Pike is back.
For the win.
=D
So I’m all set up at my new place, internet and computer all set up (clearly the most important part, as XKCD reminds us). Granted, now I have to do the whole unpacking thing, but hopefully that won’t interfere too much with more important things. Like, you know, WoW, and blogging about it. /coughs
Going to be spending the bulk of this weekend moving so I am going to be largely away-from-the-computer. Internet is slated to be up at my new place on Monday so I imagine I should be back playing the game and writing about it early next week.
Until then, happy hunting, and much <3 to all.
I gotta admit, I don’t normally do guest posts, or even really like the idea of them very much. The reason is because I dunno about you guys, but a big reason that I read blogs is because I enjoy the blogger. And as such I’d like to think you guys come here to read Pike and not a bunch of guest posts. (Though I could be wrong!)
That said, because I am busy this week and still want the site to maintain relatively active, I’ve succeeded in getting a certain someone to guest post for me. He comments here as “LS” although you may know him better as my mysterious significant other. Let’s see what he has to say about hunter/warlock synergy, gathered from all the billions of times we’ve two-manned stuff:
Hey there hunter buddies! I am LS, or as I have been more often referred to here, Mr. Pike. I came to hang out with you guys today at the request of my most esteemed lady friend, who has come down with a rather dreadful case of ‘moving-to-a-new-apartment-itis.’ I told her it might be lupus, but she told me that I needed to stop watching old episodes of House and start lifting boxes, or she was going to force me to entertain her readers while she was busy. So here I am!
With every intent of taking this request seriously, I sequestered myself away to consider what I should write. Also to hide from the task of heavy lifting. While I was thusly pondering I thought to myself; what can I write that my dear Pike’s lovely audience, would enjoy reading? I thought, perhaps, that I might regale you with humorous tales of what living with Pike is like, or perhaps amuse you with anecdotes of her past (mis)adventures. I then considered, however, that perhaps something a bit more meaningful might be appreciated. A different perspective on the game for people to consider and perhaps learn from. But what could I, a warlock, offer to an audience whose relationship with magic ended when they removed Arcane Shot from their rotation?
What I decided, is that the best use of this opportunity would be to write a brief entry of the form ‘what warlocks want their hunter buddies to know.’ While this is perhaps limited in focus, I think it will serve well as a subject on which I am capable of speaking, and on which you might perhaps be interested in listening to. With my subject thusly decided, and my girlfriend already knocking on the door insisting that she had been kidding about writing being an option, I got to work.
In all my considerable time being a warlock who works with a hunter, I think that perhaps the most fundamental misconception is that we’re both pet classes. While this may seem obviously true to some, it is actually a misnomer of sorts. A warlock’s minions have about as much in common with a warrior’s stances as they do with a hunter’s pets. While it is true that they are a separate entity from us, with their own HP and mana, and we have the ability to tell them to attack, or defend, etcetera, that’s really where the similarities end. Even as demonology our pets are not a significant portion of our DPS. I think the highest DPS I’ve ever personally seen a pet contribute is about 300 damage per second; and that was with a really wacky pet-heavy spec I was experimenting with. While it may be possible to eke out a little more than that, our pets will never approach the damage a hunter pet can put up. What’s more, our pets do not tank—not really.
Pike and I have solo’d a LOT of elites together in our time, and though I love my voidwalker Heldok a great deal—even Tux tanks better than he does. Particularly due to the superior healing abilities of mend pet over health funnel. Again, with a pet-heavy spec I was able to solo the first boss in normal mana tombs with level 80 Heldok, but it was a taxing ordeal. All in all, the voidwalker’s ability to take damage seems superior to hunter pets, but the warlock’s relative inability to heal it and its rather slow threat generation, makes my poor Heldok a rather inefficient personal tank. (Which is not to say that he doesn’t have a bevy of uses, they’re just nowhere near as powerful as a hunter pet’s are.)
Furthermore, while a hunter, or at least Pike, has a tendency to think of a pet more as a companion, for a warlock it is simply one more trick in a bag of tricks. We use our imp if we need health or slightly more DPS, we use our voidwalker if we absolutely can’t do something without a tank, we use our felhunter for the buff it gives us, the spell lock, and perhaps to steal its mana, and we use our succubus for CC.
Speaking of succubus CC, allow me to shed a bit of light on how it works for those who do not know. If for no better reason than to demonstrate why I think ‘seduce mobs’ should almost always be killed prior to ‘freezing trap mobs.’
After Pike became so exceedingly well known in our group as a top-notch CC-er with her freezing trap, I decided to see what I might accomplish with my own under-rated form of CC. I actually achieved some level of success at this, and have been complimented on my powers of seduction often. After all, how do you think I managed to get Pike to hang around me so long? But I digress. What I’m driving at, is that Succubus CC is by far one of the most complicated and unwieldy things I’ve ever tried to do in this game. And I once ran an RP / Raiding guild of over 200 people. (By far, the two most drama prone groups of people I’ve ever encountered.)
Seduce is unique among the spells I’ve encountered in WoW because it is a channeled effect which has a casting time. That there is really the trick. Because it’s a channeled effect with a casting time. What that means is that after the first seduce, there is a period of time when the mob is not CC’d, and new CC cannot be applied until the casting time is done. During these few moments, said mob will charge towards the succubus and—in any instance worth CCing in—one shot her. Since the effect is channeled, there’s no way to move the succubus to greater range whilst the effect is active. Thusfar, the only way I’ve found to stop the succubus from being killed, thus rendering the CC useless, is to break the seduce on the mob by attacking it myself, getting it to aggro on to me rather than the succubus. I then hope desperately that the succubus can re-seduce (dark gods help me if the mob resists) before I get killed—which, as a clothie, is probably between 2 and 4 attacks. What’s more, I can’t easily maneuver my succubus to be any distance from me when she seduces, meaning that next time seduction breaks, the mob is going to be within arm’s reach of her. Oh, and did I mention that seduce is on the same diminishing effects as fear? Cuz seduce is on the same diminishing effects as fear.
Aside from those two major issues, I honestly can’t say there’s a great deal of things that I feel I should say as the warlock’s delegate to the hunters. At least, nothing that is terribly pressing or interesting. I guess I should probably mention that damage meters are an atrocious way of displaying a warlock’s damage output. So if you’re ever a raid or group leader, don’t decide that your warlock is a scrub until you’ve looked at the damage output for just the boss fight.You may be surprised, or even shocked by how much the numbers change. I certainly know I have been in the past.
Oh, and Eye of Kilrogg kicks Eagle Eye’s butt. So next time scouting needs to be done, know your place: protecting the warlocks body. (Nya nya =P)
In closing, I’d like to say that despite their apparent lack of synergy, warlocks and hunters are two very interesting classes to play together. Individually, they are among the best classes for soloing content, so when attempting to two-man something, Pike and I often find that each one of us is uniquely equipped to help our combined group deal with some particular challenge. For example, the way she stacks agility and the way I stack stamina makes for some really fun times in the bedro—nevermind. >.>
That’s all I’ve got for now. I hope that some of the information here was helpful to you hunters, and if it wasn’t…well, I doubt Pike will let me guest post again anyway. =P
Thanks hon <3 and if you readers liked what you saw here, Mr. Pike has decided to branch warlock stuff away from his own personal blog, and stick them all over here at Curse of Senility. Be sure to check it out!
Dear Steady Shot,
We used to be such great friends. Oh how I loved getting to level 62 on my hunters so I could get you. Oh how excited I was. I loved weaving you between my Auto Shots so much. I dedicated instructional videos to you. I told people how fun you were. I gave you a special spot on my action bar. We had matching BFF necklaces. I carved a heart and “Pike + Steady Shot” into my resident resto druid. I’d tell people that I wished I could quit you, but I didn’t mean it of course, for how could we ever part?
It was a match made in heaven; the world was our burrito.
Then you decided to unlink yourself from Auto Shot, and it was good for DPS. But it came at a terrible cost. Suddenly all you cared about was being spammed. Suddenly that was all you wanted, and suddenly I just couldn’t press you fast enough.
And suddenly we weren’t friends anymore.
I pondered all my options, but none of them were really satisfactory. I could respec into something different that would allow me to use other, more welcoming shots, but my pets love being all strong and competitive and I couldn’t bring myself to take that away from them. I could play my lowbie hunters that didn’t have Steady Shot yet. And, actually, I have been doing just that. But then I miss Heroics and Raids so I come back to you, Steady Shot.
But then I realize that you stopped making Heroics and Raids fun a long time ago.
Well Steady Shot, it’s been a long ride, but it’s just not working out. You’re bein’ nerfed, and you will no longer be a key I have to unthinkingly pound. I caught up with an old friend lately. His name is Arcane Shot. He took me out to dinner the other night in Dalaran. He’s romantic and funny and you, Steady Shot, are just going to have to be his backup because it’s over between us.
No hard feelings; we simply had separate goals. I’ll cherish the good times, and remember– we’ll always have Kara.
Sincerely, Pike
Whether you’re trying to lose weight or just eat healthier, sticking to a new diet is tough. Because you’re not just breaking one eating habit but you’re building a new one at the same time.
“My clinical approach with my clients is to gradually change a few number of factors first. Because we have a finite amount of willpower, and the more things we remove…the harder it is” says J.k Ryan Fuller, PhD, a clinical psychologist and executive director of New York Behavioral Health who specializes in weight loss.
Breaking habits — especially the kind that trigger your brain’s reward centers, like when you gorge on ice cream — takes time and effort.
Here are the strategies that clinical psychologists who specialize in weight loss recommend if you want to change your diet habits in a safe, sustainable way.
“I advise people not even to call it a diet. That brings up all kinds of negative emotions and expectations, such as deprivation, rules, food logs, etc,” says Kimberly M. Daniels, PsyD, who specializes in overeating and weight issues. Visit https://observer.com/.
Daniels explains that when it comes to breaking bad habits, it is helpful to think of current habits in terms of self-care.
“Binge eating ice cream every night would easily be defined as a bad habit, but people do that to soothe or comfort themselves. So it’s actually self-care. Self-care that doesn’t get you anywhere good, but still self-care.”
Daniels recommends trying to uncover why you are performing this self-care habit by asking yourself some questions.
Once you understand your reasons more clearly, you can start to address the real cause of the behavior and break the bad habit. For example, “if you’re eating ice cream every night because you’re lonely, how can you boost your social connections?” says Daniels.
Whether you’re trying to lose weight or just eat healthier, sticking to a new diet is tough. Because you’re not just breaking one eating habit but you’re building a new one at the same time.
“My clinical approach with my clients is to gradually change a few number of factors first. Because we have a finite amount of willpower, and the more things we remove…the harder it is” says J. Ryan Fuller, PhD, a clinical psychologist and executive director of New York Behavioral Health who specializes in weight loss.
Breaking habits — especially the kind that trigger your brain’s reward centers, like when you gorge on ice cream — takes time and effort.
Here are the strategies that clinical psychologists who specialize in weight loss recommend if you want to change your diet habits in a safe, sustainable way. l
“I advise people not even to call it a diet. That brings up all kinds of negative emotions and expectations, such as deprivation, rules, food logs, etc,” says Kimberly M. Daniels, PsyD, who specializes in overeating and weight issues.
Daniels explains that when it comes to breaking bad habits, it is helpful to think of current habits in terms of self-care.
“Binge eating ice cream every night would easily be defined as a bad habit, but people do that to soothe or comfort themselves. So it’s actually self-care. Self-care that doesn’t get you anywhere good, but still self-care.”
Daniels recommends trying to uncover why you are performing this self-care habit by asking yourself some questions.
Once you understand your reasons more clearly, you can start to address the real cause of the behavior and break the bad habit. For example, “if you’re eating ice cream every night because you’re lonely, how can you boost your social connections?” says Daniels.
To those of you getting here via the World of Warcraft pom-poms at WoWInsider…
…my 14 year old sister made them. All credit goes to her, not me.
Yes, we are kind of a… creative and video gamey family…
Feign Death. It works.
This message has been brought to you by Pike and Why Yes Virginia, This is a Cop Out Post Productions.
And viewers like you.
If I had to pick a favorite part of World of Warcraft it wouldn’t be hunters. Nor would it be the social aspects of the game (though admittedly, that one is largely because most of my guildies are now effectively out-of-game-friends as well– we all hang out in AIM chats and stuff).
No, my favorite aspect of the game is character creation. And by that I don’t mean the whole choose your race/class/silly hairstyle part, although that is fun too.
I mean coming up with a story and personality for your character and stepping into their shoes for a few fleeting hours. That’s what I mean. That’s my favorite part of the game. That’s one of the things that first enthralled me when I started playing WoW. “Wait, you mean I can create my own video game hero/heroine?” Now don’t get me wrong, I love Mario and Link and Solid Snake and Locke Cole and Jim Raynor and Master Chief. I love them to bits, heck, don’t tell anyone, but I have a crush on Link that is like… thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis big.
*cough* Sorry, sidetracked.
Anyways, yeah, there had been times before where I could sort of create a character, but not in the same way. Neverwinter Nights and KotoR were solid games but didn’t grab me on a “character” level. Pokémon didn’t let you create female characters (which I really wanted to do) until I’d already sort of drifted away from the series. Et cetera. Other games let you sort of make a character but thrust you into an already formed backstory anyway.
But with WoW, I discovered the game alongside my character. I learned things like how to play my class alongside my character. And for some reason, this was the first game where I not only experienced the story as I would personally, but thought about how my character would react to all the events unfolding around her, too. By the time I was max level, I cared for my character in a very deep and hard to explain way– she was sort of me, but sort of not me, and she was a good friend who I experienced this crazy world with. She has a real personality, one that is different than that of any of my other characters. In a way, she is real. She is something I created and can be proud of not just by topping a DPS meter or getting her all decked out in purples, but by being able to feel like I created a character in a story.
Mirshalak recently queried, “What are you addicted to?” What keeps you coming back to the game? Sure, my guildies do and my hunters do and my general enjoyment of the game does. But more than all that, for me, it’s the way Blizzard really succeeded in creating a world that just sucks you right in. It’s the way every time I do one of the opening quests that I’ve done a million times, it’s fresh and original because I’m seeing it through a completely different set of eyes. It is pure distilled roleplaying without actually going out and walking slowly around the Cathedral District and having some deep discussion about the state of Azerothian affairs. It’s something that I’ve yet to be able to experience anywhere else, with the exception of maybe Dungeons & Dragons, but for me this might even be more than that because it is so visual and hands-on and I’m a very visual and hands-on type of person.
That‘s what keeps me coming back. My friends are here– and this time, by friends, I mean characters.
Okay, gonna end this now that there is a big neon “GEEK” sign hanging over my head. =P My WoW account is now safely reactivated though I don’t anticipate too much activity for the next couple of weeks; I am moving into a new place and that will require most of my attention for a little while! Still, I’ll be here, yapping away, I’m sure.
P.S. Since I’ve already linked to one blog in this post, go read this. Trust me.
I love drawing cutsey renditions of my hunters’ pets, and it’s always bugged me that I don’t have more of them on my site, because I do have so many hunters and thus, by extension, a lot of pets. The site banner has Tux and Locke, and on my Dramatis Personae page, you can see Lunapike with Alyosha and Althalor with Regulus. But some of my very favorite pets were nowhere to be seen.
So I opted to fix this, and now on the site sidebars, you can see Eltanin the Windserpent and Serenity the Firefly, proselytizing my contact info and my Hunter Kindergarten guides, respectively:
Both made 100% via the GIMP. I had a lot of fun making ’em, and I’m glad to see more of my pets make an appearance here. ^_^ Hopefully you all like them too!
When I posted a picture of my servers on my last post, I got a lot of comments about how I have a lot of toons. This is something that really hadn’t occurred to me because it doesn’t feel like I have that many characters, because I don’t actively play many of them. Observe:
Silver Hand (10) – I have ten characters on this server, and only five that I ever log into. One is Tawyn, one is Tamaryn, one is my bank alt, one is my mote bank alt, and one is my Death Knight. Characters posted in order of frequency that I log into them (my poor DK is neglected these days). Those other five characters… I have a hard time remembering who they are, much less logging into them >.>
The Venture Co. (8) – I have eight characters on this server. Now actually, this server sort of ends up being my “experimental alts” server so I think overall I’m more active with alts on this one than on Silver Hand. Not all eight of them, though, there are a couple characters here who I rarely touch, and Lunapike and Althalor (both hunters) and Songlark (my other resto druid… what? >.>) are the only ones above level 20.
Dark Iron (3) – This is the server that a lot of my family and IRL friends play on. So I’ve had characters on there almost from the beginning. Here’s the thing: it’s not an RP server. As such, I have a heck of a hard time playing there. It’s not even that I “miss” the RP, because I don’t do a lot of RP myself. It’s that the whole atmosphere just feels different in a way I can’t get used to =(
Regardless, I have a level 16 blood elf paladin on this server who I haven’t touched in over a year. I also have two hunters who are levels… I dunno, 9 and 12 respectively, I think. Who also haven’t been touched in over a year. They’re still sitting there out of… well I’m not sure why they’re still there. I have already informed aforementioned friends and family that if I ever decide to go play with them it will probably be through transferring Lunapike over, so maybe it’s finally time to release these characters into the nether.
Thunderlord (2) – I have a couple of sub-10 characters here. They haven’t been touched in months. More family members play on this server, but sadly it suffers from NonRPitis like Dark Iron does and I can’t get into it. Next!
Cenarion Circle (2) – This one is actually interesting, the two characters here are level 1. One is from some random BRK event a long time ago and one is a replica of Tawyn when I wanted to try my hand at machinima. Decided I failed at machinima and haven’t touched the character since. Not sure why these characters are still around actually >.>
Twisting Nether (2) – Ah yes, this server. My boyfriend and I have been casually leveling two gnome mages together. We got busy and haven’t logged in for a few months. We should probably do that again. >.> The second character on the server is a level 2 hunter who I never play.
Drenden (2) – I have a level 2 blood elf hunter here who now that I think about it should probably be deleted, and a level 12-ish dwarf hunter who… I need to log into more. Forgive me, Ratshag and BRK! /grovels
Wildhammer (2) – This server has a bit of a story behind it– the same friend that got me and my boyfriend playing WoW on the first place (and stuck us both on Silver Hand, actually), also had Horde characters on this server, and a really fun guild. So, one of the first characters I made in all of WoW was a troll warrior named Lunakuti, partially because it sounded trollie, and partially because my character had tusks like Luna from Dominic Deegan. Then I realized that I missed behing a hunter. A lot. A lot a lot. So I rolled a new character, named Lunapike, as an homage to my first failed attempt on this server. I liked Lunapike a lot and played her until level 22 or 23 or so, at which point the guild sort of imploded and I diagnosed the server with having an acute case of the dreaded NoRP Flu, so I transferred to The Venture Co. The rest is history =P
That aforementioned troll warrior and a random troll priest are still on that server, having not been touched in over a year. I find it hard to delete the warrior, if only because she wound up being the roundabout inspiration for Lunapike. I’m kind of a sap.
Moon Guard (2) – This is supposedly the world’s biggest RP mecca and I wanted to check it out, so I have an Alliance and Horde character here. Now maybe it’s because the characters are low level or maybe because I was checking out the wrong spots (Thunder Bluff is understandable but Stormwind? And I had to walk through freaking Goldshire to get there?), but I didn’t see any of this mythical RP going on. Sometimes I think I should go back and take a second look but the server is always locked these days, so…
Sisters of Elune (1) – This is the server where my boyfriend and I were doing our Grand Switcheroo project– he rolled a hunter and I rolled a warlock. They’re both sitting at level 10, and have been for quite some time. I feel really bad, but… I have such a hard time getting into warlocks. I try so hard, too. For my latest attempt, I decided to make a “hot blood elf guy ‘lock” (my term /cough) and it sort of is helping a little. Why yes, I am kind of a sad person. =P
Shadow Council (1) – I have a level 18ish troll Survival hunter on this realm who I play once every month or so because Shadow Council has this weird tendency to be the only server up when all my other ones are down. If that keeps up this character might actually be a decent level someday. o.O
Maelstrom (1) – I sat down and said “I AM GOING TO LEVEL A DRAENEI PAST LEVEL 10 FOR ONCE” and the result is a lonely level 6 draenei hunter on this random server. As you can see that little project isn’t progressing very well, but maybe someday?
And that’s that. I’ve deleted several through the ages too, but now that I look at it, I may have to go through and make yet another clean sweep. I mean, it’s a new year, Spring Cleaning and all, right? Though I always feel a little bad about deleting characters. Am I the only one who’s a character packrat? =P
In other news, I feel obligated to inform you all that my WoW subscription expired yesterday and I am not going to resubscribe right away. Not out of lack of interest in the game at all, no, but because I have a lot of stuff going on in the Real World right now that requires my attention (and money) and I want to make sure I have that all cleared up before jumping into the Warcraft World again. I don’t anticipate the game downtime being that long and I’m pretty sure I’ll still be blogging, so don’t panic! I just wanted to update you all on the situation. *nods*