Year End Progress

Christmas has come and gone.  I only started paying attention to the various FtP specials about six months ago.  But clashers were excited about Christmas, saying that's when the best specials are.  Well, there were indeed a lot of pretty nice looking gem buying specials.  But there were no gem-spending specials beyond the normal ones.   So I really did not spend anything.

Now we have a "Spend Gems and Win", and I have over 19000 gems saved.  Almost 20000.  I could roll up to the 20000 level for SG&W, but the rewards there are pretty meager.  I plan to just roll to 8000.  You get a legendary hero card.  It's not great -- will probably get another ninja.  But still, there are dupes I could get that I want, and who knows whether I might be able to roll a new hero.  Can you get Ghoulem from a LHC?  Dunno.  But that rolling will happen tonight, after my last quest for the day is done.  I am hopeful.

All of that is way of saying, not too much progress in terms of new heroes.  And in particular, not the one I want most: Ghoulem.  Right now I can run one lava3 team out of four in my guild's lava3 setup: I could run three of four with Ghoulem.  (Need SK for the fourth.)  Ghoulem would also be nice in other game modes too.

But back to the progress I have made since the last report.

First, I finished up leveling my Grizzly Reaper.  He's at 199ee.

Grizzly Reaper getting beefy.

Not all the way to 200 because I raid with him, so he gets experience, and I dislike wasted experience.  His talent is still at 8, but I will take it to 9 soon I think.  This will make him hit 6 heroes per proc, up from 5 at level 8.  It will help modestly in raiding and also modestly in lava3.

After Griz was done, I started in on my Death Knight.  I had a dupe, so evolving him was "free" beyond the rune and of course the many honor badges needed.  I don't use him much; currently I use him only in WG3.  But I figure he could be useful if I ever do start hand-to-hand raiding, and I didn't have anyone else obvious to dump experience on.

So now he's level 175e.

Death Knight getting beefy.

I didn't complete him to 180e, though I probably will in the not too distant future.  Instead I changed course.  I realized that I need to improve my sniping much more than my WG3 (which is already nearly perfect, at least in my quadrant.  Some of my guildmates less so, but I can't easily improve that).  Now, I don't really want to be using sniping so heavily (pets are starting to make it harder), but I still perforce have to do it.  I just don't have the hand-to-hand heroes that you really need.  While I do have DD (and I'm thinking about paying shards for the double evo), I don't have SK, Vlad, or Ghoulem.  I probably will continue to snipe almost indefinitely.  Certainly sniping (if at all possible) is the best way to deal with expeditions in particular, and those matter since they are the main source of HB.  And sniping is still how I deal with Guild Wars fights, and since these yield fame they are important to optimize for.

Of the snipers, I already have TG at 200ee and now Griz at 199ee.  They can't improve levelwise.  My Warlock and Aries are both at 195e: they could improve a little bit with experience, but I don't have the dupes to double evo them.

The main way in which I could improve my sniping was leveling my Pixie, who was at level 163 (no evo).  Even though I had no dupe for her, I finally decided to pull the trigger and spend the 20000 shards for her evo.  I did that Saturday.

Pixie getting beefy.

Now she's 165e and climbing.  I'll stop at 180e due to HB.

Last Thursday I was doing a quest and got a hero roll, and got a new hero:

Rolled Trixie Treat.

I took her to level 120 with books, and inscribed her to 80.  This just added might, but it does prepare her for serious leveling and use fairly rapidly if I wanted.  I don't see a huge need for her yet.  She seems good for damaging bosses, and in various hand-to-hand situations (lost battlefield), but beyond that, not particularly wonderful.

Then, last Sunday, on a talent reroll for a quest, I got this:

Rolled Englightenment 5.

Well.  Trixie got it, obviously.   Now I have a great reason to level her, irrespective of her own inherent value.

Trix gets enlightened.

She's heading for 180e, eventually, unless I roll a dupe or two pretty soon, in which I case I might go for 180ee.

Now I have Trix at level 160 capped, but after two evolves and one new hero in less than a week, I am really crunched for HB in a way I have not been in a very long time.  So, I have resumed giving experience to Pixie while I accumulate HB.  It's actually going to be a while before I can fully exploit this enlightenment.

One other funny thing.  I evolved Pixie on Saturday.  Then on Sunday, I got this in a quest gem roll:

RNG taunts me.

Thanks RNG!  Seriously, it's almost as good now as it would have been before I evolved her, since I'll need at least on more to make it worthwhile to double evo.  Still, I really wish it could have come a day earlier...