Gearing up for Archimonde
#1
Greetings, Tribe!

Oryx and I spent a lot of time researching Archimonde after our Tuesday and Thursday attempts on him last week.  The upshot is that there are no mechanics here that we can't handle:  it's stacking and spreading, correctly prioritizing and handling adds, moving to marked areas, breaking chains, and some members handling another realm for a little while.  We've all seen mechanics like this before, no problem.  We can do this.

What we are short on, though, is raw numbers.  There's a significant jump up in difficulty between Mannoroth and Archimonde:  the raid needs to handle a lot more inbound damage, and put out a lot more damage, than we did on Mannoroth.  At our current gear level there is zero room for human error.  We need to buy ourselves a little room for error by getting stronger gear.

Therefore, our goal as a raid is to GEAR UP as much as we can before our next attempt on Archomonde.  We'd like everyone to be at least at 700 for our next attempt, and that is a bare minimum.  Better would be 705+.

To help with this, we are clearing a fresh raid instance to get gear and tomes for legendary rings for those who don't have theirs yet.  But outside the raid, explore all avenues for gear upgrades!  For example:

* Make sure you have three fully-upgraded crafted items (715 for armor, 705 for weapons) if these are upgrades for you.
* If you are still missing tomes for your legendary ring, run LFR to catch up on tomes.  The rings are enormously powerful and make a BIG difference in character performance.
* Run those fleet missions for Hellfire Citadel gear.
* Look into upgrading any slots below 695 with Apexis gear.
* You can buy level 700 weapons with Conquest points.  You get Conquest points primarily through PvP, but there are also follower missions that reward Conquest points, so take a look at your currencies -- you may already have some!
* Oryx and I have a subscription to Ask Mr. Robot -- if you are in doubt about your best gear upgrades, send us a tell and we can look your character up.

-Zlinka
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#2
Personally struggling to get through naval missions for legendary. Still at tier 2 with rarely ever the proper fleet combos and enough oil to constantly update ships. Assuming I forego tier 3, same issue getting past blockades to legendary missions. Right now, i can barely do more than 1-2 missions a day with at least an 85%+ success rate, which is seriously trying on my interest and motivation to the point that I've largely stopped even bothering. Tomes have been the least of my issue. Anyone have input on things that made your experience more enjoyable? P.S. Dailies are mind numbingly boring.
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#3
I'm with Annof....I didn't pay any attention to the Naval Missions for the legendary quest so hadn't been doing them. At this point, I have no idea how far along I am but I have one active right now.
Shantow the Bear
The Ironsong Tribe


"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." King
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#4
I've seen three ways to approach the shipyard, if you approach it at all:

#1 The long slog, slowly maximizing on whatever missions might be available, not taking missions that have less than 95% success, waiting for those ones to disappear and be replaced. Drawback: takes a looooong time waiting

#2a Gathering lots of garrison resources and oil through follower missions, Tanaan dailes, treasure hunting and garrison buildings, and swapping out ship abilities constantly to maximize success. Drawback: takes time gathering those resources to spend.

#2b Gathering those resources and simply throwing ships at the missions regardless of success chance. Some will get through, some won't. Drawbacks: doesn't work well on the later story missions that can 2 days, and you reach that point with really weak ships.

Personally, I took #2a, as I at least felt like I was actually playing the game while I was doing my gathering. I also couldn't bear to lose my ships. I swapped out a lot of equipment, but I ended up with strong ships that could hold that equipment.
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#5
Here's the Wowhead page on the legendary ring quest chain, which details all the different steps.

It looks like there are five legendary ship missions at this stage of the legendary questline:

1. Stalking the Master
2. Giving Chase
3. Ambush on the High Seas
4. In Hot Pursuit *
5. Boarding the Master's Call **

I think these appear in the same order each time, so, Shantow, you can look at the one you have and see how far in you are.

* "In Hot Pursuit" requires Honored with Vol'jin's Head hunters to purchase the Battleship Blueprint.
** "Boarding the Master's Call" requires a Level 3 Shipyard because you need a Carrier to complete it.  To get a Level 3 Shipyard you need to complete the "Naval Domination" quest, which requires 25 Naval Treasure missions, 2500 gold, and 2500 Garrison Resources.

For strategies on getting the legendary missions and the 25 naval treasure missions done, I used Anca's "2a" strategy.  I HATE losing ships, so I wanted to maximize my success rate on each mission, which meant having the right types of ship and equipping them with the proper counters.  So I'd do the missions I could with the current counter configuration (and I'd do extra, non-treasure missions to spawn more treasure ones), then I'd change my counters around.

My long-range strategy with my shipyard was to decommission ships and build new ones until I got ships with crews that increase mission success.  The undead crews are the best:  they give a flat increase to mission success.  Two undead crews can almost fully counter an "Expert Captain" -- with everything else countered, I think they can get the mission success to 96%. Next best are the pandaren crews, which give a flat increase to mission success on long-duration missions (8+ hours).  Third, for me, are the blood elf crews, which cut mission time in half.  I have one arakkoa from the special Awakener ship (which can counter both submarines and battleships).  After that I decommission ships with goblin, orc, or tauren crews.  Basically I'd pick a slot in my fleet, decommission that ship, and build & decommission ships in that slot until I got the crew I wanted (undead, or pandaren if I was tired of rerolling them).  Then I'd start leveling that ship up to epic, and pick another slot to upgrade.  I didn't want to be rolling more than one new slot at a time or I'd weaken my fleet too much to be able to do missions.

My current fleet consists of 2 carriers (both undead), 2 battleships (both undead), 1 transport (pandaren), 3 destroyers (pandaren, arrakoa, and blood elf), and 2 submarines (blood elf, and I'm currently re-rolling the second one to get undead).

To generate enough oil...  If you can get an oil rig in your shipyard (requires Revered with Voljin's Headhunters to buy the blueprint) this will help.  It generates a permanent fleet mission that grants you 400 oil every 18 hours.  You need a 'land objective' ship to complete it, like a transport, but the other slot can be anything.  I have a Blood Elf crew that I send on that mission, so my oil mission takes only 9 hours.  The mission respawns instantly, so when it's done I just send the boats out again -- once in the morning and once in the evening -- which generates 800 oil per day.  If you had two blood elf crews, including one on your transport, you could complete the mission every 4.5 hours and get 1200 oil per day (assuming you could log on at lunchtime).

You can also recruit followers with the Grease Monkey trait, which multiplies the amount of oil you get from each mission.  I recruited several of those.

To generate enough Garrison Resources, I did the Tanaan dailies, collected treasure boxes (these can really add up), and picked up my daily garrison resources by my town hall.  But the thing that made the biggest difference for me was recruiting followers with the "scavenger" trait which increases your return of Garrison Resources on follower missions.  I looked for redundant followers (at the top of the "missions of interest" tab in your follower screen) and would retire one per week, replacing it with a recruit from the tavern with the Scavenger trait.  With three or four scavengers, and especially by putting scavengers on the high return missions, it's possible to pull in several hundred garrison resources per day.  A couple times a week there'll be a big mission that nets 525 - 1200 with scavenger multipliers.  You can also reroll a follower's traits (if you have a bunch of those scrolls laying around) in the hopes of getting some scavengers that way.

I've also heard that the lumber yard is good for garrison resources, but I don't have one of those.

Hope this helps!

-Zlinka
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#6
Yesterday I sent my navy out on "In Hot Pursuit" with a 98% chance of success. Once I am ready to attempt the final mission I will swap in whatever "counters" I can purchase from that goblin to increase my success rate in an effort to be done as quickly as possible.
Shantow the Bear
The Ironsong Tribe


"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." King
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