All posts by Pike

thoughts

Confessions of a Slow Leveler

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Hi, I’m Pike. I was there at the midnight release of Wrath of the Lich King. I installed it when I got home. I took Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off of work. I have been Wrath’ing it up on Tawyn– my main– for a whole week now. Oh, occasionally I will stop to heal an instance or two on the tree, and I’ve messed around on the Death Knight for a few hours, and sometimes I even stop to eat, sleep, go to work, read or watch House with the boyfriend. But for the most part I have been logged into Tawyn pretty consistently every day.

I am level 72.

75% to level 73, though.

I see lots of people who I cannot imagine play too much more than I do who have already hit 80. I am not one of those people. See, I am a notoriously slow leveler. Always have been. I get lost a lot. I spend 45 minutes looking for quest mobs. I’m super inefficient when it comes to quests. A lot of other people can look at their quest log and glean how to stack the quests together and do them in a certain order for maximum efficiency; me, I do ’em one (maaaaaaaybe two) at a time ’cause I’m easily confused and because my bagspace tends to fill up after about 30 minutes so I have to head back to town all the time.

To compound said matters, I do not use Quest-related addons. I really have no interest in QuestHelper, especially because I’m trying to lesson my overall addon usage in these buggy days, and I will admit that I did use Lightheaded for a week or two a while back before realizing that all it was really saving me was the five seconds that it takes to alt+tab and go to my WoWHead search bar in Firefox. I guess all those five seconds add up, but ehhh. I disabled it and don’t really miss it, though it’s always an option to return to.

On top of that, my guild is pretty dang laid-back about this type of thing, so any potential “guild pressure” is, literally, zero. People have been playing alts, playing Death Knights, or casually instancing their way up to 71 or 72.

You know what though? Other than a slight annoyance at myself for being kinda sucky at the whole questing thing, I don’t mind. I’m fine with being slow. I’m fine with being able to savor all the new content nice and slowly. I am super fine with being in a “we will raid! …eventually!” guild. I mean seriously, you all are talking to someone who didn’t step foot into Karazhan until like… March or April of this year. Someone who spent about four months doing the Karazhan key quest line. I’m happy with how things worked out… I’ve got no regrets. I knew a lot of ways I could’ve gotten into heavier raiding that summer, but I chose not to. So it’s not like the doors were all shut on me cause I was slow. I just decided there were other things I’d rather be doing (like, ya know, leveling a second hunter to 70).

Well, I’m off to work now. I’d like to think I’ll hit level 73 tonight. If not, that’s okay. =P

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Shot Through the Heart and I'm to Blame

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So at level 71, you get Kill Shot. Let’s talk about it a little.

Kill Shot is sort of like an Old School Aimed Shot, in that it does a ton of damage and it doesn’t just crit, it Mondo-Crits. The big differences between it and Old School Aimed Shot are 1.) No cast time, and much more importantly, 2.) It can only be used on an enemy with 20% health or less. In short, this is the shot that is supposed to “finish off” your target.

I’ve been playing around with it for the past level, not enough to be able to write up a Hunter Kindergarten post on it yet but enough to discuss some initial thoughts on it. Here is what I have found:

1.) Kill Shot makes me happy because it’s sort of like the New Kill Command. Er, the New OLD Kill Command. When I can use it, one of my addons (not sure which one >.>) pops me up a warning telling me I can use it, just like it used to do with Kill Command before it changed. I always dig that kind of stuff.

2.) Most of the time when out leveling/questing, you kill stuff too fast for Kill Shot to be useful. Two reasons for this: Your pet is still pounding away at the mob (especially if you are BM and your pet is doing lots of damage), and you are typically mid-shot-rotation. If you’ve just queued up a Steady Shot, and your Kill Shot opens up, by the time your Steady Shot goes off your mob is probably already dead either to your pet or to your Steady Shot.

3.) It has a fairly long cooldown of 35 seconds, presumably to prevent you from spamming it at the end of a long boss fight.

Now let’s talk about some situations where it might be really handy but where I haven’t tested it yet:

1.) Those aforementioned super long boss fights. I’m sure most of you who have done a little raiding can think of at least one boss that always seems to take eons. Every boss will get at least one Kill Shot, but if the boss is at 20% health or less for more than 35 seconds, that’s more than one Kill Shot– almost two Kill Shots for every minute. And Kill Shots are huge so that’s gonna be a nice little bonus for you.

2.) PvP. It always takes longer to beat a fellow player than it does most quest mobs because of stuff like stamina, resilience, et al. I haven’t done any PvP at all since the expansion hit but I’m sort of thinking a Disengage/Kill Shot combo would be really fun, in an I’m-wearing-a-devilish-grin sort of way.

3.) If you are spec’d into Readiness you can do two Kill Shots in a row. Yeah. I dunno about you guys but I am 99% sure that if I did two Kill Shots in a row, and they both crit, I would blissfully die from hunter ecstasy. Just sayin’. (Has anyone else noticed all the billions of fun things you can suddenly do with Readiness now that it’s easier to spec into? I don’t mean any sort of disrespect to my long-time deep-Survival friends, but its versatility now is really quite amazing.)

In short, I welcome Kill Shot to the Hunter Abilities Stable and look forward to learning about its uses even more!

Now I go to do important things, like eat breakfast, and play WoW. Not necessarily in that order…

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This Is The Ultimate Showdown (Of Ultimate Destiny)

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So, guys. You see that Sitemeter button on my right sidebar (you may need to scroll down a little)?

The one that as of the time of writing says “94,942” but probably says something different by now?

Yeah.

That is how many visits this little site has had so far. Kinda nuts, isn’t it?

Anyways! The important part. The first person to get a screenshot of it saying 100,000 and then e-mail that screenshot to me, gets a free “cute avatar” of their character! Done by yours truly in her silly-cutesy style that you can see on this site! This avatar shall be 100×100 pixels, perfectly sized for using on forums or Armory signatures, and you will be free to use it however you want and wherever you want, all I’d ask is that you credit me if someone asks about it.

And if nobody gets a screenshot of it saying 100,000, I will accept the closest number, so if you see it very close to 100,000, feel free to try your luck anyway!

Just thought it would be a fun thing to do. As always I really appreciate your visits and comments and support, this site wouldn’t be here without you guys!

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Dear Diary

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Today I…

“Surfed” on a harpoon.
Made friends with sentient walruses.
Became the Lich King’s unwitting example in the Spirit World (“Hey, watch what happens when I poke this hunter!” *splat*)
Ran into Kel’Thuzad.
Re-enacted Choplifter on a gryphon.
Rode a Death Knight mount, as a hunter.
Learned where humans came from.
Shot stuff out of the sky, Millennium Falcon-style.
Watched a long-time friend hit 70 and get his flying mount!
Replaced Garona’s Signet Ring with Ring of Indignant Rage.
Got 75% of the way through level 71.
Realized over and over that Blizzard has really truly outdone themselves this time.

What did you do today?

pets, screenshots

Don't Stop It Now

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Seeing as I spent most of Thursday goofing around on my Death Knight, and the first half of Friday joining billions of Ramparts groups on my treedruid, and didn’t even really get around to starting Tawyn’s leveling journey until the second half of yesterday… I’d say this isn’t too bad. I’ve got the leveling fever now though, and I want really badly to get to 71 today. Will it happen without all that rested XP that I had yesterday? Only time will tell!

I’ve been experimenting with using different pets while questing, and thus far I seem to be having the best luck with my good ol’ kitty Locke, the Ferocity Pet. The bear isn’t bad but in all honesty both he– er, she— and Locke seem to be pumping out the same amount of threat, so in the end you’re basically choosing if you’d rather have the bear’s armor and general tankyness, or the cat’s DPS for quicker questing. I prefer the DPS myself for general leveling, and saving the bear for solo’ing harder quests.

I have also experimented with both my Cunning pets, Tux the Owl and Eltanin the Windserpent, and they don’t seem to be quite as effective but they do work well enough. Tux’s Snatch can be handy sometimes.

I will most certainly be continuing to rotate through my pets as I level, and reviewing them as I go– do keep in mind that at this point I do not have the exotic pet talent and the four extra points (I’ve slated myself to get it in five more levels)– so your mileage may vary!

Well, off to do my morning routine and then head over to– probably the Borean Tundra (I’ve been alternating between both the Tundra and the Fjord but I actually find the Tundra to be a tad more interesting. And the baby mammoths must be saved.)

In closing, here is Tawyn surrounded by fanboys!

Hawtstuff!

screenshots

Unexpected

13 Comments

So, yesterday was full of surprises. Let’s see here, we’ve got…

…Death Knights which wound up being about ten times more fun than I was expecting. The whole opening quest line thingy was superbly done and perhaps more importantly, I am absolutely in love with my character ideas for my Death Knight. And as you long-time readers know, even though I am not a particularly active roleplayer, I looooove making characters and stories for them and more often than not, it is backstory more than any other factor that determines which characters I wind up actively playing… this is especially true for non-hunters cause it’s so hard for me to get into them otherwise.

Why yes, I did make a gnome. I like gnomes. And c’mon…

…stealing a pony is adorable.

Next up: Queue Times.

Queue Times are a strange phenomena that I have not had to deal with before. But it appears that with the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, old-time players are returning to the game in droves. It seems to be especially affecting older servers and, well, Silver Hand is a launch-date server (one of only two RP servers on launch day, according to WoWWiki!) I myself got lucky and never had to wait in line more than a few minutes, but there were reports in Trade Chat and among some of my friends and guildmates that the line was as high as 400 people and an hour’s wait at some points.

Fortunately for me, there is always The Venture Co. where all my hordies are at, if the wait gets too unbearable– VeCo is a low-pop server so it’s nice to see it actually bumped up to Medium now =P

As for my hunters, well, Tawyn trained all of the next levels of her professions (byebye gold!) and did some questing in Howling Fjord but by this time the place was swamped and I got sleepy really early (I blame the previous night’s Midnight Release), so I just called it an early night. I do plan on doing a lot more stuff with her and hopefully Lunapike today. Really, I am in no rush to hit 80. I know a lot of people are runnin’ their way to Naxx and I can definitely understand that, but I am content with going a little slower, seeing all the sights and messing around with multiple characters and not just one.

Plus, come on. Hellfire Peninsula is a “WTB Healer” fest right now, and I have a level 57 resto druid. You don’t expect me to ignore that clarion call completely, do ya? =P

wrath of the lich king

So I Said I Wasn't Going to the Midnight Release

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Yeah, I lied.

The Results of Pike’s Unscientific Survey taken while standing in a very long line yielded the following results:

1.) Way more people in this town play WoW than I thought
2.) This town is very Horde-biased (the ones standing in line anyway)
3.) The guy behind me who said something like “Yeah my hunter is pretty boring” and then moved on to talking about his other characters for the rest of the time, clearly needs to Learn2Pike! =P

So I was going to finish this up by saying something like “Goes to bed while waiting for the install”, but the install is just zipping along, so… erm… uh… *shifty eyes*

screenshots

Another Mission Accomplished

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All it took was one run of the Sporeggar’s “Now That We’re Still Friends” quest to want to repeatedly bang my head into the wall. Grinding on Naga bugs me more than grinding on Ogres does, for some reason (maybe all the slave adds they bring?), and on top of that, you get to deal with approximately 42 other 70s there all camping the spot. Just say no.

But I really wanted Sporeggar rep for my Tiny Sporebat. I was already sitting pretty at Revered because that’s what I had to get to nab the Primal Earth to Primal Water Transmute (aka the Moneybags Transmute), so I just had to get to exalted. Preferably without that naga quest.

But hey, Sporeggar just loves those flowers that you can get in Underbog…

The question then became, “Can I solo enough of Underbog to effectively farm the flowers?”

…apparently, up to the first boss, I can!

Now that two-pull pre-boss is where things fizzle out, because those mobs are un-trappable and they just love to squish hunter pets. But still, I was quite pleased to have gotten that far. It was a crazy ride, I had to trap and kite and maneuver my way out of a myriad of large and hard-hitting pulls, and there were a couple times where I was lucky to escape with a mere 400 HP, but I never once did die, and in the end I wound up with not only 14 flowers but also the realization that I had fallen in love with Huntering all over again, for, oh, the 736th time or so.

Now I could have just farmed that first third of Underbog over and over but at this point the Boyfriend and the Pallyfriend wanted to get in on the action so we stomped through the place a time or two and whaddaya know:

Annoying naga quest? Pfft. Who needs it when you’ve got a bear? =P

(And yes, Bear is now 70, and still nameless. Why am I so horrible at coming up with names lately? /sob)