So I was feeling pretty happy about hitting 20k words (exactly!) in my NaNoWriMo today so I decided to dink around in WoW for an hour or two.

The first cool thing that happened was getting WSG for my random battleground, seeing that our ragtag group of team members was up against a pre-made, deciding to stick around anyway… aaaand then notching up a win. Against the pre-made. I giggled.

The second cool thing that happened was that I decided to clear out my quest log before Cataclysm so I was doing this random quest down in Howling Fjord and I happened to stumble upon this huge gigantic elite polar bear as part of the quest. So obviously I tamed him.

So there I was, doing pretty good for a random WoW break, so I hopped onto my Netherdrake and sort of aimlessly started to fly around in a general Northerly direction. I had the music on (which is rare) and it was nice and calm and atmospheric and I was kind of thinking about the good times I’d enjoyed with this expansion and how it was almost over.

And this is when the third cool thing happened. See, I somehow wound up in Zul’drak during this little jaunt, and a little voice popped into my brain. The little voice said, “Hey, isn’t there a spirit beast around here or something?”

And I said, “Hey, I think there is! Let’s turn on Track Beasts for the heck of it.”

So I turned on Track Beasts.

And the second I did, this little yellow dot appeared on my minimap.

I moused over it and it said “Gondria”.

>.>

…

This is, believe it or not, my very first Spirit Beast. I know Gondria is sort of seen as the Poor Man’s Loque, but I’m already in love with my Shiny Ghost Kitty who, because of his heal, has already proven himself to live through things that would have killed any of my other pets. (Read: the last boss in Gundrak who does that thing, I’m not sure what it is, that KILLS PETS DEAD.)

I had to release my newly-tamed polar bear to get Gondria. But don’t worry. I went back and got the same bear again afterwards. :3

Hi dead blog! *pokes with stick*

I figured I should write something. So here I am. Hooray! And as a bit of a double bonus, I figured I’d return to my roots and actually write something huntery. Double Hooray! So intense!

So, here’s the deal. As of now, I sort of consider myself to be a… triple-spec’d hunter. As we probably all know by now, I have two level 80 hunters. Well, Tawyn‘s been rocking her Beast Mastery main spec and her Marskmanship Fun spec. And for a while, poor neglected Lunapike was rocking the Beast Mastery spec as well. But of course, right?

Well, recently I blew the dust off of the latter and decided to start playing her again. At that point, I hadn’t seriously played her in months, so she was decked out in a bunch of super-old-school stuff like dungeon blues, heroic purples, and Nesingwary. Spec’d Beast Mastery she was getting maybe 3k in heroics, which is like… half of what Tawyn does on a lazy day. Beast Mastery is a fickle, gear-dependent creature.

Anyways I sort of missed big numbers and I was feeling ambitious and I knew I didn’t have the gear for Marksmanship so I went Survival. Yup. Now for those of you just tuning in, my grumblings about Survival are pretty well-known. I’ve ranted about it many-a-time in this blog: how much I dislike the rotation and basically find it un-fun in every way. It’s why Tawyn’s dual spec is Marskmanship.

…so I’m not sure what I was smoking when I decided to go Survival, but go Survival I did, and you know what? This time around I really enjoy it. I’m not even sure why. I think it finally “clicked”. I mean, in essence it’s a very similar rotation to Beast Mastery, except that stuff is on lower cooldowns, so you have to be a bit quicker on your feet… and you get Lock and Load. By the way, Lock and Load is super fun. It’s tied to Black Arrow, so once you figure out how best to use that one, you’re good to go.

I can also see why SV is the recommended “Freshly Minted 80 Hunter” spec. Upon spec’ing it and heading into dungeons, it was basically like… Go Directly to 50% more DPS, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. It was very plug-and-play.

Anyways, I have also rediscovered my love of level 80 PvP. I love pre-50 BGs to death, but the endgame stuff with all the resilience and everything was never really my bag. But I did so many BGs on Lunapike this last weekend, and had a blast. It feels like I have a ton of toys to play with as Survival.

But yeah. Sorry for the massive TLDR. I’d break this up with pictures but WoW is down and I’m too lazy to go hunting through my screenshot folder.

If you want me to write about something in specific, lemme know, because I’m having a terrible time coming up with stuff to put in this blog lately. Just keep in mind that I’m still pretty much retired-from-raiding so super intense strategy guides are probably out, but most everything else is open game.

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*

*Pike hobbles out with a cane*

Gather round, whippersnappers, Granny Pike’s got a story… see… I bet you all don’t remember the war! Yes, the Frostwolf-Stormpike war. Hey now, none o’ this crying and “But I learned this in schoooool”. Your teachers probably weren’t there in the trenches like I was!

See, I was a part of this war effort quite often, and the brackets always ended in a good even number. 51-60, 61-70, and then in Wrath of the Lich King, 71-80. That’s tradition, it’s always how it’s been done, dadgumit!

So then I retired from the wars and went off to fight dragons and the like instead. Now now, Granny Pike’s not done tellin’ her Alterac Valley story yet.

Today I decided to go back there: I have a couple of level 60s now, see, and I wanted to see how my beloved Nightfall Horde 51-60 bracket was faring. Not good, unfortunately. I can tell you the reason though, it starts with an “E” and ends with an “verybody rerolled Alliance Death Knights”. But now I’m just ramblin’.

I get into this battle and I’m all ready and rarin’ to go and these grasshoppers all start up with some nonsense about how “The end is near! The patch ruined my AV!” because level 60s are in their bracket. Now I may be old, but I know my AV, so I says to ‘em, “What’re you kids flapping your gums about, that’s how it’s always been!” But they didn’t listen to me, or… perhaps they were already halfway to Tower Point because my wheelchair is Not a Very Fast Mount.

Regardless, I decided to leave Alterac Valley for the youngsters and consulted the Internet for an answer. It seems as though at some point between now and when I last played AV in the good ol’ days, they had in fact changed the bracket to a top level of 59, and this latest patch was just now changing it back.

And you know what I say to that? I say GOOD! You don’t go changin’ around a classic with newfangled rules! That’s just wrong!

*at this point Pike is waving her cane around frantically*

Ah, well, I’ll let you young’uns go now. I have a lawn to chase kids off of. Tell ya what, come back tomorrow and I’ll bake cookies. …if I can figure out how, anyway…

*Pike hobbles off, mumbling to herself*

So feeling nostalgic after my last post, I decided to give Arathi Basin a whirl on my level 46 hunter. AB is arguably my favorite battleground; WSG is a sentimental favorite but it’s in a masochistic sort of way and I’m sort of afraid to go in there now that it’s changed, AV used to have that epic feel but has turned into a zergfest, and EotS… well, we won’t go there.

Turns out the Intimidation + Bestial Wrath combo on a clothie is just as fun as it was years ago, and turns out pouncing on an unsuspecting hunter and Wing Clip + melee’ing him to death while he stands there stunned is still absolutely hilarious.

Gosh I love PvPing as a hunter. Nothing else compares, really. Healing is funnish and a nice change of pace but it’s nothing compared to huntering. I always wonder what people are on about when they say hunters need a buff in PvP– to be fair, I know they’re talking about arenas, and I’m talking about lowbie bracket battlegrounds, and there is a huge difference– but gosh I feel OP, and I luuuurve it. I basically never die, even when taking on groups of people alone. Really the only downfall is that you run out of mana far too quickly, and then regenning mana takes pretty much twice as long. >.>

So yeah, this AB. I went in and we were getting the whole “Not enough players… this BG will end in five minutes” dealy. I looked at the scorechart; Alliance had a full 15 players and us Hordies had five or six or something. I contemplated leaving, anticipating a five-cap stomp, but then said “ya know what, screw it,” and ran off to Lumber Mill.

We took Farm and took Lumber Mill, and for several minutes I was the lone person defending Lumber Mill as everyone else ran off to Blacksmith. This is where I single-handedly took on groups of two or three Alliance who kept trying to come attack me and who all failed miserably. Did I mention I love being a hunter in battlegrounds?

Anyways, we were getting more and more Hordies by the minute and finally fulled out to a full 15 vs. 15 AB. We were on a roll at this point, Alliance had no chance. Like there were a good six of them defending Mines, so we did a two-pronged attack on them, two or three of us attacking from each side, and just nabbed it out from under their nose. By the time we won we had about double the resources that they had. It was hilarious.

Almost as fun as an instance, a nice break from questing, and you get XP. Yay! I love you Arathi Basin.

There are a lot of posts about PvP and stuff on the blogosphere lately and while I have no intention to touch on the “balance” debate, it has got me thinking a little about PvP in general and how my personal feelings towards it have sort of changed.

When I was leveling my first character, I liked battlegrounds, a lot. Anytime I got to a level that ended in 7, 8, or 9, I would effectively stop leveling for a good few weeks so I could spend lots of quality time in battlegrounds. It was fun. Alliance always lost. I loved it anyway. I did Alterac Valley over and over and over again for Ice Barbed Spear, it took like twelve games before Alliance actually won. It was exhilarating.

I got to 70 and while I was mostly doing instances at this point, I decided that I was sick of staring at Valanos’ Longbow and decided to grind honor and marks for a super shiny PvP bow. Later I found out that the bow didn’t have particularly good stats for PvE, but no matter, it was pretty and I was a noob, and I wanted it.

This is where my experience with PvP started to sour. See, not only does Alliance on Bloodlust absolutely suck at BGs (or did, back then, I dunno if they still do), but premades were rampant. 99% of the time you got into a game, you were against a premade, being camped in the graveyard or the little floaty island in Eye of the Storm. Now, because I was super stubborn and thought premades ruined the PvP experience, I never participated in them. Unfortunately, everybody else, well, did.

I got that bow. I got it after weeks of drearily being graveyard camped by premades. Weeks of dreading queuing up for another resounding AV loss that consisted of me repeatedly being demolished by people that were decked out in five million resilience. Weeks of queuing in and randomly winding up as the sole Silver Hand player in an otherwise “hardcore PvP server” premade and being taunted and spammed the entire time with “LOL RP SERVAR” which would often even segue into sexist remarks. It was an awful experience. I longed for the days of pre-70 battlegrounds which were fun and exciting. I actually did a lot of battlegrounds on low-level characters to make up for it, but it wasn’t the same somehow, because I knew that those characters would eventually hit level 70 and battlegrounds would die again.

I can’t remember when the new anti-premade change (aka BEST CHANGE EVER) came about. But I’m pretty sure it encouraged me to do enough PvP that I wound up with some Merciless Gladiator gear, for the express purpose of having PvP gear when I wanted to PvP. I figured, hey, if you can’t beat the people with five million resilience, join ‘em! But by that point it was sorta too late. I was tired of PvP. My friends and I were having a blast in heroics and Kara and that sort of eclipsed battlegrounds as “my thing”. Once I had all my PvP gear, I actually PvP’d, like… twice, maybe. Once was in an arena and I hated it so never went back. But yeah, it was silly. All dressed up and no interest in going anywhere.

So then we get this expansion. I get to 80. I do a ton of Heroics and Naxx a million times. My “PvP gear set” was woefully outdated but I had absolutely zero motivation to grind for PvP gear again. But one day, I realized that I had tons of extra badges. I pondered what to do with them. Then, on a lark, I bought some entry level PvP gear, donned them and some pants I’d won out of VoA, and headed into Alterac Valley.

Much to my surprise, in the long, long months it’d been since I’d been in AV on that battlegroup… Alliance had figured out how to win. Back when I had been into Battlegrounds, this would have been the happiest day ever. But no… it was just “meh” to me. The magic had somehow gone out of AV. It was actually quite a tragic realization… it depressed me a little. Healing it on my druid was a little more fun and kept my interest for a few hours but then it just became “meh” again.

I’ve never been into Wintergrasp (other than for VoA) or any of the new battlegrounds; I’ve no interest. I know I’m going to get the overwhelming “OMG WINTERGRASP IS SO DIFFERENT, YOU’LL LOVE IT” comments, and it’s probably true, but… I dunno. I just can’t motivate myself to get in there.

Now I want to make one thing very clear, I don’t have anything against PvP, or people who are primarily PvP players, or anything like that. I respect good PvPers and wish I was among them, cause I’m not. And ya know what, the occasional battleground on my lowbie is still fun, especially now that you can get XP for it. World PvP I’m iffy on– I enjoy it if it’s a fair fight, and the whole “contested territory” thing is fun in a prickly-feeling-on-the-back-of-your-neck kind of way, but I don’t and never will understand “ganking”.

But yeah, I figured you all deserved an explanation on why I used to talk about PvP a lot back in the day on this blog, and don’t really anymore.

Someday, though, I maintain hope that battlegrounds will get that “spark” back. I have very fond memories of Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, Alterac Valley… and lots of lessons that helped shape me into the hunter I am today. Someday I’m going to go back and they’ll all be just as fun as they were the first time a scrappy little band of underdogs won AV. The first time we had 0/3 flags capped in WSG and Horde had 2/3, and somehow, an hour later, we’d won. The first time an AB game went down to the wire.

I’m eagerly awaiting that day…

At some point between the last time I seriously PvP’d (’bout a year ago) and now, Bloodlust Alliance figured out how to win Alterac Valley!

=D

…okay, so, while that is good news, it’s probably not the good news you came here to read. Fortunately, I have other good news. The latest rumblings on the PTR are the impending change to Animal Handler. This talent has changed much through the years. Initially it gave your pet some extra Hit, which was rendered obsolete with hit scaling. Then it gave your pet expertise, and that, too, is about to be made obsolete. So now what’s it gonna do? Increase your pet’s Attack Power by 5%/10%.

For the record, that is awesome. And though I have no hard numbers, if Blizz delivers that plus expands on pet scaling like they said they wanted to in time for 3.2, combined with the impending weird Kill Command reduction on Catlike Reflexes and the Wild Hunt buff… I’m guessing that Beast Mastery is pretty much “fixed”.

Gotta say I am a bit worried, though. Remember why Blizz nerfed us last time? A lot of it was because pets were doing over 50% of our damage and they said that was too much. To which I actually agree– I love having a pet doing, oh… 35, 40% of my damage, but anything over 50% makes me too uncomfortable. Anyways, Blizz nerfed the pets, while forgetting to, well, really buff the hunter to counterbalance it.

Anyways, with all these new changes I don’t see any way that a Beast Master pet won’t be back up to 50% or more of a Beast Master hunter’s total DPS, and I worry that Blizz will have their nerfbat at the ready again. But who can say, really? It’s one of those things where we’ll just have to wait and see. At least the Blues know we could use some love, and that’s always a good sign.