First Try at the Celestial Tournament

So my first attempt at the Celestial Tournament was not bad.  This week (at least on my server, I have no idea if it's different from realm to realm), was the combination of Wise Mari, Blingtron and Shademaster Kiryn.

The first two I was able to get down pretty easily and was eventually able to get Kiryn down as well.  I think it did manage to convince me of two things - first that I need to upgrade my Raven, and second, that I will probably need a second one, or a Darkmoon Crow, for the Wise Mari fight to make it easier.  My moth was doing fine and I never didn't get Wise Mari down, but it would be nice to be able to change the weather to cut down on the AoE damage there.

Where things fell apart was on the four Celestial pets.  It quite quickly became apparent to me that I would in fact need a second fox and a second jumping spider for the strategy that I was using because it worked as intended, they also did both end up dying, so weren't usable on the next Celestial.

So here is the combinations that I went with this week:

Wise Mari - Amber Moth, Onyxian Whelpling and Sea Pony
Blingtron - Spawn of G'nathus, Kun-Lai Runt and Fel Flame
Kiryn - Harbinger of Flame, Gilnean Raven and Son of Animus.

for the Celestials:

Yu'la - Mr. Bigglesworth pretty much solo'd this one with a slight assist from my Anubisath Idol
Zao - Alpine Fox, Crystal Spider and Jumping Spider - this didn't actually end up working, but I think it would on a second attempt.  I didn't hit the Crystal Prison at the right point on my spider.
Xu-Fu - my plan for this one was Alpine Fox, Jumping Spider and Menagerie Custodian.  However, with both my fox and spider dead, I wasn't able to execute this one.  Afterwards, I went out and acquired second rares of both and now just need to level them up a bit.
Chi-Chi - so my plan for this one was Unborn Val'kyr, then two Nexus Whelplings for what essentially works out to an Arcane Storm buffed Mana Surge dot.  It sort of worked, but I think I got some bad rng.  I may try it again another time or two before switching to a different approach, maybe using my Living Fluid, which I would need to level.

For the rest of my team that I've been prepping for the remaining weeks, here's what that looks like:

Spirebound Crab
Emerald Whelpling
Emerald Proto-Whelp
Spawn of Onyxia
Flayer Youngling
Scourged Whelpling
Maggot
Blighthawk
Darkmoon Tonk
Elfin Rabbit and
Sporeling Sprout

to give me a few other options to mess with, I may go ahead and grab a Darkmoon Zeppelin, a Tranquil Mechanical Yeti and a Clockwork Rocket Bot.  Maybe a Hoplingi and a Lesser Voidcaller as well.

I'm going to give it another couple tries later in the week with my leveled second fox, second spider and my upgraded Gilnean Raven and if that doesn't work, then it might be time to adjust the strategies a bit.  It seems best at this point to have really strong strategies for each of the Celestials since you're going to face them every week, and then tinker a bit with the Champions themselves.  Not sure I'm there yet on the Celestials, but we'll see.

Building a Celestial Tournament Team

I still don't see what all this fuss about pet battling is about.  Except I must managed to get the achievement for having leveled over 30 pets to maximum level, so maybe I in fact do at this point.

Since my last update, I managed to down all the Pandaren tamers, the Pandaren Spirit Tamers and the Beasts of Fable, and am well on my way to having my team fully constructed for the Celestial Tournament.  I think I have about 8-10 more pets that I went to level before being fully comfortable going in.

There are also quite a few that I still need to get upgrade stones for, so I may do some serious running of Grand Master Tamers over the next few days in the hopes of getting more stones to drop from bags.

I've also continued to work on Emperor Shaohao rep.  I'm at about 14,500 / 21,000 towards exalted at this point, so I really am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel on this particularly painful grind.

After I finish off the tournament, I will likely go back to working on my army of alliance alts to see how far I can get them before the next xpac drops.

Really? Pet Battling?

So having accomplished my Garrosh kill goal, in addition to a few LFR runs here and there (still trying to get the trinket off Dark Shaman on my warlock after all), what I have found myself doing the most over the last week has been pet battling.

On the one hand, I really don't see what the big deal is about and how people keep getting so obsessed.  On the other hand, I can't seem to stop.

I've been working my way through the various trainers and managed to take down both the Grand Master Tamer of Northrend, Major Payne, and the Grand Master Tamer of Cataclysm, Obalis, within the past week.

I'm sitting on a total of 7 level 25 rares at this point, and have 3 more that are in the 20's, that just need a little bit more work.  Those 7 are spread across different pet types.  I also have a level 25 elemental pet, but he's uncommon rather than rare.  Undead is the main pet type that I still need to get a good level 25 rare going on.  Although I may just finish up my Scourged Whelpling for now, who is in his 20's, and see if I can get a stone to upgrade him at some point.

So I've started to work on the various Pandaren tamers at this point, and and working on leveling my crab in order to face Nishi.  We'll see how that goes.

I'm of course, continuing to grind out Emperor Shaohao rep and am still no where even remotely close to being done with that, sitting at around 7,000/21,000 to exalted.

I've also been running a bit of LFR lately on my shadow priest, having completely forgotten how much I really enjoy playing as shadow.  Might give the hunter a bit more love as well.

So that's the update for this week.

Cheers.

Mission Accomplished, What Now?

So I did manage to finish up the Garrosh kill on my warrior last Wednesday, and have therefore fully completed my goal of killing Garrosh in LFR on a toon of each class.

So now I'm trying to figure out what comes next.  There seem to be a number of different options out there:

• A little bit more focus on pet battling.  Right now, I've got to level some pets to finish off the Northrend Grand Master and then work through the Cataclysm tamers.  Could be interesting to see how far I can get on the pet battling content currently available.
• Work on gearing my various toons in different specs.  There are a few that I've considered here and even started to work on a bit, including gearing the paladin for ret and prot, gearing the shaman for elemental, gearing the priest for shadow and maybe working on a feral set for the druid.
• Get the Legendary cloak on a few more toons.  Umm.  No.
• Finish working the Joar alliance army.  Right now my warlock is level 53, so not that far from being done, and would like do either the shaman or the priest next.  Maybe some druid love.
• Challenge modes.  Haven't tried them even once so far.  Could be interesting.  
• Achievement whoring.  I still have quite a few on Joar that wouldn't be that difficult to pick up.  Might be interesting.

I'm likely to work on some aspect of all of the above.  Not sure if any of them will get any particular focus, but we'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, Ordos still owes me a neck on Joar, Shahao still has yaungol that he would like me to kill, and the Dark Shaman still owe Joar a trinket, so there are at least those short term goals to work towards.

End Goal in Sight - Two SoO Wings Left

So the little goal that I've been working on, similar to the one that I set for myself in Cataclysm, of killing the current expansion end raid boss in LFR on a toon of each class is almost complete.  I just need to manage to knock out Downfall on both my rogue and my warrior and it's all done.

As part of getting there, it's now also interesting to note that absolutely all of my Horde level 90's current have ilvl's over 500, which seems crazy.  Thank you Loot Island, I guess.

So I've started the process of regearing some of my other toons to run the current content in a different way.  I've put together a tanking set for my paladin.  The bar for a "decent" LFR tank has dropped so low at this point, that I start looking at it that I can't be any worse than quite a few of the tanks that I'm seeing in LFR these days.  Namely that I bring the following three advantages:

• I have a pretty solid understanding of the mechanics of all the fights, having run them multiple times as dps and healers.  So I won't be that tank in raid chat going "First time here, so don't know boss.  Pulling in 10, 9, 8..."  
• My gear is fully and appropriately gemmed and enchanted using the best help I can find from Icy Veins and Mr. Robot.
• I have actual tanking trinkets and actual PvE gear and am not trying to sneak in using PvP trinkets that provide absolutely no help when tanking an actual raid boss.  Hey, I'm really hard to kill in WSG, so I'm guessing that'll work fine here too.  

I've also started to regear my shaman as elemental and I may also work on running a few things with my priest as shadow, although he already has most of the gear he'll need as I was never fully committed to healing on him anyway.  So that should give me a few things to work on for the near term future whenever I don't feel like leveling the Joar alliance army.

So here is the update on ilvl for the various toons since the last update on 12/4:

Warlock - 540 -> 543
DK - still 526
Hunter - still 511
Druid - still 511
Warrior - 493 -> 511 (yeah, crazy lucky with drops in his first three SoO wings)
Shaman - 498 -> 508
Monk - 502 -> 506
Paladin - 491-> 506
Priest - 503 -> 505
Mage - 498 -> 503
Rogue - 495 -> 501

There is a part of me that feel pretty bad about my priest being so far down the list since he was a toon I raided quite a bit on during Cataclysm and even early MoP, so I may give him a little extra attention in the short run to rectify that.

I'm also almost essentially done with gearing the warlock.  He's got two more drops that I'm convinced he will never actually get off of Ordos - neck and bracers, and then still needs the trinket from Dark Shaman.  After that, he's completely done.

So that's it for this installment of my alt addiction updates.  Look for an announcement in the next day or two about finally completing Garrosh kills on those last two toons.