The fun of getting better.

So I ended up running the elemental bosses quite a bit the last two days they were available, especially on the last day when I could repeatedly queue and run them till I got the drop I needed. The princess took about 15 runs to get my shield, maybe more hehe.

When I started princess took a little bit of work, and mr 3 headed dragon was a chaotic crap shoot with lots of wipes, even when I got it I knew that the next time in would be just as dicey.

So I did the brave thing and more or less avoided the scary 3 headed lizard. oh wait , I meant cowardly :).

Well finally I got to the point where I wanted to get the tank bracer to replace some PvP gear my tank was using. Apparently my greed is greater than my cowardice hehe.

First fight: Wiped quickly as I had positioned in a bad place, and didn't get him positioned great and my team got blown in different directions.

found a better place and wiped a few times, things were still pretty chaotic.

Finally I realized the main issue with that fight is keeping folks in range, keeping the mob focused on the tank, curing the ice shell thingy.

So kept at it, and finally got it down, but it was a cleaner kill, something had clicked I knew the next time would be easier, not just a crap shoot if I got lucky, I had gotten better at keeping lizard dog where I wanted him, taunting better, healing got easier. Even got where I was interrupting his ice shell heal. The bracers took a while to drop so forced my to practice and learn and by the end the fight was as easy as any of them

Princess wasn't as dramatic but even that one, got so I was practicing on avoiding the spike (still not great at that, but got better and just making the fight cleaner.

It was quite fun to know I the fights got easier because I got better at them, not because I got a bunch of gear.

Wanted to take the time to thank everyone here who has been patient, helpful and for all the pointers and tips. I'm looking forward to continuing to learn/improve in the expansion!

Tyval

This is the natural progression of the game, it's always good to know you get something down better.

What makes great guilds... great? Their ability to get to the point where they learn faster and enjoy that process and push for progression and can keep that awareness at all times and not just treat it like it's "on farm"

From the sounds of it, you may not be using Interact with Target and formations to spread out your toons.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

In PvE, Interact with target (IWT) is perfect for getting casters and melee properly lined up and in ranged.

I have a keybind for IWT, when I hold it down the toons move toward my target. When I release, they stop.

If they get to close, I can move my tank and use my formation key to spread them out. If I want to closer, I can have them follow real quick them break follow manually by hitting a movement key.

For formations, I use a foot pedal. I found that to be the most convenient and natural way to do it.
I can do star, line, and flying V quite easily.

Congratulations :) That's one of the things I love about boxing, too - that moment where it just clicks!

I'll be the first to admit that I have a pretty low threshold for frustration in this game at times - specifically, punishingly long corpse runs where your team constantly breaks follow due to phasing, just so you can run ALL the way back in a dungeon to the very end (so 10 minutes of just running back) and wipe again while trying to learn a new fight. I'm thinking specifically of Devourer of Souls, which I admit I have never been able to do casually - maybe I could beat it 1 time out of 10 without a wipe.

Another for me was the Trial of the Champion - the jousting! Ugh, that was INCREDIBLY frustrating because until you beat it you can't get past the pageantry. But when I figured it out - and I now have that totally and 100% in the bag - it was INCREDIBLE! I ran it 30 times in a row to get The Black Heart for my tanks and some other bits for the rest of my team, and every time I put down the last of the jousting opponents I got a little burst of happy-dancing going on :)

You also bring up a good point about gear - I think that gear can make it so that you can mess up a little or be sloppier in a fight and still manage to win (and obviously, better gear will make your margin for error bigger), but yeah, getting better and proving it by NOT having improved your gear much between runs at a boss is how it goes. I think, in fact, I'm actually *better* at playing when my gear isn't so good, at least from the standpoint of technical execution of a strategy, because I know I don't have that room for error. On the other hand, WoW is about gearchecks sometimes, so it can be frustrating to try to learn to do something and do it almost exactly correct, yet still die because you simply couldn't pump out enough DPS to handle it.

When I think about how much better I've gotten as a boxer in the last 6 months or so - and how BAD I was before - yikes! I mean, a lot of it is the tools I'm using now (ISBoxer vs. AHK eek) but a lot of it is just figuring out how to handle my team and get them to do fundamental things well.

Congratulations on sticking with that fight and sorting it out - to be honest, I stopped beating my head against the elemental bosses pretty quick; I realized that in about 2-3 weeks I'll be getting better gear from starter quests and satisfied myself with having beaten each one once.

Kate, Well I kept at it party cuz I wanted those tank bracers hehe. Greed/desire can be a powerful motivator hehe.

Daanji, I do have IWT set up and a diamond formation, Still getting use to using them more often. The problem I had initially though was bad setup and mob placement so my team were getting bounced up on ledges or so far away IWT wasn't working.

I found by learning the fight a bit more, keep mob turned, taunting quickly I was able to keep the punting down quite a bit. I do admit though I'm still working on not hyper focusing on my tank screen, making sure all are casting , that all are in heal range etc. Still a work in progress, I'm hoping upgrading my system and moving to a 2 monitor system (slaves on one, master on another) will help as well as I will be able to see a bit more what is going on.

At one point in the earlier fights I could find where one of my guys was, he had got punted to the side and then I guess again up so was way up on a ledge hehe.

I think another thing I need to look into is an add on to display more information on my main screen. What debuffs are on the team etc. so I can react quicker.

So much to do and learn hehe.

Tyval

Gear is a great motivator for me, too, though usually only when I know it'll last me a bit :D Back when I first got my Tankadin to 80, I was willing to pug to run through Heroic HoR & regular ToC just to get the 219 tanking shield and the Black Heart - I must have run through those PUGs about 100 times, With this stuff, though. I guess I couldn't get motivated since the 7th is coming up soon and it'll all be replaced so quickly.