Category Archives: stories

pets, stories

Ode to Locke

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This is my cat, Locke.

Formerly known as Rak’Shiri, Locke was tamed at about 4am server time while I was wearing the Leper Gnome Halloween costume. I’d wanted Locke for a while. He is teal, after all. Teal is my favorite color and basically the main reason I rolled a night elf– teal hair. Teal hair!! So I camped out for him (he’s a rare spawn) and finally managed to nab him.

We were level 57 then; today we are both level 70 and he is my Official Grouping Pet. This is mainly because a few people have taken issue with Tux’s immense wingspan and I don’t want to be a pain-in-the-butt, so I use a pet with a somewhat lower profile. (It’s also helpful because I can keep Tux spec’d more for PvP and Locke for PvE.)

Locke has successfully “emergency tanked” two dragons: the last boss in Hellfire Ramparts and the last boss in Old Hillsbrad. He usually manages to somehow double the DPS output of any and all other hunter pets that happen to be in the group. And he has really come to be loved by our little group of instance-runners. He has become our willing guinea pig more than once: “Hmm, do you guys think we can jump here? …hey Tawyn, have Locke go check it out!” And he has spawned many a guild inside joke. One is that one of these days mid-Heroic Mech run, he is going to randomly disappear and then replace Patheleon the Calculator as the new end boss. (We decided that he is going to be wearing a monocle when this occurs. “When”, not “if”.)

The other big inside joke is that if anything bad happens and there’s no apparent scapegoat– it’s Locke’s fault. Many a mysterious wipe or pull-gone-bad has been irrevocably decreed Locke’s fault.

We were in Heroic Mech the other day and after one of these “Locke’s fault” occasions, we all sort of had a good laugh about how ironic it was that nothing had ever really truly been Locke’s fault. Nothing in recent memory, at least (because I recall a few slipups in Dire Maul and Scholo). Locke has always performed his duty masterfully and has never caused any issues unless it’s my own mistake. Hunter pets seem to get a bad rap a lot– but Locke? Nope. He’s pretty much got a halo on his fuzzy teal head.

…we spoke too soon.

A couple hours after we’d finished Heroic Mech we made a new group and headed to Heroic Underbog. We were about halfway through, working our way up one of the ramps and slowly and carefully pulling naga mobs out from behind a little open door. Everything was going as intended and I sent in Locke to attack skull, as is customary. And then it happened. I send Locke in to the mob, he somehow manages to position himself so his butt is pointing towards some other naga– and they must’ve not been amused because suddenly these extra naga were targeting Locke and charging over to him.

Well you can probably guess what happened next. We already had our hands full with our current pull– the extra nagas were the death of us. Not to mention I was petless, with Locke having met his untimely demise due to an unfortunate and accidental mooning-incident.

It was all partially very funny and yet also partially very embarrassing and shocking to me. For once, it really had been Locke’s fault.

Yet another guild inside joke of ours is that if you make some silly mistake or screw up, you are informed “And that’s why you’re not going to Zul’Aman.” And Locke was not spared. He was informed that he’s not going to Zul’Aman and that Tux is going to get to go instead.

Poor Locke. Tux is givin’ him heck in the stable, I’m sure.

bugs, stories

All About: The Kill Command Bug

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Something strange happened to me yesterday in Heroic Slave Pens. I was in the middle of “Totem Duty” on a boss fight when suddenly my Kill Command button seemed to get stuck. You know what a button looks like when you’re pressing it down and using it? It was stuck there.

No biggie, right?

Actually, yes.

See, the Kill Command Bug is a mean, horrible monster. The Kill Command Bug says “NO AUTO SHOT FOR YOU!” and then points and laughs as you cry.

Yes, so long as that Kill Command button looks like that, you cannot Auto Shot no matter how hard you try. You can Arcane. You can Steady. You can Multi. But you don’t fire any Auto Shots. And that, my friends, is Not Good when you’re mid-boss-fight in a Heroic.

Fortunately, amidst my panicking on Ventrilo, my boyfriend picked up Totem Duty for me as I sat there spamming Steady Shot over and over, feeling a bit like a lost and confused kitten. Auto Shot is the solid, unshakable rod that you weave your other shots around, and when it suddenly disappears, the defining aspect of playing a hunter– the shot rotation– just crumbles. It was a horrible feeling.

But then, suddenly! The button got unstuck and everything worked again! Hooray!

I wrote it off as a glitch caused by lag or something and didn’t worry about it. I got some new epic pants and spent basically the last of my gold gemming and armor-kit-ing them and went to bed satisfied.

This morning I went to go farm motes to make up for all the gold I’d spent on my new pants the day before. I figured I’d level a lowbie pet while I was at it; it makes things more interesting.

And then it happened again. The Kill Command button locked up and Auto Shot disappeared. Helplessly I watched my poor level 67 wolf’s health plummet as the level 71 Air Elemental pounded on him; some 40% of my DPS was gone and I couldn’t kill the mob fast enough. Barely he survived that thing. *shudders thinking about it*

This is when I alt+tab’d and turned to Google for help. It turns out the Kill Command Bug isn’t just something that happens to me, it happens to other hunters too. It occasionally happens with other things, like Rapid Fire. And so long as the bug is active, you also cannot feed your pet or log out.

And apparently, currently the only way to fix it is to crit.

So I ran around using Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot and Steady Shot until finally one of them crit. Ding! Auto Shot comes back home to me and everything is fine again.

It didn’t happen again for the rest of that playing session but lemme tell ya, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at the Kill Command button the same way again, at least not for a long time. It sits there taunting me. Just waiting to pounce. Just waiting to catch me unawares and pull the Shot Rotation Doormat out from under my feet again.

So what do we know about the Kill Command Bug? We know that Blizzard is aware of the problem although it doesn’t look like it will be fixed until the next patch (it’s in the “issues list” for patch 2.4).

We know that so long as the bug is active you cannot fire Auto Shot, or feed your pet or log out.

We know that the bug is “fixed” if you crit or if you forcibly restart the game (/reloadui does not work. It was one of the first things I tried too.)

It has been suggested that the bug is caused by hitting Kill Command too quickly after your Steady Shot. Guess that’s what I get for making Kill Command a hotkey and honing my reflexes so I pound it basically as soon as I can. =P I suppose I can take the bug as a compliment then?

Until the patch hits, hunters, be on the lookout. The Kill Command Bug could be coming for YOU next, when you least expect it.

Muahahahaha!

*huddles in the corner and whimpers*

specs, stories, talents

Talent Show

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My experience with other classes is certainly not extensive enough to be able to say this with complete surety, but it seems to me that hunters, more so than other classes, are very spec-specific. Think of your average Joe R. Hunter (where R stands for “raiding”) and think of his probable talent spec. 41/20/0, 0/41/20, 0/20/41, 0/31/30. Maybe a coupla 40/21/0 and 0/21/40 thrown in for Scatter Shot and good measure.

Now, this definitely isn’t to say that there aren’t other good specs out there (in fact, I’ll address that at the end of my post) but this seems to be what you will see, most of the time. It just seems like that typical end-game hunter strategy is to grab those 20 key points in the Marks tree and then spread from there. I think, however, that what you do with your other 41 points (or even those “key 20 Marks points”) can really vary depending on personal preference and what you want.

Here, I’ll use my own current spec as an example:


Let me talk about what I’ve picked and why I’ve picked them, and why my overall talent spec is largely personal preference… and probably different from your personal preference.

Overall:

Pretty standard cookie-cutter 41/20/0 build at first glance. Typically considered by most to currently be the highest DPS hunter spec in the game, although there are a lot of disputes about whether or not this is actually true, especially when really, really nicely-geared Marks or Survival hunters are involved.

I personally chose Beast Mastery because I find it appealing from an emotional and aesthetic standpoint (geeky, no?); the DPS bonus is some very tasty icing on the cake though.

Beast Mastery:

5/5 Improved Aspect of the Hawk: Has a chance to increase your ranged attack speed by 15% for 12 seconds. This is awesome. It’s like squeezing bonus ranks out of Serpent’s Swiftness. Obviously this is proc-dependent so it’s not always reliable, and if you prefer to run around with, say, Aspect of the Viper up, then this might not be such a good choice for you. But overall I see this as a must-have for me. (Little secret: I am madly in love with the little WHOOSH noise that it makes when it procs and the little picture that pops above your head. That’s another big reason I always take this talent.) Warning: there is the possibility that it will mess up your shot rotation, but I’ve never had an issue with this.

2/5 Endurance Training: Yeah it’s maybe a little silly to have these two points here, but I still do a lot of grinding and stuff– with DPS pets, no less– so they can use all the staying power that they can get. Note: In my little opinion, 5/5 in this talent is pretty much mandatory for leveling. All my leveling hunters get 5/5 Endurance Training; they can respec later.

2/2 Focused Fire: 20% Kill Command crit is amazing. That’s really all I have to say about that.

2/3 Thick Hide: See my comments for Endurance Training. Again, I would recommend a full 3/3 for leveling BM hunters.

5/5 Unleashed Fury: Increases your pet’s damage output, pretty straightforward.

2/2 Improved Mend Pet: A lot of people I know do not put points in this and I have to admit it sort of baffles me. I don’t think I could live without this talent. This is one of the things that got me to respec from Marks in the first place. Picture this: You’re attacking something and your pet gets Faerie Fire or some other debuff that completely demolishes their armor/stamina/attack power/whatever. Whatcha gonna do about it? …Improved Mend Pet, that’s what! Oh, and the mana cost reduction is fantastic too.

5/5 Ferocity: Increases your pet’s crit. More pet crits = More Ferocious Inspiration for you (er, for me, anyway). This one’s a given.

Intimidation: This is the “Who comes to the rescue when the tank falls down” talent, to quote a line from Hootie the Strigid Screecher. Is your pet a replacement for the main tank? Oh, heck no. But if the boss a five-man is getting to end of his rope, something happens to the tank, and it’s your pet or the healer– this is when your pet comes to the rescue. Usually the healer realizes that your pet is the new tank and will plant enough heals on him to, if things go well, finish off the fight. Locke has successfully tanked both the last boss in Hellfire Ramparts and the last boss in Escape from Durnholde Keep in this fashion. Oh, and this talent is of course the gateway for some awesome talents down the road.

1/2 Bestial Discipline: One of my big personal goals is to have Ferocious Inspiration up 100% of the time. One of the ways I achieve this is to dump a bunch of focus onto my pet, so he has more chances to use Claw, which will hopefully crit. At this point in time, my crit is high enough that when I’m completely buffed and ready-to-roll, I can usually keep Locke or Tux full of focus with Go for the Throat, but there are always those long “droughts” where you won’t crit for a while and 1/2 Bestial Discipline helps act as a safety buffer. Note: I would seriously consider going 2/2 here if I were using a Windserpent or something, because of Lightning Breath (costing more focus than Claw).

2/2 Animal Handler: This isn’t quite so important pre-level-70, but basically this is your only way to increase your pet’s chance to hit, which is going to be very needed in harder instances and raids. More hits = more chances to crit = more guaranteed Ferocious Inspiration.

4/5 Frenzy: Makes your pet attack faster. Again, more hits = more chances to crit = more guaranteed Ferocious Inspiration. You may have noticed I only have four points in this talent. A lot of hunters do that. I’m not one who’s much for math or theorycrafting myself, but I do recall reading somewhere that 4/5 Frenzy is just as good as 5/5 Frenzy and in my experience that seems to hold out to be true. I love having an extra point to play with, so 4/5 it is.

3/3 Ferocious Inspiration: This is one of my very favorite talents and I put a lot of hard work into spec’ing myself and my pet so that this is up near-continuously. This increases the attack power of everyone in your party by 3%, and this works on melee, ranged, and magical attacks. 3% may not seem like a lot, but it adds up. And I just love the idea of it.

Bestial Wrath: This is a given; who doesn’t want to watch that big red pet doing almost as much DPS as you while being immune to most everything?

5/5 Serpent’s Swiftness: I think this is possibly the talent that makes BM the powerhouse spec that it is. This is what defines the BM shot rotation (Steady S

hot/Auto Shot/Kill Command) and allows us to out-DPS a lot of Marksman hunters who are hitting harder, but slower. So… yeah. This is a given.

The Beast Within: Some people prefer Scatter Shot; myself, I like having what is almost the equivalent to a “second PvP trinket”. This is the Warlock-buster. Oh, and the Warrior’s hamstring/Rogue’s poison/etc.-buster. =P

Marksmanship:

For the most part, you will see these 20 points on pretty much every end-game hunter. There is one debate though, that I will get to in a second:

5/5 Lethal Shots: Crit is good.

5/5 Improved Hunter’s Mark: This is where there’s a divide. A lot of hunters– most, I think– would rather have 5/5 Efficiency. Myself– I’m an Improved Hunter’s Mark fan. What it does is buff the melee attack power of everyone who is attacking whatever you’ve marked, whether they’re in your party or not. This buffs your pet and it buffs anybody who uses melee attacks. I have always been one who enjoys helping out the party as much as I can, and being able to provide a 110-attack-power-bonus to people is almost like having my own little Trueshot Aura. Also, I have never been in a situation thus far where I’ve wished I’d taken Efficiency instead. I know, I know, a lot of you are probably saying “Just wait until you start raiding!” And I understand that, and if the need arises to take Efficiency instead, then I will. But at this point I haven’t needed it. I would rather be buffing the attack power of my pet and the tank and the rogues and other hunter’s pets and the feral druids, than giving myself a few extra Steady Shots before I have to pot. But that’s just me. =P

2/2 Go for the Throat: This generates a lot of focus for your pet and in my mind is a must-have talent.

Aimed Shot: I really only use this against healers in PvP (paladins mostly), but it’s the prerequisite for another awesome talent.

Rapid Killing: The best place to toss those two extra points you need in this talent tier; it gives you a little boost if you are killing things quickly and shaves some time off of the gigantic Rapid Fire cooldown.

5/5 Mortal Shots: Increases the damage that your crits do. <3 big crits.

Well, there you go. That is why Pike specs the way she does. It’s not a perfect spec. But it meeds my own personal needs, and that is what talent specs are supposed to do– fit an individual’s needs. This is why I don’t think there is “one spec to rule them all”, and this is why I make an effort not to judge somebody based on their Armory profile.

Lemme tell you a story quick, and then I’ll let you go, since this post is long enough already!

One of my friends has a level 70 hunter alt. Because this hunter is an alt, he’s not all that geared. He has a level 64 green helmet of the Bandit; he has Valanos’ Longbow without the scope and overall he’s just in quest gear. He has a solid but not exactly cookie-cutter BM spec.

Guess what happens when he, I, and another hunter in Season 1 PvP gear all go into battlegrounds? Guess who, without fail, tops the damage done and the killing blows and the honorable kills at the end?

I’ll give you a hint. It’s not me. And it’s not Season-1-gear-hunter either.

It’s Mr. Green Helmet.

He is the only hunter I have played against so far who can beat me in a 1-on-1 hunter duel up to about five levels higher than me (that is to say, other hunters who attack me on my RP-PvP server hordie, cannot beat me unless they have over five levels on me.)

The last time we dueled it was in the Stranglethorn Arena to make things dramatic, and we had a little guildie audience too. There I was, completely decked out in blues and purples and with everything enchanted to the brim. Savagery on my Sonic Spear and +10 damage on my Gladiator’s Heavy Crossbow. And there he was in quest blues and greens.

He won.

He had about 100 hit points left when I fell. He told me afterwards that if I’d used Serpent Sting, I would’ve won. And he’s right. But the fact is that I failed to use Serpent Sting and thus he won fair and square.

I haven’t a clue how he does it. Somehow he manages to work magic in PvP. He’s told me he feels much the same way about me in PvE, he says he doesn’t think he could ever pull off what I do in instances. This is very flattering, but it still completely blows my mind that he’s working his magic in quest greens.

The hunter I have the most respect for isn’t some T6 hunter with Illidan on farm. The hunter I have the most respect for isn’t in complete season 3 arena armor with some incredible rating. No, the hunter I have the most respect for is wearing a green helmet of the Bandit and only has one point in Frenzy.

Armory profiles aren’t everything. Gear isn’t always everything. Spec isn’t always everything. You spec the way that is best for you, because you know your playstyle the best. The results may surprise you.

karazhan, screenshots, stories

And so it begins…

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Finally got around to doing Black Morass and nabbing the vaunted key to Karazhan. We sort of waited around until we had a good-sized group of us in the guild who needed it, and today was one of the rare days lately where schedules didn’t clash and we had four of us who needed the key, so we grabbed a fifth person and off we went to what was overall a very smooth run of BM, free of any deaths or major problems. I was on “adds duty” and I got a lot of praise for my job as such, so I must’ve done better than I thought I would, which is always a plus!

Afterwards we all rushed off to Shattrath and then all the way back to Azeroth and Deadwind Pass to finally nab ourselves [The Master’s Key].

Now, you gotta understand something here. Of the five of us, three of us, myself included, had never once set foot inside Karazhan. The fourth had only been inside once and only for one boss, and the fifth had been inside multiple times but never before on this character or even character type (his two other characters are a warlock and a mage; this character is a holy pally.)

So what did we do?

We converted the group to a raid and went inside, of course.

(Insert screenshot here that I should have taken but completely forgot to! =P)

There were some level 71 elite horses that we decided to have some fun with because we were feeling a bit giddy. So that’s exactly what we did. Pulled some horses and disposed of them. I even chain-trapped one, which normally isn’t a big deal because I do that all the time but this is Kara, after all.

After a couple pulls we were sort of discussing it and came to the conclusion that the mobs so far seemed to be of a comparable difficulty level to the mobs in a Heroic. And as a guild, we’ve got a few Heroics under our collective belt.

So that’s when somebody said “Hey, let’s see if we can grab five other people and take the first boss.”

So there we were, with that carrot dangling in our faces, and it was as four of the five of us were drooling over the carrot when my boyfriend, who also happens to be the guild leader, spoke up. He said that he had made this guild and leveled up with this guild and become good friends with the people in this guild and he wanted his first Karazhan run to be a guild/good-friends-of-the-guild run. And at the time we certainly did not have enough people in the guild who would be ready to jump into Kara with us.

And we all sort of agreed and reluctantly pushed that tasty carrot aside and left Karazhan. For now.

See, lemme talk about my guild for a bit. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before in the past, but I’m gonna say it again. We have a pretty large guild, 120-something characters and 70+ accounts, and we are largely comprised of people who are newer to the game or who are at least new to getting a character to 70. These are people I leveled with. People who learned the game with me. People who have never done this end-game stuff before… just like me. We’re all in this together.

I know of a lot of people who are in some big huge guild and they get ushered through Karazhan by the big boys the day after they hit 70 and come out of the other end all shiny and geared. I’m not trying to say that’s a bad way to do it, but that’s not how I would want to do it. I like the fact that my guild and I are doing it the old fashioned way. A year behind, yes. But that’s not the point. We worked our way through the 50s and 60s doing instances together. We learned how to work together as a very unified team. We started doing some heroics and we have done very well on them, if I might say so myself, largely because we have that unity and experience with each other.

Most of us have never been in Karazhan before (except for today’s little tour of the entryway). We haven’t done end-game before. We don’t know what we’re doing. This is a big first for us. And it’s going to be hard and we’re going to get dirty and there is a lot of work ahead of us. And we are going to learn so much. And I can’t wait.

We have a lot of people in the guild who are in their 50s or 60s or who are 70 and still need to get geared/keyed. And we agreed that we are going to start concentrating on helping those people get ready. It might take a few weeks. It might take more than that. But we will do it, and then we will have more than enough people for a ten-man raid and we’ll trust each other and be able to work as a team because that’s how we’ve been doing it all along.

It sometimes amazes me how much of a role WoW has had in teaching me how to be a team player. We’re allowed to say this in job interviews, right? You know, when they ask you the inevitable “Tell me a story of when you had to work as a group” question. I can talk about WoW, right? I might get some funny looks, but hey…

instances, stories

Good Hunters go to Heaven, Except They Don't Die

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So I had the rather, um, unique experience yesterday of surviving a wipe. Basically it goes like this:

We were in Black Morass, which none of us had ever done before. This is a very… unusual instance. It consists of you running around killing bosses and other non-boss big elites, while trying to prevent wave after wave of mob from getting to Medivh. Very intense.

Anyways, we were about halfway through and doing okay, for it being everyone’s first try. I was on add-duty, so while everybody else focused on the elites I got to run around with Track Dragonkin up, making sure nobody was trying to sneak past. Anyways to make a long story short, we were busy on one of the bosses and then it happened. Tank died. Warlock died. Rogue died. Healer died. …hunter and pet are running around attacking the growing number of adds. I was fully expecting to die any second, but… nope. You see, I hadn’t touched the boss at all because I’d been focusing on adds. So I had no threat when it came to him, so he wasn’t touching me.

Furthermore, the adds weren’t mobbing me because they were all focused on Medivh. I was able to run around and pick them off one at a time– or at least make a futile attempt to do so before Medivh’s shield fell.

Medivh’s shield was, in fact, falling faster and faster and suddenly I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be trying. Maybe I should die while his shield was still up… maybe then we wouldn’t have to start over?

I said in party chat: “Hey guys, I’m still alive”.

Party Chat: “…”

Me: “Am I supposed to die?”

Party: “Is Medivh’s shield falling?”

Me: “Yeah”

Party Chat: “Yeah… maybe dying would be a good idea…”

Okay, suicide. I can do that easily enough. I ran up to the boss they were fighting before and fired an arrow at him. Boss yells something out and charges at me and hits me for a lot of HP, but I was still hanging in there. I braced myself for the final blow…

And then he disappeared.

Medivh’s shield had fallen and so all the bad guys had disappeared.

Everyone had wiped and I’d ran up and shot an elite dragon boss in the face and yet my pet and I were still standing, battered, but alive.

Let me tell ya, I never thought I’d see the day where I could say that.

As for the instance, we tried a few more times unsuccessfully (the instance does in fact reset) and then decided we would call it a night and come back later when we needed the Kara key and when our tank was better geared. (Very good tank… needs better gear.)

I think it’s starting to turn into a joke among my guildies that I have this mysterious tendency to survive wipes. I am perfectly fine with that reputation.

stories

Why I Play a BM Hunter

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Have you ever gone somewhere without your pet? Maybe you had to go tame a new pet for skills, or maybe you were doing a quest where you took control of something else so your pet couldn’t be there (that quest chain in Blade’s Edge Mountains comes to mind)…

If you’re anything like me, going somewhere without your pet is not a pleasant experience. You feel vulnerable; incomplete, crippled even. You skitter nervously past mobs, like a mouse running through a field with hawks overhead. You are weak.

And then you see him (or her): the pet you want you want to tame. Maybe he has just the right skills you need to learn, or maybe he is just the right color and the right style. Maybe you’ve carefully done your research to decide exactly which pet you wanted to tame, or maybe this one just pops out at you and feels right.

He, like you, is vulnerable right now. His life consists of walking around in zigzags and circles and occasionally pouncing on a hapless critter. Oh he could put up a decent fight against a passing adventurer, but it would probably all be for naught– he exists so that someone can kill him and loot him for vendor trash or some random green.

You are both vulnerable. But together…

Your eyes meet and he runs at you. You’re prepared with a trap, but eventually he breaks free and bashes on you. You try to hold out just a bit longer…

And then it happens.

A flash of light and he is standing by your side. In that instant everything has changed. In that instant, neither of you are weak anymore.

There is a beautiful synergy between hunter and pet that I have been unable to find in any other class so far. Granted, I’ve never gotten another class past level 19, so perhaps I’m biased. But the fact remains that, for the time being, I’ve yet to find that synergy elsewhere in the game.

In my last post I was geeking out a little bit about crit. You know why I like crit? It’s not just so I can top the DPS meters. Oh don’t get me wrong, I love being at or near the top of the meters at the end of the instance. It means I’m doing my job and doing it well.

But this is what happens when my pet crits:
Ferocious Inspiration procs, giving a buff to everyone in my party, including myself.

And this is what happens when I crit:
My pet gets to use Kill Command
My pet gets a bunch of focus through the Go for the Throat talent.

You see that? We’re helping each other. We make each other stronger. Everytime that big blue number pops up on the screen (thanks Scrolling Combat Text) and the little alert comes up, it means I not only get to jam my Kill Command hotkey, but a bunch of pet crits are probably coming up too. Those, in turn, further strengthen me through Ferocious Inspiration. It’s a beautiful dance and it thrills me each and every time it happens.

That’s why I play hunters. That’s why, specifically, I finally settled on the Beast Mastery spec. Sure it was Uncle BRK who put the idea into my head in the first place, but it was I who had to try it out and I who had to decide if I liked it or not. It’s about more than a DPS increase. It’s about the aesthetics. It’s about the thrill of the hunt. It’s about that companionship.

Because alone, you are weak.

But together, you become stronger than either of you could have ever imagined.

ding, screenshots, stories

Storytime

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Gather round, and I will tell you all a story… (I apologize for the length!)

Way back in May, when I was finishing up university, my boyfriend installed WoW.

…now there was absolutely no way I was going to let him do this without me, so the next day I installed it too.

A few hours later, there I was, looking at the character creation screen…

Me: “Ooooh, Tauren are so cute!! I must make one!!”

The Boyfriend: “Erm, I’m playing Alliance, so you’ll have to also if you want to play with me.”

Me: “Oh. Darn. Well let’s see here. Oooh, Night Elves. They had a pretty cool backstory in Warcraft III. Look, I can even make one with teal hair. My favorite color! *squee* Now for class. Hmm. Oooh, hunter. That sounds sorta like my favorite D&D class, ranger.”

*click*

And thus Tawyn was born.

I spawned as a little level one Night Elf Hunter in Teldrassil and I had no idea what was going on. I clicked on all the little tutorials that popped up, reading them carefully and trying not to forget what they said. “The little gold chalice button is the Quest Log.” “People with a big yellow exclamation point above their head have stuff for you to do.” “Right click to attack.” It was all very confusing. I couldn’t keep a lot of the aspects of this strange new game straight. I found a cute little bunny hopping around and I wanted to select it… so I right-clicked. It died. I felt horrible. The camera angle kept doing strange things, and I had no idea how to change it.

But oh, look, a guy with a big yellow exclamation point above his head! That means he has stuff for me to do, right? He’s telling me to go kill boars. Whee, I’ll go shoot them!

So I did. But then they ran towards me and I couldn’t shoot them anymore. So I whacked away furiously with my dagger, spamming the attack button because I thought that was how you did it. Then I went back triumphantly to get my very first quest reward. I chose some mail gear because it had the most armor so it was obviously the best one. Then I spent about ten minutes trying to figure out why I couldn’t equip it.

Those first few quests weren’t so bad, even though I was still clueless about the game. But around level 4 or so, I found a cave full of spiders and that was a terrible, terrible place. Those spiders killed me more times than I can count. There was another place called “Starbreeze Village” which was filled with cute teddy bears! They killed me too. Hmm.

So by level 6 I was getting pretty discouraged and I was wondering how the heck I was supposed to get to wherever my boyfriend the human warlock was because it didn’t seem to be anywhere in the vicinity. Plus, I’d found a Peacebloom which I wanted to give to him as a present because it was really pretty. So one of my sisters decided to make a level 1 character on my server and show me the way!

Off we went. We rode gryphons and boats and died at the hands of crocodiles and ogres. My sister kept stopping and telling me to talk to strange NPCs with green exclamation marks above their heads. I had no idea why I was doing this, but I did anyway.

Eventually we got to Ironforge and rode a curious little subway thing to Stormwind. I was completely lost but I followed my sister around because she seemed to know what she was doing. I eventually found my boyfriend and opened trade with him to give him my present. But…

Trial accounts cannot trade.

…there was only one thing to do. I bought the game. And gave him the Peacebloom.

So there I was, level 6 and in Stormwind. And– oooh, look that guy’s weapon is all fiery! Mental note to get that someday, whatever it is– I began questing in Goldshire. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience. Murlocs killed me mercilessly and despite the fact that I thought I was pretty handy with my dagger, spamming that attack button and all, I didn’t seem to be doing very well. I rolled my very first alt, a tauren (they’re cute darnit!) druid, and it was a lot more fun. You mean I can cast spells at people and heal? So much cooler than that silly hunter I’d made, pffft. But I kept playing my hunter because I wanted to play with the boyfriend.

Level 10 rolled around and I got this mysterious quest to go back to my hometown and get a pet. I about had a heart attack when I found out I had to go back to Teldrassil, as visions of those evil crocodiles and ogres flashed in my memory. I procrastinated on that quest for a while, because of that. But, eventually, I used my hearthstone (which I had never got around to changing yet) and went back there.

The quest involved me taming a spider, a cat, and an owl. The spider I still had a grudge against from that cave. The cat was cute but I saw cats all over Stormwind (all the hunters wanted them, for some strange reason), and I wanted to be unique. The owl made cute flappy-wing noises. I liked him.

After the quest I was informed that I could go tame a pet of my choosing to keep for as long as I wanted. I freaked out because I instinctively knew that this was a big decision and I didn’t want to screw it up. Frantically I went to my sisters for help, and they directed me to a website called Petopia. I spent about an hour there, cycling through all the pet choices, hardly understanding anything about “DPS” or “skills”. I was going purely on looks, how hard they would be to get (I wanted a raptor but they were in the Barrens, which I assumed was full of Hordies who wanted to kill me, so that was a no-go), and whether the site said they were “offensive”, “defensive”, or “well-rounded.”

I seriously considered a wolf but in the end I went with the owl. There was something endearing about having an owl flapping next to you. I went and tamed a Strigid Hunter and named him Tux.

Back to Stormwind I went, feeling a rush of relief when I managed to get back to Elwynn. I hadn’t liked it at first but it had really grown on me. Now I just had to adjust to life with a pet. I wasn’t exactly sure how it was supposed to work. Was I supposed to put him on aggressive and have him kill things for me? Hmm, nope, he died. OH MY GOSH IS HE GONE FOREVER?? *hyperventilates* Oh wait no, there’s a spell called Revive Pet. *deep breaths*

I know, I’ll shoot stuff and make it come to me and my pet and I can fight it together!

That’s what I did for a while.

…yes. I know.

I moved from Elywnn into Westfall and began questing there. At some point during this period I realized I could teach my owl “Growl”, and I also sort of gained an inkling of the idea of having him tank while I shot stuff. I could now use something called “Talent points”. I asked a couple people (non-hunters) what I should do with them and I was told to put them into the Marksmanship tree, so I did. Improved Concussive Shot, obviously, because a chance at stunning someone sounded about ten times more exciting than increased crit. I thought I was a pretty darn good hunter, despite the fact
that, ya know, I was dying all the time. Boldly I ventured into Deadmines with my pet on aggressive. This was a dungeon afterall. More damage was good, right? Having my pet on aggressive killing stuff was good, right?

The people at my party started yelling at me and telling me to control my pet. I didn’t get it. How was I supposed to control my pet? What did they mean?

At some point they told me trap a mob. I laid down an Immolation Trap and smugly pulled the mob in. I had an ice trap too but I didn’t like it. It didn’t do any damage. Pfft. What kinda lame trap is that, not doing any damage?

We killed VanCleef somehow. The people in my party weren’t very happy because apparently someone had ninja’d a lot of the loot throughout the dungeon. I got angry too. Darn those ninjas! Good thing I somehow got a lot of great stuff though. My bags were full of them. Silly people should know to click Need if they want stuff.

And so I continued my questing, fancying myself as a nice little hunter who’d had some bad luck. I still wasn’t a big fan of the class and I was rolling non-hunter alts all the time, but Tawyn was the highest level so she was the most interesting, so she got the most playtime.

One day I was attacking something and somehow aggro’d something else as well. It ran towards me, with Tux still busy on the first mob. Now I don’t know how or why this idea popped into my head, because it had never ever occurred to me before… but for some reason I hit my never-used Freezing Trap button.

Pop!

I had one mob trapped and out of my way while I took care of the other one. Then I went back and finished the trapped mob.

Afterwards, I blinked. Whoa.

…what a neat trick I’d just discovered! I tried it again. It worked, again. Wow! How fun!

I wondered if hunters had any other little tricks like that.

After I logged off WoW I hit up WoW Wiki and Google, searching for information and help on the hunter class. The first two sites I stumbled across were called The Hunter’s Mark and Big Red Kitty. The Hunter’s Mark had a bunch of stuff on trapping which I read voraciously. Big Red Kitty was filled with math and numbers and strange new phrases I had never heard of before, like “Steady Shot” and “Kill Command”. But it all seemed very important so I bookmarked it.

I hit my 30s and began questing in Desolace. I haven’t forgotten this: me, my boyfriend, and the guy who’d introduced us to WoW playing on an alt, all of us questing in Desolace. At some point we pulled a lot more mobs than we wanted to. And I, ever in love with my little trick, trapped a mob while we took out the others.

The friend said in party chat, “Great use of your traps Tawyn… you’ll make a great hunter.”

Wait… I would?

But everybody was always yelling at me! I was always dying! And yet… I really had the potential to be a good hunter? Great, even?

And that settled it.

I went back to BRK and read the entire thing. Everything. First I read the posts he had linked on his sidebar. Then I went back to his very first post and read the whole blog “cover-to-cover”. I read all the comments. Took a few days. I tried to internalize as much as I could. I didn’t understand a lot of it but I read it anyway. I went to The Hunter’s Mark, too, and read as much of it as I could and watched the movies that had been posted. Then I started clicking on links and on the names of the commenters. More blogs to read! I never said anything, I just lurked and read.

Somehow, between all that reading and learning and the playing and practicing, something clicked.

Suddenly I couldn’t play my non-hunter alts anymore. They were awkward. They didn’t have that special, unique quality that my hunter did. They weren’t me. I remember I rolled a troll warrior on some friends’ server with the express purpose of making her my “main alt.” I got to level 7 or 8 or so and had to stop, I just wasn’t having fun or enjoying myself at all. The next day I went back to that server and rolled a hunter. Today she’s my second-highest level character.

More leveling, more questing. More… erm… very interesting adventures as you can see from the above screenshot. And slowly I incorporated what I had been learning from various blogs into my gameplay. I was using my traps. I was teaching my pet the right skills. I had my pet under control. I was no longer a hindrance in groups, but a help. I stayed Marksman until level 50 because I was comfortable with it; but here is where the Grand Respec Phase came and I messed around with specs for a while before settling on, whaddaya know, 41/20/0. I hit 58 and Outlands. Things kept improving for me. I began topping charts in battlegrounds. I began topping charts in instances. People began specifically asking me to instance with them– apparently I’ve improved a little since Deadmines.

Most importantly, I discovered something that I could practice and take pride in. It might sound a little silly to a lot of people if I were to compare playing my class in World of Warcraft, to honing one’s skills in a sport or art form. But that’s sort of what it became to me. And it taught me that no matter how horrible you are at something– a little coaching and a little practice can work wonders.

And now…?

I am a hunter.

And as of today, I am level 70.

Thanks, WoW bloggers. I couldn’t have done it without you guys. (Well, I could have, but… it wouldn’t have been a pretty sight. /twitch) I can only hope that my own little site will be as helpful to some other inquisitive newbie someday.

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!

guild, stories

The People of WoW

4 Comments

One of the neat things about our guild is that it has a very large number of people that are in their 50s and 60s, level-wise. These are all people who are either playing for the first time, like myself, or have largely abandoned previous high-level characters and are now leveling alts almost exclusively. It’s quite handy because you almost always have some people to quest with or run instances with, and I’m excited because so many of us are coming up on 70 now so it’s like we’re already going to be pretty much set for doing all those big 70 instances that are coming up (including our little guild’s pipe dream… it starts with a K and ends with an -arazhan.)

The other day, our guild’s current main tank, a 64 prot warrior who is fantastic to work with, whispered me and told me that I had to meet him in Blasted Lands, and that it was urgent. I was mystified, but quite intrigued, and hightailed it out of Nagrand and back to the old world so I could meet him there. Once we met up, he had me unequip my bow and quiver, toss all my arrows, and then he opened trade and gave me a present: [The Gunblade], complete with a +10 damage scope, a 16-slot ammo pouch and the bullets to go with it. It turns out he and my boyfriend had both pooled their extra gold and bought this present just for me. I was informed in a sort of semi-roleplaying-fashion (I love RP servers) that the gift was a thank-you to me for providing quality DPS and CC in instances, and in general “being good at your class”.

Then… you know those guys in Blasted Lands whose HP falls down to about 1% and then they don’t die? Yeah, best guys to grind your weapon skill on ever (because I’ve actually never used a gun before, even though I had the skill trained).

Anyways, the reason that I’m sharing this story isn’t just to show off my new weapon (even though it is very shiny), but because it really showed me that even though WoW “is just a game”… it also “isn’t just a game”. The reason it isn’t just a game is because of the people that you meet. These are people that you might not have met otherwise if you hadn’t played the game, and yes they might be people that you never do get to meet in person. But just because you don’t get to see them in person, doesn’t mean that they are any less important or any less capable of doing kind deeds or being good friends. I was really touched by the present that I got and what it meant, and I hope that I, too, can perform similar acts of kindness and gratitude to the people that I hang out with in-game.

I’ve met a lot of great people in this game and I can’t wait to meet others. And that’s my little feel-good story of the day. ^^

duels, instances, stories

Bad Hunter, Good Hunter

8 Comments

Some of my adventures around Azeroth…

Bad Hunter:

-I jumped off a high ledge in Dire Maul. Guess who I forgot to dismiss? Mmyep. About three minutes later, in the middle of discussing strategy, my pet comes running up followed by basically every single mob in the instance. Admittedly those last two seconds before we died were pretty funny (I’ve never seen that many mobs), and the group I was with was very forgiving and reminded me that it was sort of a hunter rite-of-passage… but I still was pretty embarrassed.

-I helped out a group in Scholo so one of the group members could get his pally mount, and another could progress in her warlock mount chain. Not too long into the instance I made a terrible mistake, clicked on the wrong mob, and without noticing, hit my “Hunter’s Mark/Pet Attack” macro key. This proceeded to pull basically the entire room. We managed to survive somehow, but I was beating myself up for it and making it worse was the fact that the PuG-members of the group assumed I was a huntard and started telling me to dismiss my pet. I apologized, told them it was my fault and not the pet’s, and that it wouldn’t happen again and that my pet was staying out whether they liked it or not. I’m hoping they noticed that my pet was very well-controlled for the rest of the instance and that I topped the damage meters pretty squarely. Normally I don’t like to flaunt the DPS meters but I really wanted to prove to them that I actually was competent and had just made a bad mistake. (And no I didn’t actually post the damage meters, but I’m hoping they noticed =P)

Good Hunter:

-This story takes place during another Scholo run (I help lower-level guildies in lower-level instances a lot). We were doing one of the boss rooms, the pull hadn’t turned out as we’d liked, and to make a long story short the entire room was on top of us.

It was pretty obvious that a wipe was imminent as I watched the group members fall one by one, so I took out as many mobs as I could before I was alone and overwhelmed. I ran out of the room, put my pet on defensive instead of passive (so he at least wouldn’t go down without a fight) and feigned death.

Poor Locke, I thought, I’m going to be sitting here playing dead while he dies…

But wait, what’s this?

Hey, Locke is doing pretty good against those three mobs (one of which was an elite) that are on him. He wouldn’t live without heals and help, but still…

I got up, bandaged up, popped Mend Pet, took out one of the mobs, trapped another, and then proceeded to solo the 60 elite.

So there we were, my pet and I standing triumphant in the face of what was otherwise a wipe. It was here that I noticed party chat was filled with people saying things like “Okay, wait for the mobs to be reset… whoa, what the heck, Tawyn’s not dead yet?” “Tawyn’s still not dead?”

And then I said “Hey guys, I killed an elite for ya”, not really thinking much of it, but then party chat proceeded to say “…um, Tawyn killed the boss.”

…I did?

Apparently I did!

He was a few levels lower than me yes. But he was an elite, and he had buddies with him, and I took him down.

And that made me feel really awesome.

-I defeated an equal-level marks-spec’d hunter in a duel. I still had about half of my hit points left by the end of it, too. Looking back on it I can think of some things he did wrong, for example, not sending his pet in to attack me (granted I would have trapped it anyway, but it’s the principle of the thing, ya know?) But it’s funny because I always had this notion in my head that marks-hunters did a lot better in duels. So this was another one of those “feel-good” moments.

The Morals of the Stories:

– Dismiss your pet before you jump off a ledge.

– Be absolutely sure you know who you are targeting before you send your pet in.

– Don’t assume you’ve lost when you’re staring in the face of an instance wipe or a duel against a differently-spec’d hunter. You never know when things will conspire to give you the edge you need.

Oh, and lastly…

– Don’t tell a good hunter what to do with their pet. Suggestions, okay. But “I hate your pet, please dismiss him”… no. Not a good idea. We have a thing called Huntery Pride and it comes out in full-force sometimes, and you probably don’t want to mess with it. *nods*