Category Archives: pvp

battlegrounds, horde, pvp

Seeing It From The Other Side

8 Comments

So what’s a hunter do the second she hits level 51?

Head to the 51-60 AV bracket, of course.


Not bad for being the lowest level they letcha in. I think so anyways.

It seems like it was just yesterday when Tawyn hit her early-50s and snagged herself Ice Barbed Spear. Well, today it looks like yet another of my hunters has achieved that rite of passage.


/cheer
/dance

It only took two games to do it, too. Just two! On Tawyn it took like eleven.

It was so weird playing this battleground from the Horde side for the very first time. It sort of felt like Bizarro-AV. To be honest I still can’t figure out Horde’s secret for winning. I was sort of hoping it would all be made clear, but honestly it seems like when I’m playing Horde we do the exact same thing as Alliance (only in reverse) and yet we win heartily rather than lose decidedly. Very odd. Clearly this requires further study.

Gosh I love leveling hunters.

arena, battlegrounds, blogs, pvp

My First Ever Arena…

7 Comments

…was a 2v2, me (BM hunter) and a warlock vs. a warrior and a priest.

I really didn’t know a lot about what I was doing because I’d never even been inside an arena before. Somebody told me I should “run up the ramp” so I did. The warrior started pounding on the warlock first which gave me ample time to pop Beast Within, Abacus of Violent Odds, and Rapid Fire, and start devouring the warrior.

I actually got his health down quite a ways, but, ya know… he had a priest. So it was all to no avail. (In retrospect we probably should’ve attacked the priest first, but I didn’t see him for a while.) I eventually died, which I expected– I am so geared for PvE right now that it’s not even funny how gimped my stamina and resilience are– but to be honest I did better than I thought I’d do. I guess having 7000+ lifetime honor kills gives me a wee bit of an advantage despite my lack of gear.

I also played ten Arathi Basin games yesterday; I figured “why not” because it was still the holiday weekend for it and also because I had this sudden idea to record the results of the ten games, just for some fun statistics to look at.

Of the ten games I played, all PuGs, seven were against premades and were thus losses. (Though funnily enough, only two of those premades wound up actually five-capping us, the other five were all long grueling battles that lasted just as long as if it hadn’t been a premade anyway. One comes to mind where we constantly had two nodes capped and the premade only managed to keep three… they kept trying to take our other nodes, and they kept failing.)

So only three of the games were good ol’ fashioned PuG vs. PuG matchups. Of those three games, Alliance won two and Horde won once. For the first Alliance win, the Horde seemed to be off the ball right from the start, Alliance was ahead the entire way and won about 2000-1200. The second Alliance win was actually a very very close race for about 75% of the game, at which point Alliance somehow pulled off some crazy epic 5-cap maneuever and clinched us the victory. The one Horde victory was a pretty resounding Horde victory, they were ahead basically the entire game and it culminated in a 5-cap for them.

All and all I was satisfied; it showed me that despite all the premades you still get the occasional really fun matchups. I’ve been taking a break from PvP for a while but yesterday may have given me “the bug” again. I need to get some gear, afterall, if I’m going to be doing arena!

And now for something completely different: more and more WoW blogs are being hosted on WordPress, and that’s fine and all except that for some reason, blogs hosted on WordPress seem to have a lot of issues loading for me. I think it has something to do with “Google Analytics” because that’s always what shows up at the bottom of my browser, by the loading bar: “Waiting for Google Analytics”. Seriously though, I had a WordPress blog open in a Firefox tab just now and it took no less than ten minutes to load. They’re all like that for me. And it takes me forever to leave a comment at those blogs, for the same reason. =/ Does anybody happen to know what’s going on? So many good blogs are hosted on WordPress and I’d like to make them easier to access.

battlegrounds, instances, pvp, thoughts

Gettin' Stuff Done

5 Comments

Getting started on a new exercise regime is a daunting prospect. You know it’ll hurt, you know you’ll have to drag yourself there on occasion and the prospect of spending your time sweating among all those toned and muscled Adonises is quite an intimidating one. So follow our top 10 tips for those gym beginners among you and you’ll find your workout goes without a hitch. For more information about fitness supplements visit sfgate.com.

JOIN ONLINE Book Online

SET REALISTIC GOALS

It may take some time to get the results you want. It’s vital to break your ultimate goal down in to stages and set lots of smaller goals to keep you motivated along the way.

BE CONSISTENT

Results come through regular and consistent activity. Stick to your programme and avoid frequent stops and starts.

TOO MUCH TOO SOON

Do not increase the amount of exercise you do too soon. Increase what you’re doing by no more than 10% per week.

ACCEPT FEELINGS OF DISCOMFORT

When you first start exercising you’ll experience feelings of discomfort such as shortness of breath, sweating and aching muscles after exercising. Don’t worry, this is completely normal and everyone feels like this when they’re first starting out.

TRAIN WITH A FRIEND

Training with a friend not only keeps you motivated during the sessions themselves but will also make you less likely to miss a planned session as you’re unlikely to want to let down your friend.

WARM UP

Not warming up is a mistake many beginners make. Before any session ensure that you warm up thoroughly and mobilise the areas that you will be using during the workout. Furthermore, failure to warm up properly may increase the risk of injury.

TIME OF DAY

We are all different. Some of us rise early and some of us go to bed late. Exercise at the time when you feel that you have most energy.

WILL POWER

Don’t give up. All beginners have set backs on the way to achieving their goals. Accept them and use them to re-motivate yourself.

WATER

Ensure you drink plenty of water, before, during and after exercise, particularly if you are exercising in warm conditions or for long periods. Dehydration will result in a drop in performance and severe dehydration can be dangerous too.

TRY SOMETHING NEW

Keep things interesting by trying new exercises, workouts and activities to keep your programme fresh, keep challenging your body and preventing boredom.

alterac valley, guild, linux, pvp, screenshots

The Roleplaying Raiders. Or the Raiding Roleplayers, mayhaps.

14 Comments

I apologize for the lack of updates these past few days. I have a semi-valid reason, I promise:

It all started a week or two back. I think I’ve mentioned before that our guild is interesting in that it is a newer guild with quite a few people who are all in the same level range– currently mostly mid-60s (and now 70).

We have also discovered that we like instancing together, a lot. We make a very good little team.

Anyways. A week or two back somebody mentioned something about Serpentshrine Cavern. Someone else said “Yeah, it’ll be a loooong time before we get to that.” “Wait, isn’t that like… a 25-main raid?” “Yep.”

…

And then somebody said it. “You know… we should become a raiding/roleplaying combo guild.”

And everybody liked that idea.

So here we are, Entelechy, a guild full of roleplayers who have never done end-game before (or even hit 70 before), slowly keying up for Karazhan a year behind everybody else, and thinking we should do raids.

Crazy? Maybe. Awesome? Yes. We’re gonna try it.

Now to why I haven’t made any posts for a few days. Basically it was decided that if we’re going to be a raiding guild, we need a Ventrilo server. (We have also wanted one for a while just to mess around and have fun with each other.) So we got one set up a few days ago. Problem: Pike runs Linux. Ventrilo does not play well with Linux.

Cue a few-day-long geekathon where Pike desperately tries to get Ventrilo and Linux playing nicely. Hardly any WoW. Just a lot of Dr. Pepper and keyboard pounding inbetween work shifts.

The sad news is that the whole attempt was pretty futile; it turns out there is some weird problem going on in my computer where microphones are not registered. I was able to get Ventrilo up and running, simultaneously with WoW with no slowdown, even… but it was pretty pointless if nobody could hear me talk, even if I could hear them. And the problem was complicated enough that I think it’s beyond my meager abilities, at least for now. In the meantime, I still wanted a way to get on Vent so we could start practicing instancing while voice-chatting.

…so, I took a deep breath, sucked it up, and stuck a little Windows XP partition on my hard drive. I copied the WoW folder over, installed Vent, and… there ya go. I now have two different WoW installations, one on Linux and one on Windows. As much as it pains me to say it… I logged into Tawyn on Windows today. My initial impression was that it was pretty much exactly the same as on Linux with Wine. My second impression was that something was off somehow, which I couldn’t quite put my foot on… the mouse was moving differently, or something. But, I’m dealing with it.

I’m on Linux now and it will remain my main operating system. I’ll hop over to Windows when I’m instancing or get bored and want to dork around with the guildies for a little bit. But the rest of my WoW’ing and computer’ing in general will remain on Linux. And hopefully I can figure out the microphone problem at some point, and come back to “pure” Linux. A pop filter was my solution. It helps to eradicate popping noises which are created by the mechanical impact of quick moving air on the microphone throughout recorded speech and singing.

So that is why I haven’t been around much.

I have one more story to tell. There is a level 70 hunter in my guild who is… maybe just a little less geared than I am, and his spec is similar to mine (though not the same– there are a few notable and interesting differences). We both have the same ranged and melee weapons, except I’ve got Savagery on my axe and he doesn’t. He’s got a windserpent and I’ve got a cat.

We dueled today about… six times. And he won four of them. Rather resoundingly, too, a few times.

We had a good chat afterwards about the results and how we thought they may have come about. Because the duels really seemed to be going either way. To be completely honest he is a very good hunter and it caught me off guard. I’d never really seen him play his hunter before, usually he’s tanking for us on his warrior. So I really wasn’t sure what to expect. Anyways we compared specs and gear and strategies and had a chat. Here are my thoughts:

-Windserpents seriously do this thing where they pop up next to you and take you by surprise and throw you off, that’s what they seemed to do to me anyway. His strategy is to dump as much focus onto his Windserpent as he can so it can spam Lightning Breath, so I was on the receiving end of that, too. Oh, and the thing about the big wings… yeah. So hard to target the other guy when something’s flapping in your face. Definitely time to bring Tux to 70 (he’s halfway through 67, currently) and make him the Official PvP Pet.

– He’s a draenei and would use Gift of the Naaru on himself right when the duel began. He also has Spirit Bond. So he was regen’ing health the whole time.

– I kept trying to use my attack-power-boosting trinket without realizing I’d forgotten to equip it. Whoopsie… *shifty eyes*

– Also, he somehow has a different strategy than most hunters I go up against in PvP, but I’ve still got to figure out exactly what it is (clearly more research is required!)

Anywho, why am I telling you all this? Because if you play a draenei hunter and/or you have a windserpent these are awesome new PvP tips for you! I’m sort of jealous of the Gift of the Naaru thing. Granted, he told me a new tip about Shadowmelding at the beginning of the duel to annoy people while your pet eats them (haha) so it’s a fair tradeoff.

After the duels though, I was feeling the urge to hone my skills because he’d won more times than I’d won and it was inspiring me to PvP and get better. So I went to AV.


Hey look, Alliance on Bloodlust actually won a “New AV” game and it was the daily too… yes I know, don’t go into shock… but aside from that, I’ve got 239 honorable kills. And that’s with the omnipresent Valanos’s Longbow. I can’t wait for an upgrade. That’s what I’m saving up Honor for next, that ridiculous Crossbow. I can’t help myself. I’m in love.

Hmm. Sorry that this post sort of rambled on and on and covered at least three different subjects. That’s what happens when I put off making a post for too long. In summary: I like my guild, I like my Linux (honest!) and, when it’s not frustrating the heck out of me, I like PvP.

And two more quick things: Armory is working again! My unbuffed crit is so very very close to 20%.

And a HUGE SHOUTOUT to Moonglo for coming to visit me on Silver Hand. You guys are all great.

guides, pvp

Hunter vs. Hunter 101

6 Comments

Thanks for all the input on my last entry, regarding my custom avatars. I’ll think about it some more; I’m sort of short on time these days, but I’m also short on money… so yeah! I’ll be thinking about it. Thanks for all the feedback, I will definitely take all of your opinions and requests into consideration. I do want to stress that I’m not turning this blog into any sort of corporate showing-off-my-PayPal-button scheme. If I were to offer my avatars for sale it would probably be a limited-time-only thing. Because writing guides and telling stories is what I do best so that will always be the primary purpose of this site.

Anyways: Here is a story/guide combo (two for one!):

Earlier this morning I was in Stranglethorn Vale with my level 34 hordie. For those of you who are new or haven’t been following; I’ve got my 70 Alliance hunter on an RP-PvE server, and a 34 (well, now 35… but 34 this morning) Horde hunter on an RP-PvP server.

Because this character is on a PvP server I’ve been explicitly avoiding STV for the most part, but I do want to do the Nesingwary Expedition “Mastery” quests that culminate in good hunter stuff.

So there I was, level 34 and searching around for panthers, and I saw this level 38 Alliance hunter out of the corner of my eye. I figured I would ignore him, hoping he would leave me alone. But nope, a couple minutes later he springs on me and attacks me.

I beat him.

I threw on a bandage and ate some food, and then resumed questing. I’m too much of a carebear to do any corpse camping or /dancing or the like. Besides, it’s just not good form! Anyways, a couple minutes later, he comes back. He attacks me again, opening with Aimed Shot. Again, he lost.

…to make a long story short he attacked me no less than five times, and all five times he lost to me.

Now I won’t deny it: it felt really, really good to know that I had consistently outperformed a hunter who was four levels higher than me and whose pet was at least five levels higher than mine (my poor kitty got kind of behind because I was working on another pet for a while.) Especially because he was always the one initiating combat, he always got the first shot off, and more than once it was Aimed Shot.

But I’m not one to sit around and simply be proud of myself (although as I said, it felt durn good), so I’ve thought of some mistakes that I either know he made, or think he probably made, which prevented him from winning. And I’m posting them here because hopefully they will be of some help to a newer hunter! =D

For the record, I can’t find this guy’s spec because Armory has been weird all morning. Or I would do a spec/gear comparison. So this is all based on my observation and hunches:

For Starters:

Buffs: I had both Aspect of the Hawk up, as well as Mark of the Wild which a passing druid had given me not too long before all the combat happened. I don’t recall the other guy having Aspect of the Hawk up, though it’s possible I just wasn’t paying attention. Aspect of the Hawk will buff your ranged attack power. It’s good to have. Mark of the Wild is a fantastic buff. Druids who put it on me and especially on my pet, make me happy. (Thorns on the pet makes me happy too.)

Hunter’s Mark: I have a Hunter’s Mark/Pet Attack combo button. This means that my pet and I are never attacking something without Hunter’s Mark on it. The guy I was dueling never once put Hunter’s Mark on me. Hunter’s Mark is going to buff your ranged attack power and if you have Improved Hunter’s Mark it’s going to buff your pet’s attack power… and on this particular character, I’d thrown a point into IHM before starting down the Beast Mastery tree, so I had that going for me.

As a bonus… and actually maybe this is just me, but I’m going to say it anyway… I honestly find nothing scarier in battlegrounds than a Hunter’s Mark suddenly appearing above my head, followed by seeing a flash of a big red pet out of the corner of my eye. Because I know what’s coming. *shudders*

Rapid Fire: This is the biggie. Rapid Fire increases your firing speed by 40% for 15 seconds. I love using this against other hunters, because it seems to me that other hunters often forget to use it in a duel or in PvP. It has a pretty big cooldown (which can be decreased a little through a talent in the Marksman tree, Rapid Killing), so I was only able to use it… twice, I think, throughout the course of our five spars. But it makes a huge difference. Faster damage = good, in the case of fights like this.

Trapping: He could have trapped my pet, but he didn’t. To be fair, he did Feign Death each time to get out of it, but I quickly sic’d Alyosha right back on him. But remember that if you are facing a higher level hunter and the pet is big and red, well, there’s not a whole lot you can do CC wise to him.

Knowing When to Use Your Shots: He kept using Concussive Shot on me even though I obviously wasn’t going anywhere, and he wasn’t going anywhere, so it really didn’t make any difference if my movement speed was slowed. Now, maybe he had Improved Concussive Shot and he was hoping the stun would proc. Even so, I don’t think it’s worth it in a one on one duel of this nature. Also, using something like Aimed Shot or Steady Shot in the middle of your fight generally isn’t a good idea. It’s better to spam autos, Arcane, and Multi, and Serpent Sting really doesn’t hurt, especially if you’re a lower level and it’s really all you’ve got… Viper Sting is fun against casters, pallies, and yeah, other hunters. Especially if it’s in battlegrounds and so might be a longer fight than a one-on-one.

Have your Pet on the Other Hunter, Not on Their Pet: I see this a lot in duels actually. We sic our pets on each other. I feign death to get out of it. The other hunter’s pet is set to defensive so he starts attacking my pet. This means that his pet is not focused on me and it’s not really helping him out any. Be careful for this; in the heat of the battle (and the initial “surprise!” of me popping back to life… at least, I know it still always gives me a little jolt when another hunter does it), you might not notice that your pet is engaged on my pet and not on me. My own pet, personally, is almost always set on Passive. (Exceptions are when I am running lowbies through things… my strategy here is shoot everything once, and then have my pet wipe up the resulting mess… or when I’m grinding and I know it’s okay for my pet to jump from mob to mob if he has aggro on a lot of them.)

Other Stuff: If you have trinkets that buff your attack power, etc. then use them. If you have time before the fight starts to turn Growl off, do that; your pet won’t need it.

There were also other special circumstances that are somewhat less controllable that gave me an edge. For example, my character is a tauren. I have a passive racial increasing my health by 5%. I also have 5/5 Endurance Training on that character, that’s another 5% more health. Some of the better gear I’ve got on that character right now come from PvP rewards; more stamina. So I probably had a better chance than a lot of other people at my level just because of that.

And lastly, I can’t deny that I’ve already got a level 70 hunter that I PvP with on a regular basis, so there’s always the experience factor.

Anyways! In my experience, a lot of hunter vs. hunter fights turn into tests of gear, stamina, and, in the ca

se of higher-level BM hunters… whoever doesn’t have Beastial Wrath on cooldown. So you have to look elsewhere to get the edge. Remember your buffs, remember your trinkets, remember Rapid Fire… remember you have a few different ways to avoid the other hunter’s pet, and remember that they do, also… and with luck you’ll come out ahead! As a closing note, I’d like to stress that this is just a very basic guide. There are a lot of little rules and nuances when it comes to PvP, and to be honest my hunter-vs.-hunter strategy will change depending on their spec and my mood.

Next on PvPing With Pike: Etiquette, taboos, and silly things that probably only Pike does! Stay tuned.

battlegrounds, pvp, screenshots

It's that time of the level-bracket again.

1 Comment

I’ve sort of been taken a break from leveling this whole past week. There were two main reasons for this. The first one is that The Boyfriend (hmm, should I call him Mr. Pike? Heehee) has been pretty busy, so he got about a level behind me. We try to stay equal in level, especially as we’re approaching 70, so I told him I would wait to level until he’d caught up.

The second reason is that I decided it would be fun to focus on PvP for a while. The reasons for this include wanting to stockpile honor and marks now so I have a jump on the level 70 PvP gear (I learned the hard way yesterday that going into the level 70 bracket AV with level 68 gear is… not a pleasant experience)… and the fact that I just plain like battlegrounds. I think my PvP skill is improving, too… I will still refrain from calling myself very good at PvP, but it felt good to see this:


I am usually near the top of the “Damage Done” charts, but I am very rarely actually first, so it was a nice surprise to see this. I’ve also noticed that my kiting skills have improved lately, and I’ve discovered a lot of little things about playing hunters in PvP that I should have known before, but didn’t. For example: Rogues love Serpent Sting. …actually, they really hate it. *cough* Because they can’t stealth if they’ve got it. I never knew this before! Fantastic. Oh, and The Beast Within handily works as, effectively, a second trinket. I didn’t know this either. Oh the fun I’ve had since I found this out. Can’t regain distance because of a warrior’s Hamstring or a rogue’s Crippling Poison? Pop The Beast Within and get back to business.

Speaking of which, I’ve noticed lately that there’s sort of been a complete turnaround for me in terms of classes that I do well against and classes that I don’t do well against. In my earlier levels, warriors and rogues were the bane of my existence. These days, I do quite well against them. Meanwhile, warlocks, who I was always pretty good at taking out before, have suddenly become near-invincible. I’m not sure if it has to do with the talents of our respective classes, or if it’s just a change in my playstyle, or maybe both. But it’s quite interesting.

Anyways, while I’ve had a lot of fun in the battlegrounds this week, I have been bitten by the dreaded Level 70 Bug, so I’ve started up my questing again. The newly-christened Mr. Pike is now at level 68 with me and we want to spend the weekend leveling. We’ll see how far we get!

battlegrounds, pvp, stories

Lessons Learned in Warsong Gulch

6 Comments

People respond to kindness:

I’m sure most of you have been there. The battlegrounds game where within five minutes, somebody has, say… taken the flag but then something goes wrong and they lose it. And then somebody pipes up with “Wow you guys suck.”

I’m here to say… don’t let your team have that attitude.

“Nah, we don’t suck, we just got off to a bad start”, I said. “Come on, we can do it.”

“Yeah,” a couple other people sort of tentatively agreed.

And so we were off again. After some hard battling we managed to capture a flag.

“See? We can do it. Now we just have to keep it up.”

That was basically really all I had to say. It took off from there, people encouraging each other, thanking each other, and helping each other out. Mr. “Wow-you-guys-suck” decided to be obnoxious again at some point, proudly proclaiming his top position on the damage meters to everyone and making a big deal out of “why can’t you guys keep up”, but a quick “Yes, you’re doing a good job, keep it up everyone” reminded him that it was a group effort and hushed him up pretty quick.

Somehow, someway, after nearly an hour-long game, our scrappy little team won that Warsong Gulch game 3-0. Even with one of our members AFK nearly the entire time. Furthermore, while Mr. Originally-Obnoxious-But-Really-Not-So-Bad kept his top spot in the damage charts at the end, there were four more of us up there with him.

Was it my encouragement and our team’s overall helpful attitude that gave us this victory? Maybe we’ll never know. But I’d like to think that it at least helped a little. I’ve had similar things happen to me before; our team coming from behind and winning not because of our skill so much as because of our attitude. Don’t underestimate the power of a little encouragement; it can go a long way.

I love worthy opponents:

I ran across a female orc hunter in a completely different WSG match. She was Beast Mastery spec’d, like myself, and she and her bright green Windserpent were good. At some point early on in the game, I think we both subconsciously decided that it was a matter of hunter pride to make each other our sparring partner, so throughout the entire game we were hunting each other down and taking each other on 1 on 1. Sometimes I won, but most of the time she did. I’ve long thought that most hunter-on-hunter matches come down to gear and stamina, but this orc had skill. You could tell. I wish I’d had time to /salute her before the game ended, she was a fun opponent.

Level 19 Mage PvP:

My mage got to level 19 and I took her to WSG a few times. It was my first time PvP’ing as something other than a hunter, and I’d like to think I did decently, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. Not to mention that it’s tough being a squishy in there.

Somehow I managed to do less overall relative damage than I do as a hunter, but got a lot more killing blows. It was kind of strange.

Not being able to track people was driving me insane, though, and I missed all the other hunter abilities too. After a few games I missed my hunter so much that I had to log out of the mage and onto the hunter, and that’s where the previous WSG stories came from.

Just a few more levels until the level 70 battlegrounds! If any of you guys happen to play on the US battlegroup “Bloodlust” then I look forward to working with you… or sparring with you!… soon. Give me a /wave!

battlegrounds, pvp

I couldn't help myself.

6 Comments

I got my tauren hunter to level 29 today, and as is the typical case with me when I get to the end of a “bracket”, I’m taking some time out to go play in the battlegrounds.

So there I was, guarding Blacksmith by myself in Arathi Basin, feeling a bit awkward about not having Flare or other helpful higher-level skills and dreaming of the trinket I’m saving up honor for. We’re winning this particular game and it’s nearing the end, but I’ve still got a freezing trap sitting at the flag waiting for anybody who wanted to try something at the last minute.

Suddenly I heard a familiar noise. I turned around and, what do you know, a rogue is caught in my trap.

Now I try to be a friendly person and honorable fighter in PvP, and throughout the whole game, really. I thank players for their heals or buffs and in general I think I’m a pretty nice person.

But at this point all I could do was be amused at the hapless rogue as my mind cycled back through all the dozens of times I’ve fallen prey to the stealthed hand of this particular class…

/target rogue
/laugh

And then I sic’d my kitty on her and she went down like a fly, and it felt pretty darn good.

Dear rogue, wherever you are… I’m sorry for laughing at you when you were stuck in my trap. But you have to realize how funny it looked and how nice it felt to be the one catching you by surprise for once. I was laughing with you, not at you. I promise. ^^

My tauren also tamed a new pet today; the windserpent Arikara. He apparently makes quite an entrance when you summon him. And I’ve never had a windserpent before, so it’ll be fun to try him out. I named him Ivan to go with the kitty Alyosha, and yes the third pet is going to be Dmitri. Cookie for anybody who gets the reference to my favorite book. *cough* =D

alterac valley, pvp, screenshots

You know you're a Beast Mastery Hunter when…

4 Comments

…you’re fourth in the healing charts at the end of an AV match:


Ahead of druids, pallies, shammies and priests. I found it rather amusing, but I guess that’s what comes from spamming the Mend Pet button!

This particular AV match was a very good one, too. Highlights included a rogue and I taking on and successfully capturing Frostwolf Graveyard by ourselves (thanks to sap, some cleverly placed traps, and Tux amazingly managing to tank the 61 elite for a very long time), a very close race from both factions to killing the final boss, and my personal favorite part, ding’ing 61 mid-game in the 51-60 bracket (you’ll notice my level in the screenshot, heehee).

It’s moments like those when I really love battlegrounds.

I was asked a couple questions regarding Linux (and my desktop wallpaper too, haha) and I will be addressing those in my next post. Thank you giving me the questions and the opportunity to answer them, and do feel free to keep asking them!

blogs, outlands, pets, pvp, screenshots

Random Ramblings!

3 Comments

So my Sitemeter tells me that I’ve had like 100 new visitors just in the past few hours thanks to a link on Big Red Kitty. To coin a term, I have been BRK’d. Wow! Thanks BRK! And welcome to any new visitors. Please feel free to browse around my little blog, and pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable if you so desire. *passes out cookies and tea for the readers, and a variety of pet foods for their pets*.

(Edit: And a link on Mania’s Arcania too? Wow, thank you!! I might just have to make another “shout-out” post sometime soon.)

Now then, Outlands:


This screenshot was taken shortly before heading through the Dark Portal to get to Outlands. Yes, I’ve had my hearth set to Shatt since level 50 or so, but there was no way I was going to miss out on going through the portal.

The irony is that the screenshot is already “outdated”, so to speak, since in the short time between then and now I have already managed to replace two pieces of gear as well as my ranged weapon, all with stuff that is better than my old-world gear to a ridiculous degree. I already love Outlands though– it’s fun, it’s challenging (the “yellow” mobs are more like “orange” mobs, and I love that challenge), and of course, there’s all the new gear!

So here I am, on the fast-track to level 60 (ooh, remind me to do more farming… need epic mount cash) and enjoying every bit of it.

Other bits of interest: My teal kitty has been christened Locke. This name has a double meaning for me; firstly, John Locke was a 17th-century English philosopher, just like Thomas Hobbes… so there is an in-joke there, a nod to both the Calvin & Hobbes comic and to BRK. Secondly, Locke Cole is a character from the Super Nintendo game Final Fantasy VI, which is one of my favorite video games. Locke the kitty and Tux the owl have been taking turns playing in Outlands with me, all the while being lavished with roasted quail.

Also, I have decided that I’d like to improve upon my PvP skills. I’ve been doing a lot of battlegrounds recently (since once I hit a level ending in 8 or 9 I hightail it over to the battlemasters… you might say I have a bit of an addiction) and while I would call my self an “okay” PvPer and I tend to be towards the top of the damage charts at the end, I still am not a “good” PvPer. A lot of times in PvP I’ll get caught of guard or people will sneak up on me, and then I seem to spend the duration of that duel trying to get back to range and doing very little non-pet damage. It’s definitely time to practice my technique here.

I do have an interesting PvP story to share. I was in Alterac Valley the other day, and was somewhere out in the middle of nowhere when I ran across a lone orc warrior. He was level 51, and I was level 59. Now I know it’s battlegrounds, I know player-vs-player combat is the whole point here… but I couldn’t bring myself to attack him. Not with eight levels separating us. Besides, since we were both out in the middle of nowhere I figured he must have been doing a quest or something. So I hopped on my mount and rode right past him. Not long after this I paused to catch my bearings and decide where I wanted to go. And who should come jumping on me but that level 51 warrior! We fought, and obviously Tux and I triumphed. But I have to say that little incident left me admiring the orc player’s courage and mindset. He knew what PvP was all about. He was willing to try taking on a player that was eight levels higher than him. Whereas I, well, I love a good battlegrounds game but I’m really just a carebear at heart. It was an interesting juxtaposition of two different playstyles and I /salute that orc warrior, wherever he is.

Alrighty, enough pseudo-philosophical rambling. Back to Outlands!