Sunday, October 9, 2016

Legion of love!

This morning I was reading a post on Blizzard Watch about act of kindness in wow. It struck a chord with me because I recently start to do some group content. But first let me tell you that yes, I wanted to post more (at the very least once a month) but I was enjoying Legion so much I didn't took any leisure time to write about it. But now I'm starting to feel like I can relax a bit. I will just tell you what happened since my last post then I will be back with my subject, the legion of love!

So I wasn't sure if I wanted to raid this expansion but I did as much as I could to be raid ready. My guild raid three times a week which is way more then I wants and anyway there at least once a week that I can't make it, so raiding wasn't even an issue. My guildmates are making good progress, doing mythic dungeon, including Court of stars and Arcwell right off the bat, clearing normal on first week and now are 5/7 heroics, so I'm happy for them. I remember when I was a fresh level 110 and they were already doing world quest and I was like: 
"WQ? What is that?"
"Oh it rewards phat lewt." 
"Bah I don't have time for that, I'm way too busy leveling profession and getting rich. Oh, is this BoE BiS? Because it's like 80k on the AH." 
My guildmates were like "Should you not keep it for yourself?" 
"Hell no, it's like 2 free month of wow!"

So anyway, I was one ilvl short of gear objective of 840 when the raid came out. I haven’t leveled a profession to max level yet since I had the good idea of dropping every gathering profession, so I had to begin anew (I was sure they were getting rid of the limits on gathering profession after WoD). I didn't level Inscription much since I was selling herbs at ludicrous price. Now most prices have dropped but things like gems, necklace enchants and the Sky Golem still have outrageous prices and I didn't had time to benefit from it since I have not leveled any alt yet. Next one in the list is my warrior who is enchanter and skinner then my paladin who is miner and blacksmith. So I just did they're artefacts and some entry level profession quest. 

Since then I've done a lot of world quest (which kept me busy, got good rewards and are actually fun), I've done tons of questing in Suramar which is my favorite zone so far.  At the beginning I had a hard time in that zone but now I'm fairly comfortable pretending I'm a nightborne, grappling and navigating around except for one elite part of the city which still is challenging. I have leveled and geared my followers (epic 830 which is a little low now that I have 850 mission), I got artefacts for all my druid specs and I managed to progress to the end of the Falanaar tunnel with my withered army, so I'm almost through solo content which leads me to group content and that's back to the subject of my post.

This expansion I feel like it's an expansion of love and I'll tell you why. First hint of that is the join scenario in Assault of the broken shore, two full raid, one horde and one alliance progressing together to rescue Tirion and his Argent dawn, boy he must have smiled when he saw us fighting together. Blizzard tried to convince Alliance that Horde betrayed them during that scenario but come on nobody bought that, Sylvanas blew her horn so the alliance had plenty of time to retreat and they would even had the time to rescue Wrynn since Fel Reaver 2.0 was one shot by the king. But hey, Greymane and Sylvannas they have a history so let them bicker but me I'm seeing the big picture. I fought both with horde and alliance during the invasions and they are all my bros (except forsaken, even my tauren had cold sweat when he visited Undercity). 

I've been playing WoW just before wrath came out so I'm used to competing for nodes and tagging as much mob as I can to complete quest. But this time even if I would want to be a jerk I wouldn't be able to. Mobs are shared within faction, rares, nodes and quest objectives are open to all. So I surprised myself stunning a mob attacking a horde player or helping another kill his mob instead of stealing his node. Hey why not, we are all bros, no? Playing in the world, I didn't see a single jerk, I thought to myself: "They must be all doing group contents or harassing low level on PvP server".

I eventually had to do some dungeons, I did normal when I could and heroics from time to time but everything went smoothly so I was thinking, it's too easy, that's why there is no drama. Then the Raid Finder came. People where talking shit, making lewd comments about Il-gynoth and such but except the random comment like "Oh half the raid is gonna die to this mechanic" (which in fact happened) or "Why DPS sucks so bad and why are they purposely standing in the fire" I didn't heard much negative stuff. One time we did Dragons of nightmare but some people where complaining that one of the tank was dumb and didn't understand the mechanics so they started a vote to kick that tank (even though we one shot the boss). I admit I voted yes but only so we could get over with it but anyway the vote didn't passed. People were like "Who cares, its raid finder, stop complaining". So I pinched myself and thought to myself I've witnessed a once in a lifetime anomaly.

And then this weekend I did my first mythic. I have two dungeons mythic only that I unlocked this week in Suramar and there is Karazan that is coming in the next patch that I absolutely wanna try so I wanted to get my feet wet. I had a mythic dungeon quest in Hall of valor so I read the adventure guide and queued for an heroic as quick practice (which took only 10 min as dps). It was tougher than I expected, I died at least once on thrash but no wipe and it was a painless run. Plus I realized it was the only dungeon I haven’t done in heroic because I got the Legion dungeon hero achievement. So I read the strategy thoroughly on wowhead, trying to find out which mechanic was different on mythic and how I could do better and I queued on group finder.

It took some time but I got accepted in a group and we managed to grab an healer and a tank while I was doing world quest waiting. When we got a group I realized I had to get to the portal, fortunately I was in Stormheim questing and our group leader was a warlock. We started and... wiped on thrash. Our healer apologized and our warrior tank said not to worry. We slowly progressed to the second boss, during that time I was on the low end of DPS and again I died on thrash. I was starting to worry and already I was like: "Oh well at least I tried, I'll try to hang around as much as I can before they kick me". We wiped a couple of time on second boss then the healer quit and said to get a better healer. Next healer we had was solid and we managed to get to the last boss. It went much smoother, I wasn't on the verge of dying every second so I had more time to concentrate on my DPS and I realized I didn't switch my trinket that's why I wasn't proccing (I had my agility trinkets). So I was climbing back to the top of the dps chart but we wiped on Odin like five time and the healer was showing signs of impatience, I think his friends were waiting for him, then he quit without a word. It took a couple of minutes, some healer declined and I thought it was game over. Meanwhile the tank and his DK bro were fooling around with toys and pretending to fight. Then a healer came and we managed to down the last boss. All that took two hours, I got no loot but I had fun and I learned a lot, not just about how to prepare (I had no flask, no food buff and the wrong trinket) or how to avoid certain mechanics but how people are nicer then what I was expecting from experience.


While I never doubted that we could triumph against the legion no matter what, I now think that if we all stand together, Horde and Alliance, and that if player continue to be nice, patient and helpful to each others, nothing would be able to stand against us, no legion, no old gods, no titans what's not or elementals horrors from outer space. Oh I hear you and I know what you are saying: there will be content drought, people will quit, wow will die, winter is coming and here will be sucks on top of sucks for everyone. But until then, dear reader, enjoy our legion of love!