Wow.

Somebody made a character on Silver Hand to say hi to me (and give roleplaying a shot)! I’m quite honored. I’ve gotta thank you all again for your comments and support. It never ceases to amaze me that I’ve got an actual readership, especially because I started this blog mostly to have a place to ramble to myself and provide occasional advice to newbies.

Speaking of which, I’m going to try and provide more guides and “newbie advice”. I’ll definitely keep posting stories and anecdotes though, since a lot of people seem to enjoy them. But I’ll try to sprinkle some guides in here and there too.

Anyways! Level 70. I have to admit, the first few days I actually seemed to come down with an odd case of a Post-70-Funk; that is to say, this whole time I’ve been looking forward to 70 and I had all this stuff I wanted to do at 70, and then I got there and after the initial excitement wore out, I thought about the stuff I’d wanted to do and none of it sounded appealing anymore. However, I think it might have just been some exhaustion over the whole thing; because now after some rest I’m quite happy about being 70 again and I’ve made some goals to work on:

Grinding marks/honor in PvP: For the Gladiator’s Pursuit set. Yes, it’s just the infamous “welfare epics”, but they are definitely not a bad start to a good set of PvP gear. I’ve already snagged myself Gladiator’s Chain Helm and I’m working to complete the set and get them all gem’d and enchanted up.

Karazhan Key Quest Line: I’ve started this one already, got some instances ahead of me though.

Getting Enchants and Stuff: The ever-so-illustrious BRK posted a list of good post-70 pre-Kara gear and enchants. Now I’m probably not going to follow this list 100% to the book but it’s definitely going to be my guide for the time being– and yes I want to work to get the enchants even on my fresh-out-of-Outlands-greens, because I want to be prepared to do my best if asked. First on my list is Glyph of Ferocity, which requires Revered with Cenarion Expedition. I lucked out here in that a.) I loved Zangarmarsh and spent huge amounts of time here; b.) I ran Underbog more than any other Outlands instance; and c.) I still have a lot of Cenarion Expedition quests to do in Blade’s Edge and elsewhere. And I’m already halfway through Honored. So hopefully this one won’t take too long.

Work on getting Sonic Spear: My Survivalist’s Pike with +25 agi has served me long and well but it’s about time for an upgrade.

– Last but not least, Leveling the Pets: Tux is level 66 and Locke is level 68. I’m rather proud of my ability to at least keep them decently close in level with me in the final stretch, though obviously I’d like to get them both to 70. I figure I can do a lot of pet leveling while working on some of my other goals, such as the rep grinding/quests.

I’ve probably got some other stuff to do, but this is the list for the time being! Posted here so I can keep track of them… =P

Do any of you have any other advice for a newly-minted level 70 hunter? Or a newly-minted level 70 in general?

Storytime

Gather round, and I will tell you all a story… (I apologize for the length!)

Way back in May, when I was finishing up university, my boyfriend installed WoW.

…now there was absolutely no way I was going to let him do this without me, so the next day I installed it too.

A few hours later, there I was, looking at the character creation screen…

Me: “Ooooh, Tauren are so cute!! I must make one!!”

The Boyfriend: “Erm, I’m playing Alliance, so you’ll have to also if you want to play with me.”

Me: “Oh. Darn. Well let’s see here. Oooh, Night Elves. They had a pretty cool backstory in Warcraft III. Look, I can even make one with teal hair. My favorite color! *squee* Now for class. Hmm. Oooh, hunter. That sounds sorta like my favorite D&D class, ranger.”

*click*

And thus Tawyn was born.

I spawned as a little level one Night Elf Hunter in Teldrassil and I had no idea what was going on. I clicked on all the little tutorials that popped up, reading them carefully and trying not to forget what they said. “The little gold chalice button is the Quest Log.” “People with a big yellow exclamation point above their head have stuff for you to do.” “Right click to attack.” It was all very confusing. I couldn’t keep a lot of the aspects of this strange new game straight. I found a cute little bunny hopping around and I wanted to select it… so I right-clicked. It died. I felt horrible. The camera angle kept doing strange things, and I had no idea how to change it.

But oh, look, a guy with a big yellow exclamation point above his head! That means he has stuff for me to do, right? He’s telling me to go kill boars. Whee, I’ll go shoot them!

So I did. But then they ran towards me and I couldn’t shoot them anymore. So I whacked away furiously with my dagger, spamming the attack button because I thought that was how you did it. Then I went back triumphantly to get my very first quest reward. I chose some mail gear because it had the most armor so it was obviously the best one. Then I spent about ten minutes trying to figure out why I couldn’t equip it.

Those first few quests weren’t so bad, even though I was still clueless about the game. But around level 4 or so, I found a cave full of spiders and that was a terrible, terrible place. Those spiders killed me more times than I can count. There was another place called “Starbreeze Village” which was filled with cute teddy bears! They killed me too. Hmm.

So by level 6 I was getting pretty discouraged and I was wondering how the heck I was supposed to get to wherever my boyfriend the human warlock was because it didn’t seem to be anywhere in the vicinity. Plus, I’d found a Peacebloom which I wanted to give to him as a present because it was really pretty. So one of my sisters decided to make a level 1 character on my server and show me the way!

Off we went. We rode gryphons and boats and died at the hands of crocodiles and ogres. My sister kept stopping and telling me to talk to strange NPCs with green exclamation marks above their heads. I had no idea why I was doing this, but I did anyway.

Eventually we got to Ironforge and rode a curious little subway thing to Stormwind. I was completely lost but I followed my sister around because she seemed to know what she was doing. I eventually found my boyfriend and opened trade with him to give him my present. But…

Trial accounts cannot trade.

…there was only one thing to do. I bought the game. And gave him the Peacebloom.

So there I was, level 6 and in Stormwind. And– oooh, look that guy’s weapon is all fiery! Mental note to get that someday, whatever it is– I began questing in Goldshire. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience. Murlocs killed me mercilessly and despite the fact that I thought I was pretty handy with my dagger, spamming that attack button and all, I didn’t seem to be doing very well. I rolled my very first alt, a tauren (they’re cute darnit!) druid, and it was a lot more fun. You mean I can cast spells at people and heal? So much cooler than that silly hunter I’d made, pffft. But I kept playing my hunter because I wanted to play with the boyfriend.

Level 10 rolled around and I got this mysterious quest to go back to my hometown and get a pet. I about had a heart attack when I found out I had to go back to Teldrassil, as visions of those evil crocodiles and ogres flashed in my memory. I procrastinated on that quest for a while, because of that. But, eventually, I used my hearthstone (which I had never got around to changing yet) and went back there.

The quest involved me taming a spider, a cat, and an owl. The spider I still had a grudge against from that cave. The cat was cute but I saw cats all over Stormwind (all the hunters wanted them, for some strange reason), and I wanted to be unique. The owl made cute flappy-wing noises. I liked him.

After the quest I was informed that I could go tame a pet of my choosing to keep for as long as I wanted. I freaked out because I instinctively knew that this was a big decision and I didn’t want to screw it up. Frantically I went to my sisters for help, and they directed me to a website called Petopia. I spent about an hour there, cycling through all the pet choices, hardly understanding anything about “DPS” or “skills”. I was going purely on looks, how hard they would be to get (I wanted a raptor but they were in the Barrens, which I assumed was full of Hordies who wanted to kill me, so that was a no-go), and whether the site said they were “offensive”, “defensive”, or “well-rounded.”

I seriously considered a wolf but in the end I went with the owl. There was something endearing about having an owl flapping next to you. I went and tamed a Strigid Hunter and named him Tux.

Back to Stormwind I went, feeling a rush of relief when I managed to get back to Elwynn. I hadn’t liked it at first but it had really grown on me. Now I just had to adjust to life with a pet. I wasn’t exactly sure how it was supposed to work. Was I supposed to put him on aggressive and have him kill things for me? Hmm, nope, he died. OH MY GOSH IS HE GONE FOREVER?? *hyperventilates* Oh wait no, there’s a spell called Revive Pet. *deep breaths*

I know, I’ll shoot stuff and make it come to me and my pet and I can fight it together!

That’s what I did for a while.

…yes. I know.

I moved from Elywnn into Westfall and began questing there. At some point during this period I realized I could teach my owl “Growl”, and I also sort of gained an inkling of the idea of having him tank while I shot stuff. I could now use something called “Talent points”. I asked a couple people (non-hunters) what I should do with them and I was told to put them into the Marksmanship tree, so I did. Improved Concussive Shot, obviously, because a chance at stunning someone sounded about ten times more exciting than increased crit. I thought I was a pretty darn good hunter, despite the fact
that, ya know, I was dying all the time. Boldly I ventured into Deadmines with my pet on aggressive. This was a dungeon afterall. More damage was good, right? Having my pet on aggressive killing stuff was good, right?

The people at my party started yelling at me and telling me to control my pet. I didn’t get it. How was I supposed to control my pet? What did they mean?

At some point they told me trap a mob. I laid down an Immolation Trap and smugly pulled the mob in. I had an ice trap too but I didn’t like it. It didn’t do any damage. Pfft. What kinda lame trap is that, not doing any damage?

We killed VanCleef somehow. The people in my party weren’t very happy because apparently someone had ninja’d a lot of the loot throughout the dungeon. I got angry too. Darn those ninjas! Good thing I somehow got a lot of great stuff though. My bags were full of them. Silly people should know to click Need if they want stuff.

And so I continued my questing, fancying myself as a nice little hunter who’d had some bad luck. I still wasn’t a big fan of the class and I was rolling non-hunter alts all the time, but Tawyn was the highest level so she was the most interesting, so she got the most playtime.

One day I was attacking something and somehow aggro’d something else as well. It ran towards me, with Tux still busy on the first mob. Now I don’t know how or why this idea popped into my head, because it had never ever occurred to me before… but for some reason I hit my never-used Freezing Trap button.

Pop!

I had one mob trapped and out of my way while I took care of the other one. Then I went back and finished the trapped mob.

Afterwards, I blinked. Whoa.

…what a neat trick I’d just discovered! I tried it again. It worked, again. Wow! How fun!

I wondered if hunters had any other little tricks like that.

After I logged off WoW I hit up WoW Wiki and Google, searching for information and help on the hunter class. The first two sites I stumbled across were called The Hunter’s Mark and Big Red Kitty. The Hunter’s Mark had a bunch of stuff on trapping which I read voraciously. Big Red Kitty was filled with math and numbers and strange new phrases I had never heard of before, like “Steady Shot” and “Kill Command”. But it all seemed very important so I bookmarked it.

I hit my 30s and began questing in Desolace. I haven’t forgotten this: me, my boyfriend, and the guy who’d introduced us to WoW playing on an alt, all of us questing in Desolace. At some point we pulled a lot more mobs than we wanted to. And I, ever in love with my little trick, trapped a mob while we took out the others.

The friend said in party chat, “Great use of your traps Tawyn… you’ll make a great hunter.”

Wait… I would?

But everybody was always yelling at me! I was always dying! And yet… I really had the potential to be a good hunter? Great, even?

And that settled it.

I went back to BRK and read the entire thing. Everything. First I read the posts he had linked on his sidebar. Then I went back to his very first post and read the whole blog “cover-to-cover”. I read all the comments. Took a few days. I tried to internalize as much as I could. I didn’t understand a lot of it but I read it anyway. I went to The Hunter’s Mark, too, and read as much of it as I could and watched the movies that had been posted. Then I started clicking on links and on the names of the commenters. More blogs to read! I never said anything, I just lurked and read.

Somehow, between all that reading and learning and the playing and practicing, something clicked.

Suddenly I couldn’t play my non-hunter alts anymore. They were awkward. They didn’t have that special, unique quality that my hunter did. They weren’t me. I remember I rolled a troll warrior on some friends’ server with the express purpose of making her my “main alt.” I got to level 7 or 8 or so and had to stop, I just wasn’t having fun or enjoying myself at all. The next day I went back to that server and rolled a hunter. Today she’s my second-highest level character.

More leveling, more questing. More… erm… very interesting adventures as you can see from the above screenshot. And slowly I incorporated what I had been learning from various blogs into my gameplay. I was using my traps. I was teaching my pet the right skills. I had my pet under control. I was no longer a hindrance in groups, but a help. I stayed Marksman until level 50 because I was comfortable with it; but here is where the Grand Respec Phase came and I messed around with specs for a while before settling on, whaddaya know, 41/20/0. I hit 58 and Outlands. Things kept improving for me. I began topping charts in battlegrounds. I began topping charts in instances. People began specifically asking me to instance with them– apparently I’ve improved a little since Deadmines.

Most importantly, I discovered something that I could practice and take pride in. It might sound a little silly to a lot of people if I were to compare playing my class in World of Warcraft, to honing one’s skills in a sport or art form. But that’s sort of what it became to me. And it taught me that no matter how horrible you are at something– a little coaching and a little practice can work wonders.

And now…?

I am a hunter.

And as of today, I am level 70.

Thanks, WoW bloggers. I couldn’t have done it without you guys. (Well, I could have, but… it wouldn’t have been a pretty sight. /twitch) I can only hope that my own little site will be as helpful to some other inquisitive newbie someday.

Dear Google

Every so often I check my Sitemeter referrals to see how people are finding my blog. I do this mostly to see if anyone is linking to me that I don’t know about yet, so I can go check out their site and perhaps reciprocate the link =D But a lot of people find my site through Google, too. There are a few search terms that people consistently seem to be finding my site from; I wanted to address some of those here. So without further ado…

If you have found my site through Google and are searching for information on one of the following things, here is any help I can offer:

Pike World
: This is probably the one that I get the most hits from. I have no idea what Pike World is but it sure is popular. I’ve Google’d it myself and the closest thing I can find to a “Pike World” is “Pike’s World: Exploration and Empire in the Greater Southwest”, a museum exhibit in Colorado that I don’t think is around anymore. If this sounds like what you were searching for, then here’s a link to it.

Leveling a low-level pet in WoW: Unfortunately I know of no easy way to do this. Once, quite some time ago, I wrote a post on my own attempts at doing this and my own little strategy. You can find that post here. However, keep in mind that I wrote that post a few months ago when I was still in my 50s, level-wise. Also keep in mind that I think this mostly comes down to finding your own little strategy. The next patch should make pets level up faster, though, so that’s always a plus. For more general pet-related information I direct you to Petopia and Mania’s Arcania. A quick search of my own also turned up this guide.

Linux and WoW: I wrote up a basic Q&A about this which you can find here. You might want to try searching for information regarding your specific distro. If you use a ‘buntu then I can’t recommend Ubuntu Forums enough.

Linux and Ventrilo: Unfortunately I have yet to get Ventrilo working entirely on Linux, although I plan on making a more concerted effort sometime soon. The best advice I can give to you is to check out this thread on Ubuntu Forums, and also this great guide over at Synarch (the blog formerly known as /dev/random).

Funny WoW Huntard Stories: /chuckle Well, I’m sure you can find a few of ’em if you look around my site long enough… though I try to focus more on being a “good huntard”…

Hunters in Battlegrounds
: I wrote up a few basic information posts on being a hunter in battlegrounds, the series starts here. They are more aimed for PvP-newbies, though, so if you have some experience already they might be too “basic” for you.

Guides on How To Be a Good Hunter: While I am immensely flattered that my blog somehow shows up when you search for this… I cannot in good conscience keep anyone away from BigRedKitty. Read the articles he has posted on his sidebar under “Hunter Training List”. Read the comments. Read more articles. Visit his forums and ask questions.

If for some reason you come back to my blog after feasting on the wisdom of BRK, then glance at the blogs I have in my blogrolls on my sidebar. Click on some links and explore them. There are a lot of blogs out there that provide very valuable information.

…if after that you still come back to my blog for some reason, well make yourself at home and feel free to leave me a comment or question or two. ^^

Alrighty, there you have it, Google-searchers! Have fun.

Instances and Groups

The other day I wound up in a partial-PuG and partial-guildies group for Steamvaults. This was probably not a wise idea for many reasons, including the fact that it’s a level 70 instance and we were all hovering around level 68, and as it turned out… the PuG members were rather… less than ideal.

I went into it really wanting to do a good job, because the healer whispered me and begged me to be a good hunter, he told me that the last five or so hunters he’d grouped with had been horrible. So of course, this is where Pike’s HUNTER-PRIDE ACTIVATED! And I told him not to worry. But it just wasn’t meant to be. We were wiping on every other pull, we were having issues with the PuG’d people, gigantic annoying plants kept blocking everybody’s vision, and overall it just wasn’t working. So we scrapped the run.

We still wanted to do an instance, though, so we said goodbye to the PuG-players and picked up people from our guild to flesh out our little party. This particular party now was one that we had all been in many times before– our usual tank, our usual healer, and I as the usual CC, etc. We decided to do Escape from Durnholde Keep.

How was the instance run? Well, by most standards, I think, it went pretty well. We had a couple problems and a couple wipes (one of which was entirely my fault, by the way; it involved me not paying attention and running blindly around a corner straight into a bunch of mobs) and a couple near-wipes, but overall the run went well; all the group members were fulfilling their role’s function to above-satisfactory levels and for the most part, everything went smoothly.

However, we all left the instance feeling sort of less-than-satisfied and thinking we could have done a lot better.

It was kind of odd, but then I thought about it and I started thinking: maybe it’s just the fact that our group has worked together so many times before. We’ve grown a sort of synergy with each other, and developed high expectations of each other, and acknowledge that there are high expectations on us as individual group members; so when a run isn’t 100% flawless, we sort of beat ourselves up over it. That’s my guess over why we felt so unsatisfied.

I’m still trying to decide if those high-expectations are a good thing for a guild or group to have, or if it might cause issues down the road if everyone is striving for “that perfect run” and it is always a little bit out of our reach. We are a very laid-back social and light-roleplaying guild, but we also have a core group of higher-level instance-running members and our expectations for instance-running people are pretty high. I hope that’s the right attitude to have and that it doesn’t cause problems later on. I can’t say, because this is my first time around, so I can really just hope.

Anyways, I hit level 69 last night. It’s very surreal how close I am to 70…

Oh, and before I forget: Escape from Durnholde Keep is the coolest instance idea ever. I ran around Old Hillsbrad for about a half hour after the instance was done, geeking out over the lore.

It's that time of the level-bracket again.

I’ve sort of been taken a break from leveling this whole past week. There were two main reasons for this. The first one is that The Boyfriend (hmm, should I call him Mr. Pike? Heehee) has been pretty busy, so he got about a level behind me. We try to stay equal in level, especially as we’re approaching 70, so I told him I would wait to level until he’d caught up.

The second reason is that I decided it would be fun to focus on PvP for a while. The reasons for this include wanting to stockpile honor and marks now so I have a jump on the level 70 PvP gear (I learned the hard way yesterday that going into the level 70 bracket AV with level 68 gear is… not a pleasant experience)… and the fact that I just plain like battlegrounds. I think my PvP skill is improving, too… I will still refrain from calling myself very good at PvP, but it felt good to see this:


I am usually near the top of the “Damage Done” charts, but I am very rarely actually first, so it was a nice surprise to see this. I’ve also noticed that my kiting skills have improved lately, and I’ve discovered a lot of little things about playing hunters in PvP that I should have known before, but didn’t. For example: Rogues love Serpent Sting. …actually, they really hate it. *cough* Because they can’t stealth if they’ve got it. I never knew this before! Fantastic. Oh, and The Beast Within handily works as, effectively, a second trinket. I didn’t know this either. Oh the fun I’ve had since I found this out. Can’t regain distance because of a warrior’s Hamstring or a rogue’s Crippling Poison? Pop The Beast Within and get back to business.

Speaking of which, I’ve noticed lately that there’s sort of been a complete turnaround for me in terms of classes that I do well against and classes that I don’t do well against. In my earlier levels, warriors and rogues were the bane of my existence. These days, I do quite well against them. Meanwhile, warlocks, who I was always pretty good at taking out before, have suddenly become near-invincible. I’m not sure if it has to do with the talents of our respective classes, or if it’s just a change in my playstyle, or maybe both. But it’s quite interesting.

Anyways, while I’ve had a lot of fun in the battlegrounds this week, I have been bitten by the dreaded Level 70 Bug, so I’ve started up my questing again. The newly-christened Mr. Pike is now at level 68 with me and we want to spend the weekend leveling. We’ll see how far we get!

My First Screenshot

Firstly, I would like to thank everyone for their input on my question about WordPress. When it comes down to it, I don’t really have any big plans for this blog (yet), and a custom domain name would be nice but it’s definitely not a top priority right now. This would suggest that sticking to Blogger would be just fine, but I am curious about the types of customization that WordPress seems to offer. So I think I will probably end up making a WordPress blog and messing around with it for a while, and then deciding whether to make the switch or not. Either way, I will keep you all posted.

However, this post is about something entirely different, namely, the first screenshot that I ever took in WoW:


That, my friends, is Tawyn Q. Huntard, Esq.

I don’t have Hunter’s Mark on my action bars anywhere because I figured I’d run out of room to put new spells, and Hunter’s Mark didn’t sound very exciting to me anyway.

Tux is there, yes, which is a wonder because I had no food for him when I first tamed him and now that I look back on it I’m lucky I managed to get some food in time. You will notice he does not know Growl. I had no idea that move existed; my general strategy at this point was shoot stuff and make it come to me so my pet and I could melee it together. Yes… it’s sad, but true.

The raid icon is above my head because I’d been grouping with a friend who wanted to show me around and they started messing around and putting those icons above my head, which was freaking me out because I had no idea what they were or what they did.

I am in Menethil because I was whisked away to Stormwind at the wee level of 6, but at level 10 I got the quest to tame my first pet and I had to return to Teldrassil. I used my hearth to get back (since I’d forgotten to set it to something in the human lands), but it was on the trek back with my new pet that I forgot all about the flight paths I had collected last time and I needessly walked basically the entire way, dying multiple times.

The reason I took this screenshot was because I found it amusing that the Menethil Sentry was partially submerged in the ground. Ironic that now I see things like that all over the place in Outlands… heehee =P

So yeah. At least I had Aspect of the Hawk on…

I’d like to think Tux and I are doing a lot better these days.

You readers, if you are up to it, are hearby dared to post or link to the newbie-est screenshot of yourself that you can find!

(Oh, and ding 68)

Quick Blog-Related Question

The new current fad seems to be switching from Blogger to WordPress; BRK just did it yesterday but a lot of other bloggers have done it recently as well.

What I’m wondering is… would it be worth it for me to make the switch as well? I know a lot of people have been praising WordPress for being more customizable and whatnot… I guess I’m just curious to know a comparison of some of the features they offer verses some of the ones Blogger does. Because up ’til now I’ve sort of been taking the view of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, which is why I’ve been sticking with Blogger.

Another reason I’m wary of switching is because I don’t want to annoy people with having to update bookmarks or RSS feeds or blogrolls. And I worry my readership might take a bit of a hit– not that I’m super popular or anything, but 60-70 hits a day really isn’t too shabby, and I kinda like those hits… makes me think I might actually be a decent writer or something! =P

So I will leave the opinions open to you guys; because you guys are the ones who read my blog so I’d like to know what you think. Do the benefits of moving to WordPress outweigh the possible cons? Are there any other good blogging software or sites out there that I should consider also? My personal journal is over at LiveJournal (and has been for over three years) but even though I love LJ it’s more for exactly that, personal journals, instead of blogging.

What do you guys think?

Lessons Learned in Warsong Gulch

People respond to kindness:

I’m sure most of you have been there. The battlegrounds game where within five minutes, somebody has, say… taken the flag but then something goes wrong and they lose it. And then somebody pipes up with “Wow you guys suck.”

I’m here to say… don’t let your team have that attitude.

“Nah, we don’t suck, we just got off to a bad start”, I said. “Come on, we can do it.”

“Yeah,” a couple other people sort of tentatively agreed.

And so we were off again. After some hard battling we managed to capture a flag.

“See? We can do it. Now we just have to keep it up.”

That was basically really all I had to say. It took off from there, people encouraging each other, thanking each other, and helping each other out. Mr. “Wow-you-guys-suck” decided to be obnoxious again at some point, proudly proclaiming his top position on the damage meters to everyone and making a big deal out of “why can’t you guys keep up”, but a quick “Yes, you’re doing a good job, keep it up everyone” reminded him that it was a group effort and hushed him up pretty quick.

Somehow, someway, after nearly an hour-long game, our scrappy little team won that Warsong Gulch game 3-0. Even with one of our members AFK nearly the entire time. Furthermore, while Mr. Originally-Obnoxious-But-Really-Not-So-Bad kept his top spot in the damage charts at the end, there were four more of us up there with him.

Was it my encouragement and our team’s overall helpful attitude that gave us this victory? Maybe we’ll never know. But I’d like to think that it at least helped a little. I’ve had similar things happen to me before; our team coming from behind and winning not because of our skill so much as because of our attitude. Don’t underestimate the power of a little encouragement; it can go a long way.

I love worthy opponents:

I ran across a female orc hunter in a completely different WSG match. She was Beast Mastery spec’d, like myself, and she and her bright green Windserpent were good. At some point early on in the game, I think we both subconsciously decided that it was a matter of hunter pride to make each other our sparring partner, so throughout the entire game we were hunting each other down and taking each other on 1 on 1. Sometimes I won, but most of the time she did. I’ve long thought that most hunter-on-hunter matches come down to gear and stamina, but this orc had skill. You could tell. I wish I’d had time to /salute her before the game ended, she was a fun opponent.

Level 19 Mage PvP
:

My mage got to level 19 and I took her to WSG a few times. It was my first time PvP’ing as something other than a hunter, and I’d like to think I did decently, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. Not to mention that it’s tough being a squishy in there.

Somehow I managed to do less overall relative damage than I do as a hunter, but got a lot more killing blows. It was kind of strange.

Not being able to track people was driving me insane, though, and I missed all the other hunter abilities too. After a few games I missed my hunter so much that I had to log out of the mage and onto the hunter, and that’s where the previous WSG stories came from.

Just a few more levels until the level 70 battlegrounds! If any of you guys happen to play on the US battlegroup “Bloodlust” then I look forward to working with you… or sparring with you!… soon. Give me a /wave!

Everyday I'm Huntering