Last night, I was called off the bench to join Team Wanda in their first serious attempt at Iron Qon normal 10, and in the process we killed both Iron Qon AND The Twin Consorts.

I then had the pleasure of dying at the hands of Lei Shen.

I can’t wait to see these released on LFR. I think they’re going to be fun for 25 people, but easier to grasp than Drurumoomoo.

Of course, I might also be huffing paint, so we’ll see tomorrow.

This post isn’t about that. :)

Instead, I am just gushing to talk about PET BATTLES!!!

I did get a team to level 25 a while back, got a bunch of achievements, I even added several more pets up to 25 so as to have some variety.

What I didn’t do was ever finish the Pandaren Spirit Tamer quests, the elementals.

Seemed to be tough, legendary pets, you know. Something to save for when I had some free time. Something to look forward to.

This last weekend, my son saw the Burning Pandaren Spirit Tamer sitting on an island as I flew past to collect ore, and asked me if I could fight him.

Well, okay. Sure, I guess.

I checked on Wowhead to see what kinds of pets he had, and they recommended a Humanoid, specifically the Anubisath Idol that drops from Twin Emperors in AQ40 to go after the Dragonkin, a pet with Aquatic attacks that wasn’t actually water for the Fire Elemental (like the Rapana Whelk), and then whatevers to take on the flying one.

Huh.

I have an Anubisath Idol, I got it from the AH. Still level 1, though. And I have a Rapana Whelk, but it’s only level 24. My go-to Aquatic pet is the Emperor Crab, with the instant Aquatic attack, Shell Shield and Healing Mists.

I do have a Humanoid, though… the Kun Lai Runt. He was an easy humanoid to ge to 25 late in the leveling game, because you can capture one at about level 22 in the Kun Lai Summit area.

Meh, a humanoid is a humanoid, an aquatic is an aquatic, let’s kick this pig.

So, smash the humanoid attack over and over, Dragonkin dies. Elemental insta-kills my Kun Lai Runt, then my Emperor Crab soloes both of the last two pets easily with Shell Shield and Healing Mists keeping me at full the entire time. Not even remotely a chance of losing.

Hmmm.

So, I won! The elemental fire spirit is cute. I’d like one of those. I should finish that quest someday

Something about that made me remember, back in the day, people were talking about this tamer being an easy faceroll to use to quickly level pets. I can see what they meant, I didn’t even have an Anubisath Idol and it was easy.

That made me wonder, just how fast could you level a pet that way? Was it nerfed?

I took my Kun Lai Runt and Emperor Crab, plus the level 1 Anubisath Idol, to Terokkar Forest and fought a Skunk. Anubisath Idol dinged level 4. You’d expect that, with a level 1 pet getting XP from some level 20′s.

Okay, so then I took the Anubisath Idol as first pet, Kun Lai Runt as second and Emperor Crab as third to the Burning Pandaren Spirit Tamer.

The first pet he uses is always the Dragonkin, and the first attack the Dragonkin uses is ALWAYS the Tornado, which calls up the whirlwind but doesn’t actually do any damage in that first round. Low level pet is assured to survive that round.

So, level 4 pet, Dragonkin summons a whirlwind, my Idol walks up and punches the Dragonkin on the snout and bravely runs away.

Swap in the Kun Lai Runt, and proceed to spam my humanoid ‘punch in nose HARD’ ability.

The whirlwind did a lot of damage to the overall team, but nobody died, not even the level 4 Idol. I can see why people say the Anubisath Idol at 25 is good for this, because that sandstorm ability nefs the damage done by the whirlwind to the ground, preventing your cowering low level beasties in the back row from taking too much damage.

Can we get through this round?

YES!

Dragonkin died, Kun Lai Runt died, Emperor Crab finished off the last two same as before.

Anubisath Idol dinged level 11.

Really? Level 11? One fight?

Wow.

Okay, try a second fight.

Wait, level 16?

Holy crap.

My Anubisath Idol was level 25 in about a half hour to an hour of fighting… because I don’t have any bandages, I didn’t look up where the nearest Stable Master was for quick heals, and my Kun Lai Runt died every time so I had to wait out the 8 minute rez timer.

I had pets go from level 23 to 25 in one fight. Pets need about 2000 xp to go from level 24 to 25, and you get around 3000xp or more for beating the Spirit Tamer. One fight, and you ding from 24 to 25. That’s pretty nice.

So, sure I swapped some of my other ‘almost but not quite’ 23s and 24s in to top them off.

The thing is, I never finished the original quest. I was lazy, so I’d do it ‘someday’.

So, now I can go up and fight him over and over in a chain, instead of him being a daily quest giver.

I am so late to the party on this it’s not funny, but all I can do is make sure to share this with you now.

If you have at least three 25′s, and you haven’t completed the quest for the Pandaren Elemental Tamers yet, you can go grab a high level Emperor Crab from the Dread Wastes water area where the Saurok hang out, you can grab a Kun Lai Runt from the Kun Lai Summit, and they’re already pretty close to 25. It shouldn’t take too long to finish them off.

Then, once you level those two to full, you can take them and level ALL of your other pets from 1 to 25 pretty darn quick.

If you were the early bird that got the worm, already did the quest and have been doing the dailies, then it’s too late…

But, well, sometimes it pays to be the procrastinating buzzard that eats the roadkill.

On the positive side, doing the dailies got you lots of chances to get those awesome Pandaren elemental pets! So it all works out. Right?

Right?!?

I know Preach Gaming is supposed to have the best ‘how to play your class’ Youtube videos, but I think this video of a bear with an equipped staff is pretty OP.

You can try to nerf bears all you like, but we just upgrade by getting our noses into it.

Noses… feet, whatever.

We can kick your butt with a staff while nibblin’ on our toes, so just step back.

I haven’t spoken much about raiding recently.

The reason being, I haven’t been doing it. No, LFR doesn’t count. If it did, I would not simply be a raider, I would be it’s king.

I finally gave up on being part of a regular raid team to cut down on how many evenings I had where I simply had to be sitting at my desk all night. I don’t need to go into that again, you know the deal. Most of the time, my character may be logged in, but I’m not actually at my desk. It could be argued that even when I am sitting there, I’m not really there, but let’s not go there.

Um.

So, I stepped back from being part of a regular raid group or schedule.

Instead, I’ve became one of the ‘backup’ DPS players on the bench for Team Wanda, the progression raid team in Band of Misfits. Nothing can go wrong there, right? Backups never get called up from the bench. Right?

Right?

I expect this will mean I play less in the future. Someday.

In the short term, I’m spending more time playing than ever before, because I feel the need to do everything I can to be geared, prepared and ready to step off the bench at a moments notice.

Yep. That means I’m trying to Valor Cap and get full clears of all three Throne of Thunder LFRs as early into the week as possible.

Good news! At this rate within a few weeks I’ll be about as geared as I can from LFR, and I can back off the push.

And then comes a new patch! Gah! Okay, just kidding. The next patch won’t have raid gear. Whew!

It is nice, though. All kidding aside, I only have one commitment in the game; Being as ready to go as possible on my Warlock, and waiting for the call.

As long as everyone in Wanda is good to go each week, I might never get called up off the bench. Right?

You never know when the lightning might strike. Check my Twitter, check my Texts, am I raiding tonight? Do they need me? Or can I log off and read The Man Who Saved The Union; Ulysses Grant in War and Peace by H. W. Brands?

You just never know.

Case in point.

Last night I’m strolling along, minding my own business, and about 45 minutes prior to regular Team Wanda raid time, I get the whisper. “Super can’t make it, he’s got something really important happening, can you step in for raid tonight? 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM your time.”

Um… sure.

 

Stepping foot for the first time into a fresh run of normal Throne of Thunder felt amazing. To see it somewhere other than LFR. To put into practice the good advice and strategies learned from Fatboss videos and by listening to the Convert to Raid podcast.

And of course the most important bit.

The stress of hoping you’re not the reason the raid wipes by standing in bad.

A two hour normal Throne of Thunder run, and in that time we blasted through the first five bosses, each killed in one attempt. Nice and smooth.

The thing that stood out for me was how calm everyone else was in vent. It was farm content for them at this point, what you have to plow through to get to the good stuff; Flight Team Alpha and nest smashing, maze dancing and blood pool soaking.

Wednesday night was what they had to get through to get to the good stuff.

For me, last night WAS the good stuff. :)

You know what cracked their jaded voices, and sent a surge of enthusiasm through vent?

We were entering the Megaera area, and just past Tortos in the tunnel was a massive gold explanation point meaning a quest was there to be had, a quest called Rocks Fall, People Die.

It was a quest… to kill an NPC in the Megaera trash area, an NPC named Rocky Horror.

That’s right, the ICC weekly random raid quest challenges are back! Genuine enthusiasm was felt at the prospect of killing Rocky Horror.

Chron had a horrible pun… so I’ll repeat it.

He said that while fighting Rocky Horror, the monster fears people, and that fear should wipe away our buff cooldowns so, yes, you guessed it, we could all do the Time Warp again.

Yes, I know. I suffer, so you have to suffer too.

Okay, secretly I think that would have been a great idea. Shh, don’t tell him I said that, it’ll only encourage him.

Looking back on the crazy that was last night, I don’t have a recap so much as a few flashbacks.

Whirl Turtles are either a LOT slower on 10 man normal than in 25 LFR, or they nerfed the shit out of them. In LFR I move my butt as fast as I can, and it seems like I get hit no matter what I do. There I am running like hell, and boom, Whirl Turtle right up the butt. Normal, not so much. You have a chance to move if you are actually trying to, like, move.

There is just too much trash on the bridges. We could stand to have two fewer of the hags on each stretch of bridge. Plus, holy cowpatties the floaty trolls knock you back on normal, stay out of those blue circles, I kid you not. Respect to the trolls, I thought they were just silly in LFR.

Horridon is a lot of fun on normal, as long as you remember to target the mobs that JUMP DOWN and burn them down first. The guys running in through the gates? I swear those scrubs are LFR bait to sucker you into targeting the wrong stuff at the start.

Does Blizzard hate healers this expansion or what? Or does it just seem that way to me?

You can tell what a raid leader fears most by what gets called out on vent. Most of the run was fairly laid back without much in the way of announcements. On Council, Every time that Loa Spirit was up, it was called in vent. No exceptions.

Megaera… ah, Megaera. Green Red Green Red Blue Red Green. Or something. I hear tell you can have fun switching up the order any way you’d like to get different effects, depending on your groups strengths. Just doing it on normal one particular way was fine with me. Cinders on you! Run away, little girl. Run away.

An amazing night, lots of fun, good times with good people.

So, I was called up off the bench, did my job, now I’m back to the minors again, satisfied that whatever else can be said… we never actually wiped.

Better yet, I don’t believe I ever once heard anyone exclaiming “bear! bear!” in that “I’m calling you out for not doing what you’re supposed to be doing without saying what you’re doing wrong” way. Always makes for a good night.

Okay, are you ready for the big reveal?

I bet you scrolled down to see the pictures first, didn’t you? You scrolled down, then scrolled back up. Shame on you.

.

..

…

…

…

..

.

Pac Man? Is that you? Wakka wakka…

What was in the box is a Figureprints statue of one of my sons characters, Wooffie. Well done Andrew for your accurate guess, even if you talked yourself out of it immediately.

Yes… yes, it is a Warlock.

How Wooffie the Worgen Warlock became a Figureprint is fairly interesting to me.

I asked our son what he thought. If any one of his characters could be a statue, who would he want it to be?

I tried to ask in such a way that he never once suspected it might actually happen. This kind of questioning is usually the province of Department of Homeland Security gestapo, and spouses desperate for birthday ideas, but I did my best.

I expected the answer to be his Worgen Death Knight. That is the character he actually plays, the character he’s run numerous raids with, Dragon Soul, Molten Core, he has his bank with full 22 slot bags and his entire Void Storage choked with transmog gear.

Nope.

He wanted Wooffie, his Worgen Warlock to be a statue. And he was serious about it.

He knew the exact outfit he wanted to be wearing, as well as which weapon. How? Because he spends more time in game browsing the MogIt addon than he does actually playing.

Which reminds me, I really need to try and get enough people scraped together to get his Worgen Death Knight the Molten Core chest piece. He has the rest of the set along with the heroic mode chest armor, but that flaming red doesn’t blend well with the nice orange of the normal mode. Someday.

Anyway.

We made sure to run raids until he had every piece of the Warlock Tier, looked smoking hot, that Warlock was on fire, man. He also got the staff he selected as his transmog weapon.

I revealed that this was for real, we were actually going to do a Figureprints statue. His reaction was so cute, I swear he squeeed.

We went to the Figureprints website, where we were able to import his character and equipment directly from the Armory.

I was shocked to see Figureprints does Minecraft as well. I was quick to hide that from Alex, I shudder to think what could come from THAT revelation!

Our first surprise in browsing the character options was that you weren’t limited to gear you actually had equipped on your Armory page. You could also browse character sets, and choose from among them to deck out the character you wished you had instead of the one you were stuck with because that damn helm won’t ever drop.

After browsing sets for a while, he went back to ‘HIS’ Wooffie, and then chose his own pose, base, colors for his name, everything.

He got to bring his own character to life, and we placed the order.

What might have thrown you off in your guesses from the previous post is how big the box was that arrived. It’s a big honking box.

That is because the statue is HUGE!

I had in my mind that this thing would be, okay, bigger than a wargaming miniature, but not much bigger. Maybe as big as normal action figures in the stores these days, around 3 1/2″ tall.

Um, no. This thing is around 10″ or more tall, and very wide. The entire thing is sturdy as heck, and I’m not kidding about how big it is. This is a statue under glass, something extremely noticeable on your shelf. It doesn’t get lost among the clutter.

So, to the good. It looks great. I don’t know how these pictures will turn out, but holding the statue in your hands, it looks incredible. It IS Wooffie, right there, big as biscuits and gravy. I was concerned about the fine details of the armor and glowy bits, but in person it looks incredible. There is absolutely no question what this is, and he looks good doing it.

The one thing that isn’t a negative but is something you notice is… as you can see, the manufacturing process does leave the product with a slightly dusty finish.

I think, for a character wearing cloth, it looks great. It leaves stone spikes and skulls and cloth all looking very good.

Alex did notice the dusty finish right away, not so much as a complaint as in thinking that it may have gotten dusty before the glass dome was put on. “Can we take the glass off and brush it off?”, so it’s certainly there and does give the impression of a light coating of dust.

Again, looking closely at the staff and cloth armor, it doesn’t take away from the figure at all.

My only thought is, if I were a devotee of ‘slut plate’, or chose a character wearing shiny metal armors or lighter colored tones, would the dusty appearance have mattered more?

I have no idea. I’d love to get the opinions of others who have Figureprints of characters wearing colorful metallic armors, and especially pictures I could feature, to find out more.

I was talking to Tesh of Tish Tosh Tesh, the Master of Peep Mayhem and Marshmallow Mastication his thoughts about the dusty finish.

He thought it might be possible for someone to use a clear coat polymer over parts that are supposed to be metal to get a nice effect. He did point out it gives you more of an incentive to play a cloth or leather wearing class. :)

I agree with him, but when you’ve invested in something this special, it would take massive guts to experiment with paints and coatings. Or to breathe on it too hard.

Overall, it’s fantastic.

I know I teased you yesterday, but I hope the final surprise was worth it.

Thank you to Cassie, who took a lot of pictures and, to my mind, did a great job of getting details through the glass case. Thanks, sweetie!

I have something special to show you, something really neat.

I’ll show you pictures, I’ll do a big reveal.

When you see it, you will laugh, you’ll cry. It’s not a hoax, not an imaginary tale.

It’s real!

But… you’ll have to wait.

For now, all I will say is…

Whatever it is, it’s in the box.