Happy
Sunday!! Yes I know it's two days late but I've been playing host to
two of my favourite bears this weekend!! Yes, the sofa has been
filled with Panda, Bear and Draenei bums, as I sat down to talk to
Sunnier and Arielle about what they've been up to lately, including
Alpha testing and tanking Garrosh Hellscream!!
So
grab your FINEST brews (better make it a big cup, we'll be here a
while) and join me as the Bears take over the sofa.....
Hi
guys!! It's wonderful to have you here, I'm so glad that you could
join me on my E-Sofa!
Just
as a reminder, or for people reading for the first time, who are you
both, what classes do you play, and how long have you been WoW'ing?
I'm
Sunnier, creator of SunniersArtOfWar.com, a Brewmaster guide site and
blog. I've been playing for nearly 9 years, though obviously not as a
monk. :) Before I discovered my true calling, I played a bear druid
(which is why you may see me around as "SunnierBear").
Hello!
I’m Arielle and I play a Guardian Druid. Most people probably
know me as the person that writes for the Inconspicuous Bear
(www.theincbear.com),
or from Twitter (@ArielleEJ). I’ve been playing WoW since
Vanilla (April 2005 actually), although I have taken breaks now and
again. I actually leveled as a Protection Warrior in Vanilla,
which was one of the most arduous experiences I’ve ever been
through. For the last little bit of Vanilla I played a PvP
Arcane/Fire Mage with some real life friends, and it was awesome.
I didn’t actually switch to the Druid until halfway through TBC,
and I’ve been Feral/Guardian ever since (with a brief stint as a DK
at the start of Wrath).
Arielle,
I heard something about a home for retired bears?
Something
like that I guess. The guild used to be called on
Suramar. There was some drama, and then we moved to Sargeras
part way through Throne of thunder. At that point we had been
running double Guardian tanks for some time, and another former
Guardian (Reesi, you may have heard of her) was our Hunter.
Then Sunnier joined and a couple of my friends (Buraan and Ahanss)
added alts. At that point I made a joke or something about us
actually being a bear retirement home. I thought it was
hilarious, and Sunnier even drew some doodles of “retired bears”.
Our GM at the time – Kal / @Cybnext – finally bit the bullet and
changed the name of the guild, and one of Sunnier’s doodles became
our logo. Now we have even more alts from other current or
former Guardians (Lyfa, Mowse, Fasc) and I think it’s just a lot of
fun. I’ve jokingly said that my method of putting together a
successful raiding guild is:
1.
Recruit former Guardians
2.
???
3.
Profit!
I
mean, if they’re no longer Guardians, they’re technically
‘retired’ right? Makes sense to call ourselves the Bear
Retirement Home then (BRH website).
What
have you been up to lately, how is WoW for you now?
With
Garrosh dead raiding is mostly about getting together and having a
good time. We have one new recruit right now so there’s a few
wipes while he learns the encounters, but overall everyone’s still
having fun which is what counts. I’ve been waiting for level
100 characters to be available before doing anything serious in
Alpha, but now that they are I’ll be doing some work on that
soon-ish.
I
also have 2 CM groups per week. The weekend one is really just
an excuse to hang out with some of my friends. The Tuesday one
is really just charity (shhhhhhhh). Because I’m nice.
Other
than that it’s really just making sure we’re farming Garrosh
every week so we’re prepared when the transition to Mythic
happens. I don’t really have any interest in re-progressing
on 25m. Thankfully all of my raiders share that opinion.
It's
been pretty quiet lately, after Garrosh. Ideally I would be spending
lots of time in the alpha (an excuse to play tauren!), though I've
been too busy IRL to spend as much time as I'd like. My ongoing goal
on live is to level up pets because I want a baby ox celestial, but
that may be a pipe dream since my strategy for pet battles is "pick
the cutest ones".
Something I must ask Sunnier, as a fellow mog enthusiast, how is your transmog looking right now?
Funny
you should ask, since I just completed a set that I've wanted for a
while -- my orange druid-inspired set. I think it passes pretty well
as a mysterious monk.
So
you've both tanked the mighty Hellscream on Heroic, how was it for
you? Any tips?
Honestly
it was underwhelming. I was expecting it to be a lot more
difficult than it was. By far the hardest thing was learning
the timings on Iron Stars in phase 4 (since I’m the kite bitch b/c
Guardians OP). Being a “tank” on Garrosh is pretty much a
complete afterthought as a Guardian. Given that we stack
offensive stats almost exclusively, you’re supposed to push your
DPS as much as possible to make the transitions between phases as
smooth as you can. I am routinely the top DPS through the first
3 phases, and I only get caught in phase 4 because I don’t tank the
boss at all.
For
those interested, you can check out my Heroic Garrosh Guardian Guide
here
I
enjoyed Hellscream. There are a lot of different types of fights
wrapped into one, which makes talent choices interesting. There's the
dps fight, there's the high physical damage fight, the high magical
damage fight, the AoE control fight, and finally, the high-damage
tank-n-spank where you're tired and really hope you, the person with
the easiest job, don't mess up. I was switching talents, glyphs, and
gear constantly as we progressed, which I love doing.
So, what encounter in SoO do you both enjoy the most?
The
qualities of the perfect encounter for me are: high tank damage, high
movement, interesting talent choices, and low tank downtime. I think
Iron Juggernaut fits those pretty well, especially as a Brewmaster.
The periodic magic damage is particularly difficult for Brewmasters,
but it forces you to make hard decisions (like: should I glyph Guard
to better handle the magic damage, or unglyph it to better handle
bomb damage). And in this case, the choices are really great because
there is no defined best build -- it depends on your gear and healers
and skillset.
Spoils.
The rest of the encounters are not that exciting from a tank
perspective. It’s nice to break out of the mould and do
something different. Paragons requires the most attention to
detail out of the bunch for me – due to our strat – and I get to
turn into a scorpion which is pretty cool. But I still find
Spoils to be the most fun.
So, the alpha landed, how are you both finding it? What have you been getting up to in it?
I've
been enjoying my time with a tauren monk. He is a beautiful
beast. Brewmasters don't have any significant changes, but I've still
been playing around with questing (I always love questing, and every
expansion I enjoy it more), and animations. What I'm really waiting
for is unlocking level 100 talents, particularly Chi Explosion. I
want to see if that talent has some angle I'm missing (because right
now it seems sort of confused).
Other
than briefly logging in when I first got access, I pretty much
ignored it until Alliance was made available. Now that both
Alliance and level 100 premades are out, I’m having a lot more
fun. SMV is PRETTY. Way more visually enticing than the
Horde starting area (Frostfire something?). I’m really
excited to go through it for real on live.
Are you both looking forward to WoD? Based on what you've seen/read so far, what aspect are you most looking forward to?
For
Guardians specifically it has to be GCD reduction from Haste. I
had my first opportunity to play with it in a dungeon setting last
night, and I loved
it. Going back to regular 1.5s GCDs on live afterwards felt
painfully slow. Other than that I’m really appreciating the
increasing dedication the developers have to making sure all of the
different classes and specs are balanced. We had a giant leap
forward during Mists, and it looks like we’re taking another leap
in that direction again. I really appreciate that.
Definately
new character models. What I've seen is so vibrant, I want to
experience all of them. I cannot wait to see female tauren, but since
I'm Alliance I'll have a tough time picking between draenei, dwarves,
and gnomes.
Sunnier we should all know by now that you are the
true mistress of the brews, but just in case anyone's not aware,
where is your blog and what can we find there?
My
site is at SunniersArtOfWar.com, where you can find my guide and any
musings I have about Brewmasters. I've also started streaming again
at twitch.com/SunnierBear.
I stopped streaming a few months ago because a lot of people (by my
standards) were watching and it freaked me out. But now I can pop out
the chat window and never see how many people are watching and it's
okay! You can also find me on Twitter @SunnierBrew.
Arielle,
your Inconspicuous Bear forums are awesome, where can people find
those and what can they expect to see there?
The
forums can be found at http://www.theincbear.com/forums . There
hasn’t been a lot of Alpha discussion yet since very little in
terms of mechanics has been available to test until recently.
Other than that there are places to ask general Guardian questions,
discuss specific raid encounters, or ask for combat log analysis.
Quite a few of the top US/UK Guardians are regulars there (including
Danishpsycho, Buraan, Ahanss, Kartog, and Khaelyn among others) so
the discussion is usually polite and detailed.
Sunnier
and I have been friends for gosh....over 3 years now? It’s a
real treat to tank with her, and I can always rely on her to get the
job done (except that one time she clicked a Warlock portal and died
to an Iron Star). I routinely count my lucky stars that I
managed to convince her to come tank for us :)
For
those that don’t know I also help out Tickle (@tickletotem) by
doing reviews of Guardian logs / armories over at Sentry Totem
(http://www.sentrytotem.com).
just a quick reminder that I’m doing it for fun, so any tips you
give for my services will go back to fund the site. You can
also simply ask the same questions over on the TiB forums
(http://www.theincbear.com/forums).
I do stream sometimes (http://www.twitch.tv/deastin)
but I’ve taken a break from streaming farm since it takes up so
much bandwidth to stream in 1080p :(
I
also host the Team Waffle Podcast (http://www.teamwafflecast.com),
which is an all-Druid podcast that covers the PvE side of the game
for all 4 specializations. We also do 2-3 “roundtables” per
expansion where I gather up 5-6 people from a given specialization
(Rank 1 Gladiators, top tier heroic raiders, and theorycrafters) to
talk about the spec is doing at a given point. I really enjoy
doing it and I’ve made a lot of friends along the way.
If
you’re interested in becoming a better Guardian, it helps to learn
from the best. So definitely check out Buraan’s raid streams
over at http://www.twitch.tv/buraan.
Who better to learn from than the rank 1 Guardian?
So
guys, there you have it, all that is left is for me to say thank you
SO much to the both of you for joining me on my E-Sofa!!
I
hope you all enjoyed the interview as much as I did!!
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