It’s only been a full day since 5.3 dropped, but wow, what a great patch. I have never felt so unpressured by the valor points grind, thanks to heroic scenarios. Like 15 minutes for 120-150 VP once per day, which is amazing. Despite an urgent need to cap every week (at least, until my gear is full upgraded) I have no concerns about how long it’ll take me to get that done.

The scenarios themselves are pretty bite-sized content, but I appreciate the step up in difficulty that the heroic flavor offers. Hopefully them not being a complete steamroll just yet will keep them interesting and not at all tedious. You also cannot beat that return on (time) investment.

In the three that I’ve run so far, all of them have included someone being a tank, which seemed to be a huge help. A healer was definitely not mandatory, but having one person taking and mitigating the damage from some damaging trash pulls was well worth it. The bonus timers also seemed pretty easy to hit (granted, that was in Throne gear).

I didn’t do much in the Battlefield: Barrens world event, but I liked what I saw.

I’m also a little annoyed (okay, jealous) because the Horde storyline right now is so good and the Alliance angle on it just cannot compare, no matter how awesome and allied and cooperative we are and how we’re planning out some sort of sneak attack with the Trolls as cover. That’s all well and good, but it’s so boring compared to a rebellion. Strife is sexy and exciting; reconnaissance is dreadfully meh.

Still, it was really nice to be back in the Barrens. I have good memories of that zone, especially after I learned how to exit general chat.

The whole event should be a nice diversion now that I’m pretty burnt out from caring about the Isle of Thunder. So, excellent pacing on the content additions there, Blizz.

Zoom, zoom

In my post the other day I talked about how critical it was for us to keep up our speedy pace and get all the farm down in one night, so we are poised for only progression on our second night. Well, thankfully, I did not jinx us! We had an awesome pace last night and stormed right through the first half of Throne of Thunder in two hours, chain pulling our way to Jin-Kun’s fresh corpse only a few minutes before raid officially ended.

Durumu won’t know what hit him on Monday!

I also picked up some great loot last night, among them an expertise-itemized Bracers of Constant Implosion, Zerat, and Ji-Kun’s Rising Winds (thanks to Voss). The tank upgrades just by themselves freed up enough expertise that I was able to push to 26% haste. It’s not an amazing amount, but I’m really happy that I’m finally starting to stack up that wonderful stat. If I could get a Worldbreaker’s Stormscythe to drop, I think I could do some serious damage.

Ah, karma. I bitch and moan about the scarcity of shields, claiming that the best I can hope for is some benighted hand-me-down from one of two fights in LFR, and then Visage of the Doomed has the audacity to drop off of Horridon and make me look like an ass.

I am not embarrassed to admit that when I saw the item on Horridon’s corpse, my immediate reaction was to utter in mumble what someone might charitably describe as a deep, throaty gasp. (Yes, I’m aware how horrific that sentence is. When it comes to shields, even dodge/parry ones, I have no shame.)

I’m not sure I would have to, but I can’t tell you enough how much of a relief it was for that shield to drop. I really thought I was going to be out in the cold for a good, long time.

Things are looking up!

Plucked from the sky

Speaking of looking up, after raid last week (which, I must say, was fantastic) we found ourselves at the end of the night looking at Ji-Kun once more. We executed fights wonderfully and generally made great use of our limited raid time. Thursday lined us up nicely for a full Monday of Ji-Kun progression.

And so it was. Last night we hit Ji-Kun once more and before long it was Bye-Bye, Birdie. I have no idea what was going on with the flying teams, being firmly planted on the ground, but they were completely on top of smashing the nests’ contents. Healers were similarly on top of their arena, and puddles were not in danger of overrunning us.

As for tanking, Voss and I had a pretty good handle on our roles. At one point we noticed that he was having trouble getting back to Ji-Kun post-Down Draft before other people (or, tragically, hunter pets) would, because he’s so damn slow now that he’s a DK. However, he was also the only one between the two of use that was consistently tanking during Down Draft, so there was an easy fix to be had.

We switched up who started tanking the fight, which put me on the ball when Ji-Kun started flapping her wings. Thanks to Speed of Light, I could pretty much stand still if I lined it up with Down Draft, which completely negated the tragedy of Snarf the Wind Serpent getting cut down in his prime. Teamwork!

I must admit, being the optimist I am, I did not expect us to get Ji-Kun last night. I feel like it usually takes us two solid nights to learn a fight, at least according to the trend line from the entirety of Throne of Thunder. With last night only being the second night we hit Ji-Kun for real, by all rights we should have finished up the night disappointedly hopeful. And yet, there we were, victorious, with Ji-Kun plucked from the sky after only thirteen attempts.

The goal this week now has to be a repetition of last week’s farm night success: storm through all completed content and clear a night for progression. It was doable last week, but will it be so this week? With 12 bosses (and ALL THAT TRASH) and only two hours to a raid night, there is a wall coming where we can only kill so many bosses in a night and still have decent time for progression. After all, we’re no spring chickens.

The time may come soon to talk about extending lockouts …