Since my last “Advice for New Hunters” post seemed to go over so well, I figured I’d make one specifically geared toward instancing. Now I made one of these a while back, but it was a.) during Burning Crusade and b.) Aimed more toward 70s/heroics. So, here’s one mostly directed for newer hunters!

See, in doing my random instancing I’ve seen a lot of things like hunters randomly using traps at strange places or complaining about why they aren’t higher on Recount (because, you know, Scarlet Monastery is serious business). So, here are some tips to make your instancing smoother:

1.) Know Your Shots. Until you get Steady Shot at 50, this basically means keeping Serpent Sting up, then Arcane Shot when you can, and Multi/Aimed depending on your spec. Don’t bother with Concussive Shot because it doesn’t do damage (but it does use up mana!). Distracting Shot is another one that you don’t want to use… not only does it not do any damage, but it taunts enemies to attack you instead! (Thank you to Anna for reminding me of this one in the comments.)

Once you hit 50 it means using Steady Shot when everything else is on cooldown. Pretty simple!

2.) Don’t Forget Your Pet. I’m not going to rant about using the wrong type of pet or anything because I do understand– you’re leveling, having a bear actually makes sense if you’re mostly questing and just hopping into LFG every once in a while. However, lemme tell you something I’ve learned when wearing the Tree Suit. 90% of hunters I’ve ran into in heroics– heroics– don’t use Mend Pet. Why? I have no idea. This baffles me. Seriously, read this and then remember that now we have Culling the Herd, too, if you have any questions.

Anyways, the point is that I think Not Using Mend Pet is a very bad habit, and it’s one to break now while you’re still leveling. I know it may seem like a lot to keep track of, but honestly, soon “checking your pet” while doing your rotation will become second nature to you, much like checking your rear-view mirror while driving. So: learn to keep an eye on your pet, bind Mend Pet to an easy-to-remember keybind, and you’ll thank me later! *nod*

While we’re on the subject of pets, turn Growl off while you are in an instance.

3.) Regarding Those Traps… Explosive Trap is acceptable for AoE damage pre-Volley. Once you get Volley (level 40), it’s much superior for instancing.

Most of the other traps involve situational usage. Freezing Trap was, long ago, near and dear to my heart but it’s rare that you’re asked to trap these days, particularly in a low-level instance. However, it’s still useful for things like mobs running at you if Feign Death is on cooldown. No guarantees someone won’t break your trap, though. Frost Trap is a similarly situational one. Immolation Trap really isn’t worth it (I use it in PvP, though.)

So for the most part… don’t worry about your traps.

4.) Viper between pulls. You get Aspect of the Viper at level 20. Learn now to get into the habit of using it between every pull and then going back to Hawk when you’re actually doing damage.

It is acceptable to use Viper during fights if you absolutely have to, but if you’re careful and use Viper between every pull you usually don’t have to.

5.) Don’t forget Hunter’s Mark! Another good habit to get into is using Hunter’s Mark on what you’re attacking. I see a lot of new hunters who forget about it. Binding it to Pet Attack via a macro is never a bad idea, either:

/petattack
/cast Hunter's Mark

6.) Attack What the Tank is Attacking: This isn’t as big of a deal as it used to be because so much is just AoE these days, but if you’re in an instance and you’re getting attacked a lot, it’s probably the first thing to look at. “Am I attacking what the tank is attacking?” Make an assist macro if you have to: /assist tank's-name

Sometimes you will get tanks who are just starting out. Learn to compensate.

7.) And I know I’m beating a dead horse here but Don’t Roll On Other People’s Stuff. I know this can be a bit of a tricky gray area especially in low-level dungeons where a lot of gear is bizarrely balanced in terms of stat allocation. And I know that learning “how and when to roll on stuff” is sort of an art form when you’re just starting out. For the most part, if it has Strength on it, don’t roll on it, especially if you have a warrior/paladin/DK in your group. Same deal goes for Spell Power: it does nothing to help you out.

Okay, I can’t think of anything else that is super vitally important to put here, so we’ll call it good for now. Hopefully this will be of some use to you newer hunters/players. Have fun in LFG!

As I’ve written about before, there are a lot of goodies for everyone in the new five-man instance, Trial of the Champion, and hunters are no exception. As such, I’ve ran it a lot on Tawyn and even more on Lunapike (at this point I’m running it for the gun. About a dozen runs and no gun so far. Our Pike is a Sad Pike. Marrowstrike, on the other hand, consistently and dutifully shows its face every other time. Too bad I got it on my first run…)

Anyways, I’ve ran it so much that I’ve got a good idea on what to do as a hunter. And since I figured there’s always new hunters out there who haven’t run it yet and will probably do so in the near future… here is a handy guide for you! ^_^ It is probably a little skewed towards Beast Masters but hunters of all stripes should find something useful here, I hope.

So here we go!

FIRST BOSS: WALL OF TEXT

It is an “intro” that introduces all the competitors and it crits you for eightmillion, every time, no matter what.

…

…

Okay, so it’s not really a boss. >.> Hey, you can’t blame me, I come from a background where we’d go “HEY GUYS CAN WE GET SOME TIPS, WE CAN’T GET PAST THE GONG BOSS” in Zul’Aman General Chat.

Aaaaanyways…

FIRST BOSS: THE JOUSTING THING

There are a bunch of guys who you will have to joust. I’d direct you to the Jousting movie I made earlier, but this is really quite different because there are four other people who will be doing it with you. The main deal here is to keep your shields up and charge when you can, and shield break between charges.

If you somehow lose your mount (you are unable to heal your mount during this), try to do it near the wall where you can hop onto a new mount very quickly. Otherwise, you may be trampled and stunned, oh, and for some reason it has this tendency to kill your pet. So try to avoid being dismounted for long.

After all is said and done your group is probably going to run out of the instance, because the transition to fighting them is… unpleasant. This is getting fixed in the next patch, but until then, you’re runnin’ out.

Once you run back in, you’ll have a little time to set up before fighting the three bosses. Don’t forget to unequip your lance in favor of whatever your Stat-Stick of choice is.

I open up with a misdirect on the tank + Multishot to help him grab early aggro on the three bosses. The main thing that you as a hunter need to know about this is that there is bubbly goo on the floor that a.) you should not stand in, and b.) your pet should not stand in either. The tank should be moving out of the way of the goo so your pet shouldn’t be in it for very long, so Mend Pet is probably all you will need. Just keep an eye on your pet’s health throughout the encounter, and you should be good to go.

FIRST AND A HALF BOSS: EADRIC THE PURE

You’re either going to get this guy or some other boss. Let’s talk about this guy first. He is, by far, the easier of the two.

Step-by-step instructions:
1.) Hunter’s Mark/Pet Attack
2.) Pewpew

…okay, so there are a couple things you need to be made aware of. The first is a thing where he yells out “HAMMER OF THE RIGHTEOUS!” and hurtles a hammer at you. Basically, it actually takes away all your abilities except for the hammer, and you have to chuck it back at the guy. Pretty self-explanatory. If you “kill” the guy with it you get an achievement, but don’t hold on to it for too long or about 90% of your health will go byebye.

The second thing is that he’ll do a big flash of light which will blind you for a few seconds and make you unable to attack. The easy way to get out of it is to spin around when you see the warning, watch for the light flash behind you, and spin back. If you miss it, it’s not a big deal, I just think it’s kind of fun to do.

It doesn’t effect your pet so just let him gnaw on the boss! Whee!

SECOND BOSS: PALETRESS

This fight is actually really difficult and is probably the first where I’ve developed a little huntery strategy for it. First of all, make sure you have full mana or close to it at the beginning. Viper on the mobs before it if you have to.

Okay, now, this is my strategy. Your mileage may vary.

Paletress will come out. Start doing your thing but don’t pop any cooldowns yet. Don’t Bestial Wrath. Don’t Kill Command. Don’t trinket. Don’t Rapid Fire. Because Paletress herself goes down like a rock without it anyway. Now…

…

She’ll summon something. Usually an old raid or instance boss. This isn’t as awesome as it sounds because instead of the old boss doing all their Old Boss Abilities, they just sort of sit there and smash on the tank and occasionally fear. So, it’s kind of a let-down.

But they’re really difficult to fight.

So THIS is when you pop all your cooldowns. You want that “Memory of [Whatever]” down as fast as possible. Not to mention, Bestial Wrath makes you immune to the fear (which is especially annoying because it also does damage).

Once the Memory is down it’s back to Paletress who once again goes down like a rock.

NOTE: I’m not sure how or why but my pet has this tendency to randomly take a lot of damage throughout this entire fight. I think Paletress and the Memory both have an aura or something that does damage. Anyways, keep a Mend Pet up and keep a close eye on your pet’s health.

LAST BOSS: THE BLACK KNIGHT

This guy is also pretty difficult. There are three phases to this guy, and here’s the lowdown:

1.) Pop everything you’ve got on the first phase– you might as well. Unless you’re a Marksman, Rapid Fire probably isn’t up yet from the previous fight, but don’t worry, it’ll likely be ready for the last phase.

2.) Second Phase! The Black Knight is apparently a Death Knight and summons Army of the Dead. You can AoE them but I’ve found that it’s often best to just focus fire down the Black Knight himself as fast as possible. If you do choose to AoE then keep your pet on the boss while you volley the adds.

The adds will probably be running around so Feign Death/trap to keep them out of your hair. With some luck this phase won’t last that long.

There are green circles on the ground, don’t stand in them. /mock stern face

VERY IMPORTANT: Once the Black Knight himself is down, all the adds will explode. One time I was in the middle of the adds when they did so. I died. Please do not stand near the adds!

3.) For the third phase, the Black Knight turns into a ghost and it’s back to a tank-n-spank. I’m not sure if there’s a threat wipe or not but I always misdirect the tank at the beginning of this phase, just in case. The main twist here is that there’s a bunch of random damage being dished out to all the party members so this is mostly a healer fight. Don’t be afraid to use things like healthstones, Lifeblood, Gift of the Naaru, or health potions here to help alleviate the healer’s woes a bit.

Just get him down fast– most of your cooldowns are probably back by now.

And that’s that! ^_^ Happy loot-diving~

Not to long ago, I had a question in one of the comments asking why I hadn’t talked about the new five-man instance, Trial of the Champion, yet. To be honest the reason isn’t that I dislike the new five-man or anything, since I rather DO like it, it’s just that I figured… hey… it’s a five-man, since when do I make in-depth posts about those? Ya know? It simply didn’t seem necessary.

Recently though, I’ve discovered something noteworthy about this new five man. Namely, this place is Epics Heaven.

See, interesting thing about me is that I usually have no idea what loot various instances drop. Well, unless I see something super awesome that someone is wearing around town, in which case I find out where it drops and get all fanatical over it. But other than that, I don’t have Atlas Loot, I don’t really comb MMO-Champion or WoWHead for stuff… and I’ll go to a new instance or raid and have no idea what drops out of there. It’s actually really funny because more than once now I’ve headed into this new instance, watched everybody in the party, in turn, link exactly what they want from each boss, and then we get to me and I’m like “Um, I have no idea what drops here” while I bounce around on my Argent Horse or Wolf.

It actually ends up in a lot of pleasant surprises for me. For example, the time I healed Heroic Nexus for the first time on my Tree. Some apparently super awesome healy mace dropped from the last boss. Everybody starts congratulating me and telling me how many dozens of times they ran their healer through the place for it and I’m just like “Oh hey, cool, I didn’t even know that existed. /yoink”

Same deal with Trial of the Champion. I’ve ran Lunapike through it about a dozen times on Normal at this point, and once on Heroic. The gear is just ridiculous. So many surprise upgrades. It’s great for gearing up a fresh 80.

During one of those runs, a super epic trinket dropped. I kid you not, four people rolled Need on it, including myself. The only person who didn’t roll need was the healer. I won it with like a 96. Immediately this was followed by the other three people lamenting how they’d ran the place twenty times and had never seen it and/or won it and now would have to run it another twenty times. I was just like “Ooooh shiny, I didn’t know this dropped out of here! *pats it gently* *equips it* *immediatly sees like a 400 DPS increase*”

My lack of looking-at-potential-loot also makes me rather behind in some areas. For example, I had aforementioned Lunapike run Heroic Violet Hold about ten times for this staff, which used to be pretty much the best thing you could get pre-Naxx, and I assumed it still was. So I finally get it and ‘chant it up, and then two days later I run Heroic Trial of the Champion and this drops. For the record, that’s pretty much a sidegrade of Tawyn’s Ulduar-10 weapon. So yeah. Won it over a Death Knight, which is okay because the Death Knight won a helmet that dropped off of the same boss.

The pleasant surprises would not end anytime soon, because not long after I was back on my main, Tawyn, doing Heroic TotC and I wound up with a necklace upgrade. Another thing that I had no idea existed. Awesome!

Also there is apparently a really nice gun which drops out of Heroic which my rogue friends enjoy waving in my face. I’m holding out for an Ulduar25 weapon though. I’m going on Saturday ^_^!

So yeah, the new five-man. Fantastic for gearing up. I’d recommend doing it on Normal several times first if you’re a fairly fresh 80, because it is a relatively difficult instance, but the gear you get out of it will help you a lot in Heroic in the future. Plus, jousting is awesome, and I WILL NOT HEAR THIS BE DENIED! =O

Now I’ve just gotta summon up the courage to get my HealyTree back in there. I did it on Normal once and found it to be fairly challenging but not unmanageable, but then an attempt on it on Heroic turned into about five wipes on the first boss, a dissolved group, and me rocking back and forth in the fetal position while I felt rather decidedly like the Worst Tree in History (although my friends assured me that the tank was undergeared, but hey, I’m hard on myself.) Ever since then, I’ve sworn off ever going back as a healer.

I was going to make some sort of horrible tree pun about growing back some nuts to go in there, but ya know what, it’s so bad that I’ll pass. …oops, too late.

>.>

ANYWAYS, this post has got me thinking (scary no?), and I’m thinking of potentially starting a long-running series where I go through Every. Instance. In. The. Game. and talk about hunter lewts and other potentially helpful hunter info for each one. That way, hunters like me who love to level up via instances would sort of have a roadmap for the better places. Would anyone be interested in that, or would it be the TL;DR of the Century?

Speak now, or forever hold your peace!

“I would love a hunter kindergarten entry on playing a BM hunter pre-Steady Shot, if you have time. Or on hunter roles in lower-level instances — I don’t see much about that out there, either.” – Ideale

Well, I sorta covered the pre-Steady-Shot thing in an earlier post, so let’s talk about instances. There you are heading into Deadmines or Wailing Caverns for your very first time as a hunter. What are you going to be doing? Well, first of all, let’s talk about what you are NOT going to be doing:

Chain-trapping.

If somebody asks you to trap something for longer than about ten seconds tell them you can’t. Unless you are a Survival hunter, chain-trapping does not exist until level 60 when you get Freezing Trap Rank 3. Period. There is no shame in telling your group that you won’t have the mob trapped very long and it’s really not worth it. It’s not your fault your traps suck right now.

That said, do keep an eye out for situations where you might have to emergency trap something, such a loose mob running towards the healer.

Alright, so we aren’t doing CC, then what are we doing? We are doing lots of DPS, and learning to control your pet.

Before you go into the instance portal, there are two very important things you have to make sure of: Firstly, that your pet is set to passive (and only passive), and secondly, that Growl is turned off. Having your pet set to passive is going to ensure that he only does what you tell him to and no more, and it is extremely important because it allows you complete control of your pet so he doesn’t run off into the middle of nowhere anytime somebody looks at you funny.

If you are not used to having him on Passive, it might take a little while to get used to it. You may not like it at first. You will be having to use your Pet Attack button/key more than have and you might feel like your pet is wasting some time running back to you all the time. But… although I used to be of the school of thought that it was okay to have him set to Defensive for leveling/grinding– to be honest, I can’t stand that anymore. You get to a point where if your pet is out of control and doing things you didn’t tell him to, it feels very awkward and unpleasant. You and your pet are One and he needs to be responsive to you and attack only the mobs you tell him to, and Passive is the only mode that allows that. Part of being a hunter is that mental calculation and planning when things go wrong. If your pet is attacking a mob that isn’t part of your mental plan– which he will do if he is on Defensive– it can really mess you up. So while I am a very big advocate of “Passive-always-no-matter-what”, if you like Defensive, then just remember to switch to Passive for an instance. =P

Growl you want to turn off so he isn’t competing with the tank for threat. …you do have a tank, right? (“No, this is Deadmines/WC/whatever.”) … …well, pretend you have a tank. He’s not going to want some random hunter’s pet stealing aggro from him all the time. You can turn it off by right-clicking on the icon for it.

So Pet = Passive, and Growl = Off. You are now good to go.

You’re inside the instance. Now what? What do you attack? Well I, myself, like to have a Tank Assist macro for use in here. It’s a simple macro that says /assist tank’s name and it’s nice to have something like that keybound or put somewhere easily accessible if you are a clicker. Basically what it is going to do is target the tank’s target so you know what you should be attacking. All the DPS should always be focused on the tank’s target unless told otherwise. Now sometimes your group will use raid symbols to further establish targets– as a general rule, you kill Skull first and X second, etc.– but the tank assist macro will make absolute sure you are attacking the right thing, especially in tricky pulls.

A word of caution with the tank assist macro though– just because the tank is looking at something across the room, does not mean you have to attack it. That would be very bad. It’s better to wait until you actually see the tank’s target’s health dropping or you see Sunders on it before you do anything, just to be sure.

And what do you do?

Send your pet in and start shootin’. It’s as simple as that. For higher level instances you’ll want to start up your shot rotation; for lower level ones you probably want to do basically what you’ve been doing while leveling– open with a Serpent Sting* and then a mix of Autos/Arcanes. Do not use Multi-Shot unless there is just one mob left. Aside from breaking CC, it also might pull extra mobs towards you, which is not good.

* You may opt instead to use Scorpid Sting, which means the tank will not get hit as much which means the healer will not have to heal as much and may help things out in the long run. But use your judgment and decide if the group needs more DPS or not. In a group where the tank is ten levels higher than all the DPS it’s probably better to use Serpent Sting.

For the most part, if the tank is tanking something, then you should always be attacking something. I would say there is an exception if you are deeply focused on crowd control but you shouldn’t be in a lowbie instance. There is an old tanky adage: “My comrades are my weapons and I am their shield.” You’re not being a very good weapon if you’re not shooting stuff and not having your pet rip something apart. =P

You do not want to attack something so much, though, that your tank loses aggro on it. Because that’s just messy. Having a threat meter such as Omen, KTM, or Diamond installed will help a lot here; you will be able to watch your threat and get warnings if you approach the tank’s threat level. (A threat meter is also nice for hunter solo’ing so you know when you are about to pull from your pet). If you don’t have a threat meter, then play it safe, give the tank a few seconds to establish aggro on on something before attacking, and pop your Feign Death (if you are a high enough level to have it) if you have been pewpewing for a while.

You may at some point be asked to pull; what that means is basically to shoot a mob and deliver it to the tank. At level 70 you’ve got Misdirection to make this nice and easy, pre-level 70 you’ll be best off standing as close to the tank as you can while still being able to pull, using a low ranking Arcane Shot, stopping your attack, and letting the tank pick up on it.

Hmm. Long blog post is long. So, we’ll wrap this one up. I think I’ve pretty much covered everything about the basics of an instance. Basically, so long as you have your pet and your threat management under control and you’re providing DPS, you are well on your way to being a sought-after hunter in later instances. Just make sure you’ve packed enough food for your pet and some water for you.

And say hi to Mr. Smite for me, wouldya? We’re old buddies.

(Oh, and: /wave to all my friends and guildies who just recently discovered this site!)

You wanna hear a story? Come gather round and I’ll tell you a story.

So there we are in Heroic Mech. By now we’ve got the thing memorized and we could run it in our sleep. We’re goofing off in Ventrilo and a couple of us aren’t even in Ventrilo cause heck, it’s just Heroic Mech, right?

…I think we took things just a wee bit too casually. We were dying left and right on random crap, we made about a million dumb mistakes, and worst of all, The Sword that Can Not Be Named managed to elude our poor tank for the thousandth time.

But amidst the chaos there was one high point to our otherwise horrific run.

Gatewatcher Iron-Hand, a sort of mini-boss you fight after the first big robot guy. Ya know him? Him in all his “RAISES HIS HAMMER MENACINGLY” glory?

We’re fighting him and the tank dies when the boss is still at about, oh, 30% health or so. (Yeah I told you this was an off night. I swear we can do this heroic in our sleep when we’re trying. Honest!)

Tank is gone, we’ve got a holy paladin, a warlock, a rogue, and me and Locke. Boss comes charging to me first so I feigned out of it (I honestly thought we were all going to wipe in a matter of seconds) and he turns and heads towards the warlock, who proceeded to load him up with as many DoTs as he could before his inevitable death. By now I’d realized the group was still alive and kicking, and had jumped up pretty quickly and resumed pounding on the boss as best I could. This whole part here is mostly just a blur, all I know is that Locke tanked him for ten seconds or so before falling, and then the warlock died, and it was down to me, the pally, and the rogue with the boss still at about 15% health.

The rogue managed to keep him occupied long enough for us to chip him down even further until he was at about 10% health, and then there were two: me and the pally.

Now the pally wasn’t in Ventrilo at the time because he was watching a movie or something. So I heard myself shouting with my brain, hoping he could somehow catch the mental vibes: “BUBBLE TANK IT! BUBBLE TANK IT!!”

And he did. Bubbled and tanked the guy while I sat there and auto-steady-auto-steady’d (and ran around and arcane’d cause he kept moving)…

Of course, it was only a matter of time before the bubble ran out and our healer hit the dirt. I think at this point the boss was at about 4% or 5% health.

Tawyn vs. the world.

Bring it on.

He raised his hammer in the air menacingly…

…meaning he just stood there and didn’t move…

Pew… pew… pew… longest 4% of a boss in my entire life…

4%…

3%…

2%…

1%…

Killing Blow.

You’d better believe I danced on his corpse.

I have my own personal little “Checklist” that I mentally go through when I’m going to be doing an instance. I thought I would share it with you guys in case anybody might find it useful:

Before Heading to the Instance:

-Ammo: Make sure your quiver/ammo pouch is full of the best arrows/bullets you can buy. If the instance is especially long you may want to bring a couple extra stacks in your regular inventory as well, but to be honest I haven’t found that I really need to do this in regular five-mans.
-Pet Food: I never bring anything less than a full 20-unit stack of pet food to an instance. If I know it’s a particularly hard instance, or one that is long, or that I haven’t done before, I’ll bring 25 pieces of pet food.
-Hunter Food: Unless you’ve got a mage handy, bring some food and drink for yourself.
-Repairs: Even if your durability is still at 90%. Get it to 100%.
-Bag space: It sucks to spend most of the instance trying to juggle what loot you want to keep and what loot you want to toss because you only showed up with three empty slots or something. (Trust me on this one.) Vendor stuff, put it on the Auction House or in your bank, or mail it to an alt and give yourself ample room for the things you’ll pick up!
-Potions/Elixirs/Buff Food: If you have some, bring it! Bring some for your pet too!
-The Right Pet: You probably don’t want to show up at Heroic Mech with the level 19 ghost saber that you just tamed a couple minutes ago. (Just a hunch.)
-Spec’ing the Pet: This is sort of an optional one and some people don’t like to re-spec their pet for every instance. But it’s cheap and it’s not a bad idea to give your pet extra nature resistance for Steamvaults, for example.

At the Instance:

- Growl is OFF. If you have Cower, it’s ON. If you have Screech, I myself like to turn it OFF (just because it causes threat on multiple mobs; I’m not sure if it breaks CC or not. Oh and a lot of tanks really hate the noise).
- Tank assist macro (feels an urge to write a macro article brewing) is set to the current tank.
- Pet is set to PASSIVE.
- Buff up: Is Aspect of the Hawk up? (I know I’ve forgotten once or twice). Have you used your food and agility elixir? Did you feed your pet some Sporeling Snacks or Kibler’s Bits?
- If it’s a group of people I haven’t worked with before I usually inform them that I am able to trap and that if they want me to trap something they should stick a blue square on it, and I’ll take care of it. Sometimes they’ll want to use a different symbol other than my usual blue square, that’s fine with me so long as they let me know (they always do).

Well, that’s my list. It seems long and scary but it really doesn’t take too long to do, especially if you’re like me and you like to be super-prepared and you go replenish your supply of ammo and pet food and repair every hour or so.

Everybody’s experience is different when it comes to this type of thing so develop your own list and find out what works best for you, but for the most part I think you’ll have a similar list. Do take note though that I have never done a real “raid” before so the list might be a bit different if you are further-progressed than I am (and I imagine a lot of you are).

Remember, “failing to prepare is preparing to fail”. Thus sayeth some random inspirational poster. =P

Happy instancing!

AND The Abacus of Violent Odds. Which the rogue already had.

Tawyn is only going to get about four and a half hours of sleep tonight but she is a happy, happy hunter.

Heroic Mech (almost) clear. We got the fire boss to 4% and wiped, and then people had to start leaving. Still, we got the Calculator, so we’ll consider it a success.

Really the only thing I can add to these pictures is: “You should’ve heard me on Vent.”

I’ll put Savagery on it tomorrow; no enchanters seemed to be on tonight. I’m at a point right now where my crit is over 20% unbuffed so I think I could use the attack power more than an agility enchant. Though agility will always be my one and only favorite stat. Because I love my crit. But I’m trying to stay balanced.

In other news, I did SM Library on my level 38 hordie hunter. With a 33 warrior tank and a 34 shammy healer. And… that was it. Just us. We three-manned it. We originally had two other party members but they disconnected and disappeared right at the beginning of the run and we… just decided to keep going. It was pretty awesome. I love instances. I love the challenge of them and the rush of doing them, and the whole way you have to coordinate yourself with other people. It’s so weird that I’ve come to enjoy that kind of thing because I’ve always been one of those flying-solo-types. And not just in WoW.

Said to me today: “A hunter who can trap. I think I love you.” You heard me ladies. Freezing traps get all the men. Now you know the secret. =P

Well, after a lull of a week or two where Tawyn was sort of stabled from instances and focusing on PvP and working on trade skills, the instancing appears to be back in full swing.

Yesterday I did both Shadow Labs and Botanica. The Shadow Labs run wound up being horribly ironic because everyone in the group was running it for gear, and not a single piece of gear for any of us dropped… that includes the ever-so-elusive Sonic Spear. However, I did receive a visit by one Bremm in the middle of this instance, so that was pretty awesome. /wave

Botanica we were running for the second half of the Arcatraz key. Our group also had slightly better luck on this one gearwise; I actually didn’t come out of the instance with anything for myself (a pretty good neck piece dropped, but the rogue and I decided we would roll for it and he won, which I’m glad for, because he deserved it)… but the quest turn-in did bestow a pretty snazzy new belt upon me. Not to mention the Arc key! We’ll hopefully be running that at some point today.

One of my favorite parts of the instance-running, though, was this: there’s a boss in Shadow Labs who mind-controls the party (I can’t remember the name of this boss). The problem for us was that when he does this, the tank seems to lose aggro. So we came up with a plan: after the next mind control, I was to misdirect onto the tank. The next mind control pops up and by the time it’s over the boss is chasing the rogue around– probably another hit and the rogue would be down.

Here comes Tawyn to save the day!

Misdirect on the tank… pulling back the bowstring… and… BAM!

Aimed Shot Crit Misdirect. Oh yeah!

Boss runs back over to the tank, rogue survives, and we finish the guy. I felt pretty awesome.

My next moment of personal heroism was the last boss in Botanica. Right towards the end– boss had maybe 6% of his HP left… everybody wound up dying except for the tank and I, and we managed to finish him off. But to be honest there were a lot of little moments of heroism from everybody throughout the instances, not just me. It was really great.

I also felt good because at some point everybody started complimenting me for my traps. “Tawyn, I have no idea how you do your traps like that, but you’re pretty much the only hunter I will ever group with.” Stuff like that. /blush. Even though I still think my trapping could use some improvement, but I think I’m getting better with all the practice I’ve been doing lately.

I promise I’m going to post about something other than instances soon. =P

I had a pretty productive day today in WoW.

For starters, my little hordie Lunapike hit level 38 and I decided to wander off to Westfall in the heart of Alliance territory and give solo’ing Deadmines a shot:

Ooooh, shiny stuff for my mount fund!

Aaaand, there ya have it, solo’d at level 38. A new record for me, because Tawyn solo’d it at level 41 (being primarily Marks-spec’d at the time.) Other then a few bad mistakes I made on Mr. Smite, and a VanCleef fight that was nearly too close for comfort (let’s just say my health was down to about 5%), the run went quite smootly and I got a lot of stuff out of it that I was able to put in the Auction House. (Hehe, and did you notice the mini-Tux in a few of the screenshots? I love it.)

I’ve been having a lot of fun with Lunapike lately; I’ve been playing her a little more often and I’ve been inspired with new character ideas for her, roleplaying-wise. I think I want to write a short story about her. There is a special meaning behind her name afterall, I bet you didn’t know that. Well two special meanings behind her name; one of them is in-character and one is out-of-character. I’ll have to talk about those in a future post!

The second thing I did today was net about 2500 honor in PvP on Tawyn, thanks to randomly winding up actually in the middle of a few Alliance EotS premades (and yes, a few good old-fashioned hard-earned games as well) and EotS being the PvP daily. I now have 100 AB marks and 100 WSG marks, which is the most you can carry, so I’m gonna stick to EotS and AV for now– sort of sad because AB and WSG are my favorites, but eh. Some of my guildies almost talked me into blowing nearly all my honor points and 30 WSG marks on some good pants… almost… in the end I opted not to because I didn’t want to spend that much honor, now that I’m finally on the downhill side of the grind for my crossbow. If I decide to be superhardcore I might even have it next weekend, but I’m certainly not going to be holding my breath!

The third thing was a guild clear of Mechanar. We did pretty well, I think, considering that only one of us had ever run it before. Sure we had some wipes, but we also seemed to manage to pull off some crazy miracles on what otherwise might have been even more wipes. Having us all on Ventrilo has been a big help also. There’s little I find more intense in this game, than something going wrong on a pull and somebody tossing out some crazy idea over voice chat, and then having it actually work. I even got to do some emergency trapwork a few of these times, and I think I did a pretty good job of it, too.

So now I’ve got the first half of the Arcatraz key, and if things go as planned I will be getting the second half tomorrow. I haven’t gotten any “phat dungeon lewts” in a while so hopefully those are in the cards, but on the other hand, I’m really just doing these instances for the fun of it and for the whole experience of doing one. The loot is just secondary.

I have to say, WoW has taught me more about teamwork than any school “group projects” or even any real-life, money-making job. The only other thing I have ever felt so much teamwork in, was Orchestra back when I used to play the cello in school. There were times when you were playing music when you just really “got it” and realized that you were all working together, playing parts that all sounded strange alone, to make a beautiful song. Instances in WoW (and battlegrounds too) are really the same way.

I sort of had a realization today in Mech. Basically I checked the damage meters about halfway through, because I wanted to make sure I was doing okay, and because I won’t lie, it’s always thrilled me to be on top. But today when I looked at the meters, the first thing I thought wasn’t “Oh yay I’m on top /flex”. Nope. It was “Wow… look at how well we’re all doing.” The meters looked exactly like they should. Nobody was doing a bad job. Three awesome DPS/CC doing their job and an awesome tank doing his job and an awesome healer doing his job, and together we were clearing this difficult instance. It was really a neat moment for me to feel that same synergy that I haven’t felt since my Orchestra days.

And yet again I realize that a video game has taught me a life lesson. Now if only we can get more people in the general public to realize that games can be good for you! =P