11 to go

9999 bones down, 11 mounts to go.  Bear & I are taking a break for today, I think.

Here be Spoilers

So I bought the virtual ticket for Blizzcon this year, partly because it went up for sale while I still had birthday money, and I figured, hey, I'll get a pet out of it.  The opening ceremony was free to stream, but subtitles only work on the main stage stream, which you only have access to with the ticket, and... I left my authenticator at home. >.<  So I watched the stream soundless at the reference desk at work between helping the occasional Friday afternoon patron, coupled with WoW Insider's live blog so I could actually get some context.

So we learned:

• We're going back in time to Draenor because Garrosh.  Apparently Star Trek isn't the only franchise to fork time in the past to get new content; Garrosh plays the role of the Romulan who went back to destroy Vulcan, and we get to play elder Spock, or some such.  (Woo double franchise spoiler post.)
• New level cap is 100.  All well and good, lets them add another talent tier easily.  The expansion after this, they'll probably have to redistribute them again.
• When expansion purchase, you can boost a character to 90.  This is good for folks who have been out of the game a long time, or if you've got friends on the other faction or another server you want to play with more right away.
• They're adding player garrisons.  We liked the farms so much, they're giving us a whole little town to play with, and we get to pick where to put it.  Collect NPCs; they'll do some crafting stuff for you.  Sounds like this is a partial answer to all those requests to make the gathering skills baseline.
• Draenor was gorgeous before the Legion showed up.

Overall, I'm... okay, not really excited.  I geek out over different things, really, but I'm looking at this and thinking, when am I even going to have time to raid?  I'm a bit of a pet collector, sitting at 188 mounts, and given a whole garrison to flesh out?  Dude.

I've always wanted to see a lot of the places that we know were changed because of pre-WoW storyline events, and places like Netherstorm, that's getting ripped apart, and Zangarmarsh, that the naga have been draining - those were pretty high on my list.  (Please let sea horses work in the Zangar Sea.)  But really - it hadn't occurred to me that the changes in Shadowmoon Valley were so recent, really.  Auchindoun, Karabor, and such - I didn't think I'd ever get to see them pre-destruction/corruption.

So far as I've been able to tell, they've been avoiding telling us who gets Garrosh back in time, but really, who has power over time nowadays?  Bronze dragons to some extent, and certain Timewalkers.  Given the last vision that the hourglass gives us on the Timeless Isle, I have a short list of bets to make about that.

I keep wanting to say Wrathion is involved in all this somehow, but every time I look at his background, I keep saying, dude, this kid's origin is just as screwed up as Anakin Skywalker's.  I'm not going to bother.  But if Wrathion's visions of the Legion are because he's somehow from the forked time, rather than our own...  But I don't think the Black Dragonflight was there long ago enough for that to be true.

Anywho, I have a placeholder Draenei now.

Bait & Switch

I was driving to work yesterday when I realized, "[swear words], this was another Old God end boss expansion!"  We were all so excited to be getting rid of Garrosh and fighting Sha that the bait and switch of handing us another Old God to defeat initially didn't register on my radar.

Now, I like the Old God plotlines, really, because there's so much ambiguity about whether they're good for, bad for, or just there with regards to Azeroth.  But four out of five expansions?

• Vanilla WoW: C'Thun
• Burning Crusade:  Woohoo Outland!  Sticking it to the Legion!
• Wrath of the Lich King: Yogg-Saron
• Cataclysm:  N'Zoth, though we never confront ... him? it? directly
• Mists of Pandaria:  Y'Shaarj

You know what?  I think we're due for another Burning Legion expansion.

Loose Threads

With the Siege of Orgrimmar out, the end results of the raid (what happens to Garrosh and who will be the next warchief) are readily available on the various fan sites, videos included.

So... what hasn't been wrapped up?  I'm not a story or lore expert, but these are some things I was thinking about this morning when I woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep.

• Wrathion's Burning Legion obsession.  If the baby dragon is as right as he is certain, the Legion is coming back.  When?  In what form?  We don't know yet, and we don't know which of Azeroth's various lore figure will be marshaled against them, but I wouldn't be surprised if Wrathion is pulling a lot of the strings to fight them.
• The Zandalari.  We took the Thunder King away from them again, but Zandalar is still, so far as I know, sinking into the ocean out there somewhere, and the Zandalari trolls still need a new home.
• Sylvanas.  I can't be the only one nervous about Sylvanas having been relatively out of sight for most of the past... how many in-game months?  Last time we really saw her do anything that I recall, she was draggin Koltira off to Forsaken re-education camp.  I love my Forsaken characters, but I really don't trust her, regardless of how far I can throw her.

I don't think any of the pre-existing loose ends got wrapped up, either - Alleria/Turalyon are still out there somewhere, etc.  I don't know what the next expansion is going to aim for, but I'm going to guess it's not any of these.

Lil' Oondasta

Lil' Oondasta is a new daily pet battle on the Timeless Isle.

Just like the big Oondasta, he's got a Frill Blast, Spiritfire Beam, and Crush.  Frill Blast will deal a large amount of damage to your active pet and swap it for your highest health pet.  (Woo forced tank swap.)  Spiritfire Beam is like a chain lightning, dealing moderate damage to all pets, and Crush is a single target attack.

It took me several combinations to find a group that worked for the fight, and ultimately, treating him like Dos-Ryga and opening with a Stampede-style ability worked best.  Lil' Oon isn't particularly fast, so most of the pets I tried got to go first in a round vs. him.

Thlayli

I started with the Tolai Hare after realizing flying pets were probably a bad idea (Spiritfire Beam and Frill Blast do additional damage to flyers).  Sure, he's a critter, but Oon doesn't have beast abilities despite being one.  He's got the Stampede I wanted, and he's wicked fast.  Of course, being such a speed-heavy little rabbit, Oon's Frill Blast one-shotted him.  This is not surprising: Frill Blast one-shots a lot of things.  If you pop Dodge your first round, the Stampede will get off a bit extra damage, as well, because you'll just dodge the first Frill Blast.

Anapa

A Frill Blast death pulls in the Anubisath Idol, since he's the highest health pet in this group.  Even if the Hare dies from other damage, I swap him in second.  I had included him for this fight because a) he's got a decent amount of health and b) he's got a wicked hard Demolish vs. Beasts.  Stampede's armor break allowed the Demolish to hit basically for full damage, and as long as you don't miss, he's going to get in probably two, three if you're lucky and Oon misses one round.  If you want to try for a chance to do a bit more damage before Lil' Oon eats him, you can try to get a stun off Rupture.

Bolts

Once the Anubisath Idol is dead, Oon will probably be low enough for a mechanical with Wind-Up to finish him off, even though the armor penalty has worn off by now.  I went with the Mechanical Squirrel; I know a lot of people like Brooms with Wind-Up, but the Spiritfire Beam does less damage to mechanical pets, so it's more likely to survive the fight on the back lines.

The first time I tried this combination, they one-shot Lil' Oon.  The second night it took I think three tries, and I played a slightly more careful match (using Dodge and Rupture) to improve the odds of it going through.  If you haven't got three strong mechanicals (I don't; I have three 25s, but two are middling), you've got other possibilities if you play towards what you've got that will hit him hard, debuff him, or doesn't take extra damage from his abilities.

Castsequence Macro Update

It isn't really an update.  I'm still using it; it's doing surprisingly well.  After 5.4's possible changes I may need to tweak the number of Arcane Shots in it, but until then, it's still:

/castsequence Chimera Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Arcane Shot, Arcane Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot

I still do Murder of Crows, Glaives, That Wolf Icon That Regens Focus, Rapid Fire, Readiness, and Army of Sporebats manually when they come off cooldown.  As a Marksman hunter, I'm still average on AOE packs, but I'm generally competitive against similarly geared folks for single target DPS.

Other things recently...  I've been trying to get my shaman up to the point she can be an alternate healer for our raids on nights we can't find one, and I'm liking shaman healing better than I did back when I last tried it: a.k.a., the Burning Crusade.  I still prefer my priest, but we have plenty of priests available usually.  I also like my baby druid healing more right now than I do shaman healing, but she's in her 40s, so that's going to take longer to do.

We're into Throne of Thunder!  Currently on Tortos.  My husband has done an amazing job both at finding us recruits, as well as finding us some casually allied guilds and friends who fill in when we're short two healers.  Perhaps somewhat ironically, the only thing we're missing post-exodus is a full complement of healers, and that's exactly who left us for a bigger server environment.  5.4 and Connected Realms can't come soon enough.

Quality of Life Addons

I don't run with a lot of addons.  I use the default interface for most things, including raid frames and healing.  I have the standard minimum for raiding - a boss mod (DBM), a threat meter just in case, and a DPS meter (Recount) to make sure I'm not entirely useless.  Most of what I use is for minor quality of life, things, though.  Here are the ones I absolutely can't do without:

• Altoholic:  Keeps track of what I've got on who, when the last time I logged everyone on was (I do a full log-on of my random little alts about every three weeks), who has auctions I should check on, and so forth.  It also keeps track of what my toons are wearing, so when I log over to a crafter, I can easily see who needs upgrades in which slots, or which slots aren't enchanted.

• AuctionLite and AuctionLite Improved Search:  I love love love the purchasing interface for AuctionLite, and I appreciate the searching/pricing options on the selling tab.  The improved search purchasing interface lets me search specifically for Battle Pets, and all the various entries for each pet are smooshed into a single entry in the big list, so I can easily see if any of the handful of auctionable pets I don't have are listed.

• BattlePetCount:  There are other similar addons out there; this is the one I use for the mouseover information and quality flagging (it tells me if what I'm fighting is better than what I've got with an asterisk).  Given that I occasionally try to up my standing on my realm on WarcraftPets, it's been fairly handy.
• CT:  I'm using three parts of CT: MailMod, MapMod, and PartyBuffs.  MailMod is nice for opening a lot of mail at once and having a log of just who you just mailed that 500g to, and it's the one that makes me realize a patch has disabled my addons (because they're now "out of date"), because it's the first one I notice missing.

I run others, but these are the ones that I miss the most if they're broken or if I haven't yet re-enabled addons.