Things I didn't notice in Draenor until flying

This is going to be an image heavy post.

The spires of light in Talador:

Spires of Arak

I love Spires of Arak.  It is far and away my favorite thing zone-wise of all of Draenor: the ambiance, the story lines, the puzzles.

You get introduced to the stories in Spires through two routes: aiding the Arakkoa, and helping out at Pinchwhistle Gearworks, where attempts to start an outpost have gone awry.  Along the way you meet various members of the Arakkoa Outcasts, find out what Wrathion has been up to in Draenor up to this point (not-spoiler spoiler: no good), and fight more plant zombies like you ran into in Gorgrond.

Into the woods to help my bird buddies...

I like the Arakkoa story here the best, but the two kind of side-plots with Pinchwhistle and Admiral Taylor's garrison are both engaging as well (and the former will land you the Salvage Yard plans).  Ultimately this is where my alts have been hitting 100, working towards getting Talonpriest Ishaal, their Salvage Yards, and Admiral Taylor's sword (where applicable).

The Arakkoa Outcasts have had a difficult time, basically on the losing side of an Arakkoa civil war.  They've fled from the spires in the sun down into the shadows, and you both help them against the Laughing Skull, who are hunting them, and against the Arakkoa who still live in the glory of the sun above, following Terokk's story as you do.  Depending on how well this Draenor's Arakkoa parallel our own, this story line helps flesh out the bits we got in Terokkar Forest in our broken Draenor.

Spires in the sun...

... banished to the shadows.

I vastly prefer getting around this zone grounded compared to Nagrand, and despite the rope puzzles making my palms sweat, I also appreciate most of the puzzle rewards here more - the archaeology fragments, the various items at Terokk's shrines.

Bear-okay puzzles

Bear-not-okay puzzles

Arakkoa are interesting; those following Rukhmar have sun and air magic, and they also make much use of wing-blades.  The Arakkoa Outcasts make heavy use of shadow and illusion magic - sort of the flipside of Rukhmar's followers.  They are closer to Anzu, the raven god, and Terokk, their former king.  Prior to Spires I didn't understand why people wanted to play Arakkoa, but now that I've got Ishaal and Kurekk hanging out in my garrison, and Reshad and Percy visiting?

I don't know that I want to play one myself, but I wish they were a bigger faction back in our home timeline.

In the meantime, I've retired Bloodsail Admiral for awhile.

Elekk Plushie - Draenor Tamers

Now that my Elekk Plushie is overstuffed, I decided to take it around to all the tamers on Draenor and start working on [An Awfully Big Adventure].  Some of them took more work to figure out than others.

Here's what worked for me:

Gargra, Frostfire Ridge:  I used a Fluxfire Feline (S/S) and Mechanical Squirrel (S/B) for this since her set up is three wolf pups.  The Fluxfire is set up with Pounce, Flux, and Supercharge; I started with it for some backline damage.  Once it dies, the Mechanical Squirrel (Metal Fist, Overtune, and Wind-Up) can take out the other one/two left.

Cymre Brightblade, Gorgrond:  Cymre took some work to figure out; she's got magic, undead, and mechanical pets.  Ultimately I ended up using the Anubisath Idol (H/H) with Crush, Stoneskin, and Deflection, paired with the Infinite Whelpling (P/P) with Tail Sweep, Healing Flame, and Early Advantage.  These two are actually one of my go-to pairs for working with carry pets, but I hadn't used them in a while.  Deflection has to be paired up opposite the Idol of Decay's Rot for this to work.

Tarr the Terrible, Nagrand:  Okay, so I hadn't actually beaten Tarr before I tried this, and doing it straight up with the Elekk Plushie took some work.  He's got three humanoids (murlocs), so I went with double undead pets:  a Ghostly Skull (H/P) with Shadow Slash, Ghostly Bite, and Siphon Life, and a Scourged Whelpling (P/S) with Shadowflame, Death and Decay, and Plagued Blood.  I opened with the whelpling, made sure to keep Death and Decay up (including refreshing it before he died), and finished them off with the skull.  There's some RNG involved in this combination, but it will be really close even when it fails.  (If I bump my whelpling from uncommon up to rare, it might be more consistent.)

Ashlei, Shadowmoon Valley:  She's got an Elekk Plushie slotted - how hard can she be?!  Anywho, her other pets are magic and beast, so I used the Emerald Proto-Whelp (P/P) with Emerald Bite, Ancient Blessing, and Proto-Strike and the Mechanical Squirrel (same set-up as for Gargra).  The Emerald Proto-Whelp will almost solo this.

Vesharr, Spires of Arak:  Vesharr has two flying pets and a mechanical that will briefly masquerade as a flyer.  I went with a Sprite Darter Hatchling (S/S) with Arcane Blast, Life Exchange, and Moonfire and a Crimson Geode (H/S) with Feedback, Amplify Magic, and Stone Rush.  I originally decided to level the geode because I've always found the Deepholm tamer annoying to beat, and it paid off for this.

Taralune, Talador:  Taralune has the standard Draenei pets, three moths.  I had good luck with a Disgusting Oozeling (H/B) with Ooze Touch, Corrosion, and Expunge opening for the Sprite Darter Hatchling.  The sprite darter's Moonfire will negate the Call Lightning, which can be really bad with Moth Balls.

Bonus:  Darkmoon Faire

I did both Darkmoon Faire tamers with the Elekk this week, too.  For Jeremy, with his magic/mechanical/beast team, I just used my regular Infinite Whelpling (same set-up as for Cymre) and Water Waveling (B/B - Ice Lance, Frost Nova, Geyser) set up and substituted the Elekk in for the Mechanical Squirrel, which is normally my third.  When the RNG is in your favor, the Infinite Whelpling will solo the first two pets, and eat the monkey's initial stun, and then the waveling can finish him off.  One of the keys is hitting the tonk with Early Advantage with the dragon buff, so you might need to pass a round (or heal or something) on the eye to get it active for the tonk.

Christoph took some experimentation to figure out.  He's got that initial fast magic pet with both a hard-hitting geyser and an attack-blocking bubble, and the obvious counter is a dragon - but which one?  It turns out the Silver Dragonhawk Hatchling (S/S) with Quills, Conflagrate, and Flame Breath can survive it.  Open with the Flame Breath to set Syd on fire; since it's a 100% speed breed, it's going to go before Syd's second-round bubble, so you can go ahead and Conflagrate on turn two, then basically Flame Breath or Quills till Syd's dead.  The tri-horn is going to kill the dragon, but a Mechanical Squirrel (Metal Fist, Overtune, Wind-Up) can take out both it and the cow.  Wind-Up will pretty much take out the tri-horn right away, but with the cow you may want to Metal Fist when you've got reduced damage to avoid wasting Wind-Up's big damage.

Beta Notes 10-12 (with bonus notes, Part 8)

Here's parts 10-12 of my beta notes, including some priest notes, initial Forsaken changes, and more.  Spoilers, of course.

Beta Notes: Part 9

Another night, another round of beta notes!  Spoilers, of course.  Notes in bold, comments after.

Beta Notes 5-7 (Now With Screenshots!)

Here's parts 5-7 of my beta notes.  Spoilers abound!

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.