Saturday, February 28, 2009

Moral Mount Farm, or "When Do You Give Up On a Dream?"

If you don't like to talk about *cough* that time of the month, skip down to the break.

I told my husband yesterday that I don't think men understand PMS. He agreed, and I told him that I think this is because it's different for every woman. Some women have to take medication to even out the wild flux of hormones. Some women barely notice a blip on their emotional radar.

For me, my most hormonal times are just before and just after the . . . icky part. Just before and after, I'm likely to have stronger reactions to just about everything -- but they're reactions I would have had, just amplified. It doesn't make me feel anything I wouldn't have, though it does make me post frustrated rants on my guild forum about stuff I usually overlook. >_> (Sorry guys.)

Most of the time, if I'm in an unreasonable mood, my husband (has permission to do this) asks me if it's that time of the month, and I stop and tilt my head and say "Oh yeah." And I can consciously rein it in.

Because there's nothing I hate more than being cranky. Except being cranky in public.

Last night I went to an AQ40 raid, to get mounts and the completion achievement.

The mounts are only usable inside the instance but drop almost constantly and count toward your mount collection achievements. (My sweet guildmate passed a green one to me.)

We couldn't get past the moron twins. Whatever their names are. One is immune to magic, one is immune to melee, they keep switching places, and the tanks can't keep aggro. People were looking up strats for half an hour.

Once I started the ball rolling to go to bed at midnight, the two raid leaders in charge (my husband's best friend and my brother-in-law-in-law, both of whom sleep during the day and play all night) proposed more mount farming -- for the Zulian Tiger, the Raven Lord, Midnight, etc. Obviously, a few of us were leaving and couldn't go.

And it hit me. Those two guys, who'd signed mostly as backup for my Mount Excavation Team, were doing exactly what I had planned to do -- farm mounts. And they weren't even trying.

When I got to bed, I wondered why I had the Mount Excavation Team if we didn't do anything, and I realized several depressing things, the main one being: I don't think I can farm the phoenix.

It's not an issue of ability. If we tried long and hard enough, if I badgered enough people into going with me, we'd eventually get it.

But.

I hate learning new content. Hate it. Cannot stand it. AQ40 reminded me of that last night. I want to be told where to stand, where to move, what to look for, and then I'll do it and I expect it to work or I don't want to try again until it will. This creates a road block for me in learning the Kael'thas fight.

I hate having things scheduled late. The best time for me is Sunday afternoon when I have a standing date to play with my family, but it's not the best time for everyone.

I hate having a full schedule. The more things I have to show up for, the more stressed I get during the week.

I hate cheating people. And this is what it really comes down to. Even if I have the numbers and the time, I'm not sure I'd be able to farm past the first mount. I don't think I have it in me to farm it every week for years. And I can't do that to the other people who want one, because they've mostly promised to pass the first to me. I refuse to use them and then toss them aside.

But it's so hard to just give up on something I've wanted for two years now. I don't want to. I don't care about people seeing me on it and going "Ooooh, she's so cool!" It's not for status or showing off, and it annoys me that that would happen anyway. It's because I frankly, simply, love that mount. With all my heart. The thought of giving it up for good made me (and I know this is the hormones amplifying everything) want to quit the game. Because while I play to enjoy my family, my in-game goals have always pointed toward that mount.

Last night, I cried into husband's shoulder as we discussed it, and I think I'll wait for the hormones to wear off and our gear to get better, and I'll focus on getting my brother the heroic dungeon title he wants, and then I'll talk to my family group about mount farming on Sundays with whomever else is able and willing from the Excavation Team.

For that, I need to get Dustfire to 80.

So. One step at a time.

7 comments:

  1. I'd just like to start off with a response to your visit to AQ40 :D

    I have recently been doing AQ40 with my guild, we literally scoured the whole internet for strats for those twins but none of the sites had it and we wiped for ages. We came back the next day and it was like a light had turned on in my brain.

    None of the sites I checked such as wowwiki etc list this VITAL point for the dungeon.

    NEVER, EVER, EVER (no seriously just don't) use any DoTs on the Twin Emperors. Nobody in the raid should be using any DoTs on the twins at ANY point, even tanks.

    Now you might think, aha! DoTs! And proceed to blame your warlock. Nope. Doesn't work like that. A DoT is anything such as the following:

    Frostfire bolt
    Fireball
    Pyroblast
    Serpent Sting
    Bleed effects
    Death Knight diseases
    Warlock DoTs

    The above were examples but they are numerous others. A DoT is NOT something such as a Paladins judgement which is just applied to the boss but doesn't cause Damage over time. We found that this was the vital key to the encounter.

    Lets imagine for a second you've got a bear druid tank who applies a bleed effect to one of the twins. Said twin then changes sides of the room, via the regular barely noticeable teleport. The bleed DoT does some damage (with the twin now over the other side of the room). Whoever does the first aggro to the bosses after a swap gets an increased amount of threat than usual. In this case the bear druid is the first to aggro. The twin who he was previously tanking now proceeds to charge across the room (due to the increased aggro). When the twins get too close they of course heal themselves which makes it nigh impossible to keep them apart.

    For the encounter I recommend:

    2 physical tanks (warriors/bear druid)
    2 magical tanks (paladin/DK) - Yes a DK believe it or not counts for this encounter as magical for the most part. (They do a lot of shadow/frost damage as threat etc)

    Alternatively spell casters can factor in as magical tanks but you'll need on the ball healers to keep the clothies up.

    Then simply split your raid in half with a mix of physical DPS and magical on either side of the room. Tell them to use only attacks that do blasts of damage and do not apply a DoT effect. Tank each Emperor against their respective walls and keep them there via the physical and magical tanks holding them there (without the use of any DoTs so bear druids lose a bit of threat here)

    Please let me know how this works out for your guild if you go again sometime :)

    -----------------

    I'd like to finish with a response to your mount farming.

    Back in TBC I ran Heroic Mode Magisters Terrace regularly for the Vial of the Sunwell. It never dropped for me. Never did. I went countless times.

    However I did during all these runs get the Swift White Hawkstrider. I thought about it a lot afterwards and yes ok the roll I made and the win of the mount was luck but I got it to drop for my group through brute force. I went so many damn times that healing Vexallus as a Holy Paladin (which was nearly impossible pre-nerf) became second nature. When groups scorned me as a loladin I proved them wrong by easily healing them through to the end each time. I did this through practice. Countless mothers tell their children practice makes perfect. If not perfect, it makes it atleast easier to imitate next time. All you need is a good chunk of a day, some regulars who want to do it with you multiple times in the coming weeks and to just get Kael'thas down once. Get him down and it will all fall into place because you can repeat it easier next time if you bring the same people.

    Try, try and try again. Get it to the point where it becomes second nature and you can run it multiple times with your guild and possibly see multiple drops for people so you won't feel guilty anymore. You'll get it to the point where it takes less than 30 minutes to get there, clear trash and get him down. It will become a Sunday afternoons work :)

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  2. Additional point for clarification: a Paladins Seal of Vengeance/Corruption applies a Holy DoT effect and therefore does count as a DoT.

    Other obscure DoTs include Rogue poisons and a Retribution Paladins Righteous Vengeance (don't let the ret pally attack)

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  3. You get virtual hugs for pep talk.

    /hugs

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  4. I told my husband yesterday that I don't think men understand PMS. He agreed, . . .


    LOL! Well of course he did! Sounds like a smart guy.

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  5. Her husband is very wise.

    Hey Birdyfall! I SHOULD have the title Champion of the Frozen Wastes this Wednesday (so should wifey). It's the super-cool-awesome-sicko Proto-Drake mount that takes the time and struggle to obtain. I'm about 2/3 of the way there and I just "started" last night.

    One major difference in our approach to the game is that I LOVE learning new encounters. I didn't even realize how much I liked it until we started doing Sarth+. It's challenging and therefore more rewarding when you succeed. We spent over an hour, 100g in repairs and a lot of ventrilo chatter trying to get the "Watch Him Die!" achievement in H-AN. We got the boss to 50% at one point but wiped to the AoE blind... again. The weird thing was, it was a lot of fun! With PvP at a low ebb right now, I've been finding WoW fulfillment in PvE. Naxx has been a lot of fun and I hope you'll speed on up to 80 (with our help, of course) and join us. You MIGHT even find you like it. :P

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  6. I think we make a good team because you like learning encounters. It makes it easier for me to sit back and do what I'm told, and I don't have to try and be the one figuring everything out.

    See, I don't mind complicated strategies, but I really hate coming up with them. I prefer to be a follower, I guess.

    But, hey. If nobody followed, everyone would try to lead, and you'd have a mess.

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  7. Thanks for the virtual hugs, but seriously:

    Never give up on the dream!

    At the end of the day that instance is going to be there for as long as World of Wacraft is still running. So what this means is, instead of it getting harder and harder it's only going to get easier and easier to complete Tempest Keep. This will occur whether we just get gear improvements such as Tier 8/9/10, or whether we get an expansion and get to level to 90 or 100.

    Think of Zul Gurub now. At 70 you still needed a couple of good players to down the Tiger mount boss. At 80 my girlfriend (Hunter) and I dual-teamed that boss aswell as the raptor mount boss. This was weeks ago when I had no Tier 7 to my name and still had 5 blues. ZG has also been solo'ed by a Death Knight.

    Now admittedly the Kael'thas fight is a bit harder than ZG but this is the reason they won't remove the mount from Kael'thas like they did the Amani War Bear from Zul Aman. Zul Aman is so easy it's almost boring to complete again now. Tempest Keep is pretty easy - except for the Kael fight. They put that mount on him for a reason. That fight will always have a certain level of difficulty because you need to do the fight properly and bring the right people.

    Additionally I'd just like to mention that they have raised the drop rate on mounts such as Baron Rivendare's Deathcharger, Zul Gurub mounts and the Raven Lord mount so now may be the very best time to seriously try for this mount as it too may have had it's drop rate improved. It will still of course remain rare due to the difficulty of the fight and the ability to only do the raid once a week.

    I can confirm that they have increased the drop rate because in 50 Stratholme runs recently my guild leader got the Deathcharger on run 3, mage 1 on run 12 and mage 2 on run 50 so they have increased the drop rate quite significantly on these 'old world mounts'. :)

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