New Pet Review: Wasp

First of all, I would like to offer my sincerest apologies for the site downtime on Friday night/Saturday morning. The server this site was hosted on was the victim of a Denial of Service attack so they took everything down and it took a little while for it to go back up. Hopefully I didn’t scare too many of you with the site’s sudden disappearance. =P

I’m back though, and here to talk pets. As much as I love my current pets– I went into this patch with five level 70 pets across my two “main” hunters– I was, a few nights back, sort of randomly feeling this urge to tame something new and different. I thought back to the pets I’d played on Beta… Rhino, Devilsaur, Gorilla… I wasn’t feelin’ it this time for any of them and the Rhino isn’t even around yet.

So off I went to Petopia to comb through the new pets. Finally I settled on trying out the Wasp family.

Tawyn was who I was playing at the time so off I went to tame Blacksting. I played around with him for a while and did some dailies with him before coming to two conclusions: Firstly, even though I haven’t seen many Wasp Hunters around at all, the ones that I did see had invariably tamed Blacksting as well, so I decided I wanted something a little more different, and secondly Tawyn is my hunter with the Exotic Pet talent so really, I should save her for trying out the Exotic Pets.

So the next day I hopped onto Lunapike and tamed a Marshlight Bleeder. I broke Lunapike’s personal protocol here and named it something other than a character from my favorite book:

Honestly though, if you thought I was going to tame a firefly and NOT name it Serenity, you were sadly mistaken.

Over the course of the next couple of days I succeeded in getting Serenity from level 65 to level 70. This was accomplished almost entirely by grinding the ogres in Nagrand and the result was that I got a fabulous bonus prize right after the pet ding happened:

/flex

Anyways, now the pet. I gotta admit, from an aesthetics standpoint, I am hooked. It’s kind of ironic because in real life, insectoids with large flappy wings have this tendency to… not sit right with me. Okay, let me rephrase that. A typical real life scenario would involve a moth flapping lazily past my face and me leaping on The Boy and screeching out something along the lines of “KILLITWITHFIRE”. (Yes, that was a dramatization of an actual occurance.)

But I really like the wasps in game, the glowy firefly variety especially. There is something comforting about having something next to you that is emitting a warm glow and making a soft chattery noise and grooming itself cutely with its little legs. It’s kind of relaxing, really. It’s like questing with a nightlight. A deadly nightlight. (Maybe he really is the only bee in your bonnet?)

Gameplay wise, the wasp is a Ferocity pet (who thus dishes out plenty of damage) and puts a handy debuff on whatever you are attacking, decreasing its armor for 20 seconds. That meant that when I was fighting the ogres, I was constantly fighting them with a big fat 400 armor debuff on them, and it meant smooth sailing. And grinding.

Overall, I gotta say I am a fan. Serenity isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and while he may not have some super-awesome exotic-pet move or anything, being able to toss around mini Faerie Fires like no tomorrow is far from a bad ability. Look into one if you want a solid Ferocity pet that is somewhat rare (as I said, I haven’t seen too many Wasp Hunters around) and you appreciate the serene, glowy aesthetic of Zangarmarsh. If you are anything like me, you will quickly become attached to your little lightning bug.

Got a pet that you want me to review? I still have several open stable slots left so give me a shout out and I will see what I can do for ya.

The NEW Leveling Beast Master: A Sneak Peek

I recently had somebody ask in one of my comments what the new “leveling spec” will be for non-max-level Beast Master hunters.

Specs are currently a bit of a tricky question. People are still playing around with them and trying to determine what works best. I’m not even entirely sure on specs yet myself; I was having doubts about the usefulness of Invigoration but re-watching my Onyxia movie (which I am currently uploading to a couple different video hosting services– I have yet to find one that I am happy with, so toss me your suggestions) it actually seems to proc quite a bit so I think it’s staying for the time being anyway.

So for the most part, I am going to tell you to take my “old” preferred leveling spec and tack the new talents onto it. My old leveling spec was “Cookie-cutter 41/20/0” except two major tweaks in the form of Endurance Training and Thick Hide. So the new one is gonna look roughly like this:

Just like the “Old” Leveling Spec, you are foregoing Improved Aspect of the Hawk and Improved Revive Pet for Endurance Training and Thick Hide.

Just like the “Old” Leveling Spec, I’m going to suggest putting five points in Lethal Shots first, though I certainly wouldn’t dock you Pike Points if you jumped straight into BM.

Just like the “Old” Leveling Spec, it is adjustable for your current situation. If you never do instances or battlegrounds ever and are a pure grinding machine then Catlike Reflexes will make your pet a better tank at the cost of Ferocious Inspiraiton. You may also opt for Animal Handler here since your hit rating will be low or nil at lower levels.

This is not a 100%-best-leveling-spec ever, it is just what I would aim for right now as a lowbie hunter. I have already respec’d my level 33 hunter to follow something along these lines. Most important though, is to figure out what works for you. Don’t be afraid to test things!

Expect this post to be revisited in a few weeks or months when all the hunter community theorycrafting comes rolling in. Until then, go ye forth and level!

Slash Cower

You know, Tawyn had to deal with a lot of scary stuff today.

A room full of dragon hatchlings in the name of a title…

And the big mother dragon, herself, just for the heck of it…

But nothing, apparently, is quite as scary as a talking tree.

/cower indeed.

(For the record, the guild name is a BIG inside joke; and Onyxia was done with a prot warrior, a resto druid, a warlock, our healadin-turned-retadin, and me. I FRAPS’d the thing and I’d be willing to try to get a video together with annotations about my usage of the new hunter talents and skills, if anybody is remotely interested!)

It's The End Of The World As We Know It…

…and I feel AWESOME.

So I’ve hardly had a chance to do anything yet, it’s true. Silver Hand is apparently buggier than most of the other servers for some unknown reason, according to the login screen, and has been offline about 75% of the night. Venture Co. isn’t faring much better, though at least I got a little done over there. Bugs and glitches galore, the worst of which, at the moment, is the fact that no chat appears to be showing up for me. …well, it’s handy for avoiding the “WHAR DID MAI MOUNT GO” Trade Chat spam, but not so good for trying to hook up Achievement Instance Runs with the guildies.

Still, I was in just long enough to figure out a few things:

1.) Omen, StellerBars, XPerl Unit Frames, and SCTD are apparently all I really need to be happy in life and now that I have got them working at least decently I am ready to rock.

2.) I don’t know how it does it but SCTD makes shot rotations feel like proper shot rotations. I think it’s the rhythm of the scrolling numbers. I dunno. I love it. I’m a female Rain Man, (d-d-definitely), it’s true. (Uh-oh, five minutes to Wapner.)

3.) Tawyn is spec’d Full BM (55/6/0) and Lunapike has her points a little more spread out (46/15/0). I am still undecided on which one I like better at this point as a level 70 spec, they both have their pros and cons.

4.) Tux’s Wolverine Bite crit a level 72 mob for 1150 damage.

5.) I have always been a minipet hound so NOW I HAVE BAGSPACE, PRECIOUS BAGSPACE <3

6.) …did I mention that Tux’s Wolverine Bite crit a level 72 mob for 1150 damage?

I am so wired right now you guys. I just figured I would let you all know that things are actually looking pretty great in my little ol’ huntery opinion. Then again, I haven’t dug very deep yet at all, but so far I am satisfied. Looking forward to tomorrow and all the stuff I’m gonna do. This includes a post, at a commenter’s request, on a good leveling spec with the new talent tree. Pike will do her best to deliver.

Oh, P.S.  If you logged out in Old Naxx, you will log in to a crashed WoW client and have to contact a GM.  Some of my friends discovered this first hand.  …just pointin’ that out.

R-E-S-P-E-C-Me

I’m really wavering on what spec I want to go to with my hunters for the remaining month that we are level 70. I’m actually pretty certain that both will be different specs– both Beast Mastery, of course, but different talent point placement. Whether they will be largely different or only slightly different remains to be seen.

I’ve been playing around with the WoWHead talent calculator and I’ve narrowed down my choices to a few options. Before I present them, I’d like to get a couple things out of the way:

Lack of Animal Handler: This was a must-have talent for 2.0 Beast Masters because pet hit did not scale with hunter hit, but now it DOES scale, so I don’t really see a need for this talent at this point so long as you are hit-capped. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, though, so I am certainly going to be keeping the possibility in mind of keeping this talent around, but for now, it’s out.

One-point in Spirit Bond: A filler talent to allow me to progress to the higher tiers of talents. I don’t really care about the health regen so much as the added +heal to pet and the subsequent boost it will give Mend Pet which may help out in tough encounters. If it turns out to not make much of a difference I will probably toss that filler point in Endurance Training instead.

Lack of the 51-point BM talent in a few cases: As much fun as the exotic pets and four extra talent points are, I… really like my current pets, a lot. Plus, I don’t know if the DPS increase from that last talent will be worth it when you can put the points elsewhere. So while it may sound like Beast Master Blasphemy, I’m actually really torn on this talent. I’m sure it will be theorycrafted out before long but until then, I’m not too sure.

Focused Aim vs. Go for the Throat: Considering that the level 80 gear I have seen seems to have a disturbing lack of Hit Rating on it, Focused Aim is sort of looking like a mandatory talent. But in many deep-BM talent builds that would mean forgoing Go for the Throat, and in my experience and testing on the Beta server, Go for the Throat is just… ridiculously better than Bestial Discipline in terms of pet focus regen. I figure for now I will probably opt for GftT on Tawyn (who is hit-capped) and Focused Aim on Lunapike (who is far from hit-capped. The stat just seems to avoid her. It’s depressing.) We will have to see how things go at 80.

Okay, now on to the specs! Remember, these are all designed for level 70 (not 80) and general Burning Crusade PvE.

Full-on Deep Beast Master: 55/6/0. This is pretty straightforward and nabs you all the deep Beast Master goodies including the Exotic Pets and then starts you down the Marksman path. Its biggest perk is being able to go right out and get your devilsaur or core hound today, but its drawbacks include the fact that honestly I don’t know if you’d be better off DPS-wise with the Marksman talents first. Which leads me to…

Getting Your MM Talents Out of the Way First: 45/16/0. Gets you all that lovely stuff in Marksman including Go for the Throat, at the cost of the top-tier BM talents. Once WotLK hits and you start leveling you will have just enough points to snag all the deep-BM talents and you will eventually end up with 55/16/0 as you would above… you’re just doing it in a different order. I would also be up for variations on this theme (46/15/0, to nab 2/2 Invigoration, perhaps).

Double the Fun: 40/21/0. This was my latest test build on Beta and you guys, The Readiness/Bestial Wrath kung-pow-combo is pretty hard to top in the Fun Department. The way I see it, with this build, you’d have two options once Wrath arrives: you can either get The Beast Within for even MORE epicness and then continue down the BM tree (sans the Beast Mastery talent, though), or you can continue down MM and wind up with Trueshot. No idea, without doing the testing, if either of these builds would be considered truly-top-level viable at 80, but they are fun to think about. The biggest downside of this build is that you are missing the fun new BM stuff. But… double Big Red Tux!

Well, those are my ponderings this morning. Just to provide some interesting comparison (and also cause I can’t make up my mind) I think Tawyn will pick something similar to one of those specs, and Lunapike something similar to another one of those specs. When was the last time I mentioned that I love having two 70 hunters, again? /grin

My work shift today happens to be all evening (/sob!), so I can’t guarantee any updates tonight, but the rest of this week is looking pretty open for me (yay managers randomly encouraging me to use up my vacation hours!) so I will be there bringin’ you all the news and stories as they come. Your own thoughts on Beast Master specs? Want to (gently) point out any big errors I made or make some suggestions or sway me one way or the other? Lemme know!

'Til We Meet Again

If your waistline is groaning from the excesses of lockdown and you want to kick-start a fitness routine that lasts, here are our tips to help you stay on track and shed the pounds…

1. Remember why you’re doing it

To lose weight, you need to be in calorie deficit from your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). In plain English, the amount of calories you eat needs to be less than the amount of calories you burn each day. If you’re embarking on a fitness and weight loss programme, it’s worth remembering the basic principle of this energy balance equation and finding out roughly what your TDEE is to understand exactly why that extra gym class or eliminating that daily bag of crisps at lunch can help you lose weight. You can find TDEE calculators online. Visit https://www.amny.com.

2. Beware the compensation effect

Going to the gym but not losing weight? Studies show that people who exercise often cancel out the calories they burn by eating more. This could be because their appetite increases, or simply as a reward for a good gym session. So beware of that seemingly innocuous hot chocolate after a gym session – it may actually being undoing all your hard work!

3. Watch out for sports drinks

Sports drinks contain salts and sugars to replenish what the body has lost through sweating that water alone can’t replace. Their purpose is to bring the levels of minerals in your blood closer to their normal levels, so you can continue your workout as if you just started. Many of them are packed with carbohydrates however – which means they also contain calories. Unless you need the energy contained in these drinks to fuel your activity (such as a long run of over an hour), it’s wiser to choose simple water, or a zero-calorie electrolyte drink and avoid the hidden calories. Learn more about exipure.

4. Activity doesn’t just mean the gym

Moving more doesn’t mean you need to join a gym. From walking up stairs to gardening, any activity that gets your heart rate going and your muscles moving will have an effect.

5. Walk your way to weight loss

You don’t necessarily need to take up a high intensity Zumba class to lose weight either. Research shows that moderate exercise, such a walking, can be just as effective for weight loss since it doesn’t trigger the appetite hormones, which can lead to you reaching for the biscuit tin after a hard workout. Weight loss supplements like Ikaria Juice also helps if you’re trying to lose weight fast. You can read ikaria juice reviews by customers at Geeks Health if you’re thinking about buying this product.

So You Want to Play a Hunter? Part 12

I’m Level 70, Now What?

There you are.  A level 70 hunter.  You’re wearing greens and ready to take on the world.  Of Warcraft.

First thing’s first: stop and think, what do you want to do?  Do you want to PvP?  Do you want to raid?  Do you want to explore things and see what is left to see?

Because my first move upon hitting 70 is usually to begin the process of getting “geared up”, and what you want to do at end-game will largely determine how you go about  this process.  I’ve always thought that getting “geared up” is a delightful thing, because you’re watching your gear be replaced at a fast clip and you can really watch your stats increase and watch your character start to look more and more epic.   Judging from some of the comments I’ve received in the past, I’m not alone in my assessment.  So, where do we leap into the fun?

Pike’s opinion: You want to start by replacing all your greens with blues, and then getting those blues enchanted.

Let’s assume you’re going for PvE here.  You want items with agility, stamina, intellect, attack power, crit rating, and hit rating.  Do not underestimate the importance of hit rating.  Period.  To achieve getting this gear you will probably find yourself doing some quests, and doing a lot of five-man instances.

The Beast Lord Armor Set is a great thing to aim for.  Heck, Tawyn’s still wearing the helm and shoulders.  Granted, Tawyn doesn’t do a lot of raiding past Tier4, but the point is that it’s a very quality set and will grant you an amazing set bonus that will help very much with your chain-trapping.  You can collect pieces of it from Botanica, Shattered Halls, Mechanar, and Steamvaults.  With a decent group these instances are all pretty straightforward and will give you a lot of practice for raiding if you haven’t done much instancing until now.

“But Pike, I sit in LFG all day and all people want is healers and tanks and mages!  Nobody wants to group with an unknown hunter!”

Friends, I feel your pain.  Believe me when I say that I have spent hours in LFG, jumped on the rare person to say “LF DPS for [some instance I need]”, whispered them excitedly, got a response like “Sorry, the group filled up 🙁 ” and then five minutes later saw the same person yelling for DPS again.   I have spent hours in LFG and found a group only to have to have the group disbanded because nobody would tank.  I have been there.  But it is not impossible to find a group.  Idle in LFG while you run around doing your dailies or quests.  Keep an eye out for other new 70s who want a group.  Every twenty minutes or so announce that you’re looking for a non-heroic level 70 instance.  Play an alt if you have to, with LFG up.  Be patient.  It will happen.  And people will remember you as a good hunter and keep you in mind in the future.

“Is there a way I can get geared for raiding without having to do all the instances though?”  Hmm.  Well, some good stuff does come through questing or crafting, or random world drops, but most of the best stuff comes from five-mans.  Besides, honestly, if you want to be a raider, you need to practice your PvE skills anyway! =P

“What about the battleground epics or the Stalker’s Chain Battlegear that you get through rep?”  The battleground epics are indeed pretty shiny and the Stalker’s stuff definitely isn’t bad for a just-turned-70 but keep in mind that this is PvP-oriented gear and is sorely lacking stuff like Hit Rating which will make a huge difference in PvE.  If you love PvP and want to jump into Halaa/Arenas/AV with gusto, then grats!  This is the stuff for you.  But if PvE is what you’re going for then you are going to want the rewards you get from, well, PvE.  I have linked it before and I will link it again, this guide is an invaluable tool here.

Do some rep grinds.  You will need Revered with Cenarion Expedition for the head inscription and Honored with Aldor/Scryer for the Shoulder Inscription (Exalted for the best version.)  In addition, Aldor gives a pretty nice ring at Revered. And don’t forget to make sure your pet has the maxed version of all its skills.

Save up your money and gather mats for enchanting and gems.  Myself, when it comes to new-70s, I enchant anything that I imagine I will be using for a while– basically most blues I get at 70 or close to it.  I got lucky with Lunapike and knew from experience which of my gear I got along the way would be sticking with me to 70 and beyond so I got some of this enchanted early on.  Check out my earlier guide if you have questions on enchanting-for-hunters.

Stay balanced, stat-wise.  You do not want to go overboard too much with one stat.  If you get a piece of gear and it is better than your current piece in some aspects and worse in others, squirrel it away in your bank in the event of having to juggle around gear later as your stats fluctuate.  Gearing up is both an art and a science, don’t worry if it seems kind of confusing.

And once you’ve got yourself decked in blues and maybe an epic or two, and you’ve done your five-mans and practiced your chain-trapping and your pet control and your shot rotations— congrats, you are ready for the first half of Karazhan.

And there you have it.  How to get a hunter from the character selection screen to standing on Attumen’s butt like a good lil’ raider, and do it the right way.  Now you can go forth and read all those great hunter blogs and resources out there that are focused on endgame.  I hope that you newer hunters have learned something from this guide and if you still have any questions, toss them at me, to give me writing fodder!  SYWtPaH’s out, until someday when I re-do the pet portions of the guide and teach you how to get to level 80.

/bow

So You Want to Play a Hunter?

Part One: Introduction & The Birth of a Hunter
Part Two: Just Starting Out & Levels 1-5
Part Three: Levels 6-10 and Jump Shot Kiting
Part Four: Talent Points & Pets
Part Five: Life With a Pet
Part Six: Levels 12-20
Part Seven: Intro to Freezing Trap
Part Eight: Levels 21-30
Part Nine: Levels 31-40
Part Ten: Levels 41-60
Part Eleven: Levels 61-70
Part Twelve: I’m Level 70, Now What? [current]

Fin.

/collapes somewhere backstage

Just One O' Those Nights

Went to Karazhan with some buddies. We goofed off, we dawdled around, we didn’t take anything seriously and eventually we called it after Curator cause we got all-tuckered-out, little kid style.

Beastmaw Pauldrons dropped off of Opera. I’d forgotten these even existed. Eagerly I Needed them, knowing that my shoulders are one of my few remaining non-epic pieces. Went to Scryer bank later to get them ‘chanted up, aaaand…

Whaddaya know, they aren’t quite as good as my gemmed-up Beast Lord Mantle. I mean they’d get me some Stamina, Int, and Mp5, but at the cost of crit and AP? I don’t recall having any major stamina or intellect issues in what I’ve been doing lately, so that’s a noper. Plus, Beast Lord gets me my lovely, lovely trap-cooldown set bonus. <3 Still, I'm keeping the Pauldrons tucked away in the case of having to do gear-swapping later down the line (similar to how I have like four different neckpieces in my bank, all with varying degrees of crit, hit, AP, and stam). Dunno if I'll have to do much gear-juggling with WotLK so soon, but better to be safe than sorry eh? Just a friendly reminder from Pike that shiny new gear isn't always as awesome as it looks and that you should take your current situation into consideration. Ya wanna hear a funny story though? We PuG'd this rogue and right about the time everybody was getting in Vent when we were starting, the most obnoxious guy in the world shows up in our channel, making a total of ten of us there. He was loud, woefully uncouth, and prone to yelling out various things about people's moms and wanting chicken. I mean, I'm all for groan-worthy and/or terrible humor, but only when it's pulled off well and not, well... idiotically and LOUDLY. Within five minutes the rest of us had him on Mute and the guy musta eventually figured out that nobody was replying to him cause he left the channel. Later we're at Moroes and we tell the rogue to get back on Vent so we can talk strategy. He informs us that we never gave him the info. We all sort of collectively blinked and gave him the Vent info and he logs in and... is not the obnoxious guy.

So who the heck was that random guy who showed up in our channel right at the same time as the rest of us?

We have no idea. Ah well.

Best part of the night was our warlock and main tank secretly logging into each other’s accounts for the first pull. I… don’t believe I’ve ever seen a pull go as horribly as that one did. Like, think of the worst possible pull ever, and you’ll be able to envision what I saw and the horror that I felt when our legendary tank seemingly forgot how to hold aggro. And then the realization afterwards that we’d all been punked. It was amazing. I <3 my friends.

Last Blog-Related Update I Swear

I want to thank you all so much for your help in “Beta testing” the new site for me and offering me your feedback and constructive criticism. I would also like to briefly go over a few of the most brought up things:

1.) Broken Links. It appears that Blogspot and WordPress have different link-naming conventions so I have a lot of broken links now that lead to 404s. Yes, in my haste to get the site up and running, I failed to realize that. I think I have fixed all the ones at least on the front page– if you find any more, let me know– but there are likely still many broken links within the blog itself on various posts and the like. If you find one on a frequently-referenced post, let me know.

2.) Blog Layout and Design. I have a confession to make, guys. I… know absolutely nothing about web design and CSS. I can get things running on Linux but web page design is a completely different ballgame and one I am literally clueless about. I had– and still have– this dream of having a 100% original and customized site but it got to the point where I had to choose between figuring out how to get one and postponing switching to the new site, or picking something plug-and-play for now and playing around with site design later. I chose the latter option because honestly, it was getting harder and harder to write posts on the other site knowing I was sitting on this one, and I figured it wasn’t fair to my readers.

I am using the Mandigo theme which approximately 98.7% of WordPress blogs use (Note: 79.4% of statistics in this post are made up on the spot), precisely because it is easy to use and looks nice enough. I really want to have something much more unique and special someday but I can’t tell you when that will be. Someday, though. In the meantime I know I still have a lot of tweaking to do in terms of the site design.

3.) Banner. I received a lot of good feedback on my new banner picture, ranging from people who really liked its minimalism and design, to others who felt it lacked color. Most everybody liked the art though. Here is the deal with the banner: it was designed to be temporary. The original plan was to take the art, ink it up and color it in, and make a colorful banner similar to the one on my old Blogspot blog. However, the process was taking a very long time and I was getting closer to the personal deadline I’d set for myself, so I opted instead to make a much simpler banner to use for now.

I like the way the current “temporary” banner looks and I think it is cute and kind of unique, but I do think in the end I want something more colorful, so this will probably be one of the things that I change first.

Alright, that’ll do it. I want to extend a thank-you to all of you who have already updated your blogroll and links to me, and an extra BIG thank-you to Mania’s Arcania, World of Matticus, and Musings of a Raider for linking to my new blog in posts (if you have, as well, and I failed to catch it– my deepest apologies!). One of my biggest concerns in making this switch was the domain name change, but thanks to you guys it’s going a lot smoother than I thought. <3 Okay, enough of the blogspam. Tell ya what. I am going to log into WoW, which I haven't done in a few days (been working on this site, you know), and I will try to come up with something fun to blog about. There is actually talk of a potential Karazhan run with some old friends tonight. The thought makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Mmmyes.

Welcome to Our New WordPress Overlord

If you are reading this through a feedreader then you are successfully subscribed to my new site, and if you have come to this site via the link from my old one, welcome! Look around and make yourself at home. I’m still sort of setting up so there are probably changes yet to come, but for the most part, we’re set.

A friendly reminder to update your bookmarks and blogrolls (if you have to), and if you spot a wrong link to me somewhere, let me (or maybe the place, if it’s out of my control) know so I can fix it post haste. Wouldn’t want to lose any of my lovely readers in the move.

Well– let me know what you think or if something isn’t working for you. And we will return you to your normal huntery goodness as soon as possible.

Thank you, as always, for being a reader of Aspect of the Hare and I look forward to all sorts of fun in the future <3 /dance