Monthly Archives: January 2009

pets, screenshots, stories, Uncategorized

There Was One She Still Missed, Part Two

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(Continued from Part One)

The Outland.

There were few that remained here now that most of the action was going on in Northrend. Oh, there were some armies still stationed here, and the younger adventurers cutting their teeth in this gods-forsaken land. But for the most part, there was nothing to be seen…

…except perhaps a bright pink raptor wreaking havoc on the moths in Terokkar Forest. And his subsequent containment by the Cenarion Expedition, who proceeded to bring the now caged creature to their main base of operations in Zangarmarsh.

“What do you make of this… creature?” Warden Hamoot asked Kameel, the Stable Master, as he gestured to the raptor furiously thrashing about behind bars. “He does not appear to be like anything else I have seen in this area…”

Kameel nodded. “He is native to the Wetlands in Azeroth,” he said in his deep voice. “How he got up here, I don’t know, but he does not belong here, and so long as he stays I do not think he will be happy.”

“Happy?” the Warden chuckled and lightly scratched his back with his mace. “When we found him he was terrorizing the creatures of Terokkar, they are the ones who only wish to be happy. But you are right, my friend, we must do what is best for this animal. There is a fear in his eyes, and I believe it may be driving him mad, if it hasn’t already. He should go back to the Wetlands.”

“The quickest way would be to take him to Shattrath and through the portal to the dwarves’ city, Ironforge,” replied Kameel. “From there, it would be a relatively short trip by cart to his native land.”

Warden Hamoot shuffled his hooves. He didn’t like using the portals, they relied too much on arcane magic in his eyes, and he was glad that this time he would have a good excuse to not have to use one. “Obviously you and I shall not be able to make the trip to the dwarves’ city, not with the Alliance and Horde still at odds as they are prone to be. You and I would clearly… raise a few eyebrows, so to speak, if we went. But one of our Night Elf colleagues, perhaps…?”

Kameel voiced his agreement and the two tauren went about deciding who the best representative would be as the raptor once again attacked the bars of his cage, letting out a shriek that sent the nearby sea birds soaring away.

—

“Tell that blasted thing to shut up!” the dwarf banged his gun against the bars of the cage, which only provoked the raptor further as the Night Elf druid escorting it tried to calm both of them down. “Why’d ya bring this thing ‘ere into Menethil Harbor anyway, boy? Couldn’t ya have just left it outside tha town?” the dwarf continued to thunder.

“I– I worry about being alone when I release it, just in case–”

“Bah, we could use less o’ those beasties around ‘ere anyway. I say we end the thing.”

A woman’s voice yelled something out in Dwarvish, and the dwarf yelled back “Dearie, ye can’t take away mah gun. It’s a dwarf’s solemn right to have a gun in one hand and an ale in the other–”

Simultaneously the woman snapped something back; the Cenarion escort said “Please, I’ll handle it,” and the raptor screeched out to the heavens as the curious Night Elf hunter approached. The boat from Northrend had landed and was soon to depart, but no commotion was going to take place without Tawyn’s investigation, whether or not she might miss the boat. A druid and a dwarf were rather feverishly discussing something, she observed, and in a cage was a brilliant magenta raptor…

He glanced at Tawyn. Tawyn blinked.

“…Wash?”

In an instant the raptor’s screeches took on a more pleading tone and Tawyn was at the cage. “Let him out. Let him out!” she roared, and it was somehow a bestial enough threat that the dwarf backed away and the druid fumbled at the lock without question.

The padlock fell away and the small crowd that had gathered tensed. The raptor, now quiet, slowly padded out of the cage, off the wooden cart, and up to Tawyn. The hunter reached down and gently stroked his head without a second thought. “What’s wrong, boy…?”

Still, he was silent. Tawyn stared searchingly into this eyes; there was pain therein. Not physical pain though– he had seen something. Something bad…

She thought about how she’d released him in the Outland. Perhaps, on second thought, not a good idea. So much chaos up there–

“You,” she looked at the druid. “What were you doing with him?”

“We– the Cenarion Expedition– found him far from his home, and he was not happy. We were simply bringing him home, to release him here. That is all. I hope I did not interfere with anything…”

“No,” Tawyn smiled thinly. “Thank you for thinking of what was best for him.” She looked down at the raptor. “You’re home now, and safe. Go on now.”

Wash stood his ground; clearly he wasn’t intending to go anywhere. There was still pain in his eyes, but something else too…

He wanted to help.

Tawyn realized what this meant, and nodded. Then she turned and headed towards the ship to Howling Fjord. Wash followed.

“Where are you going?” asked the druid.

“Northrend,” replied Tawyn.

“And why are you taking… him?”

“Because… we are partners.”

wow_tawynwashwetlands

And with that the hunter and her pet got onto the boat, and sailed away into the mists.

(The End!)

Uncategorized

After These Messages We'll Be Right Back

10 Comments

Beast Master hunters in a nutshell:

2009-01-271

(image courtesy Sinfest)

Okay, now then. I would like to thank all the people that commented or e-mailed me involving “The News”. I am in fact well aware of it, and happy about it, though we aren’t out of the woods yet. But it is indeed a very nice thing to be aware of. Be of good cheer my comrades!

Anyways, now that we’ve covered The News, I’d like to take this opportunity to do a quick Public Service Announcement. The idea of “spec loyalty” and what you should spec and why can be a tough decision, I know. And it is a personal decision. And everybody’s reasoning for doing what they are doing and everybody’s playstyle is their own personal decision and I for one will not look down upon any hunter for what they are or are not doing. In the end we are all hunters and we all love our pets, regardless of spec or spot on the DPS meter. Isn’t that a good enough reason to get along?

All the debate and discussion on the subject is welcome here in the comments so long as it is done in a respectful manner, and I am pleased to say that I think it all has been so far. Please keep it up guys. <3 I know this is a touchy subject but remember what brought us all here in the first place: our love of hunters. That's all for now folks, I hope to have the next chapter in my story up soon!

stories, Uncategorized

There Was One She Still Missed, Part One

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There was one she still missed.

Tawyn had long felt a connection to the beasts of the world. In her childhood she would climb up the trees, barefoot, to sing with the birds; an attempt at flight had bruised her kneecaps but not her admiration. She crawled into bushes and out of them again, burrs stuck to her tousled hair, in pursuit of all manner of tiny crawling things, and there were some nights that she would howl at the moon like a wolf. Her parents had shaken their heads at it all and pondered aloud if she would maybe make a good druid, but the druids said she lacked the patience for the art, and thus she followed the path of her family and joined the school of the hunt.

Her training had gone well; while she lacked the eye of some of the more gifted sharpshooters she made up for it with her passion and her love for the whole idea of the bow and arrow. Still, to her, the most important part was the communion with the animals, and the seemingly magical gift that enabled a hunter to tame a wild companion of his or her choosing. This was how Tawyn had encountered Tux the owl, and later, Locke the tiger and Eltanin the windserpent as well. There were no words in either Darnassian or Common to describe what these beasts were in relation to Tawyn, suffice to say that like her gun, and her wits, they were an extension of herself.

And yet there was one other– forgotten? No…

For the months had stretched into years and through this time Tawyn had had “trial runs” of sorts with various creatures, who she would release back into the wild upon realizing that they simply were not right for each other. But there was one–

A fierce raptor from the Wetlands. Tawyn was captivated with them the first time she saw one, stepping gracefully through the reeds to ravage a crocolisk. To tame one would be to capture a summer thunderstorm in a bottle.

So she did.

She named him Wash after a great hero from stories she’d heard of faraway lands, and she knew right away that he was different.

Wash was headstrong and stubborn, and didn’t break easily. Tawyn would give him a command, and he would do the opposite. She wouldn’t give any commands and he’d run off and attack something. And yet there was something that made Tawyn unable to release the raptor, and something that made the raptor unable to run away in the night. A growing, begrudging kinship. For they each saw themselves in the other’s eyes.

A month passed and it became clear that as the battles became more fierce and Tawyn ventured to more dangerous lands, it would be imperative that she had the trustworthy and steadfast Tux by her side. And so it was that she took Wash to a nearby stable master that she knew, and entrusted him in her care. Wash fought and resisted but Tawyn promised she would be back.

And she was– many, many months later, when her fighting prowess had been much improved and she remembered the fiery little raptor from the Wetlands. It wasn’t fair of her to keep him captive like that when she had other pets at this point. She had been putting it off, selfishly perhaps, but she knew the right thing had to be done.

Thus Tawyn took Wash far away, to a beautiful clear river in Nagrand. He was happy to be out and about, and cavorted around with a mischievous gleam in his eyes. But when they reached the river Tawyn gave him a pat and said “You’ll be happy here… there’s lots of room for you to roam around”…

…and then she released him.

Wash blinked and gave the night elf a quick indecipherable look, and then he was gone, off among the grasses and trees somewhere.

Tawyn watched him go.

—

The hunter glanced around the fire. Tux was perched on a log, Locke and Eltanin were curled up on the ground by her feet. They appeared to be asleep, though each was actually opening an eye every so often and scanning the surroundings. Tawyn reached down and gently scratched Locke behind an ear, and his subsequent growl of contentment made her smile.

But there was one she still missed.

(To Be Continued!)

specs

Embracing the Whole Hunter

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One thing I have wanted to do for a long time is embrace all of the hunter specs and learn about them. That’s because while Beast Mastery is my favorite tree, one thing that is important to me more than the love of a certain talent tree, is my love for the class as a whole. So since “respec” seems to be on a lot of peoples’ minds lately, I went to Darnassus (less traffic!) and put some serious practice into a couple of specs.

The first was the much touted Survival spec that is all the rage now; I can’t remember exactly what I put for talent placement but it was essentially very close to the one that a lot of people are using now. I pounded on those training dummies as Survival for a very long time. The first thing I noticed was that the rotation has a similar overall feel to the new Beast Master one, except it’s Steady/Explosive Shot instead of Steady/Arcane. The second thing I noticed is that when Lock and Load procs you have to switch to another rotation. The third thing I noticed was that I personally did not like this playstyle, and the fourth thing I noticed is that I am horrific at this Survival thing because I was consistently winding up a couple of hundred DPS below what I do as post-nerf Beast Master on the same training dummy.

Okay. So clearly I’m either doing something super wrong, or the new magic Survival spec involves gear scaling or buff scaling. Fair enough. I could have sat down and figured out what I was doing to mess up but I really didn’t like the weird spur-of-the-moment rotation and I wanted to get out of the spec as soon as possible. (I 100% swear, no offense to you Survival types. I have a lot of respect for you guys.)

So then I respec’d again. To 11/53/7 Marksmanship.

I’m pretty sure the first word out of my mouth was something along the lines of “ZOMGWHENDIDCHIMERAGETTHISFUNOMG”

A rough transcript, anyway.

It also resulted in a slight DPS increase over what I was getting as BM but to be honest at that point I couldn’t have cared less if I was doing less DPS than a squirrel, this Marksman thing is really frackin’ fun. The shot rotation is based off of priority so my eyes were basically glued to my action bars, but regardless! Fun.

I was invited to a Heroic Gundrak and I took my new spec along. Wound up performing very well. My main gripe was that I missed the hunter/pet synergy from BM so much. I couldn’t even look Locke in the eyes without feeling bad. =( But if there’s one thing I love almost as much as pets, it’s shot rotations, and on that count, MM delivers. We’ll have to see where things go from here!

I’m glad I have so many hunters. At this rate, I can always have one hunter for each spec that I like! =D

(P.S. Don’t worry, BM is still my favorite.)

thoughts

Aspect of the Hunter

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With all the changes to our class lately, I’ve found myself having to stand back and think about what this blog is and what it represents. There are a lot of really good and informative hunter blogs out there and most of them have very different focuses, and it’s really visible with this patch. There are people busily hammering out the next max-DPS spec and there are others sticking to their favorite playstyle. There are Survivalists perhaps a bit baffled that their spec is suddenly the one in the sun. There are people reporting anywhere from DPS losses to DPS gains, depending on their gear and spec and what they do. And there are others who don’t do much PvE stuff and aren’t affected very much. Everyone has a different opinion and it’s really brought out to me how unique all these dozens of hunter blogs are from each other.

What about Aspect of the Hare then? Is this a hunter kindergarten blog, or a Beast Mastery blog, or a “casual”-raiding blog, or what? That’s what I had to ask myself today, sitting here at my computer with a hunter shirt on and a Tauren Hunter figurine beside my desk and my first character standing guard over everything. What about Pike?

I decided that while this blog covers a variety of topics, it is mostly about two things. The first is that it is about teaching new hunters about their class, and also sort of reviewing these things for long-time hunters. This comes in the form of the guides that I post, for example.

Secondly, and more importantly, this blog is about three little words: “Hunters are fun.”

This blog is for anyone who has ever enjoyed the hunter class. It doesn’t matter if you PvP or PvE or fall anywhere along that spectrum. It doesn’t matter if you are decked out in epics and have screenshots of doing over 6000 DPS on a boss fight, or if you have never set foot inside a raid. It doesn’t matter if you’re a hardcore theorycrafter or if you avoid math like the plague. It doesn’t matter what spec you are, and it doesn’t even matter what level you are– if you have ever felt a little thrill at sending your pet in to attack something and proceeding to start some semblance of a shot rotation, this blog is for you.

I just figured I would get that out there; it’s never a bad thing to define a blog’s focus. Rest assured that while there may be some frustrations and nervousness as we– myself included– try to sort out our collective reactions to the latest patch, I, for one, can still log into one of my hunters and still feel that thrill.

And really, that’s what it’s about.

thoughts, Uncategorized

We Can Raid If We Want To

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In my last post I touched a little on how I considered myself to be part of the “I-PuG-Raids-When-My-Schedule-Allows Crowd”. Lemme touch on that a little more…

I love raiding and heroics and the whole PvE game. I love it a lot. As much fun and addicting being on the winning side of an AV can be*, for me, in the end, it’s all about the dragon slaying. Why yes, I am a geek. There’s something very satisfying to me about being in a big group of people and having someone tossing out directions on Ventrilo and the whole tense atmosphere of hoping everyone can pull off their job as some lore character flings walls of fire around.

That said, I think I am a bit of a unique position myself. I am a raider and PvE gamer who doesn’t do the “traditional” PvE game that so many other people do. I’m not in a raiding guild. And I don’t have the luxury of having scheduled raid nights. Let me explain.

The Guild: I’ve been in a big raiding guild before. I was hunter class leader, in fact. I was also an officer and for a few months I was the one that did all the raid scheduling. That was one of the most stressful things I’ve ever done. Everyone coming to you with their schedule and you trying your hardest to make everyone happy, even though you can’t. *shudders* Anyway, even though we certainly were not one of the top-level guilds on the server, we were still shuttling people into raid content every week. The main problem is that we were sort of trying to go too many places at once, and in the end maintaining a balance of “progression guild” and “family style guild” became too much for us to handle. It was all just kind of a dramafest waiting to happen, which it eventually did. Pop went the guild. A failed experiment, so to speak.

Everyone in the guild sort of went their separate ways although a few of us who had become particularly close friends chose to band together and we started a new guild. This guild has been strictly a hang-out guild where we would be able to go off and find our own outside groups to raid with, while having friends in guild chat and a reliable pool of people to do heroics with. In that manner, it’s been a success. But it’s not a raiding guild. I get the impression most of us wouldn’t mind if we tried making it a raiding guild someday, but I don’t think anyone’s in a major rush right now.

Leaving this guild isn’t an option for me because I love my friends in-game too dearly and I love being in a guild with them. It means I give up being in a big raiding guild with a raid schedule and having things like guild-progression-nights, which I do in fact miss, but I wouldn’t trade my current guild for it. If I want to raid, I have to look outside my guild. Which brings me to my second point…

My Schedule: I work in retail. On any given day I could be at work anytime between 6am and 10pm. Every day it’s different, my days off are different every week (though I managed to wrangle getting most Sundays off), and I never know what my schedule for the next week is until Thursday or Friday.

Normally, even in my current guild situation, it would be relatively simple for me to find another guild or group of people to fall in with and raid with, especially since I’m on Silver Hand, home of the infamous Leftovers Raiding, which is essentially a server-wide raid signup that has been very successful and garnered attention on WoWInsider and transfers from people on other servers who like the idea. The problem is that when many of my work shifts are evening shifts, it shuts me out of a lot of raiding, and by the time I even know what my schedule for the next week is, most of the raid slots have been filled up already. So for me, even that idea is largely out.

So what do I do?

I PuG.

I have PuG’d most of the raids in WotLK so far, on both 25man and 10man modes. Mostly LFG PuGs although I’ve made enough contacts that sometimes I get raid invites from people who need a slot filled.

Have some of these PuGs been atrociously bad? Yes they have. Have others been surprisingly good? Yes they have. Do I know what category one is going to be in advance? No, I don’t. It’s a risk I’ve gotta take if I want to see content. Oh, I can sorta make predictions based on who the raid leader is or other people I know in the group, but even then it’s not a guarantee. In any given raid I’m probably in there with both a bunch of people who have it “on farm” and a bunch of other people who have never been there before. They usually aren’t easy raids to be in.

But I do it because I love raiding. I do it because as frustrating as it can be sometimes to do it this way, it’s really all I’ve got. Because to me, it’s worth it.

I will probably never be in one of the best guilds on the server. And I may never even be part of a regular raiding group, at least not anytime soon. I’m not gonna be one of the first people on my server to be all decked out in the newest purples. I’m okay with that though. I’m seeing all the sights and I’m getting my raid on, and I’m slowly getting some gear, and most importantly, I feel like I’m working for it. And it’s hard to do, but it’s not impossible. And I guess that’s the point I’m trying to get at. If you love something enough, you can make it work.

Even in WoW.

* Read: Not Alliance on Bloodlust. *cough*

screenshots

Nerf me harder, Blizz. I dare ya.

24 Comments

arch25dps_postnerf

And yeah, I was edged out by an elemental shaman.  But seeing as he was in almost all epics, and I’m in mostly blues and a Shade of Aran cloak, I’m not too upset about my performance. =P

Oh and lemme post the first pull, ’cause it makes me giggle:

firstpull

Now, the point of this post is not to claim astronomical DPS like the screenshots I’ve seen of epic’d out min/maxers doing 6000+ on Patchwerk. I’ve never gotten near that, and I don’t think I ever will. So, I can’t vouch for DPS changes in the Elitist Jerks croud, who are probably going to be more affected by scaling. But, I’d like to think I can vouch for the I-PuG-Raids-When-My-Schedule-Allows Crowd, and I don’t think we have anything to worry about, at least not for the time being. More testing may need to be done, true, but I feel pretty reassured for now.

Beast Mastery is not dead, my friends. Carry on!

photos

The Coolest Thing That Has Ever Happened to Tawyn. Ever.

23 Comments

tawyn13

tawyn11

tawyn14

Thanks to Figureprints, Tawyn and the gear she exited Burning Crusade with1 have been memorialized for all time in the form of an actual figurine that is now standing very heroically atop my computer desk.

And it came to pass that upon opening the box containing aforementioned figurine, Pike did emit a fangirly squee that was heard throughout the surrounding land.

That is all.

—

1Okay, she’s holding Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle instead of the superior Choco-Bow, but seriously, it’s just that much sexier. And also her RP weapon. So. *nods* (back)

patches

So, We Meet Again, Patch

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I don’t know if I’ll be able to play around with the new patch today at all, as I’ll likely be running off to work right when the realms come back up. However, I can tell you what I’m planning to do:

Respec: Those three points from Focused Aim are going into Improved Arcane Shot. I’ve been purposefully overcapping myself these past few weeks specifically for this impending respec and while I’ll still be a bit short, I should be close. Plus, now I’ll know my pet is benefiting from all my hit, too.

Re-Glyph: Goodbye, Glyph of Aspect of the Viper, hello Glyph of Arcane Shot.

Practice The New Shot Rotation on the Training Dummies: Beast Masters: Back before WotLK, we didn’t use Arcane Shot because it would interfere with our shot weaving, and cost a lot of mana. Until today, we still didn’t use it because while it no longer interfered with shot weaving, it still cost a lot of mana.

But as of today, it has the same mana cost as Steady Shot. And the reworked Ferocious Inspiration talent increases its damage. So does Improved Arcane Shot if you spec into it.

As of today, my fellow Beast Master Hunters, we have a shot rotation.

/giggles like a schoolgirl

You are going to want to apply Serpent Sting and keep it up while you cast Steady-Steady-Arcane and repeat that– or even better and if your latency is low, three Steadies and then Arcane.*

On top of that your pet is still going to be dishing out a lot of damage; sure, not quite as much as before, but a lot regardless, so while doing your Serpent-Steady-Steady-Steady-Arcane you’ve also got to pay attention to your pet and keep him out of trouble.

Sound tough? You betcha. I can’t wait.

—

* This can probably be macro’d. But you will have to find that macro somewhere that isn’t this blog, because you will have to pry manual shot weaving out of my cold, dead, waiting-to-be-rez’d hands.