There's really no pleasing raiders.

Traditionally, the last bosses of WoW raids have always been epically long, multiple-phase, battles for survival. Progression ultimately requires players to suffer through 10+ minutes of Garrosh or Imperator only to get f'd in the a in the last phase and have to go through the entire encounter again. When raid time is limited, it can be fatiguing to repeatedly execute the monotonous yet still punishing beginning parts just to see and learn the all-important and usually most difficult final push. One begins to wish for a shorter fight that compacts our skill and strategy into less time or moves the phase that matters earlier instead of tacked on at the end. With Mythic Blackhand, we get exactly that.

I put on Glyph of Metamorphosis so all the locks look different in demon form.

Yet, M Blackhand only demonstrates what Blizzard already knows of its customers, which is that we can find anything to complain about, because here I am bitching about eight-minute pulls and how equally fatiguing they are. There are no lulls or semi-relaxing intervals of mindless DPS between important mechanics. Downtime between attempts is minimal, and it's a constant res, buff, pull timer cycle. The fight is all about phase 2, and if we could consistently get out of it without any missed balconies, this boss that probably should have already died yesterday would be down. As opposed to perfecting execution of early phases to see the last phase, the encounter is a series of short DPS pushes while trying to mitigate RNG, and the deaths of any of a number of key players leads to a call for a quick wipe and regroup. Four hours and fifty attempts a night of this can be quite taxing.

But more importantly, I'm going through consumables like they're mage water! Seriously, every early wipe is a painful stab at my miserly soul, and whoever is selling augment runes and buff food right now is making bank when I'm popping them just to lose them to bad Demolitions in the first phase or having to call a wipe because a siege tank decided to make love to a healer. Every random disconnect makes me groan when I think of the 70g I just spent to buff myself for two minutes when I could have spent it on two hours of game time instead or just held onto it forever like I do with all my gold anyway. Botched attempts hurt me physically, and when our res is down, I stare at the dead tank on my raid frames with the same despondence associated with watching a beautiful stranger on the street walk away and out of one's life forever.

We are so close to a kill now, and my in-game wallet wants it as much as my guild and I do. All I can say is thank Draenor for my treasure hunters carrying back loads of gold from who knows where.

By the way, after a mere five months in Los Angeles, I'm moving back to the East Coast. Sorry, California. You had good vegan food and a much cleaner beach than NYC's, but I must return to the concrete jungle and surrounding suburbs whence I came. No hard feelings, and see you at Blizzcon, maybe?

<3Avia.

My spellcheck is telling me "clusterfuck" isn't a word. Like hell it isn't.

After years of raids and dozens of boss fights, there's a reason the tired phrase "Don't stand in fire" is still the single best piece of advice any player could attempt to follow, forget while tunneling a boss, and then die stupidly while ignoring. Once one learns the timing of mechanics, any boss encounter is easy enough to maneuver, but during progression and especially if someone messes up an aspect of the fight that imposes punishment, such space-encompassing effects can just look like unmanageable clusterfucks where standing anywhere is impossible. While it may not be so fun to work those bosses and die to their puddles of bad, it's definitely amusing to reflect on how ridiculously excessive their mechanics look while tanking the floor.

Imperator Mar'gok's infamous runes

Previously featured in my post about how pretty this encounter's mechanics are, beauty doesn't make up for how helpless one can feel when surrounded by a bunch of runes with no gap and the boss is across the room.

Mythic Operator Thogar's track fire

Look at that perfect positioning.

I don't think he's supposed to set train tracks on fire when there are trains still coming through them, but hey. He's the boss.

The Iron Maidens' Omega Pattern bombs

Aw. It's so sweet of the Maidens to give us safe spots in which we can stand. As long as other mechanics like Penetrating Shot or Rapid Fire don't fuck us over, we can do this dance forever!

Mythic Iron Maidens' Convulsive Shadow debuff

To be fair, it's not supposed to look like this, but part of progression is seeing all the possible iterations of how badly we can handle a mechanic and how comical it looks when we completely botch it. While this is what happens when everyone gets the debuff and nothing is dispelled, we also managed to dispel people too quickly and instantly kill them. However, it looks nowhere near as glorious as this.

Blackhand's Siegemaker fire

It's not supposed to look like this either.

Phase 3 Tectus

This is exactly what it's supposed to look like.

-Avia.

The thrill of a new relationship... I mean raid.

It took three weeks of attempts and raiding until past our usual time the night before the release of Blackrock Foundry, but we finally got M Imperator. Check out our kill video below.


Now that Highmaul is finished, everyone is excited to be learning and executing new fights in BRF. However, now that we're 9/10H and have completed almost all of the encounters in the new dungeon, comparing the two raids objectively and without either the negative memories of wiping or the sheen of brand new content makes it apparent how monotonous BRF mechanics can be. The defining characteristic of many of these encounters seems to be the "rinse and repeat" mantra of identical cycles whether it's the completely predictable sequence of events in Flamebender Ka'graz or the long, drawn-out tasks of Blast Furnace, a.k.a. Spine of Deathwing 2.0. Even the Iron Maidens, with their choice of strategy depending on which targets we whittle down first, have the least threatening and most easily managed pattern I have ever seen in the history of bomb mechanics.

It's just a jump to the left... then right... then left then right.

While I can't say I miss an end-boss that takes fifteen minutes, the un-fondness with which many in my guild look back upon Highmaul and the sense of relief associated with this week's content release are bound to be short-lived. As OG Priest referred to it, BRF is like rebound sex after breaking up with Highmaul. Our relationship with the old raid was full of struggle, and now that it's over, we're super thrilled to get any action that's different. Then after a couple of weeks, the excitement wears off, we look at the new raid and how boring and demanding it is, and we wonder, "What the hell did we just commit ourselves to?"

Bitches, right?

-Avia.

RP Your Life! Guide to Mythic Raiding for the Semi-Quasi-Antepenultimate-Hardcore

I let my resources pile up! >_<

The past couple of weeks have been a crazy mess of packing, moving, and frantically trying to find an apartment, but don't worry, guys! I have my priorities in order, and I have been raiding Mythic Highmaul all the while. Sitting at 3/7M so far, I have analyzed what exactly it takes to get those coveted Mythic kills.

Gear

Obviously, gearing out of those ilvl 630 pieces will make any raid encounter easier, but it's not enough to just raid normals and heroics. Merely raiding is not a guarantee that one will get drops, and the rule of Highmaul seems to be that any gear that does drop will be horribly itemized. What will make those prized trinkets and weapons finally coin-roll is if one spends all the gold s/he has an hour before raid on crafted items that will immediately be replaced and thus turn into a complete waste of money. Not doing this will ensure that the only drops in raid will be hunter gear and healing plate, so don't even try to save up for that Alliance chopper.

The Pull

Since it's vital for a DPS to execute a perfect pull in order to end the fight with decent numbers, it is important for one person to maximize his/her own DPS by casting way too early and screwing over everyone else's pre-pot. If the entire raid isn't yelling "goddamnit!," then they might as well start over.

Execution vs. RNG

When it comes to killing bosses, there are two tactics a raid can follow. The first is execution, which my current guild employs rather adeptly, i.e. not standing in bad, planning for upcoming mechanics, reacting to the ones that force people to adjust on the fly, and pushing throughput. Or a raid can go the RNG route and just try again and again until the stars above Draenor align and any mechanics that can kill people end up not bothering anyone at all. Sure, it's annoying when someone is standing where they're not supposed to be and Tectus puts a pillar right underneath him/her, but it's awesome when everyone is running around like an idiot and the mountains happen to get perfectly placed anyway. If every attempt was that ideal, then it'd be a Mythic kill for sure!

A Banging Soundtrack

While voice chat and boss mods should be the primary focus of one's auditory attention during raid, there's no denying that having music playing in the background is a great way to keep up energy and stay hyped during what can arguably be described as a somewhat monotonous activity. It's easy to get drained when going through pull after pull of unforgiving yet predictable mechanics, and having that appropriately soothing raiding soundtrack will help offset the boredom and/or frustration of spending four straight hours watching people take inordinate amounts of fire line stacks. Occasionally, listening to music a little too loudly might cause a particular warlock to miss important instructions and then end up blindly following a mage that blinked into a corner to iceblock through something that she definitely cannot survive. But hey. Beats.

Fuck All

And then, sometimes, all of the planning, execution, and perfect play of one's class becomes completely irrelevant, and all it takes to get a kill is for a single person to die to something incredibly stupid and sacrifice his/her DPS to make everyone else look great.


*sigh*

-Avia.

The Week in Highmaul

 

After the frenzied rush of leveling for two days followed by an unnerving raid-less calm for two weeks, I am once again entrenched in the middle of almost nightly group content. Currently, I am hanging out alone at the Darkmoon Faire, finally taking the time to relax with a mug of what is probably disgusting tasting alcohol and reflect on my week running two alt/main split raids in Highmaul. With 6/7H bosses down and Imperator still to go tomorrow, my guild has been performing... as expected. No need to hype it up, people. It's only "heroic" after all. Come Tuesday, we're going to start getting our asses handed to us by OP class stacking, bench drama, and oh yea Mythic mechanics. But for now, it's just a lot of hours and the feeling of accomplishment when we finish encounters for the first time. After all, regardless of how satisfying the actual fight was, in the end, a nerdgasm is a nerdgasm.

Check out our kill videos below for what we've cleared so far, and stay tuned to see if we have as much trouble with Imperator as other guilds did!


-Avia.

IRL News Day: Avia rhymes with Moldavia is moving to Cali!

Guess what, everyone? I'm moving! In a few weeks, I will be leaving Myrtle Beach and relocating to the Los Angeles area. Not quite the NYC that I miss every day, but at least it's not the middle of nowhere in South Carolina. I'm sure many people would argue that Myrtle Beach, as a major city, is not quite the "middle of nowhere." However, as someone who has spent most of her adult life in a metropolis, any place that requires a driver's license to navigate it might as well be the tiniest island in an archipelago where all of the stores, cultural centers, and people are only accessible by a boat that I'm not allowed to operate. Everyone with a boat gets to go places and have fun, and I could get a boat, but I'm smart enough to know that if I learned to ride one and then moved off the archipelago like I am now, I would just end up with a useless boating license. Look who wins at life now. The answer is me.

Home is where your mission table is.

Speaking of relocation, while Lunarfall is essentially a bachelor pad of a fortress with a single hero in charge of his/her own interior design, its location within Draenor and role as a central base has made it a zone that has the feeling of home for players. Compared to Sunsong Ranch, the sheer expanse of the garrison is so immersive that it feels like a true living space where I can relax, hang out with my followers, invite people over to selfishly take advantage of my property, and return at the end of the day without feeling like I'm a vagrant putting up for the night in the Stormwind City inn. And yet, it's not entirely cozy because, while it is my own personal house, it's also located in a heavily-populated area, and Trade chat keeps butting itself into my goddamn living room.

With the decentralization of players away from major cities and a shift towards sitting alone in our garrisons, it only makes sense to link Lunarfall/Frostwall with Trade chat access, but I sure as hell already unlinked mine. With my history of strategically hanging out in spots just outside of the range of trolls and closed-minded morons, I don't need to see the constant stream of people arguing about politics, accusing each other of being either children or middle-aged basement dwellers, and the occasional person actually selling something while I'm just trying to have coffee with Ziri'ak in my inn. At the same time, I'm preparing to leave my barren but admittedly quiet island in Myrtle Beach to move back to civilization once more. As thrilled as I am to have access to a metropolitan area again, there are people out there, and over the past year, I had become rather adept at avoiding them. It seems Blizzcon was a proving ground for my social skills, and I'll have to start employing them more liberally soon enough in an environment where /ignore doesn't always provide the perfect solution.

I kind of insulted Myrtle Beach multiple times in this post, and to any South Carolinians reading this, I'm kind of sorry. <3

-Avia.

Guide to 6.0 Pre-Patch Shenanigans by RP Your Life!

Inevitably, patch day is always a hectic and busy affair. When the servers came up yesterday, I had to get in all of the new quests, prepare my gear for raid, and then fight bosses with new spell rotations and adjusted mechanics. Over the past few weeks, every WoW fan-site in existence has published a guide for surviving the WoD pre-patch. I might be a little late now, but I have a little 6.0 pre-patch guide of my own. However, forget all of the class changes, UI improvements, and new features that are baffling everyone, because my guide doesn't address any of that. In fact, there is only one major bullet point:

Iron Starlettes

Take a page from Neopets (if it would load) and hoard a bunch of a semi-retired item. It might take seven years, but they will eventually inflate in value enough for you to get sick of them taking up space in your guild bank, and then you can sell each of them off for a MASSIVE 20g profit. Go ahead and do the Iron Invasion quest chain on every single 90 that you have. Compared to Gahz'rooki's world tour of Azeroth, it takes about ten minutes to get one of these seemingly non-sentient balls of metal that somehow know how to Pokébattle, and it will be ten minutes spent investing in your (very distant) future.

Leave it to RP Your Life! to touch upon the important issues for YOU!

-Avia.

I'm getting ready to put some toys in my box.

Originally, I had planned to gripe about how yet another character that Blizzard told us was good is now turning into a villain, but then I got distracted by the collection-type organization of the Toy Box. Those sneaky bastards really know how to hijack my mind.

So I present to you, my cherished readers, the world's most basic spreadsheet: Avia's Toy Box.

Sample Usage. Keep track of what you have and where it is!

In this manually typed spreadsheet with no formulas whatsoever, I have listed all of the Toy Box items alphabetically and also by source for the purpose of making it easier to spend the next four months farming for them ahead of time. Get an early start while we're sitting around waiting for WoD and acquire all of the toys that drop from Pandaria rares before others realize they must also find meaning in their lives through filling in an online collection journal. Use this precious downtime to level a rogue on the opposite faction and pickpocket the entire world looking for a pair of dice for no other reason than making those sad, grayed-out space-holders light up in satisfying and gratifying completion. Stare longingly at the the few yet unreleased items and dream of the day when a follower returns to the garrison, bloodied and tired from from a soldier's mission, to place in one's hand the spoils of war... an autographed Hearthstone card.

One day...

-Avia.

P.S. Don't forget to tune into FinalBossTV one week from now for a chance to win a full heroic clear of Siege from my guild! Check this post for details.

People who say they like this boss are LIARS!

It's been a seemingly nonstop few weeks of beta testing, and despite the inevitable bugs and a surprisingly large number of fights that feel exactly the same, it wasn't until yesterday that I ran into a boss that I actually think is awful.

a.k.a. Conveyor Assholes

So the entire raid has to move on a conveyor belt for half the fight? Well that's ok. If casters can't DPS, then the melee will take care of damage. OH WAIT! The boss jumps around like a wallaby on amphetamines, so they can't hit him either. I guess that's fine since the bosses don't have much health to make up for the fact that the entire raid is playing Frogger the whole time. That makes it ok.

Next tier, why not just make a boss that has 5 HP and have every player dodge fire for six minutes?

-Avia.

P.S. I love Frogger.

Garrison Mission: Gather all the foods!

One of my favorite aspects of any game is the variety of virtual food. Yet, disturbingly, the only forms of sustenance I've been able to find in the new Draenor so far are war rations of the Iron Horde. Since I'm not about to spend an entire expansion living off of tasteless biscuits scavenged from the bodies of dead orcs, I've decided to take some precautionary measures and stockpile my garrison with some of my favorite foods from the old/classic/currently-timelined world.

First and foremost, it's important to have an ample supply of hydrating liquids. I've always been a fan of Moonberry Juice seeing as how it's one of the few drinks available that isn't booze or possibly contaminated medieval puddle water, and I'll be filling packing crates with ginseng and Honeymint Tea since tea is required for living. As for food, I, of course, am partial to vegetarian options like Pine Nut Bread, Savory Snowplums, Carrot Cupcakes, and the oddly delicious Lyribread that the Ethereals of Outland claim are constituted from pure energy and somehow ended up like rye. Buying mass quantities of pantry goods and moving them across parallel universes may seem impractical, and yes, in my travels through Pandaria, I've learned how to make plenty of sophisticated and complex dishes like Sauteed Carrots and Seasoned Pomfruit Slices. However, I'm not my garrison's private chef, and I'd rather eat increasingly stale Pine Nut Bread every day than peel carrots for what is supposed to be my personal staff.

On the other hand, I could just forgo all of this work, make friends with a mage, and live off an endless supply of strudel and cinnamon buns. Good thing demonic spellwork burns so many calories.

-Avia.

Yea, I talk to my voidwalker. So what?

I finally got my beta invite this weekend, which means that I made a new friend.

He seems like a cool guy.

So far, I haven't gleaned much about his personality, but I hope that Demonic Servitude gains me a new companion, and I don't just mean in combat. Right now, my voidwalker is the only demon with whom I can have worthwhile conversation and isn't preoccupied with sadomasochistic bondage or stealing silverware from Black Temple. My felguard just wants to cleave things in half, felhunters can't really talk, and I'm pretty sure my observer thinks I'm a moron, which is rich for someone who runs into battle gurgling like a murloc.

As much as I love Barkath, it'll be nice to get to know a new demon with a different nature. I know doomguards can seem kind of cocky with all of their "Who dares summon me?!," but what can I learn about mine when, rather than merely calling him for one minute in the middle of a fight, I actually spend time with him just hanging out in town or working together to complete quests. We can explore new worlds, defeat powerful enemies, and then, as the sun sets in Shadowmoon Valley, discuss over tea how we each felt about our day in Draenor.

Because I don't think an infernal can hold a tea cup.

-Avia.

Get the costumes ready for Blizzcon 2014.

Much to my dismay, Blizzard announced Blizzcon 2014, which I'm sure will be fun and games for all involved, but it also means that this expansion is probably not coming out until around Christmas. T_T I'm going to have to pace my QQ a bit better since there are many more months of class changes and reworking of those changes about which I must throw up my arms in incredulity every time someone datamines a grammar edit on a tooltip.

However, as my new guild schedules a major get-together every year that coincides with Blizzcon, I am actually planning on going this year. Stay tuned to see if I manage to get tickets with the new "Walmart on Black Friday" sale system and get to hang out with the crew that proudly brings you priceless content like this:

-Avia.

Let's talk alpha notes.

It's an exciting time right now because of Warlords of Draenor alpha notes. There is plenty of speculation, badgering of devs' Twitters, and crying about precious removed spells. That doesn't mean I'm not crying, because I definitely am. However, in RP Your Life! fashion, let's take a step back and look at the trends that these changes are indicating for the development of WoD.

- It now takes a lunch break to read mage talents.

- Healers are panicking about Cata-style healing when it was AWESOME.

In the Convert to Raid and FinalBossTV interviews, Celestalon assured healers that healing in WoD would not become the fight against OOMing that it was in Cata, but that period of time when healers had to think about which spell to use, not only to match the situation but to also preserve their mana, was the most engaging. The WoD movement away from critical burst healing back to triage seems like the perfect opportunity to bring that cerebral kind of healing back, but it's not looking like they're willing to push healers that far.

- The devs can't decide what to tell us their ultimate goal is.

If the new Mythic raiding is balanced around having at least one of each class, then why remove utility like healthstones and Innervate? If they want to remove unique utility so a raid doesn't require a specific class, then why leave in things like Gateway? If they leave things in like Gateway because they want to balance around having at least one of each class, then why remove utility like healthstones and Innervate? If...

- The devs might not even be talking to Mythic raiders.

Even after their big claim that the move to 20-man raiding would be the epitome of balanced raid tuning, it doesn't even look like many of the changes that they're making are geared towards Mythic at all. The homogenization of classes and making sure that certain class abilities aren't required are definitely safeguards for 10-man Normal and Heroic raids. Plus, when a shadow priest asks whether or not s/he needs to carry separate sets of gear for multi-target and single-target fights, the answer that I gleaned from Celestalon's appeasing "No, but..." was actually "Yes, but not for casuals," which he could have just said outright. I was hoping that FinalBossTV's interview would be more enlightening for end-game raiders, but there were very few instances in which the crew pushed the devs to a point where they were forced to defend their choices and explain their reasoning in a deeper manner. Why indeed is a certain DPS class retaining a raid-wide CD while others are having theirs taken away?

Watch your raid spot, everyone. The mages are after it.

-Avia.

Edit: Added a link to the FinalBossTV interview.

Three people carrying twenty-two others is normal for LFR anyway.

Do people in your LFR look like this?

This week, I pre-purchased the WoD expansion and immediately used my free level 90 boost, and despite the provided gear being quite adequate ilvl-wise, it sure makes anyone wearing it look craptastic. Even if it's 483 ilvl, it's embarrassing to queue for LFR with that glaring green color on all my gear like a giant neon sign reading "Pick on me even though plenty of people in epics do worse DPS." No wonder some people have been so quick to complain about boosted 90s even though they're often being played by competent raiders.

On my new mage, I've actually been using my H Garrosh title for the first time since I've earned it just so I'm not grouped in with people who boost to 90 in a random spec and spend LFR pressing one button every ten seconds. Call me lame, because that's what it is. It feels like I'm wearing one of those cheesy bumper stickers that claims, "My other car is a Ferrari," while I'm driving a rusty lemon into Jin'Rokh and missing.

To all the Silent Heroes out there braving LFR in these noob and difficult times, I salute you.

-Avia.

Blizzcon 2013 Round-up

I'm going to sound like a negative nancy, which is a bummer since last year I was so excited for all the MoP changes to the talent trees and specs and was really looking forward to their development. But Blizzcon 2013 is now over, and almost none of what they have announced has impressed me much at all. Let's do this as compliment sandwich.

Compliment: The new character models are pretty cool.

Criticism: I'm getting pretty sick of time travel and alternate dimensions. They are great concepts to wrap your brain around, and every time that they are introduced, it adds layers to Warcraft universe in a unique way. However, they seem to pop up constantly, and by now whenever patch notes mention the timeways, I can only think, "What got messed up this time by who?"

Yea yea, the devs said that it's not a "time travel expansion" and that we don't have to worry about affecting the past. Then why do it? When I heard the name "Warlords of Draenor," I actually though we were going with the draenei back to Argus to take their planet back. Going through some loophole to the old Draenor seems to me like a way to rehash old content without worrying about continuity.

Also, I'm not too pleased with the new Mythic difficulty. Though the four-tier gradation of difficulties will be exactly the same as it is now, a big difference is that raiding guilds will have to progress through Normal, then Heroic, then Mythic. So rather than keeping Flex, they're making it so that the content lasts for a longer period of time before they're pressured to release more by the speed at which top guilds progress. That's a cheap tactic to me. Mythic difficulty has to expand on the mechanics of Heroic in meaningful ways for it to be worth it, and that doesn't mean that Heroic can merely be a higher DPS requirement version of Normal either.

Compliment: The garrisons look pretty cool, too.

-Avia.

P.S. Since everything is based on what information has been released so far, all of this is subject to change. Thankfully.