alts, art, druid

Heroic Nexus Is the Birthplace of Bad PuGs

23 Comments

I’ve actually been playing my healer a lot lately. Mostly because she’s been sitting around in this patchwork mixture of blues, Naxx10 my-first-epics, and super OP new-badge-stuff, and I’d like to even that out a little and that way potentially be a help to my guild in the future if an extra healer is needed. (I know you’re about to warn me “Don’t do it Pike, once they start taking your healer you’ll never get to DPS again!” but my guild is actually unusual and informs me that “TAWYN IS 4 FITE”, so I don’t have too many worries about having to scrap DPS forever.)

Not to mention, ever since Tawyn got that trinket, DPS’ing heroics has turned into “Hey check it out, I can pound on random buttons and get 4k DPS”, so I’d might as well play something that can use the badges a little more, eh?

I’ve also started to enjoy my Tree more ever since I started using Lifebloom again. I stopped using it at the advice of a Very Good Tree who told me you could do just fine with Regrowth/Rejuv/Nourish, and I tried that style for a while, and it was effective and you got less overheal, but I didn’t like the style. Druid Healing, to me, has always been like Disc Priest: it’s about damage prevention and anticipating when people are going to take damage, and pre-healing. But with a Regrowth/Nourish heavy style, I was back to Whack-a-Mole, and it just wasn’t as fun. So I’ve gone back to my tactic of triple-stacking Lifebloom on the tank, and letting it bloom (for your instant heal + mana back), and using my other heals as needed for AoE damage or an extra buffer or preventative stuff. It is just a lot more fun to me and I don’t have any mana problems with it.

Anyways, I’ll stick my Tree in LFG for heroics that I know are Super Easy to Heal. Heroics that are Super Easy to Heal = Nexus, UK, Drak’theron Keep, and VH. Maybe CoS if I’m feeling adventurous. Some of the others are pretty easy too but they’ll have some aspect to them that I don’t like or something– for example, the Chain Lightning crap in Halls of Stone, or the stupid fish in the water in Gundrak. I have actually now successfully healed HToC as well, and it was a very smooth run, but I’ve convinced myself that it was a fluke and am still scared to go in there, for the most part, so it is also off of the list.

For some reason I keep getting invited to Nexus, and for some reason I keep going, despite the fact that Heroic Nexus is shaping up to be where all the bad PuGs happen.

First Special Group:
Consisted of a Fury Warrior who was doing a spectacular and amazing 417 DPS, and a Paladin tank who was running out of mana about 10 seconds into every pull, and blaming it on me not healing him enough. And for those of you who are about to say that he was overgeared: he was in Blues and getting upgrades from this Heroic.

After defeating Anomalus the whole group (sans-me) bravely leapt off the edge into that hole– you know the one I’m talking about– the Hole of Death From Which There Is No Rez’ing.

One guy had to abruptly leave because apparently his wife was yelling at him or something, and our brave, mana-thirsty Paladin Tank decided we could four-man it! Of course, he wasn’t aware of the fact that I was outDPSing the Fury Warrior with Moonfires and Starfires between heals, but hey. We actually somehow finished the Heroic. I was shocked.

Second Special Group:
This group actually wasn’t as bad, and the tank was way overgeared. When you’ve got a way overgeared tank and a healer who has at least a small idea of what is going on, you can brute force your way through most heroics even if none of the DPS is doing over 1.2k (as was in this group). As such, this heroic went overall smoothly, it just took three times as long as it should’ve.

I’ll admit to making a mistake here, namely, all the DPS jumped down, sans-tank, after fighting the Ormorok the Tree Shaper Guy. Now for those who do not know, there are baddies roaming around down there. In a moment of hubris I figured I could keep the DPS up and save the day, since two of them were plate wearers, so I hopped down as well, but it turns out that Arms Warriors and Ret Paladins are about as squishy as a mage. Byebye Tree. Hey, I tried, right?

As I was flying away from that run, I got a whisper asking me to heal H. Nexus. I was very relieved to inform them that I’d just finished it and was saved.

I don’t think I’m going to put myself in LFG for Nexus again for a while…

TreeCroppedResized

characters, rp, thoughts, Uncategorized

To All The Characters I've Loved Before

18 Comments

As a wannabe cartoonist, one of my personal heroes is Chuck Jones. The mastermind behind Looney Tunes who brought Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and all their friends to life. There is a story that is frequently told regarding him, wherein he introduced himself to a small boy as “The person who draws Bugs Bunny”. The boy promptly corrected him, “No, you’re the person who draws pictures of Bugs Bunny.”

See, that’s how I feel about my characters in WoW. I am not Tawyn. I just play her in a video game.

tawyn14

Tawyn’s path to life has been a long and windy one. There were some parts of her character that I knew from the beginning: for example, that she lived in Stormwind instead of Darnassus. But most of the other aspects of her character wouldn’t manifest themselves right away. In the beginning, largely influenced by the night elf voice acting I think, she was a much nicer and more serene and overall “elfy” individual. It was my first ever Brewfest at level 50 or so where the guild running joke of Tawyn being an alcoholic surfaced, and I later decided to tie this into her personality. After that, it was just a snowball effect, with my character leaping unbidden from “neutral good” to a much more chaotic persona. She became misanthropic; a cowgirl and a mercenary. A Beast Master because beasts were the only thing she could trust. Time and all the changes it has brought to WoW had an effect on her as well, and I tend to say that she has since fled Stormwind due to the political goings-on and now wanders around Northrend as a vagabond.

When I think of her, I don’t think of her as a character in WoW. I think of her as this living, breathing individual. She is of course, not real, but it sure feels that way sometimes.

I think this may effect the way I play the game. For example, the idea of a faction- or race-change seems almost like a crime to me. Sure, there are races I like more than night elves, but the whole idea of Tawyn’s identity as a night elf and the internal struggles she has with this fact is bound tightly to her character. To change her into something different and rip that integral part of her story away is unspeakable. I don’t even like thinking about it.

At this point you may be thinking “Wow, you are superbig into roleplay, aren’t you?” to which my reply is, actually, I almost never roleplay in game. I was never comfortable with it. Primarily because I didn’t want to step into the shoes of this character who I knew I could never do justice. I always approached roleplaying with trepidation, the way an actor might approach playing some historical figure in a film. I don’t much like roleplaying because I know I am not Tawyn and am afraid I’ll play her all wrong. You’re laughing at me, telling me I invented her, but in truth it feels more like she came to me. I don’t fully know her yet. I’m still learning about her.

tawyn1

So it is that I have this character that popped into my head and I also play her in a video game. The video game aspect of it is a large part of it, and that’s why I never quite understood the “I don’t roleplay in WoW because stuff like spirit rez’ing is too unrealistic” thing. That doesn’t make sense to me because what’s happening is just that, a game adaptation of your character’s life. Stuff that happened in game doesn’t necessarily have to be stuff that happened to your character’s backstory. Tawyn didn’t actually murder thousands of the Defias Brotherhood. Tawyn didn’t actually wipe on Sapphiron or Curator billions of times. Tawyn didn’t actually do that infamous “torture quest”. The game is a loose roadmap for Tawyn’s life, but it’s not a home movie. Most World War 2 video games aren’t exactly how it happened either.

No, the Real Tawyn lives in my head and manifests herself to me in stories and in her little personal piece of lore that has been cooking in my head since day one.

All my other characters feel very real to me as well, of course– heck, I’ve been known to level characters only because I like their backstory— but none of them is quite as real as Tawyn is, and I think that’s why after all these years, Tawyn is still my main. Cause how can you shelf a character that real?

I gotta say, in the end, this is why I play World of Warcraft. I mean, the huntering is great. Obviously I love the huntering. But if you shoved Generic Hunter #13458 in my face and told me to play it, I’d lose interest. Very fast. Because in the end, the biggest reason I love WoW is because it’s a gateway for letting some really interesting imaginary people into my brain.

NewFeedPet

And that’s awesome.

gear, raiding, screenshots

Lazy Sunday Screenshots

21 Comments

WoW_TwinBears2

Color-coordinating Bears. It was cute. =D

WoW_EpicAchievement

This is the achievement I got after winning The Greatest Piece of Loot I Have Ever Won In Any Event Ever. To be fair, I used the trick where you just stick it in one trinket slot and then move it to the other, so really, I am still rolling with one non-qualifying trinket (Curse you, Mirror of Truth!)

In any event, I had a big night, and now I’m off to go lovingly cuddle my new trinket as I fall asleep~

*is not in any way obsessed with her new trinket*

*may not be telling the entire truth*

beast mastery

Beast Mastery in 3.2.2: Less QQ, More PewPew

29 Comments

I’d hit a point last week where I was feeling pretty doubtful about my own potential as a raider and about the glass ceiling on Beast Mastery. I think it spawned mostly from an Ulduar 10 run with a bunch of people who I didn’t know. See, the first day of that run, there were people there that I knew and liked from earlier raids, but most of them didn’t show up on the second day, and they were replaced by people who were SuperBig raiders who had been doing Hard Modes since forever and who were reminiscing about the good ol’ days of Black Temple and Sunwell. I started to feel extremely self-conscious knowing that I was the Oddball, the Beast Master Hunter who had never done these fights before and kept dying to things that everyone else seemed to be dodging effortlessly. I didn’t feel very good about myself at that point; I was afraid I was nothing but a hindrance to my raid group.

So then yesterday it was guild raid time; I was back on familiar ground and dealing with fight mechanics that I knew (for the most part). We started out in 25man ToC, which was going nicely until Faction Champions decided to glitch out like you would not believe– The Amazing Disappearing, Reappearing Faction Champions, Only On Pay-Per-View!– so because it was unplayable, we headed off to get a head start on tonight’s Ulduar. I was checking Recount after each fight, largely for numbers to report back here regarding things like the Bestial Wrath change.

4999 DPS on Northrend Beasts.
4553 on Jaraxxus (this is a fight I am still shaky on because I haven’t done it very much).
5082 on Ignis.
5297 on XT.

And these are all long, sustained fights– not just a few seconds of burst. I had to dip into Viper at least once on every single one of these. Now I have no idea if this is good or not compared to other hunters, but, I can now safely say that I am certainly NOT being a hindrance to my own raid group by spec’ing Beast Mastery, and that my issues from that last raid were simply my own unfamiliarity with the fights. Class/spec viability does not exist in a vacuum in most cases. So, I felt a lot better about that.

So let’s talk about numbers!

Stuff I’ve observed while “in the field”:

  • Wash is still doing a good chunk of my damage. 45%ish or so. The fact that this means he’s doing close to 2500 DPS by himself makes me giddy.
  • I actually am starting to really like the reduced time on Bestial Wrath.  The reason is that it can now be safely used in places where I might not have used it before.  Before, it was like “Okay, if I am going to have 18 seconds of uninterrupted DPS time, let’s use it.”  But in fights where, say, there’s a lot of running around going on, or target-switching, or the boss burrows, etc., you may not always have 18 seconds of uninterrupted DPS time.  10 seconds, however, is considerably more feasible.

Stuff I’ve observed by doing “math” and messing around with spreadsheets (note: these calculations were all performed with my own gear/spec.  Your mileage may vary!):

  • Wolves have surpassed Devilsaurs in the Beast Mastery DPS department, presumably due to how Beast Mastery DPS has skewed more in favor of the hunter in this latest patch.  The DPS difference is very pronounced in fights where you have less buffs (a la Heroics), and considerably softened in larger fights with more buffs (a la 25mans).  For me specifically, performing several tests, I was actually getting Raptors as being ahead of Devilsaurs as well, but I know not everyone who was retesting my results got that answer.  The Wolves > Devilsaurs thing, however, appears to be legit as far as I know and has been confirmed on the training dummies by the lovely Tchann of Crowd Control.
  • For me personally, with my gear, 53/11/7 is still pretty much the best spec.  I know Elitist Jerks has this whole 54/12/5 thing going on, but honestly that was a relatively large decrease for me with no buffs, and only a very slight increase (like, 10 DPS) with all the best buffs.  I also tried a few spec variations that involved putting more points in Mortal Shots, my assumption being that more hunter damage would favor that talent, but again, any DPS increase was incredibly slight and didn’t scale well to heroics and 10mans.
  • I then went through and enabled all the best raid buffs and tested pretty much every Ferocity pet I could.  The DPS differences between pets are, in fact, much smaller than I was expecting; the majority of Ferocity pets, when fully raid-buffed and attached to a Beast Mastery hunter, fall somewhere within a spectrum of about 100 DPS.  That may seem like a large number “in theory”, but honestly, if you’re talking about 5400 DPS vs. 5500 DPS, unless you’re in one of The Bestest Most Hardcore Guilds Ever, it’s not a huge deal. It’d be like if you got a 95% on your math test and your friend got a 97%. You’re both still getting an A. It made me happy to see this because I have this tendency to be drawn to the unconventional pets on my hunters; Lunapike is really starting to favor her Wasp, and I have a hard time doing anything with Althalor without his Moth. (Hmm, I appear to have a thing for flying pets as well, it would seem.)

As for Tawyn, well, she’s not going anywhere without Wash. First of all, I have a really hard time getting into wolves as hunter pets. Like… I’ve been trying since before wolves were cool. I’ve been trying since Burning freakin’ Crusade. I’ve lost count of the number of wolves I’ve tamed, tried out, and then released. I dunno, it just feels too much like I’m sending in a cute little puppy to attack, instead of a big ferocious killing machine.

Secondly, I just really like my raptor, and isn’t that one of the reasons to play a hunter– to use a pet you are fond of and attached to and that you adventured with?

My guild really likes Wash. I do too. <3 tawyn1

This amazing picture was made by Van over at Art of the Hunt. It’s one of the best things ever and makes me happy. <3 Speaking of which, if you have ever done a fan-art of one of my characters, send it my way, I'm going to be putting a fan-art section up on the site shortly! (And I may be contacting you for permission to post yours, if you've sent me fan-art in the past!) =D

hunter, patches, screenshots, Uncategorized

Two or Three Huntery Things About Patch 3.2.2

15 Comments

Just a few hunterrific things you may or may not have noticed with this latest patch…

1.) Bestial Wrath Graphics Change:
This was pointed out to me by a guildie who wanted to know if my Bestial Wrath went “RAWR” anymore, because his didn’t. I tried it and immediately assumed it did, however, this was because my pet was by my side. See, now your pet will still go RAWR, but the hunter will do a Swirly Ball– a la Old Rogue Detect Traps– and make a cleansing noise. This falls in line with Blizzard’s intention of turning The Beast Within into a “defensive ability” in PvP. However, I still firmly consider it to be 100% offensive in PvE, and I sorta miss my personal RAWR! in all its ragey glory.

BWSwirlyBall

At least Swirly Ball is sparkly.

Pike’s Final Grade: B-

2.) Feed Pet Graphics Change

You now visibly toss your pet a snack, and your pet makes a cute noise and jumps up and catches it! It’s the cutest thing ever and I love it to bits. Too bad thanks to Bloodthirsty and the Mend Pet glyph, I hardly ever feed my pet anymore…

NewFeedPet

Pike’s Grade: A+

3.) Pink Elekks are Not Tamable

Self-explanatory.

WoW_PinkElekkBeastLore

Pike’s Final Grade: F. But at least we get the minipet, right?

gear, raiding, screenshots

You shall not hold me down, Cough!

15 Comments

Have at ye! *wields cold medicine*

This is what I did today, in spite of having said persistent cough:

WoW_CallOfTheCrusade10Player

I got a ring out of it, which means for the first time in my entire WoW career, I am wearing all purples. Took long enough, dontcha think? =P I mean, I’ve only been playing the game for, I dunno, two and a half years at this point…

The fights were, for the most part, fun and interesting. I look forward to writing up a guide once I’ve ran through this joint a few more times.

WoW_OnyxiasLair25Player

Ah Onyxia, the classic. I’m kind of disappointed I never got around to solo’ing her before the change, but at least I do have the Sinew in my bank so I can theoretically still do the Rhok quest (if I can ever get into a Molten Core group without five or six other hunters who also want the Leaf). I am also glad to say that four of my best friends and myself took her on at 70. It was glorious. I made it a movie that can’t go on YouTube because it’s like thirty seconds too long.

Anyways, here’s a hint for the current Onyxia: if your computer can’t handle lots of things onscreen at one time, do not look at the whelps when they are being AoE’d. Trust me.

So a pretty darn nice polearm dropped. I won the roll, but then traded it to our bear tank afterward, because I know she really wanted it. Or at least the weapon that it turns into.

But then we found out something interesting.

See, when you turn it from the ranged-oriented weapon into the melee-oriented weapon, you keep the original weapon. So you basically have two polearms.

And that first one can be traded within that 2-hour period.

So, she kept the copy, and I got the original back.

I have no idea if this is intended or not and I’m half expecting Blizz to take it away during the next wave of rolling restarts, but until then, we are Polearm Buddies:

WoW_PolearmBuddies1

WoW_PolearmBuddies2

So yeah. This week shall be known from here on out as “Let’s see how many raids Pike can stuff herself into and still maintain her sanity.”

In other news, I’m come up with some super interesting Beast Mastery and pet related math on the online spreadsheet as of this latest patch. I’ll go into more detail on a later post, though, because the NyQuil is gonna knock me out in T minus ten… nine… eight… …

screenshots

Aspect of the *COUGH HACK WHEEZE*

21 Comments

Aspect of the Hare is temporarily MIA because I am doing battle with the dreaded influenza boss which stealthed up on me and stunlocked me a couple days back, and it’s left me too sick to even play much WoW.

I mean, you guys know how there’s “normal sick”, and then there’s “really sick”, right? Like, with “normal sick”, it doesn’t affect my routine too much. I down some Advil, grab a box of tissues, and sit at the computer all day and am good to go.

But no, at the moment I’m popping Cough Drops like they’re candy or something and going through about a tissue a minute. (We can only be thankful that I haven’t overdosed on DayQuil yet.) I’ve tried to log into WoW a couple times and it usually turns into me sitting around in Dalaran or Stormwind for ten minutes and going “eeeerrrggghhhh” and logging off. And going to lay down in bed. And playing SimCity DS and flailing around as all my Sims demand more Zoos and Marinas. My city has a population of 10,000 and they have a Zoo, a Marina, a Stadium, and they want like… two zoos and three marinas. Needy lil’ buggers.

…as you can see, I am not good at writing coherently when I am sick, either.

I did snag this today:

TawynsKodo

Then I had to turn down heroics in favor of a nap because my head felt like it was going to explode. Phooey. I was really wanting to get a good look at the new Bestial Wrath numbers. My inkling from doing some dinking around on training dummies and the Brewfest boss is a small but tangible increase, but we will have to see. Hopefully, I’m in relatively decent condition again by Friday, which is when my Weekend o’ Raids starts.

In the meantime, it’s 8:00pm and do you know where your Pike is?

If you said “In bed, hugging her box of tissues and mumbling about her mental capacity having been completely destroyed by horse pills that are a compilation of like five different types of medication,” then you are correct!*

—

* This is, in fact, an improvement over the first night of sickness, which involved weird semi-dreams semi-hallucinations about Ulduar. *is pathetic*

raiding, screenshots

Yo Yogg-Saron, I'm really happy for you, and I'mma let you finish

14 Comments

WoW_Yoggy

…but C’thun was the greatest Old God of all time! The greatest Old God of all time! Peace.

(Okay, so really I just wanted an excuse to make that joke. Sorry. D= )

So yeah, I have now officially seen every boss inside Ulduar, and killed them all except Yoggy*, whom we wiped on a couple times and then we started doing really well before suddenly everybody had to leave (myself included, sadly.)

I have to admit I’ve been feeling some compunctions about raiding and my aptitude at it lately; it feels like 50% of my boss kills and achievements happen with me facedown on the floor, and while there are times where my DPS shines, it also seems like as time goes on and I get into harder content and as my fellows acquire better and better gear, my position on Recount just seems to be slipping. It is probably partially because I cling to a less-than-ideal spec, but also I think because I just really stink at climbing the raid boss learning curve. I really don’t want to be Donald from Dark Legacy Comics, but sometimes I worry I am turning into him. >.>

Hopefully it is just a phase and will pass as I get more practice. It just takes me a little bit of extra time to learn what stuff my pet shouldn’t be hitting (Giant Tentacles and Freya Mario Party minigames, I’m looking at you), or what I should and should not be standing in (Vezax can DIAF). I may not be Ensidia or Death & Taxes material, but hopefully I will at least be halfway competent with a little more practice.

I am signed up for ToC25 and Ulduar25 this week, and Ulduar10 seems to be in the cards as well… holycrap, does this make me a real raider? It seems so surreal! x_x I hope my poor alts don’t feel too neglected… D=

—

* And that one guy who I’m never going to see ever

raiding, screenshots

The Hunter's Mimiron Experience

27 Comments

1. Your pet dies
2. Your pet dies again
3. Your pet dies, yet again
4. Is your pet dead? No? GOTO 1
5. Watch your pet die as he stands next to you
6. Watch your pet die while you spam Mend Pet
7. Be content that your pet is at 100% health, glance the other way for two seconds, glance back and notice your pet is dead
8. Forget about your pet and switch to your Marksmanship dual spec
9. Get the Power Rangers theme song* stuck in your head…

WoWScrnShot_091809_213341

10. Stare into the pretty laser beam coming out of the guy’s face… and die.

—

* I swear to you, when I figure this fight out I am going to FRAPS it and set it to the Power Rangers theme song. Cross my heart, hope to Feign Death.

Everyday I'm Huntering