Not Everything Will Go Perfectly - and That's OK

A few days ago, I noticed that I hadn't killed Garrosh on flex mode. My guild is 11/14H and I've killed him on normal several times, so I thought it was silly that I hadn't killed him on flex.

I joined a group in oqueue for a flex Garrosh kill. The group was incredibly stacked and the fight went flawlessly, we one shot him with a few inconsequential deaths. That's when I got my first heirloom.

I was instantly incredibly upset. I knew your first heirloom is guaranteed to be for your spec, and I also know that your first Garrosh kill after 6.0 comes out you're guaranteed to get an heirloom if you haven't yet. I hadn't gotten my heirloom yet and I was banking on the fact that we'd clear after 6.0 and I'd get my heirloom, hassle and worry free. That dissipated as I stared at this flex heirloom, thinking it had greatly lessened my chances at a better one.

Now, when I say I was upset, I was really upset. During the flex encounter, I briefly thought about how upset I'd be if I got my first heirloom there, then I totally did.

I learned a few days later that I probably let myself get a little carried away because the guarantee for your spec is separate per difficulty - my first heirloom I receive in normal mode is still guaranteed to be the staff. Now, I'm not sure if I still have a 100% to get an heirloom on my first normal kill after 6.0 as the wording is not distinctly clear:

"Players who have yet to get any Heirlooms will have a 100% (guaranteed) chance of getting a spec-appropriate Heirloom when defeating Garrosh on Normal difficulty or higher."

As I interpret it, I won't have a 100% chance as I have received an heirloom, although it does specifically only mention normal and heroic difficulty. I guess I'll find out, though.

Expansion releases and the grind to the new level cap is a full out marathon event for me. I get ready days before to make sure everything is in order for the release evening to be perfect - not in a "determined to level cap before all my friends" way, but in a "I'm so excited for new content" way. I do it out of enjoyment rather than stressing out over trying to get realm first (which I couldn't do this expac even if I wanted to), but I still look toward ways to level most effectively and efficiently, not out of pride or competition but just because I think it's fun. Part of my preparation plan included the fact that I was sure I'd have a nice, high ilvl heirloom to help make leveling faster, but I'd thought I'd lost that chance. It felt like my plans had been ruined.

Even if I were to not get a normal heirloom before Warlords comes out, I realized it doesn't really matter. The flex quality heirloom would be better than my current weapon at level 95, while the normal version would be better at 94.

The heroic (mythic) version is better significantly earlier, at 92, but I wasn't upset about possibly not getting one of those because I had not expected to kill Garrosh on heroic before Warlords. So why should I care if I don't get a normal heirloom - realistically I'm going to be level 100 in two days, anyway.

Basically I took it way too seriously. 

I completely forgot the entire point of doing it for fun and ended up stressing out over something stupid. I'm way too excited about Warlords and for a moment I was about to let something this insignificant bother me.

We get upset when we don't get the gear drops we want, but the thing is, the game wouldn't even be fun in the first place if we weren't killin' the monsters and fightin' the bad guys to get those drops. Sometimes I still get a little steamed that my guild in vanilla quit raiding three months early, I remember how mad I was that I never got to upgrade my Rhok'delar (and that the same hunter got both Ashjre'thul and Huhuran's Stinger), but I would be lying if I tried to say that I didn't have a ton of fun raiding back then. If I hadn't, why would I still be doing it now?

I'm using myself as an example today - if you aren't having fun, you aren't winning.