Category Archives: movies

druid, movies

Foshizzywhatsy?

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I have three things of interest to say in this post.

Firstly, this is my 200th blog post. I would wax nostalgic here and give a nice long speech about it, but I’m saving that for my one-year-blogoversary next month! Thank you, though, to all you crazy people that visit here every day.

Secondly, somebody got to my blog via the search term: “warcraft hunters why do you think you’re special?” Well, Googler, the long answer is here. The short answer is “Because we are. Durr.”

Thirdly, something is afoot among the druid community. I did my very best to defend my huntery honor in the Great Foshizzle Debate of 2008, and I maintain that Massive Quantities of Sustained Ranged Foshizzle is how it is best dished. But my level 40 druidling was very impressed by the unification of her fuzzy, feathery, and leafy comrades, so much so that she decided to show her own personal Foshizzleness against the baddest of the baddies: Edwin VanCleef himself. With only a level 11 priest (the alt of another druid, of course) by her side, Tamaryn ventured into that big scary boat and defended her honor.

Bear, Bell, Awlbiste, and all you other druid bloggers out there, this is for you… from the huntard with love.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmlM90fPezE&hl=en&fs=1]

(Disclaimer: if you didn’t understand the last paragraph, it’s okay. /pat)

guides, hunter kindergarten, movies, so you want to play a hunter, Uncategorized

So You Want to Play a Hunter? Part 3

11 Comments

So you’ve hit level 6 and you’ve got Arcane Shot. Great! This will make it easier for you to kill stuff before it gets to you. Now there seems to be some confusion, I think, involving when to use Arcane Shot. In all honesty, I don’t think there is a set “best rotation” for Arcane Shot in the low-levels. But the basics that you want to know is that you don’t want to use it too much, because it will eat up your mana and pull aggro away from your pet pretty easily. It does, however, round out most of the skills you will be using pre-level-62.

Hunter’s Mark is the other thing you learn at level 6. There is some debate over whether Hunter’s Mark is worth the mana. In my mind, it is: it provides a sizable DPS boost (particularly over time), and if you are spec’d for Improved Hunter’s Mark, it boosts your pet’s attack power by a significant amount, too. Think of it this way: if you are a Beast Master or Survival hunter, Improved Hunter’s Mark is basically like your own mini-Trueshot-Aura. And if you are Marksman, it’s more of the goodness! Rank 4 Hunter’s Mark is going to give you an extra 110 AP and the more you shoot it, the higher that bonus rises (for ranged only). Pike’s verdict: learn to use and love Hunter’s Mark.

Typical Lowbie Hunter Rotation:
-Hunter’s Mark
-Serpent Sting Opener
-Auto Shot until the mob is dead, throw in an Arcane Shot every so often to speed things up.

That’s really all there is to it. Before you have a pet, you are most advised to use your Arcane Shot whenever you can, though.

If you are looking into doing more PvP than PvE, Arcane Shot is going to become basically the cornerstone of your life and everything you hold dear, but us more-PvE types typically love our Steady Shot more.

And now you’ve hit level 8. And you’ve got Concussive Shot. Your mission, if you choose to accept it: put your kiting skills to the test and learn how to jump-shot-kite.

Jump Shot Kiting is accomplished by jumping, turning, shooting, and then turning back and landing, while moving. Sound complicated? It is, and it’s difficult at first, but if you practice a little, you will soon have the hang of it. It’s a little hard to describe through writing, so I’ve made a movie:

I don’t know if it is the clearest or most helpful movie, so let me know if you need clarification! Also, I have decided that Hellfire Peninsula is perhaps not the best place to hold many of these videos in the future, because over the overwhelming… red…ness… yeah. Note to self: Nagrand next time.

Well, congratulations, you have (hopefully) mastered the art of playing sans-pet. /diploma

And that’ll do it for this week’s installment of SYWtPaH. (pronounced Suit-paw…? Perhaps!) Be sure to join us next week when we go on a crazy pet-taming adventure!

guides, hunter kindergarten, kill command, movies, shot rotation, steady shot

Hunter Kindergarten: Intro to Shot Rotations – The Motion Picture

22 Comments

As promised, here is Pike’s Official Intro to Shot Rotations Movie!

Couple things before I begin:

1.) Kill Command is a move that you can use anytime you crit. You learn it at level 66, not level 68 like I said in the movie… sorry about the oral typo there. /blush

2.) I apologize that my voice sounds somewhat congested, my allergies are pretty terrible this time of year.

3.) My Kill Command is keybound to alt-tilde, hence the sound of a frantic jamming of keys anytime I use it.

4.) I was originally going to have a quiet background music track as well (because honestly you just can’t go wrong with The Safety Dance) but I decided it was too distracting. So hopefully just my voice by its lonesome can hold your interest. =P

Enjoy and hopefully you can learn something from this, I worry that maybe it’s not the clearest video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxLGFv1skh0&hl=en]

guides, hunter kindergarten, movies

Hunter Kindergarten: Chain-Trapping 101

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I’m enjoying this movie thing so much that I decided to make my very first real instructional movie:

Tawyn and Tux show you the basics on how to chain-trap in an instance.

I noticed something though. Something that didn’t even occur to me until afterwards when I was watching the finished product.

…I kept using certain pronouns.

…like “we”… and “us”…

…is it a hunter thing, or is this what happens when you read too much BRK? Have I been permanently transformed? Am I doomed to refer to myself in the plural form from here on out? WHAT SORT OF MONSTER HAS BEEN UNLEASHED?

/cough

Enjoy the movie, hopefully it’s helpful to some of you =D And I promise I’ll start posting some non-movie stuff again too.

And yes, I know I have a dorky voice.

movies, trapping

Traptacular Trapathon

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When you are chain-trapping, possibly your two most important assets are: firstly, making sure your trap cooldown is up before you first pull, and secondly, distance. Putting distance between yourself and your trap helps more than I think many people realize; it can give you up to some ten seconds of extra time if you concussive shot/wing clip your mob, and still a lot of extra time even if you don’t.

I have a lot of hunters who will ask me how I can keep something trapped for so long, and those are my secrets. Starting off with no trap cooldown, and then maintaining distance. If you lose distance, you can still regain it later to maintain your edge– it’s difficult but can be done.

I’ve discovered I’m really into this whole “movie” thing (I guess my filmmaking degree is coming out here?) so I’d like to show Tux in his motion picture debut in “Trapathon: Tawyn Gets Bored”. Basically when I get bored farming Scryer signets, I’ll go trap a mob and see how long I can keep him trapped while I burn down the other guys. This is mostly a “just for fun” movie as opposed to an “instructional” movie because I figured BRK already has his fantastic chain-trapping how-tos— so this is mostly to show that keeping your distance = endless chain-trapping, even if you don’t have any points in Survival:

Music: Beatnick vs. Loituma – Leva’s Breaks/Caramell – Caramelldansen (Speedycake Remix)

(Yes, this is the type of stuff I listen to when I play WoW. No wonder I’m so upbeat and postive about the game all the time, right? =P)

Another important thing to keep in mind when you’re trapping is to make sure that you are inbetween your trap and the mob you are trapping. Sounds obvious right? Well sometimes it’s easy to forget and move yourself so you have a better shot at whatever you are shooting at the moment. Always be aware of your surroundings so you can adjust yourself if need be– for example, you’ll notice at around 3:50 that I saw my hapless Trap Victim was running towards me and not the trap– so I had to quickly move myself so he would run into my trap instead.

So there we have it: Start with your next trap ready, maintain distance, and keep the trap between you and your mob. With those three things you can trap indefinitely, at least until you decide to pull five mobs at once =P And even then you can regain your trapping rhythm and continue trapping indefinitely… well… until the wrong mob runs into your trap anyway.

I enjoy making these movies but I sort of feel like most of the instructional stuff has already been covered by BRK and others such as The Hunter’s Mark. But if you’ve got anything in particular that you’d like to see, let me know and I’d be glad to see what I can whip up! (Oh, and also, let me know if you’ve got a good solid place where I can host bigger sizes of these movies).

karazhan, movies

Hey There Little Red Riding Hood

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We went to Karazhan yesterday. At first we were kind of nervous because a lot of the people who went this time had never gone before, and could probably still be considered a little undergeared.

But I guess we shouldn’t have worried:

Attumen: One-shotted
Moroes: Two-shotted
Maiden: One-shotted
Opera – Big Bad Wolf: One-shotted
Curator: One-shotted
Chess: Free badges!

So at this point, having completely demolished the first half of Karzhan, we were all feeling really high off of our successes. All you other bosses, bring it on! We were on fire.

…soon to be literally.

We had two wipes on Illhoof before deciding to skip him. This was rather hilarious actually, somebody cried out “If you run far enough away he resets!” so off about half of us went, running throughout the entire tower with millions of little imps following us as one by one Illhoof plucked people away from their flight and sacrificed them. Pretty soon we were down to only me left, so I feigned death– I don’t know if that’s what got me out of it or not but I do know that by the time he finally reset I had 40 HP left and was the only one still alive.

With that guy out of the question, we headed over to Shade of Aran. It was all sort of Leeroy Jenkins-ish: After an initial mishap where three people got too close and started the event with the rest of us still standing outside the closed doors (the panicky screams over Ventrilo were priceless), we all gathered together and had the two people who had done it before spend about ten minutes explaining the nuances of the fight to us in detail, we ran in, and… we blew up. At that point, the paladin was soulstoned but was literally laying at Aran’s feet, it was super late, and everything decided to respawn, so we called it for the night.

Still, I gotta say it was a very successful night overall. I think the fact that we’ve got the first half of that place “on farm” isn’t too bad for a scrappy group of roleplayers who have never stepped foot inside before until a few weeks ago. Oh, and no hunter loot, though our healers (and to a lesser extent, the rogue) really hit the jackpot. As I often say though– I’m here for the fun. The loot is just the gravy. Also I think I did really well this time (that’s the link to the anonymous WWS report– I’m Thetys, Locke is Snooper, and Jitte the Mysterious Rogue is, I’m pretty sure, Moroes’ garrote. No idea why it’s showing up as a player.)

I was feeling kind of bad the last Karazhan run because I wasn’t anywhere near the top and I sort of started to worry that I was “losing my touch” and not pulling my weight. So it was nice to do so much better this time. I was even tops on Curator! All the tips people started giving me musta helped. Oh and I was wearing my hunter shirt. Maybe that worked too. +100 Agi, +100 Ranged Attack Power, +100 doing-well-in-a-video-game.

/nods

…hey, you didn’t think I’d letcha go without a movie, now did ya?

This is the Big Bad Wolf version of the Opera Event. It’s basically a tank ‘n spank with one little gimmick: Big Bad Wolf randomly turns people into Little Red Riding Hood and you have to run around in circles while he chases you, because you’re silenced and can’t do much of anything except run. Now as a wise man once said, if you Feign Death, he loses aggro on you and you don’t have to worry about it (except for the fact that you are still slienced and can’t do anything). Fortunately, my Feign Death, well… worked. =P

Music: The Revs – Turning Japanese

And yes, bad, bad, naughty hunter at about 1:20, pulling aggro like that. Now in my defense, Omen failed to give me any sort of flashy advance warning like it usually does… but still. Bad hunter.

/sits in corner

karazhan, movies

Giant Robots? Check. Fuzzballs? Check.

6 Comments

My guild went to Karazhan on Saturday– I unfortunately was unable to go– and they managed to get past the Opera Event in what I hear was an epic fight (something about six people dying, the tank kiting stuff around for five minutes while the healers regen’d mana, and eventually four-manning it) but then got stuck on Curator.

So… we went back. When I was available!

This fight, for those of you who haven’t done it before, works something like this: There are these electric fuzzballs that aggro on random people that you have to kill. Every so often, Curator, a giant robot, turns all blue which means he takes double damage from everyone and that’s when you have to focus on DPS’ing him.

Here’s the final video I made– after three or four false starts:

Music: Cyborg Jeff – F-Zero GX Dr Stuard Jeff & Toad Air Team Challengers OC ReMix; Jean Jacques Perrey – Brazilian Flower

(I know the last song is ridiculously silly. Bear with me when I say it’s an inside joke of sorts. And makes the fact that the tank and Curator died within about a half second of each other even funnier.)

I’m not sure if this is a difficult fight for a hunter or if it was just hard for me because I’m not used to it. I know I do my best when I get to stand still and really dig into my shot rotation and let the crits flow. But for this fight I hardly got a chance to get in one or two shots on each fuzzball. For this reason, I had the snot beaten out of me in the DPS charts. I don’t mind though. I had fun, I had the killing blow, and I got something shiny out of it:

Feels good to have some Tier 4 on my Armory, lemme tell ya.

At some point I’d like to write detailed guides to playing a hunter in each of the Kara fights but that’s a ways off yet, right now it’s just a blast to run around and check out all the different bosses. It sort of has a “rogue’s gallery” feel to it. These are the bad guys that I’ve been hearing about since I started playing WoW about a year ago. It’s so neat to finally go “meet” them.

We went to the Chess Event after this and then called it a night. Yes, we won Chess. I’d been informed that we’d be disowned if we didn’t, so I guess that’s a good thing.

karazhan, movies

They're Gonna Put Me In the Movies…

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…all I gotta do is act naturally!

Yeah, I figured you guys might want to see a little more than just screenshots!

Our little guild’s second ever try on Moroes; the first try doesn’t really count, I think, because somebody got disconnected and the pull was a complete accident. Now I’m no BRK; watching this movie there are a few things I would have liked to have improved on, but overall I think I did a pretty good job that I can be proud of. Me and the other hunter were sort of bouncing traps off of each other during the second half; what you don’t hear in the movie is the two of us on Ventrilo discussing how we’re backing each other up.

About four minutes into the movie is a sort of funny moment as you can see both us hunters trying desperately to get green triangle into one of our traps… he was pretty heavily planted onto the off-tank at that point though.

And yes, the song is indeed “Scatman”. Partially because the other hunter requested that song, partially because it fit perfectly with the length of the movie, and I won’t deny, partially because this song has long been one of my favorite songs to WoW to. It’s overdone, but I like it.

Enjoy!

(And I realize the video is pretty small; I may try to see if I can post up a bigger, higher-quality version, if enough people would be interested.)