A Legendary Undertaking

Part of enjoying the game for everyone no matter how they like to play the game or whatever they tend to take joy from is to set goals for themselves.  From just leveling, to leveling professions, to PvPing, to getting achievements, to raiding, to pet battling, what have you.  We all find what we like to do, set a goal to do it, and put into it whatever efforts we can to get it done.

Roughly 6 months ago (guesstimating here) I had four characters with the legendary cloak and one on the runestone line that happened to be a tank.  Of the four characters two where hunters (ranged DPS), one was a rogue (melee DPS) and one was a priest (healer) with the one character getting close being a monk (tank).

I then hit complete burnout on the LFR.  The people in it had just gotten to me.  Even if I do not recall anyone saying anything offending or mean to me, because I was usually one of the better players so there was never any reason to complain about anything I did as you fly under the radar like that, it was the way I saw others being treated that bothered me. 

I didn't like the attitudes of people, the disrespect they showed each other, the bickering, the waiting, the ninja pulls, the people intentionally trying to wipe us, the people entering the raid in roles they were not, the meter spamming so bad players can think they were good just because they did okay in an LFR, there was (and still is) absolutely nothing to like about the LFR.  So I stopped trying to get the cloak on the last character I really wanted to get it on at the time, my monk.

See, my personal goal was I wanted to finish the quest line on one of each respective role.  Just like I leveled characters on both sides because I wanted to see the whole story I wanted to complete all four ending quest bosses for the legendary so I can see all the fights.

It did not happen because I finally ran into a boss I could not beat.  No, it was not the end of the quest line boss, it was the community boss.  The hardest boss in the game to deal with.  There are no strategies for how to beat the community boss.  It can not be reasoned with because it is unreasonable, and as the saying goes, some people just like to watch the world burn, and it started to seem like everyone in the LFR wanted to watch the world burn.

Perhaps their thing, the thing that kept them playing, was to try and ruin the game for everyone else in it.  Just like the guy that pet battles all day trying to get to his 5000 wins, they wanted to see how many people they could get to rage quit in an LFR because they were doing all they could to ruin the experience for everyone.

I could write an entire post asking the question about that alone.  Is that as viable a play style as any other?  Do they have as much right to play the game the way they want to as we have to play the game the way we want to?  It would make for an interesting article of course and maybe, just maybe, for as much as I hate those people, I might have to take their side, reluctantly, and say perhaps they have the right to be a jackass just as much as I have the right not to be one.  But as I said, that is a conversation for another day.

Those people made me quit.  My goal, as I said, was to have one of each type of role finish the legendary quest line so I could experience it all.  Honestly I think there should be an achievement in game for beating all four of the final legendary challenges.  I am sure there are many players that have already done it, but I am not one of them.  But I will be some day.

That was my legendary undertaking and it has been six months since I worked my way toward it.  Until last week that is.

I went into some LFRs on my monk and wanted to see if I could get a few runestones.  It did not happen because the couple I did I was not lucky enough to get any in and none were the ones with the so called (but not always) guaranteed drops.

In the last week I dabbled in the LFR again a bit, more than I had in the previous 6 months combined.  I healed on my druid for the first time in 5 years.  I DPSed on my monk, because even if my monk is geared to tank and will do the tank challenge I do not tank the LFR, that is also why my druid is now healing, because I refuse to tank the LFR.  And last but not least I changed a few talents on the mage I had not really played in a while and decided to try it out with my whooping 528 item level and quite honestly I was surprised how quick I was able to find a rhythm with it and found myself topping out at 160K on most fights making me understand why mage is still considered the flavor of choice if you are looking for an easy class that can put out decent numbers.

Maybe the LFR will scare me away again but my legendary undertaking is once again going to start up.  I am going to get that tanking cloak and do that tanking challenge.  I will try my best to not let the dregs of humanity drag me down again like they did before.  I will try to make sure that they do not make me begin to hate the game with the same passion I used to love it like they did before.  I will try to finally finish off what I had left stalled around 6 months ago because I let them win, I let them chase me away from the LFR.

However, I think I want to step up my game on my legendary undertaking.  Not just do each quest.  I want to do each class.  Do I have enough time for that?

Can I survive long enough in the LFR world that blizzard does nothing to moderate?  Can I keep putting up with the people that ruin the game for not just me but basically everyone I have ever spoken to in one way or another.  Can I do it?

Lets take a look how close I am with all the classes, only going to count a few of the multiples that I intend to get the cloak on.  I will not be mentioned the extras I have no intention of getting it on like my second mage, my second shaman, my second death knight, etc.  Lets look at the progress of where each class stands on their legendary undertaking.

My Main Characters, A Hunter:

Stage: Complete

This is the only one that will really be a story, the rest will just be summations of where they stand on the quest line and maybe a little about how the handled the last battle, for those that have the cloak.

Now, this is a hunter focused blog for the most part even if I do ramble about everything.  My main is a hunter, always has been.  From when I first started in BC, so when I came back in wrath and started a new character, it has always been a hunter.  There will be 4 hunters mentioned here, but that does not mean I might not do more at some point.

As my main my hunter got the cloak first and got it as early as possible to get it, meaning as soon as 5.4 came out, I logged in and got it.  But it went through the longer route.  I had to deal with having 18 sigils of one type before I got 10 of the other because they had not fixed it to award the other if you already had enough of one.  This was also because one type dropped in MV and the other type dropped in HoF and ToES, not either dropping in any.  So of course I had more of one than the other.

This hunter also had to deal with six weeks of valor capping for the part of the quest when we needed to collect valor.  This was also when those six weeks of collecting valor made sense, it was a time filler.  Now they just need to remove that step of the legendary line because all it is now is a waste of time for people trying to play catch up.  Blizzard really needs to notice that and remove that part of the quest all together.  It was needed when first doing the line to extend the length of the content, it is not needed now.

This hunter did not have much of an issue with secrets even if I did need to do LFR to get them mostly because we were stuck on horridon for the longest time and it was worse when it came to the runestone part of the quest.  While we were clearing ToT by the time I got to that stage, I had no luck with drops what so ever.  I once went a full 6 weeks with no runestones.  And no, do not say that the last boss is a guaranteed drop because it wasn't. 

If anything the only reason it is a guaranteed drop now is because of people like myself bitching and complaining that we had not got one in six weeks.  The drop rate for runestones was nearly as bad as trying to find a moonstalker pelt back in the day.  If you remember what quest I am talking about, I feel sorry for you, you went through the same hell I did.  Even when they changed it to the guaranteed drop off the last boss, that was the only one I got each week.  It felt like it took forever.  Because it did.

When I went in for the big battle I believe I had a 524 item level and I went in blind.  Just figured I would do what it is I do as a hunter and blow his butt up.  Did not quite work as intended and I needed to try something different.  After a couple more attempts and switching a few abilities I gave up and said, let me just go back do doing what I do best.

I switched back to my default spec, my default talents, and went after it the way I go after everything as a hunter, with guns blazing.  The same as I tried the first time, but now it was 5 or so attempts later and tricks were not working for me, so back to basics.  I actually ate, flasked and used a pot this time too.  I beat him like a red headed stepchild.  He did not even have a chance to summon adds or mirror images.  I hit him so hard he did not know what hit him. 

Maybe if I had not dabbled around and if I had given it 100% the first attempt instead of going at it with the approach of "lets see what he does first" I would have one shot it.  Either way, as my main, it was not really a problem at all.  The only problem was me trying to change something to fix something that was not broken instead of just doing what I do best as a hunter, kill stuff. 

I went from 524 item level to 529 item level with that one piece.  Sweet.  When the time came to upgrade it, it was just a matter of logging in and killing a few bosses that were being chain pulled at the time anyway.  Kind of anticlimactic after such a long journey and a major let down for the ending of changing the epic cloak into a legendary one.  The entire quest felt like a journey worth doing, at the time, and the end just felt like a "kill 4 giant animals" quest.  Kind of boring.

2nd Hunter:

Stage:  Collecting Valor

My second hunter is a horde hunter and as my only horde max level character and a kind of broke one at that (only 29K) I never gemmed or enchanted anything but I did reforge.  I have no intentions of raiding with it because I do not have a raiding guild, so why go out of my way.  I can still go well above and beyond your average LFR player even without investing in those things and that is all this character will ever do unless someone horde wants me to transfer to their guild and help me catch up, then I will be raid ready for them because I will have a reason to be.

I handled its journey to the legendary cloak the same way as I did with its gearing.  No real rush.  No raid team I need to be my best for so I play the character once in a blue moon.   As it stands, I am 240 valor away from completing the collecting valor part of the quest line.  It is one of 3 characters I can potentially finish that part of the quest line with this week.

3rd Hunter:

Stage: Complete

This character was created on the same server as my main hunter with the intention of having a second hunter raid ready because, well, that is the only thing I am decent at playing.  I made him the same race but not the same professions because I wanted some burst on demand (engineering) and the ability to disenchant all that junk I get from killing rares and getting gear I no longer needed (enchanting).

As such I speed leveled him the way only I can, super fast, and I worked my ass off at 90 to get him geared and done with the quest line.  With a little luck he not only managed to collect the things faster thanks to catch up mechanics but he won both battle grounds on one try, something I can only say ever happens when I play my priest.  The biggest speed bump in the whole process was waiting 3 weeks for the new 3000 valor you needed to gain (at least it was not 6000 any more), once again I ask, why is that even still part of the quest line?  I believe I ended up going from 1 to 90 and having the cloak and a 562 item level in less that 5 days played.  But do not hold me to that, do not remember exactly, but it sure as hell was really lightning fast and probably was even faster than that.

When it came to the final battle, I had been there and done this before on a hunter, and a considerable less geared hunter at that.  This character blew it up so fast you would have thought I was killing a level 43 rare out in the old world and not a boss that was part of the legendary quest line.  Soloing the dread ship on timeless island proved a harder battle than this.

4th Hunter:

Stage: Collecting Valor

This is a really old hunter, but one I rarely ever played.  Just to give you an idea, it only passed 2 days played this week.  It is one of the three characters I have that will, if I play him which is the only one of those three I can assure you I will, finish the valor collection this week.

So yes, I have the intention of having 4 hunters with the cloak before expansion end.  This one, while alone in the world, I have a little more dedication to do, and because it is alliance unlike my horde one, I might even drag him in for some farm stuff so he can get a piece or two if I am not needed on one of my stronger characters or needed to tank.

1st Priest:

Stage: Complete

This character kind of got their legendary cloak without ever even trying to do so.  Yes, I am serious.  I would join guild mates for LFR to help them get a faster queue and just stayed for the run.  As such I collected a lot of stuff and moved along the line.

When it came time for the big battle at the end she handled it like a champ despite the fact she was not raid geared at all.  She was used just for LFR and on the extremely rare occasion she was needed to heal.  Her entire raid experience this whole expansion was a few normal ToT kills and healing the first 9 bosses of ToT heroic.  That is it.

She beat the healing challenge with little to no problem.  She is a disc priest after all.

2nd Priest:

Stage: Collecting Valor

The 3rd of three characters that could complete their stage this week.  However, being this character is so rarely played it might not happen this week.  Lets put it this way, this character has been on the collecting valor phase since before my first character even had the legendary cloak.  Yeah, I play it that often.  But I do intend to finish it off at some point.  Doing the quest line as a healer is easy.  Fast queue times, perfect healing spec for LFR, and for the battlegrounds, which tends to be the hardest part of this entire legendary quest line after the waiting to collect valor part on a character you rarely play.

Rogue:

Stage: Complete

All I can really say about this is, WTF?  I hate playing a rogue or more so melee in general, I am not very good at it, and some how my rogue always ends up in the middle of everything I do.  It was my second 85 in cataclysm and my 3rd cloak recipient in mists.  For a character I do not play that is rather, odd.

I met the final battle in woeful condition.  I had not really gotten any better at playing a rogue and my gear was in desperate need of an upgrade.  Lets not even mention the fact I had two 502 weapons and an item level lower than my hunter did when it got there.  But at least I knew how to play a hunter and knew how to work its toolkit.

I wiped a little over 20 times if I remember correctly but with my skill level on a rogue and my gear level it was wearing, it is roughly what I would expect.  I did not really think I could beat this challenge in low gear on a character I am not all that good on but beside being always grumpy this elf has another fault, I am stubborn as a mule.

I kept making adjustments and moving my binds, just for this fight alone, until I was basically, I believe, getting the most I could out of the gear I had when it all fell together and I got the kill.  Unless something changes, which I doubt it will, this will go down as my most exciting memory of mists.  Because I beat a challenge that I had to work hard to do.  Sure, a better player might not have had the problems I did doing it with 502 gear, but for me, it was the most exciting experience of the expansion on the class I hate playing the most.  How funny is that?

Monk:

Stage: Runestones

Slowly, very very slowly, this character is moving forward with it.  The problem for this character is that I usually queue for a few LFRs at the same time on the rare moments I play it, and I will do the first 2 or 3 that pop up and then drop from the rest due to time reasons and I never seem to get the ones with guaranteed drops.  It has been on the runestone collection part since I had quit LFRs some 6 months ago.

Even if I never get to the goal of having every class having the cloak, which I would love to do, this one will get it so I can do the tank part.  Even if I have to put together a pug for a normal ToT clear, which actually might be a better idea.  Maybe I will do that.

Mage:

Stage: Secrets

My mage is one of those characters that slowly, and I do mean slowly is working their way to the cloak.  They do ToT wing 3 whenever I feel like trying to get a few secrets.  Why not ToT 4 or SoO 1 which has the guaranteed one?  Because I am in no rush, and I like using the coin on the second boss in ToT 3 because I am still trying to get that pet.  Over 200 total tries over all my characters so far now and still no pet.

Let me also make a little side note here for people that might interest them.  ToT 3 is the absolute best LFR to run.  I see better DPS in it than I do in SoO 4 or any other LFR for that matter.  All I can think is a lot of the better players are doing it to get their quick valor and a chance at not only that pet which sells for a ton, but the last boss also can drop a pet that is pretty powerful for pet battling.  I see better groups in ToT 3 than in any other LFR, even now and even if you do it on a monday, which I did it last night, and had 3 people over 400K in there.  Name one other LFR you ever see that, even early in the week, and I saw those numbers a day before reset.  As long as one tank can live through the maze (if you even get to that phase) this is an easy run.

Shaman:

Stage:  PvP - 0 Wins

If I could ever get past the PvP part of the quest line finishing the legendary quest line on my shaman will be a breeze.  It is a healer which means fast queue, I am good at playing it, which means I can be that 1 healer you always get that rules to LFR by doing 50% of the healing, and the last challenge, if doing it on my priest was any indicator, will be easy when this character gets there with a much higher item level than my priest had.

Druid:

Stage: Secrets

My poor druid should have had it already.  As a matter of fact it would have done the tank challenge if it had been there because it is a bear first and foremost and that legendary undertaking would have been done with a long time ago.

My druid just kind of got screwed that the catch up mechanics were not added until SoO came out.  Remember, I do not do the LFR on tanks so my druid only did normals.  It tanked a fair bit in the first tier and managed to get almost all the required sigils.  I think I needed 2 of one of them and that was it when ToT came out.  But ToT did not drop sigils like it does now.  If it had, by druid would have been done with the quest line already.  I tanked ToT a lot.  More than enough to get those last sigils, all the secrets and all the runestones during that time.

But it did not turn out that way.  I ended up getting the last sigils tanking SoO and then got hung up on the PvP part of the quest line. Which I just managed finishing.

So now I can finish it just tanking SoO, easy enough right?  But I do not want to wait that long, I want to speed it up which means I want to do the ToTs.  So there was a choice, use my kitty one button macro, which is more than ample to still be an LFR hero, but is boring a sin, or switch to healing which is something I had not done in forever.

When looking at it, DPS waits for an hour, healer waits for a minute, there really was not much of an option.  While doing it as DPS would have been stupid easy thanks to the feral one button rotation macro, the wait would drive me crazy.  I built myself a healing set and I am going to push this character through it as fast as I can along with the 4th hunter that will be doing PvP this week most likely.  So the question is, will my bear or my monk be the first tank to do the challenge?  My monk only need 6 runestones.  But it has only needed 8 for many months and only managed to get two in that time.  And also has to wait the DPS wait.  My druid very well could beat my monk to the cloak.

Do you want to know the best part of doing this on my druid?  When I get to the point where I need to beat the four celestial bosses I won't need groups.  I've already soloed all four of them on my bear.  Who needs a group when you are a bear god.

Warlock:

Stage:  PvP - 0 Wins

My first character through, the hunter, had issues with the PvP part.  My rogue has slightly bigger ones as did my monk and my mage.  Only my second hunter and my priest went in and had a good time of it.  But none of them can hold a candle to the nightmares my warlock has when he sleeps at night and thinks about PvP.  Do you know how horrible something needs to be to give a warlock nightmares?  Yeah, it is that scary.  Maybe some day.  But I really fear my locks luck in PvP.

Paladin:

Stage: ~the sound of crickets~

I do not even know if my paladin has turned the letter in yet to start the quest.  Seriously.  That is how little I have played it this expansion even if it has been max level for about a year and a half.  I just have not had any motivation to play it.  As I play as prot, and it seems to take forever to kill stuff, and it always seems like I am on the verge of dying, it is part a learn to play issue and part a gear issue because I have none.  I think the fact is it the only original class still sporting a green piece or two explains the gear issue.

So why did I list this higher on my list of characters that will get the cloak than the other two that I have not yet listed?  Because it has a secret weapon just waiting to be used.  That weapon is called healing.

Although the last time I healed on my paladin was while leveling in wrath I did maintain a complete healing set all throughout cataclysm despite never even having a healing spec.

In the grand scheme of things healing is just easier in the LFR.  Faster queue times, less disrespect as long as the bosses go down and people do not die, and of course, a much easier time pugging into other things because people always need healers.  That is how my healer got ToT heroic progression despite never having healed normal.  They asked, do you know how to heal, I said yeah, but I haven't been needed as a healer this tier, invite sent.  You do not even need to know what to do as a healer, just know how to heal and you get an invite.

So if I ever decide to work on my paladin the journey will not be that hard or that long.  If I put the effort into it and anyone that knows me, and read my rogue part here, know that when I set my mind to do something, I do it no matter what.

Thanks to timeless gear, and some tanking gear to help boost item level, I can easily get into SoO healing in LFR today if I wanted to and with some luck gear might not be too far behind.  That is why the paladin is on the list before others, because it can heal and that makes it attractive, even if I am out of practice.  Lets face it.  If you are willing to spend a few minutes reading, and asking a few people the right questions, learning the basics of how to play any class in any role is not really hard.  So I have no worries about it, I can and will be a capable healer, when the time comes.

Death Knight:

Status: Sigils

I think I am sitting at 10 of one and 2 of the other but being my main DK is a bank character I don't play it all that much.  I can easily DPS in my tank gear because I tank in DPS gear.  While it would not be perfectly itemized for DPS, it will be more than ample for LFR to do so in such gear.

If I ever wanted to wait the DPS wait, and play the role of melee, which I hate, it would not be a big deal on this character because I do not really need a different set of gear even if different trinkets would be nice, but with the timeless pieces I can have at least one DPS trinket.

Warrior:

Status: Sigils

I got a few sigils from the one time I tanked SoO normal.  That is all this character has done all expansion raid wise.  What is holding it back is I do not have a weapon to "pretend" to be arms or fury.  Unlike all other classes like my monk, druid and death knight being able to DPS in their tanking gear and my paladin having the ability to heal if I choose to, my warrior is screwed.  It is either tank or get myself another weapon and different gear.

This is why he is at the bottom of the list.  However, and this is a huge however, if I really wanted to, with the desperate need for tanks that is always going around I could just start pugging the starter raids, ToT and maybe even flex SoO to get my legendary quest needs while getting to stay as a tank.

Not sure how attractive this is as an option, but it is an option for sure.  I am not really a pug type person any  longer, I grew out of it, and it is rare I am ever in the mood to do so.   But I would prefer an organized group pug over the LFR any day.  I will not tank the LFR, but I would be willing to tank a pug.  Because this character has no other option but to be a tank, it is last on my list of getting the cloak.

A Legendary Undertaking:

I will absolutely finish what I originally set out to do from the start and complete all four of the celestial challenges.  The tank one is the only one I have left and with my monk so close and my druid healing now even if I get frustrated with the LFR again I believe I can still get that done.

So what is next on the challenge road once that is done, and I do consider it done as it will be.

I want to get the legendary cloak on at least one of every class before the expansion comes out. Will I have enough time to do that?  Will I be turned off by the LFR again and give up?  Who is to know, but having something to aim for is always fun and it is what we play for.  We play for a goal, no matter what that goal is, simple or complex.  For now, this is my legendary undertaking.  I want to complete the legendary quest line on all the classes.  I will not be the first to do it, I am sure hundreds have already, but I will still have something to keep me going through this horrible drought of content.  At least until I quit the LFR again. ;)