5.4 Plan of Attack

Today I'll be logging in when I get home from work, if there are no major errors that delay things, and as always I have a plan of attack.  Everything I do in game I always try to think out ahead of time.  I'm one of those people that always love to have a plan and a backup plan in case the plan goes off task.

While your plan of attack for the new patch might be different I thought I would share mine.  It is what I believe will benefit me most and maybe it might point out something you forgot and help you streamline your plan of attack.  Or maybe you can point something out to me that I am missing so I can make my quest to make the move into 5.4 nice and smooth.

First off, things I will NOT be doing on day one.

Pet Tournament:

Going to leave this one for now.  I imagine it will take a little bit of time to find the right teams to best handle the matches I will have to win and while I have read a few good guides on the battles it can wait.  It is something I do want to do however as there are four celestial pets to be had and of course I must have them.   On the grand scale of things we are going to be raiding this tier for 6 months at the shortest and 12 months at the longest so I will have more than ample free time later to get this done.  No rush.  It is a weekly anyway, by the time the weekend comes I should have the time to play around with it and even if I don't it would not be a huge loss to push this one off for a tiny bit.  There are only 4 pets anyway so I only need to do it for 4 weeks to get them all which means I will have more than enough time to get them later.

Proving Grounds:

This is another thing I am going to be waiting on until later.  It is filler content for something to do when you are bored or when you are trying out new specs or talents maybe.  With all that needs to be done on day one this is about as far from mind as possible.  I said this in another post and I believe it needs repeating.  The proving grounds is better suited for a middle of the raid patch.  Not even sure why it is here and not in 5.5 where it would fit better.  It just makes people try to squeeze it in now, when it could be welcome content later as a change of pace.  I think it is a misjudgement to release it at the same time as a raid patch.

Valor Capping:

Being there is no valor gear this was moved down the list.  Most of my characters are over 2,000 valor points anyway which means I can not cap them even if I wanted to.  I need to win some gear to make some room by spending valor on upgrades.  Even if valor has fewer uses I am still tied by the obsession to make the most of my time playing that I would need to cap valor on one character before I start trying to get any on another.  It is all about effectiveness for me, always.  So my main will pass on valor for now and one of my alts will go and spend a tiny bit later in the week so they can cap and give the bonus to the others.  Or, if I get lucky in the raid tonight and win two pieces I can upgrade them both and have room to cap on my hunter.  I think I would like that idea best.  Gear on your main is always a good thing, but valor capping is far from my mind on day one.

Crafting Patterns:

I will need to get my leather worker, tailors, blacksmith and engineer out to the island so they can get their drop to start making the new special crafting material for the new stuff.  I have enough cloth, ore, leather, to last a while but as my main is non of these professions I will not be getting drops on day one.  Unless I get the other stuff done quick then they might make an island appearance. Will it set me behind some?  Maybe as I do not know when I will get these characters in there searching for the drops but I am not stressing it.  By day two they should all find their way there.  As anyone will tell you, mains come first.  "If" I have time I might drag my leather worker there as that is the one I would get the most use out of if anything as my most used characters lately are my hunter, my druid and my monk.

Noodle Cart:

How much more fitting they put a noodle cart into the game people call like kung fu panda?  Have a goose pushing it maybe.  Either way this will be a quest line that requires a little work like doing the jade serpent dungeon.  So while I want to get the recipe and do it, I do not think I will have the time on day one to get it done.  I will however make sure to pick up the starting quest on the island.

What I will be doing:

0) Update addons.

Who reading this has ever logged in on patch day without updating addons and having so much stuff broken?  Oh, all of us I am guessing.  I always say I have to do this first and oft times forget even when thinking about it.  This is step 0.  Do it before logging in.  Broken addons slow you down and grumpy does not like being slow and inefficient.

1) Get 3 warforged seals.

I am parked right in front of the NPC to trade this in when I logged out.  It is in the same place we got the elder charms and then the mogu runes, we can now get the warforged seals from the same person.  It is important to get them before going to the island.  I'll be killing the celestial world bosses so might as well get a coin to use on them and the legendary only boss right?

2) Make sure I pick up the cloak quest.

I want to be on the legendary quest when I head to the island, so make sure I have it before going there of course.

3) Head to the island and start killing.

From all I read it should not be much of a problem to gather up 5,000 timeless coins and day one is really the best time to get a jump on easy coins as everyone will be killing everything and you can share on kills.  If you are like me and want the mount you will need 100,000 coins for that, so might as well take advantage of the filled area with lots of stuff dying real fast to get as many as you can now when it is easier.  The 5,000 for the quest and more for later.

4) Kill the world bosses.

Groups for the celestial world bosses should not be a problem even on my smaller sized server but I do have worries that the legendary only one might not see a group happening for a while.  If I had to guess I would not be surprised if less than 200 people on my server are even up to date on the cloak quest.  And that might be over estimating.  Off to open raid for that.

Remember those coins I got before coming to the island?  Well, this is the time to use them.  You can use one on any celestial boss.  They all share the same exact loot table and all count as one boss, in terms of loot anyway.  This means while you can kill all four in one week, and you will need to for the legendary quest line, you can only loot them once a week.  Not once each, once from the loot table.  Being they share a loot table that means you only need to kill one celestial a week.  They drop 553 loot and the legendary only boss drops 559 loot.  One coin for the celestial boss an one for the legendary boss.  Last coin is being saved for the real raid, not flex, weapon boss hopefully.   Getting the coins before I came here saved me time from having to run back to get them.

5) Get my legendary cloak.

I am so glad to see a legendary that we get before we raid and not after we have already finished the raid.  It makes more sense to have the legendary item help you down the raid than as a reward for downing it.  Well, that is one way to look at it at least, I am sure many would disagree.  With the four celestial world bosses down and 5,000 timeless coins collected it is time to finish off the quest line.  If all goes well based on what I have read I should be able to do this all within an hour to an hour and a half at most after logging on.

6) Do some exploring.

If my handy notes are updated I should be able to find all the goodies nice and easy.  So whatever I did not get to during collecting my 5,000 coins I will get to now.  Open all chests, exploring all areas.

7) Collect loot.

While the 496 pieces will be all but useless for most of my characters the 535 upgrade pieces will be great for all of them.  With the exception of my hunter I do not have any 535 level items on any characters as my hunter is the only one to down anything on heroic.  So I will collect as many of the 496 pieces as I can but I will not use them until I upgrade pieces to make them 535.  My plate wearers are the ones in most need of gear.  But I might prioritize my druid or monk first if they do not get lucky with flex.  Then my plate tanks get all the first 535 upgrades as they need to catch up most.  The 535 upgrade piece is BoP but the 496 is not.  So I can farm the 496 pieces on my main, which will make it easier, and then just go get the 535 piece on the character that needs it to upgrade it.  Really wish the 535 piece was not BoP but in a way I can understand why it is not.  A person like me with as many alts as I have on one server could effectively deck out one character in all 535 pieces on day one a lot easier if I were willing to put in the effort being all characters can get one 535 loot upgrade per week, at least that is how I read it.

8) If there is time bring in the alts.

Being it is day one I can be pretty sure the celestial bosses will be going down left and right.  If there is time I am going to drag as many alts over just to get a kill in and a chance at 553 gear of course.  In a perfect world I should be able to get them all there to get a kill in before raid time.

9) Raid baby raid.

Last but not least it should be time for raiding.  Today will be flex day and we will try to bring as many people in as possible.  I am guessing at least two 20 man teams, maybe even more, will be heading into flex on day one.  I am expecting that my hunter will not be in either of them however.  Being we are still at a shortage of tanks I might be called on to tank.  Normally we do not run two teams at the same time and our main tanks all have multiple tanks so they tank for multiple teams but that won't work now as they can not run two at the same time.  Either way, it will be fun to get a start on the new content and flex makes for the ultimate testing platform.

10)  Start the evaluations.

The 25 man team and additional 10 mans will now be different thanks to flex raiding.  We will keep detailed reports and evaluate everyone in the flex raids to see who deserves to be on those teams.  Is that too much for a take it easy casual guild?  I think not.  It just means we can do flex if people are not ready.  I am sure this will help the 25 man more than anything else.  I am really looking forward to that.  Maybe we can get better as a 25 man this time around with the help of flex as a learning tool.  I am really looking forward to that.

I plan to spend a good 6 hours on tonight.  Might seem like a lot, but it really isn't for a patch day.  I am sure there will be many that spend a great deal more than that, but if all goes well when day one ends I will have the legendary on my main, a few bosses down in flex, and every one of the crafters the patterns (if I had time) or at least a celestial kill on a few.  Maybe if I get lucky I might even have a few new pieces for some alts.

Advanced look at day 2:

1) Get those near capped players over to the shado-pan assault vendors.

I have more than a few players that can use some 522 gear.  So it is time to buy a few pieces, at least enough to get them under 2K so they can cap.  There are a couple, namely my plate wearers, that can even use some of the 489 trinkets and they all have enough valor set up ahead of time to get them.  So day two is spend that valor and justice to get some pieces for the characters that need them.

2) World boss kills.

I expect that on day two the world bosses will still be going down at a reasonable pace.  By day three on my server it should calm down, usually does, can never find a group for anything by day three.  So getting all my remaining 90s there today will be very important.

3) Get those crafting recipes.

Now is the time I will make the extra effort to get those patterns for my leather worker, black smith and tailors.  That is if they did not get super lucky when (and if) I ran them over to the island on day one.

4) Pick a character and valor cap it.

At this point I should have at least one character under 2K valor which means I can cap someone to make the rest of the week better in terms of valor rewards for my other characters.

5) Raiding again.

Depending on what tuesday looks like, wedensday might be the real raid for 25 man.  If not we could always run another 25 flex with the people that need it, continue if we did not down the 4, or start normal mode 10s.  So much to choose from raiding and I still have no clue what we are going to do.  Flex has opened a whole new door and it remains to be seen what that will lead to.  It is all up in the air and for the first time ever I do not have a set plan in mind because I don't know what to expect from flex difficulty.

For at least the next few days things should be busy and interesting.  Long term goals of course are all the island achievements, the 100,000 coins for the mount and the bloody coin collecting for that mount.  As a non-PvPer that should prove extra interesting. I would not be surprised if there were some win trading events that pop up for that one.  I'll have to join in on that those.  Might be the only way to get it for me.  I'm looking forward to a busy night and a lot of stuff to do for the near future at least.  New patches always seem like so much to do.  This is what we call a good problem.

Happy 5.4 day everyone.