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!

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?!

If At First You Don't Succeed

...make sure you have enough gold for repair bills.

After running 6 PuGs this week with varying numbers of idiots, incompetents and elitists to get this kill on the board, I was so relieved to finally get a winning combo that I didn't even care that I (once again) didn't get loot.

Honestly, it's quite disheartening when someone /ignores you because you dared to whisper them after being kicked that it wasn't your fault that someone else's chains killed you and you couldn't kill shadows whist dead (this was after a single wipe and I already had points against me because a) I was BM and not MM; and b) I didn't have AotC).

Luckily not all the groups were that toxic, otherwise I'd have given up earlier. There were also good-natured but ultimately bound to fail groups:

...and it even got to the point where I was "that guy" and left a raid after one wipe because I just knew they wouldn't be able to get a kill (I was right; they were still in the LFG tool hours later).

Yes, this week was a complete nightmare of PuGs, but on the upside I did manage to scrape through with the all-important achievement to link for next week.

Now that I can breathe a little easier on that front, I plan to start practicing MM a little. I don't know whether I'll be able to get better DPS out of it given my tendency to move randomly whilst raiding (thus ruining Sniper Training and cancelling out any advantage MM is supposed to have from the 4set this tier), but I'm willing to at least give it a go - even I have to admit that the last phase of Archimonde is incredibly pet-unfriendly!

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.

The Dark Ranger Rises

I started WoW wanting to be a WC3 dark ranger. With Lone Wolf, it's probably the closest I'll ever get.

I do miss my animal companion and try to raid as BM whenever it isn't a hindrance to the raid (here's to you, Tectus!), but Survival is supposedly better DPS, so I figured the switch between "hunter" and "ranger" deserved a new outfit.

Having had to attempt to raid as MM in the first couple of weeks in Highmaul due to the unbelievable discrepancy in DPS between MM and SV/BM (and believe me, I tried all 3 in an attempt to avoid MM - standing still for 3sec may not seem like a big deal to most people, but it is when you've played WoW for 10 years like you're standing on hot sand at the beach), I was extremely glad for the recent round of SV/BM buffs.

I mean, sure, in theory I don't particularly care whether I'm the worst or the best player, but when your mistakes wipe the raid the guilt does tend to kick in. Luckily, my performance this past week has improved a lot from the previous weeks, so I think once everybody's iLvl starts to even out, I'll be OK.

On a related note, my new guild has finally settled on a raiding pace after some rather high expectations that we would be raiding Mythic as soon as it released. Even though it hasn't been quite as fast as our raid leader had wished for, we've cleared Normal, Heroic and the first boss of Mythic already, which to me is still a pretty cracking pace.

As expected, 4 nights a week is a little trying for me - I still haven't finished questing, levelling my secondary professions, exploring all the zones, collecting all the minipets or working out how to use followers in my garrison - but I have to admit that it's a remarkably efficient way of raiding!

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!

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!

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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! :)

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!

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 :)