This is something that happened to me a while back so the details are pretty foggy, but for some reason I never blogged this and it deserves to be blogged, so:

I was playing my delightful Tauren Tree, the second resto druid in my arsenal (because I luff them), and I was… 62, 63?… at the time so I was in Slave Pens. Pretty standard run, things were going just fine and we were at that point between the second and final boss… you know what I’m talking about, right? All those billions of packs of Naga adds right as you get to that tunnel-ramp-thing that gets you to the druid who gives you the buff and all of that.

So anyway we get there and this segment was always a little tough, especially back in the day on heroic. Who remembers that?

*cane-waving*

Anywho, our pally tank picks up one too many packs and I get feared or something or other and the tank dies. We still manage to survive, but apparently said pally tank was too impatient to wait the ten seconds to get a rez in what had otherwise been a flawless run and wordlessly leaves the group.

This is followed by one of the DPS leaving the group as well.

So there we are, Me the Tree, an arms warrior DPS, and some other DPS whose class I can’t remember. He was a blood elf and I wanna say some sort of caster, but it’s not really all that important.

We re-queue and we wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And wait.

…it’s been thirty minutes. No joke, cause I moused over the little icon and it said we’d been waiting for thirty minutes.

I was expecting the group to dissolve in a pile of “Well thanks anyway”s any minute now when the arms warrior, a lovely female orc, strapped on a shield and a one-handed sword. “Let’s clear trash while we wait,” she said.

So we did. Cleared trash. It was slow going and pretty healing intensive but we survived.

We got up to that final room with the druid and the last boss. We successfully freed the druid from his cage, killed the mobs that spawn when you do that, and got his buff.

We waited around for a few more minutes. Still no bites from the queue. The last boss in Slave Pens, who throws poisons and crap around and has always been a toughie, was looming in front of us.

I’m not sure how we came to the decision that we would give it a shot anyway, but we did. Arms warrior in Defensive Stance rushes in…

…

The first minute or so of the fight, I spent Tree-Tanking. Seriously. The boss was on me. I was Barkskin’d and spamming heals every cooldown.

Finally the warrior snags aggro. I couldn’t let down my guard; the warrior was squishy and this boss hits HARD and he hits EVERYONE with his AoE. I was out of mana so I popped Innervate. At this point the boss was maybe down to, oh, about 66% of his health or so. Yeah, this was gonna be a long fight.

Still we continue. I’m still healing on every single cooldown. It’s not long before I’m out of mana again (Tree druid mana efficiency sucks at this level) so I use a potion. I know, though, that Innervate isn’t gonna be ready next time I run out of mana, and the fight is still just as tough…

The boss is down to about 33%. I’m almost out of mana again. In fact, I’m down to my last two or three spells before I go OOM. I quickly plotted out in my head who best to use my final heals on and executed them… one last Regrowth on our pseudo-tank…

…I wince cause I know we’re gonna wipe now…

…

…

And suddenly something weird happens with the party frames and I blink, not really comprehending what happened, and suddenly the boss is down.

A few seconds later I realize that the party frames had jumped from three to five. The queue had finally popped and thrown our new party members right into the fray of the boss fight.

*blink blink*

…easy Goodie Bag for those two, eh?

Arms warrior sends me a whisper. “Sorry about you having aggro, I didn’t realize that my one-handed sword skill was still 1.”

All’s well that ends well.

Crazy secret hideout thing in Hillsbrad that I didn’t know existed? Check.

Traps set for you on the way there? Check.

Hot blood elf guys?

Check.

Tearing up battlegrounds at 29? Check. Not as much as I was at 19, but still.

This rogue thing is wicked fun. Just sayin’.

So I was browsing MMO-Champion and stumbled upon this blue post:

The only specs we really failed on in LK raiding were Frost mage, Subtlety rogue, BM hunter and Arms warrior.

…and I thought, “BM hunter? Really?”

I mean, I know tons of people see it that way, but I don’t.

Here is a handy list of stuff I raided as a Beast Master hunter:

• Naxx
• Obsidian Sanctum
• Obsidian Sanctum hard modes back when they were still semi-hard
• Eye of Eternity
• Ulduar up through about half of Yogg
• Various Ulduar hard modes (back when they were still hard)
• VoA
• Onyxia
• ToC
• Various ToC hard modes
• ICC, the two times I went in there before I quit raiding

I dunno Blizz, I appreciate the concern, really, but I don’t feel like you failed me. I mean, maybe you did for that dark period between 3.0.8 and when you started giving us consolation buffs (although that didn’t stop me from raiding as Beast Master), but now that we’ve reached the end of WotLK, the spreadsheet has proven that a geared BM hunter does just as much DPS as a geared Survival hunter.  Tons of raiding hunters still play Survival, don’t they? Even though Marks has shown to outstrip it?

See, ultimately what bothered me the most about “spec issues” this entire expansion wasn’t the game mechanics so much as it was a good portion of the playerbase. If you had a problem with raiding BM hunters during the Ulduar era or even during the ToC era, then fine– my guild and I operated differently, but I can see where you were coming from.

But then ICC showed up, BM got more buffs, BM became essentially equal in DPS to SV, and yet blogs/forums were still only posting strats for MM and SV while ignoring BM, and various people in game were still picking on BM while gladly accepting SV raiders.

Yeah. I’m not seeing any logic here. (Please let me know if you see it, so I can correct it and put my foot in my mouth.)

Anyways, enough about that. I don’t raid anymore, and I don’t really seriously play my hunters anymore, so ultimately this doesn’t affect me, other than finally allowing me to get something off of my chest that has been bothering me the last few months. I guess I just wanted to say that I just found it odd that Ghostcrawler lumped BM hunters in with, say, sub rogues and frost mages, who, from what I understand, have it FAR worse off than we do. So yeah, don’t worry about it too much, Blizz. All’s good in hunterland. Go work on our frosty and stealthy friends.

Well, that’s all for now on one of my rare excursions into WoWblog-land recently. I have to admit, blogging here feels kind of odd lately. It truly does feel like what Aspect of the Hare used to be left back in February when I went on hiatus, and I don’t think it’s coming back, even if I do keep blogging here. Not to say that’s a bad thing. I just want to overhaul the blog and shift the focus a bit. I think more story posts are in order. You know, like “Once upon a time, there was this PuG…”

*grin*

When I’ve actually been playing WoW lately (and not Starcraft 2), I’ve been all about my gnomes. I’m serious with this, you guys. I’ve got Tawbree (my gnome warlock), Tourbillon (my gnome rogue), Widgets (my gnome mage, who I am leveling on a separate server with one of my good Twitter friends– and yes, I actually paid money to transfer BoA items over because I am spoiled), and my latest project, my gnome warrior Breguet (whom I have made a jewelcrafter, which seems appropriate. I 100% blame Khraden‘s comment in one of my earlier posts for this name inspiration.)

It’s so funny because these are classes that I have never been able to get into before– do you guys know how many times I’ve attempted warriors, and then scrapped them before level 10?– but this time is different. I am convinced that gnomes make everything more fun.

And yes, I have a spot all ready to go on my main server for my impending gnome priest.

And goblins, a BUNCH of those are happening.

Let’s make this an interactive blog post, shall we? Gnomes make everything more fun for me… what makes everything more fun for YOU?

My DoTs crit.

My DoTs crit.

My DoTs crit.

My DoTs crit.

So I’ve been doing random heroics every day. My goal with this is to be able to have enough badges to use them like candy when I pamper all my alts. And I have a lot of alts these days. I’ve actually got a pretty expansive list of the BoAs that I still need to buy. (Because I’m spoiled and now I can’t bear to level an alt without BoAs.)

That was the first bit of backstory for this. The second bit of backstory is that I’m currently sporting my “of the Shattered Sun” title. The reason is actually because a few weeks back I thought it would be funny to pull all of my level 70 gear out of the bank (I still have every piece– trinkets and all) and then add my Shattered Sun title and walk around Stormwind like old times. So I did. It only lasted about an hour before I got bored and put all the 70 gear back in the bank. The Shattered Sun title stuck around, though… because why not? I’d been using “of the Nightfall” for a billion years and I’d been contemplating switching to something else anyway.

So enter the random I did yesterday. We zone in and start the instance. All is well, right? It is, until two people from the same server/guild decide to start regaling me with such poetic and eloquent statements as “lol did ur mum pay for ur shattered sun title for u.”

I sized these people up– both are “the Kingslayer”, and honestly, considering the way they were acting and that we wiped on the second pull in the dungeon (did I mention one of these people was the “healer”), I am nearly positive that these people just got their Kingslayer like… yesterday, now that the 30% buff is out.

Anyways the group disbands due to sheer fail moments after this, and I am left wondering if any of these people ever read “The Sneetches”. Did you? Classic Dr. Seuss, this.

The summary is something like this: There is a species who are called Sneetches, and there are two kinds: those with stars on their bellies, and those without. The ones with stars proclaim themselves to be superior by right of this star, until a guy shows up with a machine that gives stars to un-starred Sneetches. The “original” starred Sneetches, horrified that they have to be on equal footing with these newcomers, decide that stars are now out of style and de-star themselves, because they need to find a way to differentiate themselves. And hilarity ensues.

It would be really easy to re-write this for WoW.

Then along came Blizzard McMonkey McBean
With a magical epics-bestowing machine
“Badges for all!” he said, “Do not fear!”
“Soon everybody will have the best gear!”

So they clambered inside and the Badge Machine roared.
It bonked. It clonked. It jerked. It berked.
It bopped them around, but the thing really worked!

They yelled at the ones who had epics from the start,
“We’re exactly like you; you can’t tell us apart.
We’re all just the same now, you snooty old smarties.
Now you can invite us to your heroic parties!”

“Good grief!” groaned one who had gear from the first.
“We’re still the best Sneetches, and they are the worst.
But how in the world will we know,” they all frowned,
“if which kind is what or the other way ’round?”

So Blizzard stepped up with a very sly wink,
And said “Things are not quite as bad as you think.”
The style has changed all over again–
Epics are Out, and Titles are In!

The Sneetches, of course, figured out how silly the whole thing was by the end– whether or not actual people are capable of the same has yet to be determined.

…okay, I’ll admit, this whole post was basically just an excuse to rhyme like Dr. Seuss (I’m a poet and I don’t even know it.) Now it’s time for Heroics again. Maybe I’ll be lucky and get a good group (you have no idea how badly I want to rhyme that with “soup”.)

Someday I’ll have all the badges I need for alts… until then, as a wise band once said, I wanna be sedated.

Twenty - twenty - twenty - four badges to go-o-o...

(As a side note, does anybody else think it would be hilarious to re-do the music video, but with dragons and demons and stuff walking around in the background, and your Heroic party of five sitting bored at the table? It would be the most fitting music video EVAR.)

My rogue was about halfway through level 18 this morning, so I decided to do some Warsong Gulch. The first game was kind of a failure; we lost pretty badly. I was sort of preparing for this to be one of “those mornings” where it was just a string of losses and crying.

But then something interesting happened.

We started communicating.

See, there was a pretty solid group of about six or seven of us who kept re-queue’ing over and over. We didn’t always get into the same games, of course, but we’d always be there with at least a few buddies from the previous game or two games ago or whatever. A couple of us were pretty twinked out but there were a lot of your average lowbies in our little re-queue’ing group as well.

Anyways, pretty soon we’d figured out what everyone’s strengths and weaknesses were, and we were making and executing plans. We knew who our best flag-runners were, who was best on defense, and who made the best distractions. There was no QQ, no whining, no crying if somebody messed up. Just a lot of “gj”‘s when we made yet another flag capture.

Game after game we just dominated. 3-0, 3-0, 3-0. Anytime we queued up and saw a friend we could rely on from a previous game we would say hi and /cheer at each other. Even the people from the Super Hardcore PvP Servers were /cheering and /waving. And every game our motley little group just smashed the Horde. It was, quite honestly, the best PvP I have participated in in a very, very long time.

But all good things come to an end, and pretty soon came that fateful game where I announced at the beginning that it would be my last: I was gonna level out of the bracket. The response was a few “Noooo”s in BG chat which made me feel kinda warm and fuzzy.

Perhaps fittingly, this was our hardest game of the morning: the Horde had some pretty geared folks on their end this time, including a rogue who was basically equal to me in gear and who I locked one-on-one horns with several times. But we managed to eke out a victory in the end– with a flag I captured.

Thanks, BG9, for making WSG surprisingly awesome again for one morning. I hope to see you all in Arathi Basin! <3

Let me tell you about my rogue.

She’s level 18, and she’s wearing Exceptional Stormshroud Shoulders, Stained Shadowcraft Tunic and a Swift Hand of Justice. She’s got an Upgraded Dwarven Hand Cannon, and she is dual-wielding a Venerable Dal’Rend’s Sacred Charge with Crusader and a Sharpened Scarlet Kris with Fiery.

Warsong Gulch is my sandbox. My kiddie pool. If I am on defense, the other team doesn’t get the flag. Period. (Or if they do, they drop it within five seconds.) If I am guarding our flag carrier, the other team doesn’t get their flag back. Usually at this point I am asked to go retrieve our flag from the other side, so I oblige, stealth across the field, and calmly get our flag back.

In my latest game I was on defense the whole time. Despite being out of the action most of the time, I was third on killing blows/damage done, and I didn’t die a single time. I exited the game with the same buffs I got at the beginning. And we won 3 – 0.

I used to hate people like me. The goggles-wearing rogues that could jam random buttons on the keyboard and two-shot me. In fact, I kind of hate myself for turning into one.

Low level hordies on Bloodlust, I do apologize. You are free to hate me, because you have a good reason to. Don’t worry, I won’t be here long– I plan on leveling right up and out of this bracket and moving on to Arathi Basin.

But until then, WSG is my playground.

*naughty, evil grin*

I can’t decide which is more fun, my warlock or my rogue.

My warlock is currently level 47 and I’m leveling her with my boyfriend’s warrior tank. His goal with the character is to Tank Everything In The Fracking Game at the Correct Level. That means if he has to XP-pause at 60 to tank the raids, he’ll do it. And if he has to XP-pause at 70 to do the same, he’ll do that too. And he has roped me into his nefarious plans.

For the record– The Boy is an amazing tank. And he is decked out in blues that are enchanted with stuff like Mongoose. And the other day in ZF I pulled aggro off of him on the final boss.

THAT IS HOW AWESOME MY WARLOCK IS.

Also fun. Did I mention fun yet?

Oh by the way, I never die. Like the other day, after the ZF run was finished, it was just me and The Boy left in group and we were kind of running around for fun and we ran smack into a respawned pack of mobs.

The Boy charges into the fray and is promptly Hex’d and turned into a frog.

Mobs all beeline for me.

/Howl of Terror
/DoTDoTDoTDoT
/Drain Life
/point
/laugh

Yeah that was fun.

But then there is my rogue. Oh my gosh. I have the goggles + the heirlooms and my rogue never dies either. …okay, that was an exaggeration. I’ve died a couple times on my rogue. Sucks to not have heals. Still, I’ve also taken on unexpected packs of like four mobs, and lived to tell the tale. I usually have like 5 hit points left, but still. I LIVE. Also solo’d Hogger at the appropriate level. Did I mention that Evasion + BoA items + dynamite is OP? I love it so much.

It’s probably too early to say anything definitively about the class this early on, though, but it is SO FUN, I am so excited to do more leveling with this one. How did I never get into rogues before? Silly Pike!

So, I’m seriously considering changing mains for Cataclysm (assuming I am still playing– I still have so much stuff going on IRL that I’m really just playing it by ear at this point). No real major reason, just kinda want to try something different. The question, though, is change to what? Healy Druid was my original inclination but I still haven’t recovered from the impending Loss of Perma-Tree, since Tree Form was the entire reason I rolled healy druid to begin with (I know, I’m lame), so now both warlock and rogue (and maybe Goggles Bear) are at the top of the contenders list. We’ll see how things go!

(Also toward the top of the list: Gnome Priest, and Goblin EVERYTHING.)

I get a lot of spam comments. A lot of it. I clear out probably five or so spam comments a day on both of my blogs combined– and that’s not counting the several thousands that Akismet has caught in its spider-web.

Yeah.

Most of the spam tries to cleverly disguise itself as not-spam, which is how it gets through the filters. But it’s still not something I want to deal with every day.

As a result I have decided to auto-close commenting on all posts older than 14 days. I hate to do this, because I know some people have a lot of blogs to catch up on and don’t get around to individual posts for a while, but it will help tons with the spam situation (as 90% of it happens on old posts).

You are, of course, always welcome to contact me via e-mail, Twitter, or by commenting on more recent posts, though!