Emerald Drake Source Discussion

[Wain]

Albino is probably redundant for this achievement, but I suppose if someone collected nothing but drakes then they could have less than 50 mounts, crazy as that seems

[peanutbuttercup]

Albino would be a "freebie." Just as Black and Bronze would be freebies at this point. Nothing wrong with mixing some easier ones in with the rarer drops.

[Lisaara]

Blazing is not very easy to get either. I rarely see anyone doing Dragon Soul, let alone wanting to do it. I farmed Heroic Dragon Soul back when it was current and normal. Never saw either mount drop ONCE. We raided three days a week too, if thats any indication to how much of a pain in the butt this drop actually is.

It's drop chance is MUCH higher than the Azure, Blue and Onyxian. We saw drop

If you even did Heroic 25M Deathwing you would have HAD to see one, it was a guaranteed drop along with the Handmaiden, in fact you would frequently sometimes get 2 blazings and a handmaiden. In 10H man you would get a guaranteed drop of the Handmaiden, and frequently an additional blazing.

It will be easy to solo come WoD, and as much as you luck may have been cruddy with you previous experience in DS, we should be counting our lucky stars its not the handmaiden in the achievement, as it's drop rate is the same as the Azure, Blue and Onyxian.

Might wanna tell that to the drakes I have...which is all those...minus the Blazing. Saw Azure drop 4 times, blue drop 2. Onyxian once.

I restate. Never. Saw. Once. Raided 3 days a week since DS(started normal then went to heroic) came out til Mists started. Never saw it. Not once. Not at all. That chance is a lot lower than Azure, Blue, and Ony. It's gotta be. I even have Ashes for pete's sake. If Ashes dropped before that one, then that tells me the droprate is far lower than even Ashes. To clarify, I raided 10man. We never had enough for 25, not even close.

Guh, don't give them ideas! No handmaiden either!

It's a little insulting to say 'no effort' when there was effort to get each and every one of those drakes, imho. I got most of them when content was current. I put in effort to get them as well as many others by raiding, doing special timed runs, etc. I didn't buy runs from anyone and I didn't buy them on the BMA either. A lot of the drakes on there are not easy to obtain due to low drop rates. Blazing and Sandstone just seem to be too much considering the amount of others already required that actually make more sense to be on there.

Also um...should we split this to a different topic since this isn't the Felfire hawk anymore? XD

[Lupen202]

I still think collecting a drake from each flight should be the criteria. Especially since prior we've had all the flights EXCEPT green and that'd be a cool way to get the very last - green. Brought this up before in fact in another thread. Red, blue, bronze, black and maybe twilight flights. Both azure and blue drakes can count for the blue flight. Red and the Dragonsoul mounts can all count for red. Bronze is obvious. So is black. Then twilight just as an added little thing even if it'd be a freebie anyways. If they wanted to they could add albino.

Or as said before, collecting any six drakes could work really well as well. Or make it eight or nine if they must.

[Wain]

OK, split this Emerald Drake discussion off from the Felfire Hawk thread. I think I got most things relevant, but there was some crossover.

[Myrrmi]

If I got to pick, I actually agree with Wain and they should add the Chromatic and Albino in the Blazing and Sandstones stead. That way it would be all the Classic Drakes. That would be perfect imo.

I agree. Those two don't fit in there at all. Maybe they could rename this to "classic dragon collector" then as well?
...by "chromatic" you mean 12-B? Or did I miss something?

In any case - time to start learning how to farm DS

[Kurasu]

Thanks, Wain.

Let's see.... yep. I've got all but the Blazing my own self. I've attempted to solo DS at 90 (Timeless Isle geared), but while I can (with difficulty) do the trash, the first boss eats me alive. So I don't see it being a problem to do it at 100. They may have to change a few bosses to make them more soloable.

That said, even *having* all of them, I'd rather suggest the classic drakes my own self. Not because of low drop rate, but because they could retitle it 'The Dragonflights' or 'A Flight Of Dragons'. Onyxian, Blazing, and Sandstone don't fit that description. Instead have them add a Netherwing mount (or all of them, since they're purchasable once you have the achievement).

[Lisaara]

Thanks, Wain.

Let's see.... yep. I've got all but the Blazing my own self. I've attempted to solo DS at 90 (Timeless Isle geared), but while I can (with difficulty) do the trash, the first boss eats me alive. So I don't see it being a problem to do it at 100. They may have to change a few bosses to make them more soloable.

That said, even *having* all of them, I'd rather suggest the classic drakes my own self. Not because of low drop rate, but because they could retitle it 'The Dragonflights' or 'A Flight Of Dragons'. Onyxian, Blazing, and Sandstone don't fit that description. Instead have them add a Netherwing mount (or all of them, since they're purchasable once you have the achievement).

I'd get behind that.

[Kurasu]

Tweeted my suggestion to Crafticus, BTW. Since he wanted feedback!

[Wain]

Tweeted my suggestion to Crafticus, BTW. Since he wanted feedback!

Yeah, I like that. Cool! I'm not very Twitter savvy. When I view the thread for that tweet (which I'm sure has some special bird-call-related term for it, but I'll call it the thread), I can only see one page of replies. I can't even see my reply in the context of the discussion. Is there some trick to showing more? I can't find any kind of "show more replies" or even a "page 2" link.

[Xella]

If you even did Heroic 25M Deathwing you would have HAD to see one, it was a guaranteed drop along with the Handmaiden, in fact you would frequently sometimes get 2 blazings and a handmaiden. In 10H man you would get a guaranteed drop of the Handmaiden, and frequently an additional blazing.

Not actually the case; my guild only ever saw three Blazings and we outfitted our entire roster in Handmaidens (I don't think we ever actually sold them like we're doing with the hgarrosh mount, but I could be wrong—our loot tracking database from t13 is having issues connecting to the mysql database and while technically it's my job to fix that, I'm pretty sure nobody in our team ACTUALLY cares if we have a working database for Dragon Soul loot at this point ;P). I always liked the Handmaiden best and I'm glad I have one, but the Blazing was my second favourite, I just never really got a crack at it :( I can probably do DS 10m on my hunter (she's like, 584 ilvl atm), maybe even 25 if I was crafty about it, but I'm just... being an idiot and focusing on my last two Timeless Isle items right now instead (I really should do reps. REALLY should do reps, since I main swapped this expac so all my old reps don't count anymore. Urrrrgh.)

Personally, I'd prefer something in the Crazy Cat Lady style—a list of all (or most) of the available dragons/drakes, with a requirement to get X number of them (Crazy for Cats requires you to have 20 of 25 listed cats, and I think six or seven of them require some significant investment and/or luck and/or being rich (in-game or irl). Could be tuned so that you need to have at least a couple of the rarer drop ones but you have the flexibility if you have, say, a blazing drake and a black proto-drake but not a 12-B and a time-lost. Obviously I think a lot of that is because I don't have two of the mounts currently listed, but I think the CfC/CCL-style achievement is better because of the flexibility included in it.

That does remind me that I've got to be more diligent about my weekly Onyxias, though :x

[Kurasu]

Tweeted my suggestion to Crafticus, BTW. Since he wanted feedback!

Yeah, I like that. Cool! I'm not very Twitter savvy. When I view the thread for that tweet (which I'm sure has some special bird-call-related term for it, but I'll call it the thread), I can only see one page of replies. I can't even see my reply in the context of the discussion. Is there some trick to showing more? I can't find any kind of "show more replies" or even a "page 2" link.

I admit, I don't know of any.

[Lisaara]

Tweeted my suggestion to Crafticus, BTW. Since he wanted feedback!

Yeah, I like that. Cool! I'm not very Twitter savvy. When I view the thread for that tweet (which I'm sure has some special bird-call-related term for it, but I'll call it the thread), I can only see one page of replies. I can't even see my reply in the context of the discussion. Is there some trick to showing more? I can't find any kind of "show more replies" or even a "page 2" link.

If it makes you feel better...neither am I. XD I can't see either of my replies to him.

Also I can get behind the crazy cat lady idea too!

[Xota]

I like the drake collection idea. It combines some of the others, (rep, rare drop from boss, large amount of gold). I'm still missing Ony and Blazing, but I haven't been farming Ony very long (pretty simple on most characters I have). Blazing will be a challenge, but I expect it will be doable, especially in WoD. I think our guild saw it a couple of times (we never did heroic, so we never saw that mount when it was 100%). Blazing is at 4-5% now, in 10 man, and 10-13% in 25man. For now, I may grab a guildie and 2man it a couple of times a week. When I've pugged DS for achievements/transmog, the hardest part was spine, because most people didn't know what was going on. If you're farming with a buddy, then that should be a lot easier.

I too find twitter non-intuitive. I wish it was easier to tell if the devs read other feedback, like in-game suggestions. It feels like those go into a suggestion box that's been nailed shut for years.

[Moonlost]

[...]I restate. Never. Saw. Once. Raided 3 days a week since DS(started normal then went to heroic) came out til Mists started. Never saw it. Not once. Not at all. That chance is a lot lower than Azure, Blue, and Ony. It's gotta be. I even have Ashes for pete's sake. If Ashes dropped before that one, then that tells me the droprate is far lower than even Ashes. To clarify, I raided 10man. We never had enough for 25, not even close.

Unless you were raiding with three different groups on three alts, each of them reaching Deathwing within the space of one night and successfully downing him, that still only accounts for one attempt at the mount each week. In either case, personal luck is a bitch, but doesn't necessarily equate to an exact measure of chance. Sounds like your group was unlucky more than anything. I saw the Blazing drake drop the first time we downed Deathy, then not again after that. The stats pulled from Wowhead say about a 5% chance of seeing it, which is more generous than many of the other raid drop mounts, but by no means a high chance. Admittedly, I'm unsure if the rate was higher when the raid was current.
Sometimes that's just the way the dice roll.

[...] Personally, I'd prefer something in the Crazy Cat Lady style—a list of all (or most) of the available dragons/drakes, with a requirement to get X number of them (Crazy for Cats requires you to have 20 of 25 listed cats, and I think six or seven of them require some significant investment and/or luck and/or being rich (in-game or irl). Could be tuned so that you need to have at least a couple of the rarer drop ones but you have the flexibility if you have, say, a blazing drake and a black proto-drake but not a 12-B and a time-lost. Obviously I think a lot of that is because I don't have two of the mounts currently listed, but I think the CfC/CCL-style achievement is better because of the flexibility included in it.

That does remind me that I've got to be more diligent about my weekly Onyxias, though

I really like this idea and would vouch wholeheartedly for it. Means that you have to worry less about one last boss randomly screwing you over luckwise, or being unable to farm for one reason or another. If they did end up going with something like this though, I'd not mind seeing more drakes added to the list - the drakes of the north and south wind, as an example. Just to buff the list up a little and to make the sandstone/blazing drakes less of an oddity.

[Qraljar]

Should just be a reward for getting Bronze, Black, Red and Blue. It's more cohesive, and fits into the idea of collecting all the original/classic dragonflight drake mounts. The other ones are totally irrelevant, break the cohesion of the achievement and reward thematic, and are just there to pad up the difficulty/rarity arbitrarily, which is what it doesn't need. Not every desired mount needs to be rare or hard to get. We have enough difficult mounts as it is. I'm not against more, but this just doesn't deserve/need to be one of them. It's simply a classic drake mount. It fits into the concept of having all the classic dragonflight drake mounts, which the others being included just ruin.



It also makes every drake mount a reward from a different difficulty, which is another fun pattern that makes it fit well


This way, you not only get the last official dragonflight/classic dragonflight through getting all of the other ones, but every drake will also have a different method of being obtained, which is cool, imo:


Bronze: easy timed dungeon drop
Red: rep grind
Blue: raid rare drop
Black: special circumstances 100% drop from raid boss
Emerald: achievement

[Rawr]

I think only the classic drakes should be required: Azure, Bronze, Black, Blue, Red, and Twilight. They are hard but no impossible to solo at 90 (speaking mostly about Maly as people still have issues with him at 90)

[Xota]

If you're having trouble on Malygos, remember the sparks. Kill them before they get to Malygos, even if you can't use the puddle. But definitely use the puddle if you can (stack them if at all possible). As a hunter, you will probably be able to get more damage on him in between phases than melee classes. About the only class I really remember having a problem killing him were my mages.

In the vehicle phase, do 1 1 2 3 (waiting for energy to build), and strafe around him pretty frequently.

If anyone has a tips for Ultraxion in DS, I'm all ears.

[Rawr]

I have all but Twilight (need to get that done) Maly was no problem for me but I have friends who have had issues.

[peanutbuttercup]

Thanks for splitting this off Wain!

I've attempted to solo DS at 90 (Timeless Isle geared), but while I can (with difficulty) do the trash, the first boss eats me alive. So I don't see it being a problem to do it at 100.

Yeah, gear makes a huge difference with that. Even in ToT gear the first boss was such a joke that (with my melee happy partner dead) I didn't bother with most of the mechanics. Or... actually you could try it on heroic. Sounds contradictory but heroic Morchok is actually easier for hunters than normal.

I saw the Blazing drake drop the first time we downed Deathy, then not again after that. The stats pulled from Wowhead say about a 5% chance of seeing it, which is more generous than many of the other raid drop mounts, but by no means a high chance. Admittedly, I'm unsure if the rate was higher when the raid was current.

I believe the Blazing has a slightly higher than normal drop rate (like the Maly mounts). During current content my team saw it drop once. I got my Blazing at the start of this year but have not seen another drop after that, with weekly clears. I don't think the drop rate has been changed since it was current content.

If anyone has a tips for Ultraxion in DS, I'm all ears.

I'll see if I can convince my partner to just stand there and let me try soloing it this week. I'm pretty sure I can but I'll report back if I'm wrong.

HAHAH well he hit my pet for about 30% of its health a blow. I managed to keep going through the first Hour of Twilight but the damage only gets worse from there, so at this time, no I can't solo it as a hunter. Given that I did last that long though, this will be an easy solo in WoD IMO.

EDIT: My partner's pretty convinced I can do it. Might give it another shot next week with flask, food, some buffs, switch a talent or two. We'll see.