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