One year ago today I wrote the following in my LiveJournal:
I’m playing the World of Warcraft free trial.
My night elf hunter has awesome teal hair.
Fin.
“Darn straight I have awesome teal hair.”
All posts by Pike
Window Shopping
Firstly, thanks for all of your continued kind comments! I received a lot of requests for more hunter kindergarten posts and guides for lower-level hunters. Well you’ve come to the right place: ask and ye shall receive! I’ll be working on more Hunter Kindergarten guides shortly.
Lemme tell you a little about today, though. I got home from work, logged onto WoW, and noticed I had a mail waiting for me from Blizzard Customer Service. Excitedly I ran to the mailbox, eager for my boots, and found… two badges. Just those. And a letter from Blizzard that seemed to be closing up the whole issue.
They also had an e-mail address, though, telling me I could e-mail them if I had any further requests, so I quickly fired off an e-mail to them telling them about my boots and how I saw them and couldn’t get them, and could they pretty please get them to me?
After that, though, I was in sort of a low rut of a mood, stressing about my boots and all. So I went and did some Sunwell dailies and then went to the new badge loot vendor and decided to take a close look at the badge stuff because to be truthful all I’d really paid attention to before was the Choco-Bow.
But today I saw this and immediately began drooling. And it cost 100 badges. I had more than enough.
And I wavered. I was suffering from No Boots Syndrome and I needed something to lift my spirits and ohhhh that chestpiece is about a million times better than my current auction house blue which I’ve been wearing since about ten minutes after I hit level 70.
But the bow that I’d been wanting forever…
But now I have this rifle which is still pretty darn good and which just plain looks sexy…
And I hit this horrible crossroads where I couldn’t make up my mind and I didn’t know whether I wanted to spend 100 hard-earned badges only to later decide I’d made a terrible mistake and would rather have the bow or something, and then have to earn 100 more badges.
So I decided to do something I’d never really done before and consult The Spreadsheet. Most of you probably know what I’m talking about. Basically a hunter sat down and coded up this ridiculously complex and awesome spreadsheet where you can insert all your stats and it will cook up your DPS and your shot rotation and you can sit around and fiddle with stuff to your heart’s content and decide what is optimum for you.
I’ve never really used The Spreadsheet before; I tried it once before and got confused and quit. (I get confused easily. >.>) But this time, armed with Drotara’s guide, I plugged in all my stuff by hand (the Open Office version, which is the only version I can use on Linux, does not let you import info from the Armory) and did some research.
Turns out that by either getting the Choco-Bow and keeping my current chestpiece, or getting the new chestpiece and keeping my current gun… I get almost the same exact DPS increase. I think the bow gets me a very slight edge (less than 1 DPS). Either way I do gain about 18 DPS. The super interesting part was that with the bow, I’m the one getting most of the DPS increase, whereas with the chestpiece, a lot of the DPS increase will come from the pet. So I suppose it’s really a choice of whether I’d like to have more of a pet-DPS increase or focus on the hunter-DPS increase. And also a choice of whether I’d rather spend 100 or 150 badges to obtain roughly the same increase. And a choice of whether I’d cheat on my rifle (my preciousssss) with a Choco-Bow.
Leanin’ towards the chestpiece but I don’t want to make any major decisions right now. Especially because I sort of wonder if the haste rating is going to make things harder on my hand-woven shot rotations. So for now…
I will have patience and will think about this some more.
And I will wait for my boots.
/twitch
A Teacher's Work Never Ends
I think that sometimes we may take what we know about a subject for granted and assume everyone knows it. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve been somewhat reluctant to post “hunter kindergarten” guides in the past… because I often fear it’s stuff everybody already knows.
But just now, while playing a lowbie hordie, I heard the following two things said by two different level 70 hunters:
“BM hunters don’t need agility, they need attack power.”
And
“The best shot rotation for 41/20/0 Beast Mastery uses Aimed Shots and Arcane Shots, and Steady Shot but only against dazed targets because it does more damage against dazed targets.”
…
/blink
Sorry Barrens hunters, but it’s back to school for you guys. Let’s go over some stuff real quick here: and I know I don’t have the math to back it up, but I do have some personal experiences.
Attack Power vs. Agility:
Attack power isn’t bad per se, but here’s the thing, if you are gearing for Attack Power over agility, then you are basically giving up crit in favor of a little extra damage per shot.
Whether or not AP helps your “pure DPS” more than crit does is somewhat debatable and is largely dependent on gear, according to Cheeky, a hunter that I have a lot of respect for.
But let’s go beyond “pure DPS” and think about what happens when you crit as a typical Beast Mastery hunter. You get to use Kill Command. More DPS. Your pet has a very good chance of crit’ing with Kill Command. More DPS. This procs Ferocious Inspiration. More DPS. Also when you crit, your pet gets a bunch of focus via Go for the Throat. This lets your pet use his focus dump moves (more DPS), which also have a good shot at crit’ing (more DPS) and procing Frenzy (more DPS) and Ferocious Inspiration (more DPS). Now I haven’t done any math or anything but I’m having a hard time believing that some extra attack power is going to overcome all the benefits of crits. I myself would much rather see a big crit number on my Armory page than a big AP number.
Now the key is balance, you don’t want to stack crit chance and let your AP suffer or vice versa. That’s why agility is so good, because it contributes to both. Not to mention when a paladin gives you Blessing of Kings, it is going to scale based on your agility and not on flat AP or crit increases.
And that is why, in Pike’s opinion, Agility > Attack Power.
Shot Rotations:
My fellow hunters, do not underestimate the importance of using a good shot rotation if you want to do lots of DPS. If you are a Beast Master hunter you do not need to be using Arcane Shots (unless you have a slower weapon and can thread one in there) and you should never be using Aimed Shots. I have done heroics with hunters who have a nice solid spec, are very well-geared, and yet do very little DPS compared to me, and the reason is because they are simply spamming whatever shots they can when the cooldown is up. You need to learn how to time your shots. I know it seems kind of counterintuitive at first to simply not use certain shots when they’re sitting right there in front of you, ready to be fired. But ya gotta trust me on this one. Grab a nice weapon like Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle, start weaving in Steady Shots between your Auto Shots, and hang on and enjoy the ride. The results will amaze you.
My damage meter told me I was hitting over 1100 DPS during my last Kara run; I don’t want to quote that just yet because it seems a little high to me and my damage meter has been sorta glitchy lately anyway. But I know I am doing close to 1000 under optimal circumstances and the reason is because of my shot rotation.
As for Steady Shot: apparently it really does do more damage against dazed targets (I… feel kinda silly for not knowing this before >.> I guess you can learn stuff in Barrens Chat.) but that doesn’t mean you should be saving it and only using it against dazed targets. It is the most mana-efficient special shot that you have and you should make the most of it.
Well, that wraps up today’s little review. In closing, I just want to mention how much I dislike lag. Because it throws off my groove.
This little guide was hastily written up before running to work, so as always, lemme know if I made a mistake or left somethin’ out.
Tawyn and the Case of the Missing Chess Loot
On Sunday I did the Chess Event in Karazhan.
But then it decided to glitch and afterwards we all got pooped into Curator’s Room instead of back into the Chess Room.
We ran back, but much to our dismay, it meant we could only see the loot and badges inside the chest… we couldn’t actually take them because we apparently hadn’t run back fast enough.
Ya know what I saw in there?
Mmmyep.
After much whimpering and clawing at the glass, I sent in a ticket to the GMs, and about an hour later one popped up (mid-crazy-pull) and I informed him of the glitch. He asked a couple questions about it, then told me that everybody in the raid should send in a ticket about their lost badges but that he would have to escalate the issue of the unlootable-loot to a higher power, and that they would get back to me. I said “Sounds good!”
We downed Prince for the first time. It was an epic battle. By the end, the tank was the last one standing; the priests (post-Spirit of Redemption form) having hit the bucket mere seconds before Prince. It was also the longest 1% on a boss you’ve ever seen in your life. Yeah… it was intense. We decided to call our Karazhan a big success for the week.
But I stayed around and waited a while for the GM. He didn’t come.
I kept waiting. No GM.
Finally, after staying up much later than my bedtime, I went to sleep.
The next morning I got online; my ticket to the GM was still in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. But alas, there was still no response.
It’s Tuesday night now, and still no word from the GMs.
This is killin’ me, you guys. /twitch
Boots.
Boots.
Boots.
(Really though, I’ve no right to complain; I got a nice new cloak from Shade of Aran, not to mention my shiny new rifle. …but… you guys… My current boots are level 67 rogue blues. /whimpers again, and contemplates various ways to bribe the GMs)
P.S. Are Felsteel Stabilizers really that hard to come by? I swear, I’ve been stalkin’ the Auction House for days. How is the kind Mr. Flinthammer ever supposed to make me my scope at this rate, as he so generously offered to do?
/asplode
Pick a pet, any pet!
So I’m sure you long-time readers know about Tux and Locke, but who’s the third pet in my stable?
Well, currently, it’s a level 68 Bloodmaul Dire Wolf from Blade’s Edge, named Amarok. Amarok being the name of a giant, fearsome wolf in Inuit mythology, and also the name of an amazing piece of Open Source software. I originally got him partially because I was inspired by my desktop wallpaper and partially because I wanted a pet that still did some damage but also had a little more armor than my other two pets, for grinding and the like. But for some reason I haven’t really gotten attached to him the same way that I have to Tux and Locke. Oh, he’s a neat little pet, but… I dunno. I’m sorta feeling like something different.
So here is where I turn to you, readers, for help and advice.
Should I stick with the wolf, or try something different?
Oh, and here are the current candidates for “Try Something Different”:
Raptor:
Tux was the first pet I ever tamed, and the second was Wash, a Mottled Raptor from Wetlands. I’d had my eye on a raptor pet almost as long as I’d been playing the game, and I went out and tamed Wash the second I was a high enough level. (Oh, and for those of you who do not “get” the name… click here, please.)
For a while, Tux sat in the stable while Wash followed me everywhere. Then I started to feel bad for Tux so I pulled him out again. Then I tried alternating between Tux and Wash for a while but it soon got to the point where I simply could not keep them both up to me in level. Finally while questing in Stranglethorn Vale I realized that level-36-Wash just could not hold aggro on some of the level 40 mobs I was trying to attack, and I was forced to choose between Tux and Wash… and, well, I picked Tux and Wash went to the stable for good.
There he stayed until I was level 69 when I realized that I needed that third stable slot (the other two taken by Tux and Locke) to be able to learn the highest level skills for my kitty and birdy. It was actually something that I’d known I’d have to do for a while, but I’d been putting it off because I’d gotten rather attached to Wash in the short time that he’d quested with me. So finally one day I took a deep breath, pulled him out, took him to the prettiest spot in Nagrand, and released him.
…I cried. Real hunters cry.
(Warning: if you are anything like me, then do not look at these pictures while listening to “When Somebody Loved Me” from Toy Story 2 unless you want to risk bursting into tears.)
*pulls self together*
Anyways, the point is that I still have this little longing in my heart to have a raptor waddling after me again. The downside is that they do fill basically the same role as a cat so it might be sort of redundant to have both. But hey, who said having hunter pets had to be logical, right?
“A feeling is not much to go on.”
“Sometimes a feeling, Mister Spock, is all we humans have to go on.”
Ravager:
I’ve never had one. Supposedly they are the highest-DPS-pet in the game and that aspect sort of intrigues me. I’d like to try something else in my raids and heroics; I love Locke but he’s gotta get some time off sometimes ya know?
Unlike many people, I find ravagers to be cute in an Aliens/hydralisk sort of way. “Pike, you’re nuts for using the words “cute”, “Aliens”, and “hydralisk” in the same sentence.” Yes, yes I know. (Hey, Starcraft is cute.)
I do rather like the idea of trying out a type of pet that I have never tried before… it’d be exciting I think.
Windserpent:
My character Lunapike has a Windserpent as one of her two pets (the ever so cute bright red Springpaw Lynx is the other) and I’ve really enjoyed having him as a pet. Lightning Breath is great and scales with hunter AP, so as your attack power goes up it will make a difference in your noodly Windserpent buddy as well.
I’ll admit I’m also inspired by the fact that a hunter friend of mine who I have ridiculous amounts of respect for (and who consistently beats me in PvP although I outgear the heck out of him) runs with a Windserpent. Clearly he knows something that I don’t. (Actually I think he knows a lot of things that I don’t.) And I think the Windserpent might be a part of that secret. MUST. FIND. OUT.
Boar:
If I want to stick with my original plan of having a grinding pet, then the ever-fashionable boar might be a good choice. The downsides are that it’d be quite a level grind to bring one up to level 70, and also, the recent boar nerfs make this somewhat less of a must-have-pet than it used to be. Still, it’s a solid choice with lotsa armor.
And there you have it. What’s a hunter to do for her third stable slot? The nostalgia and overall coolness-factor of the raptor? The damage, unique-ness, and new-ness of a ravager? The fun Lightning-Breath-goodness of the windserpent? The armor of the ol’ boar standby? Or should I just stick with my wolf?
…I’m torn.
What do you think?
I’ve put a poll up on the sidebar so you can cast your vote. And please feel free to leave your comments on pet-picking!
This Is My Rifle
“This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life. My rifle, without me is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than any enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will….
My rifle and myself know that what counts in this war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit…
My rifle is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weakness, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its sights and its barrel. I will keep my rifle clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will…”
So yeah, cookie for the first person to guess what exactly about this picture is making me grin like a lunatic!
/continues grinning like a lunatic
You broke my Karazhan!
That’s me. In a raid group with one other person so I could run into Karazhan for two minutes.
And that’s… that’s another raid group in the same instance with me.
After a lot of confusion and pondering over whether we actually could 11-man Karazhan, the one final member of the other raid group realized he couldn’t get into the instance because the “raid was full”. Ah, so that was it. Ten people with the same Raid ID can all get into the same copy of Kara, regardless of groups. That’s how it seems, anyway, because I’d earlier been called in to help on Curator with two of these people a couple days ago… so I was, in fact, sharing a Raid ID.
Still, I can tell you right now, after months of playing this game, it is downright surreal to be in an instance all by yourself and suddenly run into a bunch of other players.
My Kingdom for a Choco-Bow
In a comment in my last post, Sonvar asked me when I’m going to be replacing my PvP bow with a good PvE bow.
Sonvar, I am the first person to admit that my bow is not the best bow for PvE. Not by a long shot. The reason I’ve been using it this whole time is because I got sick of [Valanos’ Longbow]. Every new-70 hunter and their ravager has Valanos’ Longbow. And no upgrades to it were dropping for me (none has ever dropped for me actually) so I did the honor grind and got myself a spiffy and oh-so-shiny [Gladiator’s Heavy Crossbow]. It’s slow, it’s not an optimum PvE Beast Mastery bow by any means, but it’s served me well regardless.
As for when I’m going to replace it… the answer is… the very second I loot my 150th Badge of Justice. Currently I’m sitting at 93 of ’em or something similarly abysmal. “Pike, why do you need 150 badges?”
This:
[Crossbow of Relentless Strikes].
This is delicious on so many levels. Improves your hit rating. Improves your crit rating. Improves your attack power. 2.80 speed. 93 DPS. Probably tastes divine when plucked, roasted, and lightly seasoned.
It may be a Choco-Bow (This is the new name of this weapon. So let it be written, so let it be done), but I will be doing heroics all weekend and it will be mine.
Top Secret Project #314159: A Confession
That’s me.
Tamaryn, kittycat, druid.
Yes, I can hear you, screaming at your computer monitor, “Whoa whoa whoa, wait a minute!”
“Didn’t you roll a horde druid that you got to level ten?”
Yes, yes I did. Then I decided to reroll as an Alliance druid because I wanted to play with my guild.
“You actually got a non-hunter character to level 20?”
Hey, this is my second non-hunter to get to level 20, thankyouverymuch. I have a 21 mage.
“So you decided to make a feral druid?”
Actually no, all my talent points thus far have gone into the Balance tree. The picture shows me in Cat Form cause I just got it and thought it looked fun.
“So you’re gonna level Moonkin?”
Yup, I figured it was the best bet if I wanted to be able to solo decently efficiently while still having a strong mana pool for times when I’d want to jump into a healing role. Endgame I think I’m gonna either stay moonkin, or more likely, switch to tree, because I really want to give healing a serious try.
“Wait… did you just say… endgame…?”
Yes. Yes I did. I’m being serious when I say I’m leveling this character. And thus far this is the only non-hunter class that has been able to hold my interest for a decent amount of time.
Here’s the deal, basically I decided that I wanted to try playing a “hybrid” class that would allow me to heal, or, with the proper reshuffling of gear and talent points– tank, for my guild. That gave me two options: paladin and druid. In the end it came down to whether I wanted a reliable rez or whether I wanted to be able to turn into stuff, and being able to turn into stuff won out. (Not to mention I have a horribly hard time trying to get into paladins. I just can’t do it… I don’t know why!)
How am I liking the class so far? To be honest I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. It’s fun to be able to cast at stuff and then when you’re running low on mana, switch to bear or cat and start swiping at things. It’s fun to be able to run around and give people buffs (hunter pets are always buffed. Always.) Perhaps one of my favorite things is that it’s an all new challenge for me. Running into quests that are orange or red to me with one of my hunters is challenging and it’s fun to take on that challenge; but trying to do the same with my druid is even more challenging, partially because I’m still learning about the class. I felt so proud of myself today trying to complete some collect-the-mushrooms quest in a cave in Darkshore. There was one last mushroom that I had to get that was surrounded by three guys all at my level, one of which healed. I popped an armor elixir, cast Regrowth on myself, hopped into Bear Form and ran into the fray. A healing potion, a couple healing spells, and a whole lotta Mauling and Swiping later, I’d finished the quest and was /dancing all over the cave.
That’s really the beauty of the class so far– you can change your style of play based on what you feel like doing. Feel like casting? You can. Feel like tanking? You can. Feel like being a rogue? You can. Feel like healing? Yep, you can do that too. Granted, this does leave out “feel like being a hunter?”, which is my favorite type of character, but hey… nobody’s perfect. And running around in Cat Form sorta feels like a perpetual Eyes of the Beast.
I have no idea how much longer I’ll be able to feel like a true hybrid before I realize that my feral skills are falling farther and farther behind because I’m spec’ing and gearing myself up like a mage, but in the meantime, it’s fun. There is a “MoonkinForLife” in my guild who told me he leveled up to 30 with no problems using Cat Form, even as Balance, so that’s encouraging.
Oh and for the record, I still like hunters the best and this is always gonna be a hunter blog. =P My hunterness, I feel, extends beyond the game whereas donning the druid costume for a couple hours does not.
That said, I’m having Writer’s Block lately. Ask me hunter questions so I can answer them. Dooooo iiiiiiit!
Easing into Endgame
World of Warcraft is an interesting creature.
It is, of course, an MMORPG– “Massively Multiplayer” being the first two words in that acronym. And yet if you want, you can go through much of the game without really dealing with too many people. That’s what I did. Oh sure, there’s other people you can interact with and there’s a living breathing economy, much like on Neopets which is what I played pre-WoW. But you can level to 70 basically without any outside help.
When I was level 19 or 20 or so, I did Deadmines because somebody told me I should. It was my first ever instance, people were impatient with me (to be fair I was the worst hunter of all time at this point– pet on aggressive and immolation trap for the win) and the whole experience really left a negative impression on me and after that, with the exception of a few run-throughs by higher-level friends, I hardly did any instancing at all until I hit Outlands.
And this is where it started to get interesting, because this is where our guild really started to grow and we started to do stuff together. Our little Karazhan group that we have now has been running stuff together since Hellfire Ramparts– heck, a few of us have been running together since Zul’Farrak. But for the most part, we went through Outlands together, running instances as we encountered them and sort of learning together. This has culminated in what I think is a very solid group of people who know how to work efficiently as a team.
So you’d think the level 70 endgame would be a breeze right?
Well, it takes a lot of work that really hadn’t occurred to me beforehand, simply because I’ve never played an MMO with situations like this before. Karazhan is a ten-man raid that takes quite some time to do if you’re still learning it. So it’s a pretty big time commitment. And it’s really hard to sync up the schedules of so many different people, most of whom have school or work or even the military going on in their real lives. And it just so happens that as a guild officer, I am now in charge of trying to plan this and get it together, and keep everybody happy.
It’s a little bit stressful and it pushes me out of my comfort zone, and I have to admit it had me worried for a while. Had WoW finally turned into a job? Was I breaking my own “it’s a game” rule by continuing to play?
But I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve decided– WoW isn’t just any ol’ game. It is an MMORPG as I said at the beginning of my post. It has plenty of solo content, but if you want to really, truly unlock the “massively multiplayer” portion of it, it’s going to take some work because other people are involved, not just you. But that, I think, is part of what makes endgame so rewarding.
It’s not everybody’s thing, and that’s quite okay. In fact, as I even told my boyfriend the other day… “Sometimes I catch myself wishing that I could just go back to when all I had to worry about was how many kobolds I had left to kill.” But in the end, as much as I do truly love the solo content of the game and the leveling (hence all the alts), I also love running instances and raids with my friends. And to experience that, you’ve got to be willing to put in a little effort… more than you might initially expect.
And that, in a nutshell, is why I’ve been a little scarce these past couple of weeks. Because I had to take a little break to sort of define the game in my head and decide if the sudden new “work” aspect of the game that jumped on me without warning was justified. I’ve decided it is.
As is running into Orgrimmar with a couple buddies when you’re bored, just to see if you can actually hit Thrall once before dying:
I think I got in a single Arcane Shot. It was epic.