Category Archives: screenshots

beast mastery, raiding, screenshots, shot rotation

Beast Mastery Meets Multishot

February 20, 2009 Pike 9 Comments

The Stage: Vault of Archavon, 25-man. I’m one of three hunters in there, the others are Survival.

The Plan: As I’m sure many of you know, this is a fairly straightforward and simplistic fight; yeah you move around a little and you’ve gotta stay away from the big scary falling rocks but other than that it’s a tank’n’spank. Like Patchwerk but a little more mobile. And in a 25-man there’s gonna be a lot of mana regen. Perfect testing grounds for my new shot rotation.

The Spec: 53/17/0

The Rotation: Serpent Sting (kept up); then in order of decreasing priority: Arcane Shot, Multishot, and finally Steady Shot. Pop Rapid Fire, Kill Command, and The Beast Within when available. Keep an eye on Wash to make sure he doesn’t get unsuspectingly caught in something that hurts.

The Verdict:

Was barely edged out by one of the SV hunters. The other was no where to be seen in the top 12, as you can see, showing that spec alone doesn’t automatically make you good– it’s rotation and gear and that kind of thing too. Overall I was quite satisfied. Wash did a smashing job and contributed 48% of my total DPS and had Ferocious Inspiration ticking non-stop. Raptors are indeed lookin’ good, what with the fact that a BM raptor can keep their 10% damage boost up for a good portion of a fight.

Other Notes: Despite all the Replenishment going on, I did run out of mana faster with the usage of Multishot. I had to switch to Aspect of the Viper twice during the fight. However, thanks to all of that said Replenishment, I only had to stay in Viper for 10 seconds or so each time and it would give me enough to keep going for a while. If I’d wanted to I could’ve chugged a mana pot, seeing as I run with an Alchemist’s Stone and it would’ve given me quite a boost, but I opted not to because my mana issues were so close to the end of the fight.

I also think my rotations would have been a lot tighter and the results would have been better had I not been lagging so much. >.>

Lastly I think it is important to mention that I think the SV hunter who edged me out could have been rather higher on the chart. However, she was using a Tenacity pet (not exactly known for their DPS) and her spec was slightly more SV-heavy than the current cookie-cutter one. So I am not trying to suggest that running with this BM spec and rotation that I mentioned here, is necessarily going to have you neck-and-neck with really good SV hunters all the time. But I am trying to say that for most of us everyday WoW folks, if you are doing it right, it will keep you quite competitive. And remember, don’t just compare your performance to the other hunters, compare it to the DPS and group as a whole and see yourself as part of the big picture. (The More You Know! *flashy star*)

Conclusions: Use Multishot when possible and you don’t think you’ll have a big mana issue. It’s worth it for me and I think it might be worth it for you too, so give it a spin and see what you think! Next on the agenda: go all out and try Aimed Shot, perhaps? Or will it be too small of a damage boost for too much mana? Stay tuned!

addons, screenshots, ui, Uncategorized

UI de Pike

February 19, 2009 Pike 18 Comments

Inspired by Anea over at Holy Discipline, I am here to post about my UI. I haven’t really done a post like this since I was like level 55 because I figure this blog is largely a screenshot dump anyway so I’m sure you’ve all seen it by now. But hey, this gives me an excuse to talk about addons, right? And I get a lot of comments asking about mine sometimes, so why not!

Startin’ from the top:

Ah, X-Perl. Sometimes I go and try to replace it with something different and then I cry and run back to X-Perl. X-Perl is the unit frames mod that you see there, making you and everyone in your party all 3-D and purdy and in general just looking a lot better than the default thing. It also comes with approximately fifty million options to play around with. It’s kinda buggy and bulky at times but I still secretly love it, meaning this is one o’ those “I wish I could quit you!” addons that I’m sure a lot of us have.

Now let’s hop over and take a look at the lovely Drake-Mounted Crossbow in my bags which I recently traded in for the sexiest gun since Wolfslayer *drools*:

See how it’s giving me a “Stat Summary”, that’s RatingBuster and I couldn’t live without it. I mean really. Makes gear choices a lot easier to calculate out on the fly. Remember though that you have to tweak the options to take things like gems and enchants into account (I’ve certainly wound up with a few false “upgrades” because those options were unchecked) , and obviously this addon isn’t gonna be the answer to all your gear upgrade problems. You’re still going to have to mentally think about stuff like sidegrades and the like. Still, lovely addon.

(Also, looking at that screenshot now, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t take scopes into account. Just a heads-up.)

And below that, you see Auctioneer. Would you guys believe I actually went Auctioneer-less for a while? No really, there was a month or two right after WotLK launched where I decided I didn’t like the new Auctioneer and auctioned all my stuff manually. I am a Neopets restocking veteran, I figured, I didn’t need no silly pricing addon.

Then one day I reinstalled it, figured out how to work the new Auctioneer, realized that I really really like it now, and it’s been good times since. <3 And finally we go down to the bottom of my screenshot and we see StellarBars. I love StellarBars. No having to worry about moving your action bars around, no having to worry about logging in and seeing like twenty extra random action bars filling up your screen, no having to worry about re-doing your keybindings… no, this is the pure and simple Blizz action bars but prettier and with some nice stylization options. I combined mine with ButtonFacade for maximum prettiness. Sure, I can play without StellarBars, but it sucks. I had to play without it for a couple days after this latest patch cause it was broken for me; I actually went and told the SB guy about my problem and he had it fixed in a new version literally the next day. So much love <3 Moving on to combat!

The scrolling combat text? Is SCT and SCT-D. I like this a lot better than the built-in game version because it tells you which shot is doing what and I find that immeasurably useful. For example, I can see how my Steady Shot crit in that screenshot for 1865, but I can also /chuckle inwardly because I know that I’ve seen Arcane Shot crits that go well over 4000. Very handy, and the numbers don’t bounce all over the place like they do with the Blizz version. You can customize it a lot too, to display the numbers where you want to and change the colors around. The written [Cobra Strikes] proc you see there is also a part of SCT/SCT-D. I do know there are better scrolling combat text addons out there by this point that are more frequently updated, but I’m happy with the old standby for now.

Up by my map is Omen, I don’t leave home without it, and neither should you. /cough

And straight down from there is Recount, the obligate damage meter. I usually don’t have my damage meter open and visible even when running things; I display it briefly after bossfights to see how I did, or when I’m pounding away at the training dummies. It’s a good tool for testing and troubleshooting.

And now moving on to the addons that I have but weren’t visible in those screenshots…

Deadly Boss Mods: when I was raiding in Burning Crusade I somehow wound up with the unofficial title of “Deadly Boss Mods Person, Give Me Assist Please” and even though I think I’m not the only one in our group who has it these days, I still have it just in case it’s needed. Basically it tosses up warnings and the like during raids and it can be handy for a lot of people. Now we just need to get it to draw a frickin’ line on the ground on Heigan and I’ll be all set.

CensusPlus: Take a census of your server and upload it to WarcraftRealms. I’m a sucker for this kind of thing.

And finally, the Addon Graveyard, of addons I used at one point and no longer do. RIP…

FuBar. I really like FuBar, I do. But 75% of the FuBar plugins that I used quit working with 3.0.2 and never updated themselves, and in my latest reinstall it was borking my minimap somehow, so I canned it entirely. Maybe someday in the future I’ll look into it again.

MyRoleplay: I like what RP addons do, not just cause you can see details about other peoples’ characters, but cause it’s an easy way to see who else roleplays. It got to a point, though, where 1.) it was hogging up all my chat channels, 2.) I don’t actively roleplay enough (I’m more of a mental roleplayer), and 3.) not enough people on my server even use the thing. So it got booted. Again, I’m more than willing to look into an RP addon someday in the future, if I ever feel the need or urge for one.

Gatherer: Displays on your map where you’ve found various herbs/mining nodes/etc. in the past. Semi-handy but in the end I’m enough of an herbalist junkie at this point that I know where everything is anyway. Oh, and while we’re on the subject, if you want Briarthorn, go live in Silverpine Forest. Trust me.

Lightheaded: It takes about three seconds to alt+tab and use the WoWHead search bar on my Firefox. In the end, it wasn’t worth it for me to take up extra memory to be able to do that in game. Your mileage may vary!

Well, that’ll do it. If you’ve got questions/comments/discussion, lemme hear ’em!

memes, screenshots

It's Not Showing Off If You Were Tagged

February 18, 2009 Pike 11 Comments

My good buddy Rip over at Critical QQ tagged me with a meme where I was supposed to open up my screenshots folder and post my sixth screenshot, regardless of what it was.

My first thought was “Oh, heck no”. I’m that person who takes screenshots of random funny crap people said in Trade Channel. I’m that person who is OCD and takes screenshots when buffs make my HP end in “000”. I’m that person who takes screenshots and then when I go back and look at said screenshots I have no idea why I took them.

But then my curiosity got the better of me. What IS my sixth screenshot right now? I’ve reformatted and reinstalled and moved around and copied and deleted and hacked up my screenshots folder so many times by now it’s a mess. So what could it possibly be? Something from when I was leveling no doubt, or one of my alts, or Tawyn when she was running around as a fresh 70 or something, right?

…

…so, remember when BM hunters were overpowered and cats were broken?

Yeah. Me too. /cough. I like things better now by the way, though I won’t get close to 3600 again until I’m actually in purples. But that’s probably how it should be, ne?

I tag whoever wants to do it =P

(P.S. original screenshot was unedited. I decided to do a rough edit job on it to take out the Vent password (no idea whose Vent that is) and out of courtesy on the Recount. Just in case ^_^)

gear, goals, screenshots

I Like Shinies

February 17, 2009 Pike 22 Comments

So I didn’t mention this in my last post because I didn’t want to stray too far off-topic, but in my latest Naxx run Heigan decided it would be really funny to mock my inability to live more than ten seconds on his phase two by giving me a present that was loaded to the brim with stamina.

“Ya know what stamina lets you do? Stay alive! Oh wait, you’re Pike, my bad. /snicker”
“Die in a fire =(“

To be honest, I was willing to pass on this thing to anybody who wanted it. I woulda given it to a feral druid in a heartbeat if there had been one in the raid. And besides which, I have this personal quirk where I always hate to roll on an item that dropped from a boss that I was dead for more than 50% of. I think said items would better go to someone who was alive for the duration of the boss fight. Just a personal thing of mine.

But nobody else was even remotely interested in the thing, so to me it went. You’re a laugh riot, Mr. Unclean.

It is shiny, though. /strut

Now aside from being loaded with stamina it’s also loaded with Attack Power. However, this comes at the expensive of two little things: Hit, and Crit. I can live with giving away some of that precious Crit for a bunch of that delicious delicacy that is AP, but the Hit is something I can’t afford to lose right now, especially since I’m already scooting around a little under-cap. Remember, Hit is pretty vital for a BM hunter cause we pass it along to our pets now, too. As such, while I’m holding on to this beauty in my bags, it’s not gonna replace my twin Broken Stalactites until I’ve done some more re-gearing. I’m working on the chestpiece outta Argent Crusade (about 75% through Revered!), and trying to weasel my way into Heroic Violet Holds for that cloak.

Have I mentioned lately that my cloak luck has been atrocious? Ya know what I’m still runnin’ with?

…

“Such a comfy cloak, isn’t it?”
“Yes but that’s no excu–FLAMEWREATH DON’T MOVE”

The moral of the story? Be sure to check all your stats before equipping that new shiny. It might be better to hold off for the time being.

Oh, and Heigan can still bite me. Nielas Aran can stay though, he’s a nice guy. And I totally have a crush on his son. /blush (I’m weird, okay?)

fun, screenshots

My Bank Alt Has a Guild

February 14, 2009 Pike 12 Comments

Silver Hand is collectively jealous at my epic name grab.

…or maybe not, but I can pretend.

I put an alt hunter in the guild, too… just for luck.

screenshots, Uncategorized

Top Fifteen Screenshots I Found While Waiting for WoW to Reinstall

February 10, 2009 Pike 18 Comments

(I opted not to provide annotations for all of these, because I like how a lot of them look alone, without commentary. However, many of them do indeed have a story or two behind them, so feel free to ask about any that you are curious about…)

Attempting to two-man part of Molten Core with a “certain someone” in WotLK Beta…

Directly after a disaster Karazhan raid. We went a lil’ crazy.

This was a few weeks before WotLK. Great guy with limited playtime; I did Scholo with him at least once.

A good friend and I visually “duped” the paper zeppelins and they followed us wherever we went. Even if we flew. You can see them between the trees there, coming closer…

Probably my all-time favorite screenshot; me, my friends, and Dire Maul. This was my desktop wallpaper on my Windows partition for several months.

I’m currently re-installing WoW from scratch thanks to a complete computer overhaul and some WoW-folder-savings mishaps. I was feelin’ kinda burned out from the game lately, I won’t deny it, but sometimes, old screenshots do wonders to remind you why you play it… don’t you think?

screenshots

FINALLY

February 8, 2009 Pike 17 Comments

And now all those dailies are going to be thrown into the pile of quests that I liked the concept of but were camped and farmed into oblivion and I never want to do them again. Like that wolvar pups quest for the Tuskarr. I thought the idea was adorable and silly (does that make me a horrible person?) but I got so sick of people swooping out of the sky and grabbing your pups that I haven’t done the quest since exalted. Same deal for most of the Sons of Hodir dailies. Heck, I gave up on the Blowing Hodir’s Horn one way back at friendly. Got better things to do than sit around for thirty minutes while druids swoop past me in flight form and moonfire tag everything from the sky.* =P

Oh, and for all you people that seem to get to my blog by Googling “Sons of Hordir”, because someone misspelled it in a comment once… it’s Hodir. No extra “r”. You’ll get more results if ya search for Hodir. *nods*

* Don’t hurt me, boomkins! /cower

alts, fun, i love hunters, screenshots

Rumors of My Rerolling Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

February 4, 2009 Pike 25 Comments

So I have a paladin who I’ve been spending a little time on each day, and I have a resto druid who randomly wound up with her very first old-school Badge of Justice the other day (Yes, it is apparently quite possible for a level 65 tree to heal a level 80 tankadin through level 70 heroics), but you gotta understand something. Namely, you can take the girl outta the hunter but you can’t take the hunter outta the girl. Or something along those lines.

Heck, scratch the girl part, you can be a hot blood elf guy too:

Althalor is now level 40. For the uninitiated, that means I now have a level 80 hunter, a level 70 hunter, and a level 40 hunter. And once you toss all my dozens of sub-20 hunters into the mix, I’ve clocked well over 200 collective levels in this class. Probably closer to 250.

Yes, yes, I know. But hey, I can’t help myself. Once you go pewpew, you can’t go… uh… I’ll get back to you on that one.

So yes, I am here to ease the panic that sometimes occurs on blogs, comments, e-mails, and the WoW Twitterati (term coined by one Matticus) when I briefly dip into a non-hunter interlude. Be not afraid– Pike is a hunter, and this is a hunter blog. One lil’ treedrood and one lil’ baby protadin are no match for the Hunter Mafia. I mean, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the leveling of two little alts doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy World of Warcraft.

Eh? Ehhh? See what I did there?

/cough

Okay, I’ll stop now. >.>

(P.S. Okay, so maybe not that many people are panicking. But I can pretend, at least, to make it more dramatic.)

alts, screenshots

Stop. Hammer Time!

February 2, 2009 Pike 29 Comments

So I finally managed to get a draenei over level ten. Now you may be imagining that I have some female draenei hunter working her way through the draenei starter area, and that would be a good guess, but sadly, it is incorrect.

See, I made a male draenei. Shake them facial appendages!

And I ran him to Elwynn Forest at level two. Yes, I’ve still yet to do a single quest on Bloodmyst Isle, with any character ever.

Oh and…

He’s a paladin. Jinkies!

His name is Tanfarr, meaning he continues my tradition of giving my Silver Hand toons a name that begins with “Ta”, and he is about a third of the way through level 18, which means he is now my highest level paladin ever– higher than that failed attempt of a blood elf paladin who I haven’t played in like a year and a half.

Something surprising about this character: he’s really fun to play. You gotta understand, no offense to you pallies, but I could never get into your class. Ever. I tried soooo many times. It was never fun for me. So what inspired me to start up once again, I have no idea, but something clicked this time and it’s been a blast. Heck, I even semi-jokingly asked my guild’s ~~holy~~ ~~prot~~ ~~ret~~ whatever-the-group-needs paladin if Blizz secretly made pallies fun in a recent patch, and his response was “As a matter of fact, yes they did.”

I was also surprised to find out that I could actually get into a melee class, though to be fair, I’ve noticed that more than going up and hitting things in the face, I enjoy being the one getting hit in the face, and then laughing because I am simply soaking up all the damage. Hence the fact that all my talent points so far have been dumped into the Prot tree.

Not to mention, how many level 18s can receive /thanks for buffing a level 80? Blessing of Kings for the win.

Gosh I love alts. Raiding can wait until BM is buffed up again; I’ve got old content to love <3

pets, screenshots, stories, Uncategorized

There Was One She Still Missed, Part Two

January 29, 2009 Pike 42 Comments

(Continued from Part One)

The Outland.

There were few that remained here now that most of the action was going on in Northrend. Oh, there were some armies still stationed here, and the younger adventurers cutting their teeth in this gods-forsaken land. But for the most part, there was nothing to be seen…

…except perhaps a bright pink raptor wreaking havoc on the moths in Terokkar Forest. And his subsequent containment by the Cenarion Expedition, who proceeded to bring the now caged creature to their main base of operations in Zangarmarsh.

“What do you make of this… creature?” Warden Hamoot asked Kameel, the Stable Master, as he gestured to the raptor furiously thrashing about behind bars. “He does not appear to be like anything else I have seen in this area…”

Kameel nodded. “He is native to the Wetlands in Azeroth,” he said in his deep voice. “How he got up here, I don’t know, but he does not belong here, and so long as he stays I do not think he will be happy.”

“Happy?” the Warden chuckled and lightly scratched his back with his mace. “When we found him he was terrorizing the creatures of Terokkar, they are the ones who only wish to be happy. But you are right, my friend, we must do what is best for this animal. There is a fear in his eyes, and I believe it may be driving him mad, if it hasn’t already. He should go back to the Wetlands.”

“The quickest way would be to take him to Shattrath and through the portal to the dwarves’ city, Ironforge,” replied Kameel. “From there, it would be a relatively short trip by cart to his native land.”

Warden Hamoot shuffled his hooves. He didn’t like using the portals, they relied too much on arcane magic in his eyes, and he was glad that this time he would have a good excuse to not have to use one. “Obviously you and I shall not be able to make the trip to the dwarves’ city, not with the Alliance and Horde still at odds as they are prone to be. You and I would clearly… raise a few eyebrows, so to speak, if we went. But one of our Night Elf colleagues, perhaps…?”

Kameel voiced his agreement and the two tauren went about deciding who the best representative would be as the raptor once again attacked the bars of his cage, letting out a shriek that sent the nearby sea birds soaring away.

—

“Tell that blasted thing to shut up!” the dwarf banged his gun against the bars of the cage, which only provoked the raptor further as the Night Elf druid escorting it tried to calm both of them down. “Why’d ya bring this thing ‘ere into Menethil Harbor anyway, boy? Couldn’t ya have just left it outside tha town?” the dwarf continued to thunder.

“I– I worry about being alone when I release it, just in case–”

“Bah, we could use less o’ those beasties around ‘ere anyway. I say we end the thing.”

A woman’s voice yelled something out in Dwarvish, and the dwarf yelled back “Dearie, ye can’t take away mah gun. It’s a dwarf’s solemn right to have a gun in one hand and an ale in the other–”

Simultaneously the woman snapped something back; the Cenarion escort said “Please, I’ll handle it,” and the raptor screeched out to the heavens as the curious Night Elf hunter approached. The boat from Northrend had landed and was soon to depart, but no commotion was going to take place without Tawyn’s investigation, whether or not she might miss the boat. A druid and a dwarf were rather feverishly discussing something, she observed, and in a cage was a brilliant magenta raptor…

He glanced at Tawyn. Tawyn blinked.

“…Wash?”

In an instant the raptor’s screeches took on a more pleading tone and Tawyn was at the cage. “Let him out. Let him out!” she roared, and it was somehow a bestial enough threat that the dwarf backed away and the druid fumbled at the lock without question.

The padlock fell away and the small crowd that had gathered tensed. The raptor, now quiet, slowly padded out of the cage, off the wooden cart, and up to Tawyn. The hunter reached down and gently stroked his head without a second thought. “What’s wrong, boy…?”

Still, he was silent. Tawyn stared searchingly into this eyes; there was pain therein. Not physical pain though– he had seen something. Something bad…

She thought about how she’d released him in the Outland. Perhaps, on second thought, not a good idea. So much chaos up there–

“You,” she looked at the druid. “What were you doing with him?”

“We– the Cenarion Expedition– found him far from his home, and he was not happy. We were simply bringing him home, to release him here. That is all. I hope I did not interfere with anything…”

“No,” Tawyn smiled thinly. “Thank you for thinking of what was best for him.” She looked down at the raptor. “You’re home now, and safe. Go on now.”

Wash stood his ground; clearly he wasn’t intending to go anywhere. There was still pain in his eyes, but something else too…

He wanted to help.

Tawyn realized what this meant, and nodded. Then she turned and headed towards the ship to Howling Fjord. Wash followed.

“Where are you going?” asked the druid.

“Northrend,” replied Tawyn.

“And why are you taking… him?”

“Because… we are partners.”

And with that the hunter and her pet got onto the boat, and sailed away into the mists.

(The End!)

Aspect of the Hare