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