Bunnies can DPS too!

Being Noblegarden this week, an extra buff was applied in my guild's raids - bunny costumes.

Of course, as with most costumes, there's an associated debuff:

If you've ever been silenced as a hunter, you'll know that some of our abilities are spells - traps and Aspect switching being the more obvious ones.

However, not all of them are... and it was to my great amusement that I lasted quite awhile DPSing as a bunny in my Ulduar raid.

Unfortunately, I didn't think to get screenshots at the time (and Ulduar isn't exactly the best place to be mucking around anyway, unlike Naxx), but I took a few later in Dun Morogh:

Volley (if you look carefully you can even see the faint blue "cast" lines coming out from my bunny self towards the target area):

Cobra Strikes buff:

BigRedBunny:

Quest text

Some quests I agree could use a little more detail in the description as to where to find things.

However, in this day and age where everyone (well, except me) uses a multitude of addons such as Quest Helper and Cartographer to help play the game... I think some people may have lost their common sense from underuse.

This example actually amused me, but I've been in guilds before (lowbie levelling guilds that randomly invite anyone, usually) where someone needs help to find stuff for every single quest... and it can really get quite annoying.

Seriously, people - not only does that quest tell you exactly where in Westfall you can find the quest item in the quest text (a house in western Moonbrook), the frickin' quest TITLE tells you where to go.

Read the quest text, stop using so many mods, and you never know - you might even find yourself having fun hunting down Mankrik's wife all by yourself!

Flame Leviathan - Demolisher Passenger Tips

Last night, my guild killed the Flame Leviathan in Ulduar 25, with one tower up.

Being my first time as a Demolisher passenger being flung up top to destroy turrets, I tried a few things out and thought I'd share my findings here for any interested parties:

Assuming your Demolisher driver can aim, you should land on top of the boss, right next to one of the 4 turrets you need to DPS.

1. On the other 3 turrets, a hunter is fine - DPS as normal. However, the one next to you is in melee range, so you won't be able to shoot.
2. Pets die quickly, and aren't really worth summoning (unless perhaps you're BM and can somehow manage to get a Bestial Wrath off before they die).
3. Traps (such as Immolation) don't work.
4. Swap turrets with someone (another ranged DPS), so they DPS the turret you're standing on and you DPS theirs.
5. If the last turret up is the one in your melee range, switch to Aspect of the Beast for extra Raptor Strike damage.
6. When the turrets are down and before you get punted off, switch to Viper so you have a full mana bar for the next round (don't forget to switch back to Hawk once you're up top again).

Definitely a fun fight, even if my poor pet had to take a death in the name of science!

Serendipity

Recently, I opened my Oracle egg while waiting for a raid to start. "Eh, another whelp," I thought, promptly mailing it to a bank alt.

A guildie, observing my prize (he was in the raid, so he saw the loot pop up), asked me if it was from the new fishing daily.

I said no, it was from the egg... and then blithely linked the pet I *did* get from the fishing daily, a Strand Crawler I'd picked up on the second day.

His next whisper - something along the lines of "maybe for YOU..." (made in good humour) - made me rethink my initial thought.

These pets are rare.

I assuaged him by saying the usual - I've been buying the eggs for quite awhile, it's not as lucky as Guildie1 who got the Baron's mount on his first run, or Guildcasual2 who doesn't log on for months and ends up with not one, but TWO green protodrake mounts.

However, I have to admit - I *am* pretty lucky... mostly with things that I'm not thinking about. This year alone, I've:

• fished up a pet rat within 10min while waiting for a PuG raid to fill up

• gone past the Forlorn Cavern in Ironforge waiting for the Adored debuff from the "Love is in the Air" event to drop off, impulsively equipped my fishing pole, cast once and pulled up Old Ironjaw

• failed to get my own green protodrake mount, but in the process picked up 3 drake minipets (worth at least a hundred gold each in the AH).

• (on my flat-broke, mountless 55 Horde druid on Frostmourne) looked for cheap recipes that might help me level jewelcrafting faster, picked up the Savory Deviate Delight recipe for less than 2 gold and sold it for a few hundred - enough of a profit to pay for Glyphs and level 30 mounts for both my druid and mage (32), plus a start on the level 60 mount.

• downed 10man Malygos for the first time in a PuG, and picked up Black Ice

Not bad at all... Maybe I should start not thinking about getting loot more often!

It's a girl!

Nothing makes you feel more like a hunter than getting a new pet... and with Seismic the gorilla able to be retired due to the Thunderstomp change in patch 3.1, the free stable slot had me more excited than I'd expected.

Even finally being able to be the Survivalist as well as the Beast Master I've always wanted to be somehow took a back seat in my mind!




Meet Fury, my newest raiding pet.

She's my first female companion (no, don't ask how I can tell if she's female. Irrelevant!), and very pretty - I couldn't possibly go past taming this "wolf" instead of the more popular (and theoretically, higher-DPS) devilsaur.

Shadow the cat will of course continue to be my battlegrounds partner - he and I have spent numerous hours stealthed at nodes together - and my backup pet for absolutely everything.

The only downside to getting the new pet is, naturally, the levelling - I have 5 levels to get over the weekend before Sunday night's raid, and I don't know if I'll make it. If all else fails, I'll have to get Shadow to stand in; I'd probably take Fury to Naxx as a sub-80, but not Ulduar!

3.1 Glyphs: Are you ready to rumble?

I've spent so much time picking 3.1 glyphs out (for both specs!) that I thought I may as well write a post on which ones I settled on, and why I rejected the other major contenders:



Minor Glyphs

Both specs - Feign Death, Revive Pet, Scare Beast

• Nothing new here. I've never really liked Mend Pet, because it's so easy to keep pets happy these days ("In MY day, we had to carry more food for our pets than ourselves!").
  

Major Glyphs

BM (raiding/soloing - pet tank) - Bestial Wrath, Steady Shot, Mending
Survival (PvP/soloing - kiting and CC) - Explosive Shot, Aimed Shot, Mending

(Note: "Mending" is still labelled as "Monkey" on WoWHead's PTR site, although the tooltip is correct)

• I don't like mana regen stuff because I prefer to have extra burst DPS available if required rather than longevity in boss fights, so Arcane Shot and AotV are out.


• Hunter's Mark, Raptor Strike and Kill Shot don't get used all that much.


• Haste isn't very good for BM *or* PvP, so Rapid Fire and Hawk are out.


• The bonuses for Disengage, Wyvern Sting, Deterrence, Frost Trap, Scatter Shot and Serpent Sting aren't quite enough for each skill, although it was REALLY tough to choose between these and my eventual top 3.

Round Up

Basically, I had to have the main glyphs for each spec (BW and Explosive).

Aimed I took for PvP because a reduction of 2sec for a 10sec CD is actually decent for burst damage and keeping the healing debuff up.

I took Steady over Aimed for PvE because I think I'd run out of mana way too fast, and don't usually need the burst damage even when soloing.

Mending... well, what can I say. "BM spec since beta" - anything to keep my pet alive!

Repair Bot Fail

"How, exactly, does a repair bot fail?" I hear you ask.

Well, besides the fact that it's damn expensive to repair using a bot (not being affiliated with any factions and thus not subject to any reputation discounts), here's how:



...it walked under the stairs.



Luckily, while the bot failed, the PuG didn't - 25man Sartharion was one-shotted with 2 drakes up... and we didn't even use Ventrilo/Teamspeak. How's that for quality PuGgage?!

(If you're wondering about the bot - people had forgotten to repair before coming)

Googly

Unfortunately not *quite* matching - one is from PvP and the other from Black Temple - but I finally have my "eyeball" hunter set (shoulders and helm) to weird people out with.

Hunter set gear may look terrible (barring the Cryptstalker outfit), but at least these particular pieces were interesting!

Pet tanking AQ40 - Twin Emps

(Ignore my armour in the screenshot... I forgot to take a pic last night and this one is old - Eyeball helm, ZA shoulders and Prince bow FTW)

I and 2 guildies had decided we'd take on the AQ40 trash before Skeram for bug mounts.

Only.... I thought I'd ask in guild for more helpers, thinking hey, why not try some bosses, not thinking I'd get any replies.

Awhile later I found myself leading - and main tanking with my gorilla Seismic - an impromptu raid through AQ40 with what seemed to me like way too few people for what we were attempting (9 at this point), particularly when I recognized the doorway to the room of the Twin Emps.

The first attempt was as bad as I'd expected - the Twins healed constantly, and I called a wipe after it was clear we weren't going to get anywhere.

However, I'd discovered something important while pet tanking that I hadn't picked up when I'd DPSed my way through the encounter in PuGs previously - Seismic could pick up and hold aggro on BOTH Twins, at least long enough for the casters to hightail it across the room after a swap. Repositioning the physical Twin was also far easier than I expected.

The second attempt, despite only having 9 raiders, some of which were unfamiliar with the fight (including the other tanks) and not all of them being 80.... we killed them.

Unfortunately, we didn't seem to have quite enough DPS (or mental capacity, since it was 1am by this time) to down C'thun - we were overwhelmed by tentacles and Dark Glare caught a few unawares - but I've been in 40man PuGs where most people were 80 and wiped on Twin Emps; to lead a successful raid of 9 is pretty epic.

Hopefully on the weekend I'll get a raid to finish C'thun and the optional bosses - not only am I getting decent Brood rep, I'm finding it very satisfying to lead my guildies through content that, while outdated, is still technically difficult (particularly if you haven't seen it before).

Bring on Sunwell!