The past week or so I’ve been really hitting LFR and certain daily hubs hard to boost my toons as much as possible. I started to farm Throne of Thunder parts 1 and 2 now that I’ve become quite comfortable with the fights. Part 3 I’ve only done twice and still find it a little awkward but slowly am getting comfortable. Unfortunately, for Part 4, I entered at Lei Shen and we wiped pretty quickly. Because it was late, I decided to leave and just try another day. Admittedly, I didn’t understand the fight in its entirety because the explanation on WoWHead was incomplete (at least one of the main explanations) as well as another video that did a pretty bad job showcasing the mechanics. So I ended up checking out another video (actually a healing guide) which did a great job of showing the full fight. Thus, the next time I give it a try, I should be in a far better position.
Ironically, it’s been my hunter who is now my top geared toon. He’s at ilvl 492 and suffers mostly due to still using the Ghost Iron Dragonling trinket. However, he still has two 2-tier bonuses from the tier 14 and 15 sets. So that part is pretty nice. Also, it’s nice that he has a Sha-Touched weapon (finally!) with the Crystallized Dread gem. My plan is to continue to perhaps find the 483 trinket off of Lei Shi (good luck!) or farm valor to get the trinket. It’ll be nice to see him doing better damage though and become epic eventually.
Also, my Death Knight has come quite a bit. I’m having a lot of fun learning the melee aspects on him. He’s still sitting at ilvl 488 but the good thing is that he’s completely epic in terms of gear. I did upgrade his axe, which is the Shin’ka, Execution of Dominion to a full 491. I expect that he might not find a 2-handed weapon for a while so I just went ahead and put some points into his weapon. I’ll continue running older LFRs just to continue to collect loot for his blood spec as well as attempt to get the last few sigils for the legendary gem. Besides his weapon though, the thing I really think is awesome about my death knight is that he has the full tier set. I think he’s the only one at this point in time who has the full set but it looks great!
Next, I’m also working on my shaman. I did something incredibly stupid and left his elemental loot specialization on during a Heart of Fear Part 2 run and ended up winning the weapon for his elemental side. I felt incredibly stupid since he really needs a better 2-hander. And it would be awesome to get a hold of the Sha-Touched weapons as he now has completed the quest and just needs to kill the Sha of Fear for the last part. I will say though that it was pretty painful all day today doing LFR since everyone just wasn’t on top of their game. Probably the holidays can be blamed for that.
Lastly, I’ve been pretty hard at work on my warlock. He’s really had a lot of ups and downs. For instance, he won his tier robe piece on Heart of Fear part 2 twice…but that, of course, was after I dropped 7k on a 496 robe piece. Talk about throwing lemon on an open wound! But he did manage to pick up his Sha-Touched sword and the off-hand on top of that and even got a necklace from Oondasta. After all the frustration of running Heart of Fear part 1, it was nice getting something. He still has a few crafted PVP pieces but I hope in finishing up the part 1 run (and maybe some Mogu’shan Vaults), he’ll get a few upgrades so I can take him into Throne of Thunder.
Going back to the Throne of Thunder, I will ask myself, “What are my impressions?” I wrote a piece the other day about raiding/LFR in general, but with regards to the specific Throne of Thunder raid in LFR, it’s a real mixed bag. Part 1 has gotten significantly easier since I started. Horridon is still a clusterfuck of a fight but at the LFR level it’s certainly not boring. Council also is so much easier than before but Horridon might be my favorite fight just because it keeps you on your toes at all times.
Part 2 isn’t that bad either. Magera is easier than what I imagined and Tortos is like Horridon in that it’s a big clusterfuck of a fight. But it’s pretty dynamic so it can be fun. Ji-Kun is more annoying than anything. If you have a movement boost then you’re good. But I found my paladin having some difficulty at times even using his Judgments to give him a boost. I can certainly see other classes having a rough time on that fight.
Part 3 had its moments. I kept hearing Durumu all the time as being the most frustrating fight. I think because I heard so much about it and the fact that they nerfed it into the ground, it ended up being not as bad as I originally had thought. The maze still is the worst part but it’s not as bad as I had thought. It’s still a terrible mechanic but you can get through it within reason. I actually thought Dark Animous was far more confusing than Durumu. I think the problem is just having all these adds running around and understanding the priority along with people dropping large puddles in the middle of the room and killing people without really knowing it. In that sense, Durumu is a better designed fight since you can designate someone who is familiar with the maze mechanic to lead everyone. Same with the eggs in the Ji-Kun fight.
Now, I haven’t completed all of part 4 and I really would like to sometime tomorrow. But from what I’ve seen about the Lei Shen fight, the one thing that I don’t care for is the group aspect in terms of the pillars. That part does require a bit of coordination and communication. Because of the low standards of people who do LFR, that aspect can become somewhat of a pain. Add all the other clusterfuck mechanics and it does appear to be a messy fight. But people do say it’s fun once you get the mechanics down so hopefully over time this fight will become less painful (hence why I’ve waited for so long)
The one bad thing I’ve noticed is that with all the waiting and working on alts, I haven’t had enough time to really pursue collecting lesser charms and capping on valor. Even having all this time off really doesn’t permit doing all the necessary activities to really maximize what your toons can do. That kinda blows since there’s just so much going on right now. Pretty much most of my time is spent waiting for LFRs, looking for world bosses, the occasional rare, maybe the treasure scenario and a few dailies here and there with professions and farming sprinkled about.
Lastly, I’ve been leveling my warrior. I decided to go slow with her mostly because I’m hoping to get my paladin, who is also my blacksmith, to get as many recipes as possible before my warrior hits 90. That way, I’ll be ready with a variety of crafted gear to boost her asap.
I will try doing LFR part 4 tomorrow. With the Tuesday reset (mine already did), I feel that the quality of people doing LFR will be higher so getting into a good group sometime tomorrow I think will help out tremendously in preparing me to starting farming Throne of Thunder on my remaining toons.
Beyond that I’m looking to getting my warrior to level 90 and then leveling my remaining 85s. I still have my monk but she’s such a low priority at this point that I’m not really that motivated in doing anything with her. I might actually end up deleting her and just re-rolling her on the horde side.