So finally, when it came time around for I was like, you know
what I want? I want the 3400.
I want to get this mount that required a bit of work and that
there were dungeons. I mean, again, pugging where
groups just didn't time some of those sixteens.
It took me about like a a reset week, really playing a few hours
throughout throughout the week here and there to work on it
gradually and then and then eventually time those and get
it. It wasn't just a go in one shot.
Hey, we're done. Victory for the Forsaken.
For Lauderon. For the Karen Tour for Pandaria.
For calendar. To the burning region, for
Gilnaeus, for hath not done, for the Lynch King, for the
Sindorai, for the Alliance, for the Horn, for Azeroth.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of For Azeroth.
I am one of the hosts, Manny AKA Truman.
Manny and I am joined again by a special guest.
So we do not have Lex, we do not have Sean, but we have Lyria.
Lyria, how are you and how's the World of Warcraft been treating
you this week? Hi, I'm doing very well.
I'm absolutely loving midnight. I've been telling people like I
really enjoyed the War Within, like enjoyed it, it was
fantastic. But midnight for me has been
even better. I I've absolutely loved it so
far. What's been, what's been the
high point for midnight that's been putting at that next level?
Oh gosh, I think so. I told myself going into this
season that it was going to be the season of ALTS for me
because going back to probably like Legion and BFA, I, I used
to have a lot of alts. Like I had my main and it would
raid. It would do all, you know, all
the weekly things. But I, I used to just, I feel
like be known for playing alts and I moved away from that a
little bit. And so this season, going to the
expansion, I'm like, you know what, I'm going to slow down a
bit, like still do all the things I normally do, but carve
out time every week to make sure that I'm, I'm actually doing
the, the delve season journey or I'm actually working on renown
for cosmetics. And like just things like that,
that make you really appreciate the smaller things in the game
that aren't like the, the bigger like rating and, and chasing IO
and, and mythic plus and things like that.
I just really wanted to slow it down.
And so far I've managed to accomplish that.
And I think, I think that's helped a lot.
That's amazing. That honestly sounds like the
inverse of my journey. I got to ask you, when you're
saying you're re re enlisted this army of alts, how many alts
are we talking about here? Oh gosh.
Well, so I have 5 characters total.
One of them is technically my main, but I I still, I suppose
that's still 5 characters. I used to play one of every
healer and over the last couple of expansions that's kind of
just been like my main and maybe one other healer.
It has not been all of them. So what I've been trying to do,
I should also say it's, it's excluding shaman.
I'm, I'm so sorry for anyone who plays a shaman.
I've never I'm so sorry. I it's the totems.
I just I have such a hard time with the totems and I know
everyone has told me that they've those are just kind of
like scaled back on the totems. They're on it nearly as many as
there used to be, you know, looking back at like Mop.
But I that is still on my list because technically I can't say
I play all the healers until shaman's leveled, but Hunter's
also on my list. I finally learned how to play
survival in the war within. Do you remember legion when they
they turned it into a melee spec?
I, the most I played in Legion as survival with that new spec
was the mage tower. And even then I just pressed
buttons that lit up and just kind of like hoped that
everything would be fine. And then I finished the mage
tower and I didn't touch it again.
So anyway, Hunter's on my list though, because last expansion I
actually sat down and learned how to play survival and it's so
much fun. So that's, that's on my list
coming up. But for now, for now it's it's 5
characters. 5 characters OK honestly, because the buzzword,
the word that has lost all meaning on this show is average.
We have Sean who'll be like, Oh yeah, I'm, you know, I'm at
average item level and that'll be like 280 something.
And then Lex will be I'm at average item level or other
people. And like what averages is of
course different for all of us. So it's average.
You're playing with a few alts and that happens to be 5.
What when you said you're doing like, you know, the, the
journey, your dungeon journey and everything.
What item level are these? How are you playing?
Do you have like separate roles for each of them?
So my my rest or druid is the one I do.
I do cutting edge rating on the rest or druid.
I I made it every tier, every expansion.
That's that's just my go to. That's always my main that I
believe at the time of this recording, it's 283.
It's but again, that's the character that it goes with the
great every week. So that's the one that has the
most gear. The other alts I try to do at
least one key on them so that the very least, even if I end up
taking a socket or whatever, I have one myth slot option in the
vault every week. If I have, you know, if it's the
weekend and we're coming down to the, you know, the heading
toward Tuesday basically for reset, if I have more time, I
will do, I'll pick maybe one or two alt healers and do more keys
on them at least maybe like 4 because because then you want
unlock 2 ball slots. They're all around 27270,
something like maybe the low two 70s.
So there I would say that there's about a 10 item level
difference with the main and the alts.
What I, what I used to do in, in BFA and it was a little bit
easier because, you know, that was the COVID days, if a lot of,
you know, most people were kind of at home and, you know, work
schedules I think were a little bit different.
So I had a lot more time back then.
And what I tried to do was have my alts ready to step into
mythic rating because that was always my focus for many years.
And my Guild knew that, you know, if we for some reason lost
a healer, they quit rating or we got to a boss fight on mythic
and it needed a particular healer.
You know, like for for example, like mythic mythic paladins
right now in, in Voyd's Fire that a lot of most, most groups,
I think bring a misweaver so that you can revival off the,
the spell off the whole group, you know, situations like that.
And so I like to have my alts very gradually, not a ton of
pressure every week, but get to a point where if I needed to put
a little bit, you know, 110% into 1 alt for a week, it could
step into mythic at any point. I haven't had to do that, but
you know, it's fun to switch it up.
OK, that's very cool that you are both specialized in healing,
but also a Swiss army knife where you can like pop any of
those things out of your roster when needed.
OK, so then you of course have done Mythic plus at one point.
You were pushing really hard. For those who don't know you,
that are just having introduction to you, what's your
history with Mythic Plus and Keystones?
I guess my more immediate history is that I I made a
wrestler dirt and I I push relatively high mythic.
Plus I have achieved the 0.1% title one time one season and
that was season 3 of Dragonflights fairly recently in
a way the a season immediately after that.
I was exactly 50 points off of title that season and that was
unfortunate and I'm sure we'll get to it at some point.
I, I often pug my keys, you know, so I whenever I talk about
high mythic plus it's not like I have a, a pre made group ready,
ready and waiting to go. It's I, I for the last several
years have always pugged a tank, for example, always and I've
always pugged usually one DPS. So it kind of, it kind of
depends. Before that though, I I should
also mention that up until Dragonflight I used to only do
whatever the weekly key would be.
So weekly key meaning like the lowest key level you need to do
to unlock the highest item level from your vault.
So in this case, right now in midnight season one, that would
be a 10. It unlocks A myth myth level
gear from your vault. I used to only do that and then
in Dragonflight that's when things shifted a little bit and
I started to do higher, higher and higher keys.
OK, so let's focus in on that. Like what was involved in making
that shift from going and saying like, OK, I'm going to get the
highest reward and since nothing I don't get anything extra from
from going beyond to I'm going to be in the top .1% and push
and push on that. And I, I also do want to say I'm
really sorry for missing the point 1% by 50.
That's that's got to hurt. That took that, that was
painful. That took a little while to get
Oh, and and it it was, it was painful, I think because when
you're pugging it, it just, I mean, a, a friend and I were
pugging together. It was a it was DPS and I were,
were queuing up in LFG, the season 4 Dragonflight.
And it got to the point where even just listing it wasn't even
like we were playing that queue simulator that people talk about
where you, you know, you, you go up for a key D list, D list, D
decline, D list, you know, decline.
It wasn't it wasn't even that we would list our own key.
We would try to push our and we were not finding people with
comparable experience. And, and what I mean by that,
because it's not meant to come across as a oh, we're excluding
people. It's more like when you, for
example, right now, the time of this recording, I believe title
range is right around plus A + 19.
At the time when we were, we missed it by 50 points.
It would be like if you were putting up a + 19 key into LFG,
but having people with a + 14 + 14 experience queuing up.
There's a big difference. There's a big jump between a +
15 and a + 19. The damage itself, just the
numbers are quite different and there's a little bit of, there's
a bit more understanding involved when you're kind of
jumping out, You know, I don't, I don't even, I wouldn't even
jump from like a 14 to a 16. You know, I would, I would jump
into a 15 instead, personally. And so at the time, and those
numbers I'm throwing out are just an example, at the time it
was just really difficult to find somebody who knew the
dungeons because my friend and I had been pucking and pucking and
pucking till for like 2 weeks straight.
We sit up till, oh gosh, do I tell you this, We stayed up to
about 3 or 4 in the morning for two weeks straight.
I had some time off of work and we were like, you know what,
this is the big push. We're just going to go and and
attempt to get title. It's toward the end of the
season. And we had seen the dungeons
over and over and over and over again.
We knew the routes, we knew the polls.
And so part of pugging and I might be getting a little bit
off topic of your original. No, no, this is all wonderful.
Part of pugging is you. You don't know who you're going
to get, like what their experience level is.
And so again, going back to those numbers where when you see
somebody in their highest key is, you know, couple key levels
below what you're trying to do, there is that there's that gap
in experience where it gets a little bit tricky.
And when you only have X amount of hours a day to attempt
something, it becomes this question where like, OK, well,
do you, do you try to team up with somebody and you know,
maybe they're going to stay. They, they might not even want
to stay in your group. You know, they already have a
group, but maybe they're, they're queuing up because they
have an hour to kill. And then, you know, we ran into
that a lot as well, where people couldn't commit to our group,
but just wanted to do a key here and there.
You, you just, you never know what people's experience levels
are going to be. And it just, it made it really
tricky to kind of match up that experience level.
And I think in general, I should also mention, because I, again,
I'm not trying to come come across it as, you know, you have
to has to be the same, you know, experience level has to be the
exact same IO, because that's, that's not the case either.
I have, I've brought in DPS friends before who didn't really
have a ton of experience, but needed to see the dungeons, knew
their class really well and just needed to know, Oh, this is when
I pop a defensive or this is when, you know, they kind of
learn, you know, you spend a few days, a week or two, you know,
and, and they kind of get into this rhythm.
We've tried that before, but I think sometimes you fall into a
little bit of a time crunch where you're just kind of
looking for somebody who has approximately, you know, a key
level or two difference than what you're trying to to time.
OK, No, that is that's a lot of things that you touched on there
that I was going to hopefully get to in the future.
But I do love that. So I bear with me.
I want to pick apart just just some of that so.
I tend to keep going. I love talking about Mythic
plus. No, this is wonderful.
This is great. I mean like that's just front
loaded information. I hope all the people listening
to this are are thankful that they are getting all this
because I'm enjoying this a lot. But again, you were pugging it
to get to that point and you have gone into the point 1%
through this mean. So it is possible as you said,
obviously as you're pugging the confidence that you have in what
in who you're bringing is like different because you haven't
worked with these people. What I would like to ask you
about is as you are preparing yourself, or if you are looking
for other people to prepare, what are the things that they
could do to like give themselves the best chance of not being the
person where that confidence was betrayed, I guess.
So that, that reminds me, because I think I've answered
part of your question before, and I think part of your
question a moment ago was how do you, how do you go from doing a
+ 10, for example, like just trying to fill up your vault and
to the 0.1% range or, or possibly just under like 50
points? I had just joined a Guild and
this is connected to the confidence piece.
I just joined a new rating Guild.
I had taken the first couple of Ray tears off in Dragonflight
and in this new rating Guild, there was a Windwalker monk And,
and they were, he was very, he's very, I'm still friends with
him. He's very nice.
And he had reached out to me pretty, pretty early on when I
joined the Guild and he said, hey, beginning of the season,
are you interested in pushing keys?
I asked the Guild every season, hey, does anyone want to push
keys? I'm never going to need takers.
You're new. Would you like to do this?
And I had never had anyone asked me that before.
And I was like, you know what? Sure, why not?
Because if this person also doesn't have a ton of experience
pushing keys and I don't have a ton of experience, then at least
that confidence level, it made me feel it was a little bit more
comforting knowing that if I make a mistake, this person
isn't, they don't have high, super high expectations for me
because they're also learning it in a way.
I think they had a little bit more experience than I did
because they had tried to push higher before, not at the title
range, but it it felt nice one knowing that it was someone in
the Guild, someone that yes, well, I had just met them a
little bit. They had been in the Guild for a
long time. Obviously the Guild, the Guild,
trust them. They have a ton of friends
there. It's always nice, you know, when
someone sticks around for a while.
And then it was also nice to be asked to want to do this, want
to learn, want to just have fun. There were no goals from the
beginning to, to hit title or even even the, the 1% range.
It was, hey, let's just do this for fun in our free time.
We'll push keys, we'll see what we can do.
And so the confidence piece, it took me a long time to get that,
even even with playing with somebody who I knew.
I remember the first key I did that season by myself without
this Windwalker monk who was there to kind of like not quite
hold my hand, but you to be there as like a comforting
person that you know. And I was terrified.
I remember, oh gosh, it was, it was dark heart thicket.
I remember that. And that dungeon in particular,
if anybody else played that season or you remember it from
Legion, there are cats at the beginning of that dungeon as
you're, you're kind of going down this very windy road and
the cats leap and they and they, they do a bleed.
You know, there's also birds there.
The birds screech. There's, there's a ton of a weed
damage. And I remember signing up for
this key level and it was a, it was a score key for me.
Like I hadn't timed it at that level.
And I was terrified. I remember sitting here in this
chair with my heart racing. It's kind of like when you're
watching a scary movie and you know something bad is about to
happen and your heart just starts racing and racing.
And then you can feel your like your face is like getting kind
of hot and you're like, what is the best, you know, And you're
still on the edge of your seat. That's how I felt going into
this key. And on that pull on that winding
Rd. we, we basically bricked the key in a way.
I mean, it was a high enough key where we just kept wiping over
and over a week where we're not getting past those packs.
And the, the person whose key it was, was like, all right, Gigi,
nice try, but nobody yelled, nobody said anything.
Nobody. They just said, you know, Gigi,
you know, NT a nice try. And then and then everybody
left. And I think some of the
confidence comes from the confidence piece is knowing
that, telling myself that this is this is the Internet, yes,
it's an MMO, yes, you're playing with other people.
Yes, I'm going to make mistakes. You're going to make people
watching this are going to make this.
Everybody makes mistakes and the people.
And again, I think this is easier to maybe say or maybe
easier to hear than it is to kind of like take it to heart
and actually like, you know, remember it, including myself
when there are people who maybe do make comments like for at the
end of that poll, for example, if that group had kind of gone
off on me and been like, where are the heels?
You know, like tanks and healers are always blamed for things or
hunter pets, you know, and even if they had done that, I think
the more important thing to remember is why, why did the
pole fail? Because it's not just a oh,
healer didn't press buttons kind of issue.
It's OK. Well, when the screech went off,
did the hunter use a defensive? Did the mage pop mass barrier?
Was somebody sitting on a healthstone available to use and
didn't and then bled out to a bleed?
You know, there are a lot of things.
Did the tank lose aggro on a mob and it went and one shot the
rogue? You know, something like that.
I try to remember those moments and I try to not focus on the
negativity because I think if it's if somebody who is going to
kind of fly off the handle like that, it's someone who's not
looking at the key in an analytical way, trying to figure
out why it wiped. They're just throwing out
insults because they're ticked off, you know.
So another long winded answer of explaining, you know, the, the
confidence piece takes time, but it also kind of takes this
mindset where you kind of do need a little bit of thick skin
on the Internet. You know, whether you're whether
it's on a pocket, you know, or you're streaming or, or you're
just playing, playing a key, right?
And you're, you know, it's not even broadcasted or anything.
You're just, you're logging in. It's just your character knowing
that, you know, even if you did make a mistake, you forgot to,
you forgot to iron bark the tank or, or whatever it was, it's
just a mistake. And now you know, hey, the in
the next key, the tank needs iron bark on the pole or, or
whatever it might be. Even in those negative moments,
it's always a learning experience.
The negativity that can come from from pug groups and such,
focusing on the analytics, focusing on trying to improve.
I like that When you are moving to these higher key levels, are
there like things that people should be on the lookout for?
Are there like points where you're like, hey, now that
you're here, maybe you should be paying attention to this more
than you were before? Yeah, actually there's a dungeon
this season at midnight that comes to mind, and it's Win
Runner Spire, the very last boss in that dungeon.
There are, I always call them feathers.
I don't know if they're they're they're the little feathers that
drop on the ground. I don't know what else to call
them. I think it's a feather because
it, it kind of boosts you up into the air.
So you get everybody gets a debuff at some point and it,
it's, it's ticking damage on you unless you go and grab one of
those again, we'll call it a feather and it, it kind of
throws you up into the air. It gets it gets rid of that dot
though. I think on on lower keys people
don't notice the damage as much, but on higher keys that ticks a
lot. And let's say the entire group
does not clear it. That's a lot of extra healing
stress on your healer while they're also dealing with other
other mechanics that are that are going on on that fight.
My hunter that I play with did them.
I am not a numbers person by the way.
I was an English undergrad, so I have not fact checked if I have
not done the numbers myself. But he did the numbers one day
and it was roughly at, at a particular key level, something
like 6060, something extra percent of healing that the the
healer has to do on people. If you don't clear that on a, on
a high enough key, because I guess there's a couple different
ways of thinking about it. Let's say you have two out of
your three DPS or melee. Or let's say even all three,
maybe all three are are melee. There's this one argument where
you know you're having melee, run away from the boss, grab it,
get thrown up in the air. That's DPS that's not on the
boss. You're not DPS ING the boss at
that point. But also it's a little bit of a
of a trade off because you also risk people dying.
The healer might not be able to heal.
I mean, we're talking like high like hierarchies.
I'd say anything above like a like a 13, maybe 13 or 14.
I think it's when you really should start considering
clearing it. It depends is, is somebody going
to die to that they're going to get too low it, you know, you
just run into these risks and now and now someone might be
dead because they didn't, they didn't clear it, you know, So
it's that's one example that comes to mind because I think
when, when you're entering and for a long time, I didn't know
that again until I got to a hierarchy and realized, oh,
we're supposed to be clearing this.
You know, I have people who watch my stream, you know,
sometimes if I'm doing that dungeon and they ask me, hey,
why, why are you having everyone clear that?
Because they also don't know. It's those little things.
I think there might be mechanics in certain dungeons, either on
the trash or on certain fights where you don't notice it as
much on like a a 10/11/12, maybe even sometimes a 13 until you
get to the the higher keys. And you also start to see
overlaps maybe. And you start to see, OK, if
there's two mechanics happening at the same time, there's two
overlaps. This this one that I thought
wasn't really anything actually does hurt a lot.
You know, like in their example in Winrunner is the the bird
boss, right? The firebird boss.
Well, the fire swirls, I'm sure, you know, like you're.
Yeah, you're not. You're like, Oh yeah, I know the
boss people. When you run out a swirl, the
boss selects 2 people. You have to run it out.
It drops a tornado basically that does a lot of damage to
people. And if you're playing a healer
and you're and you're the one who gets it, you're running,
which means that you're not healing yourself and you're not
healing the other person who gets it.
And you'll notice really quickly that, oh man, this, this
particular mechanic, this hurts. This is a this is a dot.
This is damage that I didn't notice before because it was
lower key. So I think it it really just
comes with repetition and and seeing it because there are
certain spells, debuffs, mechanics, fights, even overall
dungeons that are easier on some healers than there than there
are others. OK, so I think a lot of this is
actually getting into the dungeons, doing those dungeons,
pushing yourself, not only just because you learn and you can
like, I guess ingrain that information into your head.
It the example you gave is actually kind of perfect.
Because I, when I ran my first 13 in Windrunner Spire, I had
two, two people who mentioned me and said you may not be ready
for a 13. You weren't paying attention to
this and this. And so, like I, I know that you
may not be ready for a 13 is a harsh thing.
And so I, I had to like, you know, have that thick skin
you're, you're saying, but the fact that they pointed out
exactly what the things that I had missed was was incredibly
helpful. So one, removing that dot it
from like just being shot up from I think it's arrows on that
last boss, but whatever, we'll call them feathers.
And yeah, the fire plumes or the fact that the undead boss, that
is a curse. So as a shaman, I can get rid of
that in my DPS spec and not have to worry about it being chased.
All those little things that like once you've played it and
then you know what you and in your particular specs slash cost
can handle uniquely means that you're just that much better
prepared as things become way closer.
And I think you gave that a great example of the fire
tornadoes because the fire tornado may not kill you on its
own, but it may leave you so vulnerable to at the point that
it combines with something else and just ends you.
And so like, the issue wasn't what exactly killed you, but
what you could have done to put yourself in a position where you
wouldn't have been killed by that.
And I love, I love that you're giving all these examples that
just sort of meld in this season in particular, we have the new
3400 rating to get a saddle. We also have aside from the
point 1% title push, we have a 1% new milestone to hit.
Do you think that these are needed to bridge that gap from
just doing doing what you needed for your vault to like getting
people to go higher at what do you think that this is like a
good thing overall? But what are you?
What's your take on this? I've seen a couple of different
takes. My mine personally is I think
having more incentives for people to continue to push past
the Keystone Legends, which is which is all I believe all or
three 3K rather, which is mostly twelves.
I think it's really good to have incentives like that.
However, I have seen other takes where people are saying, well,
now there's FOMO. I don't do plus sixteens.
And for the most part you, you need mostly sixteens or, or all
sixteens to get 3400. And that's, I'm not going to
lie, because I, I just got that at the time of this recording, a
couple weeks prior to this, I, I kind of took the first couple
weeks off and I didn't remember the 55 volts.
So I focused on, on, you know, the plus 10's and, and gearing
those up. So finally when it came time
around for, I was like, you know what, I want, I want the 3400.
I want to get this mount that required a bit of work and that
there were dungeons. I mean, again, pugging where
groups just didn't time some of those sixteens.
It took me about like a a reset week, really playing a few hours
throughout throughout the week here and there to work on it
gradually and then and then eventually time those and get
it. It wasn't just a go in one shot.
Hey, we're done. And so I understand that take as
well where people are saying, hey, I don't normally do
sixteens. Now I have to spend all this
extra time this season working toward that.
But I also think, you know, I guess, I guess that same
argument or similar argument maybe is that usually the last
boss of a Mythic Ray tier will drop a mount.
Now it's not every tier, but several mounts usually drop off
a final mythic boss every every expansion.
And yes, while that mount is still technically there, it just
drops down in percent usually. You know, instead of having like
3 guaranteed drop it I I think it's like a 1% or or maybe even
lower. It's somewhere around in that
range. You know, I think having all
season to work toward a + 16, I think A+ plus sixteens are much
different than finding a group of 20 people and then rating
every single week for two to three nights a week every week.
You know, it's, it's a lot different.
I think the plus 16 is a little bit more accessible because you,
you can puck it. It is only for other people in
addition to yourself. And I think you, you just, you
have the entire season to work for that.
So I do think it's good. I do hear both takes.
I think for many years, people who were already kind of in that
range were already saying, Hey, I, I don't, I'm not quite at the
point 1% range, but I also don't get anything for doing this.
Like I like the challenge of pushing keys, but I don't get
anything from it. The only thing I get is this
like personal satisfaction that I'm doing challenging content
either with pugs or with friends and it's fun.
You know that, that difficulty, I think I think it's good and I
think it's an interesting concept that they have.
You know, you, you basically get a token, it's this currency
token and you can go and you can spend it on, I believe it's past
KSM mounts from previous expansions.
But then they also have 6 new mounts that you can get.
So I guess the one, the one piece of feedback I do have
about it is that like for me, I have 6 different mounts to
choose from and I just, I always freeze up in general when it
comes to a decision like that where I'm like, I can only pick
one. You know, I remember back in
Mop, if, if you, if you played Mop back in the challenge mode
dungeons, when you timed them all on silver, right, there was
like the bronze, silver and the gold.
When you timed them all on a silver, you got access to the
mounts and they were these gorgeous phoenixes.
And you could only pick one unless you did it on multiple
characters. And then the next character
could pick a different color and then the third one would pick
the third color, you know, and so on.
And then eventually they just, they unlocked all four colors if
you, if you unlocked it at the time.
But even back then I remember thinking, oh, no, OK, I have to
pick wisely. I feel that now.
So the one piece of advice I have is, Oh my gosh, why do we
have six options? I mean, I think three of them
are shredder mounts of different huge so but yeah, I I get that.
And I, I remember so little bit of deep lore before I was doing
any podcasting or anything. I was also working on those
those challenge modes back in Mr. Pandaria.
That was I was actually healing on Resto Shaman, the one that.
You don't like, I'm so sorry. Oh, it's OK.
I actually have not healed in many years.
Definitely not main healing. I love pushing and getting those
rewards. And even though they gave all of
the mounts, you only get the transmog on characters that had
done that and that, that's another thing that's unique.
So I always hated that. I was like, oh man, I'm missing
out. And I don't want to like go
through all the effort of like creating a different character
of each class just so I can get that trans blog.
I guess I'm missing out. I understand.
I'm always a person who doesn't feel FOMO in that same way.
I like, yes, it's like, oh, I guess I'm missing out.
But also isn't it cool that as a shaman, man, I have that thing
and that's for shamans. It's not just I did it on any
character. So I I like that prestige as a
relative quality to the exclusiveness.
But yeah, I feel like the amounts that they added, the new
ones that they did, they're recolors of previous ones.
I want to see how quickly they rotate the selection.
Like if we get into next season and those six mounts completely
change, I'm going to like call foul on that.
But if they stick around so that we get through like let's say
three seasons of this and we can pick up half of them, that would
feel OK before they wrote. And I wouldn't want them to
rotate them all. I they rotate some of them and
then you're like, OK, great. Like I can eventually get all of
these. So it is a it is a matter of
like how quickly, how quickly they stuff these back in the
Disney vault. It's a Disney vault.
I love that. Oh, yeah, no, every time, Every
time I think about artificial scarcity, it is the Disney vault
that I think of as the paradigm. So we're looking for these
things. Therefore, there is a bit of
FOMO involved. But when I am going, because I
am at the situation where you're at, I did my like twelves.
I wanted to get my KSL so that I got everything.
And now there's more things that are out there that I want to
get. And So what resources could I or
people like me look at to say like, OK, now that I'm making
this shift, what can I, what can I do to like, give myself the
most I can without just beating my head against the wall until I
get it? The advice I have it's, it's the
same advice I gave. You know it again.
I, I keep going to back to dragonflakes.
That's when I started and and I I streamed the progress really
it's when I came back to streaming and I just so happened
to kind of start doing mythic plus and then people kind of
started watching and then it. So anyways, the advice that I
have always given this is this is exactly what I followed back
in Dragonflight is so I when I'm not streaming, I usually have a
stream up. It's it's, it's often why I see
even Cory stream right. And you know, we're in and other
streams as well. I always have a stream up,
whether I'm like actively sitting here and talking in chat
or I have it up in the background.
I'm working on something else. But I that also means that I'm
always watching other other restaurants who are doing
similar key levels as B or higher.
And I, even if, again, I'm not sitting here for hours on end
watching every single key, I might TuneIn or I might see that
let's say they're doing winrunner.
Let's say I'm having a difficult time in winrunner.
And I see that they're doing that because it's live and most
people streaming they're, they're going to, they, they
want questions, right? They're going to interact.
I, I don't know why else you would be streaming it if you
didn't actually want to be interacting with people, right?
So it, what I've always done. I ask questions, I ask a ton of
questions. I, you know, I think back to a
tall Dizar, which was Abfa dungeon and then they, they
brought it back and there were some mobs.
Oh gosh, was this, I think this was also maybe it was a
dragonflight. I think it's when they brought
it back. There were some mobs that had an
enrage. And I asked another rester
druid. I said, I noticed that you're
not soothing those mobs as, as a rester druid, Why?
Why are you not soothing them at this point?
1% key level? Like wouldn't when they leap at
you, they're in rage. That leap is going to do a ton
of damage. And at the at the time this
person said, well, if it's just not worth the the GCD, you know,
we have these triants. You can drop a triant, go back
into melee. The triant will and this
involves a little bit of tech, but the mobs would jump to the
triant that you dropped outside of melee instead of at the
players. So that frees up, you know, you
don't have to use a GCD soothing all these different mobs.
And there were things like that, just little things like that.
I remember something else. I, I don't know if I had
mentioned this in season 4 of Dragonfly.
It was, it was very last season of that expansion.
I participated in team, Team Liquid E sports organization.
They offered a mythic plus tournament for marginalized
genders. And I, my team came in second
place in that tournament, which was super, super exciting.
But I remember spending weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks
training, training like like this is football practicing,
practicing these key levels. Because of the time the the
tournament realm was open, the Blizzard had, I think it must
have been MDI that maybe was, was coming up soon.
And even if we weren't participating MDI, we were able
to log on to the the tournament realm.
So you get to create your key level, you get to decide the
affix you want to practice and all this stuff.
I would do that. And and we were practicing Ruby
life pulls. So here's another example and
Ruby life pulls. I believe it was an 18 or a 19
that we were practicing and that season nineteens and some 20s,
if I remember correctly, were title range.
So it was a really high key. The damage was really high.
And that very first boss, the boss at, Oh gosh, the very, the
very first boss of, of Ruby life poles there, there's a cadence
to it. It's a very like rinse and
repeat. But you have to know how to
handle all those mechanics because it's like 1 hard hitting
mechanic into the next hard hitting mechanic.
And you are going to run out of defenses if you use them, if you
try to use them for everything back-to-back to back.
You had to space everything out. And I was having a hard time
healing that successfully, like consistently, you know, we would
go and we killed that boss. Everything's great.
The next time we practice that dungeon, oh, we all flop over.
We have to reset the dungeon because I couldn't heal through
it. And so I remember reaching out
to another wrestler, Druid at the time, who on the live
servers had already timed that key.
And I said, hey, here's our cop. This is what we're running for
this for this tournament. What do you do with your healing
cooldowns and with the available externals and group defensives
in your group? Those are the kinds of questions
that if someone is looking to get into higher keys, Those are
the questions I think you should be asking if you see that there
is a pain point in either a particular dungeon or a
particular fight or a particular trash pole in a dungeon talking
to other people because they basically sent me at the time it
was method raid tools or Exorsus raid tools for those who used it
back and wand Exorsus and he sent me his basically his
cooldown list. Hey, I use convoke at this
point. We you, you know, the warlock
uses unending resolve for this one with the timestamps of the
fight. It was very similar to it felt
like rating in a way where you're mapping out this like 8
minute fight, you know, and, and whose cooldowns are being used
where. And obviously this level of, of,
of detail is much different than when you're trying to go, let's
say from like a 12 + 12 to like plus 13 or plus 14 range.
But it's this idea that you're reaching out to other people,
you're watching people stream. And again, long winded answer,
but something else following this up that I that I did 'cause
I one day I was like, who, who do I watch?
Like, where do I find these people who are doing these keys?
I got Larry is over there telling me to like, you know, go
and watch another major's time or whatever class you play.
Where do you find those people? I found them on Raider IOI just
stumbled across this. So that season that I was like,
oh, hey, we're pushing, we're pushing higher keys now.
I have no idea what I'm doing. I went to Raider IO and they you
can sort, there's a list of of players.
Basically it's based on their score and you can organize it by
spec and class. So obviously I went into the
rest or Druids and I looked at the long, long list of people
and in that long list it will you can.
I'm trying to remember now because this is a couple years
ago. Either in that list immediately
it will show you if they stream, it'll have like a little icon or
honestly, just start clicking on random names.
Click on I I don't know. It doesn't even have to be the
top 10 if you don't get, you know, or click on, though it
could be halfway down the list or at the bottom part of the
list. Click on some names, go to their
radar IO profile and the people who link their twitch to their
profile, you can just click on that and it'll bring you right
to their twitch page. So again, this is a little bit
of research. I should mention I'm also a
librarian. I, I do a lot of information
organization and, and maybe this is this is what gave me the
idea, but I just remember spending an afternoon going
through following all these different restor druids and that
way I could get the notifications when they were
live on twitch. Go and watch them.
And then from there you start, you start asking them questions.
Even if you're maybe a little trepidatious about asking the
questions, just watching what they're doing, maybe you can
glean something from that. And as you said, these are
streamers. They want to interact with the
audience. So like, they they not only
value your question, they're almost like begging for it
without actually asking. So like, yeah, I I do love that.
So you've got the radar IO to find people that you can use as
resources. And like, I also think that one
thing to highlight from what you were saying is that like knowing
where your pain point is and be like, OK, this is a pain point.
So you can focus on that rather than be like, how do I deal with
this dungeon? Which is not a good question to
bring to anybody, let alone a streamer in the middle of
things. Knowing like what how do you
handle this fight? That is that's a big thing as
well. I love that.
Has being a librarian helped you in other things in Warcraft just
because you brought that up? I, I think so I, I've always
been pretty good about research and just sorting through
information. I'm a pretty organized person to
begin with and it's kind of why my content on, you know, on
stream, but also the other projects that I do like I, I
edit the, the raid guides on mythic trap, for example.
Mythic trap is now managed by Warcraft logs.
It was started by somebody who, and now they kind of like
partnered up basically like Warcraft Logs took over.
I, I, I go through and I edit those.
So there's a guide writer I go through, I make sure everything
is consistent, succinct, etcetera.
I think it's helped me with that.
It's helped me with my own content on YouTube.
I started, I started making YouTube content originally.
I wasn't a streamer. That was not where I started and
it was because I was again, pre, pre mythic plus, really, I was
a, a cutting edge Raider and at the time for a long time restor
druid. I feel like if you count the
seasons, like restor Druid has been meta for many, many, many
seasons across the expansions. And at the at this time, I could
really only find restor Druid content that was from mythic
plus. So I was like, Oh well, OK, I'll
just make, I'm doing all this research myself.
Why don't I put it into a video and try to convey that
information that way. I, I try to rephrase information
maybe or, or kind of frame it in a way that might be a bit
different than how it shows up in, in blue post from Blizzard
or how it might show up in the, in a dungeon journal or things
like that. I if, if you can't tell, I, I
try to use a lot of anecdotes and a lot of personal
experiences because for me personally, when I'm learning
something, I can't just, you know, if someone, if someone
copy paste their talent build and they go here, here you go
Laria, take this. I take, I, I can take that
talent build, but then I go, OK, but why do I take this?
And what about this one? And why?
Like why? What's the why behind that?
So I guess to answer your question, I think not only do I
do the research, I try to provide the answers as to why
because I think that will help people.
I don't know if absorb the information is the right word,
but maybe help help it stick a little bit better.
As a person who is very much about why being able to
contextualize information, what is, is so important that that is
the why. It's like, OK, I've got AB and
C. It's like, well, why A?
And then why B? Like, yeah.
And then that'll help me make decisions like, oh, I've moved
and I can't do C. It's like, should I go back to
A? No, no, no, you do C next
because B gave a buff towards C or something along those lines.
And yeah, I, I do think that being able to contextualize
information is big on everything.
Take that for not just mythic plus or as we're saying, but
like just in general if you want to understand your class better.
So then along those lines, are there any pointers, let's say
last pointers that you would give to people who are just
trying to improve in general or specifically for improving A
mythic plus? For healers in particular, I
guess I'll speak to healers because that's because that's
primarily what I play. That's what I mean, all right,
and this is this is going to bring up a topic that I I feel
like the the wow community in general was very split over for
for many, many, many months. I'm going to start by saying I
overall I am team no add-ons and I will I will link this to what
I'm going to say in a moment about healers and and tips.
And with that said, while I try to have AUI that doesn't use a
ton of add-ons, there are a couple that I think are
necessary. And I think it's having really
good party and raid frames as a healer.
That is really the bones that like hold holds everything else
up as a healer, especially the higher up that you get in in key
level, key level range. Right now, I think at the time
of this video, the default raid frames and party frames are not
customizable enough, or at least on, at least for restor Druids
in particular. Restor Druids have a lot of hot
Hots that you need to track. And then there's a way that it
interacts with your mastery. The more Hots you have on a
person, it, it, it works for your mastery cause the more
healing that those Hots are going to do, the more you have
on one person, if that makes sense.
So exactly, yes. So it, it just gets really
tricky for a class that can very easily have 5 Hots on one
person. And so with that said, my 1 tip
is to make sure that you use party frames.
If we're talking about Mythic plus, for example, that work for
you. I am going to shout out grid 2
because I started using grid two last summer, summer 2025 and it
has been incredible. It's been a super solid add on
and I've been using it basically since I think week one or two of
midnight. I should also say the experience
I'm talking about is in the pre patch of of the war within
leading up to midnight. So those those six weeks or so
that we had, I used zero add-ons.
I continued to to get cutting, cutting it.
I don't know if it was cutting edge at that point.
Mythic with mythic grade clearing the raid on mythic,
we'll say, because it was technically pre patch with, with
0 add-ons, just using the base raid frames and the base party
frames for my keys every week. And so I'm kind of comparing it
to that experience. I wanted to get enough
experience using no add-ons that I could say, all right, this is
working for me in the content that I do regularly.
This is not working. And raid frames.
That was really a like a pain point.
I am the only healer on my raid team right now with the raid
team that has not had any issues tracking dispels.
I think that was a really big topic that came up in the
community when Blizzard was posting updates about, again, I
think leading up to the war within or midnight pre patch
rather toward the end of that expansion when they were making
tweaks and changes to the default UI and things like that.
I've never had any issues with dispels.
Grid 2 tracks it beautifully. My hots show up, there's there's
no issue. And so I just think whether you
use grid 2 or, or something else that works for you, I've heard
Dander's kind of thrown around a little bit.
If you use that, you know, it's, it's whatever you end up using.
Just make sure that it works for you.
You see the information that you need personally to track.
Because I'm going to go slightly off topic again real quick that
I'll link back. It reminds me of weak auras.
And obviously we don't have weak auras anymore.
But when we did, I feel like a lot, a lot of people would just
kind of import these massive beck weak aura packs, tracking
every every buff you could and and ability you can possibly
imagine. And they would like plop it
right in the middle of their screen or off to the side of the
screen or wherever you put it. And and if that's you, totally
fine. But when I did that, I was it
was like information overload because I didn't need to track
all those things. So I realized that there were
certain buffs sold the forest, for example, as a rest or dirt.
I want to know when I have that I need to make it super clear
when I have that, you know, another one might be my abundant
stacks. How many rejuice do I have out?
What is that? You know, a caps at 12, AM I at
8 or am I at 10? You know, what am I at 2?
Do I need to put out more rejuice?
So tracking those kinds of things are really helpful.
And so I think when it comes to raid and party frames as a
healer, just make sure that it has the information that you
personally as a player need to track, because I don't, I don't
think like many like what you track as let's say you're
playing restoration, What you decide to track might be
different than what I need to track.
And I might track something that you're like, oh, what, why does
Larry need to track that? I know all the time when I have
that, you know, I think we just our attention is a little bit,
we everybody plays differently and we're able to keep track of
different things. Again, it's all it all comes
down to information organization, I think, but
that's the biggest thing. No matter what your stance is on
the add-ons, whether you're like, Nope, I want an add-ons
free UI. I think that's great.
But really as a healer, it comes down to having really, really
good party frames. You calling it out as a
customization thing is big because of like the difference
between how you would play as a rest of Druid versus anybody
else in that same spec and dungeon and so forth.
That's a big thing if people want to find like your work and
what what you do, where can we find you around the Internet?
I am primarily on Twitch. I I guess you'd call me a part
time streamer. I, I stream two to three days a
week, usually in the evenings Eastern Time zone, although
occasionally you'll see me on the weekends.
I what I've started doing over the last few months is leaning
more into a more general informational content on YouTube
where it's not only healing content, but it's just
information in general, whether that is summing up blue posts
or, you know, housing content, what's changing and things like
that. Just trying to share information
with the community, but framing it in a little bit of a
different way so that it's more either more accessible or, you
know, whatever it might be. And then I'm also on socials.
I try really hard to post different forms of content that
is not just like taking clips and just posting, you know,
because people who see stream, yeah, while they might want to
re, I don't know, revisit maybe some funny moments.
I try to make sure that each of my platforms has its own content
in a way. So primarily Twitch, but I'm
also elsewhere. I'm really glad that we got to
you get some of the information that you're putting out over
here. Of course, I've been in a few of
your streams. I think I really I followed you
on Instagram. I'm not sure the fit of the day
is exactly helping me, but it looks amazing.
So thank you for that. But again, thank you for coming
on the show today. And until next time guys, may
all your hits be good.