Monday Random Thoughts

- After last weeks debacle with blackhands arm I did not do LFR on any alts this weekend.

- I would only end up being screwed again and lets face it, no one likes that.

- Even more so no one likes customer service that does everything but service the customer.

- So I figured I would do something I had not done in a long while.

- I leveled an alt.

- With the awesome leveling this expansion it was nice to do it again.

- They really did a bang up job with the leveling experience this expansion.

- Thanks to flying it was even faster than I remembered.

- Totally forgot I had about 20 of those mission flasks that gives +300% to experience for 15 minutes.

- Or the 20% extra we can get from the garrison vendor.

- Just leveled straight out with none of that and just my rested to work with.

- I made it from 92 to 100 in one sitting.

- I was still rested when I hit 100.

- It took around 3 hours and 30 minutes to do those 8 levels.

- So... yeah.   I did not need any bonuses from anything.

- It was actually perfectly smooth with just rested.

- I was able to get to the end of the zones, gather all the followers, and then move along perfectly.

- I guess if you wanted to speed it up and not get the end of zone reward for a free blueprint and all the followers you could do it much faster.

- That is just not me, I have to get all the followers as I level because I know I would not go back for them.

- With flying you could basically move from objective to objective.

- It made it feel very efficient and enjoyable.

- I might actually go back and level some more now that I have flying for the lower characters too.

- The only thing I dread is the garrison building up again on a new alt.

- Leveling all those followers, buildings, etc.

- But I had no problem.

- I also had 9 of those +1000 garrison resource things from missions to pass to an alt.

- And 5 of those +50 item level to a follower things to pass along.

- So it made the "hit 100" hate a lot less hateful for me.

- I stopped leveling because I started to hate hitting max level.

- The idea of building a garrison from scratch killed me.

- Of leveling followers I already leveled 10 times already on other characters killed me.

- Of basically feeling like I was so far behind it would take forever to catch up.

- That was the biggest downfall of garrisons if you ask me.

- You always felt like you needed to play catch up, or at least I did.

- As soon as I hit 100 I went to nagrand, had hit 100 in spires and finished spires before moving on, and did just enough to get the 3 followers from there.

- I then did the DPS proving grounds, as I leveled as a windwalker on my monk and had no tanking gear.

- As per standard, DPS proving grounds was no issue what so ever.

- I then decided to give the tanking proving grounds a chance, as a fresh 100 with only 3 650 pieces I had passed over and leveling gear, for DPS, otherwise.

- I was actually worried, I had not tanked on my monk since week one of SoO really.

- I finished ToT with my monk as my main tank and the day SoO came out we stepped into normal (now heroic) and I got my ass handled to me by the third boss.

- Had no trouble on the first, none on the second, but the third boss, when the tank needed to go in and there was this one hit that hit for 600K, and I only had 500K life, there was nothing I could do.

- You might not remember but when it first came out you could not decrease it.

- You had to be able to take the hit.

- It could not be absorbed either, so guard was useless.

- It was a pure hit and if you did not have 600K health, you died.

- So I died, I switched to my bear who had no issue with it and never went back to my monk.

- A few weeks later they made it so absorbs worked and now even a monk could take the hit.

- Too late for me, I had already given up on the monk.

- Side note, we still downed it that night, I just did not go in.

- So you didn't "need" to go down.

- I still hated they added a mechanic that a low health tank, who is low health by design, could not handle it unless they are over geared.

- One of those "oops" moments where something, some how, escaped the designers.

- Not sure how.

- And it was not like my monk was under geared.

- It tanked all of normal (now heroic) ToT and the first 8 heroic (now mythic), so it was not like it was under geared.

- If anything, it was over geared to start normal (now heroic) SoO.

- Sorry, I am sounding bitter.

- Probably because I am.

- I was having fun playing a monk tank and that ruined it.

- Oh, back to the proving grounds.

- So it had been a long time since I tanked.

- I took serenity for my level 100 talent.

- Played around with my binds a little.

- And then attempted the proving grounds with no bonus armor gear at all.

- Hot damn I forgot how many buttons monk tanks had.

- My fingers were all over the place like a mad man.

- I loved it, an active play style class, just as all classes should be.

- I felt like I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

- Probably because I didn't, it had been so long.

- Cleared through bronze with no problem, do not think my health ever dipped below 95%.

- If it even got that low.

- Silver was a bit more of a challenge, but I was moving along nicely.

- Love all the monk movement.

- Love my ox so much I want to give it a big hug.

- Interrupts, movement, knockdowns, slows, additional taunt thanks to the ox, xuen taunt and DPS if needed and I called it, oh my the tools I have.

- While I did hit a few rough patches and needed to be a little more proactive with my own survival in silver, I managed it easily.

- I have now done the tank challenge on all tanks, DK, warrior, paladin, druid and monk, and I can say, by long and far, the monk tank was the easiest one to do it on.

- Out of practice, did not level as a tank as I did with the other four, and it still was so much easier on my monk.

- So I figured, let me try gold, this is kind of fun.

- I did not manage gold.

- According to the game at least I didn't.

- According to me, I did.

- Not even sure how I failed it.

- I made it to the 10th round, I was at roughly 60% health the healer was at 100% health and there was 15 seconds left on the timer and suddenly the "you have failed" message popped up.

- Excuse me?

- I am alive, the healer did not even have one mob remotely close to her and she was at 100% health, and the few mobs that were alive were on me and well handled.

- Heck, I would have even killed them all well before the 15 seconds was up.

- So how did I fail?

- Does the tank challenge have one of those exploding things like the DPS challenge does and I missed it?

- I do not ever recall seeing that one before and I have done it before on other characters.

- Or am I a victim, once again, of some stupid bug.

- Needless to say, making it to round 10, and beating it, which in reality is what I did, with no tank gear was kind of fun.

- And a little bit of a challenge for someone like me that was never great at monk tanking to begin with and was way out of practice.

- So I had fun with it.

- After that I figured it was dungeon time.

- But not as a tank, want to get gear first.

- So I set loot to brewmaster and started doing some dungeons as a windwalker.

- I did the 5 timewalker dungeons first.

- Got a whole 2 pieces of loot in 5 dungeons, how exciting.

- I must say I really suck as a windwalker.

- I know it is hard to tell in timewalkers, some people will say, but it really isn't.

- Your gear is balanced out so unless you are stacking "perfect" gear for it, everyone is on an even playing level and all that matters is skill.

- And skill wise, I sucked compared to everyone else.

- In comparison, on my hunter I rarely see myself doing less than 60% damage just hitting anything, most times 80% or more of the damage on boss fights.

- I greatly out skill your average pug goer.

- So being last on my monk, with the average pug goer, shows that I really am a little bit on the major league suck side.

- But by the 5th dungeon I was getting the hang of it.

- I was "with " the pack instead of well below it.

- Woot woot, I am finally "average" on my monk and all it took was 5 timewalker dungeons.

- I might have only won a couple of pieces of gear, but I bought a few more with the badges from the dungeon, and got a 700 item from my cache, so I was on the way to gearing up.

- I was also now high enough of an item level to enter a heroic.

- So I started the legendary quest line with sky reach and moved on to the others with direct queue.

- The groups I got were mostly good.

-  One run had an OP hunter doing 70K, one had an OP tank that was top DPS, and the others looked like the basic group of people that were there because they needed to be there, just like me.

- The only "issue" I had was in the first one, skyreach.

- We wiped on the third boss 3 times, the healer said it was because we were not killing the birds right.

- I said, with one ranged and the low numbers we are all doing, ignore the adds, kill the boss.

- They argued with me saying they kept being killed by 5 or more birds on them.

- I said, that is because you are killing them, leave them alone.

- After some back and forth I got them to at least give it a try my way, and we killed it.

- There were only three birds up when it died.

- See, don't kill the birds.

- Why do I have to debate about everything with people.

- I surely don't know it all, but if you are going to argue with me, at least have the common courtesy of doing it when you are right.

- I hate arguing with people that are wrong and will not accept that fact.

- After the fight no one said anything.

- You would have thought at least one of them would have mentioned that the first time we killed no birds we downed it.

- Either way, the rest of the runs were smooth.

- As the runs went on my DPS steadily increased, based on practice no doubt.

- It is not like I won any gear, because I didn't.

- Until the last dungeon where I won a weapon with a gem slot, but that was when I was done anyway.

- Even squeezed in a world boss and won nothing and coined gold.

- Got the 680 ring and was all was done with dungeons.

- Finished all my tanaan stuff and killed a bunch of rares to get a few baleful pieces.

- When all was said and done, from 92 to 100 and the 680 ring, took me 8 hours total.

- I spent longer at 100 than to get to it.

- And I logged off with everything in my garrison being a level 3 building already, so that is one hurdle out of the way.

- Also started up the shipyard and have 5 of the 15 missions needed to get to level 2 already.

- Now to remember to log into that alt each time I am on to level the followers.

- Which I know I will forget.

- I was 658 when I logged out.

- Now to start collecting stones and doing the LFRs for the first time.

- Or maybe I will just say screw it and level another alt.

- I think I am going to get a few more into the expansion, up to 92, and let them start collecting rested and garrison resources.

- All while my other characters collect more of those +50 follower pieces, +1000 garrison resource pieces, and whatever else I can send their way.

- If only I could send follower gear upgrades otherwise.

- Now that would rule.

- I think alts should have recruited followers at max level.

- That would have made the alt process more enjoyable.

- I dread having to level them all again.

- Nothing is more annoying than having to do something you already did when it wasn't fun the first time.

- Well, it was fun the first time.

- But it really isn't after that.

- So that was basically my whole weekend.

- That and one alt raid run that I tanked the last 2 bosses I needed to on normal.

- Would you believe, not sure how it worked out, but even if I killed archie a while ago, I had never tanked Soc or Tyrant on normal.

- Weird huh?

- I guess a main tank was always around when we killed them.

- Oh well, now I have killed them on my tank on normal at least.

- Maybe in a few weeks I might be killing them on my monk.

- Who knows.

- And remember, I have not even looked into BoEs or any crafted gear yet.

- So I think 658 on day one is okay.

- More so when you consider no raids yet, no BoEs, and no world boss loot.

- Just what I was lucky enough to scrounge up, which was very little.

- Most of that item level is all thanks to the timeless vendor gear.

- Someone said he sold weapons, I did not see weapons.

- Maybe that is the BC one only and I have to wait for the BC event.

- So I shall wait.

- I am in no rush.

- I think that will be the key to trying to enjoy the game again.

- As weird as it sounds, it will be to "not" play it as much.

- Have a great day.