Real Life Hits Blog for >9000 (8000 Overkill)

Despite the length of time between this post and the last, I have actually been playing WoW fairly consistently the entire time.

I just don't have anywhere near the amount of time I used to have to write a blog post (or, in fact, the inclination - considering there are now many places to get the small tips I used to post, in a more efficient way and in a central location).

To that end, I've updated my go-to hunter links on the right hand side of the page for anyone who happens to come across this blog (who on earth are you people?!), so you will hopefully find what you are looking for.

If you happen to be here to see what the hell I've been up to all this time, well... a lot! I've changed guilds (again), tamed a stupid number of pets (anyone else's favourite part of the expansion the 200-slot stables?) and signed up with a bunch of vampires... and that's not counting the fact that I skipped posting anything to this blog for almost the entire of Legion (has it really been three and a half years?!).

I can't promise to post more frequently or keep anything on this page updated, but if you're looking to chat or learn2hunter, I'm happy to answer in-game mail (Phyllixia-Khaz'goroth). Otherwise, you never know.... I may pop up here again at some point if I feel the need to be creative!

Drain Life

Duh.

Legion of Hunter Fans

Today's Legion hunter class preview has a lot of hunters excited for the upcoming changes to the 3 specs in the next expansion.

As always, I've only skimmed the changes - I tend to like getting the feel for new spells and talents only when I'm on the PTR or live servers rather than reading previews - but one thing I'm happy about is the connection the specs have to lore.

Anybody who has been reading my blog for awhile would know my original connection to the old WC3 dark ranger, so Marksman is sounding better and better all the time. I'll definitely be happy to see the last of Sniper Training; being mobile is probably the main reason the classes I'm most comfortable playing are the hit-and-run hunter and resto druid.

Survival is sounding interesting as well, although it's not a spec I'd be playing much, being fully melee. Potentially something I'd pull out for world PvE and soloing ventures, particularly if Harpoon turns out to be as fun as it sounds. I'm anticipating a lot of "clever use of game mechanics" type shenanigans going on with that one!

I would have liked a bit more info on the pet-hunter interaction for Beast Mastery - the spells don't stand out to me right now (apart from the thought of having every pet in your stables coming out to help you, which would be frickin' awesome).

Also, whilst I agree that Survival having a monopoly on traps is mostly fine, I actually think it makes more sense for BM to get Snake Trap. I mean, really, if you're going to carry around and throw down a cage of snakes at someone and have them strike at your enemy with precision, surely you need to have some kind of bond with them?!

Aspects of the Fox

Since Patch 6.2 is set to remove Aspect of the Fox, I've been trying to monitor how often I use it in raids and how essential - or non-essential, as Blizzard seems to think - the ability really is. So, my uses in BRF:

1. Oregorger - directly after a feeding frenzy (1x)
2. Hans/Franz - start of final burn phase (1x)
3. Beastlord - none
4. Gruul - during destructive rampage (1x)
5. Flamebender - as requested
6. Thogar - none
7. Blast Furnace - start of phase 2 and during phase 3 (2x)
8. Kromog - none
9. Iron Maidens - Marak's boat phase (1x)
10. Blackhand - phase 3 (1x)

Notably, I would say only #2, #4, #7 and #10 are the fights where AotF is useful; and then only #7 and #10 where it's really useful. Considering Blast Furnace and Blackhand are pretty much the two hardest fights in the entire raid, it's unsurprising for any raid-wide ability to be a significant boost.

However, is AotF really necessary? Probably not, considering most casters have either some sort of cooldown to cast on the run or instant cast spells that could tide the raid over until the phase change settles down, which is when AotF is the most useful.

Will I miss it? Sure. Nothing like pulling it out to rez your pet on the run... but I have a feeling our boomkin will miss it more, and I'm fairly content with that!

BlackRhok'in Foundry

Having settled into our new guild Resurrected on Khaz'goroth - a much better fit for us than the previous high-end guild on Proudmoore was - we have made quite a decent headway (9/10 and looking like Blackhand won't prove too difficult) into heroic Blackrock Foundry.

Unlike others, I hadn't really had any complaints about Highmaul. It's an interesting enough raid dungeon and the Mythic fights are extremely challenging for me. However, BRF is proving to be what Blackwing Lair was to Molten Core - a huge step up in fun and mechanics.

We are, of course, still going through mythic Highmaul, since we still haven't cleared it. With the gear jump from T17 2 and 4pc bonuses, we managed to get mythic Brackenspore without too much trouble.

I can see mythic Tectus being a little bit of a challenge - I cannot imagine having to deal with US latency on this fight - the first time I've actually felt that the drop in latency wasn't just a happy convenience but a bit more of a necessity.

As it is, the first few attempts I couldn't manage to get out from under the mountains before getting one-shot (I eventually realised I couldn't afford to even be a single step behind the person getting targeted, otherwise I wouldn't make it).

I'm also still finding it difficult to maximise my SV DPS - at first glance, I can't really see any major errors, but I'm significantly behind compared to the other hunters in execution. On the other hand, I'm finding the set bonuses for SV a lot better than the BM set bonuses, just because I find the BM procs a little too random to be useful.

I'm still hopeful that I can make a killing on mythic Tectus using BM beast cleave, but we'll have to see how that goes.... we'd actually need to survive past the first lot of motes before I can figure that one out! :P

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.

Five Bye Five

It's the eve of Patch 6.0 and as we bid farewell to MoP, it's been a slightly more disappointing than exciting couple of weeks for me.

Firstly, I had hoped that merging with the new guild would allow me to completely clear an expansion at the appropriate time for the first time in my WoW career, but unfortunately they were only taking 1-2 people through heroic Garrosh a week and didn't get around to taking me. Yes, I realise the expansion isn't quite over yet (and we are planning to continue raiding as a new 20man team), but it still feels wrong not to do it with the old MoP abilities.

Secondly, although I did manage to get to wave 18 of Endless DPS Proving Grounds as BM, I didn't manage to get further. I'm confident I could have made Wave 20, but making a single mistake means pretty much starting from scratch and unfortunately these days I have less time to play outside of raids. Plus, I'm not sure I would have had the patience to re-learn cooldown usage as Survival (pretty much every hunter guide I've come across has used Surv to get through Proving Grounds).

Thirdly, I didn't manage to get all the drops required for the Deck Your Collection Achievement of Brawler's Guild - random drops are annoying :(

On the upside, I did manage to finish the Gold Challenge Modes and I am excited about the new hunter changes (hooray for keybind space and new pets... although boo to losing Scatter), so maybe the shiny new UBRS will help to swing the mood. Or maybe not - I was rather disappointed to read that there wasn't an updated version of General Drakk to kite down the hallway!

Hit Me with your Longbow Stick

After getting the heroic crossbow a couple of weeks ago and ending up way over the hit cap, I am extremely happy to replace it with something that has no +hit at all - Dagryn's Discarded Longbow.

...Yeah, I'm still over the hit cap. But hey, at least it's only 8.7% now instead of 10.9%! It was nice of the other hunter, Ane, to immediately pass on the roll for me as well since his gear wasn't as terribly itemised as mine was.

As an added bonus for tonight's raid, the guild managed to kill heroic Iron Juggernaut and get some extremely decent attempts in on heroic Dark Shaman, so I'm looking forward to trying them again next week.

Or perhaps I should say that the bow was the bonus - I always feel better about raid progression rather than getting loot. Hopefully my DPS will get a bit of a boost from the stat shuffle to help with the Shaman - we're down a DPS to use a 3-tank strat for the fight, after all... every little bit counts!

And as a final note, speaking of DPS - going BM on Iron Juggernaut and keeping my pet DPSing in the tar phase (including Kill Command on cooldown) while the raid is turtling out of range of the boss seems to have paid off. Usually, Surv beats BM on single target fights with my gear level, but this time I managed to do more DPS than Ane (who generally stays in Surv for every fight). Good to know the hunter spec balancing is working out reasonably well!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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

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! :)

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.

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

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!

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! :)

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!