Tuesday 11 April 2017

Mission Accomplished

Mardah scouting the Nighthold on a flying disk

With the new abilities and powers from patch 7.2, what happened was logical of course, most of us are no throwing two non-shit-legendaries and at least 2 tier pieces, if not 4, against the fights.

But this strory is still a little different than what we do normally, it all started some days before the patch. We had four bosses left, Tichondrius, Star Augur, Elisande and of course, Gul'dan. We had been working on Tichondrius a little bit, but the week before the patch, our leaders steered us towards Star Augur.

This fight had the reputation of being irritating..so we killed him in 3 or 4 pulls. After the patch dropped we cleared heroic again, and also took down Tichondrius. Next Target was Elisande, which went down after only 4 wipes, and then, Evallyn our GM basically said, no other bosses till Gul'dan.

So, with a few try-put pokes on Tuesday, the lockout was extended, and we went in on on Thursday, where Gul'dan gave us an old evening of wiping on a Boss, 12 times he defeated us that night. So, Sunday-evening we went in again..with one twitch for me... I was designated healer for the night.

Tuesday's Tanks, Moreor and Illistra

Innovation has a problem with healers at the moment, luckily both me, and Synthea the Shadow-priest are keeping our Healing Set a little up to date. Synthea healed Thursday, now it was my turn. So I studied a little more on how to tree.

I experimented somewhat on the first pulls, the choice was between more potent Efflorescences, that is the mushroom-AoE, or more potent Wild Growths. I didn't feel the AoE was helping much, to often Gul'dan was pulled out of shroom-range, so I decided to go for more powerful Wild Growths, by going for Soul of the Forest and Prosperity.

Our first pull was almost the last, it all looked good, till 10%, that was the moment everything went awry. The next two pulss where very short, and short, wipe-calls due to to many deaths. Pull 4 went perfect, but the 10% mark was again a problem. So we went into a break with lots of discussion adn soul searching.

I think most of us really got it in their head that we really didn't want any souls in the well, whatever happened, get rid of the souls, and with the help of an extra healer in the person of Kristenveldt, we pulled again.

After 3 minutes, one of our tanks needed a battle rez, but still, that was the first death, there would not be a death for another 6 and a half minute, so we could save up our rezzes. At 9.48 into the fight, I either didn't noticed I had the debuff, or someone else dumped a big fiery patch under me, which I was a little late to realize..GET OUT OF THE FIRE..to late, I got rezzed. A minute later, a tank got one, but..still, the souls didn't really got time to gather, a healer went down..I think he got a brez, not sure.. Kitty didn't get a rez...to much to do, run into the souls, run away with fire, big black patch of death, A demon hunter hit the dirt..than serenity... we survived another gathering of souls.. one more than the last pulls... push push, MOONFIRE!, heal more..what is happening...

After 19 wipes, 11 minutes and 55 seconds, our screens flared up with the Ahead of the Curve achievement
Guild-first picture by Evallyn

Monday 27 March 2017

Seven point two

So, this 7.2 patch that is coming this week... do I find it to soon?

Normally I would judge it on how far Innovation is in the current raid-content. Before the release of the new tier, we should have heroic, and probably 1 or 2 Mythic bosses as a bonus. But the next tier won't be released this week, that will be in 11 weeks or so I understand. And with the nice buff we get tomorrow, and more power in the artifacts, that should actually be do-able.

So, maybe I should look to myself. Is Mardah ready for this patch! Well..almost, I could have gotten a little bit more Artifact Power in my weapon, bringing it closer to level 54, but that is peanuts. With me healing-stump on 36, and the Scythe on 53, it seems to be right on time. My Bearclaw and Kittypaws are not that happy, they are far back in the line to have a decent upgrade-path.

Mardah about to get his 53th Artifact trait

My alts are less happy, mostly because they are so few. But Verulani, Forak, Timicin and Lurche all have their main weapon on 36.. However, I am only keeping Verulani and Forak up to date, as far as possible, the rest just swims around. But, it is said this will be a great patch for alts.... I'll see about that.

In other news, which should make every moonkin antlers lit up, I got a nice Legendary last week:


Basically the best Moonkin Legendary, although sometimes the Helm or Sephuz will be better, you always want to equip this one. It comes down to one more Incarnation every normal lasting fight, around a 30 second lower cooldown, definately a keeper.

Saturday 11 March 2017

I need more talent books, a night in Nighthold.

This is a story about changing talents..a lot, and gear, and legendaries, and Tier sets..and..well...

Going through the Emerald Nightmare, Boomkins had it easy, you had some variety in talents, but those mostly came down to either choosing Guardian or Resto Affinity. The DPS-talents where set in stone, no reason to spec differently. This was because most fights where Single Target, or their Single target-phase (hello Iilgynyoth) where that important, that you didn't spec for AoE. But then Trials of Valor came out.

...and again we went in with ST-talents. Now there where adds on Odyn, but they didn't last for long, and where rather spread out, so out of reach of Starfall. Guarm was completely ST, but then Helya Happened, and for the first time I respecced...and since then, respeccing is something I do for every boss.

But it is not just respeccing, I am also juggling around Trinkets, Legendaries and Tier-Pieces, the latter, because Tier-bonus for Balance is purely Single- Target Starsurge-based, so equipping Higher Ilvl bon-tier sets is a better option if you hardly use Starsurge during a boss fight.

Skorpyron

MeMe build, full AoE, I try to go for high Ilvl over Tier here, you hardly use Starsurge. Trinkets are my Stargate and Twisting Winds. This is the only fight where I find Twisting Winds usable, a static main-target with lots of adds around. I am also using my Sephuz here with Entangling Roots, mini-heroism every 30 seconds.

MeMe-build
Chronomatic Anomaly

All around build here, which is basically taking Stellar Drift over Nature's Balance. Most of this fight is single target, but the adds live long enough to make using Stellar Drift a good option. Sephuz also works nicely here, you can Solar Beam the big adds, and root the small ones. Tiersets and ST-trinkets here, although a on-use AoE-trinket would also work, but I don't have that.

All around build
Trilliax

Full ST build here, no adds, just eating cakes, which makes Feral Affinity a thing here. Tier and ST-trinkets, but no Sephuz needed, luckily I have a third Legendary, free Lay on Hands every 2 minutes.

Single Target build

Spellblade Aluriel

This is an interesting boss. Your talent choice will mostly depend on what the rest of the raid is doing. The first time I was here with Innovation, I went in with the same build as on Anomaly, but I noticed that the adds weren't dying fast enough. So I changed it to MeMe, but the boss wasn't dying fast enough. 

After several things to do, I am now using a Starlord-AoE-build, with  ST-gear. So Tier, ST-trinkets and no Sephuz, only fire adds are interrupt-able, and I prefer the big Regrowth here, so much damage going around.

Starlord-AoE build

Hippy (High Botanist Tel'arn)

Same strategy as on Skorpyron, Full AoE-build. After 50% you will not be using Starsurge anymore, so definitely don't take Starlord. I am bringing both a ST-trinket and a AoE-trinket here, and I might go 2T19 here over stats, because of 50% mostly ST.

Sephuz is very usable here, the little adds can be rooted...BUT.. we found out there was a little hiccup here. Rooted mobs will attack in melee-range even when fixating another target. And because our raid is melee-heavy, some of them are assigned to kill plants when not fixated, which makes using entangling roots a problem.... wtb more ranged for Innovation. At the moment I am not using Sephuz here, and using Typhoon.

Krosus

DuH! Single Target all the way. There shouldn't be adds... and if they spawn they die so quick it is now worth casting MF or SF on them.

So, as you can see, I am basically respeccing/gearing/trinketting every boss. This is how far we got so far in Heroic, and this post is getting long, so the other bosses will be for next post. But here are some quick things as remarks. Level 30, 45 and 60 talents are purely situational. I normally run Displacer Beast (hurray, a blink), Guardian Affinity and Mass Entanglement to proc Sephuz.

The reason I am taking Guardian Affinity is for those moments a tank dies, and there is a short cool-down left on a battle-rez.  I know the guides say go Resto, but there will come a day again, Mardah-bear will safe da day....





Monday 6 March 2017

All that stuff to do, and no time to blog...

So last week I just posted my wowversery blog, after a loooong period of not blogging. Bascically since Legion launched I did not published a blog, I wrote some unfinished ones, but they never saw the light of day.

The simple reason for not publishing blogs is the amount of stuff I am doing in Azeroth itself. The moment Legion launched, all my allocated WoW-time basically went to playing. Writing a good blog takes a while, even the simple fast pulled together blog of last week took 45 minutes between me starting to write, and me hitting the publish-button. Not to mention the thought that went into it before I even started.

But it now seems to be slowing down, actually since patch 7.1.5 it has been slowing down..so I finally got some serious alting done. Before that I did bring some alts to 110, but every time I played them, I had the feeling I was actually not progressing Mardah. That feeling went away after I got the 5% more damage on my Scythe.
Gwaednerth dueling it out with an old Wolf

The addition of AP20-tomes also helped, and at this moment I am making sure to keep my Shaman and my Hunter up to date with World Quests. There are also a Paladin and a Mage at max level, but that just takes to much time. Except for the monk, all my alliance alts have their artifact, and my Horde Paladin and Demon Hunter are also in that group.

I haven't seen a new Legendary in a while though. The last ones I got where around Patch 7.1.5, where basically all my alts at 110 got a Legendary within two days. On Mardah I have three at the moment,  but not the big ones...

Raiding with Innovation so far has been constant, about one new boss-kill a week. We got all the Heroic End bosses in time for the achievements, and are now progressing through Heroic Nighthold, Skorpyon, Anomaly, Trilliax and Alluriel have been on farm a little while, although Alluriel gave us some trouble this week. We downed the Hippy last week after 20 wipes, and last night Krosus went down after 7 wipes. But I plan to have a night in Nighthold as Boomkin-post soon, so more about that later...which reminds me to make sure I have some screenshots for that.

Krosus Heroic..and yes, I am experimenting with colors and shades.







Friday 24 February 2017

Ten Years

I had no idea what to do. I started working on a school at the beginning of Januar, and now it was happening, school holiday, a week of being forced not to work, because the school was closed.

That saturday-morning I came to the conlusion that I didn't know what the F. to do for a week. Yes, I had to referee a Korfball-match that midday, but the next match was 7 days on. It was to cold to work in the garden, and I would be basically alone during the workdays ahead, so what to do....

That afternoon, I downloaded a game, I activated the free trial account, and Mendak, Dwarf Hunter was created.

That was the 24th of Februar, 2007

Within a week, after Mendak was kicked of the boat to Azuremyst Isle, I bought the full version, and started a Blood Elf Tankadin called Gowron. which within two years brought me face to face with a Demon Hunter called Illidan....  the more things change... the more things stay the same.

Look at that UI, so this was after patch 3 I guess.