Tis the Season

From Phyllixia, Shadow, Tails, Seismic, Koopa, Malice, Shardik, Venom, Quickblade, Riptooth, Slimer, Bullet, Skitter, Cerberus, Myth, Crawler, Vampyr, Celestia, Nightshade, Razor, Hydrastorm, Fenris, Dynamite, Talon, Sting and Galaxy:

Wishing you all a Merry Winter Veil and Happy New Year!

Late to the Party

I started Cataclysm a couple of days late - Thursday instead of Tuesday night, for my time zone - but am thoroughly enjoying the visual effects of the new zones...or should I say zone, since I've really only quested in Vashj'ir?

One thing I'm rather surprised at is how quickly I'm levelling; in previous expansions it took me several weeks to get to level cap, but being 82 already and only halfway through my first zone tells me that 85 may only take me a week or so.

I'm not sure how to feel about that. Sure, it would be good to get to level cap and start raiding again so quickly, but it seems so short... oh well, I suppose I'll have more time to go back and quest in the lowbie areas, which so far are proving to be brilliant; each zone has its own story and background (I would definitely recommend going through all of them, if you're interested in lore).

And of course, I'm really happy to finally have that last stable slot open, even though I still think there's not enough room for all the pets I want!

I wanted to offer him a stable slot...

I would have submitted a GM ticket to demand that Grimclaw be given a new friend, but luckily he found another survivor to hang out with... was definitely not happy seeing the above scene, I felt so sorry for the poor bear! :(

Meanwhile: Anyone else trying desperately to finish all of the new "old world" quests before Tuesday? I managed to finish quite a few zones, but still have so many to go... and I feel it's important to try and get through them all because there's a lot of background lore for what's happening in Cataclysm. So much to do, so little time!

What OH&S?

Shouldn't there be a barrier for this? There are kids running around!

Also, why can't we tame these?

I totally want a snail that can Dash...

Most hilarious quest line ever

The Day that Deathwing Came.

If you do only one thing in the day after The Shattering, make it this quest and the 2 followups. So worth it! :D

Something you don't see every day

It was probably 3-4min before another DPS joined, too!

(If you're wondering... it was for one of the elemental boss spawns, immediately after the portal opened)

Pet Makeovers

Mania of Petopia and Mania's Arcania recently posted about updates to pet skins in Cataclysm.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not entirely happy that some existing pets will change their appearance - I can't always remember where I got my pets from, so I'll be waiting apprehensively come launch day to see whether I need to re-tame pets so that they look how I want them to look.

Not to mention, I'll have to tame an entirely new wolf since Fury, my current wolf, will be changing into a dog.

I mean, I think it's great that there are new pet skins to tame, and I'll even give you the blighthound changing into a dog (it always looked like a dog more than a wolf, anyway), but why change the rest?

I can't be the only hunter out there that cares enough about what my pet looks like that I'd re-tame the whole lot if they all changed... it just isn't right calling a pet by a particular name when it looks entirely different!

(My new wolf will have a different name, not "Fury")

All quiet on the Western front #2

It's even quieter than my previous post on this topic; my guild has officially stopped raiding until Cataclysm and attempts to get PuGs going for raiding Achievements have failed.

So, I've been mostly sitting AFK in Sholazar Basin on top of a Loque'nahak spawn point.

No such luck yet and I really wish the global LFG channel was still in-game so I could watch "Trade Chat" for PuGs at the same time, but at least I feel like I'm doing something "productive" in-game without actually doing anything! ;)

There should be an Achievement for this

...because damn, levelling 24 pets (well, 19 plus the 5 I already had...) to 80 was a bit of a grind!

This was my last one:

I'm definitely having fun having such a range to choose from when I feel like running around with a different pet... hopefully I can remember all of their names eventually!

(And thanks to all of those PuG tanks that decided to stay on for more than one heroic... made the queueing a hell of a lot faster!)

Old habits die hard

Things I still need to get used to, even though I'm now fairly comfortable with Focus:

1. Not automatically stopping to cast Multi-Shot (you can now cast it while moving)
2. Not wasting Focus on Widow Venom (that keybind used to be Aimed Shot, which used to do damage as well as the healing debuff, unlike WV)
3. Using Scatter Shot, particularly in BM spec
4. Using Lifeblood for the haste buff instead of saving it for the now-pathetic heal component

Anyone else?

Watch your login screen!

No, I'm not crazy... you really should spend an extra second watching the login screen - your character will do an appropriate animation for your class; in my case, shooting a bow:

Even though the login screen isn't really an important part of gameplay, it's still nice to find the little things that change in WoW :)

He's cute, really!

This is my new favourite tank pet.

Yes, my turtle Koopa is still the last line of defence for all things tankable, but seriously... for AoE, Burrow Attack is unbelieveably hax - my lvl 79 worm was taking a good half health off lvl 70 elites in heroic Sethekk Halls; I can't wait to try it on Garr when I next have time.

Plus, it does much more damage than Bad Attitude ever did for crocolisks, although a Thunderstomping slime is another of my favourites... so I won't be releasing Slimer any time soon, either!

(25 stable slots? Yeah, not enough. Really not enough!)

Take that!

Finally some retribution for Sylvanas:

Buying that item was worth the gold... I've been wanting to kill Arthas ever since my first introduction to the creation of a banshee in WC3!

Move To vs Eyes of the Beast

Pro: You can move your pet while still being in control of your character.
Con: Your pet doesn't "jump" ledges.

I discovered the latter point yesterday and wiped my heroic 5man group with it; luckily it was a guild run and not a PuG.

Sadly, this means we'll have to dismiss pets before jumping down in dungeons... I know it's only a 2sec cast time and your pet doesn't lose happiness anymore, but I still don't like doing it - waving goodbye to a pet never seems nice :(

Trap Launcher = Unimpressive

Initially, I was rather excited to start practicing throwing traps around with the new Trap Launcher.

Now that I've tried it, I'm disappointed.

It's awkward to use, because there's a small delay between casting Trap Launcher and being able to cast your chosen Trap (unlike the old Freezing Arrow, or just placing a trap at your feet, which is instant).

Even macroing both together doesn't work (as far as I know; I'm not an expert macro-er), since the delay is still there and you still have to spam the macro twice.

If you're trying to make every global cooldown count, the Trap Launcher mechanic definitely needs work... here's hoping it gets changed before competitive PvP starts.

Trueshot Time

With Patch 4.0.1 beginning the Cataclysmic change in WoW, it's finally time for me to take the plunge and do something I haven't done since Vanilla WoW - spec Marksman.

Survival used to be my favourite survival/utility spec from Vanilla - longer and better traps, extra CC spells - everything to make sure that you last as long as possible on the battlefield; a cannon not so glassy.

Well, all of that really can't compare to the new Chimera Shot. 5% self-healing? Are you kidding me? Not to mention - Scatter Shot is baseline and Readiness is an adequate replacement for Wyvern.

Right now, the only Survival talent left that really jumps out at me as OMGMUSTHAVE is a new one, Mirrored Blades, which is on a much longer cooldown than Silencing Shot... so while I'm pretty sure I'd have a whole lot more fun with that talent than possibly any other talent in any tree (oh, the mages I could kill with their own Pyroblasts...), it isn't enough to carry the Survival tree by itself.

Oh well - looking forward to learning MM. I guess I'll finally find out what it's like to be the top DPS spec in WotLK :)

On another note: I'm really happy to finally post a pure hunter blog post again. It's been so long since my last one that this blog was beginning to feel like a general blog instead of a hunter one!

AQ Scepter Quest Chain - Get it done!

One of the most (if not *the* most) epic quest chains in WoW, the AQ Scepter chain, will be scrapped in Cataclysm.

I highly recommend you do this chain if you haven't already; most of the steps will be fairly easy to get through with a small group of 80s (as opposed to the full raids of 60s they used to take).

There will probably be no Achievement or Feat of Strength for completing the chain, but being able to say you've done it is a reward in itself :)

Hexxer is Haxxor

I finally got motivated enough to completely solo clear ZG the other day, and I can tell you now - Jin'do is definitely the most difficult boss in there.

He drops more than a few Mind Control totems (as seen in the above pic!), which tends to make you kill your own personal tank, so here's the method that worked for me:

• Use a mix of PvP/raiding gear and BM spec (for better pet survivability).
• Use a Ferocity pet (I used my wolf, Fury).

1. Blow all cooldowns as soon as you start.
2. As soon as a shade spawns and reaches you, Mend Pet and Feign Death.
3. Stay Feigned while your pet solos Jin'do, using pet abilities (eg. Cower) on cooldown.
4. While Feigned, unequip your weapons.
5. When your pet gets low on health, blow Beastial Wrath and Mend Pet in quick succession - these spells will be all you get off before being Mind Controlled.
6. Since you unequipped your weapons, you will run around trying to punch your pet to death.
7. If your pet dies before Mind Control wears off, rez using Heart of the Phoenix and repeat from the beginning.
8. If you don't have Heart of the Phoenix, you can either try and kite/melee Jin'do for the last bit of health, or use Deterrence and try and rez your pet manually.

For my kill Fury managed to survive through Mind Control, so I didn't have to rez.

Definitely a lot more fun trying to kill this guy than your average tank n' gank fight, so I'm glad I did it before ZG disappears in Cataclysm!

Getting my Mojo back

I'd been getting a little bored lately - trying to PuG raids when there aren't any running (Oceanic-time players on Proudmoore are in a pre-expansion slump) and farming for mounts that are about as likely to drop as me changing mains (ie: not @#$%ing likely) was getting a little old.

Not to mention, I've about given up on getting any T10.5 - it's just not happening.

Happily, I found something to do last night that renewed my interest in spending time on my hunter instead of my druid again (I do like alts, really... especially my druid. I just don't like them all that much - if there's anything at all I can do on the hunter I'd much rather do that): Farming for Mojo.

What's so fun about farming trash, you may ask?

Well, anything that isn't easy (read: "has a chance of me dying") is a challenge. Just like healing heroic HoR with a 3.8k gearscore is a challenge (take that, you stupid tank that a) tried to kick my druid and b) left before the last boss, after we'd all survived the 1st 2 bosses with no deaths).

And I like challenges.

It wasn't too much of one - I only died twice (once on the Eagle gauntlet - which I finished with ease the next time round - and once on the trash in front of Lynx), but at least I've found a solo activity to have fun with again!

No, I didn't get Mojo.

However, I've found that it's probably faster just to reset the Eagle gauntlet than to wait for trash to respawn, so hopefully I'll get Mojo some time soon! :)

Worth staying up until 2:30am for

It was with a guild that usually raids at that hour and regularly takes on a few PuGs... not something I'd do usually, but I've had quite a few good runs with those guys and when the advertisement came up in Trade Chat for Professor/Sindy/LK, I decided to chance it :)

(We didn't have time to take on Arthas since we had more than a few wipes on Sindy, but still. One more Achievement to link to get into PuGs!)

Breaking news!

Yesterday, a DPS in my heroic 5man PuG apologized for accidentally pulling aggro.


(Those of you who PuG will understand why this is worthy of a blog post)

Brewfrost

If you haven't been killing Coren Direbrew during this Brewfest, start doing it.

You'll have to queue through the Dungeon Finder this time around instead of finding your own group (the queues are quite short, even for DPS).

Even if you don't want any of the epic loot that comes in the once-daily Keg-Shaped Treasure Chest reward, you'll still want the 2x Emblem of Frost - easy for what can be less than a minute's work!

How much?

...that much.

To tip me over the 9000 edge, I got this one:

...which is also cool, although I am not wearing the Kingslayer title - overused and means little these days; I'd rather stick with "Knight".

It will definitely be useful for linking in PuGs though... and I've finally avenged Sylvanas Windrunner, which I've wanted to do ever since the brave elven Warcraft 3 ranger was forced to become a ghastly banshee.

@#$% you Arthas, this one was for the Dark Lady!

Battle for the Under-Gnomer-City

So apparently Blizz threw me a bone to alleviate my boredom by implementing the re-taking of Gnomeregan event.

Sure, it didn't take long to complete, but at least it was something different. Besides, it's about time those gnomes got proactive about their irradiated home town; even Undercity, built in the sewers of Lordearon, is a cooler hangout.

I will also likely be doing the equivalent event on my tauren druid, 1) for the troll lore, and 2) just so that every 4hrs I can actually fit through doors properly (why I felt the urge to make my druid a male, I have no idea).

Hooray for new content! :)

All quiet on the Western front

Not much is happening on the hunter, sadly. Pre-Cataclysm slump seems to have hit most people (either that or post-Starcraft 2 launch... :P), so I've been hanging around on my feral/resto druid.

Of course, whilst healing is a nice change from DPSing and world PvP (my druid is on a PvP server, as opposed to my hunter) is an adrenaline-generating thrill, I'd still rather be hunter-ing.

The problems is, I'm having trouble finding things to do that aren't too boring, grindy or require a group - all of the Achievements I need involve Arena, battlegrounds, raiding, or have terrible odds (ie. killing all the rares or fishing up a turtle).

Soloing elites has also lost its appeal slightly - it takes longer for me to travel to ZG or MC than to kill the bosses that drop the stuff I want, and since I've done them a few times it isn't really much of a challenge any more (which is the main reason why I like elite soloing in the first place).

What to do? I hate leading guild raids, let alone PuGs. I managed to put together a PuG for 20man OS recently without too much trouble, but was lucky in that the tanks knew what they were doing and I didn't have to type many instructions at all. Any PuG that would require Ventrilo is definitely out.

Guess I'll just have to hope the Americans on Proudmoore will start running Achievement runs in a friendlier time for me one day... hopefully before I get so frustrated I transfer my hunter to Frostmourne Horde :P

(Well, either that or Blizzard could send me a beta key. Come on Blizz, I have a blog and everything!)

Boned

It's amazing how many ranged DPS never bother to hit spikes that they can't hit with random AoE...

It was mainly due to a lucky draw, since only 1 spike was outside melee range (on me, and I was standing in as close as I could to the group).

Tangent: why *is* this Achievement called "Boned", anyway? Shouldn't it be "De-boned" or something, considering the whole point is to free people?

Volley in Cataclysm - or Lack Thereof

If you're reading this post, chances are you'll already know about the fact that Blizzard intends to remove Volley and "replace" it with Multishot as our main AoE ability in Cataclysm.

Probably every hunter would have something to say on this matter... and whilst I've resisted commenting much on Cataclysm changes, this topic motivated me enough to post the following on the official Blizzard DPS forums:

If Volley is going to be scrapped, I have the following concerns:

1. You cannot control where Multishot lands. With Volley and other targeted AoEs, you can target a specific area and not hit anything outside of it. With Multishot, anything close to your chosen target may be hit (or not hit, as the case may be).

Example: Pull pack of mobs, mage is slow off the mark and sheeps something right next to the rest of the mobs, everyone else shifts their AoE so that it doesn't hit the sheep, hunter hits Multishot and breaks the sheep.

2. Flare/traps have a long cooldown.

If you know there's a stealthed player around, you can stand on a trap and hit Flare... but since rogues can sap from *outside* the flare area and disarm traps, they can get
around it. Not only that, they can vanish and wait until you waste both cooldowns again before they reappear.

Possible solutions:

1. Make Multishot a targetted AoE, or at least a consistent area of effect so that we can control where we're aiming at.

2. Remove (or at least reduce) the Flare cooldown. If you need to compensate for hunters spamming this ability, make the Focus cost high. Alternatively, make Multishot targetted and spammable (or at least a fairly short cooldown), and obviously as an AoE it will have a fairly high Focus cost anyway.

One other concern I have that I didn't put into my post because Blizzard doesn't really support it anyway - keeping your tank pet alive when doing elite soloing is going to be that much more difficult.

Currently in fights with several mobs, you can easily spam Volley wearing 2pc T5 and have your pet healed 15% of the amount of damage you do.

That won't be possible in Cataclysm unless Blizzard makes Multishot spammable (and even then, we're going to be limited depending on the Focus cost).

Blizzard may want to make classes unique, but really.... the way hunters are looking, it'll be that we're missing abilities rather than having something special to bring to the table. Not good.

Random PvP stuff

Firstly, congrats to "team chris thormann" in Blizzard's North American WoW Arena finals.

No, I'm not actually cheering the hunter on the team for once - it's the Aussie warlock I was supporting; even though they only won against one team at the event (and that team managed to defeat them later), managing to get to the top of the Arena board in the first place with Aussie latency is a bloody impressive feat.

Secondly, trying to excel at, and get Achievements in, PvP takes so much more individual effort than any PvE Achievements.

Sure, you can argue that it's difficult finding halfway-competent people to run a raid in the first place, but really... if you're willing to wait until everyone is geared up (or at level 85 in Cataclysm, for example), you'll finish all the PvE Achievements eventually.

Besides, if you're willing to spend a huge chunk of gold, usually there's at least one guild on your server that will run you through raids and Achievements for a price.

For PvP, on the other hand... if you suck, you'll never be able to get an Arena title no matter how many games you play... and even if your entire battleground team is communicating in Vent, the other faction can still pwn you if they're quicker.

(Props to that team of Horde, by the way... we didn't have any AFKers, only 1-2 PuGs, and a group of about 5-6 Horde - possibly an elite Arena team, but still - managed to roll us and win 1600-1590 in AB)

PuGs? What PuGs?

After being back for a few days, I've noticed the PuG scene on Proudmoore at Oceanic peak times has... kinda disappeared.

So far this week, I've only seen a couple of PuGs for VoA10/25, 1 PuG for Ony10 and 1 PuG for ToC25... and I started logging on on Wednesday, which is usually the best night for PuGging (being the night after maintenance for Oceania).

No ICC, no Ruby Sanctum.

To be fair, Proudmoore *is* traditionally more a US server (the PuG scene is certainly a lot better on Frostmourne, my "Oceanic" horde server), so this weekend I'll be logging on in US peak times to see if I can at least get some ICC in.

Even so, I'm disappointed about not being able to raid on weeknights... I can only do so much Battleground-ing before getting sick of it, even if Alliance are actually winning!

(Note: My guild is on a raiding break this week - back next week - so if I want to do anything this raid lockout, I have to PuG it)

Back in Action

I'm finally back from my vacation... and surprisingly, I haven't missed all that much.

Sure, I'm a little behind on character development in terms of PuGging/raiding, but I somehow managed to keep up with the beta news, RealID kerfuffle and Starcraft 2 launch while away, so I'm not doing too badly.

Hopefully I'll have new stuff to blog about soon, although the jetlag is still winning :(

Skill > Gear - ICC in Blues

Quick note to say go check out the interview of Gevlon on the WHU site - it's times like these I feel really incompetent... or wish I was in a guild that would do crazy stunts like that!

http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2010/07/frostheim-interviews-gevlon-of-undergeared/

(Sorry for the terrible set out of this post, but I'm posting from a phone...)

Phyllixia on Holiday

It's highly unlikely that there will be any blog posts for the next couple of months, as I'll be away and not playing WoW.

Then again.... I *will* probably be keeping tabs on any hunter previews for Cataclysm, so who knows? :)

On a related note: apparently my 25man ICC PuG subconsciously threw a going-away party for me, because not only did we complete a smooth 9/12 run this morning (I'd been 6/12 in 25man previously), I also won the roll on Deathbringer's Will!

Rather amusing how it's usually the tier pieces people upgrade first.... and now I find myself completely in ilvl 264 gear *except* for my 4 pieces of T10. WTB Hunter tokens, PST! :P

Hunter Tank!

So I finally got to tank in a raid the other day.

No, not using a pet tank - that day will come, I'm sure! - but a boss hunters are legitimately asked to tank occasionally, Prince Keleseth of the Blood Prince Council.

Not only did I have fun (Kill Shot as an opener? Close to 50,000 hit points in full PvP/tank gear, even minus a couple of buffs? Hell yes!), we even got an Achievement at the end of it:

Thanks to our great healers, I didn't even feel the need to use my emergency shield (and we didn't have a warlock for healthstones... which is actually why I was tanking in the first place), so it was a pretty comfortable kill.

Definitely a lot better than my usual job of running around chasing after orange balls, anyway!

(Side note - having to put up Rank 1 Serpent Sting on all of the purple nuclei really does drain your mana... I was surprised how quick it went, even in Survival spec)

WoW Spam

It's interesting how I take ad spam in WoW for granted these days.

Whether it's the floating orcs (as shown above) or everyone's buddy "Susan" in Trade Chat, I don't bat an eye.

Usually I take the time to click and report them for spam, but sometimes I don't even notice... and others, I just couldn't be bothered.

Sometimes I wonder, though... is everyone else as apathetic about it as me, or are there people out there who still care? Does Blizzard even care, or do they just mass ban the accounts that got reported and move on?

Most Expensive Quest Chain Ever

Yeah, I finally paid for the hilt.

Not the best way to spend gold, perhaps... especially since I have Distant Land already and Quel'Delar wasn't even an upgrade.

Still, it's definitely a cool quest chain and would recommend doing it to people if you have enough gold to throw away :)

My Guild

I have had many, many discussions with people as to why I do the things I do.

One of the more common questions, particularly from dissatisfied guildies or curious non-guild friends, is:

Why do I stay with my guild, Southern Wardens of US-Proudmoore, where raiding progression is slower than I'd like, wipes from silly mistakes are frustrating, and first kills are often obtained through PuGs weeks before the guild as a whole even sets eyes on the boss?

My short answer tends to be: "Because I want to".

Of course, people are rarely satisfied with that answer, so here's a slightly longer one:

• My guild doesn't care if I raid as BM.
• My guild doesn't immediately replace me if I'm running late for a raid.
• My guild /rolls for loot and often pass in favour of someone else who needs it more.
• My guild helps people who ask for it, and don't mind "carrying" people who are good-natured, grateful, and at least try their hardest.
• And more importantly, my guild are a friendly, cheery bunch that accept people for who they are... even if you're a mage called Wildence.

Would I recommend this guild to a hardcore raider? No.
Would I recommend this guild to someone who doesn't mind a few wipes as long as everyone has fun? Hell yes! Southern Wardens rock :)

(If you're wondering what inspired this post, we ran Ulduar 10 hard modes last night in preparation for seeing Algalon. Sure, we wiped a couple of times despite now having double the HP and DPS as when we did normal modes, but it was better than stressing over ICC10 progression. When the most important loot /roll of the night is over who gets to push the Big Red Button, you know there's fun to be had :D)

The other side of AH Arrows

After complaining about arrow etiquette on the AH, I thought I should also post the other side of the story - the times when I actually like several pages of arrows being listed:

Gotta love it when people put blue arrows up for less than vendor arrow price!

The Aussie Ping

Everyone on US servers that aren't based in the US are aware of our higher latency, particularly when some uncaring Yank makes a complaint that - ZOMG! - they have 200ms, how terrible!

(200ms is the type of latency us Aussies only see in Exodar at 2am... 3-400 is more normal)

However, we're all used to it - and unless your Arena team is hitting 2k rating, we don't really notice. I don't, anyway.

Until last night.

Every strat I've read for hunters on Sindragosa states that if you're quick enough, you can hit Disengage on her Icy Grip and not move at all.

I'm here to tell any hunter that hasn't done Sindragosa before that if you have 500ms like I did last night, that "tip" is bull&#$@.

Yes, I still got a headstart on the rest of my crew in running out.... but the best I could manage was the edge of melee range. Definitely nowhere near where I started.

I've heard horror stories of the timing that used to be required for Naxx40 back in the day and now I wonder - if any Oceanic guilds were actually raiding that place successfully, they should probably have their guild name plastered next to the old Nihilum guild for world firsts back then, because they deserve it.

Even more annoying pea-shooter

Usually I scoff at BoA items, since my hunter is always the leader of the pack and I don't care much about gearing/levelling alts.

I am, however, going straight out to buy a bow after reading a post in the hunter soloing thread on the EJ forums by Brightlol (Brightofday of Aman'thul), the first hunter in the world to solo Nefarian.

Not only did Brightlol solo something pretty epic, they also provided an absolutely epic tip: the BoA Charmed Ancient Bone Bow has no durability, and therefore can't be broken in Nef's hunter class call!

...and I guess another good thing about it is if you ever forget to repair, you know this bow will never break. Almost never happens to me, but hey - I remember some pretty close calls doing Hyjal retro runs where the mass AoE was enough to make me worry :P

Auction House Arrow Etiquette

If you insist on listing a single arrow for sale on the AH to try and catch people out (eg. listing 1 arrow for the same price as the average stack of 1000)... at least have the decency to only list, say, 4 pages' worth.

Not 10, 20, or some other obscene number of pages that gives everyone trying to find the first decently priced lot of arrows RSI.

Trust me, there aren't 200 stupid hunters that will each buy a few of your single arrow stacks within the 2 day AH limit, so there's no need to provide for that many!

Was that really heroic?

I had to double check that the ToGC10 raid I'd joined was heroic or not - it was one of the smoothest runs I've ever been on.

...Also, I won the horse. Woot! :)

I hate when this happens

Luckily, Alliance actually won that Strand of the Ancients fairly quickly, even with me stuck somewhere in the bowels of the ship for the entire game...

PuG team

Since Bloodlust Alliance are notoriously bad at winning in the PvP stakes as a general rule, I've occasionally joined a cross-realm premade (the "QQ" crew, if you're familiar with them from Trade Chat spam on your server).

If you aren't sure how a cross-realm premade works, you basically get on Ventrilo and all queue at once. If most people get a popup for the same BG (eg. Arathi Basin 2), everyone enters. If not, everyone quits until the current BG fills with PuGs, then all re-queue. You tend to get a couple of PuGs, but for the most part it's a decent-sized team.

Last night in one of my AB games, a single PuG had made it into our QQ premade; a tree druid. At one point in the game, I found myself guarding the flag at the farm with this druid when a rogue and 2 warriors rode up and tried to take us out.

They failed, miserably. The druid and I worked together instinctively, kiting the melee over Frost Traps and keeping them off the flag, him keeping us both alive and me peeling them off both of our backs with Wyvern, Scatter and Concussive every cooldown.

When the druid finally went down after the 3 horde had died a few times each (they kept rezzing at their hall and coming back for more), I called for backup and managed to keep myself alive long enough for help to arrive and clear them out properly.

"That was fun" the druid whispered.
"GJ :)" was my reply.
"GJ yourself, it's nice to play with someone who doesn't just take care of themselves"

Sure, the premade I was in was great... but I think that PuG was the best teammate I had all night. If only he was on my server; I'd add him to my Arena team roster in a heartbeat!

My new favourite mount

...is actually the same as my old favourite mount.

That is to say, this one:

Blizzard gets enough of my money; I refuse to pay extra for a pretty horse when I have plenty of nice-looking mounts already.

Not to mention, I tend to like things that took a lot of in-game effort to get, because it means more - I spent quite a bit of time tailing Skyshatter and his buddy for my Netherwing drake, and my favourite ground mount is still the first cat I bought at 60 when I finally scraped enough gold for it.

I hope Blizzard brings in the change for all flying mounts to be 310% if you have a 310% one soon, because I'm getting quite sick of my purple-pink atrocity.

I mean, I know it took some effort to get and I should be proud of it... but I do hate pink.

Master Jouster

Although I tend to get bored doing daily quests, I've been forcing myself to do the Argent Tournament ones again lately because I currently have 98 mounts and need 2 more for the Achievement (my only other option is to hope for a rare mount drop... so I'm not holding my breath).

In an attempt to make things more interesting for myself, I've been doing things like soloing Chillmaw, trying to gather and mass AoE as many cult members as possible, and... racing the timer on jousting.

My previous record (before the jousting buffs):


My current record (after the jousting buffs):

I wonder if it's possible to get it under a minute?

Cataclysmic Change

I'm sure most people have had a chance to read the Cataclysm preview for hunters by now.

I've been in the "skeptical" camp ever since I heard about Focus, which was actually quite awhile ago.... and the preview hasn't assuaged me one bit.

For one thing, Focus is a much more limited resource than mana. How will this affect kiting? What about burst damage?

Consider rogues and druids, for example: both of these classes have a stun, which they can use on their target to either re-open with a full bar of Focus or get off a heal. If the only way we can regenerate Focus faster is Steady Shot (which isn't possible to get off when kiting in either PvE or PvP) or Viper Sting (which means we can't use a different sting while kiting), we aren't going to have many options for what shots we can use.

Another concern I have is that Camouflage won't help at all against melee. The main classes that can disarm are melee... and there are very few spells a disarmed hunter can cast to get to range.

You basically have the option of dropping a trap (fairly useless against a melee that's on your tail because of the arm time) or Disengaging (again, fairly useless because all melee classes can easily close the gap and there's nothing you can cast before or after that will snare, stun, or otherwise prevent them from doing it, especially if they snare you first).

Trap Launcher - 1min cooldown means every *second* trap, at best. Why not make it 30sec so that we can at least toss a Freeze/Frost ahead of us every cooldown so the melee behind us will set it off?

Anyway... it's too early to read too much into it. I'm definitely not impressed with our new spells - especially compared to some of the other classes - but I've always been a BM hunter and I'm sure that won't change in Cataclysm, no matter how dire it gets.

I just wish that we could inherit some of the cool tricks rogues have as well as their Focus :P

This is why you don't quit

Given Bloodlust Alliance tend to be.... less than stellar... at PvP, I entered a half-finished AV with a sinking heart as I noted the score: Horde ~400, Alliance ~200.

"OK, I'll just farm some kills in the Hall and be done with it," is what I thought.

Instead, this happened:

It was one of the most exciting AVs I've ever had - every kill counted, every death counted.

I even joined a couple of others to help defend the single resource the Alliance owned, the Irondeep Mine (and it was no easy task!), while the rest of our team were locked in full "turtle" mode pushing back from the Stormpike Graveyard.

When we eventually won, it was with 59 resources left at 38min, which is something you rarely see these days. Nice to know there are still some good battles to be had in "organized" PvP. :)

Gold Can't Buy You...

...Stuff.

To explain: I have 117 minipets, all of which are game-only (ie. none from trading cards or collector's editions), which means I am well over quota for the 75 pet Achievement. All of the BoE ones were bought with gold over the years.

I have a bike.

I have ICC-level BoE gear.

What I don't have: the 100 mount Achievement (I have 97 right now), because I can't buy any more with gold - the only places I can get a mount now are rare drops or force myself to do the Argent Tournament dailies.

Since I shirk at anything that includes some sort of "farming" (herbing, grinding mobs, running dungeons, daily quests etc) because I get bored easily, I'm rather disappointed that I've run out of things I can buy.

In fact, the only thing left on the Auction House that I could possibly spend my gold on is a Battered Hilt... and only for the quest chain, because the weapon itself would be a downgrade.

Oh well... maybe it's about time I started saving anyway, since there's bound to be plenty of BoE stuff in Cataclysm. Hopefully more mounts.

And no, you can't have any gold. :P

Got your Rhok on?

If you're one of those fairly new hunters that has no idea why I named this blog "Hunters Rhok", please do yourself a favour and check out an article on WoW.com written by Brian Wood (a.k.a. Frostheim of the Warcraft Hunters Union blog): Rhok out with your Lok out.

Why do the quest? Because it's fun. Because it's more legendary than our legendary. Because only REAL hunters have Rhok.

And because hunters don't just rock, we Rhok!

Hunter Login Screen Changed

If you play a hunter at all, I'm sure you would have noticed this change from the patch if nothing else: we now display our ranged instead of melee weapons!



I wish the change had been documented somewhere, because the only screenshot I can find of my login screen prior to the patch is this one:



...which I took to show off my T5 shoulders more than anything else.

Oh well, it's a nice change - it makes sense that hunters should display our ranged weapons and not our "stat-sticks". Now, if only our bows showed on our backs while walking around...

Hunter Pet Haiku Winner!

Mania over at Mania's Arcania (and caretaker of the much loved sites Petopia and Warcraft Mounts) recently held a Hunter Pet Haiku contest where randomly drawn winners would win a month of WoW game time.

Well.... I won! /cheer

It's a good thing it wasn't based on how good my entry was, because there are some great ones (which you can now vote on in the Petopia forums to win a "most popular" prize)... but here's my winning piece:

Loyal black panther
Sacrificed so I may live
I will avenge you!

You can judge for yourself whether it's good or not... I'm happy my faithful Shadow gets the recognition he deserves after having to sit in the stables while Fury the wolf gets all the raiding fun, although I suppose he *is* immortalized in my Hunters Rhok banner! :)

Patch 3.3.3 Bug Fixes

Patch 3.3.3 is being rolled out as I type (*insert obligatory grumble about Maintenance starting at peak Oceanic play time here*) and there are a couple of notes for hunters that I wanted to point out (read: /boo at).


Apart from the changes to Ferocious Inspiration and Heart of the Phoenix (both of which are welcome), there are 2 "bug fixes" affecting me that I wasn't too ecstatic about:

• Rapid Fire: Now triggers the global cooldown correctly
• Lock and Load: Fixed a bug where Lock and Load always proc'd 100% of the time from the first tick of Explosive Trap and never from additional ticks. It should now be 6% as advertised

Why does Rapid Fire need to have its own GCD? It's not a direct damage ability per se (if you don't do anything after it, you won't get any benefit from it). On-use trinkets aren't on the GCD and do the same thing, so why pick this out?

The Lock and Load bug was a rather more obvious bug I expected to be fixed... but I'll miss it on fights like Onyxia. Pretty harmless bug if you ask me - it's not like people drop Explosive Traps left and right to try and get a proc out of them (if you were that desperate, you could always drop a Frost or Freezing) - but I guess Blizzard didn't think so.


On another note: Hooray for getting rid of battleground tokens! Trying to get Warsong Gulch tokens as Bloodlust Alliance is worse than camping for a spirit beast...



*Edit: Apparently the Rapid Fire note was to *fix* Rapid Fire not being able to be used on a GCD, not to give it a GCD. Much better :)

In case you were wondering

Yes, you can bandage Dreamwalker... and there's *just* enough spare time in between getting the initial 4 mobs down and waiting for the first add to come out to do it. My 6k "heal" helped! /cheer

(She gets the usual bandage debuff, sadly... 7 DPS/tanks bandaging a dragon at the same time would have been hilarious)

I Hate Pink

...Luckily, this particular shirt is actually covered by my armour/tabard:

...so it can stay. It *is* a rather unique shirt, after all... you get a "Best in Show" buff while wearing it.

Also, I only had the rather boring-looking Fine Cloth Shirt previously; if I ever get around to checking out which crafted shirt looks best I'll chuck this in the bank.

Oh, and I got a new melee weapon too. Pretty good 25man ICC PuG for me this week, although still no bow....

Unfinished Business

I got bored doing the daily grind of Random Heroics and Raiding, so I thought I'd finish something that I'd been meaning to do for ages:

I hadn't done it at 70 because there was always a queue for the the Shartuul event and I only ever did the quest sporadically, which meant I never learnt how to kill the bosses.

This time round, it only took me a few tries to get the hang of it - Shartuul went down without me having used any of the "emergency" abilities and my minion was close to full health.

Yeah, there's no Achievement for it, I don't get any epic loot out of it (unless you count the level 70 blue that dropped off his corpse), but I had heaps of fun doing it so that's all that counts! :)

Skilled!

Yeah, I know everyone overgears this dungeon now, but it still isn't easy to PuG. As it was, it took us 3-4hrs (2 wipes on Faction Champs, 1 on Twins) to finish the place - Anub is definitely not a walkover.

In any case, I'm really happy I got this done because now I have access to those elusive and rare PuGs going for the Insanity Achievement, which usually require you to link Skill or Mad Skill to join.

Besides, I had a lot of fun doing it - I didn't even notice it was past 3am when I'd finished!

Tips for PuGging heroic Anub:

• Unless your healers are @#$^ing epic (and haste capped), you will need to run with 2 tanks and 3 healers
• It's easier if your DPS can push Anub into phase 3 with only 1 submerge (and without heroism, which is saved for phase 3), because most people (unlike all good hunters!) can't kite and you only have 6 frost orbs for the entire fight
• Healers should have plenty of spare globals until phase 3 and can help out with DoTs etc.
• Some sort of healing debuff should be kept on Anub in phase 3
• In the submerge phase, use Aspect of the Viper to top your mana off and keep pets on aggressive so they attack bugs with no delay (especially helpful if you're on orb duty, which I was)
• Since I was on orb duty, I went BM so my pet could beat on Anub the whole time... and the controlled burst DPS was useful

Nerfing: When is it too much?

Among today's in-game fixes are:

• In the Lord Marrowgar encounters, the boss will no longer reset threat after a bone storm and will now wait a small amount of time before attacking at the end of a bone storm
  
• In the Deathbringer Saurfang encounters, the boss is now less likely to cast Blood Nova on targets affected by Mark of the Fallen Champion
  
• In the 10- and 25-player heroic Festergut encounters, the malleable goo ability should no longer target pets
  

I'm all for progressive nerfing. It gives the "less-coordinated" guilds a chance to see content without having to bang their heads against a boss for months.

It's also great that it *is* actually "progressive", and not the epic nerf of BC when poor Kael and Vashj found themselves dying a whole lot more after just one fix.

However... are some of these nerfs really necessary?

I'll give you Saurfang - healing through Blood Nova as well as a Mark is challenging - and Festergut - not realizing a goo is headed for a non-player would be a nasty surprise for melee - but Marrowgar? You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone running ICC who hasn't come across a boss that resets threat. Are there really that many groups repeatedly wiping to this boss because of that issue?

Not to mention, the zone-wide buff in ICC is now active, starting at 5% and increasing later. Surely this buff is enough to help languishing guilds through this week?

I hope this isn't the start of a trend where the first wing of ICC will eventually become as laughable as Naxx when we first started; easy bosses are fun for awhile but quickly get boring once the challenge is gone.

Buff you? No, buff ME!

I'd just joined a PuG for LBRS on my mage when the following exchange took place between the priest and shaman:



I don't know what other buffs the priest was expecting, because I had already buffed him with AI and the other group members were a shaman, warrior and DK.... and of course only the tank had Fort and nobody had Spirit.

Seriously, where do these people come from?

I hate it even more when the noob happens to be a hunter (I'd also PuGged BRD where the hunter shot anything within range, used a gorilla with Thunderstomp on autocast and was cockily indifferent to any protest to slow down and let the tank pull... you can imagine how well the usually-neutral mobs in the BRD bar reacted when we got there), so I sympathize with any priests reading this that are /facepalming right now.

Hunters: The (Im)mobile class

With the PTR patch notes for 3.3.3 out, I was interested to see the following change to FI:

Ferocious Inspiration: This ability is now an aura and provides 1/2/3% damage to all party or raid members within 100 yards and boosts the damage of Steady Shot by 3/6/9%

While I'm all for a buff to BM - I'm finding myself running as Survival more and more in raids out of guilt that I'm not contributing enough - I don't particularly like this change.

Yes, I realize that Blizzard needs to consider PvP damage and putting talents like Sniper Training and the above change in is the easiest way of buffing hunters in PvE and not PvP, but I've always hated anything that requires me to stand still.

A hunter is *agile*. We're supposed to keep - and kill - things at range, which to me does *not* mean standing in the same spot and hoping they're dead by the time they get to you.

This change would mean BM hunters have less DPS on the move, less threat while kiting and potentially less DPS overall than before the change in certain fights - because how many times have you interrupted/delayed a Steady Shot to get out of a fire or cast something else?

Yeah, it's a small thing to complain about; Steady Shot isn't exactly the longest cast time in WoW... but hey, there isn't exactly anything else I can pick on because that was the only patch note for hunters. QQ.

You learn something new every day

Who knew it could rain in Darnassus?

Not to mention, there is a flight point on the border of Western and Eastern Plaguelands, meaning you don't have to traverse the entire map to do quests in that area... somehow I totally missed that Patch note somewhere.

Things like these always make me wonder what *else* I must have missed. Things that aren't on the Achievements page, aren't pointed out in quests, aren't one of those popular "Easter Eggs" that get slung around the forums every now and again or referred to in the ever-popular Trade Chat, and aren't something that you'd usually come across.

For all of my 8300+ Achievement points, there sure is a hell of a lot I haven't done in this game!

Love is in the Raid Buffs

Even if you don't participate in World Events usually, make sure you do the daily quest "A Gift for the High Priestess Elune".

All you have to do is collect 10x Lovely Charm (which collect automatically in your inventory when killing green or higher level mobs) to make the Lovely Charm Bracelet.

You will get a Lovely Darnassus Card and 5x Love Token, which can then be used to purchase "VICTORY" Perfume.

Both the card and the perfume stack with flasks/food etc (see below), so are basically a free 30Agi + 75AP for your raiding needs until the Love is in the Air event ends.


Of course, non-hunters will want to do the equivalent quest in either Exodar (Spirit), Stormwind (Intellect) or Ironforge (Stamina).

For Horde, Silvermoon (Spirit), Undercity (Intellect), Thunder Bluff (Stamina) or Orgrimmar (Agility) are your choices.

Too easy! :)

MC round 2

Had another block of spare time before Tuesday maintenance this week, so continued soloing MC:

I didn't respec or change my gear from the last time, but I did have to do some careful aggro juggling between my pet and myself to kill Garr. Letting a couple of the adds beat on me when my turtle was out of defensive cooldowns seemed to do the trick... and Spirit Bond brought my health back up after his adds went down.

At this point I was reminded of something that I vaguely recalled from Vanilla WoW - only Golemagg and Ragnaros give reputation past Revered, which means I won't be able to tick over into Exalted until I kill those guys. Bleh.

Anyway, moving on.

Baron Geddon was next, but I forgot to take a screenshot. This fight was fairly simple for me, since I do actually have Hawk Eye in my normal spec and could avoid being bombed by standing at max range.

The only semi-problem was to make sure that every time Baron cast Inferno, Koopa would run around the *back* of Baron and start whacking away... which means he went out of Mend Pet range and I'd have to move closer, putting me within range of Baron's bomb. Setting him on /petstay during these times worked well.

Last kill for the night was Shazzrah, a fairly easy fight; just keep out at range as often as possible.

I had a quick attempt at Golemagg, but ran into the same problem as I had with Garr last time - he hit too hard and my lack of pet armour/dodge talents hurt. Next time round I may try the same tactic as I used for Garr - let Golemagg's dogs beat on me instead of my pet and see how that goes.... or I could respec my pet into more armour and use consumables/scrolls as well.

Other notes: the trash in Baron's/Shazzrah's room is brilliant for Thorium Brotherhood rep, which I'm almost exalted with as well. Hooray for extending raid lockouts!

Forget it, Blizz...

...no matter how much you nerf it, some people just don't like doing heroic Oculus.



Seriously, I get this heroic maybe every 3rd random I do and I don't think I've had any group where all 4 of the initial members have stayed.

This Patch is great already!

Of course, now that I have this, I'm going to actually have to start doing dailies again for the Frenzyheart... /sigh

I don't usually name people, but...

Italic of Thaurissan-US, you are an exceptional tank.

A warrior with only 25k hit points (buffed with Kings/GotW/Com Shout no less), PuG heroic AN where all 3 DPS were doing ~3-5k, and no-one could pull aggro off him.

I was even Survival spec and not BM for a change (I don't tend to have too many problems with aggro in BM since a lot of my threat is shared with my pet).

/salute

Bring the player, not the class

With the raiding week all but over this time yesterday, I decided I'd try and get into an ICC25 PuG. Nothing to lose if it failed (apart from a repair bill) since it was going to reset soon anyway, everything to gain if I managed to get any actual boss kills.

I looked at Trade Chat; someone I'd PuGged with before was LF1 melee DPS for ICC25 for the new wing.

Normally, I'd ignore this. When people specify "melee", they generally do mean "melee" and not "physical" DPS (although I've come across people before who don't make that distinction).

However, I thought I'd take a chance - I'd PuGged with the guy before and I'm certain he'd remember me (particularly since he had commented positively on my DPS).

He invited me.

Nothing surprising, right? Just another PuG story; move on Phyllixia!

Not quite... because there were FOUR other hunters in the raid already.

I've lost count of how many PuG raids I've tried to join that refuse to take me because they're "full on hunters", no matter how well-geared or high-Achieved I am, so it's nice to know the PuG networking system (it's not what you know, it's WHO you know) is alive and well.

(If you're wondering.... we didn't down anything. The healers somehow couldn't deal with healing everyone up after Stinky's Decimate and the Yankees in the raid were falling asleep, so the raid collapsed)

PuGs Behaving Oddly

It's 1am and you decide you still have time for a quick random PuG heroic before bed - after all, you're well geared and even if the rest of the PuG sucks it should only take half an hour, tops.

The dungeon pops up, you click Enter.... and the mage doesn't speak English, the tank is having a fight with his girlfriend, the healer is walking backwards and the rogue is saying nothing in party except, "Quack!".

Before complaining to your guild about your extreme bad luck in grouping with randoms.... you might want to check this first: Who's line is it anyway? - PuG version!

Epic idea and props to those that actually go through with it. I'd do one myself if I wasn't so careful about my hunter's reputation (it's not exactly easy to get PuGs as a hunter, so I'm always happy if someone invites me to a raid because they know I'll do a good job from grouping with me before).

Maybe I'll have a go on one of my alts.... seems like a fun way to liven up a dungeon, since PuGging 5mans is so much more mechanical and boring these days!

Post-Holiday Post

Well, I'm back.

...Yeah, you probably didn't notice I was gone in the first place since you were busy with your own holiday break, but oh well!

Random notes now that I'm back:

• No BB gun for me... I missed the Winter Veil period entirely. I guess I'll have to either wait another year to get BB King or hope Blizzard makes it a Feat of Strength.
• The weeks of missed Frost Emblems hurt, but I'm still ahead of my guildies in terms of gear (although that may change when people start getting their T10 bonuses).
• PuGging Gearscore is a different story, but I can't PuG ICC anyway since I'm saving the IDs for guild and gear isn't a problem for anywhere else.
• The new WoW Armory rocks - I've already added an Achievement/loot feed on the side of this blog and customized my character's default pose.