Lesson learned: whine as much as possible and you'll get your way

So after spending much of yesterday telling my sob story to just about everyone who would listen, the Packers and Falcons finally got around to playing. And let me tell you this, the Falcons have an atrocious defense:

Yep, I ended up winning after all! Onto the semi-finals to face the #1 seed in the playoffs. Given that I spent much of the night watching football, I don't have a ton to add to this post about World of Warcraft.

I did want to point out something that I just recently noticed in my Garrison:

That big dude, Tormmok, saying "This will be a glorious battle."? He's one of my followers. They pretty much just chill in various parts of your Garrison. It might be a small thing overall, but it's a nice touch, something that makes it feel like it's actually being used. Perhaps my favorite is an NPC that I just added (unfortunately his name escapes me at the moment, starts with an M though) who sits by himself off in a pretty remote area of my Garrison, overlooking a river.

I will likely hit 100 the next time I have a chance to play as I'm half-way through 99 currently. Then I have a tough decision on what final buildings to select for my Garrison. Let's talk about those on Thursday, shall we?

I hate Fantasy Football

A lot of leagues had their first week of playoffs this week, so if you've been subjected to whiny (or gloating) sob stories already, I apologize. Here's mine though:

Our league has 6 playoff spots; the division winners get byes in the first round and only the top 4 get money back. I entered the playoffs as the #5 seed, just a game behind the division winner despite scoring more points than anyone else in the league over the course of the season (Points Scored is a better indicator of a team's true talent level, as it does away with all the randomness of head to head matchups). I averaged almost 5 points more a game than the #2 in points scored! My team is behemoth. Over the past 6 weeks, I've failed to break 100 just once and have averaged 123.7 points a game.

My sob story actually starts last week though. The last week of the regular season, and the division crown (and the bye that went along with it!) was up for grabs. I scored 139.5 points - the second most points scored in a single week over the course of the entire season in our league. The only team to beat that number was, of course, the team that I was playing at the time - they put up over 150 points!

So, okay, no big deal. I am confident in my team's ability and I know that I have a pretty decent matchup in the first round. I'm facing the #4 seed who last broke 100 points in week 8 and has averaged just 83.6 points. In visual form:

Averaging almost 50% more than your opponent seems like a sure-fire win, right?

Wrong!

Heading into tonight I am down by 36.7 points, though I still have two players left to go and my opponent has just one. So I have a slim chance to win, but the two players I have left are averaging 23.4 and 13.7 points respectively, so if they just put up their average I would need his player to get blanked (and it's Atlanta's kicker, so that's pretty unlikely). I need my two guys to both have big days and his player to do close to nothing. So what went wrong?

My players basically put up the numbers they were expected to; I'm projected to score ~120 points which would be in line with my average. Instead, it's what did his players do:

• Russel Wilson has averaged 20.2 points this year and had scored over 22.5 points just twice before this week. He scored 29.3.
• DeMarco Murray has averaged 17.9 points this year and had scored over 21.5 points just twice before this week. He scored 28.8
• AJ Green has averaged 8.1 points this year and had not once broken the 20 point barrier. He had scored over 12.5 points just twice before this week. He scored 28.4.

Those 3 players alone add up to more than my opponent had been averaging! Needless to say, I am not happy with how this has played out.

Tanks for nothing

As you may have gathered from a couple previous posts, I've done several of the new dungeons. At first I didn't really plan on checking any of them out until I hit 100, simply because I was pretty nervous about trying to tank (and I had heard that queuing as DPS took forever). However, after getting a couple of the daily dungeon quests I decided to give it a shot, anxiety be damned.

As you can imagine, the first try was pretty rough. I didn't even have all my skills on my bar until I entered the dungeon (woops). In case you were wondering, yes, it is kind of difficult to read ability tooltips while you're tanking! Several people died along the way, but we managed to finish the dungeon, so I guess that worked out alright. I got better (and less nervous) the more I tried to tank, and at this point the only thing I get concerned about is when I try a dungeon for the first time.

One thing that has made running the dungeons immensely easier than when I last played is the Looking For Group tool.

I've only used this for dungeons, so I can't comment on how it works with PvP or Raids, but it's pretty straight forward for dungeons. You basically select what roles you are comfortable playing and then select your dungeon (there is also a "Random" option that gives you a small amount of gold). It selects your two current specs by default (from left to right the options are: Tank, Heal, DPS, Leader).

You'll notice in the screenshot that I am currently unable to queue for the highest level dungeon, Auchindoun. Each dungeon has a minimum iLvl gear requirement and mine was a tad too low! It's an interesting mechanism to ensure everyone is capable of contributing, and I've heard all the heroics / raids are like that as well.

96 is an exciting level (or, Garrisons, pt 2!)

Oh man, so much stuff happened last night, I'm not even sure what to talk about! I guess since we had been talking about garrisons previously I'll update you on that.

Two things happened last night that had a big impact on my garrison:

1) I hit level 96

2) I finished a quest in Gorgrond that gave me a free building upgrade

Hitting level 96 unlocks all sorts of upgrades. First, it unlocks the Herb garden, allowing you to collect from 6 random herbs each day. This, in turn, gave me the ability to start filling the daily work orders at my Scribe's quarters. Second, once you hit level 96 you can upgrade your small buildings and gathering sites.

Level 2 buildings are great because you can assign a follower (if they happen to have that Trait) and get extra benefits (these vary depending on which building and can be seen in the garrison infographic I linked above). I was fortunate to have a mining and leatherworking follower already, though my leatherworker was already out on a quest so I couldn't assign him (woops!). The benefit for assigning a follower to the mine was the addition of Mining Carts - they basically have extra ore and a random green item. My mine today had two carts and the first one provided Miner's Coffee which increases your run speed inside the mine (woot!) and the second one had a special pickaxe that decreases the time it takes to mine a node. The blueprints for the Small crafting huts cost 750 gold each and then upgrading the building itself costs 300 gold and 100 garrison resources. The blueprints for the Mine/Herb plots cost 1,000 gold each and they cost 300 gold and 50 garrison resources to upgrade. The gold wasn't an issue at all, as I have made about ~5k since getting to Draenor just through questing and vendoring items. Garrison resources haven't been an issue yet, but I did spend about half of what I had just upgrading buildings. Looking through wowhead (to verify the costs, my memory is terrible), it seems as though I may have been able to upgrade my mine at an earlier level. Woops!

What I did with my free building upgrade was grab the blueprints for the Frostwall Tavern. At level 1, the Tavern is filled with a couple of ragtag explorers (or sometimes, a very "leet" explorer) who offer up daily dungeon quests. Completing the quests gives you a fair amount of gold, garrison resources, Apexis Crystals (still not sure what these are used for), and a piece of blue gear that is usually a decent upgrade:

Gloves upgraded!

However, once you upgrade your Tavern to level 2, you gain the ability to recruit a new follower each week with a specific quality. Since I didn't have any followers with the Inscription trait, I opted for that. I was able to pick from three different followers, each of whom had different other abilities (and I'm assuming the quality of the followers that you get to pick from is random? I ended up with 2 rare and one uncommon, but I can't imagine why anyone would pick the uncommon follower if you are always given the choice of a rare one). After I made my choice, I was immediately given that follower, who I then assigned to my Inscription hut.

I still don't have a follower with the Herbalism trait, so that's next on my list if I don't find one randomly before the recruitment quest refreshes. You can apparently find random NPCs throughout the zones that you can have join you, too. I stumbled across a guide on Reddit that gives a breakdown of some of the ones you can get and went and picked up two of them last night that were in my level range. I got really lucky with one of them, as you have a chance to randomly upgrade a follower's quality, similar to how items work. My first epic follower, Blook (yes, I did a bad job with the screenshots, here's what he looks like):

Blook!

Weekly Wednesday Fitness Check-in

So Thanksgiving happened. Let me rephrase: a week long out-of-state Thanksgiving happened. No gym. No calorie tracking.

All of that adds up to not having to worry about not gaining enough weight!

The week before I left I averaged 178.3 for the week (down slightly from the previous week). The first day back from our trip? I weighed in at a whopping 182.6!! Yes, that is indeed 4 pounds heavier than before I left. Fortunately some of this was water weight and my weigh-ins have gotten progressively lower, but right now I'm sitting at an average of 180.5 for the week (2 days left to go).

The first day back at the gym was rough. For whatever reason, doing squats after a week or so of off-time always gives me the worst DOMS ever. Upper body is generally fine, a little sore, but nothing that makes me cringe just moving around. Additionally, I just joined a new gym. Ugh.

It's significantly cheaper, but having to switch from a gym I had belonged to for almost 6 years to a brand new place is intimidating. I suppose I'll be used to it in no time and then it won't really matter. But on Monday it was enough that I almost skipped out altogether! The best part about the new gym is that the wife belongs there as well, so we've been going together and working out. She has a different program than I do so we aren't together the whole time, but we generally have at least one thing that's the same. It's a whole new experience!

On Monday I completed the following lifts:
BP: 215 x4
Squat: 245 x4
Deadlift: 305 x3

It was ridiculously busy so I wasn't able to do OHP. Instead I did incline bench but wasn't really paying attention to the numbers as, while it is similar, the movement is not exactly the same and I hadn't done it in a very long time (6+ months).

Garrisons, part 1

Before I talk about Garrisons, I wanted to show this picture:

If you open the picture up all the way, you should see the text of the scroll says, "The Joy of Draenor Cooking. Use: Teaches you Draenor Master Cooking and a number of recipes." These scrolls exist for, I think, every profession. I touched on this yesterday, but these drop randomly and do two things:

1) They bump your profession max up to 700 which is the Draenor max (I think)
2) They teach you several recipes that use reagents found in Draenor and can be crafted regardless of what your current skill is (i.e. you can level up from 1 to 700 in Draenor itself).

This is important because it means you don't have to spend any time grinding in old content just to be able to enjoy the new content! And that means you have more time for your garrisons. I thought they introduced this in a really cool way. You get a quest to mark a bunch of trees for your peons to cut down and build you a garrison. For those of you who played any of the Warcraft editions, this might be a familiar scene:

Once your garrison has been built, you get a follower and are able to start sending him on quests. I wish I had taken a screenshot of the interface because I think it's pretty cool how they did it [editor's note: pictures added!], but essentially all followers have randomly assigned Abilities and Traits Similar to how gear works, there are varying levels of follower quality - uncommon, rare, and epic. Uncommon followers have just one Trait and one Ability; Rare have one Trait and two Abilities; Epic followers have two Traits and three Abilities.

The Abilities are important for the quests that you have access to. Every so often (I'm not sure what the time frame is yet) you get access to a new quest in your Garrison. These have various rewards (gold, bonus exp, garrison resources - required to upgrade buildings in garrison, send followers on missions, and I'm sure other things that I'm not yet aware of) and have a randomly assigned "strength" that can be countered by a particular ability. If you send a follower on a quest that has an Ability that counters that quest, the likelihood of completing that quest is much higher.

Additionally, with the level 1 Garrison you will be able to build a small building. I found (or it was a quest reward? I can't remember) the blueprint for the leatherworking hut. I believe you will always find the blueprint for your own profession first, and then once the second tier of Garrison is unlocked (at level 93) you are given the blueprints for all the rest. At first glance, the profession small buildings don't seem to be of huge value at lower levels. They require Draenor ingredients to process a work order which then rewards you with actual materials you can use for professions. The problem is that the original ingredients are so few and far between (at this point) that I barely have enough to process one work order a day (the max you can have going at once is 7! and that number can be increased once the huts are upgraded). I imagine this won't be much of an issue as I become higher level and my skinning increases, as I'll be getting more leather scraps from each mob I skin.

Of course, that's just for my own profession hut. For my second small hut, I went with the Scribe's Quarters and I have yet to acquire any of the necessary ingredients so far. As I don't have Herbalism, I can't gather any of the flowers I find out in the wild ... however! At level 96, the Herb Garden in your Garrison becomes unlocked and I will be able to gather everything I need (I hope) from there. My mine is already unlocked and allows me to harvest minerals from 8 nodes a day. There is also a fishing shack that I unlocked at level 94 and finally a Pet Menagerie at 98 that helps out with a variety of Pet Battle stuff. An interesting option is selecting your second small hut as the Enchanter's Study as this gives you the ability to disenchant all those soulbound green items. I imagine the price varies depending on your server so this might not actually be a profit for some people.

There are bonuses to be had from the small huts by placing followers there, but they require level 2 of the huts and I haven't gotten there yet. Hopefully when I do I'll be able to talk a bit about how that works.

And we're back

Hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving.

Last we talked, I had just hit 90 and was debating which class to boost. I ended up boosting a Mage and then heading over to Draenor with my Druid. Let me tell you, the intro to Draenor is really awesome!

You go through the portal and find yourself fighting along side a bunch of well known NPCs, both Alliance and Horde. In addition to the likes of Thrall and Archmage Khadgar are a smattering of garden variety NPCs in the likeness of the different classes (I tried to take some screenshots of them, but I don't know how well that translates). I really liked the opening scenes and the quests to escape/infiltrate the new world were really cool. The NPCs I was fighting with and getting quests from kept moving along with me to new locations as we moved further in; it really gave it a feeling of intensity.

And gear decisions were no longer hard to make. The very first quest reward was ... well, you can see my reaction in chat:

Needless to say, all of the gear from quest rewards have been upgrades. It's been really exciting despite the fact that my Druid now looks like a hobo.

I'm also glad I didn't stick around trying to grind leather to level up my tradeskills. Regardless of your tradeskill level, you can make items in Draenor, allowing you to bypass all the old materials / patterns. There are also random items you can find that give you large skillups (up to 600) when combined with the proper reagent (which can be collected regardless of your gathering skill).

I just finished the first zone last night and I'm up to level 94. I've made ~3,000 gold just from questing though I've heard it starts going quickly once you get to the higher garrison levels. What are garrisons? We'll talk about that tomorrow!