Garrison pet battles

After a couple times through the Menagerie's pet rotation, I realized I wasn't going to remember what had worked if I didn't start keeping notes.  So now I have a spreadsheet for what teams worked for what; here's a visual version of the spreadsheet if any of them are giving you trouble.

Some of these pets are harder to find (Unborn Val'kyr in particular), and some of them (I'm thinking of the Crimson Geode) are perhaps not as commonly leveled; I did that one in particular for the tamer in Spires of Arak.

Archimedes, Samm, Jahan; The Beakinator
The team:  Disgusting Oozeling, Crimson Geode, Chrominius
Both these fights are flyer heavy; Chip (my Disgusting Oozeling) can take the Beakinator by himself, but if he gets knocked out in the three bird fight, the other two can finish them off.

Brutus and Rukus
The team: Pandaren Water Spirit, Fox Kit, Alpine Foxling Kit
This is the two boar team.  Make sure both foxes are set up with Bite; I've got flurry on the Fox Kit from the Floret team fight and forgot to swap it for the picture.  Any two foxes will work here; these are my two rare quality ones.

Deebs, Tyri, Puzzle
The team: Scourged Whelpling, Crawling Claw, Ghostly Skull
Deebs is a magic pet, so you'll want to start out with the Scourged Whelpling in this line-up.  The Crawling Claw and Bob... er, the Ghostly Skull can handle the other two.  Make sure you set them up for some healing before the whelpling dies.  Tyri is going to pop Darkness, so you can set up the skull with either of his hard hitting abilities.

Eleanor
The team:  Any three rabbits (shown here: Tolai Hare, Tolai Hare Pup, Elfin Rabbit)
Slot three rabbits, pop dodge, stampede until it's dead, rinse and repeat.

Grubbles, Scrags, Stings
The team: Elder Python, Mechanical Squirrel, Chrominius
This is a basic critter/beast/flying team, so counter with a beast/mechanical/magic team.  Chrominius gets thrown in for the magic here because Howl/Surge of Power is going to do 2000+ damage.

Hanos, Manos, Fatos
The team: Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling, Lil' Deathwing, Chrominius

This is the fight that finally made me level the Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling.  Manos, the Hand of Fate, is probably best known as a MST3K episode.  You can probably substitute the Scourged Whelpling or another mechanical in if you don't have Lil' Deathwing, since he's a CE pet.

King Floret and Queen Floret
The team: Pandaren Water Spirit, Fox Kit, Eternal Strider
This is similar to a "Howl Bomb" set up, except that you don't start with the Unborn Val'kyr - Geyser, Whirlpool, swap to the fox, Howl, Dazzling Dance, Flurry and Howl till the fox is dead, and then swap to the strider to finish things off.  You can buy the Fox Kit now, but I got it back when it was a drop in Tol Barad.  Apaprently "Reynard" is a restricted name, so I went with the alternate spelling.

Mr. Terrible, Carroteye, Sloppus
The team: Two frogs (here, Jungle Darter and Garden Frog) and the Emerald Proto-Whelp
Set up your frogs with Frog Kiss and go to town.  When the frogs are down, finish off Sloppus with the proto-whelp.  Apparently frogs don't blink for pictures; they just hop out of the frame.

Protectron 011803, Protectron 022481, Blingtron 4999b
The team: Terrible Turnip, Tiny Shale Spider, Mr. Grubbs
This is a team that gave me fits, and the use of the shale spider came from reading the comments in WoWhead.  I got the shale spider on Super Bowl Sunday - it was the first day the population was low enough to snag the rare.  You can throw any pet in the third slot, really - the shale spider will close out the fight.

Quintessence of Light
The team: Unborn Val'kyr, Pandaren Water Spirit, Chrominius
This is the classic "Howl Bomb" configuration; you can probably substitute the Ghostly Skull for the Val'kyr (I haven't tested it, but it also gives you the Unholy Ascension option).  You want to close with Chrominius if possible for that Howl/Surge of Power combo.

Rockbiter, Stonechewer, Acidtooth; Kromli and Gromli
The team: Crawling Claw, Scourged Whelpling, Ghostly Skull
This is basically the same team you use for Deebs/Tyri/Puzzle, but you can start with the Crawling Claw.  Try to line up the Ghostly Skull's stun from bite with the gronnling's haymaker - it's got a pretty good chance of stunning him.

Stitches Jr.
The team: Unborn Val'kyr, Sprite Darter Hatchling, Chrominius
Stitches Jr. has that annoying trait that he only takes damage if the attack deals at least 500, so you're going to want to debuff him for Doom, ascend so he takes more damage, swap to the Sprite Darter, Life Exchange, Moonfire so magic abilities deal more damage, and then swap to Chrominius for Howl and Surge of Power.  You may want to throw in a Bite before Surge.

Tirs & Fiero
The team: Unborn Val'kyr, Disgusting Oozeling, Silkbead Snail
I haven't got a max level crab, so this is the team I ended up using for this pair.  The snail works fairly well.

Post-Blackrock Foundry

Yeah, yeah, 6.2 hasn't dropped yet.  But Blackhand's dead, and my guild is taking an unofficial raiding break.

So what am I doing in WoW right now?

Leveling alts.  I had done my warrior and priest with the intention of having tank and heal alts available for fives, alt raids, LFR, etc., but realized that with treasure hunters I might be able to get the yak.  So my death knight got bumped up when it got slow, and my rogue is a fresh 100.  The weird thing is that I'm doing the melee first.  They aggravate the arthritis in my hand with their keybind-heavy set-ups, but the DK just kind of mowed through stuff, and my rogue, with stealth, can skip a lot of stuff (I've been doing this with her since Vanilla, really).  I really like Spires of Arak and have been basically heirloom and potioning my way to it and then more or less doing the quest achievement for the zone.  You get your salvage yards done like that.  I've hardly touched Nagrand other than on Duskhawk and some barn farming.

Missions.  I love the missions, although I kind of wish our mission table were in Warspear, so I spent more time around people I'm not in charge of.  I also wish Nazgrim were running it.  Siege of Orgrimmar left some holes in our NPC ranks. :(  But yeah, the  missions are edging me closer to a yak.

Crafting.  I realized I had over a thousand hexweave bolts; I upgraded my main's bags and kind of have some space again.  I feel bad when I load up my barn on my priest because I always feel kind of useless in a group farming wolves, but she's disc/holy.

Occasionally - apexis dailies when they align with the two reputations I still need to finish.  I'm nowhere near done with the Frostwolf and Laughing Skull reputations, so when those dailies come up, I buy the extra apexis dailies from my sergeant and hit them up with my bird-buddy Ishaal.

Even more occasionally - hitting up old dungeons or raids where I need mounts.  I still need the mount off Deathwing to finish out the drake achievement.

All in all I'm still playing, and enjoying, the game, but I'm not doing some of the things I did previously; I haven't farmed out the archaeology items yet, and I haven't been regularly hitting up the pet tamers.  Both of those feel too time consuming on ground mounts.  We'll see how Tanaan is for non-raid content once 6.2 drops.

Favorite Garrison Followers

I have 73 followers on Duskhawk.  Every week I go to the inn and get a new one, currently favoring Treasure Hunter followers because I'm still working towards that yak.  Having as many as I do, I definitely have some favorites.  Here's my top seven:

Talonpriest Ishaal:  Ishaal is my best bird buddy, currently assigned to the barracks.  I really wish he could go everywhere with me, not just in Draenor.  I loved the Spires of Arak storyline for the Arakkoa, and I'm really glad I've got a couple of them hanging out with me now.

Lin Tenderpaw:  Lin was the first follower I got that was a pre-existing NPC back in our timeline.  I was so excited when she showed up!  I think I have rerolled her stats, since I don't recall her having come with mining.

Matoclaw:  I was even more excited to get Matoclaw than I was when Lin showed up.  Matoclaw is the druid who coordinated all the Azerothian side of the Molten Front!  She's pretty awesome, and I wish I could get her Warmaster Zog's job.

Aila Dourblade:  You're probably thinking, "Who is Aila Dourblade?"  I don't know, but she's a blood elf rogue with death knight hair, which is entirely the reason I picked her at the inn that week.  And she's subtlety, the best rogue spec!  Aila has helped bring in a crazy amount of resources for me with Scavenger.

Bim'ini:  Bim'ini is another Inn follower you've probably never heard of, but she's got an awesome transmog, Emerald Plate.  This transmog and Epic Mount have kept her in my active lineup of followers.

Soulbinder Tuulani:  I like having Tuulani around since she's a draenei and I'm playing Horde.  She's one of my active healers, ironically, since she's a shadow priest.  I'm still trying to get Treasure Hunter or Scavenger on her.

Talon Guard Kurekk:  Kurekk hangs out with me since I'm, you know, the Talon Queen.  Also he's an engineer, likes fast horses, and works well with orcs.  I think I probably rerolled him trying for Treasure Hunter, but Epic Mount was good enough.

6.x Raiding Pets

Here I am, swapping back and forth between Exotic Munitions and Focusing Shot depending how much I actually need to move during a fight, when I have the option to just not use a pet.  Depending where you look, either Focusing Shot or Lone Wolf is the way to go for Marksman, but I haven't even tried Lone Wolf yet.

Why not?  Two words:  battle rez.

That's right, I'm raiding with a Crane.  Some raids, we have no druids, no warlocks, and our only death knight is one of the tanks.  If that tank drops, it could easily mean a wipe, and no one likes repair bills.  (We're saving for a yak. Ahem.)  Gift of Chi-Ji gives me the option to bring up a raid member without having to switch to Beast Mastery to bring a Quilen.

Now, there are downsides to this.  I have occasionally worried some people as I wandered into the maze of the Twin Ogron's flames to find a dropped tank and pick them up.  The cast has a 40-yard range, but in practice this means you may have to send your crane to stand closer to the unfortunate's corpse in order to reach them.

Optimal DPS versus raid utility is a trade-off you make sometimes; nowadays, with pet DPS normalized regardless of what buff they're bringing, you can focus on bringing the best pet for the raid - if you need to bring one at all.  The buff redistribution that happened with the 6.0 patch means that no longer am I bringing a sporebat to every raid (regardless of how amusing Stampede was with one).  The nine standard buffs are almost always covered now, and on the occasion that we've been missing multistrike, one of the other hunters has been able to bring that.

One of the reasons I've opted to go with the crane is that I don't frequently die early in a fight, my DPS is usually just kind of average, and I'm good at watching what's going on.  (The third is likely feeding into the second.)  This means I'm generally still alive and not in immediate danger of dying if a tank drops, since it's been quite a while since I regularly rode just under the tanks for threat, and I notice when a tank or healer drops.  I also notice how much mana the other healers have if it's a healer, I've got a Weak Aura set up to monitor how many battle rezes we have available, and I not infrequently can easily pull up Recount to check either the healing or DPS meters without too much affecting my output or immediate safety.

So if we've got two battle rezes up and three DPS down, I'll pull up Recount, see who was riding highest before their demise, and burn one of the rezes on a DPS, saving one in case we have a tank or healer drop.  Some fights you get to know you're more likely to lose one or the other - most of us only raid about six hours a week at the most, and then maybe LFR, so we expect folks to die sometimes.

As our raid pool slowly shrinks due to interest attrition, the people who need a battle rez aren't coming as often, and our raid group is getting to know each other better, so on non-progression fights, the tanks don't die as often.  I'm still not really inclined to go pet-less, though, since Focusing Shot helps make me stand still more (for the mastery buff), and Exotic Munitions means fire arrows that I've wanted since forever.

Dragon Soul meant raiding with Coby, my armor penetration ravager; Siege meant raiding with Clarence, the spell haste sporebat; so far raiding in Warlords means raiding with Lucius, the green crane with the Gift of Chi-Ji, who was originally acquired to be part of the Aesop's Fables stampede group.

Battle Pet: Bob

I know, I know... the Ghostly Skull is supposed to be named after @CM_Zarhym, but... come on, Dresden Files.  If you've seen any of the one season that made it to TV, Terrence Mann as Bob was amazing, and Bob in the books is generally always entertaining.

My undead pet family always feels like one of my weakest, so part of how I picked ones to level up after the initial few (Andrew, one of the shades from Deadwind Pass, and Hilde, my Val'kyr) was I went with ones pet tamers used that I found annoying to deal with:  the Scourged Whelpling, the Crawling Claw, the mariachi dude when I could get him, and of course the Ghostly Skull, because Ghostly Bite can dish out some serious damage.

The Val'kyr may be a more commonly used undead pet, due to the "howl bomb" configuration - with the Pandaren Water Spirit and anything, usually Chrominius, that can cast Howl or a similar damage-doubling ability - which can be very effective versus a single boss pet, but I've found Bob particularly useful in two of the NPC battles: Tarr in Nagrand, with his triple murloc team, and the Diablo trio in the Menagerie.  I think I've used him versus the Goren and Gronn Menagerie teams, as well, but the last time I did those was before I started taking notes, so I'm not completely sure.

What I do know is that, despite Ghostly Bite's stun, it can be devastatingly effective, especially when timed with something (for example, Geyser) that is going to stun your opponent, so the stun rounds line up and become moot.  This can be particularly useful against Gromli, whose Haymaker is as likely to miss and stun him as not, and against Murkalot, whose Falling Murloc will stun him.

Another benefit of Bob is that the one I've got is breed #7 - H/P, which means he's got a lot of health and a power rating over 300, so Ghostly Bite usually hits for over 700.  On humanoid pets, it's amazing, and if you've got it combined with a damage doubler, it can be way out there.  (Not as mind boggling as Chrominius's Surge of Power with Howl up versus a flyer, but still nothing to sneeze at.)  The stun frequently doesn't matter if you're using him as a closer.

If the stun makes you too nervous, you can substitute in Spectral Strike, whose miss chance isn't as much of a hindrance against the Diablo team, since you know Tyri is going to throw out Darkness.

I frequently team Bob up with the Scourged Whelpling and the Crawling Claw for these teams - since the Lord of Terror is a magic pet, the Scourged Whelpling's dragon abilities are useful, and then Death and Decay and Plagued Blood give your later pets some healing.  Like Bob, the Crawling Claw hits hard, so it can knock things down fast, and the undead family's extra turn doesn't hurt.

In the end, only one question remains:  Where in Draenor did Tarr find three murlocs?

Playlist: Bronze Dragon

As awesome as the Awesome Mix (Vol. 1) was, let's face it: mix tapes are dead.  No, nowadays, with all our digital music and its fancy players, now we have playlists.

If, somehow, you've gotten tired of the soundtrack in Draenor (or, more likely, just need something with words to sing along to), here's a bronze dragon themed playlist culled from my library.

• Back in Time (Huey Lewis & the News) - Just from the first verse you can tell this was written for the Back to the Future movies; it is probably the most bronze-dragony song on this list.
• The Longest Time (Billy Joel)
• Time (Pink Floyd)
• Time is Running Out (Muse)
• Suspended in Time (Olivia Newton John/ELO)
• A Good Idea at the Time (OK Go) - I'm sure Kairoz thought it was a good idea at the time, too, but we know what happened to him.
• This Is the Time (Billy Joel)
• All Kinds of Time (Fountains of Wayne)
• We Have All the Time in the World (Louis Armstrong)
• Rocket Man (Elton John) - If the connection isn't clicking, "And I think it's going to be a long long time..."
• Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is (Chicago)
• The Right Time (The Corrs) - I didn't realize this album is so hard to find nowadays!
• Haven't Got Time for the Pain (Carly Simon)
• As Time Goes By (Casablanca)
• Time (Hootie & the Blow Fish)
• Closing Time (Semisonic)
• Mr. Sandman (The Chordettes) - Not time, per se, but...  Hourglasses, sands of time, all of that.

Now we just need to be able to pipe these into our garrison's jukeboxes...

Warlords of Draenor Shot Rotation

Okay, we're a bit into Warlords now, and I haven't been entirely satisfied with the numbers my rotation was putting out.  Since I absolutely love the concept of Exotic Munitions (specifically, of fire arrows, which I've wanted since Vanilla), and I'm frequently the raid's battle rez with my crane, I'd been using this cast sequence still:

/castsequence Chimaera Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Aimed Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Aimed Shot

But I've been drowning in focus.  Just drowning in it.  So I put together this cast sequence to work with:

/castsequence Chimaera Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Aimed Shot

The difference on the target dummies, using Murder of Crows, Glaive Toss, and Poisoned Ammo, was a bump from ~15k to ~16k.  Moving in a positive direction!

But then I decided to try Focusing Shot, since I was frequently getting Glaive Toss or Crows in between my Steady Shots when I wasn't paying attention.  The first attempt went badly - I just shoved Chimaera, Focusing, and Aimed into a cast sequence, and I was again drowning in focus and clipping cooldowns.  Based on those observations, I put together this:

/castsequence Aimed Shot, Aimed Shot, Focusing Shot, Chimaera Shot

The results were markedly better than either of the Exotic Munitions tests: around 18.5k.  That's an improvement of about 3k on my average dps right now; with raid buffs that will likely be even better.

What I'm not sure about is movement:  Focusing requires not moving, and there are some fights where movement is important.  I won't get to test this in our raids again until Thursday due to work, but I might hit up LFR before then to see how it shakes out.

Either way, with or without Focusing Shot, this is the first major revision to the cast sequence in what, four years?

Times change!