One fish, two fish....

...dammit, lost the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza again.

Being the one day in summer when I'm actually free (ie. not going to work), I decided to try the new version of the STV fishing comp.

I had actually thought it might be easier this time around - after all, there are 3 winners now, right?

Wrong. Unfortunately, it seems to be a lot harder, since you're competing for pools with cross-realm people and it's harder to gauge the number of people in each zone since you can't use /who to find them.

In fact, now more than ever you need to find a quiet place to fish... and because I rarely do the comp, I don't tend to know where the best places are.

Looks like I'll have to wait until daylight savings is over in the US for me to get another chance.... oh well. One day :)

It's beginning to look a lot like

...that time of year when I don't have time to make a proper blog post. Oops!

It's been an interesting year in terms of WoW. My playstyle has changed somewhat; generally I try to race to level cap, race to get exalted with all the new factions, race to get all the new mounts and pets, race to try and solo achievements I missed in previous expansions... but since WoW is now extremely casual-friendly, I feel as if I'm playing more "casually" as well.

I still do make sure I do my LFRs every week as soon as possible, but apart from that, I haven't done many dailies, I haven't seriously gone after Scenario or Heroic achievements, I haven't finished all the quest/exploration achievements... and I'm actually playing my druid, which generally doesn't happen until I'm well into an expansion when I've completed all of the above.

(Of course, things like Double Agent and Jack of All Trades probably have something to do with that too, but still... there are easier achievements to get)

I haven't even actively tried to join raiding PuGs when I see them (which admittedly for a hunter isn't often). In fact, I actually feel as if I'm playing the way I used to play WoW when I first started, before I started raiding - like a single-player game.

I'm pretty sure that when my guild does manage to pull together a 10man team (hopefully early next year), I'll be keen and ready to raid, but at the moment I'm quite comfortable with the dabbling. :)

Hunters are Just Awesome

Frostheim over at the Warcraft Hunters Union has put together a hunter-themed cover of Boom de Yada entitled "Hunters are Just Awesome" that I had the pleasure of singing a few lines for:

I'm proud to say that I'm one of the contributors listed that is still writing about and playing WoW... and I still love my hunter!

Arena Mastered

I'd posted way, way back when that I had needed 10 Darkmoon Faire trinkets to go to be a Master Pit Fighter....

...and I've finally done it.

Granted, a lot of these wins were me in the Arena by myself, but a few of them weren't (I still have as much ease killing casters and as much trouble surviving melee as I have always had), so I feel as if I've earnt my title!

Next aim: Wait patiently for a Monday when I'm either not working IRL or daylight savings stops in the US so that I can actually try for Master Angler again...

The Final Ka-Pow!

After finally reaching exalted with the Golden Lotus crew, I was excited to see that the final quest wasn't going to be easy - I always love a challenge.

...until, that is, I found out A) how difficult it is to time jumps with Aussie latency and B) pets don't jump with you. Not a great quest for a BM hunter... and yes, I actually did it the long way, since I didn't realise that there were a few ways to get around doing it properly.

Still, it was definitely a nice end to the GL rep grind... or so I thought.

Unfortunately, I realised today that I still haven't seen the Roll Club quest at all, so I'm going to have to go back and do at least 1 full set of GL quests so I can get the Achievement... and that's *if* I know the quest will be up.

I'm thinking I may need to brave General Chat if I want to get this done, because I sure as hell don't feel like continuing to do 2 hubs of GL dailies just to find out if the appropriate hub for Roll Club will be up for the day!

LFRest

After doing 5 LFRs in a row after the last reset, I decided that I had had quite enough of the usual daily grind.

To that end, I haven't done any dailies, heroics or scenarios this week. Instead, I've played on alts, levelled professions (jewelcrafting is an absolute killer...), ticked off a few Cata achievements I hadn't managed to get yet... and generally avoided everything I usually do in WoW.

I have to say, it's been a pretty good break. I'm in a nice position where I have a high enough iLvl for all the LFRs, but no pressure to gear up further because my guild still hasn't started raiding yet.

Next week I'm sure I'll feel obliged to get back into it - particularly as I only have about a week left of the dreaded Golden Lotus dailies - but in the meantime, I've rediscovered that having a spirit beast heal is pretty damn useful for soloing things like Lazy Eye! :D

Sce-niche-io

Every class in WoW has something that they excel at.

For mages, warlocks and shaman this year, it happens to be 3v3. DKs are elite soloers, druids are hit-and-run farming kings, paladins never die... and hunters, well, over the full 8 years of WoW you really can't beat us for levelling/questing (what do you mean, you have trouble tagging and/or killing goats?).

This expansion, however, I've found something else we're good at - Scenarios.

Not only can we solo everything, we're also the most versatile class anyone can be put with, since we can bring 5 different pets and act as tank or DPS depending on group makeup.

As a bonus, the PuG queue times for DPS are short, unlike LFR and LFG... so if you're as sick of dailies as I am and need to top up your VP for the day, it can be a quick and easy "dungeon" where you aren't as likely to wipe... purely because you're the hunter and you can make it work!

I don't do it often...

I usually have an extremely high tolerance for people in LFR. Low DPS, excessively talkative, stands in fire, low iLvl - I won't ever initiate a kick if you're one of those people, although I may vote if someone else does, depending on how bad I think you are and whether I think you're trying your best.

Today's LFR, however, brought an absolute @#$%head healer who missed the mage table at the beginning (even though it was announced as a raid warning through someone's mod) and then proceeded to complain after every pull that he was out of mana and refused to heal.

I was, quite frankly, surprised this priest managed to last in the raid all the way until the first boss, especially as he took on a rogue that had told him to shut up, apparently not only arguing in raid chat but also whispering the rogue and several others to demand free mage food.

Right before the boss, one of the mages finally put a table down, so the priest got his way... except I chose that moment to initiate a kick.

Totally worth the couple of minutes' wait for another healer. Totally.

Single-Minded

If you've started repping up with the Klaxxi, you will probably know that one of the NPCs gives you a buff to control a minion for 10min.

I was rather amused to discover that since you can MC any NPC in the zone, you can get some rather amusing companions:

This poor sod just can't stop mining, whether we're attacking or AFK. Can't imagine he has much of a life... wonder if he sleepwalks and mines too? o.O

That was a raid?

About a week ago, I ventured into LFR for the first time.

I hadn't read anything about it - no strats, lore, screenshots, dungeon journal, zip - and none of the PuGs had offered strats, so I was rather surprised to realise halfway through what I thought was a trash pack was in fact the first boss encounter.

In fact, I didn't feel there were any really difficult boss mechanics for an average group of PuGs until the very last boss, although a couple of the previous bosses may have had tough mechanics for tanks and healers.

I went in again as soon as the VP cap reset this week, and absolutely blew through both halves of LFR in just over an hour.

Once again, I can't really see anyone wanting to do this raid past the first tier or so of raiding, which means that pretty much every tier people will only ever do the most current content and good luck if you want to do the rest.

Maybe this system will work out, I don't know... but for Achievement hunters like me, it'll be that much harder to fill PuGs for older content.

Heroics Hard? More like Hardly Heroic!

After a couple of weeks of not much more than making friends with the local farmers, I finally ventured into heroics this week.

I'd been holding off because I wasn't about to enchant quest gear or even bother reforging it, so I figured I'd do some Scenarios first to get into the swing of things and re-learn how not to be a hindrance in groups.

As it turned out, I needn't have worried - heroics are the easiest they've ever been.

If this is what they're like now, I can't imagine anyone would want to do them on their main after this tier of raiding. I suppose that's what Challenge modes are for, but still... doesn't really bode well for later on in the expansion when there aren't so many tanks wanting to gear up!

!

Well, what else would you call a tall, thin land mass?

Is that supposed to hurt?

At first I thought the Anatomical Dummy from Archaeology wasn't as good as the Turnip Punching Bag from questing; after all, what's so good about a normal-looking dummy mob that's level 93 when you can have a skull-level mob for raid testing that looks like a vegetable?

With bag space at a premium right now (why Blizzard decided to make every other quest reward a fun item, I have no idea... it's great, but also awful because I haven't enough space for them all), I almost deleted it.

I'm glad I didn't, though, because the Anatomical Dummy is worth keeping just for this:

Don't worry, I'll take over

No wonder the Zandalari are taking over the village... all the guards are leaving their posts and no-one is replacing them!

Pet Battle Musings

The best thing I like about pet battles is probably not what you'd expect; I don't particularly care for turn-based combat, collecting pets isn't as fun as it used to be (it's a little tiring trying to keep track of which pets you have every time you see one on your minimap) and even though starting a quest on my hunter and handing it in on my warlock is a novelty, none of those things beat the simple fact that the background music rocks.

If you've played Warcraft 2 and haven't pet battled yet, check it out. I've always thought that Warcraft 2 music is some of Blizzard's best, even when it wasn't a full orchestral setup... pitting squirrels against rabbits whilst listening to the classics will never get old :)

Ding: 89!

No, I didn't make this post 1 level early.

I have, in fact, been rushing to level this weekend - not to 90, as you'd expect - but to 89, the lowest level that you can do Coren Direbrew at.

I'm generally not a race-to-level-cap kind of person, being a fan of RL/gaming balance (a few hours ago I felt like I'd just come out of a late night LAN session), but I did pretty well considering I've only missed 2 chances at the kodo.

It was also rather amusing when I finally did queue how long the fight took - we were all level 89 and pretty undergeared where most years the group would be overgeared... it was almost like a raid boss!

Thankfully, I got through it well enough... and I'm now going to take it easy with levelling.

After all, I have all these pet battles to catch up with!

Levelling Difficulties

I've run into some levelling difficulties for MoP.

"What's that?" I hear you ask. "Impossible!"

Yes, I'm a hunter. Probably the best (or second-best besides DKs?) levelling class in the game.

Well, I suppose you could call my problems hunter-related... and my current broadcast message to my friends list says it all:

It's like a whole new stables with 200 pets! :D

The Traditional Bag Cleanout

And so commences what I call the pre-expansion bag cleanout: making as much space in my bags as possible so that I don't need to make extra trips to the vendor between questing/dungeoning, all while cursing the fact that void storage is so far from the bank.

Not really an easy task for someone who is a bit of a hoarding magpie.

Or, you know, a lot of a hoarding magpie :P

In any case, I managed to free up 47 bag slots after 2hrs of sorting through items; more than enough for general questing and a few profession mats. I doubt I'll find too many rare/interesting items that I'd want to keep until level cap either... and by that time, I'll probably have got rid of a few more things (eg. holiday food I've been stashing away for times when I don't have access to mage food).

I haven't filled up my quest log ready to hand in yet either, but then I'm getting my copy of MoP through the mail, so I may not be able to start levelling tomorrow night anyway.

Plus, trying to play on the first day has always been a fairly dismal experience - competition for quests, lag, queue times.... I'm not in a hurry. Besides, I'm a hunter - you can't beat us for fast levelling! :D

Theramore's Fall Faction Tip

I'm probably a little late to put up a post like this since most people would have done the event already, but just in case:

If you're planning on viewing both sides of the Theramore's Fall scenario, I really recommend doing Horde first.

Unfortunately, I'd already done it on my hunter before doing it on my druid and realised too late that the cutscene right at the end of the Horde version is exactly the same as the one right at the start of the Alliance version.

In any case, I'm going to miss Theramore. I've always quite liked that Jaina had her own town to run, especially as she was a little more neutral towards the Horde than the rest of her Alliance counterparts.

I'm not sure I'll like her as Wrynn's sidekick in Stormwind, either, if that's what happens after her town goes kaboom - doesn't seem right when she's such a powerful mage herself. I'm hoping she gives Wrynn the flick and follows her own agenda elsewhere - maybe not a leader, but at least a strong female Alliance character to rival Sylvanas.

Who needs men? :)

Fishing Fail

I've been trying to win the STV fishing comp for awhile now.

However, for the past couple of weeks, there have been issues with cross-realm zones: some people are fishing up Tastyfish in realms in an earlier time zone and then going back to their own zone to hand the fish in as soon as the competition starts.

Since I have absolutely no chance of competing with these people, I don't think I'll bother trying to fish until Blizzard fixes it... not a happy situation, but what can you do? Props to the people that managed to figure out "creative use of game mechanics", but I hope it gets fixed soon!

Pet Shuffle

Since Blizzard has changed the pet system yet again, I've had to re-shuffle my stables. My new pet list looks like this:

1. Dragonhawk - Dynamite
2. Bird of Prey - Talon
3. Chimaera - Myth
4. Ravager - Quickblade
5. Fox - Tails
6. Serpent - Charmer
7. Windserpent - Hydrastorm
8. Crocolisk - Slimer
9. Core Hound - Cerberus
10. Spirit Beast - Ghost
11. Sporebat - Galaxy
12. Silithid - Malice
13. Moth - Celestia
14. Cat - Robotica
15. Raptor - Razor
16. Basilisk - Medusa
17. Spider - Venom
18. Scorpid - Scorpia
19. Shale Spider - Skitter
20. Carrion Bird - Roc
21. Turtle - Koopa
22. Wasp - Sting
23. Water Strider - Skimmer
24. (Crane)
25. (Quilen)

I've basically tried to make sure I have one of each type of pet for buffs/debuffs/abilities and then filled the rest of the slots with pets I like.

Even then, I had to cut down my list from ~36 or so... not the ideal situation (funnily enough, I think I had the same number of pets I wanted last expansion), but not too bad really.

Once MoP hits, all I really need is to tame a quilen (I really want the rare blue or green model, but highly unlikely I'll find it, so I'll have to settle for red...), crane (white) and exchange a new model of water strider (a blue water insect type), plus exchange turtle models for Terrorpene if I can find him, and I'm done with my ideal stables.

Haven't decided what to call my quilen and crane yet, either... I always try and name my pets carefully; they're almost as bad as alts for me to name, sometimes!

Thrown Away

Is anyone else a little sad about thrown weapons becoming grey items?

I realise that they're now fairly useless since hunters can't use them and melee no longer have a ranged slot, but I also think there were some cool-looking items out there that I would have kept if I came across them (and had actually had room in my bank, but that's another story...).

Personally, I would have kept the items in-game somehow - even as grey tradeable items, if nothing else - because someone obviously spent some time designing these items and I'm sure there would be more than a few people that actually liked those models.

Aspect Switch

No, it's not about what you think... :P

Is anyone else slightly put out by Aspect of the Cheetah and Aspect of the Fox being switched on the special action bar?

Old:

New:

I don't know about anyone else, but I have keybinds set up for those slots and I'm going to get them mixed up an awful lot.

Yes, I could change my keybinds, but that would mean re-learning those two spell slots for all the rest of my classes as well (admittedly probably easier, since I don't play alts anywhere near as much and the muscle memory is probably not as strong).

On the upside, at least they didn't change Aspect of the Pack... would be incredibly annoying for raiding/PvP/dungeons if the rest of my party had to suffer my misclicks as well!

Digging the Archy Changes

Whilst on the hunt to re-fill my stables (more on that in a later blog post), I discovered the improvement Blizzard made to Archaeology:

Increasing the number of times you can survey at a dig site means you can get one or two common artifacts at each site - great for people like me who still have one rare item left to discover for a few of the races (and 4 for Tol'vir :P).

I still don't think I'll manage to get all of the rare items before MoP brings in more, but at least I have more of a chance now! :)

This space NOT for rent

Having gone through all of my characters and organised their spells, I once again find my hunter short on action bar space.

I don't know whether there are any other classes that suffer the same problem, but I have a druid, warlock and priest all at 85 with spare spell slots and I've never had this problem on any other class (or at least, the hunter has always been the worst).

Survival (I've switched from MM, since I like Entrapment better than Chimera Shot) seems to not be as bad - there are 3 fewer abilities than for my BM setup.

I am, however, definitely liking my self-heal and survival options, of which there are plenty - Readiness is going to be epic with double Exhilaration, Intimidation, Silencing Shot, Deterrence spell reflect, Bestial Wrath, Scatter Shot.... can't wait to get into the MoP Arena - PvP has never looked so good! :)

Beta luck next time

Awhile ago I was excited to finally get my MoP beta key and was getting ready to do my usual testing.

Unfortunately, although I usually have plenty of bandwidth, there have been various reasons why I haven't been able to keep up with the WoW beta download - Diablo 3, live streaming the Olympics (Australia's Channel 9 free-to-air coverage was abysmal)...

This month I'll have plenty of bandwidth, but I'm pretty sure I've just about run out of time to test this thing, considering MoP will be live in 6 weeks and I'll still need to set up my hunter's spells, glyphs, macros, interface, pets.... not really the most ideal situation!

Oh well.... I'm sure the other beta testers have gone through all of the important stuff... I never was any good at number-crunching!

Nef needs new minions

Saw not one, but 2 appropriate PuGs last night; one for DS with 5 heroic (which I missed), and one for BWD heroic (which I managed to scrape into).

I was slightly surprised to find heroic BWD more difficult than I expected - it's definitely not a "faceroll", even for a team of 10 fairly well-geared and competent people.

It probably didn't help that the boss that gave us the most trouble was Magmaw - this first boss gave me a repair bill of >100g.

Luckily, most of the raid were from the same guild and all prepared to wipe - I can't imagine a regular PuG would have stuck at it for so long.

The only boss we didn't do on heroic was Nefarian, and only because it was getting late and the guild didn't want to even bother trying. At least we did manage the Achievement for it.

All in all, it was a great run. To me, a 200g repair bill is well worth seeing the fights on heroic, not to mention the Achievements and the challenge of running a difficult raid.

And even if I didn't get any of that.... 200g is totally worth this:

No glory for silver

This week, the STV fishing comp started just after Bolt's lightning Olympic run, so I figured I had a great chance of winning for once.

Indeed, I started off fantastically, getting quick bites of mostly tastyfish and not too much competition for pools.

I'd just picked up my second last fish - and getting tentatively excited - when a tauren made a neat landing next to the pool I was fishing from and promptly fished it out.

"OK, it's fine. I just need one more," I thought.

Of course, it wasn't to be; every pool from that area had vanished and by the time I *did* find a pool (close to half the map away) and cast the line out for my last fish, someone had handed theirs in.

I guess this week just reflected what the Aussie swim team must be feeling: close, but no cigar! :P

Valour Failure

Since my guild started our holiday raiding break (which is now looking to last until MoP, although that's another story...), I haven't been getting my usual quota of Valour Points.

Last week I'd realised that one week of points could get me over the line to the Arena bow I'd been wanting for transmog purposes, so I thought, "Great! I'll just do a quick Raid Finder Dragon Soul and be done with it".

Yeah, not so much.

Whilst RF used to be a quick and easy source for VP, I'm pretty sure that anyone and everyone - including me, really - who is actually capable of running the place has long finished farming it and is nowhere in sight.

Not to mention, the healers left at the slightest hint of a non-optimal group (stretching the queue time and leaving us with only the desperate hangers-on), making it incredibly difficult to finish the run once you wiped.

A few attempts later and I decided it was sadly much easier to run 5man heroics for VP, much to the delight of more than a few undergeared PuGs who /boggled at my ilvl 398 DPS.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, really, considering that everyone is feeling pre-expansion lethargy, but still. LFR is supposed to be easymode raiding, dammit! What happened? :(

Aspect of the Dragonhawk

No, we aren't getting that spell back; I'm talking about this:

Yep. Because you can change Aspects whilst mounted, you actually get a cast animation if you change Aspects whilst transformed into a dragon via Vial of the Sands.

It does look a little odd, since the dragon looks like a chicken sticking its neck out really quickly... but pretty amusing as well!

Bubble-o-flage

After running through the Well of Eternity and getting Tyrande's Hand of Elune buff, I realized that not only does the buff put a clear bubble around you, it also changes Camouflage to put a second visible bubble around the first one:

Reminds me a little of those Alien eggs for some reason, even though they don't look the same... but in any case: definitely not stealthy to be walking around inside a double bubble!

Outfit Complete

Finally! After more than a few runs through Sunwell (much thanks to my guildies!), the Golden Bow of Quel'Thalas dropped for me and I have my complete elven ranger outfit:

Unfortunately my dark ranger outfit (which I use for PvP) needs 3 more items with extremely low drop rates, so I'm still using placeholder items (which really aren't too bad, considering).

I'll still have to run Sunwell for Thori'dal, of course, but at least I have my PvE set done! :)

Hey guise, new hat!

Sometimes I don't know why I keep these items, or even make the effort to get enough tokens to get the items in the first place... and then, of course, I remember that I'm an OCD collector and Achievement hound, and I guess my head being on fire is kinda cool :P

In other news, I also managed to finish Frostbitten:

Found Dirkee in the spawn point far, far away from any Time-Lost Proto-Drake paths, unsurprisingly.

I have to say, I didn't think I'd get those rare Achievements... but parking an alt at spawn points instead of going AFK in town really does help a lot!

I've Seen You Before...

I only need Dirkee and Terror Spinner for Frostbitten, so I've parked an alt at one and set my hearth to the other, and log out at a spawn point.

It is, however, rather disconcerting to see someone else parked close to you when you log out... and in the exact same position when you log back in the next day. Do these people not sleep or work?!

Anyway, I've been trying harder to get this Achievement done because I was reminded recently that come MoP, zones will be cross-realm... meaning more people in the zone and therefore less chance of you seeing rare mobs. Great for questers, not so great for Achievement hunters like me! :(

Here's hoping I manage to get the Time-Lost Proto-Drake and the Camel Hoarder as well... although if the dude I see when I log into Storm Peaks is still there for the rest of the week, I'm not holding my breath!

The Minions of Hell Grow Stronger

...and the minions of Azeroth grow lonelier.

My guild has jumped on the Diablo 3 bandwagon, plus we've had illnesses (it's getting into cold 'n flu season here in the Southern hemisphere, don't forget!) and people taking holidays, so it's been a little quiet in WoW lately.

That's not to say we haven't been progressing, though - we consistently kill 3 heroic bosses in DS and we're working on a 4th.

Not to mention, we're finally at the last few runs of Firelands for our guild leader to get the legendary staff - an epically long hard slog, if you ask us. Our rogue got his legendary daggers with much less group effort.

I was actually a little surprised that we all keep turning up to raid, considering. I guess Diablo 3 is more of a solo game or with a small group of friends, so WoW is still the only way we can all get together in a big group and have fun.

Well, that, or perhaps the core raiding team of 11 or so that we have left are the more motivated group - after all, Southern Wardens hasn't traditionally been a heroic raiding guild, but I think we can safely say we are now! :)

Solo Pit Fighter

I know I'm not the best PvPer. Far from it, in fact. However, I do like being the underdog - sometimes you can sneak your way to the finish line purely because you're not the most obvious target.

With no extra buffs, under-par PvP gear (still less than 3500 resilience) and not a single party member to back me up, I almost didn't step into the Darkmoon Arena ring tonight because I knew it'd be tough. However, there were enough people fighting that I figured I'd have a chance of ninjaing the chest...

...which is clearly what happened, because I've just come away from the Darkmoon Arena with my second Pit Fighter trinket - and this one I managed solo!

All it took was waiting for the right moment. In this case, a mage put up a Ring of Frost on the chest, clearly expecting to catch everyone and have the chest be safe for a few seconds. I deliberately run in, trinket, FD to make everyone lose me as a target, drop a Freezing Trap and start opening the chest.

Meanwhile, of course, everyone else is still either frozen in the mage's ring or staying out so they don't get caught. I send my bat to stun someone coming close, a warrior charges into my trap... and bam. Cast finishes, I get the trinket. Epic win! Only 10 more to go.... :P

Failands Raiding

We've been trying to get one of our guild members a legendary staff from Firelands on our off-raiding night, which is actually quite a long slog.

You'd think it'd be an easy raid for a guild in heroic DS - and for the most part, it is - but Ragnaros actually gives us more trouble than regular progression content, to the point where we almost always finish at Domo.

We also tried heroic Shannox once or twice tonight for fun; it wasn't pretty. It's a little difficult to catch Face Rage when the only shot that works for me is Chimera and the other ranged don't have great shots either (we unfortunately don't run with a mage/warlock regularly). Saving Chimera for Face Rage doesn't quite work when you're the one getting swiped, funnily enough....

I'm starting to wonder if Firelands might not be more difficult now that DS is progressively getting nerfed - even if it isn't, it certainly feels that way sometimes!

Heroic Dragon Sorrows

I've mentioned before how much I hated when I clicked the button on Ultraxion, got the cooldown, and still died (presumably from latency issues).

It's still happening, and this time I got pic proof:

We were sitting on 4% as our best attempt for the night on heroic Ultra.... and tomorrow night it'll be nerfed at the reset. Tad disappointing not to get the kill before then :(

Dragon Soul Challenge

Vodka and Method are facing off in a race to clear Dragon Soul: http://athenelive.com/dschallenge

I love watching things like this - not only is it fun to see the top guilds in the world competing, you can also pick up some great tips scrutinizing their gameplay.

I always pay special attention to the hunters, of course - it's amazing how much you can improve. I only wish Blizzard would organize more of it - I know watching Arena games always helped me a lot; why not PvE-based competitions?

And yes, I know I could always watch boss kill vids... but really, it isn't the same. People doing boss kill vids tend to either be comfortable playing, showing the strat, or showing a messy-ish first kill. This Dragon Soul challenge will be challenging enough for the players to push themselves, but will also rely on excellent execution.

/popcorn time :)

Ultrafun

Of all the bosses in Dragon Soul, I didn't expect heroic Ultraxion to be so much fun compared to normal mode.

I've always viewed Ultra to be a rather boring fight - DS's Patchwerk; the obligatory tank n' spank.

However, making Fading Light a variable time - plus the added bonus of having to stay out for Hour of Twilight every now and then - somehow makes the fight a lot more interesting.

No, I don't know why either - possibly the extra adrenaline from almost missing Fading Light occasionally when it's on a short timer? Who knows! In any case, I'm a fan and can only hope that the other heroic fights improve on the normal modes as much as this one :)

Swiftest Springstrider Ever

Yeah, I really couldn't believe I'd got it that fast either. Very glad I didn't have to camp for ages this year - it gets a bit old when someone standing next to you has better latency! :P

Bit of a Beta Breather

I finally got my MoP beta pass and am currently waiting for the setup to finish.

Last time I did beta testing, I didn't do the quests or anything that people usually do in betas; after all, I rather enjoy the process of discovering new quests and items at launch and don't bother reading many spoilers besides talents and spells.

Besides, I figure there must be enough people testing quests, talents, spells, PvP and the like - no need for me to join the bandwagon.

This time I plan to do much the same - find quirky things to test that probably aren't necessary... but at least it'd be unlikely that others would be testing the same things.

Testing plans:

1. Pet strength - DPS and tank pets vs lvl 90 and 90 elite mobs
2. Gear strength - Normal DS level gear (which is what I'm wearing, mostly) vs no gear
3. Talent gauge - Determine which talents look promising for levelling, PvP and raid
4. ???

If anyone has any suggestions as to what to test in MoP, feel free to fire 'em at me... I'm not a theorycrafter or number cruncher by any means (I tend to leave that to the rest of the great hunter community), but hey - I'm sure Blizzard wants some "average" people testing their game and not just the elite few :)

The Time is Now

Raid nights shortened (DS normal is now a 1-night a week affair and we haven't started heroic modes), almost no Raid Finder (I have everything except the ring... which continues to elude me :P), no Diablo 3, no MoP beta, no Darkmoon Faire dailes - I finally have time to take a look at the worgen and goblin starting areas!

So far, I'm really liking the worgen area; the story and atmosphere are great - for now, anyway. I can see that levelling more than 1 could get quite tedious, considering you can't really skip quests etc.

It's not really a problem for me since I don't really have many alts, but I'm sure there are others that would want the absolutely epic racial and are sick of the quests.

Hopefully RL will allow me to play through the new areas - and hopefully the BElf one too, since I still haven't completely finished it - before Diablo 3/MoP/raiding kick in again, because I'm quite enjoying this "new" content!

Bull#$%# Eye

"Bullseye" on Thursday:

"Bullseye" yesterday:

There were more people around on Thursday; Saturday I did it at a time when the Faire was less busy. Aint latency grand? :P

Deathwing Death

Tonight's guild raid saw Deathwing's corpse sink into the Maelstrom.

Not a bad effort for a guild that a) started raiding DS about a month late, b) lost pretty much all of the then-current guild officers to work or SW:ToR, c) have difficulty fielding a full raid team some nights due to lack of numbers and d) actually killed Deathwing tonight with a 2.5wk old 85 using his offspec.

Up until now (all the way back to Vanilla!), the actual "end game" (heroic modes and/or Achievements) has never been on the agenda for Southern Wardens, but it's nice to see we're finally at that stage.

I'll be interested to see how we do in Mists of Pandaria, since as a guild we seem to be progressing further every tier :)

Heroic Trial of the Fail

I joined a 25m PuG the other day hoping to clear heroic ToC.

As per usual, it was fairly straightforward until we got to Anub - Leeching Swarm got the better of us every time (not that it was even one of the better PuGs I've been in - out of the 10 or so tries where I repeatedly mentioned the fact that the adds need to die first, not once were they all dead before Anub was pushed into phase 3).

Even though the PuG failed to kill him, the attempts left me feeling that if it was a guild run, we would have been able to do it. Definitely not easily, but doable.

What's more, Durendil, one of the pioneering epic hunter soloers (bless those people!) recently uploaded a video of a solo heroic 10m Anub kill.

Unfortunately, not all of my guild are as enthusiastic about Achievement hunting as I am (I know, it's terrible that not everyone has my OCD! :P), so I tend to have to resort to PuGs for this kind of thing and hope they don't fail.

Of course, PuGs being PuGs, every ToC PuG I've joined since hitting 85 has failed at Anub. Oh well, perhaps I'll be able to solo the 25m version when I'm level 90....

Spinal Tapped

On the eve of the 10% Dragon Soul raiding buff tomorrow night, it gives me great satisfaction that our 10man raid group managed to sever Deathwing's spine today with only the 5% buff up.

We had been working on Ultraxion prior to the 5% buff and just missed killing him with our own power - I'm pretty sure 1 week's worth of gear upgrades for people would have done it - so the kill on Spine was some great timing.

Not to mention, we managed both Blackhorn (a fight we were still a little shaky on) and Spine without Bloodlust, since we had no shaman/mage and our raid leader was confident that we could do it without, even though I've usually volunteered to switch to BM for Ancient Hysteria in the past.

Hunter note about Spine: It seems to take at least 3-4 Arcane shots (less if you get an auto/Chimaera/insta-Aimed in there) to break Fiery Grip, so doing less DPS but keeping a full bar of Focus ready is important, especially when you have to break someone out close to Rolling or Tendon phase.

It'd be interesting to try the fight as BM - with the lower personal DPS it might be more difficult to break people out quickly, even though you'd have better burst DPS available for killing Tendons.

Hooray for off-peak hours

Not really something I expected to get until much later when the hype died down (at least, not without a team of dedicated followers or something!), but I guess doing it at midnight (6am server time) helped quite a lot - I managed to get Gurubashi Arena Grand Master the same way, not to mention more than a few rare spawns.

I have to admit, although it makes PuGging old content (or even new content!) harder being on a non-Oceanic server, it does have its advantages :)

Transmogrification Gallery

I love the new Transmogrification Screenshot Gallery Blizzard finally put up. As I expected, I didn't like the tier sets as much as the character outfits that people have put together - some of them are quite creative, like a dwarven miner, Stormwind guard, handyman or farmer etc.

Some of my favourites:

Male BE as Thor (the Marvel character)
Human female as Jaina (why can't we get anywhere close to Sylvanas' outfit in-game but you can pretty much replicate Jaina?)
Human female as a "Dark Man" (with flaming weapons)
NE female hunter that managed a random yellow outfit to match the Skyfire Hawk-Bow

Achievement Hunting

...and Druid-ing, and Priest-ing... because soon, Achievements will be account-wide and I'll be able to do them on my alts instead of my hunter.

Really not ideal, because I'd really rather do all Achievements on my hunter if possible... but being on a non-Oceanic server, plus being a DPS, unfortunately does limit what PuGs you can find for old content.

At least now I'll have a chance to get into PuGs if I offer to heal - or even tank, if I absolutely have to - because for retro runs, having slightly under-par gear doesn't usually matter as much.

Not to mention, camping for rares will be that much easier on low population servers, although I'm pretty much done with that now.

Either way, I'm sure altaholics will be ecstatic about this change in MoP!

Dragon Sorrows

The thing I'm finding most annoying about Dragon Soul at the moment: when the cooldown for Heroic Will goes off and you still cop a death on Ultraxion. Stupid latency :(

Not the best idea

...to lie whilst trying to get people to join your guild:

There is no way my Level 10 trial account alt (for use in forming a raid whilst doing elite soloing) would have played with anyone.

Even if I could join a guild with a trial account char (you can't), I wouldn't join this one!

Lucky Red Envelopes - Now Spam-Free!

This year's Lunar Festival has thankfully been updated to include the Lucky Red Envelopes as a quest reward instead of what happened in previous years, where your mailbox got spammed the following day with a red packet from every Elder you visited the day before:

Hooray for progression! :P

Back in Business

We had our first all-guild raid today since before Christmas. With our current limited raiding pool, I've been going BM for Ancient Hysteria.

Even though raiding as BM is a little more frustrating in general (I'm pretty sure I died a lot more than I would have if I'd had Chimera heals to fall back on...), at least the bosses in the first half of Dragon Soul don't involve much pet movement or target switching - Kill Commands landed when they were supposed to (mostly!) and having done it for a few raids now, I'm comfortable playing the spec again.

Plus - an all-guild raid is a definite win. 3 bosses down with at least a couple not even having seen the fight on LFR mode is a pretty good effort for this lil' guild :)

Looking for Raid vs Guilds

With LFR making raiding the easiest it has ever been, we seem to now be back at the stage where being in a guild isn't much of an advantage.

Sure, guild perks help, but I could join a level 25 levelling guild and get the same perks without having to join a raiding guild.

On the one hand, I think it's great - everyone gets to see end-game content, I can raid for 15min if I don't have time for anything more and if you want to stay with a guild of friends rather than an anti-social bunch of overachievers, it's fine.

On the other hand, it isn't so great when you're in a guild trying to recruit more for your raiding team - nigh impossible, in fact.

I'd be interested to see whether Blizzard thinks this issue is important enough to do something about it in the next expansion, or whether they believe that the LFR-casual-friendly approach outweighs the need for mid-level raiding guilds. I'm not sure I'm liking the fact that there are less than 10 people in guild chat these days (thank you, SW:TOR) and even though we may have a couple of regular PuGs that join our guild raids, it just isn't the same.

Holiday Hunting

Happy New Year!

As Proudmoore is usually a highly populated server, I decided to take advantage of the holiday lull to get some "rare" hunting done and hit the jackpot:

I finally managed to tame Loque'nahak - and not only that, I found him again to kill for Frostbitten! :D

I now only have 3 rares left for Frostbitten (one of which, Dirkee, will likely be difficult due to all the people camping for the Time-Lost Proto Drake in Storm Peaks) and none for Bloody Rare:

Unfortunately, there were still a few people around for the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza and I didn't manage to win it... but I did grab a PuG to do a few Cataclysm 5man Heroic achievements, putting me over the 12,000pt mark.

Not bad, considering that 1) the person with the highest number of Achievement points in the world is somewhere in the mid-14,000's and 2) I haven't done any PvP for a good long while and still haven't tried the two newest, meaning there are a few more Achievements I could easily get! :)