Bookworm

A guildmate reminded me this blog existed, so I thought I would share a pic of the most popular pet I have ever had: Book.

For some reason, this unassuming worm receives quite a lot of attention from strangers and guildmates alike, which completely surprised me at first - but I guess unlike the more popular pretty ponies and cats, most hunters don't immediately think of taming worms.

My transmogs often get random whispers too, especially as I don't use a particular "set", but rather piece together my own outfit.

It just goes to show - sometimes you stand out a lot more when you do something different!

(Also... Book just *is* cute)

Drain Life

Duh.

Defending Alone-a

Anyone else spend a whole lot of time with Defender Illona dead?

This follower has got to be the most frustrating one to level up, particularly as she has the tendency to kill herself:

Yep, the Garrison Training Dummy killed her. Tough mobs, those training dummies.

Sure, I may have killed Arachnis a little close for splash damage, but when my pet gets into combat with it I can always call it back... I didn't even have time to *think* about the fact that you can't call Illona back before she died.

It's a good thing this is my last bodyguard not at max level... if I had tried levelling her with a lower ilvl she would have died a lot more!

Hell Hath Frozen Over

Unfortunately I didn't have time to queue and take advantage of it... the novelty!

And Here's Me at the Frozen Throne

Trying to take a few travel selfies and Arthas photobombed me... such an attention hog.

"Raid Break"

Well, it's counted as a break to *me*... when else does one have time to do old achieves but in raid breaks?! :P

(Incidentally, it's crazy how much my gear affects old raid soloing. Doing Firelands with my Heroic SoO gear vs my fresh 90 gear, which would have been the last time I did it, makes me feel absolutely invincible!)

An Apology...

Yes, I'm still alive.

I've been incredibly busy this year and haven't prioritised time for blog posts... sorry about that! Anyway, I've finally decided to stop putting off a catch-up post, since my hunter exploits have certainly not been neglected in that time. Plus, we're on a raiding break so there's a few extra hours this week :P

Here's the recap:

1. Raiding. My last post made reference to downing heroic Iron Juggernaut. Well... we've gone a little further than that now - Dark Shaman, Nazgrim, Malkorok, Spoils and Thok have all fallen, making our guild 11/14 heroic in Siege. Exciting? Hell yes! Haven't ever been in a position to potentially clear any final heroic raid boss at level, let alone the final boss of an expansion.

2. Challenge Mode dungeons. I managed to get a regular group going for CMs. They're almost as bad as heroic raids in terms of difficulty (and sometimes even more so depending on the dungeon), so it was extremely satisfying to get those Golds done.

3. Proving Grounds. The DPS challenge naturally didn't give me too much trouble, although I haven't managed to get the Endless version done yet; mainly because the AoE phase annoys me (I might have to actually use a flask to get it done; it's terrible! Also, I refuse to switch to Surv to make the AoE easier...). Because I am who I am, I of course had to get You're Doing it Wrong (seriously, it's like Blizzard made that achievement for me... I'd wear it as a title if I could; it sums me up in a nutshell :)).

I tried both tank and healer, and just found tank a lot easier. The tank in the healer challenge tends to taunt a lot more than my pet can keep up with... but if I have time I'm definitely going to try and get at least Bronze healer on hunter. My achievement pane says Gold healer only because I did it on my druid (yeah, the rare occurrence where I actually did something on an alt and not my hunter! I can only think of a handful of things where that's the case and I think this is the only non-horde specific achievement where it would be).

4. Old Achievements and Random Stuff

a) I managed to solo Halion 25 on heroic, which was a bit of a pain to get through. Can't think of any particular tips apart from drop traps and wait to DPS until he gets pushed into your phase, then blow your cooldowns.

b) I also got my last achievement (Stay Chill) for Glory of the Cataclysm Raider, which means the only non-MoP dungeon/raid achievements I have left are Ragnar'Os, heroic Spine and heroic Madness - all of which I expect to knock off in this raiding break. I expect I'll have to bite the bullet at some point and start working on some of the other "farming" (hi2u, fishing and archaeology) and PvP achievements that I've been neglecting.

c) Last but not least, I have a shiny new heroic warforged bow - once again, first time I've ever had the absolute best bow you can get in an expansion. Rhok on! :)

Phew, epic wall-o-text. I'm going to try and post here regularly again so that I don't get so far behind in updates - there will be plenty of LOL-worthy moments in pipe-jumping for heroic Siegecrafter that I'll want to post about, I'm sure. Plus, I've probably missed posting about so many things, just because I can't remember what happened between now and February. Half a year is way too long!

Holiday Hunting II

Yet another holiday task I set myself was to hunt down the treasures scattered around the continent.

Particularly for the latter group, I would recommend searching for the items that only spawn in one place rather than one that spawns in an area. The items aren't exactly large, so it's quite easy to miss them.

Luckily, it seems most people are focussed on farming on the Timeless Isle, so I haven't had too much competition.

I also recommend you take the time to look around while you're doing it. You might find some rather amusing sights on your way, like this poor dude...

I Don't Like His Chances

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!

I almost didn't heed the call

But then I did.

Hooray for people calling rare mob spawns in General Chat!

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!

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

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! :(

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