or you can use the extra action button again to land somewhere specific. So it makes getting around a lot faster.
I will admit, that even though this is a stunning area for a fight, it’s my least favourite in the raid. There’s SO much running around, so I can’t drop my rain anywhere, and I always seem to get lost. The changes to the fight on mythic have the raid splitting even further, so it will be very interesting indeed. but for now, not my favourite (at least it’s pretty!)
Imonar the Soulhunter
Silly bugger wouldn’t turn around for me to take his picture! So here’s a pic of his butt 😉
This fight has bombs and sleeping and racing through mazes… it’s chaotic and awesome!! It’s going to be bananas on mythic. It requires some good coordination with the team to make sure that bombs are placed in suitable spots around the room, and to make sure we don’t accidentally put each other to sleep. The fight starts on one side of the room, then he will jump over to the other side. We have to run across a bridge that is full of bombs and rolling balls and lines of death… yep, bananas. But I’m a sucked for punishment, and actually really love this fight.
Kin’garoth
This guy is AWESOME! We smash his face for awhile, then go kill some adds that spawn. Any adds that we don’t kill do a whole bunch of mechanics in addition to the boss mechanics, so it’s really important to get them down. My only issue with this fight is that I find myself out of range of the tanks a lot. I think I need to get them to have markers on their heads so I know where they are. But yeah, another really interesting fight.
Varimathras
This fight is scary. It’s a tank and spank kind of fight, which is probably pretty boring for dps, but there’s a healer mechanic in this which is terrifying. You need to always be near someone, otherwise you get a debuff on you called Misery, which makes you take 200% extra damage, but worse than that, makes you unable to be healed for its duration. Misery lasts for 7 seconds, but I tell you what, it seems so much longer than that. Watching peoples’ health go down and not being able to do anything about is excruciating!! It means people need to be sensible when they’re going to take damage- anything to help reduce the amount of damage taken is going to be really helpful for healers, because otherwise we can’t do anything until the debuff is gone.
This fight has a quick enrage timer on it, and it’s really easy to mess up. I know some people don’t like it, but for me, it’s challenging and really intersting. And bloody terrifying.
Also, it’s nice to see a male character with barely any clothes on for a change!
Coven of Shivarra
I mean, there’s so much ass here…
I’ve only done this fight (and the following two) on normal so far. It’s chaos. I’m not usually a fan of council fights, but this one has some really interesting mechanics that mix things up a bit. There are titan abilities that come in to try and hurt us, and they rotate randomly, so we have to be able to react quickly. There’s also a debuff that needs to be healed off, because if it isn’t the person with it gets stunned. It’s an interesting fight. I’m concerned I’ll dislike it on mythic, but so far, I enjoy it!
Aggramar
So again, I’ve done this fight on normal. It’s damn good fun. This one, to me, feels like a dance, and I really like it. There’s fire and explosions and smashes and thankfully at least a bit of stacking for my healing rain to enjoy. I’m excited to see this fight on heroic tonight!
Argus the Unmaker
Oh Argus. You can’t help but feel sad about how this all came about. But oh boy it’s hard to be sad when you’re surrounded by the freaking AMAZING zone. We’re in space and it’s just incredible. And this fight… this is a damn good final boss for an end of expansion raid.
The fight has 4 phases. The first phase has cones of void that need to be placed properly, and blobs of void that need to be put in the right place as well. There are also orbs of awesome that spawn that give you some buffs, which is a really great.
Phase 2 opens with a giant storm that gets rid of the void zones. We just hang out in the middle avoiding the storm. Then there are junk-rat-style tyres of void doom that make lines of death across the platform that we have to dodge. There are also bombs that get put on people that need to be dealt with… of course they have really similar names so it’s quite confusing!
Phase 3 comes to us with a WHOLE bunch of adds around the room. They start out really pretty as stars, then turn into evil adds of mean that needs to be killed ASAP. There are lines that need to be avoided and casts that need to be interrupted and adds that get specific debuffs on them to make them easier to kill.
Once the adds are all killed, Argus pulls us all in together… and kills us. Dead. RIP
It’s amazing. There’s a bit before the image above where we are pulled together in space, and locked in this big chunk of ice-like stuff… then Argus gets all cranky and smashes us in one hit. What a jerk.
But all is not lost. Eonar is here to save the day!!!
Thanks for the res, Eonar!
I forgot to take a pic of what it looks like when we’re dead! (There will be plenty of time for pics of it in later attempts, though!). While we are dead, we need to avoid running in to some little adds that are out blocking our path, and run to a tree where we can res. That tree stays up for the whole fight, which is really interesting, because it means we can die quite a few times without wiping. Death becomes a resource in a way. And it’s needed, because there are abilities that go out that will just plan and simply kill people.
The last phase is quite chaotic, and is definitely a dps race, because you will eventually run out of rezzes.
But then Argus dies, and the end cinematic begins…
I had watched the end cinematic before I went in to Argus. I knew that it would get spoiled for me before I would have a chance to see it for myself, so I watched it in advance. But watching the cinematic again after having completed the fight was something else. I cried. I really did. It was pretty emotional. Thinking about everything that had happened to lead up to that point… the people who have died (RIP Varian), and all of the battles we have had to face to get to this point, where Sargeras is finally being captured and brought to justice… it’s a lot. It really does reiterate my last post, too, about just how epic this is, and how difficult anything that comes after it will be “disappointing” to a lot of people. This was fucking EPIC. And I’m really going to miss Illidan. What an amazingly deep and interesting character. This was a really nice send-off.
So that’s it! Antorus the Burning Throne. Freaking AMAZING. Here are a couple of more pictures from the raid itself.
Have you had a chance to experience Antorus yet? What did you think? I hope you had a great time 🙂
xo
We did it! After all the dramas we have gone through as a team over the past couple of months; after losing so many players and recruiting and trialling others, we are finally at a point where, not only have we defeated all the mythic bosses we had killed before, but we have now got down a new boss! Mistress Sassz’ine is DOWN!
Mythic Sassypants (Sassz’ine)
This fight is of the most RNG-heavy, mechanics-intensive fights I think I’ve ever done. It is one of those fights that, even after having done it hundreds of times, you still kinda feel like you don’t really know what’s going on. It is absolute CHAOS. And I freaking loved it!
For our team, we went with 5 healers, but as a result, were told that we also needed to dps as much as possible in order to beat the enrage timer. Because of this, and the fact that this fight has SO much movement in it, I swapped my gear and talents around a little to what I would normally do.
For my legendaries I used Uncertain Reminder. Aside from having some really juicy stats on it, it extends the duration of hero by 75%. That extra time of hero, combined with our restoration artifact trait Sense of Urgency, AND the fact that hero is popped at a time when there is bucket loads of damage going out, means that it’s a really useful legendary to have. So this one was a no brainer.
The second legendary I had been thinking a fair bit about. In the end, once it was confirmed that we needed to be pushing out more dps, the decision was easy. I went with Soul of the Farseer. Again, it has some great stats on it. But the reason I went with this legendary was the fact that it let me run Echo of the Elements AND Cloudburst at the same time, meaning I could cast a lot more on the move (extra Riptides and Healing Stream Totems) and be able to cast more Lava Bursts. I was glad I went with it in the end, because towards the end when I wasn’t dpsing so much, I was able to drop out some more instant heals as I was fleeing for my life from some hungry octopus thing.
For talents, I had Torrent, Graceful Spirit (this is a no brainer – being able to cast on the move more often is essential in this fight), Lightning Surge Totem (which I didn’t use at all), Ancestral Guidance (to beef up my Cloudburst Totems), Ancestral Vigor, Cloudburst Totem AND Echo of the Elements, and lastly Wellspring.
Wellspring was a last minute change. Normally on this line I’ll take High Tide, but swapped over to Wellspring because it just felt stronger here. It was great for topping up loads of people after each Hydra shot. And it looks cool. 😀
My heals overall were pretty crap, but a lot of that is just due to pushing out damage wherever we could, and the sheer amount of movement there is in this fight. The movement also meant that I couldn’t drop healing rain very often at all, and that usually heals for a pretty decent amount.
None the less, we did it. Mythic Mistress Sassypants is sassy no more. Next up… Maiden of Vigilance.
Well, I find myself here once again where the team I’m raiding with has crumbled. We had been losing a few people here and there over the past couple of months for a whole bunch of different reasons. I’m not sure what happened, but this last week something snapped, and we were done. Through a combination of real life issues and people wanting a change, we dropped enough to not have enough people on the team to raid anymore.
It’s not a new story, and it’s not a story that we’ll never hear again. This is what happens. And even though I’ve been here so many times before, it doesn’t get any easier. Before raid on Wednesday we all logged on and had a chat about what everyone’s plans were. There was talk of server transfers to try and rebuild the team on a more populated server (and then further discussion about what the server might be); there were talks of staying put and pushing through it; there were talks of finding other teams, of going our separate ways… and of disbanding entirely. In the end, some people decided to move on, which in turn made other people also decide to move on to other teams rather than waiting for the numbers to come back up again.
There were no hard feelings towards the people who decided to leave for other teams. I totally understand it. Things weren’t perfect, and some people had really good reasons to go, but it still makes me sad. *shrug* It is what it is, and I truly hope everyone is happy wherever they end up.
In the meantime, there are 10-13 of us who have decided to stay and try and rebuild, rather than moving the guild to another server. Our team is 5/9 mythic… past the halfway mark of Tomb of Sargeras… so hopefully we will be able to attract some good players in time to get mythic Kil’Jaeden down. (Shameless plug! Here’s our recruit thread on the forums.)
For now, I’m just feeling sad. I know it’s (hopefully?) not my fault, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling like rubbish. Being in a guild and raid team like this always feels like a second family. We all spend so much time together, and we argue and celebrate wins… so it just feels weird everyone not being together any more. But like I said, it is what it is, and it will probably happen again. In the meantime, I’m holding out hope we find some more awesome players so we can get back to killing internet pixels. 🙂
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