Legion Blabbering

I am not dead yet, still playing, ilvl 893, 45 artefact rank, despite not raiding anymore.  I can now fly in Legion, what a relief!  I like this expansion, probably better than Draenor.

My current build:

Used Wyvern Sting up until last week and decided to switch to Intimidation for one of the quests on the Broken Shore.  Didn't have a chance to give it a try yet though.  Since I do a lot of grinding of mobs and not so much of instances I am thinking of going back to Barrage.

Like the changes to the loot - now you share the loot with you faction mates, the thing that drove me crazy few years back when I had started my blog.

Week's Progress

Last night I decided to run the last LFR where I could get the Secrets of the Empire and then, unexpectedly, was invited into guild's Flex run.  By the end of the night I had 10xSecrets in my bag, much better than I was hoping for two days ago.  I also upgraded my Assurance of Consequences to the Flex version and replaced a bow with Death Lotus Crossbow. This brings my item level to 543 and in terms of DPS I increased my output by at least 10% this week.

Overall this has been a terrific week even despite the fact I still struggle to get a Primal Egg on the Isle of Giants after grinding over 6,000 Giant Dinosaur Bones.  I even approached one of the hunters grinding in the area and asked if he had any eggs dropped for him and he said he had two in the last two days, so I guess eggs have not been removed from the game it's just RNG.  Or me.

Back to Work

My server had been merged with another one a month ago and now I feel like living in a city.  Everywhere I go I see players, people camping Warbringers have to stay in line to get one and AH trade is crazy.  Overall I don't like it, too much competition for resources; not only my Warbringer business went sour people who do get to kill them consistently drive AH prices down, so for me, working on the mats for Geosynchronous World Spinner mount, it's a hassle to make gold I need.  I discovered The Isle of Giants, have no idea where I've been all that time, but now I am grinding bones and looking for eggs to drop.  After 2 eggs (both hatching into Red Primal Raptor) in the first week I am running empty for the last two weeks.  Not sure if it's a bad luck or something is broken since the last hotfix.

I have used Wowhead profiler to compile the list of mounts I don't yet have and found about a dozen I could buy outright from vendors which I promptly did.  I also completed the list of my Honor Points mounts recently by running Heroic Dungeons and converting Justice Points into Honor Points.  My mounts count stands at 147 at the moment.  I am grinding bones for one more, hope to get two more from the eggs on the island, which would put me at 150 (and that's a bonus mount).  Plus I am getting ready to pull the trigger on the engineering crafted mount (see above) and in a few days might work to get Darkmoon Fair mounts too.

On the gear front I finally collected four Tier 16 LFR pieces. I dropped Timeless hands and chest in favor of the LFR Tier pieces (even if it lowers my ilvl and I lose some stamina) because of the DPS boost. And since I hit the ceiling of the items I can get out of LFR I decided to look into legendary cloak questline I abandoned a while ago because it wanted me to do PvP battles.  After hesitating for a few months I finally went and won both battles I needed in about 20 minutes all in my PvE gear and no performance enhancing substances.  Should've done it years ago!   Although being ilvl 541 and having 4-piece gear helped.  So now I will be looking for 20xSecrets of the Empire.  Ran 4 LFRs last night and 4 of the secrets dropped.  Nice feeling of being overpowered in ToT LFRs, and even in SoO LFRs I show up in the upper floor of the DPS charts consistently.

Daily Chronicles

I finally switched to another guild, time will tell, but for now I enjoy more company and some benefits I haven't experienced in the past.  For example, one of my guildies made me a Panther mount from my mats and I am looking forward to send him mats for the second one to complete the set of four.  I might even go for the uber-Panther.

I am still farming Warbringers, but this time I have a company, one of the guidies, a shaman, is looking for the Direhorn mounts, so he joins me and brings additional DPS.  Nice thing about this is that it takes less time to down the Warbringer this way and I can play it safer by spending more time on managing the pet's health and mobs.  The guy is humble enough to not ask for any loot, but I send him some windfall bars later anyway (have to smelt what he can use).  He already got one mount, so his efforts are not in vain.

On the AH front I started to use Auctioneer's Snatch search, instead of getting enormous list from Resale I focus on few things I know and feel like started to generate some gold from resales.  Bean Counter plugin for Auctioneer tells me I am losing money, but my balance grows over time, not sure how it counts profits, suspect it misses sales where gold was taken out of the mailbox using remote agent, so I stopped doing that remotely, but still I can't get a clear picture of what my income from trading is.  TSM add-in looks nice in reporting department, providing exact data in exact layout I expect it to be, but the trading setup in TSM does not fit me.  I am a gatherer, not a crafter, so all these setups with recipes and plans and rules don't really help me.  I want to know how much I can sell a thing for, nothing more.  So I went back to using Auctioneer.  Auctionator is another nice choice, especially when buying stuff, has few shortcomings too.

I started to do "floor sweeping" in AH - some people under-price items significantly and I pick them up for quick buck.  I don't know why they're doing this, but I can see two reasons, first, it's a random item they have no experience with value of and they just want to get rid of it.  Second, they might just try to skew the prices and grab whatever is posted below their benchmark.  In either case I can leverage those to get some extra gold.

I decided to tame one of the Spirit Porcupines, namely Hutia and after few unsuccessful tries cried out for help in the guild chat.  The guild master promptly got me someone who helped me to tame, although I'll probably won't allow her to do it again.  My problem was with the beast self-heal - I couldn't interrupt it with whatever default interrupt shot Beast Masters have right now.  One of the guides I found on the Net said you need to use Silencing Shot which I thought was retired, but looks like it can still  be used by MM hunters, but I didn't know.  The guy who came over to help me used Scatter Shot to interrupt and I feel that if I could get this hint I could've tamed the porcupine myself instead of relying on someone else.  So I didn't like the aftertaste.  Oh well, I am too lazy to abandon the pet and tame it again solo, I am keeping her.  I named her Dyxless, however I don't think anyone around gets the reference.

By the way I have few pets with special names:
My latest addition, Spirit Porcupine: Dyxless
Quilen: Bacbka
Panther: Mypka
Boar: XpIOH
Corehound: TEPbEP
Chimera: XuMepa
Water Strider: BODOMEPKA
Bear: TonoTyH

New mounts in collection

I keep killing Zandalari Warbringers occasionally and acquired the last Direhorn mount from them.  Unexpectedly ran into Huolon and it dropped me the Thundering Onyx Cloud Serpent mount.

Still can't get over the mistake I made: I had been collecting Tier 16 pieces from LFR and accidentally sold them to a vendor and didn't notice it until it was too late.  Could've had 4-piece bonus.  I am iLvl 539 with all the Timeless pieces, but Tier gear provides a significant DPS boost compared to Timeless.  Since my guild is not very active lately (only see 2-3 people online at any given time) I think my chances for running full-fledged raids are pretty slim for the foreseeable future.  Oh, well.  Nevetheless I consistently top LFR DPS meters this week, so it's not that bad.

New Mounts

I had been grinding Zandalari Warbringers and received two of the Direhorn mounts, like this one: Slate Primordial Direhorn.  I think I have Slate and Amber and Jade is outstanding.  Along the way I have completed some achievements for Pandaria champions (killing rares), except for the Glorious!, where I have one guy outstanding - people are camping him in stacks and I just can't catch him alive.

Since my AH business is going ok I snapped Sky Golem mount from AH for cash.
I am also running Firelands for the Avengers of Hyjal reputation, but it's a slow process and I am still working through trash, don't feel like I can solo any bosses, especially given the fact that I never killed any bosses in FL before.

Transportation and Financials

I purchased two new mounts, one being Sunstone Panther, and another Panther, the red one, I also finally had Drake of the North Wind dropped in Vortex Pinnacle.  So my stable increased and finances plunged.

Since I am done with the grind I started to look into ways to make money.  My primary character is Herbalist/Skinner and the current alt does Mining, so I can get fair amount of raw materials.  Recently the prices have shot up on my server, could be because it was linked to another one (not sure if it has happened, I don't care if it did enough to check it).  So I made one panther cost back in a week and continue to replenish my currency reserves.  Mobile App with Remote AH is a huge help, I started to list auctions for the shortest duration possible (12 h), so the prices get corrected faster if items are not sold.

State of the Union

I finally reached Exalted status with Emperor Shaohao last week, while grinding reputation I looted few Burden of Eternity items and used valor points to upgrade resulting Timeless pieces, so overall my ilvl is 533 now.

Looking for additional challenge I went to hunt Zandalari Warbringer.  As it turned out I chose the toughest location (Jade Forest) and failed few times.  Went on to read how people kill it and finally brought one down in Towlong Steppes and then, eventually every other location.  Everyone says you need to kite Warbringer, which doesn't work for me, I got the glyph and tried to kite it, but it always switches to a pet.  Finally I gave up on whatever people say and did it my own way.  I pet tank warbringer with a regular turtle.  I switch off the Growl and switch pet into Passive stance, misdirect to pet and that's usually enough to keep warbringer on the pet at all times.  The only thing that can bring pet down is the Vengeful Spirit, so I have to make sure I use Distracting Shot as soon as it's up.  Most of the time spirit goes after me anyway, but it can kill the pet in two-three shots, so I don't want to risk it.  Spirit is very slow, I am able to kite it with no speed boosts, so I maintain my Hawk stance to maximize DPS and able to kill warbringer in about 8 minutes, give or take.  The other annoyances are passing mobs that engage with me or pet once in a while.  I have to make conscious effort not to redirect to pet and deal with them one on one.

Alleged Stealing

I was reading a post on WHU page today and decided I'd like to reply to it. And I did. Then, after giving it some thought ,I decided I am going to write a post about a larger issue.

So the original post was about people snatching items from you while you fight mobs that guard it. From how I understood the post and comments to it most of the people do not see a problem with it, saying if you need an item then make it a priority and make sure you grab it before you finish off a mob. And, note, that this is a hunter community page. Hunters can misdirect threat to their pets and deal with mobs at a better time. So I wrote something like:

Being a hunter puts you at advantage against some of the melee classes that don’t have luxury of misdirecting mobs to a pet. I can see how it could aggravate people that can’t get away from the mob to pick up an item because they get either get interrupted or item is not even lootable in combat (the latter is true for hunters as well).

I had seen people sitting on flying mounts just above an item waiting for someone to aggro a nearby mob and snatching it right after I land before I had a chance to misdirect. This is a common thing I encounter when I gather herbs – druids don’t even have to land and dismount to pick them so they wait until you aggro a mob and then take it on a flyby.

I do not appreciate it personally. I don’t complain about it, it is what it is, WoW is not a community-building game, it promotes a-holeness in people and punishes cooperation and friendliness.