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!

I always loved hunters but it was a bit of a bizarre relationship. I loved them for what they were, obviously, but I also loved them because I was afraid to try anything new. Because anytime I tried anything new, I was expecting a carbon copy of a hunter, and when this never turned out to be the case, I would quit said new character in frustration. I was, for lack of a better term, caught in a bad romance.

After several months of hiatus things are different. I no longer feel like I have to keep writing hunter guides. I mean, tons of you guys followed me over to my new blog to hear me talk about things like aquarium test strips. Seriously.

I can feel the excitement.

I have also Officially Quit Raiding. I don’t have the time or the previously discussed mental stamina. My guild keeps trying to talk me into letting them drag me to an Arthas fight so I can see it, but I’m pretty apathetic about the whole issue. If I see him, fine, if not, fine. Ya know?

So my beloved hunter has been relegated to the status of BadgeBot. I run random LFGs with her when I’m feeling up to it. I spend the badges on those BoA heirlooms and Primordial Saronite. That’s right, I’m in Ulduar tier stuff and spending badges on stuff that isn’t better gear. Savvy?

Instead of raiding and endgame, I’m dinking around in alts which are tons more fun. When I started WoW again I made a pact to myself that I was going to be The Very Model of a Modern Major Casual, and I’m happy with how it’s turned out. I’ll spend a half hour or so in game every day, doing things that are familiar (starter areas/old instances anyone?) but also different. For example, after avoiding melee like the plague for years, I have a Feral Druid. And a rogue. My word, I love my rogue. And her vanity guild.

...gaga ooh la la?

Stuff dies before I can use Eviscerate. It’s hilarious. Also I’m a gnome, and an engineer, which means that as soon as I go into WSG I am going to become the embodiment of everything that Every Horde PvPer hates. It will be glorious.

I also really like her name. Tourbillon. This is a tourbillon:

It’s POWERED BY PHYSICS! Fully mechanical; and it goes on a watch, which means it’s about the size of what, your thumbnail?

Perfect name for a gnome rogue engineer, no? <3

I’ve also started making alts on the servers of friends and fellow bloggers. I used to avoid doing that because I was really bad about logging on to them and then I’d feel horrible about making an alt somewhere and never playing it. I’m trying to be better this time, though.

I’m Pike, and I endorse this Pointless Post.

When I was younger I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. (And before you all go into some sort of tirade against clueless parents or something, be aware that it was mostly my idea– I was a rather informed young thing.)

There is a long and convoluted story behind all of this but suffice to say that the second school stopped interesting me was the second I stopped caring. As far as I was concerned, my games of make-believe held much more weight than whatever boring homework the school system was throwing at me at the time. The result was that suddenly the “gifted school” girl was failing everything in sight, and nobody knew why. Yeah, that was kind of an uncomfortable time in my life.

I struggled with this issue for quite some time– all through middle school and then some of high school– and then finally I started taking meds.

Mmyep, I read the label, and this was pretty much it. Seriously.

That was when something crazy happened. See, the meds had a completely different effect than what was originally intended. Instead of giving me the drive and focus to concentrate on school, they gave me the drive and focus to concentrate on video games. For hours on end.

Up until that point, I could only play video games for small amounts of time and then need a break. Suddenly I was binging on everything in sight. Zelda: Ocarina of Time for 18 hours a day? Did it. Starcraft for 18 hours a day? Yup. Mario Freaking Golf? Did that too.

Aaaanyways I was on the meds for a while and then halfway through college I quit, cold turkey. There were a few reasons for this but chief among them was “Why am I taking this super addictive crap when the tradeoff is probably not even worth it?”

Plus I missed my imaginary friends.

Well once I got over about a month of painful withdrawal symptoms (further cementing my desire to not touch the stuff ever again), things had returned to normal– so it would seem. See, I wasn’t playing a whole lot of video games at this point because I was working and going to college. In fact, I wouldn’t really seriously game again until I graduated college and installed WoW.

I was soon back to my old shenanigans again as far as video games were concerned: I am unable to sit still and play a game for more than a couple of hours at a time. Oh, believe me, during the early WoW honeymoon phase it was several shifts a day, but these were interspersed with frequent breaks.

Anyways, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Pike, where are you going with this?”

Okay, I’ll cut to the chase. This whole insanely long prologue was meant to be a lead-in for this:

I can’t do that thing that everyone else does and binge play.

Seriously.

Chain heroics? Really? I can do two heroics, max, before I want to smash my head into a wall.

Raiding? An hour in and I’m done. I just stay the rest of the way out of courtesy more than anything. Karazhan was really the only raid that was near-immune to this phenomenon, because it was interesting. And Naxx wasn’t too bad, I guess. But ultimately this was one of the big reasons why I quit raiding. I just don’t have the mental stamina for it. After an hour or so, I simply don’t enjoy it anymore. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I kind of liked ToC. Short and to the point.

Leveling? Guys, not even heirlooms and the new in-game Quest Helper map can save me from how slowly I level. One level a day is a good day for me… and that’s pre-60. All you people that say stuff like “Oh I am leveling from 76 to 80 this weekend?” Seriously, you can do that? I think when I leveled my druid from 76 to 80 it took about a month. And I was a freaking healer and was getting groups every five seconds.

Doing anything on one single character for more than about an hour? There is a lot of crying and wailing and gnashing of teeth on my end.

Let’s not get me started on dailies. Dailies have tossed a sharp pointy stake in the heart of more than one online game for me.

I don’t know how you guys can do it. I mean, clearly, I must have at one point, because I think back to all the video game marathons I managed back when I was on Speeeeeeed™, and I did it back then. These days, though, I can’t go back to that, and ultimately I wouldn’t want to. I like how I am at this point, you know, with the whole doing-one-heroic and then having-to-log-off-for-several-hours-to-recuperate thing. Because in all those several hours that I am logged off, I’m doing other things like drawing or reading or writing or what-have-you, or maybe even taking out the trash when I’m feeling really inspired.

Well, now that I have elaborated far more on this than I was originally planning to, I hope that maybe you have an unde- SQUIRREL.

It’s not often that you meet someone that is

• awesome at DPS
• unfailingly friendly and supportive through not one, but two PuGs otherwise consisting of equal parts fail and QQ/whining, and
• willing to kill themselves, with no compunctions about it, so they can show the dead huntard who hasn’t played in months where the entrance to Pit of Saron is.

Thanks for being that person.

I don’t know if you realized that whispering me boss strats or level headed encouragement amidst all the bawww’ing that was going on in /group would make my morning, but it did. So, thank you. <3

I haven’t raided since February. But I’ve done some heroics and testing/spreadsheeting.

Best Pet?: Elitist Jerks says Raptors (yay!) at very high gear levels. Wolves & Devilsaurs are testing out to be slightly higher for me in my ToC duds. By “slightly higher” I mean “about 20 DPS fully raid buffed”, whether or not that’s worth it for you is up to you.

Shot Rotation? Again, going by very high gear levels, Elitist Jerks says you can drop Arcane Shot. Spreadsheet tells me I can’t yet. Praise the light, I hate dropping shots, it makes me bored out of my mind.

Spec? I am still 53/11/7. I tried playing around with dropping Survival Instincts in favor of more points in Mortal Shots but the difference is minuscule (less than 10 DPS, fully raidbuffed). It might be worth a shot if you are better geared, however.

Is BM “viable” yet? Ah yes, that word with the nebulous definitions that people love to toss around. Ultimately this one comes down to you, what you are doing, and what your personal standards/opinions are, but I can tell you two things for sure:

One, Elitist Jerks says that at high gear levels the difference between BM and SV is now very minimal. Both lag noticeably behind MM, however.

Two, if I can pull this off on a single-target boss fight in a heroic as BM in oldschool ToC gear & freaking blue ammo:

…then anyone who makes fun of you for being BM in a heroic is, quite honestly, out of their looney little mind. And yes, you can tell them I said so.