Monthly Archives: November 2008

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Onward Ever Onward

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Tawyn dinged 75 last night. I actually am about 25% through that level already, in no small part because I tagged along with Mr. Pike who has this knack for being able to glance at his quest log and instantly know where to go and what to do and in what order (don’t deny it, hon). So I was able to finish several quests in the space of about an hour that it would have taken me all day to do otherwise.

Have I mentioned lately that I stink at leveling? I have? Ah, never mind then. The ironic thing is that it’s probably my favorite part of the game, really.

Speaking of Mr. Pike, he’s trying to level his enchanting, so this means I get to be the lucky test subject on all his free or near-free enchants. Super Stats on chest? Yes please. +16 agi on cloak? Yes please. +38 AP to bracers? Mmm, right here baby. Icewalker on my shiny new blue boots, because their lack of hit rating makes baby Thrall cry so I need a hit enchant to appease him? Yes, very yes.

Toss my druid into the mix and it gets even better; Tamaryn is now toting around +50 Spell Power on her Hellfire Ramparts staff and +23 Spell Power on her Green-Bracers-of-the-Owl, all at the tender level of 61. I gotta say, leveling my druid is jawdroppingly easy; every few days I will hop over to her and announce “Resto druid LFG Ramps/BF/Slave Pens/Underbog”. I get a group invite within about ten seconds, and presto, 40 minutes later I’ve gotten about half a level and, satisfied, I can head back over to work on Tawyn. I’m pretty sure I’ve done a total of three actual quests since hitting level 58, the rest has all been pure instancing. It’s nice and easy and I like it. I even have people complimenting me on my healing, though we all know that’s just part of a hidden agenda to get less hunters and more healers in the LFG channel. =P

Coming up soon: a post on Master’s Call once I’ve had more time to play around with it. Hope you all have a nice weekend!

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In Case I Led Anyone Astray…

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So in my last post I made a gigantically huge and horrific typo and got Longevity and Invigoration confused. Thanks Kantaro for pointing this out.

Just to be clear:

Longevity is the godly talent that I think every BM hunter should have.

Invigoration and Cobra Strikes are iffy to me at this point, and I don’t have either included in my talent build. This may change, but for now… they are not worth it.

That is all. Hopefully nobody thinks I have absolutely lost it for waxing philosophical on the virtues of a talent that I don’t even take. >.> Carry on!

guides, hunter kindergarten

Rez'ing Your Hunter: A Quick Guide

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So you’ve got a hunter parked at level 70 who is an alt that you haven’t played in a while, and you want to get them to 80. Here are a couple quick tips to help answer the questions you may have… (warning: probably BM biased >.>)

Specs
So as you log in to your 70 hunter and are taking a look at your shiny new 0/0/0 spec with 61 talent points to spend, you may feel a bit overwhelmed. I am here to say that the spec doesn’t have to be perfect, you are just going to be leveling. I am also here to say that if you always wanted to try out some talent tree that you haven’t tried yet, then now is a perfect time to do so. All three specs are pretty viable now.

Let’s say you’re going into Beast Mastery whether because you like it or simply because you want to level with it. This is the spec I am currently leaning towards personally in terms of a goal of PvE endgame. No guarantees it’s perfect but it’s what I really like at the moment. It borrows a lot from pre-WotLK talents– for example, you still only need 4/5 in Frenzy– and then picks up new good talents like Aspect Mastery and Invigoration Longevity (WORST TYPO EVER).  The number of deep BM hunters I see running around without Longevity is somewhat mystifying to me… it’s such a godly talent!

You are of course free to move talents around as you see fit. For pure leveling you may opt for 5/5 Endurance Training and 3/3 Thick Hide– really it’s a better choice for the level grind, I’m just stubborn =P Spirit Bond is a much more valid choice now than it was before and I don’t think many people would fault you for choosing that over Animal Handler. Invigoration and Cobra Strikes may wind up being worth it for you. You may want to pick up Aimed Shot in the Marks tree. Go for what you like and try it out!

Pets
There are now three types of pets: Ferocity (PvE/DPS), Cunning (PvP/utility), and Tenacity (Tanking). Note that the description I put in parenthesis for each one is very rough. But you sort of get the general idea. Each type of pet also has their own talent tree which you can spec along side yourself. For the most part, I think you can spec your pets how you think you need to and how you think you will be using that pet. Just as an example I’ve been going something like this (without the extra points) on my kitty, Locke. As you can see, I’ve picked up all the DPS-type talents and Cobra Reflexes (the faster your pet is attacking, the more he is proc’ing Ferocious Inspiration for you and your raid.) Pet respecs are cheap so it’s not a big deal if you screw up. =P Oh, and the 51-point Beast Mastery talent will get you four extra talent points for your pets to use.

I see a lot of people in Trade asking about which is “the best” pet but really it’s very flexible and situational. Each pet gets a special unique family “skill” now so you may want to look into those and see which ones you like. Also, just because a pet is a Tenacity pet doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be leveling with it– I’ve been alternating between a Cunning pet and a Ferocity pet myself!

Exotic Pets
The 51-point BM talent lets you tame “exotic” pets. Exotic pets are stuff like core hounds, devilsaurs, giant worms, chimaeras… stuff like that. Exotic pets typically tend to have a special ability that is above-average and at some point Blizzard said they were going to buff the damage of exotic pets in the future, by 10% or something. In the meantime, for most hunters, I don’t think an Exotic Pet is really a necessity. They’re fun to play with though =P

Glyphs
Myself, I’ve just been picking up glyphs as I go and experimenting with them and replacing them at will. The must-haves I have found at this point are Glyph of Steady Shot (this is the big reason why Serpent Sting is awesome now for BM hunters) and Glyph of Bestial Wrath (can you really say no to that?) I have also found Glyph of Freezing Trap to be pretty nice for chain trapping but I dunno if it would be something I keep around at 80– it remains to be seen if trapping will even be seen much in five-mans anymore now that tank AoE got so buffed!

Well, since the title pledged that this would be “A Quick Guide”, I’d best stop here. If you’ve still got questions leave a comment, and I will see about making a Part Two!

special

You knew the rules and the lifelines…

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So I had not just one, but THREE screenshots show up in my Inbox today with my Sitemeter showing as 100,000. I also had several screenshots of 99,999 and 100,001, as well as a couple other close ones.

Now I know the original rules were that the “first” screenshot to show up in my Inbox would be ultimately crowned the winner. However all three were submitted within a few minutes of each other, and I would feel reeeeeally bad turning anyone down, so… all three of you will soon be receiving e-mail instructions on how to go about obtaining your own World of WarCute custom avatar!

To all of you near misses, I wanna thank you very much for participating, and stress that I really wish I could make the avatars for everyone. But each one takes an hour and a half to two hours to make. And while I could spend all my free time making them, it would be at the cost of, ya know, writing the blog. And that should probably come first. Regardless, the interest was high enough and encouraging enough that the “Hey, maybe I can sell ’em for $5 or $10 or something” idea that has been kicking around in my head for months now, might actually be more than a dream. I am, afterall, a “Bachelor of Arts” as of 2007. Guess I should be doing something artsy eh?

Really though, thanks once again to everyone. 100,000 pageviews is quite ridiculous (in a good way), and why you guys visit I have no idea. Thanks all <3

screenshots

Ding Dong

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Hit 74 last night. Loving Dragonblight. Loving the Tuskarr. Loving the Red Dragonflight (honestly I have been a big fan of theirs since the War of the Ancients novel trilogy, but the expansion has rekindled the love and I am soooo going to have a Red Drake mount. I don’t care if everyone else gets one too.) Loving Dalaran– it’s like a mall only all the shops are toy shops and instead of a bunch of zombies taking over there are a bunch of gnomes taking over. Much <3. Loving Aspect of the Dragonhawk if mostly for the fact that now I can consolidate two buttons on my actionbar down to one. (...what? Don't give me that look!) Loving the fact that in one more level I'll be plunking my 51st talent point into Beast Mastery (cause I opted to go for some Marks stuff first) and I'll be able to have a pet talent point field day. Well, that'll do it for today. I have a couple of informative-guide-type posts in the works, I swear. =P I leave you with the following screenshot:

“So then after that Sephiroth jerk ganked me, my whole party just left without rezzing me! The nerve! I had to make the corpse run back but they were all gone by then… harumph.”

thoughts

Confessions of a Slow Leveler

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Hi, I’m Pike. I was there at the midnight release of Wrath of the Lich King. I installed it when I got home. I took Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off of work. I have been Wrath’ing it up on Tawyn– my main– for a whole week now. Oh, occasionally I will stop to heal an instance or two on the tree, and I’ve messed around on the Death Knight for a few hours, and sometimes I even stop to eat, sleep, go to work, read or watch House with the boyfriend. But for the most part I have been logged into Tawyn pretty consistently every day.

I am level 72.

75% to level 73, though.

I see lots of people who I cannot imagine play too much more than I do who have already hit 80. I am not one of those people. See, I am a notoriously slow leveler. Always have been. I get lost a lot. I spend 45 minutes looking for quest mobs. I’m super inefficient when it comes to quests. A lot of other people can look at their quest log and glean how to stack the quests together and do them in a certain order for maximum efficiency; me, I do ’em one (maaaaaaaybe two) at a time ’cause I’m easily confused and because my bagspace tends to fill up after about 30 minutes so I have to head back to town all the time.

To compound said matters, I do not use Quest-related addons. I really have no interest in QuestHelper, especially because I’m trying to lesson my overall addon usage in these buggy days, and I will admit that I did use Lightheaded for a week or two a while back before realizing that all it was really saving me was the five seconds that it takes to alt+tab and go to my WoWHead search bar in Firefox. I guess all those five seconds add up, but ehhh. I disabled it and don’t really miss it, though it’s always an option to return to.

On top of that, my guild is pretty dang laid-back about this type of thing, so any potential “guild pressure” is, literally, zero. People have been playing alts, playing Death Knights, or casually instancing their way up to 71 or 72.

You know what though? Other than a slight annoyance at myself for being kinda sucky at the whole questing thing, I don’t mind. I’m fine with being slow. I’m fine with being able to savor all the new content nice and slowly. I am super fine with being in a “we will raid! …eventually!” guild. I mean seriously, you all are talking to someone who didn’t step foot into Karazhan until like… March or April of this year. Someone who spent about four months doing the Karazhan key quest line. I’m happy with how things worked out… I’ve got no regrets. I knew a lot of ways I could’ve gotten into heavier raiding that summer, but I chose not to. So it’s not like the doors were all shut on me cause I was slow. I just decided there were other things I’d rather be doing (like, ya know, leveling a second hunter to 70).

Well, I’m off to work now. I’d like to think I’ll hit level 73 tonight. If not, that’s okay. =P

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Shot Through the Heart and I'm to Blame

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So at level 71, you get Kill Shot. Let’s talk about it a little.

Kill Shot is sort of like an Old School Aimed Shot, in that it does a ton of damage and it doesn’t just crit, it Mondo-Crits. The big differences between it and Old School Aimed Shot are 1.) No cast time, and much more importantly, 2.) It can only be used on an enemy with 20% health or less. In short, this is the shot that is supposed to “finish off” your target.

I’ve been playing around with it for the past level, not enough to be able to write up a Hunter Kindergarten post on it yet but enough to discuss some initial thoughts on it. Here is what I have found:

1.) Kill Shot makes me happy because it’s sort of like the New Kill Command. Er, the New OLD Kill Command. When I can use it, one of my addons (not sure which one >.>) pops me up a warning telling me I can use it, just like it used to do with Kill Command before it changed. I always dig that kind of stuff.

2.) Most of the time when out leveling/questing, you kill stuff too fast for Kill Shot to be useful. Two reasons for this: Your pet is still pounding away at the mob (especially if you are BM and your pet is doing lots of damage), and you are typically mid-shot-rotation. If you’ve just queued up a Steady Shot, and your Kill Shot opens up, by the time your Steady Shot goes off your mob is probably already dead either to your pet or to your Steady Shot.

3.) It has a fairly long cooldown of 35 seconds, presumably to prevent you from spamming it at the end of a long boss fight.

Now let’s talk about some situations where it might be really handy but where I haven’t tested it yet:

1.) Those aforementioned super long boss fights. I’m sure most of you who have done a little raiding can think of at least one boss that always seems to take eons. Every boss will get at least one Kill Shot, but if the boss is at 20% health or less for more than 35 seconds, that’s more than one Kill Shot– almost two Kill Shots for every minute. And Kill Shots are huge so that’s gonna be a nice little bonus for you.

2.) PvP. It always takes longer to beat a fellow player than it does most quest mobs because of stuff like stamina, resilience, et al. I haven’t done any PvP at all since the expansion hit but I’m sort of thinking a Disengage/Kill Shot combo would be really fun, in an I’m-wearing-a-devilish-grin sort of way.

3.) If you are spec’d into Readiness you can do two Kill Shots in a row. Yeah. I dunno about you guys but I am 99% sure that if I did two Kill Shots in a row, and they both crit, I would blissfully die from hunter ecstasy. Just sayin’. (Has anyone else noticed all the billions of fun things you can suddenly do with Readiness now that it’s easier to spec into? I don’t mean any sort of disrespect to my long-time deep-Survival friends, but its versatility now is really quite amazing.)

In short, I welcome Kill Shot to the Hunter Abilities Stable and look forward to learning about its uses even more!

Now I go to do important things, like eat breakfast, and play WoW. Not necessarily in that order…

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This Is The Ultimate Showdown (Of Ultimate Destiny)

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So, guys. You see that Sitemeter button on my right sidebar (you may need to scroll down a little)?

The one that as of the time of writing says “94,942” but probably says something different by now?

Yeah.

That is how many visits this little site has had so far. Kinda nuts, isn’t it?

Anyways! The important part. The first person to get a screenshot of it saying 100,000 and then e-mail that screenshot to me, gets a free “cute avatar” of their character! Done by yours truly in her silly-cutesy style that you can see on this site! This avatar shall be 100×100 pixels, perfectly sized for using on forums or Armory signatures, and you will be free to use it however you want and wherever you want, all I’d ask is that you credit me if someone asks about it.

And if nobody gets a screenshot of it saying 100,000, I will accept the closest number, so if you see it very close to 100,000, feel free to try your luck anyway!

Just thought it would be a fun thing to do. As always I really appreciate your visits and comments and support, this site wouldn’t be here without you guys!

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Dear Diary

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Today I…

“Surfed” on a harpoon.
Made friends with sentient walruses.
Became the Lich King’s unwitting example in the Spirit World (“Hey, watch what happens when I poke this hunter!” *splat*)
Ran into Kel’Thuzad.
Re-enacted Choplifter on a gryphon.
Rode a Death Knight mount, as a hunter.
Learned where humans came from.
Shot stuff out of the sky, Millennium Falcon-style.
Watched a long-time friend hit 70 and get his flying mount!
Replaced Garona’s Signet Ring with Ring of Indignant Rage.
Got 75% of the way through level 71.
Realized over and over that Blizzard has really truly outdone themselves this time.

What did you do today?