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!

High On Qon Kill

I finally got a heroic Iron Qon kill last week, making 4 heroic kills in ToT.

The only heroic kill that Infamy has that I still don't is Tortos - the fight I was probably the most intimately familiar with, since we spent so much time wiping on it.

With Patch 5.4 imminent, I'm hoping Zero Yard Range will be able to get Tortos next week, but I don't have any high expectations.

Somewhat related, I have high hopes for flex raiding in 5.4 - 3 of my former Southern Wardens guildies have come back to WoW and started gearing up in preparation for joining Infamy's planned run. Would be great to have 5 Wardens and Infamy in the one run - ZYR is good, but just not the same as having the old crew back together!

Challenge Accepted

With a few guildies, I've started to work on Challenge Conqueror: Gold in earnest. The difficulty of the dungeons seems to vary quite a lot, particularly depending on group composition.

Because most of my group have done the Challenge modes before, they knew what to expect, which helps both with strategy and where/when to move - getting Silver is a given.

For my part, I've had to learn exactly where to use my cooldowns, potions, CC, everything, because if I do something at the wrong time, a few seconds is the difference between success or failure.

So far, my experience has been thus:

• Siege of Niuzao Temple we 1-shot Gold almost by accident while cruising for a Silver.
• Temple of the Jade Serpent looks to be another easy one, since we got close to Gold without trying but haven't been back yet.
• We took a few runs to get used to Stormstout Brewery and another few resets for bad RNG to get Gold, so I'd call that the average.
• Scarlet Halls trash packs are overwhelming for our group, so that one ranks hardest so far.
• The Silver run of Mogu'shan Palace I can see being somewhere between average and hard, since we had a few deaths, but since I've only been there once it's a little hard to tell whether it will be harder than Scarlet Halls or not.
• I haven't tried the other 4, so can't comment on them just yet.

All in all, Challenge modes are a lot easier than I thought they would be. Then again, I have great guildies, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised!

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!

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.