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

Found Your Fifty?

I've just spent the past few hours drawing up my list of 50 pets for next patch.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually have room for a few "luxury" pets, rather than having to limit myself to one of each pet family and a few rares. It's always a bonus to have room in your stables for new beasts!

I also don't think I'll have too much trouble chasing down the rares I'm after - I'm not one of those hunters that tames rares just because they're rare. I do wish I had tamed and kept the hydra "crocolisk" way back when, but apart from that I'm quite happy with how my stables turned out.

I suppose the final list is probably what you'd expect of an average hunter, although I do have more than my share of panther skins... you just can't beat the classics!

Now to name them all... :S

Lei Shenned

Tonight, not only did I get promoted to a full member of my new guild Infamy, we also downed Lei Shen.

I haven't ever cleared normal raiding content so quickly before... or at least, not to the point where there was plenty of time to work on heroic modes, so it's a bit of a novelty for me.

Definitely looking forward to seeing how I go on those! :)

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! :(

Home Run

After last week's "I'm a n00b" effort, the end of the raiding week has gone extremely well.

Firstly, I didn't die on the guild's first kill of Tortos until the very last second, meaning my raid awareness has finally decided to emerge from the cave it had been hiding in since Cata. Hooray for progression!

Secondly, not only did I get the guild's first Thunderforged item, I also got a shiny new bow with my bonus roll. It upped my DPS quite significantly, meaning I'm not quite so behind my fellow guildies in gearing level any more.

Thirdly, I was actually reasonably competitive on DPS on the next boss, Megaera. Yes, it's probably the absolute easiest fight for a hunter because there's a lot of movement and it's only single-target, but hey - at least there's one fight in this dungeon where I know they're not just bringing me for pet buffs! :P

Can't wait to see my improvement on last week now that I know all the fights and I have new gear to boot! :D

The Rookie

It's been rather a long time coming, but I've finally decided to try raiding again with a new guild; Infamy.

I have to say, I've never felt more like a total n00b as I have this week.

When I started with Southern Wardens, I was a newbie, so I didn't know any better. The Wardens are a friendly bunch and the hunters especially (there were about 7 or 8 of us rotating in the 40man raid at the time) helped to train me up from bottom DPS to top 5, even being BM spec (which, at the time, was a joke) and a full tier of gear behind the leading hunter.

This time around, I am yet again a full tier of gear behind everybody in the raid (well, LFR to heroic, anyway), I'm dying from standing in fire more often than everybody else... but unfortunately I don't have the excuse of being a newbie anymore and I know it.

Consequently, it's been rather embarrassing - after all, you want to make a good impression on people who have consented to trial you for hire, particularly if you're playing one of the most popular classes where there are any number of hunters who would probably be more experienced in MoP raids than I am.

I'm hoping that by next week I'll have brushed the cobwebs off my raiding skills and got into shape... I can live with being bottom DPS if my gear dictates that I am, but definitely not if I know I can do better!

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