Long term petting, in at the deep end.
So, over this past week I've managed to complete a couple of long-term goals.
First up, the legendary ring! Huzzah! Finally managed to get through the chain and get the final reward, Maalus the Blood Drinker. So once I'm back from hols and raiding again, that should give a nice boost to my DPS. Frequently over the past several weeks whenever I've not been top DPS, it's been mainly our raiders that have already gotten their legendary rings that have been beating me.
It took me that wee bit longer to get mine because of course I switched mains a few weeks before HFC opened but couldn't get gearing the hunter until the final few farm raids because I had to keep tanking at the time. That also meant I couldn't progress with the collection of the various grindy bits of the various quests; runes, stones, tablets, tomes, yadda yadda yadda.
But, I eventually got there and was pretty pleased to get it done before heading off for a fortnight's holiday. This will be my first holiday abroad in over 6½ years, so it's long overdue, I assure you.
The other bucket list item I managed to chalk off this week?
This was something I've been working on for a very long time. I used to hate levelling pets. It was long, tedious, and annoyed the hell out of me. But over the past few weeks I've been working on taking out all the grand master tamers. I started off with the Wrath ones, then onto the Cata, Mists and finally Draenor tamers. This of course opened up the grand master tamer dailies, which are a superb source of XP for levelling pets.
With a pet treat, giving an extra 50% XP, and my Safari Hat from beating 40 tamers giving an extra 10% on top, it means I can level a pet from 1 to 25 in 4 fights.
Yep, 4 fights!
The first fight takes the pet to about level 12/13, 2nd up to 18, 3rd to 22/23, and the last one's the charm bringing it up to 25.
I usually go for Gargra in Frostfire ridge, then onto Aki in Pandaria, and I stay there and do the Thundering/Whispering Pandaren spirits, Farmer Nishi, Shu, Mo'ruk, Yon and finally Hyuna. Doing this I can level a couple of pets to 25 without much fuss, as I have set duos for all these tamers, with which I can throw in my levelling pet and get that sweet, sweet XP.
So once I got the necessary pets levelled off I went to the Timeless Isle. I followed this guide, and I thoroughly recommend it, as it's faultless in its content, and there's even 1 single weak spot in the entire strategy (round 7 against Xuen: If he crits you, quit and restart) that the author points out.
Following that guide with the eponymous 18 pets I was very much on for a win. It took a few goes to get past some shitty RNG crits by the NPCs, but a straight run through all 7 tamers/Celestials takes less than 45 mins.
So which pet did I go for?
Well, initially I wanted to do the tournament for the Zao calfling pet. I felt it represented the role I played at the time very well, and I wanted him because he looked so damned cute too.
However given my change of role, I felt it didn't represent me as a player (listen to me, pretentious shit eh?), so it was a difficult choice between Xu-Fu and Chi-Chi.
In the end, and 4 tamer fights later:
So that was that. I was done and another long-term goal notched off the list.
Going on holiday has never felt sweeter.
