1-2-3-10

This week has been a huge week.

Firstly, we managed to back up last week's Immerseus kill and move onto Protectors... where we spent a raid and a half min-maxing everything to try and beat the enrage timer.

After we finally managed not to lose anyone to a) Corruption Shock or b) Mark of Anguish, we actually did OK. Unfortunately the only thing I got from the kill was RSI, although the other hunter managed to coin the crossbow.

Going back in earlier tonight, we found Norushen a complete walk in the park compared to the previous night's efforts, making it our 3rd heroic boss kill.

To top off the week, I finally got to Rank 10 in the Brawler's Arena. All in all, a brilliant run for the week before Christmas - I know when I was in a more casual guild, we would have stopped raiding by now. Pretty good turnout for a holiday period, although we did have to use a few people's offspecs and a casual raider to get it done!

Immersed in Heroics

Felt a bit weird getting heroic Immerseus down before getting Garrosh, but oh well - I suppose if he were easy, he wouldn't be the final mob in the raid (or the ex-leader of the Horde, for that matter...).

Thanks to gear (and definitely thanks to familiarity, on my part), we got Garrosh down quite easily on 10m tonight, then did a quick run through on Flex as well. Unfortunately nobody got any heirloom weapons, but otherwise it has been a good end to the raiding week - 2 new bosses for me, plus a bonus minipet! :)

Fully Decked

I am once again at the point where there are no further upgrades to gear, the expansion has been announced and morale is low from wiping to Garrosh after the guild has already killed him (mainly due to replacement raiders - including myself, since I was away for a month during progression - being unfamiliar with the fight).

Yes, I do expect that we will get at least Garrosh and possibly even a heroic fight down, but I'm anticipating that the holiday season (with inevitable raider absences) will put a dampener on raiding progression fairly soon.

What to do in the meantime? Personally, I think it's been too long since I've done non-raiding/Timeless Isle stuff. Top 3 things on the list would be a) old raids (for Achievements or minipets), b) pet battling and c) solo fights (Proving Grounds and Brawler's Guild).

I'm also hoping to get a decent enough group together to go for a full complement of Gold Challenge Mode runs... preferably with a group that knows what they're doing already, because I sure don't for the half that I don't have yet. Time to rack up those Achievement points again! :)

I Was Not Prepared

...to start heroic modes this week, since I still haven't killed Garrosh on 10m and was expecting at least another week of normal, but no such luck.

Heroic Immerseus actually seems like a fun fight and I was actually enjoying the challenge by the end of the raid; it was just that I started behind the 8 ball by a) not having read up on heroic abilities; b) starting half an hour of attempts behind everyone else (I was expecting to be late, so they had a replacement in for me until I got there); and c) being informed by the other hunter that since our planned placement was quite far back from the boss, I should go Survival because our pets would likely despawn - a spec I hadn't played for awhile.

As it turned out, I realised after a few attempts that Blink Strikes was the pet problem - we had switched talents due to A Murder of Crows apparently being buggy and giving too many stacks of Corruption, but Blink Strikes was then automatically putting our pets too far behind the boss and into despawn range. Switching out for Lynx Rush seemed much better.

Unfortunately by the time I was comfortable with the fight, a lot of others were probably getting tired. I can see him going down possibly next week if we can pull it together - it doesn't look like a difficult fight as long as we all stay alive!

The November Catch-up

I've been away for a month due to work and holidays, so I missed quite a bit, including my guild's Garrosh kill last week. My first raid was last night; I was pleased to see that I hadn't got too far behind in gear, DPS or experience, although I unfortunately can't make the Garrosh fight this week either.

I've also scanned the planned hunter changes for the new expansion, Warlords of Draenor, and have the following comments:

1. Boo to 20man raids - I agree it's a good idea for the progression race for top guilds and for ease of balancing fights... but try and recruit (and keep) 20 people for an average guild with people who have the ability and will to do heroics but not enough people who want to leave their friends' guild for another, and there's a problem.
2. Yay to the proposed With or Without You talent - the "BM since beta" in me is crying for all those unused pets, but the WC3 dark ranger wannabe is quietly cheering.
3. Yay for BoA toys and heirlooms - my bank is going to be half emptied. More room for bows! :)
4. Yay for a Level 90 boost - but I really don't know which class to pick! A healer on Proudmoore would make the most sense so that I can supplement my hunter with professions and also help guildies out with old content etc... but my druid is already 90 and Blackrock Horde. My disc priest is 85 and it seems a waste to use it on 5 levels. Do I want another druid? Another priest? Pick something different and try out a shaman? What if I don't end up liking shaman healing? Risk a monk even though they're melee, I've never tried them and I'll probably hate it?
5. Wonder if people will still want hunters to kite Drakk in heroic UBRS? :P

As for the rest of it... I'm not particularly fussed either way. I've noticed a number of my old guildies coming back out of the woodworks, so perhaps it has renewed some interest... I wouldn't hold my breath for them to come back and raid though; in the past they haven't stuck around all that long!

I Feel for the Person that Left This LFR

50min in the queue, zoned into an LFR with 3 stacks of Determination and promptly 1-shot Garrosh with next to no experience on him besides a few wipes in 10m for phase 1.

It pays to have patience, people!

On a side note, the bad thing about 1-shotting Garrosh this week is that I still don't really know what the hell is going on in that fight. Avoid stuff, kill adds, DPS MCed people is about what I got out of it... hopefully it's a lot more interesting on normal mode!

Standing Achievement

It's been a while since I last concentrated on getting some Achievements done, but I realised recently that I was close to another milestone. Perfect opportunity to knock over the Timeless Isle ones and hit 17000:

...or, I could have been procrastinating because I hate farming mobs and I still haven't got to Honoured with Emperor Shaohao yet. Possibly. *cough*

The Sound of a Body Hitting the Floor

Yep, Thok has fallen to our efforts on our second night of raiding this week, meaning we have a full night tomorrow to figure out Blackfuse.

It's pretty exciting to be on the frontline, yet again beating LFR and Flex gating to see new bosses. Although LFR has its merits - not having to use 10m to learn fights is one - I do think encounters are a little diluted when you go through an almost guaranteed version of it first.

Thok was actually the first boss this tier where the thought of perhaps needing a gear buffer (ie better gear to guard against our skills or lack thereof) crossed my mind, but on our last pull of the night (naturally!) we finally managed to get to the end with everybody alive.

It's nice to know that even though our limited raid comp forces both hunters to use specific pets to cover buffs, we can still progress well. The only real problem we still have is a lack of people on reserve - one person away is probably OK, 2 away means scrounging in Infamy or Trade chat for help.

We've been lucky so far in that we've only had to completely skip one raid night due to lack of numbers... but I don't think that will hold for long.

I Don't Like His Chances

Timeless Grind

Anyone else find the mob grinding for Emperor Shaohao rep tedious? The fact that I'm only Friendly with them shows how little patience I have with mob grinding, particularly as I have less time to play now than I used to.

I don't, in fact, keep track of Achievements, pets or mounts as much as I used to, since there isn't any way I can keep up with all the new additions at the moment.

Not that that's a bad thing; at least I'll always have something to do. I just don't feel like I have any particular thing to work towards right now, apart from keeping my gear up to date for raiding.

Oh well, I suppose I'll get my rep up some day... there is one thing I'm up to date with, after all - I have pretty much every single useful port item in my bag for ultimate mobility and I don't intend to skip this one!

LFRaiders

Yet again, my raiding team has a problem with numbers.

Losing one of our main tanks is going to halt our progression - and it was going pretty well, with 9/14 down in 10m - particularly as a few of us will be taking holidays in the coming months.

I don't know if I really have the patience to sit through LFR if we don't manage to find people. It had pleasantly surprised me how fast we went through content at first, but since my gear is significantly higher than LFR this time around (again, a novelty for me), I've realised that there's no need for me to do it unless I'm trying to get tier set bonuses. Even flex raids are barely an upgrade.

Luckily Zero Yard Range is the type of guild that doesn't mind the occasional PuG from Trade Chat (it's where they picked *me* up, after all), but it's pretty difficult to find a consistent, geared and reliable DPS, let alone a tank.

Crossing my fingers we find someone by Sunday!

Unprecedented

This is the first ever tier where I - and my raiding group - been heroic geared for new content.

I'm not sure whether it's because of that that my raid is breezing through the first few bosses or Blizz is just making content easier in general, but it's a completely novel experience for me to be so far into a raid dungeon this early.

In 10m, we got up to the 7th boss (Kor'kron Dark Shaman) in the first week of raiding... and even then, it doesn't look like too difficult a fight. We just ran out of time!

I think it's a lot better being ahead of the curve... you don't run into fights where you're lacking on DPS/heals - a source of frustration for everyone because there are usually people who "carry" the raid, whether it be gear or skill. It's never fun waiting for people to catch up.

In our case, even if there are some better geared (or better skilled!) than others, it's not enough of a gap to significantly slow progression. Woot for the new and improved raiding experience! :)

(On the other hand, I've suddenly discovered I have much less patience for LFR... was considering not bothering with it, but I feel obliged for the chance at loot :P)

Proving Groundless

I had been looking forward to the Proving Grounds, since I do like to challenges.

I did, however, expect somewhat more of a challenge for the Bronze, Silver and Gold trials. You are, after all, "proving" yourself. Maybe I was expecting the difficulty of Challenge Mode Dungeons, I don't know.

In any case, I breezed through the Gold DPS. I'm confident of doing fairly well in Endless, but I'll need to be more awake when I start it, not after a raid!

...and just because I'm me, I attempted the Bronze Heal and Tank mode. Sadly, pet tanking is seriously lacking, otherwise I'd definitely want to give it a go. I suppose this is one of those times that I'll have to make use of my druid. I only hope he's geared enough!

Well, that's annoying

This cloak does not go with my outfit :(

I will admit that the effects are very pretty, though!

...I do think rather wistfully that my first legendary really should have been a bow and not a cloak... but oh well. Rhok was orange to me!

High On Qon Kill

I finally got a heroic Iron Qon kill last week, making 4 heroic kills in ToT.

The only heroic kill that Infamy has that I still don't is Tortos - the fight I was probably the most intimately familiar with, since we spent so much time wiping on it.

With Patch 5.4 imminent, I'm hoping Zero Yard Range will be able to get Tortos next week, but I don't have any high expectations.

Somewhat related, I have high hopes for flex raiding in 5.4 - 3 of my former Southern Wardens guildies have come back to WoW and started gearing up in preparation for joining Infamy's planned run. Would be great to have 5 Wardens and Infamy in the one run - ZYR is good, but just not the same as having the old crew back together!

Challenge Accepted

With a few guildies, I've started to work on Challenge Conqueror: Gold in earnest. The difficulty of the dungeons seems to vary quite a lot, particularly depending on group composition.

Because most of my group have done the Challenge modes before, they knew what to expect, which helps both with strategy and where/when to move - getting Silver is a given.

For my part, I've had to learn exactly where to use my cooldowns, potions, CC, everything, because if I do something at the wrong time, a few seconds is the difference between success or failure.

So far, my experience has been thus:

• Siege of Niuzao Temple we 1-shot Gold almost by accident while cruising for a Silver.
• Temple of the Jade Serpent looks to be another easy one, since we got close to Gold without trying but haven't been back yet.
• We took a few runs to get used to Stormstout Brewery and another few resets for bad RNG to get Gold, so I'd call that the average.
• Scarlet Halls trash packs are overwhelming for our group, so that one ranks hardest so far.
• The Silver run of Mogu'shan Palace I can see being somewhere between average and hard, since we had a few deaths, but since I've only been there once it's a little hard to tell whether it will be harder than Scarlet Halls or not.
• I haven't tried the other 4, so can't comment on them just yet.

All in all, Challenge modes are a lot easier than I thought they would be. Then again, I have great guildies, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised!

Wrath-I-Owned

Fighting Wrathion was actually not too difficult, once I'd decided on a strat. I don't know about anyone else, but I was having flashbacks to my Rhok demons.... particularly kiting Solenar.

Back then, when it was a) a bigger deal what spec you chose and b) a bigger deal to respec, I'd stuck my guns and did the whole chain in BM spec. I had a brief moment this time around where I wondered whether I should do the same thing, but it didn't last long.

For Rhok, I had wanted to prove that it was possible to kill the demons as BM. Now, I have nothing to prove... because even if I killed Wrathion in BM spec, all I would be giving up is the convenience of a little extra AoE damage and Entrapment - I may as well just take a piece of gear off and it'd amount to about the same thing.

Plus, the game has changed. Specs are no longer what they were; people tweak talents constantly just to make a fight easier, just like Vanilla hunters changed their gear to +intellect (yes, Int. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're new to WoW :P) to kite mobs around, or +stamina to have epic pet tanks.

Saying what spec you are as a hunter really doesn't mean much anymore - a hunter is a hunter, and people expect you to be able to do everything and have every buff pet available when required, which basically means that you need BM as one of your specs no matter what.

Since I'm Ms "BM spec since beta", I hadn't thought about it much before, but that must kinda suck for those hunters that prefer MM and Surv. I would applaud anyone who is brave enough to rock those specs and stand by their choice - it'd be the equivalent of what I did back in Vanilla, so I totally see where you're coming from!

Stayin' Alive, Stayin' Alive

Yes, I'm still here, unlike Frostheim. It's been awhile since my last update, but last week I hadn't done much in WoW due to being fairly busy IRL and this week I've been busy catching up with all the things I'd missed!

For one thing, after about 3 months' worth of terrible Runestone droprates, I finally accumulated 12. I've only had time for a couple of goes at the Celestial Blessings quest, but it's looking like an incredibly fun challenge already. Will hopefully have time either next weekend or mid-week (since there's a public holiday here on Wed) to figure out tactics (kill adds? kite adds?).

For another, my guild (Infamy) has shifted their Challenge mode dungeon runs to Wed night instead of Sun arvo, which means I've been able to join in when there's a free spot. I do use my PvP abilities (eg. Silence, Scatter, Trap) regularly anyway, but it's not often when the use of them can mean the difference between living and dying! Unfortunately we only managed Silver in Scarlet Halls that night (and being the only one who has never completed a Challenge mode before, a lot of those resets I'm sure I could have done better), but now that I know what they're like, I'm keen to do more.

Finally, the guild I am currently raiding with (Zero Yard Range, not Infamy :P) is extremely close to getting their first heroic Horridon kill. I actually missed all of Infamy's progression runs on Horri, so I've never felt *entirely* comfortable doing it. Wiping with ZYR has been good - as much as I loved the smooth runs with Infamy, I feel bad if I'm being "carried" through fights and I certainly don't feel like I am this time.

I will endeavour to update the ol' blog sooner rather than later, this time. Wouldn't do to have people start thinking I've gone the way of many other hunter bloggers who have stopped playing! :)

I Love These People

I had to whisper some serious props to the tank in this LFR - he/she solo tanked the fight from start to finish after the second tank left just before the pull, only dying right at the end and surviving long enough for the DPS to finish Lei Shen off.

Makes a very nice change from your average PuG tank!

I almost didn't heed the call

But then I did.

Hooray for people calling rare mob spawns in General Chat!

A Change of Pace

Due to Infamy not raiding anymore, I've been playing casually, filling my stables with rares and getting back into pet battles.

One of my former Southern Wardens guildies, who joined a different guild to me when the Wardens stopped raiding, offered a place on their raid team for the week.

They're rather behind where I was in the progression stakes; their 2nd raid of the week was only the 3rd boss in ToT normal, where Infamy would normally be working on the 6th heroic kill, whichever boss that happened to be.

Since I had a "free" week, however, I accepted... and actually didn't mind the change of pace. It's been quite awhile since I've been the most experienced one in the raid - in Infamy I always felt like I was scrambling to keep up, but with this group I helped them get their first Tortos kill and make some decent progress on Megaera to boot.

Sure, I could see it getting frustrating wiping on fights that I'm used to doing either on heroic or in half the time, but for this week, it was cool. Not as boring-ly easy as LFR (which I still have to do because of my incredibly bad luck on Titan Runestones), but not as stressful as heroic.

I'm not sure how long I'll last as a casual - I tend to like more of a challenge when playing computer games - but until I decide to go searching for yet another guild, chilling out for awhile isn't such a bad idea.

Silence! I keeel you

Hunters have been getting a lot of attention lately as Blizzard tries to tone down PvP utility and burst but still keep PvE DPS viable.

One of the newest changes on the 5.4 PTR is the addition of Counter Shot, a baseline ability to interrupt spells.

I think this would be a great change, although I'm not sure if it would make it into the game in its current form. After all, an interrupt is pretty powerful, which is why PvE and PvP hunters alike felt forced to take Silencing Shot as their 2nd tier talent.

If we did get Counter Shot, I would definitely feel free to take either my old favourite spell, Intimidation, or most probably Wyvern Sting (due to the shorter cooldown and CC potential) instead... which makes me wonder, if we *did* get Counter Shot, would we have the opposite problem that we have now, where no-one takes Silencing Shot rather than everyone?

We've always been a rather odd class to handle - jack of all trades, master of none. Probably the most versatile class for any one role (PvP, PvE, farming, soloing) with heaps of utility, but none of the raw killing power of the other classes.

Really don't envy the Blizz developers trying to sort this one out!

Full Circle

Firstly, no, it didn't take me a month to write this post. I've had internet issues this past month and haven't been able to log on.

When I finally do manage to log on, I find that not only have I missed 3 heroic boss kills, it is also the last week of raiding for Infamy - there aren't enough of us to keep a 10m raid team going.

Considering I only just joined the guild 3 months ago, this is incredibly annoying. I hate to go back to being a non-raider after the challenge of heroic raiding, but I may have to - there are very few Oceanic guilds left on Proudmoore (or at least, ones that can at least clear ToT).

Blizzard may be bringing in more casual players by promoting LFR, but damn it's killing the raiding scene. It makes me wonder how many people now are doing heroics - surely a lot fewer now than previously.

I used to know and PuG with so many people from familiar guilds; now my friends list is almost empty and those guilds have fallen apart with very few new ones to replace them. All the inter-guild banter going back and forth about which guild killed which boss, Trade Chat filled with guilds picking up PuGs to fill raiding slots - gone.

I feel I'm back where I started, way back in Vanilla - no permanent home, no ties, just casual playing. Not terrible, but I was playing WoW like a single player RPG, subscribing on and off to make the most of the monthly fee.

Perhaps it's worth it to Blizzard to change the playerbase to mainly casuals, but I'm not so sure... hardcore fans will pay any price for what they want (just ask Apple); casuals will go at the drop of a hat... and now that there are games out there that look and feel less dated, it's not a good sign.

Escalating Issues

With a week of experiencing Patch 5.3, I've discovered several things:

Blink Strikes is handy because it's quick and automatic.... and also inconvenient because it's quick and automatic. Accidentally sending your pet in to attack the wrong thing now requires a better reaction time than usual :P

Also in the talents, missing the extra interrupt from Intimidation. Once again Blizzard is taking away things that make BM fun and unique for me: NOT HAPPY, Jan.

Once the quest chain is complete, the Barrens doesn't hold any interest whatsoever. For someone who hates farming, a quest which requires you to collect 4x150 items is quite off-putting, even if there are rewards.

Heroic scenarios are easy, fun and fast. Pretty much the same reaction I had to normal scenarios when they were new; thumbs up to Blizzard for whoever came up with the concept!

I still have not had time to fill my stables. WTB RL holidays!

Roll Call

Having found my 50 pets in preparation for tomorrow's patch, I have now named and identified species, colour and location for each stable slot. Full list below (with a few explanatory notes for some of the names!):

1. Basilisk - Medusa
2. Bat - Vampyr
3. Bear - Shardik
4. Beetle - Tempus
5. Bird of Prey - Talon (eagle), Carc* (black hawk)
6. Boar - Brimstone (felboar)
7. Carrion Bird - Roc
8. Cat - Robotica (black gem panther), Shadow (black panther), Jewel (green gem panther)
9. Crab - Scuttle
10. Crane - Dart
11. Crocolisk - Slimer (slime)
12. Dog - Fury (blighthound)
13. Dragonhawk - Dynamite
14. Fox - Tails
15. Goat - Rumble
16. Gorilla - Seismic
17. Hyena - Bullet
18. Monkey - Sunwukung
19. Moth - Celestia
20. Nether Ray - Bloodshade
21. Porcupine - Quills
22. Raptor - Razor
23. Scorpid - Tank (armoured type)
24. Serpent - Lightning (cobra), Plasma (arcane wyrm)
25. Spider - Venom
26. Sporebat - Galaxy
27. Tallstrider - Streak
28. Turtle - Koopa
29. Warpstalker - Bamf (the sound, not the acronym... in case it wasn't obvious :P)
30. Wasp - Sting
31. Wind Serpent - Hydrastorm
32. Wolf - Static (lightning worg)
33. Chimaera - Myth
34. Core Hound - Cerberus
35. Devilsaur - Yoshii (green - and had to be two "i"s due to Blizz's naming policy)
36. Quilen - Sekhmet
37. Rhino - Thunder
38. Shale Spider - Skitter
39. Silithid - Malice
40. Spirit Beast - Ghost (Loque'nahak), Electrashock (Skoll)
41. Water Strider - Skimmer (water strider), Stilts (fen strider)
42. Worm - Jaws (jormungar), Book (silkworm)
43. Direhorn - Spike**

*I know... Carc is supposed to be a raven. I liked the look of the black hawk more than the in-game raven :P

**I know... Spike is a stegosaurus and Cera is the triceratops. I like Spike better as a name :P

As you can see, I have at least one pet for every pet family (of which there are 43), with 7 extras for different skins. Unfortunately I probably won't get time to tame these until the weekend, since my guild raids on Wed and Thurs nights... oh well, not like I'll actually get them all this week anyway - it's quite a huge list! :P

Determined

It usually is the case that doing LFRs get easier as time goes on, since more and more people learn the fight every week.

Case in point: first week of ToT release, this many stacks of Determination:

Hours of wipe time, people leaving and being replaced with yet another lot of people who hadn't seen the fight before... and getting stuck behind the trash because the first raid group had made everyone run past to click on the column instead of clearing. Nightmare.

This week, after having an unusually awful time with Ion Qon in this week's LFR, I hadn't been looking forward to doing Lei Shen with the same group... but I was pleasantly surprised when this happened:

Full buff list... no stacks of Determination. Go the casual PuGs! :)

Rona the Lone-a

In another one of those "amazing what you find if you explore" moments, I roamed Darkmoon Isle looking for Darkmoon Glowflies (yes, late to the Pokémon party) and discovered an out of the way vendor:

Not sure I'd want to eat a few of those vendor items... o.O

Crossbow of Rainbow Brite v2

I'd never thought that Blizzard could ever manage to top the eyesore of a crossbow I'd christened the Crossbow of Rainbow Brite, but this one has to come close:

Durumu's Baleful Gaze is actually a pretty appropriate name (unlike Relentless Strikes vs Rainbow Brite), although I have entertained the idea of nicknaming it Durumu's Awful Craze.

All I can say is: hooray that I already have Shattered Tortoiseshell Longbow, and even more of a hooray for Transmog :P

Found Your Fifty?

I've just spent the past few hours drawing up my list of 50 pets for next patch.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually have room for a few "luxury" pets, rather than having to limit myself to one of each pet family and a few rares. It's always a bonus to have room in your stables for new beasts!

I also don't think I'll have too much trouble chasing down the rares I'm after - I'm not one of those hunters that tames rares just because they're rare. I do wish I had tamed and kept the hydra "crocolisk" way back when, but apart from that I'm quite happy with how my stables turned out.

I suppose the final list is probably what you'd expect of an average hunter, although I do have more than my share of panther skins... you just can't beat the classics!

Now to name them all... :S

Lei Shenned

Tonight, not only did I get promoted to a full member of my new guild Infamy, we also downed Lei Shen.

I haven't ever cleared normal raiding content so quickly before... or at least, not to the point where there was plenty of time to work on heroic modes, so it's a bit of a novelty for me.

Definitely looking forward to seeing how I go on those! :)

Dungeon Premonition Journal

Having run the new Throne of Thunder LFRs without having read, seen or heard about any of the boss fights, I've come to realise that the Dungeon Journal isn't really a journal.

Although it's a good idea - people having a quick skim of boss abilities before entering a fight so that they know approximately what to do - it's neither here nor there. Hardcore raiders would point to sites like Icy Veins for more detailed killing strats; casuals would find reading the descriptions tedious.

In my opinion, to make the Dungeon Journal a proper journal, boss abilities in the Dungeon Journal should update automatically only AFTER you have seen the boss abilities.

ie. If you make it to phase 2 in Onyxia, Onyxia's abilities up until phase 2 are visible.

This way, it won't change anything for people who want to know the fight before going in, because most would look at raiding websites anyway... but it makes the most sense in terms of lore. Plus, it gives a sense of achievement - we made it this far and figured out that the boss does this - it'd be just like keeping an actual journal.

Guilds in previous expansions that went into raids fresh and spent hours through the combat log after a wipe for which spells hit when and for how much etc had the right idea; it's just that for most people doing all of that takes too much time. Why not tie the Journal in with the Lorewalkers and act as a combat logging analyser rather than just a dictionary?

Loot lists are a different story, of course - you could spend an entire year and not see items drop, so having the loot lists available beforehand makes sense.

I know it wouldn't be easy to change the Dungeon Journal system, but still... it's all in the detail!

The Safety Dance Reloaded

Those of you who played in Vanilla may remember a point at which Heigan the Unclean cleaned the floor with 35 people, leaving 5 coordinated people to dance for the next half hour.

Blizzard clearly thinks it's time to bring back that hilarity, as I found out in my LFR this week:

Lucky it was LFR Durumu and not normal, since the 7 of us left alive in the above screenshot had to finish the fight ourselves from ~24% :P

Aniwha?

A new week, a new LFR.

I had no idea what was going on in the Dark Animus fight, since LFR very conveniently recruited me right on the boss as the group was about to pull.

I feel sorry for whichever DPS decided to leave, because not only did we one-shot it (note: extremely pet-unfriendly fight :P), I also won this:

Don't Squish My Pet, Bro!

I get that it's cool to have your pet turn into something different each time you change into a Saurok in the Isle of Thunder daily hub, but seriously? A cockroach?

Why a cockroach when people are running around trying to complete this quest?! I don't want people to step on my poor water strider! :(

Home Run

After last week's "I'm a n00b" effort, the end of the raiding week has gone extremely well.

Firstly, I didn't die on the guild's first kill of Tortos until the very last second, meaning my raid awareness has finally decided to emerge from the cave it had been hiding in since Cata. Hooray for progression!

Secondly, not only did I get the guild's first Thunderforged item, I also got a shiny new bow with my bonus roll. It upped my DPS quite significantly, meaning I'm not quite so behind my fellow guildies in gearing level any more.

Thirdly, I was actually reasonably competitive on DPS on the next boss, Megaera. Yes, it's probably the absolute easiest fight for a hunter because there's a lot of movement and it's only single-target, but hey - at least there's one fight in this dungeon where I know they're not just bringing me for pet buffs! :P

Can't wait to see my improvement on last week now that I know all the fights and I have new gear to boot! :D

The Rookie

It's been rather a long time coming, but I've finally decided to try raiding again with a new guild; Infamy.

I have to say, I've never felt more like a total n00b as I have this week.

When I started with Southern Wardens, I was a newbie, so I didn't know any better. The Wardens are a friendly bunch and the hunters especially (there were about 7 or 8 of us rotating in the 40man raid at the time) helped to train me up from bottom DPS to top 5, even being BM spec (which, at the time, was a joke) and a full tier of gear behind the leading hunter.

This time around, I am yet again a full tier of gear behind everybody in the raid (well, LFR to heroic, anyway), I'm dying from standing in fire more often than everybody else... but unfortunately I don't have the excuse of being a newbie anymore and I know it.

Consequently, it's been rather embarrassing - after all, you want to make a good impression on people who have consented to trial you for hire, particularly if you're playing one of the most popular classes where there are any number of hunters who would probably be more experienced in MoP raids than I am.

I'm hoping that by next week I'll have brushed the cobwebs off my raiding skills and got into shape... I can live with being bottom DPS if my gear dictates that I am, but definitely not if I know I can do better!

Solo 10m TotC Achievements

If you haven't managed to finish the Trial of the Crusader 10man Achievements yet, they're a lot easier than I thought they would be.

The only one I didn't manage to do myself was The Traitor King... and even then, I managed to last through 2 submerges before succumbing to the stacking DoT. If I were more careful about kiting, I probably could have done it (I recruited some guildies to help out instead!).

Upper Back Pain was easy, since the snobolds just jump off Gormok's back and stayed on the floor until the end; all you have to do is avoid the fires for the rest of the fight. I managed to kill Acidmaw and Dreadscale within 10 seconds of each other as well.

360 Pain Spike is all about timing - you don't need to leave the Mistresses up for ages, just time your kill just as a second Mistress emerges from the portal.

I already had Salt and Pepper, but the one thing that surprised me the most was how easy Resilience Will Fix It is.

Even with both the druid and the priest healer, I didn't have too much trouble - just equip a PvP trinket, drop traps, send your pet in and blow your cooldowns at the start... and by the time the mobs get through your snakes and you're out of interrupts (Scatter, Silence, Intimidation or Wyvern do well here), you will probably have both healers down. Killing the rest of them takes less than a minute if you have decent DPS.

I also found it helpful to run a timer (which you can pull out of the in-game clock and place anywhere on your screen like I've done in the screenshot below) to keep track of time so that you can wipe it if you're having trouble.

And to think my PvE-oriented guild had so much trouble with that fight! :P

LOLCrystal

I took plunge and accepted the PvP arm of the Kirin Tor dailies the other day.

Here I was, thinking I'd get some World PvP action with this beacon of light shining the way, and what happens? Zip. Nada.

At one point I sat AFK in the outer Horde camp where the wards are installing Mumble and having a long chat in /whispers and no-one even glanced my way.

I suppose I should have remembered the not-so-epic Silithyst fiasco - not to mention that I'm on Proudmoore, one of the most Alliance-heavy servers (particularly at Oceanic peak time) - but still, a rather zzz-worthy experience.

Oh well, back to the PvE set I go! :P

Oondisaster

Oondasta is the most ridiculously hilarious world boss fight I have ever seen.

Because of Faction tags - in that your entire Faction shares a mob tag whether you're in the raid that started hitting the mob first or not - what should be a heroic NPC fight only to be attempted by the server's most progressive guilds turns into a case of fire ants devouring an elephant while it's still alive.

I can only be glad that the rez timer only goes to 2min, because I'm sure mine would have gone up to half an hour as the last arrow hit Oondasta, who by that time was buffed with 30 stacks of Growing Fury.

What made it extra difficult was that no-one could tank from halfway through the fight - there were just too many buff stacks for anyone to last more than 1 hit and Oondasta was spinning around to hit whoever was closest. Even if you weren't in melee range, you would rez, be hit by either Piercing Roar or Frill Blast and be stuck as a ghost for another 2min.

In the end, I figured that the best time to rez was straight after a Roar, Deterrence the Frill Blast and get the most out of your DPS time before the next Roar.

The 26g reward really wasn't worth the repair bill, but the screenshots of the skeleton carpet sure was! :)

Know Your Role - Solo Cheng Bo

I know most people would be well into the new Thunder Isle quest hub, but I figured this might be useful anyway. Better late than never! :)

Know Your Role can be a difficult Achievement, particularly Cheng Bo.

Most people would suggest taking the easy way out and getting someone else to do the killing for you, but hey, we're hunters! Why not solo it instead?

The easiest way I've found to do this is to stand on the hill that overlooks Cheng Bo's hut:

From here, you can clear out the mobs around the hut from a distance without having to worry about anyone sneaking up on you. Always send your pet in first before you start DPSing except when there is an Earthtalker present.

For the Gai-Cho Earthtalkers, I would recommend hitting them with a silence or stun straight off so they dont cast Earthquake. By the time they're able to cast again, they will more than likely cast Healing Wave instead, which you can interrupt again and then finish them off.

You always need to target Earthtalkers first in the pair, because they will almost always cast Earthquake under your feet, even if your pet has the aggro.

For Cheng Bo himself, he comes with two adds, one of which is always an Earthtalker.

I would recommend first parking your pet right in front of the hut, use Misdirection, then send it in to aggro the Earthtalker and quickly pull it back out. The mobs will follow your pet out, where you can stun and silence the Earthtalker from the safety of your hill.

If you want to take a helper, take Protector Yi - he's melee and he taunts, which means he will be well out of your way if the mobs target him.

Remember that you need to not have taken damage on any of the prior quests as well and you're golden! :)

Ai-ya.... Ai-li Hurts!

Not sure when Blizzard decided to change things, but the rare Pandaren mobs around Pandaria (Ai-Li, Ai-Ran etc) that cast Spinning Crane Kick and Healing Mists used to not affect pets when casting the spin, meaning you could leave your pet in melee range and just worry about interrupting the heal.

Now, however, Spinning Crane Kick will kill your pet within a couple of seconds... and just pulling your pet back isn't quick enough.

I recommend saving Master's Call for those spins; otherwise you could probably use Dash.

Sometimes Things in WoW are Just Disturbing

I think they should have set a time limit on their moves...

I See the Light

After more than a few false starts, I finally found a PuG group that managed not to A) blow everyone off the platform or B) stand in Defile:

I'm really quite happy about that. It's not the easiest raid to PuG when there are so many abilities that will kill you - and the rest of your raid - no matter how much health you have.

Plus, it was the last Achievement I had in ICC... and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to solo or at least only need a small group to do most of the rest of the WotLK raid Achievements. Woot! :)

A Change of Playstyle

I was extremely surprised to see that Wrathion's Legendary questline - picked up and thus far carried out completely in solo PvE and raids - suddenly veered into PvP territory.

The two quests you get in this current patch (if you've been keeping up with the legendary quest chain) are A Change of Command (kill an elite with a raid group), which I expected, and The Lion Roars, which I did not.

Having next to no PvP gear due to not PvPing regularly since probably WotLK, I was rather apprehensive going into my first Battleground, particularly since I had no idea what the rules were.

As it turned out, I needn't have worried:

It only took 1 round for me to get the idea - hold the orbs for as long as possible - and 1 more round to get a win (coming back from behind, no less!).

Sure, if I was targetted I went down faster than the global cooldown, but it definitely whetted my appetite to get back into something competitive.

I especially liked the arena-style Kotmogu battleground since it's a bit of a free-for-all and can't wait to try the other new one (Silvershard Mines). I've never quite liked BGs like Alterac Valley, where you can win or lose the entire map without having touched anyone from the opposite Faction.

Happily, I've been getting through the dailies slowly and only have 2 more to go - Cloud Serpents and August Celestials - meaning I'll soon have more time for all the things I've been missing, like PvP, soloing old content and starting on that minipet collection. :)

Cracking the Vault

My guild managed to scrape a raid together this week to down not only Stone Guard, but Feng as well, with the help of 2 PuGs.

And I do mean help, because not only did they endure numerous wipes and (embarrassingly) out-DPS most of our raid - by a fairly wide margin, I might add - but they also helped to lay out strats for Feng since we hadn't looked at him previously.

I was incredibly relieved that with my newly-acquired 4pc the PuG warlock with 6 blues didn't show me up (that wouldn't just have been embarrassing on a personal level... it'd be horrifying!), but it does highlight a bigger concern that as a guild we may not have enough oomph.

With the advent of LFR and the casual raider, I feel that a tendency to be lazy has arisen - stand in fire in LFR and you probably won't die; neither will you be punished for low DPS.

Maybe it's time we all went back to raid training camp to re-learn how2play - I've made a lot more mistakes myself this expansion than I ever did in previous ones!

For Peace

After months of ranting to my guild about horrible loot luck in LFR, I've finally got my 4pc tier set.

It's rather timely considering we're starting to get the hang of the Stone Guard mechanics and really need more DPS to beat the enrage timer (I'm one of the highest-geared characters (if not the highest); the lowest DPS currently hits around 30k, so we need the boost).

Hopefully we'll get enough people to raid on Sunday so I can test my new gear out - it'd be nice if we could get a guild raid kill on the board before next patch!

Topsy-Turvy Land

***Spoiler Alert***

The more of the Shieldwall quest chain I do, the more bewildered I get with how a lot of things seem to have turned on their head.

Firstly, Jaina is acting like Varian; after the Horde razes Theramore and she realises someone in her own Kirin Tor has betrayed her Faction, she completely purges Dalaran of the Sunreavers - something that I-hate-all-Horde Varian would usually do.

Secondly, Varian is acting like Jaina; he berates her for evicting the Sunreavers because he wanted to lure them over to the Alliance - something that we-are-all-equal Jaina would usually do.

...not to mention the shock of meeting with Valeera in Dalaran and having her casually mention her late husband.

Rhonin gone? I'm a diplomat myself. Losing both Rhonin and Jaina as advocates of "world peace", as it were, is crushing. Having read Wolfheart, I've been tentatively on Varian's side for awhile now, but since he is still a fairly new character I haven't completely been taken by him.

I have to admit, I'm a little lost trying to find a character I can really follow in MoP, especially since Sylvanas has been fairly quiet (at least from an Alliance point of view). I don't know if I'll have to wait until next expansion when Alleria Windrunner shows up, but I hope not!

The Slow Nerf

Well, the latest PTR patch notes are out and I have to say I'm not entirely surprised by one particular note that has generated a bit of discussion:


Raids, Dungeons and Scenarios

• To encourage Raid Finder groups to persevere, each time an Raid Finder group wipes on a boss fight all players in the group receives a stacking buff that increases health, damage dealt, and healing done by 5% (up to a maximum of 10 stacks). This buff is cleared once the boss has been killed.

Unlike some, I actually don't mind Blizzard catering to casuals. In fact, I definitely enjoy the fact that I've seen every bit of the game, even though it's only at "easymode" level.

The one problem I do have is that by catering to casuals, it makes it easier for everyone to be lazy and just do the "easymode" level rather than joining a guild and raiding normal or heroic... which makes it harder for the more casual raiding guilds to recruit, fewer guilds that want to raid, fewer people willing to start PuG groups...

It's a vicious cycle, really. Blizzard's playerbase has changed; there are a lot less hardcore gamers and a lot more casual gamers, and I suppose it's actually better for them monetary-wise if there were more players that played less, rather than fewer players that play more, but I can certainly understand why a lot of hardcore raiders have quit over the years.

Fewer chances to be challenged, fewer opportunities for an adrenaline high... I'm starting to get complacent myself, meaning it's probably time to try and solo old content again!

Triumphant Return

...well, kind of.

Southern Wardens finally made the move into guild raids last night. Yes, an extremely late start, but better late than never!

Unfortunately our return was less triumphant than "LOL how we do this again?", but given that we were running with 2 heals instead of 3, were melee-heavy and one of our tanks was new to WoW in *this* expansion (inorite?), we felt pretty good just getting the Stone Guard down past 50% before calling it a night.

Not to mention, our raid leader confirmed to me what I had suspected from watching tanks in LFR: tanking is a lot more complicated now. Making a mistake as a tank is quite a bit more costly than it was before, which I don't particularly like. IMO the tanks and healers have enough on their plate to worry about - it'd be better for there to be more pressure on DPS!

Some of our DPS were also expressing opinions that it was a huge jump to actually pay attention going from LFR to normal mode and I suppose I agree, but personally I didn't find it too hard to convert at all.

Perhaps it is because I do tend to notice things going on around me (possibly a forced habit from not using addons that yell at me to get out of fire?), but the only ability I had to get the hang of were the chains... and since hunters can stand in melee range now, it was pretty easy to follow my partner. Plus, since I'm the most mobile person in the raid, I always had control over when to let the chains tick, meaning I could plan to use Exhilaration immediately to help with healing.

All in all, I'm definitely looking forward to next week - I have a feeling that once we get going, we can really catch up to the raiding scene.

Encounter Tuning Watercooler

If you're into raiding and haven't read Blizzard's latest Developer Watercooler on raid encounter tuning, I highly recommend doing so.

I had only intended to skim it, but found myself reading the whole thing and appreciating the thought that goes into designing encounters and punishment (or lack thereof) of players for finding bugs and finding creative ways to kill things.

It really appealed to my sense of logic - *this* way of killing bosses is wrong because of X, *that* way is OK because of Y. Makes me wonder whether Blizzard have some kind of raiding handbook somewhere of do's and don't's.... some huge tome they probably need to add to every year, since you can never predict what new situations will come up!

Oh, and props to Blizzard for releasing a PvP article (also an excellent read, and something that should be very welcome to a lot of PvPers) at the same time... that'll keep everyone happy :P

The Crumbling Hell

After a helpful guildie mentioned that The Crumbling Hall was up as one of the Golden Lotus dailies, I immediately started going about getting that half of the achievement done.

Initially I'd thought the quest would be easy, since everything I'd read about the Achievement said that The Thunder Below was harder. However, I tried going slow, going fast, using Camouflage as much as possible, shuffling my pet ahead of me, starting the quest with a random person sharing it with me at the first wall so that I wouldn't have to go through the front part of Guo-Lai... and found after numerous restarts that it really *isn't* easy at all.

Also, unlike Roll Club, which I also had an incredible amount of difficulty completing (although to be fair, it was mainly due to motion sickness and Aussie latency rather than any lack of skill I happen to have), I only had that day to do the quest before it reset... meaning that if I missed it, I'd have to wait until the next time the quest was up.

As luck would have it, I finally managed to follow someone on the same quest through the halls, letting them activate statues ahead of me and hearthing out to hand the quest in at the end with only 20min to spare before daily reset.

I suppose after all that, it was actually a really good challenge... which makes a change from doing the same dailies over and over. I really should look at the achievements list more!

Happy New Daily

Well, it is 2013 and I've had a bit of a holiday IRL (nothing too interesting, but a break is a break), so I have a renewed interest in finishing all of my daily rep grinds as soon as possible.

....OK, maybe not. This is me we're talking about. :P I *did* manage to finish off Klaxxi and I'll probably start on another group, but really, in no rush, particularly as my guild is still shaking off the holiday confetti and gearing up to do our first raid.

I *do* find it annoying that I still have Achievements for both Klaxxi and Golden Lotus dailies, which means I'll still have to go back (and in the case of the GL Achievement, I'll actually have to do a full round or several considering you can't tell when the quests will be up).

On another note, because I only started back in on a Monday, I was in a bit of a rush to try and get the 2 LFRs I still need gear from done for the week; something I don't tend to like doing since I feel that Monday LFRs are full of lower-geared players.

To my surprise, I didn't wipe on any of the bosses, although Lei Shi was rather amusing - tanks dead at 15% with no battle rezs, 7 people alive at the end just as the boss enrages. Did I mention how much I love Exhilaration?