I was at work today, stationed at my usual spot by all the fish (I work in a pet store), and this kid of, oh, about ten or twelve years old or so and his buddy were walking up and down the area, inspecting all the fish and pointing out all the cool ones. Then the first kid stopped in his tracks, and I saw him staring rather intently at our Red Zebra Cichlids…
After staring at them for a minute or two, the kid turned to his buddy and exclaimed “Look! Look! I found the Golden Darters !!”
You know, quite some time ago I had a dream that Tawyn had the chance to get the most rare and most awesome flying mount ever. She could get an owl mount, one that looked just like Tux.
And in the dream, I turned it down. My reasoning? It wouldn’t be in character.
I woke up and thought “Dream-Pike you dorkchop! Giving up a super awesome mount like that in the name of roleplaying! You don’t even roleplay all that often! Real-Pike is much more sensible than that.”
Or so I thought.
This is Althalor:
When he was a wee young lad, he and his high elven merchant parents were traveling down Southern Gold Road in the Barrens when they were attacked by some particularly nasty beasts. They fought gamely but they were tired and weary and couldn’t much fight back. With their dying breaths they managed to conjure up a spell that made it so the creatures did not see, hear, or smell little Althalor who was hiding in the caravan.
It was the Tauren of Camp Taurajo who found him and took him in. He was raised in Mulgore as an adopted Tauren, as a hunter, because of his uncanny skill with a rifle and his odd rapport with the lions of the Barrens. Today he fights for the Horde, passing himself off as a Blood Elf, although deep inside he feels that he really is a a Tauren in spirit.
So clearly he needs to ride a Kodo. This was the plan from day one. And for that, (unless you want the war mount)… you need to be exalted with Thunder Bluff.
At the tender level of two I ran him all the way from Sunstrider Isle to Mulgore. He cleared the place of quests and this led him to Crossroads, Camp Taurajo, and eventually Freewind Post in Thousand Needles. Considering the fact that I began with a distinct disadvantage (blood elves begin the game as Neutral with Thunder Bluff, not Friendly… and on top of that, a rather long questline in Mulgore is apparently Tauren-exclusive), I didn’t think I was doing too badly. Tawyn was exalted with Stormwind at level 37, why couldn’t Althalor be exalted with Thunder Bluff at level 40? Easy, I figured.
Then came the change to the mount level. I worried about my rep grind but hoped for the best; turning in as much cloth as I could at my low level and scouring WoWHead for quests I hadn’t finished yet.
Today Althalor dinged 30.
…well dang.
Now don’t get me wrong. I like the chicken mount. I like it a lot. I was so excited when the Warstrider was announced and then so crestfallen when I found out my taurengirl Lunapike couldn’t get it. (She has some MgT farming in her future I think.)
But Althalor, I thought, no, he can’t ride one. It would be obscene. In his story he hasn’t been to the Eastern Kingdoms since he was a baby. Him on a hawkstrider? It would be So. Out. Of. Character.
So I said “Forget getting the mount at level 30. I’m not getting one until I’m exalted with TB.”
I went to work today and realized I’d turned into Crazy-RP-Mount-Dream-Pike.
And I thought about it and I thought about it and I thought about it and I thought about Aspect-of-the-Cheetah-ing all over Desolace and it was this horrible dilemma, you have no idea.
Then I had an epiphany. He’s trying to pass himself off as a Blood Elf right? So maybe his Tauren friends decided to help him out by obtaining a Hawkstrider mount for him… and he rode it around for a while because he was very grateful for the thought but it just made him so uncomfortable that he got a Kodo later?
…that sounds viable.
So I went and got the chicken mount.
It still feels awkward but at least my OOCometer isn’t buzzing off the hook and blinking red anymore.
There are two morals of this story. One is I think Blizzard has really succeeded if they managed to create a world so immersive that at least some of its players are willing to do crazy things like forego mounts in the name of their fictional character’s backstory. Two is that Pike is completely insane. But you all knew that I’m sure.
I was on Lunapike, my level 63 Hordie Hunter, and I was camping out in the inn in Tarren Mill because I’d been helping a friend out. At the moment though, my services weren’t required, so I’d alt+tab’d out to do some stuff.
Suddenly I heard a bunch of commotion on my screen and pulled up the game just in time to see a big red cat clawing my face out. I could barely move before I was completely demolished.
Eh, it’s Tarren Mill, it’s to be expected. So I went back to the Inn and rez’d and then alt+tab’d again.
Same story about a minute later, big red cat destroys me.
So at that point I was getting annoyed but there really wasn’t a whole lot I could do, this being my highest leveled character on that server. I started to play a little game with the guy. I’d stand in my spot in the inn, I’d see “Noodle gains Bestial Wrath” and “Noodle gains Dash” in my combat log, Noodle the kitty would run into the inn… and I would log out. I can only imagine the confusion on poor hunter’s face when his big red kittycat came running back to him emptyhanded.
I did that a couple times and thought it was immensely hilarious until one of these times I logged in and the hunter himself was standing in my spot waiting for me, and I got demolished.
Okay, this was all getting super annoying, and at this point I was having to wait around in Ghost Form to rez because I’d died so many times in such a short period of time. So I figured I’d head out of there. Which was in and of itself a major pain, because even my Frostwolf Howler is apparently no match for Concussive Shot + Intimidation + Full S2 Hunter, and I died another two or three times on my way out.
Now it was around this point that I think the other people at Tarren Mill were getting annoyed too because they started disappearing and higher levels started showing up. Mr. AnnoyingHunterGuy left somewhere around this time, headed south, and we all made a group to go track him down.
We didn’t see him anywhere, though.
But whaddaya do when you’re in a group full of ticked off Hordies whose lowbie alts just got camped into oblivion?
You raid Southshore, that’s what.
We leveled the place. I mean, completely leveled. There were no NPCs left. There were no quest givers left. The poor level 30-ish Alliance that got caught in the crossfire? Rest in peace. They can thank AnnoyingHunterGuy and Noodles.
Now the respawn rate on the guards was super fast and we were just killing them over and over. So I was figuring the Alliance World Defense must have been exploding with “Southshore is under attack!” which is why I was expecting the Alliance Response Team to show up and put an end to our shenanigans. See, I say that as somebody with experience about the other side. I always have WorldDefense on, and if Tawyn sees “Southshore is under attack” more than a couple times and she isn’t in Outlands, she pulls out her PvP gear and hops on her gryphon– you’d better believe she does. Usually she shows up right around the same time as five or six other similarly-minded people and we successfully defend our town.
But you know what, on this server, it never happened. The Alliance Counterattack I was waiting for never came. Every so often a single level 70 would pop up and they would quickly get killed. That was about it. AnnoyingHunterGuy never even came back (although he did /yell something at us in the middle of it, so you know he was somewhere and knew what was going on– he just never came out to fight us.)
So after about twenty minutes of having Southshore firmly under Horde control we left not because the Alliance came to take care of us, but because we just got bored.
Victory for us!
So there you have it. Has Pike crossed over to the dark side? Gonna go around ganking and camping lowbies on a regular basis? Nah. I still like /hugs for the most part.
But revenge is sweet.
The best part of the entire night though?
Now I’ve had people make alts on servers specifically to say hello to me, but I can only think of a few cases where people who already live on that server recognize me. Makes me feel special. <3 And to Mr. Moonkin who asked me that, if you are reading, ’twas fun! =D
…and he can feed his cat once. Teach him to fish, and he can feed his cat for a lifetime!
…okay, so that’s not really how the saying goes, but I’m sure you’ve all heard it and know what it means.
I am here to talk about why I blog about hunters, and why I make “hunter kindergarten” posts, and things like that.
I try my best to write readable and easily-understandable Hunter How-To Posts because I think that there is a very big category of hunters out there that fall between the category of “good hunter” and “huntard.” These are the people that are spec’d something cookie-cutter like 41/20/0, have gear that is at least mostly correct (no spell hit gems or shammy gear *shudder* … but maybe going too overboard with one stat or something), and yet do not know why they are doing these things.
I have been in heroics with hunters who show up with a solid spec and a solid set of gear and then they start tossing random Aimed Shots into their non-existent rotation and Serpent Sting stuff they should be trapping. I’ve seen hunters that use the Auto/Steady macro and have no idea WHY it does so much DPS, they just know that it DOES, so they spam it, maybe with a bow that is several speeds too slow.
Now do I have anything against these hunters? Of course not, I was there once too, and I’m sure I’m still there in some aspects. That is why I write what I write, and that is why I advocate hunters learning to weave their shots manually before switching to the macro (if they choose to do so)… because it’s all about the foundation.
I’ll never forget how surprised I was one day when this story happened: I popped into game and four of my guildies were in a Heroic. I asked who the fifth member was, and they said a PuG’d hunter. I asked how the hunter was doing (I tend to ask that… I’m curious), but instead of the typical answers, which are always either “He sucks” or more often “He’s okay, but…[something]”, they told me “She’s actually really good.”
I got into Ventrilo and popped into their channel just to listen in, and chat a little. I had just got my Choco-Bow and mentioned how fluid it made my shot rotations, and the PuG’d hunter said “Hey, what shot rotation do you use, if you don’t mind me asking?”
… /blinkblink
Another hunter was actually asking me about shot rotations. And we actually had an intelligent hunter conversation about them.
MADNESS, I tell you!
That’s never happened to me before outside of blogs. I’ve had a lot of people come up to me in game and ask me for shot rotation advice, which I have always very happily given those who ask… but actually having a little discussion about it was new.
Since then, that incident has stuck in my mind, and it reminds me about why I write. Because incidents like that should not be as rare as they are. I shouldn’t have to be surprised when my guildies say they PuG’d not just an okay hunter, but a very good one. I shouldn’t have to be taken aback when somebody wants to discuss shot rotations with me.
I’m part of the “WoW Noobs” community over at Livejournal, where I can give advice to newer players (Heck, if you look back far enough, you can find a level 20 me asking what the meeting stone outside Deadmines is for), and I’ve noticed that new players are attracted to the hunter class like a magnet. This means that we, as hunters, have a big responsibility. Learn why you are spec’d what you are spec’d. Why you’ve picked one talent over another. Learn why your shot rotation is your shot rotation. Then, pass it on.
“But Pike, if everyone is a good hunter, won’t that put you out of a job?” Maybe, but teaching-for-make-benefit-glorious-class-of-hunters is more important. Besides, I seem to have lucked out and I currently hold a monopoly on the hunter class in my guild. It’s true, almost all of the other 70 hunters in my guild either /gquit, permanently started playing non-hunter alts, or disappeared entirely. It’s really kind of odd and I’m not sure whether that’s says good or bad things about me, but… hey. >.>
Ever had to chain-trap during Moroes? All the way through Moroes? You get a ton of buffer time on your trap cooldown at the beginning so it’s all easy, and then that cooldown dwindles and dwindles as the fight goes on and by the end you’re pulling out all the stops with your Concussive Shot and extra Distracting Shots, and frantically running around hoping nothing stupid happens.
Feels absolutely great afterwards when you’ve successfully pulled it off though. Oh, let the ‘locks and the boomkins and the rogues have the top of the DPS chart for that battle– you, meanwhile, you know that you’ve got that CC on farm and that you’re a big reason why things went so smoothly.
Lemme tell you a lil’ about Karazhan; I started playing WoW a couple months after Burning Crusade was released. I was level 6 and everybody else was just getting to 70 and just getting geared up for raids. I walk into Stormwind for the first time and hear the names of these seemingly mythical legendary bosses being whispered in trade chat. Moroes, Maiden, the Curator, Shade of Aran, Prince Malchezaar. This makes an impression on you. You know nothing about the game but you know about this rogues’ gallery of bosses that, in your tender young eyes, only the greatest of the great are ever going to see. And to down one of those bosses must be an amazing feat of pure unadulterated epic-ness.
And now you’re giggling at me because Karazhan is the Deadmines of level 70, and yeah, I’m giggling with you.
But you gotta put yourself in my shoes for a second and realize that when this stuff sinks into you and makes an impression on you from basically day one– it doesn’t go away. Yeah, it’s just good ol’ KZ and I won’t deny sometimes it does make me want to smack my head repeatedly into the wall, but it holds a special little place in my heart. All these months later the music still gives me goosebumps, and all these months later a successful boss downing still feels special.
Bigger raiders can have their Black Temple or their Sunwell Plateau that they’re all proud of; me, give me my crazy lil’ tower in the middle of nowhere and all its storied villains.
Pike/Medivh: BFF!
(P.S. I originally wrote a poem parody to go along with the title of this blog post. But then I opted not to post it because I think I want to polish it up. Maybe if you poke me nicely, I’ll finish it and post the thing.)
Many of you who have been following my blog or my comments in other blogs for a while know that I am a bona fide unabashed carebear. My main is on an RP-PvE server, and Lunapike, my level 62 alt, is on an RP-PvP server but has the tendency to /hug every member of the opposite faction that she meets, before continuing on her way.
But what some of you may not know is that… if you call down the thunder, you’ll reap the whirlwind.
Today I reached into my Holding Bag of hunter alts and plucked one out to play in Stonetalon Mountains on that RP-PvP server. I was doing a quest that was orange to me and I somehow kept aggro’ing a mob who was some seven or eight levels higher than me who was immune to seemingly all of my forms of crowd control, and I kept dying. It was sorta annoying, so I figured I’d find another, easier quest. Just as I had rez’d myself for the third or forth time and was bandaging up before heading out, an level ?? Alliance warlock rode up to me, dismounted, and ganked me.
She mounted up again and rode away, and I noticed that she had a non-epic mount…
I logged out and hopped over to Lunapike, who was parked not too far away. Upon getting to Sun Rock Retreat, I mounted up on Snowball, my Frostwolf Howler, and barreled down the road towards my alt’s corpse. And ohh, what do we have here, but that level 57 warlock…
She dismounted and popped a fear off on me. I used my PvP trinket followed by The Beast Within and sic’d my lynx Alyosha on her. Game over in about six seconds.
Right as I was finishing her off, a level 66 Alliance hunter… her buddy, maybe?… rode up. He was four levels higher than me, and five levels higher than my pet. He dismounted and stared at me and my pet, the two of us still big and red. I /waved at him.
He sic’d his pet on me, I feigned death to get out of it. And then he made a very, very bad mistake…
He queued up an Aimed Shot.
With me pounding away at him with Arcanes, Multis, and Autos, and Alyosha still big and red and Frenzy proc’d… interrupt city… he queued up an Aimed Shot.
By the time he finally got that Aimed Shot off, I already had his health down to 30%. In a last ditch effort he ran up and tried to melee me and actually proceeded in trapping me, but at that point his health was down to nil and my trusty kitty finished him off easily.
Afterwards I glanced around smugly at the two poor Alliance souls at my feet, then I hopped on Snowball and trotted off.
You mess with one of my baby hunters, you mess with Pike. /grin
I remember when I was about to hit 70 on Tawyn. I remember frantically running around Netherstorm, doing quests and killing random things, slooooowly watching my experience bar inch towards the end of the row, knowing it wouldn’t be long before that experience bar disappeared and my game experience would all change.
I had a similar feeling today with Lunapike. Except that it wasn’t for level 70. No… it was for level 62.
I had been waiting for this moment for a while and I’d actually prepared for it in advance; knowing halfway through level 61 that my [Ironstar Repeater] would be far too fast of a weapon to have so I found another quest that I did specifically for a bow that was sort of a side-grade but had a beautiful 2.80 speed.
The second I dinged I flew to Shattrath, hopped into the portal to Thunder Bluff (Because Thunder Bluff is clearly superior to Orgrimmar) paid a visit to my old friend the Hunter Trainer, hearthstoned back to Outlands, found the first random mob that I could, and unleashed a barrage of bona-fide Shot Rotation.
It was marvelous. Marvelous. Granted, it all feels sort of vanilla right now without Kill Commands to spice things up. But Steady Shot, oh Steady Shot, how I’ve missed ya. Welcome back, buddy.
And now for something completely different…
The other day I asked several fellow WoW-bloggers via Twitter if they told a lot of people about their blog. I got a few different responses, some people didn’t tell anyone whereas some people told friends and guildies. I myself didn’t come “out of the closet” to my friends and guildies until recently for various reasons, but the reaction has been rather positive so I’m pretty happy with that.
I wonder sometimes, though, if there’s a way to “plug” your blog on WoW without it sounding showy. Perhaps I’ve just yet to hit on it. But there’s a reason why when people ask me for hunter advice, I typically do not link them to my blog. Because I sort of fear that it will come off as sounding like I’m showing off or something.
Yesterday when I was playing Lunapike, I was approached by an Orc Shamaness who was extremely well-spoken (which always garners my immediate positive attention) and told me that I should look into investing in a Ravager for maximum DPS over my other two pets on that character– a cat and a windserpent. She said she had a level 70 hunter, to which I responded that I had one too (followed by the inevitable “Yes, I know this is my second hunter.”) We had a brief discussion about pets and it didn’t take long to realize that this shaman was very knowledgeable about hunters and especially pets. I was impressed and sort of wanted to bring up my blog because she seemed like a really neat person but I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it. Then she brought up Mania and Petopia and asked if I knew about them, to which I responded that yes I did, and in fact, if you look at Mania’s blogroll you’ll find my own hunter blog!
And that’s about when the conversation fizzled out and the shaman had to go and used Astral Recall to get to Shatt.
It’s sort of unfortunate that the conversation ended when it did, because I didn’t mean to come off as bragging about being on somebody’s blogroll, rather I was hoping it would enable me to sort of bring up my own blog, it just didn’t happen. Anyways, Orc Shaman on The Venture Co. who knows a lot about hunters, if you happen to be out there reading, I appreciate the fact that you offered to give me advice, even if it happened to be advice that I already “knew”. =P We need more people like you who are willing to give good advice to newer hunters in a friendly and very intelligent fashion.
Next time on Pike-TV: The Official Intro-to-Steady-Shot Post, Stats for Hunters Part 2, The Initiation of a new Character Spotlight Feature, and Oh-My-Gosh-Does-Pike-Actually-Have-A-Level-29-Resto-Druid.
Same Pike-time, same Pike-channel.
So there I was, heading out of Heroic Slave Pens*, and there, standing at the meeting stone, was a level 70 hunter. As I am prone to do when I see my fellow hunters, I decided to inspect him. This is what I saw:
A 23/20/18 spec.
An elemental shammy helm packed with intellect and bonus damage and healing.
Some sort of caster trinket.
Various spell-hit gems.
Two random daggers enchanted with Unholy and something else that I’ve never heard of before.
So as I was sitting there sort of /boggling at the guy, someone else nearby straight up asked him what was with his gear.
“What about it?” said the clueless hunter.
“It’s all wrong for your class,” the other guy said.
“Oh… I was trying to get a good balance of everything… how should I do it?” said the hunter.
And something funny happened. I felt sorry for the guy. Ebayed? Without a doubt. But you can’t repress my inner hunter-trainer.+
So there I sat and told him what sort of stats he should look for in gear, and what sort he should definitely avoid. Then I told him a little about the different specs and how he should pick one to specialize in, rather than trying to spread out and be mediocre at everything. I told him to look at mine as a rough example.
He asked what the advantage would be of specializing like that, especially if he mostly wanted to do battlegrounds.
So I challenged him to a duel. Bestial Wrath, Intimidation… the duel was over in a couple seconds after he’d done maybe 600 damage to me total. “See?” I said.
“Thanks, I’m going to go respec right now!” he said, and hearthstoned out of Coilfang.
Did I magically transform him from huntard to hunter? Nope, I doubt it. Is he probably going to make some mistakes with his respec, if he even goes through with it? Yep. Is he still going to be wearing crappy gear? Probably yeah. Would I trust him with traps anytime soon? Nupe.
But is he at least sorta tentatively on the right track now? I think so.
I have a tendency to see myself as a teacher. I am Hunter Class Leader in my guild and that is a badge that I wear with pride, not so much because it says I am good, but because it says my guild trusts me to take other hunters under my wing. I do not see myself as an expert hunter by any means; I still have a lot to learn and practice, and there are a lot of hunters out there that are as good or better than I am. Master Hunter? Nah, I’d love to be called that someday, but I don’t think I’m worthy of the title. (And even if I am, it’s not something I’d want to peg on myself– that’s a title that’s got to be bestowed by another master.)
I simply want to teach others how to pull a little more efficiency and a little more enjoyment out of this class. And a lot of the comments left at this blog indicate that I have had at least some measure of success and that really makes me feel good. One of the great things about the blogging community is that we can all teach each other and you can have many different teachers. Because we have that luxury, do not take one person/site/guild’s word as gospel. Search around, read different blogs, test things for yourself, reach your own conclusions, and come out a better hunter. That is my advice for the day.
I hope that you readers have obtained a little of that communal knowledge from my blog, and I will continue to do my best to provide more. ^_^
And yes, I know that perhaps I just view Azeroth with rose-colored glasses. I have seen similar glasses online.
*Funny story here. We got a group together specifically for Heroic Underbog and it wasn’t until some time after we’d downed the first boss in Slave Pens that we went “Wait a minute… this isn’t Underbog…” We are brilliant, eh?
+My guild is quite aware of this. “Tawyn, ready for a summon?” “Hang on, somebody just asked me how to play a hunter.” “…Tawyn… just link him to the website… and get out now while you still can…”
Well, the results were in, and the masses wanted me to give the Windserpent a try:
Now there’s high-level Windserpents all over Outland. But I, being me, needed something special. Something… dare I say… teal. Something I’d fallen in love with during a random fun-run of Zul’Gurub a few weeks back:
This Guy.
Level 61 elite Soulflayer, found in Zul’Gurub, a pre-BC level 60 raid instance. The only other Windserpent with that same skin is found in Wailing Caverns. Yes… yes. He would be mine.
So I bid my goodbyes to my wolf Amarok, got my boyfriend (on a lowbie alt) to set up a raid group for me so I could get into the instance and then I walked into Zul’Gurub solo. And by solo, I mean solo. No pet. Just Tawyn.
It wasn’t long before I found my target. Unfortunately, he was constantly flanked by two level 60 elites who acted as bodyguards. If I trapped and started to tame the one I wanted, I was quickly swarmed by two elites who hit hard and have various stuns and poison abilities. Not good.
I tried a couple of strategies here, none of which quite worked. I tried getting onto the higher platform and trying to tame him from there, so they’d have to run to get to me– but then he just went out of range and the tame failed. I tried to tame him from the water, but he wound up evading it. I soon realized I would have to get the two entourages out of the way before I could focus on the guy I wanted. So I figured I could maybe throw down a Frost Trap and kite them and slowly burn them down. This failed miserably thanks to their charge’n’stun tactics. It was all sort of discouraging and I began to wonder how I was ever going to do this without various Survival Hunter tricks. But no, I wasn’t going to give up. Cause I’m a hunter, dangit.
So eventually, after much trial and error and my feign death button worn from use, I realized that as a Beast Master hunter, my best weapon would be exactly what I was missing… a pet.
So I got one.
A level 60 serpent in ZG. He’s kinda cute, no?
Now, I felt, I was ready. I went back to the taming spot and laid down a freezing trap. I positioned it in such a way so when they patrolled back, they would walk right into it, and I’d have another trap cooldown ready.
And around the corner they came, and into the trap Teal Windserpent popped. The other two dashed at me. I laid down another trap… double-trap! And with two of the windserpents crowd-controlled I sic’d my new snake on the other and proceeded to burn him down. But it wasn’t long before Teal Windserpent broke out of the trap (early, I think) and shoved me off the ledge and into the water… which I hadn’t exactly been banking on. And so, I regret to say, thanks to some unfortunate stuff that happened, I hit the bucket.
My serpent and I (who I’d renamed Kaa because he’d sort of grown on me) went boldly back inside. We were down to just two.
Same routine as before. Laid down a trap…
Trapped Teal Windserpent. Sic’d pet on his red buddy. Intimidation, Bestial Wrath, and onslaught of MQoSRDPS. Uh-oh, Teal’s out! Chain-trapping for the win!
And now the time had come. As he was heading for my next trap, Teal Windserpent got off a fear and a bunch of poison on Kaa, sending him running. But before he could finish him off, I /thanked him and hit the abandon button. Just me and Teal Windserpent now…
Aaaaand action:
Woo-hoo!
Now he just needs a name. Oh and he needs to be brought up nine levels. It’s gonna be a pain, but hey, I’ve got nothing better to do during farming sessions. And how often do you see one of these guys runnin’ around? I mean, I adore Locke, but I think he must be the most popular cat model on the server.
Oh, and the above story– I think I could have probably pulled it off with no deaths if I hadn’t been standing too close to the edge. It woulda been tough, but I think I could’ve done it. Almost makes me want to go back and try it again… almost.
And yes, this is one of the reasons why I can’t get enough of this class. Who else gets to pull of crazy stuff like this, in the name of something that equates to some 30% of our DPS? =P
In other news, my new boots, they are lovely, no? /pose
You wanna hear a story? Come gather round and I’ll tell you a story.
So there we are in Heroic Mech. By now we’ve got the thing memorized and we could run it in our sleep. We’re goofing off in Ventrilo and a couple of us aren’t even in Ventrilo cause heck, it’s just Heroic Mech, right?
…I think we took things just a wee bit too casually. We were dying left and right on random crap, we made about a million dumb mistakes, and worst of all, The Sword that Can Not Be Named managed to elude our poor tank for the thousandth time.
But amidst the chaos there was one high point to our otherwise horrific run.
Gatewatcher Iron-Hand, a sort of mini-boss you fight after the first big robot guy. Ya know him? Him in all his “RAISES HIS HAMMER MENACINGLY” glory?
We’re fighting him and the tank dies when the boss is still at about, oh, 30% health or so. (Yeah I told you this was an off night. I swear we can do this heroic in our sleep when we’re trying. Honest!)
Tank is gone, we’ve got a holy paladin, a warlock, a rogue, and me and Locke. Boss comes charging to me first so I feigned out of it (I honestly thought we were all going to wipe in a matter of seconds) and he turns and heads towards the warlock, who proceeded to load him up with as many DoTs as he could before his inevitable death. By now I’d realized the group was still alive and kicking, and had jumped up pretty quickly and resumed pounding on the boss as best I could. This whole part here is mostly just a blur, all I know is that Locke tanked him for ten seconds or so before falling, and then the warlock died, and it was down to me, the pally, and the rogue with the boss still at about 15% health.
The rogue managed to keep him occupied long enough for us to chip him down even further until he was at about 10% health, and then there were two: me and the pally.
Now the pally wasn’t in Ventrilo at the time because he was watching a movie or something. So I heard myself shouting with my brain, hoping he could somehow catch the mental vibes: “BUBBLE TANK IT! BUBBLE TANK IT!!”
And he did. Bubbled and tanked the guy while I sat there and auto-steady-auto-steady’d (and ran around and arcane’d cause he kept moving)…
Of course, it was only a matter of time before the bubble ran out and our healer hit the dirt. I think at this point the boss was at about 4% or 5% health.
Tawyn vs. the world.
Bring it on.
He raised his hammer in the air menacingly…
…meaning he just stood there and didn’t move…
Pew… pew… pew… longest 4% of a boss in my entire life…
4%…
3%…
2%…
1%…
Killing Blow.
You’d better believe I danced on his corpse.
