THE TEAM: Legion Edition

Last time I talked about the new healer I've added to my team, today I want to take a moment to introduce the team as a whole.

It's been a long time coming, so I thought I'd spend the time introducing the team for Legion and give you guys a brief outline of my overall goals. The team has gone through multiple revisions, in the end only 3 characters remain in the team from my initial return to five boxing, but only two of those are in the same role as before. The changes might surprise you, read on...

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KHAAS the Indomitable
Let's start with my tank, one of the newest additions to my five box team, and ironically the oldest character on the team. I created Khaas on the night of the Wrath of the Lich King release, though originally he was an Orc on the Bloodscalp server. When I started boxing again, it was using a Warrior tank. Which while fun, was a bit lacking for me personally.

Transmog: The Hollow
Grievous Gladiator's Dreadplate Helm (PVP)
Grievous Gladiator's Dreadplate Shoulders (PVP)
Valorous Scourgeborne Battleplate (Naxxramas, 25)
Dark Silk Shirt (Crafted)
Scryer's Tabard (Reputation)
Grievous Gladiator's Dreadplate Gauntlets (PVP)
Befouled Demonhide Belt (Hellfire Citadel, Normal)
Valorous Scourgeborne Legplates (Naxxramas, 25)
Grievous Gladiator's Warboots of Alacrity (PVP)
Maw of the Damned (Artifact, Bonejaw)

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HASHUT Ironbane
I used to play a Shaman back in the days of EverQuest as my main, when I started boxing wow it was a tank and 4 Shamans back in BC, then Wrath. However I've never been much of a fan of Shaman healing, until now. The only trouble is I don't care for the look of the Artifact Weapon, so I went a completely different route. I really wanted something more like cauterizing heal than healing wave, mission accomplished.

Transmog
Mantle of Fiery Vengeance (Ulduar 10)
Chestguard of the Lasher (Ulduar 10)
Gloves of Taut Grip (Ulduar 10)
Belt of the Blood Pit (Ulduar 10)
Leggings of the Insatiable (Ulduar 10)
Tempered Mercury Greaves (Ulduar 10)
Seismic Bore (Siege of Orgrimmar)
Furnace of the Great Machine (Challenge Modes)

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MARMORA the Insane
Once upon a time, in Vanilla I played a Mage on the Blackrock server. I was Undead, and raided through Molten Core. But, I decided to switch things up and rerolled as a Warlock. I went Human on the Malorne server. And when BC was announced and the guild I was in blew up. I went back to the Horde, and rolled an Orc Warlock, since there was no faction change, server transfer services, etc at the time I had to level it up from scratch. But the old Warlock lingered, ready to come out and play when I needed him. Well, things have changed a bit since then. Now, he's a she. And a Gnome at that. But, still as deadly as ever. If I'm being honest, I feel like the Warlock's in a very good place, I enjoy the class immensely right now. And I'm glad to have this little beast on the team.

Transmog
Demon Prince's Ascendant Crown (Hellfire Citadel, Normal)
Mantle of the Eredar Lord (Hellfire Citadel, Normal)
Sanctified Dark Coven Robe (Icecrown Citadel, Normal)
Sanctified Dark Coven Gloves (Icecrown Citadel, Normal)
Demonbuckle Sash of Argus (Hellfire Citadel, Normal)
Plague Scientists Boots (Icecrown Citadel, Normal)
Spine of Thal'kiel + Skull of the Man'ari (Artifact, Gaze of the First Summoner)

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MORATHI the Flamebreaker
Mage wasn't really my choice in Vanilla, I got railroaded into playing one initially. Because my friends REALLY needed bread, water, and ports. If you read the previous entry you already know how well that went. I no longer have my original mage, I sold that account to a guild mate about ten years ago. Morathi is a very new addition to my stable of characters, but she's still proven to be quite capable and useful.

Back in the days of Vanilla, I played an Arcane/Frost spec out of necessity. The only real metric of value in raids at the time was how many Frostbolts can you cast on Ragnaros? I prefered Fire, but it just wasn't viable for that content. Things have changed since then and now I can go fire to my heart's content.

Transmog
Jewel of the Firelord (Blizzard Store)
Slaughterhouse Spaulders (Highmaul Heroic)
Sanctified Bloodmage Robes (Icecrown Citadel, Heroic)
Dark Silk Shirt (Crafted)
Sanctified Bloodmage Gloves (Icecrown Citadel, Heroic)
Koralon's Burning Touch
Einhorn's Galoshes (Blackwing Descent, Heroic)
Felo'melorn + Heart of the Phoenix (Arifact, Pride of the Sunstrider)

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RUSALKI of the Nightfall
Time for the dark horse addition to the team, Rusalki is a hold over from my return to boxing, though she's no longer a healer. With the changes to Discipline, I decided to switch my healer to Hashut. And initially had my Hunter Sieba tapped to replace Rusalki as the third DPS in the team. But, changes to the class made me second guess running a Hunter. Druid became a real contender for the team, but I settled on Shadow Priest for a number of reasons. For starters, it fits in more thematically to the rest of the team. Has some nasty damage potential, and adds some extra healing potential for specialized encounters.


Transmog
Grievous Gladiator's Satin Hood (PVP)
Grievous Gladiator's Satin Mantle (PVP)
Grievous Gladiator's Satin Robe (PVP)
Grievous Gladiator's Satin Gloves (PVP)
Grievous Gladiator's Cord of Meditation (PVP)
Prideful Gladiator's Treads of Meditation (PVP)
Xal'atath, Blade of the Black Empire + Secrets of the Void (Artifact, Claw of N'zoth)

Note: I haven't decided between the red and white variants of this set. We'll see how it looks with Void form.

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THE TEAM WITH NO NAME
So, there's a few questions to be answered here. The observant may note for example a Warhammer influence. Two of the five members literally are named after Warhammer fantasy characters (Hashut and Morathi). And there's more in my character selection screen, and I approached the appearance in the same way. I wanted something evil and chaotic, that wouldn't look out of place in Warhammer, and was pleasantly surprised to find I could easily make it work. There's a lot of aspirational stuff here, there's gear to be farmed (PVP and otherwise). As well as mounts. One of the bigger things for me in this game has always been defining goals, both short term and long term. So, this post should serve as an idea of where I'm going in terms of developing my team.

I definitely will be trying my hand at Mythic+ Dungeons, as well as raiding down the road. But before the end of the expansion my characters will look at least pretty close to how they're presented in the screenshots above. I started Warlords of Draenor with the goal of getting the Blackhand when I first saw it the loading screen. I did that and more. What I've presented here is much like that, the baseline of what I hope to accomplish. That does it for me this time, but do check in again as next time I'll be getting into a bit more of the nuts and bolts of my army of alts, and we'll see how the fires of industry might be stoked in this expansion.

K

BY YOUR POWERS COMBINED

The Legion is almost here...

MY LEGION TEAM
Generally speaking I've known for a while now what my team would look like in Legion. My first night of Alpha access made me drop me decide to swap tanks from my Warrior to my Death Knight. In terms of DPS, my mind hasn't changed much.

The Mage and Warlock are solid, I actually think I could main either one in the expansion if I were looking for a raiding guild. They're both perfectly capable. Though, I think if I were to main a Warlock I'd probably go Demonology rather than Destruction. Mage, I'd probably go Fire. But I could easily go with any of the three specs, honestly. They're all three fun and capable.

The hunter however is another story, I don't think I could main one. Survival is kinda meh frankly, there's nothing really wrong with it. But there's nothing really interesting about it either. Same goes for Marksman, it's fine if you get a rubbery one when you go PEW PEW at the screen and see big numbers on the screen. Beast Mastery however, has gotten way too simple to be really interesting over a prolonged period of time. Which is really a shame, there's some cool new pets available and Engineering is looking better than ever. Ultimately, it's somewhat disappointing. For boxing, it'll work just fine though.

That leaves us then with the healer, a question that I really couldn't answer until literally days ago. I suspect, like many boxers this has been the real sticking point in this expansion. Because Discipline has been such a popular choice for healing boxed groups for so long. But the move to a more hybrid DPS/Support healer position created a big problem for those of us accustomed to shield and flash style healing. So, what to do?

HEALS FOR DAYS
I decided to test heals out, in a more serious manner, but. I also relied pretty heavily on YouTube to point me in the proper direction. Credit where credit is due, here are those videos for reference.

Method - Best Legion Healer Class and Spec
HIST - Legion Beta | RANKING ALL HEALERS
Preach Gaming - Legion Healer Comparison

There were others, like FinalBossTV which got me started down the rabbit hole in the first place with a round table discussion with several healers months ago about the Alpha/Beta changes in Legion. I think my opinion of the healers, as usual comes closest to that of Preachers. I quickly eliminated the melee healers, so Paladin and Monk were out. That left Priest, Druid, Shaman. I enjoyed all three actually, but the reliance on HOTs was a deal breaker for me, so Druid was out.

That left only two.

Priest has a couple of good advantages, Holy is ultimately kinda boring. But it's got all of the tools necessary for a rock solid healer. Disc, if I decided I wanted to run Mythic Dungeons would actually be a reasonable bet, assuming I could keep the rest of the group alive. And to tell the truth, Disc is probably my most enjoyed spec of all of the healers. Which is ultimately what eliminated it from the final selection. I'll explain...

In my estimation, Disc is loads of fun. But it is not the kind of spec you can casually press a couple of buttons and do okay with. It's a very "reactive" spec. There's always something to do, something to keep tabs on. If I were to main a healer in Legion, it would be between Disc, Mistweaver, and Tree honestly. But I'm not talking about solo play here. I'm talking about boxing, the Disc priest would be excellent for someone looking to box from the healer perspective, but I prefer boxing from the tank.

So, in the end the Shaman won. I haven't run a healing Shaman since Burning Crusade, even in Wrath I simply ran 4 Elemental's and called it a day. The toughness, and all around great healing abilities, coupled with the ability to toss some extra damage in a pinch, Heroism, utility, not to mention CC in the form of Hex. Then of course there's the added bonus of Reincarnation, offering some extra wipe recovery alongside the Warlock's Soulstone.

This rounds out an ultimately very versatile group with multiple CCs, redundant wipe recovery and strong single target as well as AOE damage. Now that I know what I'm taking, it's time I start working on them each in turn. In the coming weeks I plan on talking a bit more about my plans. But now, we're all on the same page as far as my team is concerned. So be sure to check back later, I'll be talking over each of the five characters individually to discuss the macros, talents, and settings I'm using as well as my new UI.

K

THE LULLZ REPORT Vol 2

It's been a while and you could be forgiven for thinking I simply quietly left the game entirely, I haven't. So, what have I been up to? Let's find out...

CONSOLIDATED BOXING LTD
As mentioned previously I'm still in the process of consolidating and organizing my forces on my new home, Staghelm. When I figured out just who exactly I wanted to move from my previous server (Blackhand), I decided on bringing the following: My Death Knight, Warrior, Priest, and Hunter.

That leaves my Monk, Druid, Mage, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, and Mage on Blackhand. For now, they're just generating gold for wow tokens and pets. And I'm okay with that. I'm sure they'll trickle off to join me later, but I'm sure they'll stay put until either Blizzard lowers the price of transfers (if they offered a bulk transfer option I'd be all for it) or some time after Legion is released.

Anyhow, both my Death Knight and Warrior have already been moved. My hunter will be coming with his Legendary bow a bit later, and my priest with his rare recipes will follow. Meanwhile, I decided to trim my focus to 3 accounts, I will be playing this when Legion launches. After I'm well established, I'll play catch up with the remaining 2. Ergo, when I'm ready to transfer the Hunter and Priest I'll start working on that mess of alts.

I decided that my consolidation would also be a simplification; along with a few other words that end in tion. Allow me to explain...


WHAT'S IN A NAME?
I play with a small pocket sized notebook on my desk, it's an old habit but one I swear by. I keep notes as I go. When you create a character, you have a series of options to choose from for the characters appearance. I decided to note the corresponding numbers to each choice, so I can make all of my minions identical. Of course, no single race can be EVERY class in the game. So, I had to do this for Humans, Night Elves, and Draenei. Additionally, I chose names by class. Deciding that each game license would have a special character relating to it.

So, my little list ended up looking like this:
Khaas [ HU / DK]       
Berstuk [ NE / DRU ]
Hraban [ NE / DH ]
Euron [ HU / HU ]
Esmer [ HU / MA ]
Fütaba [ HU / MO ]
Titus [ HU / PAL ]
Emeritus [HU / PR ]
Delvin [ HU / ROG ]
Horaxe [ DR / SHM ]
Veknus [ HU / WL ]
Arbaal [ HU / WAR ]

NOTE: There's more options for Death Knights and especially Demon Hunters, so I had to make some special notes for them.

NIGHT ELF CODE
6, 1, 1, 5, 2

DEMON HUNTER CODE
14, 3, 3, 5, 1, 21, 2, 10

Yeah, seriously it's that different.

So, armed with the recipe for success I got to work. I'm nearly finished boosting my guys to 90 on these three accounts. There are of course a issues here and there, a handful of level 100s that don't conform to the new system. These will of course be dealt with in time. The names are fine, but there's the Draenei Paladin that will end up a Human, eventually. There's the Dwarf Shaman that will of course be a Draenei. And the two Hunters that will eventually be human, and in one case will be going male, as will a Warlock (though she's already Human). But, that's going to wait as well.

ASIDE FROM SPREADHSEETS
Playing some games obviously, and not just WOW. The new Hearthstone expansion was released and I actually like the new format pretty well. Last week's Tavern Brawl was especially amusing.

The largest C'thun I've gotten so far, super effective at baddie rank.

Speaking of Tavern Brawl, favorite brawl ever.

I actually enjoyed some constructed play, I took a page from wowhobbs's book and made a Cho based mill deck that's been pretty fun. I also made a deck I call Bubbles, a Paladin / Murloc deck (surprisingly effective). And of course, my latest darling... Darwin, an Evolve deck.

So far so good Darwin.

Cho show? Yes, yes indeed.

Okay, cool you played some cards what about WoW?

My I've been mostly focused on boosting alts, but I have been busy elsewhere. First, I'm to announce I finally finished the Stay Classy achievement and unlocked my 8th guild tab.

Baxter approved.

I finished a couple of more Shadowmournes, with actually a not insignificant amount in the que for future sale. There's been a fair amount of competition of late, so I've been moving the stuff by undercutting deep (about 100k per set of goodies, normally I get about 200).

The bird is the word

Yeah, that gives me both mounts from Firelands. I STILL haven't seen the hammer from Rag though. In other farming news...

I've been working on my stockpile for Legion, moving copies of my Horde guild to Staghelm has supplied me with some extra space. As well as a LOT of items I want on hand for the big day. I've decided to stop production on bags at 8 tabs. I'll keep a single tab in my main guild, that should cover all of my alts. The other 7 are in one of my stockpile guilds, and should make me a pretty penny when all those Demon Hunters decide 20 slot bags are bullshit.

With enough bags we can carry all of the things.

Good deal, would deal again.

I also noticed something in trade chat that pique my interested recently, someone selling a load of pets for 330k. Doing a bit of quick work on the Undermine Journal I realized I could buy the lot, and sell off the ones I already had to break even, while adding some good rare pets to my collection. I'm not a huge pet collector by any means. But, realizing I could score not only a good deal, but also some good TCG pets that will likely only go up in value, I jumped on it. I've since sold the doubles, and surprise I'm actually up 10K. I always liked buying in bundles like this, but it's so rare to find good ones these days. Now, if you stuck around this long time for the big payoff...

AND FINALLY
I'd like to take a moment to thanks the folks at Tell Us a Story, the Alliance guild on Staghelm who recently hooked me up with a Moose run. Not only did this give me an opportunity to check out my UI in a 25 man setting (spoiler, worked fine). It also got me some goodies. Next week they'll be taking me through Mythic Blackhand for the Destroyer mount, and after that likely the CM Gold runs for XMog weapons and if my math is correct I should be getting a new Spider just as soon as Legion drops...

It's really coming together nicely.

Call me Teddy

K

THE LULLZ

It's been a couple of weeks, so you might be wondering what's going on. That's a fair question, so here goes...

CONSOLIDATION CONTINUES
As I mentioned in my last post, I've decided to really trim the fat. Instead of going all out on ten or more accounts, I've decided to just focus on five. With the introduction of Mythic 5 mans, and the reported expansion on this in Legion it seems like the best place to start. And if later I decide I want to expand to ten and make a real effort at raiding, the option is always there. First thing I decided to do was take stock of what I had, so there's the old reliable. Khaas and his merry gang of Horde on the disused battle.net account, this includes characters I've been playing since Vanilla (my Warlock for example is from when we decided to reroll Alliance on the Malorne server).

Remember me?

Yeah, there's a solid stable of level 100s there. They come with a load of Achievements, Feats of Strength, and goodies in general. Not to mention a pretty good guild for keeping things tidy. Two problems though, they're Horde and I've committed to playing Alliance. Additionally, they're also on a different server.

But most importantly this is a completely different Battle.net account. When I got in to take stock I realized I had 6 standard licenses, and 2 "Trials". So, first thing I did to save myself some real money was start the process of moving two of the licenses I've been playing Alliance on over to the main Battle.net.

Wait, what?

LOGISTICS, I HAS IT
First, you can only have 8 wow licenses on a single battle.net account. So, I had to contact Blizzard to remove those two Trial licenses. For this, you have to submit a ticket to Blizzard support, and they can only delete Trial licenses that have not already been upgraded to full retail copies of the game.

The next step is to have relevant licenses from the other battle.net account moved to the main battle.net account. This also requires contacting support with a ticket, and takes time. The entire process will likely take a weekend from start to finish if you contact them on Friday.

For me, this makes sense because as I've said I'm trying to consolidate my disparate game licenses. This is the most expedient way to do that. These licenses were created before the merge, so they don't have your standard WoW1 names. But for the sake of argument, let's go with Blizzard's default naming scheme so I can illustrate my point(s).

First, there is my main account, WoW 1 which houses the 11 level 100 Horde characters listed in the picture above. WoW 2 has been my "main" account while playing Alliance, Dazhbog and the rest of my tanking characters, as well as a full set of plate users that I've got waiting in the wings to complete Shadowmourne on Azuremyst are housed here. This was the first license I had moved over, why? Well since I'm going to continue playing on Staghelm/Alliance side I definitely would rather keep all of those characters if at all possible. But paying to transfer each of these characters, the very idea is the stuff divorce papers are made of. Just to do the math for you at $25 per character transfer, by 22 characters = $550 per wow license. Additionally, I'm talking about moving a total of 5 licenses worth of characters which comes out to $2750. And we haven't even talked about the elephant in the room, namely all those level 100 hordies on Blackhand. Not to mention a few I've got sitting around on Bloodscalp.

That's actually even more dire a situation, since not only do we have the server transfer to consider but also the faction change, which is another $35 per character ($605 to move the entire set if you're wondering). So the obvious answer is NOT paying out my ass to get these guys where they need to go. Hence, the battle.net shuffling shenanegans. A couple of emails ends up saving quite literally thousands of dollars. It doesn't address the hordies, but I'll get to them... in time.

DECISIONS
The first question I had to ask myself at this point was just how many of those Horde characters did I want to move over? All of them obviously, but I don't have the kinda cash necessary to move them all in one shot and I don't know if I would do it even if I could. So, who was most important? Obviously, Khaas would be making the move. He's my reputations guy, as well as having a bag full of old legendaries for the guild achievement and other goodies. I also want to move my old guild over, and take it over as my main guild (I have too many of these) as it's around 1000 more achievement points than the one I'm using currently. So, move it with Khaas, a bunch of gold, and items as a first move.

After that, it would be my Warrior and Hunter for the same reason. Blixxa has Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury, and Bheld has Warglaives of Azzinoth. However, since the guild I'm transferring already has those achievements unlocked, I'd then be more interested in my priest since he has the very old, very rare recipe for the Rich Purple Silk Shirt which is coincidentally and surprisingly very profitable to this day.

This also begs the question, do I want to stick with my "tank account, and DPS/Heals accounts" mentality that I developed since I started boxing again? In which case, I might actually transfer Dazhbog and Titus over to the new main account along with Khaas. Move my Monk and Druid over from Blackhand, and have a full set of level 100 tanks at my disposal. This is actually a pretty attractive proposition, I can then fill the accounts using a combination of RAF and transferring the odd hordie in to fill a spot as able.

This seems like my most logical/likely route. While I'm at it, I think I might earmark accounts on the secondary bnet for Horde, giving me the opportunity to boost myself through the Nemesis achievements, and others... for a nominal fee of course.

So, with that settled I decided I should probably make some room for the impending transfer. With the real Khaas en route, I needed to name change my Dwarf DK. And in the spirit of being broke, I used a little trickery to accomplish this. First, I deleted Dwarf Khaas, then I created a placeholder on the account where the original would be going. This also let me determine my appearance settings for when I do actually move him over. With the new Placeholder Khaas in place, I used the monthly character recovery/undelete option to bring back Dwarf Khaas, now flagged for a rename.

The grave indignity...

Text With that out of the way, I decided to go ahead and start levelling some people that were milling about at 90. Dwarf Khaas, err Erythnul as he's now named is following Dwarf Blixxa who just made 100 by accident basically. Erythnul is now 96, and I've already got Bleys to 92. I think I'll go through the list in fact and run through the starting quests of WOD to get everybody at least in their garrisons generating resources for later.

This is basically how all of my 90s look.

While I'm on the subject of levelling, I'd like to take a moment to address the gear these alts are using. Heirlooms are obviously the biggest consideration. I give them each a crafted ring, give them a belt and boots, then let them upgrade their gloves and bracers as they go. I was surprised at how quickly I got the heirloom rings, and now I'm thinking I might want to try for the fishing one, simply because it's one of the few looms I'm missing now.

Pictured: Easy Mode

Those levelling characters don't take long, right now I'm focusing on plotting out where I want to move everybody before I commit, it's worth it I find to take your time and do it right the first (or in this case 2nd) time. Meanwhile, I've got other diversions... like the Legion Alpha.

BURYING THE LEAD
Yeah, I got an Alpha invite. And I had it knocking around for a bit while I decided if I really wanted to give it a go or not, of course the first thing I did was lock in my Demon Hunter. Actually a fun class to play so far, and I intend to spend more time with it.

What's in a name?

Of course, I've got loads to say about Legion, and will likely be talking more about it here and elsewhere, the biggest revelation however is one you might have guessed earlier in this post. I thoroughly enjoy the absolute shit out of playing a Death Knight again. Further, I fully intend to run the Khaas as my main again, as the tank in my main boxing group SRS Business.

But wait, wasn't I playing Warrior before? Yep.


Then I played the Alpha...

Just for you, here's a love song! Which sums up exactly how it feels to be a Death Knight again.

Warriors are actually working just fine on the Alpha, but playing through the Maw of the Damned questline and seeing how the new abilities work actually got me excited about the class all over again. Which is actually exactly why I'm doing all of this shuffling in the first place, if I'm going to be playing a Death Knight good and proper, it's going to be on the original - there is no substitute.

There's obviously plenty more to talk about, but I've been rambling for a significant amount of time already, so this is probably as good a place as any to call it. But if you've got questions, feel free to ask. And keep an eye out on Twitter and Twitch in particular, as I'm streaming my Legion experiences regularly. When I'm not generating mass quantities of gold on Staghelm of course.

K

FILLING THE RANKS

It recently occurs to me that I haven't really been keeping up with this as much as I'd like, so time for an update. What exactly have I been up to?

CONSOLIDATING MY FORCES
So, first thing is first - until further notice I've decided not to ten box. In Legion that may very well change, I don't know. For the moment however, I'm refocusing on my primary account(s). Having said that, I decided to clean things up a bit and decide what I actually want and where.

Staghelm
I decided I wanted to get one of each class on each of the five accounts across Staghelm, additionally I wanted to knock out the Stay Classy achievement for my guild. So, I divided the accounts by race. Humans on the first, Dwarves on the second, then Gnomes, Night Elves, and Draenei on the fifth. Of course, what about Worgen and Pandarens? Yeah, there is that to think about. And it makes me sad, I really am not super excited about those. More on that in a bit.

Add caption

This offers me some serious flexibility, and of course means I can farm on an industrial level once complete. For the months between now and Legion I'll have 60+ Garrisons running missions for gold. Yeah, that adds up pretty quick...

WoW2

WoW3

This has always been my major strategy, having loads and loads of alts. Though, now I've moved on to another level entirely. But what about the second set of level 100s I've levelled and Azuremyst?

Azuremyst
This is becoming an overflow server really. I intend to move my extra 100s here, with the exceptions of the Shaman. She will be moving to account 5. And I will be moving a Hunter to her place on Azuremyst (I've really built up a LOT of extras while boosting). Additionally, I've decided I want to use those left over accounts for some Horde characters, I will be using these to boost myself and others (for appropriate compensation) through the Warlord of Draenor title and the requisite Nemesis kills. Yeah, as I think about it there's actually quite a bit outside of boxing raids to keep me occupied while I wait for Legion...

FURTHER READING
You might also recall the stock of boosted plate wearers on my main account, I've been putting them to good use. Aside from farming Shadowmourne (which they're all doing now). I've also decided to utilize the excess storage these represent, for example Drenton now operates my Transmog business. As my AH empire grows, I find it exceedingly useful to segregate the various aspects of my empire. Drenton's the soul member of the guild Void Storage, which allows me to hold massive amounts of transmog gear for dissemination either to my alts or the AH.

All I know is he wears a lot of purple for a white guy (I should've named him Phantomas).

Drenton is essentially my arms and armor dealer, as my stockpile grows for Legion I'm sure I'll be making good use of these other characters very shortly. Meanwhile, I've been doing some revision on my UI. Ultimately, I want something clean and compact.

So far so good...

 
I'm going to burn through some 5 mans this week to unlock the level 3 Tavern, so keep an eye on Twitter as I'll likely be streaming as I hit up a few dungeons.

K

YOU GIVE HEAD

This week has been pretty routine, though little did I know it was building up to awesome...

HEAD

I'm not one to bury the lead, so I'll get right to it. Mimiron's Head dropped yesterday during a really last minute Ulduar run...

Dafuq... that couldn't be what I think it is...

Wait, yep it is!

I say again, DAFUQ!?

Robotnik is officially tired of your shit rodent.

So yeah, I don't have a lot of mounts yet. But I've got at least one REALLY good one. As mentioned, this was really kinda a last minute run, I spent the entire day reconfiguring macros and settings in preparation for getting out there and killing some big bads, I realized there wasn't enough time to do a whole lot but figured I may as well knock out something easy like Ulduar before lockouts reset, I'm currently working on the healing legendary for my Priest and transmog gear for my Hunter.

Last thing I expected was to get a mount out of the deal.

THE TEN
The raid group is progressing nicely, SRS 2 now has a fully upgraded Garrison on each character, so they're starting to get their followers geared up. They're actually getting some gear too from Tanaan, my goal is to get everyone to 640 iLevel before I start taking some serious whacks at bosses. SRS 1 is almost 640 across the board, and they've started getting Highmaul missions with their followers so they should be 640 pretty much any minute now.

During my Monday Maintenance routine I spent some time really planning out my raid comp a bit more seriously, I wanted to have maximal coverage as far as buffs and debuffs. Here's how that turned out:

Dazhbog - Attack Power
Vecher - Crit / Spellpower
Warlock - Multistrike
Hunter 1 - Mastery (Hydra)
Priest 1

Paladin - Stats
Shaman - Haste
Hunter 2 - Versatility (Ravager)
Hunter 3 - Healing Debuff (Devilsaur)
Priest 2

I also downloaded GnomeSequencer for my basic rotation macros, basically meaning I spam the 1 button to do a normal DPS rotation. I spam the 2 button for an AOE rotation. GS REALLY simplifies for setting this up for multiple copies of the same class. Here's an example, I have this code setup as my Hunter rotation currently.

Hunter Rotation Code:
Sequences['SRSBH1'] = {
StepFunction = [[
    limit = limit or 1
    if step == limit then
        limit = limit % #macros + 1
        step = 1
    else
        step = step % #macros + 1
    end
]],
PreMacro = [[
/targetenemy [noharm][dead]
]],
  
    '/castsequence [nochanneling] reset=20 !Barrage,!Barrage,!Barrage',
    '/cast [nochanneling] !A Murder of Crows',
    '/castsequence [nochanneling] reset=20 !Barrage,!Barrage,!Barrage',      
    '/castsequence [nochanneling] reset=combat Cobra Shot,Cobra Shot,Cobra Shot',
    '/cast [nochanneling] Bestial Wrath',
    '/cast [nochanneling] Kill Command',
    '/cast [nochanneling] Kill Shot',
    '/cast [nochanneling] Dire Beast',
    '/cast [nochanneling] Focus Fire',
    '/cast [nochanneling] Concussive Shot',
    '/cast [nochanneling] Bestial Wrath',
    '/cast [nochanneling] Kill Command',
    '/cast [nochanneling] Kill Shot',
    '/cast [nochanneling] Dire Beast',
    '/cast [nochanneling] Focus Fire',  
PostMacro = [[
/startattack
/petattack
/cast [combat] Dire Beast
/use [combat]14
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
]],
}

-------

And to use that rotation in game I just make a macro named SRSBH1 and put it on my bar. SRSBH2 is for AOE. Super simple. I edit the GS lua code for the rotation and all of my hunters will use the modified code, without me having to copy/past multiple times. For someone who has 20 hunters that's kinda a big deal. Speaking of having more of a single class than absolutely necessary...

ARMORED CORP

Since I started over from scratch, one thing I wanted to make sure of was that I divided between my main account and my minions. There are likely to be times where for one reason or another I'll only have the main account active for a time. That account is where I'll be playing an Enhancement Shaman for lulz, or *shudder* fishing for boredom. So, when I set up my RAF chain it was main account acting as the Veteran account, inviting all four of the Minions. So, all of the granted levels went to the main account. I now have 1 of each class on the main account at 90 or higher. I still had some levels to grant though, so I decided to get onto the allied server Azuremyst and make 11 plate wearing alts.

That's a lot of Shadowmourne farming...

These guys serve several purposes, for starters I can farm Shadowmourne and sell off the goodies. I don't expect to do that all in one go, but having enough guys to do it repeatedly is nice. Additionally, I can literally just sit them outside ICC and share a lockout, run them to LK and camp out when Invincible doesn't drop again. With a shared lockout I actually should be able to kill him about 30 times per week in a couple of hours using my army. So, unless I keep rolling 1s for months on end, it will eventually drop.

It also gives me a lot of extra storage for things like stockpiling, I may for example want to create a guild for pets as an example, have it sitting on one of these plate users. I can then grab loads of cheap pets to sell later. It keeps things out of the way, and tidy. But close at hand for when I actually need to access the stuff.

HORDENNING

I've decided to power man a team of Horde as well on my old home server of Bloodscalp. I had a bit of a false start previously, but now I think I'm in good shape. I don't know how much I will play them, not a whole lot probably. But it will be nice to have a team to play around with on occasion. I'll have some more details about that very shortly, as my RAF time is running dry quick. So, expect to see some new faces pop up next week. For now, I've got things to do so I better get started doing them.

HOR

DING 1000

Time to play catch up, what have I been doing lately?

THE RAID TEAM
Recently I hit Draenor with SRS 2, it took a couple of days worth of questing but I ground my way through to level 100. Overall this team probably does about as much damage as my main team, despite the poor showing from my ele Shaman, seriously she's weaksauce.

The UI is pretty much straightened out...

As the caption suggests, I'm pretty happy with where my UI is at this point. There's still a few things I want to work out however, buffs/debuffs is a big one. And my minimap. So, work in progress still.

Yay, I get to delete 3 mounts!

Thanks to the limitations Blizzard has on Battle.net accounts, I have to have a second bnet account to run a full set of ten characters. Which is unfortunate, seriously for just two characters *sigh*

That means though that mount dropping rares like this one are nice, since both bnet accounts get the it simultaneously. It does mean however, I have to delete the extras. After I actually hit max level I decided to run my team through ICC 25 to not only unlock Heroic for both bnet accounts but to give me a rough stress test, and I have to say my machine held out nicely.

Heroic Lich King is surprisingly easy when you're not herding cats...

The most surprising thing about this run is that I didn't lose any of my minions once, while questing or even doing dungeons I frequently have to go back because a Mage gets stuck on the stairs or something. And I figured that with the extra strain on the system this was going to be a rampant problem, but I didn't encounter any type of stuttering or any other performance issues from any of the ten accounts. So, as a proof of concept it worked beautifully.

While we're on the subject of Icecrown Citadel, I should also mention that I'm on my way to completing Shadowmourne again. I did it with Khaas back when it was current content, but now I'm doing it as many times as I can, but more on that later...

ALSO surprisingly easy to do when you're not herding cats...

For now, I'm just happy to see how easy it is to complete with my current setup. With that out of the way, let's look at the other guys for a minute...

THE BENCHWARMERS

With my available RAF time ticking down to nothing, I'm working on getting a few extras together. I mentioned previously how I wanted to have tertiary teams that would be available as substitutions for raiding and also just as a change of pace. Though farming isn't out of the question for these guys either, and there's always PVP as an option for when I get the itch. Basically, if I'm thoughtful now I can have a huge army of alts to use as I see fit. And since I have those free 100 boosts from Legion, I figured why not go for it?

Have you tried NOT being a Paladin?

Yes, what you're seeing in the picture above you is indeed a full set of five Paladins. Yes, I boxed them to 60. No, I don't like no endorse multiple melee boxing. If anything, the experience only reinforced that dislike. GG was it awful, took longer than a normal group too. I've gotten to the point where I can run from 1-70 in a single session with RAF + Heirlooms using a Paladin, 3 Hunters, and a Priest. All Paladins though? Took all week, to get to 60. FFS.

[/rant]

I'm exaggerating, but not by much. I have no interest in levelling this team to 100 myself, so I'll be using my Legion boosts to put them all to max. Seeing as how they're already level 60, that will come with maxed professions and buildings. Which in their case is Tailoring and Alchemy if memory serves.

Tailoring, wtf?
Bags... More bags!

I'm looking at something like 50-100 level 100s here. That's a lot of bags. That and they're still selling around 1k each. I can already make about 4 per day. So yeah, not bad.

I'm making a couple of individual subs for my secondary team as well, I made a Mage to sub for my Shaman for example. And a Warlock for one of the Hunters. I'll probably make a set of tanks for the Paladin, actually I already have I'll just need to transfer them there later. My main account has a full set of boosted plate wearers ready to get their Shadowmourne on. Yeah it's a WHOLE lot of characters under my control, which requires a WHOLE lot of management, which will be a post or series of posts on it's own at a later time.

HOR

Double Teamed

As I write this it's January 10th, it's been exactly a month since my last post, at the time I had just started boxing again in World of Warcraft, and unless you've been following me on Twitter you might be wondering where I'm at with the whole thing. If so, read on...

THE REREMIX
Initially I was playing a mixed team, a Warrior, Shaman, Lock, Hunter, and Priest. I got these guys and gals to 60 before I realized there were a few changes I wanted to make. First off, I decided to drop the Shaman from my main group. I decided instead that I wanted a Mage in the group. I also decided to pay some serious attention to my group's professions. Since I hadn't really gotten anywhere, I decided to literally delete everyone and start over. But don't let that fool you, I've gotten a lot accomplished.

This is basically what my screen looks like when I log in, click an image for a better look...

I remade my Warrior, Priest, Hunter, Warlock, and Mage (all as Humans this time), I also started plotting out secondary teams. With RAF and my new Heirlooms being figured into the equation I realized I could realistically level from 1-60 on a team in a few hours. So, I made a Death Knight. A Druid, a Monk, and a Paladin. And while I was feeling frisky, I decided to seriously consider adding another set of accounts so I could ten box raids...


THE TEN
I'm not interested in going above ten characters simultaneously, for raiding I've come up with two teams. As of this writing the first team is level 100 and the second is level 90 and resting.

SRS 1
This is my main team, there will be times where the secondary set of characters won't be active. This set however is where most of the action is.
 

Dazhbog Prot Warrior (OS Arms) [Blacksmithing | Enchanting]
Devanna BM Hunter (OS Marks) [Engineering | Leatherworking]
Marmora Destro Warlock (OS Affl) [Inscriptions | Tailoring]
Vecher Fire Mage (OS Frost) [Jewelcrafting | Tailoring]
Koleda Disc Priest (OS Holy) [Alchemy | Tailoring]

SRS 2
These guys bring me more DPS and more flexibility, I may not care for Ele in my normal line up but for raiding it seems like a solid choice. Though I also plan to level a Hunter as a stand in for those fights where just a little extra damage is called for.

Titus Prot Paladin (OS Retribution) [ Enchanting | Jewelcrafting ]
Medeine Ele Shaman (OS Resto) [ Alchemy | Tailoring ]
Mokosh BM Hunter (OS Marks) [ Alchemy | Tailoring ]
Sieba BM Hunter (OS Marks) [ Alchemy | Tailoring ]
Rusalki Disc Priest (OS Holy) [ Alchemy | Tailoring ]

This raid force allows me to maximize damage potential, as well as allowing the flexibility needed to really adapt to specific situations. Of course, there's also my additional teams which add even more flexibility as potential subs when needed.

SRS 1 and 2 are my main force, I consider them to be two parts of the same team. For secondary teams, I have a template following the rules of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid: Tank, DPS, Heals). The secondary teams are as follows...

DEICIDE
Khaas Blood DK (OS Frost) [ Enchanting | Jewelcrafting ]
Archangelô, Archangelõ, Archangelo Destro Warlock (OS Aff)
Emeritüs Disc Priest (OS Holy)

BEAST MODE
Berstuk Guardian Druid (OS Balance) [ Enchanting | Skinning ]
Berstúk, Berstùk, Berstûk Balance Druid (OS Feral)
Berstük Resto Druid (OS Balance)

PORKCHOP EXPRESS
Fujimora Brew Monk (OS WW) [ Enchanting | Tailoring ]
Pantsù, Pantsú, Pantsû BM Hunter (OS Marks)Pantsü Disc (OS Holy)

The patriarchy in action...

 All other characters are Alchemy | Tailoring for their professions, except for my AH mule Madof, he's Herbalism | Mining. As a quick note, I chose this type of redundant profession method because frankly after the first team I've got pretty much every profession covered. So, after that it's all about what professions can I use to make more gold/make my life easier. Tailoring is a pretty obvious one, as I can make 30 slot bags for days. And alchemy for transmutes, though it's hardly worth it for Savage Bloods, someday maybe it'll Transmute Mastery will be en vogue again, either way I'm sure there will be opportunities in Legion for someone with 30+ transmutes available per day, even if I'm not proccing bonus whatever.

I'll probably set up another team for my future Demon Hunter, but we'll see... For now, this is how things look. They offer me more versatility in general, offering some extra DPS options for my raiding group as well as expanding tanking options. I can sub my Warrior for a DK for example if I end up in a very magic heavy fight that favors the class to the extreme. I've also used the RAF levels to boost a set of alts on my Warrior's account, so presumably on single tank fights I could add another Hunter, or anything for that matter as I need.

SO WHAT NOW?
For now, I'm busy burning through my RAF time. Getting my teams levelled and or geared. I hit 100 on my main team on Thursday, so they're sitting out building up resources to finish out their Garrisons. While they build up I'll be levelling my second team, they're 90 now and have been resting. Once they max out (later this week) I'll be back on my secondary teams milking that sweet, sweet RAF experience for all it's worth. I shouldn't have any problems getting those teams to 90 before the period is over, if not 100 on each of them. Either way, things are looking good and I'm having fun. Next post I'm going to go over some of the logistics I'm working on, because that's a big part of boxing and moreso when you're talking about raiding. Hopefully I'll have some video footage of my first steps into current content as well. If you have questions or comments, feel free. Otherwise, game on...

K

The Man in the Box

My relationship with World of Warcraft, historically speaking has been complicated. The past week, well I decided to get weird with it in a bigger way than usual...


STARTING OVER
If you follow me on Twitter (@SuperDuperSRS), which you probably don't since even my wife isn't following me on Twitter. Wait, what was I saying? Oh, yeah...

I decided to start over fresh recently with World of Warcraft, I actually spent the Thanksgiving Holiday and then some scouting for the perfect target for my endeavors. I decided to go Alliance, and with a completely fresh account. Well, not perfectly fresh to be honest, I'd been playing Hearthstone on this account once upon a time. So, I already had a freebie mount waiting for me when I logged in to check out the Alliance side of things. But that's not all, a couple of things happened at just the right time. First, there's the Blizzard winter sale that made getting an actual account up and running ridiculously cheap. In fact, for the price of one, I made five...

Five boxing, because jokes are hard...

I don't really have a distinct plan, I just wanted to play and have some fun doing it. Though there are some minor schemes...

This is my scheming face... ladies.

My first team is comprised of a Warrior, Ele Shaman, Destro Lock, Marks Hunter, and Disc Priest. I've already made 60 on these guys, and I'm only really underwhelmed with the Shaman. But, what can you do? I really like the versatility and the oh shit I forgot to soulstone the priest functionality of the Shaman. I've had to definitely rethink my UI a bit, which is something I've given up on entirely until I get to 100. Still, knocking around these old instances without idiots has made for a more enjoyable experience than I've had in a long time. It's definitely been interesting, if a little disconcerting to see the changes in the old instances. Which, for now thanks to RAF are exactly how I'm leveling. Though, I think I'll probably switch to some quests soon to fill out some gear slots. Burning through instances at this rate doesn't do much for your gear. My Warrior, Dazhbog still has iLevel 29 mail gloves ffs, at level 61.

I'm also a bit out of my comfort zone all the way around, I don't play female characters. Never have, never thought I would. But, this time around I've made a few. I've sort of gone with the philosophy of "does this character look better with or without boobs?" In the case of Draenei it's hard to make the case for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer level of goofy the male character brings to the game, so in the case of that race it's pretty universally female.

No, I will not sex0r for gold...

I haven't had much interaction with other people on the server, which is by design. Though I have had some odd encounters, a dude kept following me around calling me butt plug. Naturally I was intrigued, so much so that I literally stopped what I was doing for a bit to see what he would say next. Butt plug got boring (never thought that was a sentence I'd use in my life, surprises abound). Another guy tried to initiate some sexual transatcion with my priest Koleda. so that's a thing. And I've quickly learned I'm not the only boxer in the neighborhood.

In terms of my long term goals and plans? Well I've started leveling several teams, I'm thinking later I might expand and run a ten box team for raiding/BGs. That's going to be a while down the road yet though, most likely won't seriously happen until Legion drops. For now, getting levels and tinkering with the game, making gold, and having a lot more fun than usual.

After New Years expect to see some videos, I'll be streaming to Twitch soon and doing more on Twitter. Definitely have a lot to talk about, so stay tuned. And if you're looking to get in on the fun look me up on Staghelm. TTFN.

K