Monday Random Thoughts

- I have not purchased anything from the blizzard store in a while.

- But seeing the new arcane hippogryph makes me want to break open the wallet.

- If that becomes a store mount, which I hope it does so I can get it right away, I will buy that without a seconds thought.

- I love hippogryph mounts.

- But I think you guessed that.

- Color does not mean anything.

- It is a matter of looks and size.

- I think they are the perfect size for flying mounts.

- But to each their own.

- What do you think is the "right" size for a flying mount.

- Some things just do not match.

- Like a tauren on a plainstrider.

- But a gnome on a plainstrider is a match made in heaven.

- I like that combo.

- Speaking of gnomes if you happen to be a gnome fan getting that winter veil thing in your garrison that turns you into a festively dressed gnome has to be a favorite addition of yours.

- While I do not normally like small characters I do sometimes like to run around as a gnome.

- I change into one each time I go to do the holiday dailies.

- Just seems fitting.

- My priest did some "baggie" LFRs again this weekend for tomes, did a total of 3 wings, and 9 bosses, and got one tome.

- At this rate she should be done with the legendary just in time for the next expansion.

- Meanwhile another one of my characters who has not killed every boss the last two weeks is sitting pretty at 19.

- So I would guess they came in on a few in progress runs so maybe I did 11 bosses each week.

- So I get 19 in 22 bosses on one character and the other I have to be over 50 kills on thus far and have 5.

- Speaking of boss kills, did a normal this weekend on one of my characters I never even started the legendary on.

- Felt like wasted potential.

- But they needed a healer and I bought in a 673 healer.

- Low for normal you say?

- I say just right.

- One shot everything all the way to archie and I had poor, but acceptable healing numbers.

- 3 healed a 17 person group but still it seemed like as a shaman, which I was, there were not enough times for my mastery to really make my numbers soar.

- It was the first time this character was in HFC, had not even done LFR.

- Heck, had not even opened T2 yet.

- I had to be summoned there.

- Felt funny because I am one of those people that never need a summon, I am always there on my own.

- I guess I could have flown there but the summon was faster.

- I won a few pieces of gear and ended the run with 12 of the 13 bosses down at 686.

- Not a bad run at all.

- Sure it was mostly a guild run with people on alts and some pugs, but it was still awesome to one shot everything on alts like we did.

- Wish our heroic runs were that smooth.

- We still wipe sometimes on bosses that should have been one shot bosses for a long time.

- And the even funnier part is we wipe on some of the easiest bosses in there like reaver and iskar.

- Put it this way, if someone is having lag issues it is a 100% certainty that they will put the wind on them on iskar.

- Or they will DC the second they get the orb.

- Have you ever killed iskar on heroic without using the orb?

- We did, once.

- The person with the orb DCed, we started to run the fire through them and not heal them just to kill them on purpose.

- We did about 1/2 the fight without the orb because we had no choice.

- Wish the game code was smart enough to pass it, to anyone, the second someone disconnects from the game.

- But I'll admit that doing the boss with no orb was probably the most exciting fight we have done this expansion.

- Did you know if you time it right you can run behind the pillars and not get blown off by the wind?

- We had to use that strategy on that kill.

- Only lost one person to the three sets of winds were were orbless for.

- Speed bosses, abilities, leap of faith, you name it, we used every trick in the book.

- Having three druids for stampeding roar didn't hurt either.

- Was fun, you should try doing it sometime.

- If you do LFR you have a hell of a lot of practice with no one ever throwing the orb.

- I wonder why mechanics like that even make it into LFR.

- You would think blizzard should know by now that anything that requires a group to work as a team never works in random grouping.

- At least their toned down the abilities to not matter there, so that is something.

- Either way, the mechanic should never have been in LFR to begin with.

- Over all had a good weekend with the holiday stuff.

- Got a few medallions, a few elixirs, a few follower upgrade things, and some alts got lucky with some needed oil.

- Seems like only my less played alts need oil, my main is floating in the stuff and I have not done T2 since the opening month.

- My main has like 60K, my two more played alts have like 26K and 12K, and one less played alt that somehow managed to get the oil mission for being revered is at 6K.

- But any alt that does not have the oil platform is screwed and working on follower missions only to get oil.

- So needless to say getting oil at the "you did not win the mount" parting gift is a welcome sight.

- BTW, I did not win the mount yet.

- I am decorating my garrison on my main and opening boxes on my alts.

- I do not do them all every day, but get it done on at least 5 or 6 each day.

- Over the weekend I did it on 11 on day.

- I was bored.

- Doing it on a healer with a follower that tanks can get you into a lot of trouble, and fast.

- The follower kept getting knocked back into more mobs and I got my 8 kills in one lump sum, but it really makes me wish we had some follower control.

- I got my 8, like I said, but it felt more like I killed 80 and not only 8.

- The AI is still miles better than that shadow pan guy from mists.

- What was his name, Protector Yi, or something.

- I still have nightmares about him, I think I partly blocked it out.

- He would pull entire zones.

- You would be nowhere near a mob and he would find a way to pull it.

- The mob would not even be aggressive, he would pull it.

- You name it, if it was on his hit chart where he could damage it, he would.

- And the worst part of the deal was he could not hold aggro.

- So maybe picking up mobs if he held aggro would not be so bad.

- But not holding aggro and then dying easily, he was, in a word, a nightmare.

- So you can tell they made a massive upgrade to the follower AI.

- It is better than our shadow pan buddies, that is for sure.

- Maybe I should add that to my list of posts about what warlords did right.

- Their bodyguards are leaps and bounds an improvement over the mists version of them.

- Still, when it comes to followers / bodyguards, Taoshi remains my favorite.

- Even if mists AI was not as good as the one in warlords.

- Taoshi rocked.

- Have a great day.