Resurrected

After my last blog post indicating that my raiding guild had dissolved, I have now moved to Khaz'goroth - an Oceanic server - with 3 of my Zero Yard Range guildies.

Rather appropriately, the fresh start on a fresh server has seen us join a guild called "Resurrected", who have accepted all four of us as trials. I don't expect too many problems, considering we are at the same stage of progression: 2/7 Mythic.

At first glance, they seem like a more laid back kind of group, which I'm happy about - I'll hopefully have a little more time during the week for non-raiding stuff... including more hunter-related blog posts.

I realise that a lot of my posts lately have been guild-drama related, so in the near future I'm going to make a concerted effort to get back to what I intended this blog to be about: how much hunters Rhok! :)

Non Combat

In a rather unsurprising, but unwelcome, turn this week, my guild Non Combat Pet (team Dropbears) has dissolved. Numbers were declining and both raid leaders decided that the raiding pace was too slow (read: not cleared Mythic yet) and quit for greener pastures.

Unfortunately with Proudmoore being what it is, there are next to no Oceanic guilds running raids anymore - certainly none anywhere near our level of progression.

This of course puts me in a position of needing to transfer realms if I want to keep raiding at that level... and finding yet another new guild.

At least this time I'm going to have a couple of my old Zero Yard Range guildies in the same boat - trying to prove yourself in a new guild with no support is a pretty hard slog. I'm hoping that at least a couple of us will be in a slightly more social, and less progression-oriented, guild this time around - I have absolutely no desire to raid 4 nights a week again!

I Ain't No Flamin' Brack Girl

I'm currently the backup raider and flamethrower on Mythic Brackenspore.

Unfortunately, it seems like every time I start getting the hang of things, something happens to break the flow.

For a start, there are only 20 in a Mythic raid and if everybody shows up, I'd be on the bench.

Secondly, if the other two main hunters are in the raid, I don't use the flamethrower (we have a boomkin for our third).

Thirdly, our flamethrower strat between the 3 raiders is still evolving - trying to find a balance between maxing out two flamethrowers and keeping the moss in check is pretty difficult when your raid DPS changes slightly every raid due to different people, different gear and mushroom spawn points.

Tonight it so happened that one hunter was sick, so I was looking forward to either a kill or a decent run of attempts to practice in... only for the raid to be called due to various raiders having technical issues.

Disappointing not getting a kill, but my main problem? The less I play at a high level, the worse I get at actually playing. Not helpful if you're in the type of guild where you get benched for lack of skill!

I'm considering doing some PvP or at least Brawler's Arena to keep my reaction times fast this weekend if I get some spare gaming time... and probably should anyway for the achievements. So far behind on non-raiding related stuff... not even at 20k points and still have an entire zone I haven't explored!

Hunter Tools in WoD

Zeherah of http://www.femaledwarf.com/ fame has unfortunately stopped updating the absolutely brilliant tool that was the Hunter DPS Analyzer. Having used a version of this spreadsheet since the time when it was actually a spreadsheet at Elitist Jerks, I am very sorry to see it go, although I wish Zeherah well and thank her for all the effort it took to keep it up to date.

Happily, there is a new tool updated by Esoth:
http://www.wowhuntertools.com/hunter/

...although considering the gear choices in raiding are currently extremely straightforward, it probably isn't going to get much use from me in the near future.

More useful is http://www.noxxic.com/wow

...which I found extremely helpful for spelling out situational shot priority for Survival (there are guides for MM and BM as well). Definitely useful when DPS is a limiting factor for boss kills; my guild managed to kill Mythic Twin Ogron this week and the last wipe before the kill we were a few % short before someone reminded everybody about Augment Runes.

I'm still a bit shaky on SV DPS compared to BM DPS, but improving as I get more comfortable with it.