Secret Healer Alt

August 21, 2009 Pike 12 Comments

Healthy Eating Tips for College Students

As a college student, you need to eat to fuel your body for a hectic season in your life, where you’re busy with classes, studying, and work (and some play too). But you may feel like you don’t have the time, energy, or even the nutrition know-how you need. And maybe you are worried about that “freshman 15” you’ve heard about.

The good news is that you can build healthier eating habits, even on a budget and a busy schedule. Start with these strategies.

Know What a Balanced Diet Is

College woman eating at a table. — Andersen Ross / Getty Images

Eating a healthy diet means you’re getting the correct balance of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates (also known as macronutrients), along with the vitamins and minerals (or micronutrients) your body needs to function well. To get all of these nutrients you want to make sure you are eating a variety of foods and that your meals contain some carbohydrate, protein, fat, and fiber at each meal. Check these ikaria lean belly juice reviews.

A good rule of thumb for eating a well-balanced meal is to consume about 1-2 servings of vegetables or fruit per meal, along with a serving of fat, a starch (such as a whole grain, legume, or starchy vegetables) and some protein (legumes, tofu, chicken, fish, turkey, eggs, yogurt, etc).

For example, you may have 1 cup of low-fat Greek yogurt with 3/4 cup blueberries, 1 tablespoon of chopped nuts and a handful of whole grain cereal for breakfast. Or you might eat 2 slices of whole grain toast with 1/3 avocado, lettuce, sliced tomato, and chopped egg. Each meal contains some carbohydrates, protein, fat, and fiber. This will leave you feeling full and energized. Read more about the best weight loss pills.

A common mistake is not eating enough fruits and vegetables or high-fiber foods. Another pitfall is eating too much fried food and sugary snacks and sodas (or any foods that supply a lot of calories without many nutrients).

Add a Fruit or Vegetable to Every Meal

College students choosing healthy foods. — PhotoAlto / Laurence Mouton / Getty Images

The average American only consumes around 1/2 of the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables daily. So add a fruit or a colorful veggie to every single meal you can. It’s easy—you only need to be more mindful of what goes on your plate. This is how alpilean works.

Top a bowl of cereal or oatmeal with sliced fruit, or fresh berries at breakfast, or start your day off with a fruit and vegetable smoothie.

At lunchtime, choose green beans to go with your sandwich or grab some crunchy raw carrots. End your meal with an apple or banana.

Dinner works the same way. And even if you’re out for pizza with friends, you can order a side salad or opt for veggie toppings instead of meats on your pie.

One of the easiest ways to eat a balanced diet is to aim for 2 to 3 cups of veggies and a serving or two of fruit every day.

Work in Some Extra Calcium Sources

Calcium is essential for all kinds of things—blood clotting, muscle and nerve function, healthy teeth, and strong bones. In fact, you’re building up bone mass until you reach about 30 years of age—then it gets tougher to add calcium to bone. So take advantage of this time and get plenty of calcium every day.

Milk and dairy products are well-known calcium sources. Try Greek yogurt with fresh berries, nuts, and honey, or drink a glass of milk with your meals. Cheese is an excellent source of calcium too. One serving of cheese is only about an ounce (about the size of two dice).

If milk’s not your thing, there are still plenty of calcium sources available. Dark leafy green vegetables, nuts and seeds, and fortified cow’s milk alternatives like fortified soy milk, rice milk, or almond milk will provide you with plenty of calcium. Tofu is also a good source of calcium, as well as sardines, salmon, fortified orange juice, cottage cheese, chia seeds, and some breakfast cereals.

You need about 1,000mg of calcium a day, which you can usually get from three to four servings of calcium-rich foods. To meet this goal, consider adding some of these foods to your diet.

Plain yogurt: 8 ounces provides 415mg of calcium
Part-skim mozzarella cheese: 1.5 ounces provides 333mg of calcium
Nonfat milk: 8 ounces provides 299mg of calcium
Soymilk (enriched): 200mL or about 3/4 cup provides 240mg of calcium
Cress: 120g provides 188mg calcium
White beans: 80g of raw beans provides 132 mg calcium
Broccoli: 120g provides 120mg calcium
Almond milk (not enriched): 200mL or about 3/4 cup provides 90mg of calcium
Kale: 50g provides 32mg calcium
Bok choy: 50g provides 20mg calcium
Almonds: 30g provides 75mg calcium
Hazelnuts: 30g provides 56mg calcium

If you feel like you’re not getting enough, you can take a dietary supplement. You might want to take a Vitamin D supplement as well, especially during the winter months. Discuss supplementation with your healthcare provider.

Drink More Water

College man drinking water. — Jose Luis Pelaez Inc. / Getty Images

Your body needs water to stay hydrated and energized. Water is inexpensive and readily available, so carry a reusable water bottle with you on campus and refill it often.

Does it matter where your water comes from? Probably not—tap water should be perfectly fine, but depending on how it’s treated, you might not like the flavor. You can buy bottled water or use a water filter pitcher.

raiding, screenshots, Uncategorized

In Which Pike Goes On a Raid Boss Grand Prix (Now with more Ulduar)

August 21, 2009 Pike 22 Comments

So I was in Icecrown, doing a couple dailies (my Mechanostrider obsession means I will get the Argent Tourney Mechanostriders as well), when I somehow wound up in a PuG for the new 25man. Trial of the Crusader? Dunno, all the names and modes throw me off.

The PuG was kind of a failure, although I now know more about killing Snobolds and giant Jormungar than I ever figured I would.

So anyway, I was trying to figure out a sneaky way to weasel out of the failure PuG when I got a whisper from my guild. “We’re throwing together a 10-man Ulduar, want to come?”

…

/raid “Hey uh guys, thanks for the fun, I’ve got a guild raid now.” *poofs*

So this… okay. Basically I just spammed 1 and 2 and occasionally spent more time than I probably should’ve trying to figure out how to pick little blue glowy buckets off of the ground. I was basically informed to just shoot stuff while sitting passenger in this tank thing. It gave me Halo vibes. You know, sitting in the back of the Warthog? That was fun…

This fight, I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off, shooting the dragon thing when it landed. I think there was fire and stuff but I couldn’t see it half the time (My Windows version of WoW likes to conveniently not show important things like buildings and fire and void zones.)

This fight… hmm. I think I just stood there and shot him. There were other people doing a bunch of running around but I just sort of… yeah, stood there. OH, I totally got an Achievement without even trying, cause the guy picked me up or something.

I’m also pretty sure this is the boss that yielded a sexy new polearm that a paladin won the roll on, but he gave it to me because MY GUILD IS WAY TOO NICE TO ME DARNIT.

This guy was really annoying, and I’ll tell you why. It’s cause every so often he’d pull a Curator and stop attacking and his “heart” would show up and you’d have to DPS it, but guess what… your pet refuses to attack it.

Other than that, it was Grobbulus 2.0. Get the debuff, run away, then come back.

I think he and Patchwerk would get along well. “OOOH I WANT TO PLAY WITH MY TOYS!” “PATCHWERK WANT TO PLAY TOO!”

Oh right, this guy. There were three guys and they all took forever to kill. And the last guy would every so often turn into Doctor Octopus and walk around the room on these electric spider legs. There was stuff that you weren’t supposed to stand in, and stuff that you were. That’s about it >.>

Oh wait, he also did a Falcon Punch every so often. Actually I don’t think that’s what it’s really called, but that’s what I called it. *nods*

“Tawyn! Walk across the line!” said my guild.

So I did. Big huge scary guy popped up. Like from a pop-up book.

So this is another one that reminded me of Curator, in that you stuck your pet on the main guy while you shot other stuff. Every so often he’d do a laser eye beam thing like in Old Kingdom and Halls of Stone. Freakin’ scary when it happens, I would high-tail it to the other end of the room. XD

At the end of that fight everyone said “Tawyn wins!” and I was like “Buh-wuh? What did I win?” and my guildies said “On Recount, duh!” So I pulled it out and I had! I was happy to see that even though I had no freakin’ clue what was going on, I was still pulling my weight.

This chick had a bunch of kittycat adds. Of course, the very first thing I did when we pulled was Beast Lore to see if they were tameable. …what? >.> They weren’t. They’re level ?? anyway.

I don’t really remember the details on this boss much. Honestly what I remember more was the pull riiiiight before it which was a cross between Romeo and Juliette and Curator (again). That pull was crazy.

At this point I informed my guild that I was turning into an all tuckered out lil’ hunter, having done such a crazy Raid Boss Tour, but they informed me that they were stopping for the night anyway. I think they may go back to finish tomorrow; I’m not sure if I’ll go or not because Yours Truly is having the BlizzCon Live Stream beamed into her computer. (Confession: I ordered it almost exclusively for the Murloc Marine minipet.)

A month ago I was dinking around feeling like I’d hit a glass ceiling as far as my ability to see content was concerned, and now here I am: Champion of the Frozen Wastes, wearing a polearm from ten-man Ulduar, and slated to go to the 25-man counterpart on Saturday. I’m really starting to feel like a raider. It is… a very odd feeling.

I also feel like… you know in the Matrix when they upload stuff into Neo’s brain and he goes “Whoa… I know Kung Fu!”

That’s how I felt today after getting about a dozen new boss strats crammed into my head… x__x

*curls up in a ball and falls asleep*

guides, hunter kindergarten, screenshots, shot rotation, steady shot, Uncategorized

Hunter Kindergarten: Intro to Steady Shot

August 19, 2009 Pike 12 Comments

So, you’ve reached level 50 with your hunter. Congratulations! One of my hunters just hit level 50 as well! His name is Althalor, and he’s a very deliciously good looking Blood Elf who lives with Tauren. This is him:

See, told you he was cute!

When you are level 50, you learn Steady Shot, and because this is a very important shot to all hunters, we’re giving it its own special post. Hunter Kindergarten is in session!

History Lesson: Steady Shot was introduced in Burning Crusade and originally you got it at level 62. It had a relatively short cast time, and it had to be used at very specific intervals to avoid “clipping” your Auto Shots, which would gimp your DPS. To get around this, many people made a macro which automated this process. As for me, well, that completely defeated one of the biggest reasons I enjoyed hunters so much, so I always hand-wove my Steadies.

With Wrath of the Lich King, Steady Shot was overhauled entirely. It was removed from being linked with Auto Shot so you no longer had to worry about timing, although its cast-time was made slightly longer. Unfortunately this meant all Beast Masters had to do was spam Steady over and over, which was heinously boring to me just as using the macro was in Burning Crusade, and it almost had me switching specs.

Never fear, Blizz came along with a Steady Shot nerf and an Arcane Shot buff and here we are today!

Today’s Steady Shot: Steady Shot, in and of itself, is not a very good shot, damage-wise. In fact, it’s pretty bad. For a lot of hunters, it does less damage than Auto Shot.

I see you raising your hand there, ready to ask why we use it then. Simple: it’s there to use when you can’t use anything else. And remember, even a little extra damage is still extra damage.

Keep in mind that because Steady Shot does have a cast time, it cannot be used while moving, and in my experience, you will rarely use it in PvP.

How And When: In general, Steady Shot is for use when everything else is on cooldown. Beast Master and Survival Hunters in particular will find themselves using it more than a Marksmanship hunter would, because a Marksmanship hunter has a few more shots to use. You don’t want to use it more than is necessary, though, because it typically does not do as much damage as any of your other shots. There are of course exceptions to the rule; for example, I know of Marksmanship hunters with very high amounts of Armor Penetration who are able to drop Arcane Shot from their rotation in favor of more Steadies, since Steadies are positively affected by Armor Penetration. For the most part, though, Steady Shot should be the lowest rung on the ladder. Basically, you always want to be doing some sort of special shot to fill in your Auto Shots, and since Steady has no cooldown, it fits the bill a lot of the time.

Glyph of Steady Shot is a very good glyph that many hunters tend to use, because pretty much all specs are using Serpent Sting now for various reasons and because a 10% boost to a shot that you are using so frequently is definitely not bad. Keep an eye out for it, and snag it when you can!

Warnings!: For a low level hunter who already has mana issues, Steady Shot is really going to exacerbate them. Some leveling hunters opt to forego using Steady Shot very much at these low levels to avoid this issue. Others, like me, JUST HAVE TO USE IT NO MATTER WHAT BECAUSE SHOT ROTATIONS ARE FUN AND SQUEE.

*cough*

You try it out for yourself and decide. >.>

Conclusion: Steady Shot has come a long way. It was designed to be a “filler shot”, was inadvertently turned into our main shot, and has finally been tuned into actually being a filler shot. Don’t treat him too badly, though; we may have broken up with him but he’s still a decent friend when no one else is around.

…nice guys finish last, don’t they…? *gently pats Steady Shot*

thoughts

A Completely Different and Possibly Insane Angle of "Welfare Epics"

August 19, 2009 Pike 39 Comments

Guys. I have a confession.

You know all the new badge gear? The stuff that is really really good? The stuff that is a godsend and is gonna let me catch up to my guildies in Ulduar?

Yeah, I don’t have any of it yet.

Because none of it has a story behind it the way the stuff I’m wearing right now does. The stuff I’m wearing right now is mostly from Naxx10, with a sprinkling of stuff from Naxx25, and dropped from raid bosses, some of whom took weeks to see, and when I wore it, I wore it very proudly.

I am having a really hard time convincing myself to replace it with stuff that is being held in sterile confinement in Dalaran and that I earned by doing “chain Heroics”. I feel like there would be no soul in said gear.

“Soul? You’ve lost it, Pike.”

Yeah, perhaps I have. That’s why I put the word “insane” in the title of the post. =P

This issue plagued me before; in Burning Crusade when they introduced all the stuff with the Shattered Sun dailies and Sunwell, remember? Suddenly there was all this gear that you could get with badges that far out-stripped my Karazhan stuff. I waffled on this new gear for a while, too, for the same reason. It had no soul. But eventually I caved and bought it all, topping it off with that infamous “Chocobow”, Crossbow of Relentless Strikes.

But when I got my Figureprint it was with the gear that all had stories behind it… Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle being the crowning piece. Aside from just looking better, it simply meant more to me than the badge bow did.

At some point before Ulduar25 this weekend, I’ll bite the bullet and snag some badge epics. And in the end, I’m glad they are there, because otherwise I’d just end up embarrassing myself in my new guild. And I don’t really have any moral problem with the way “welfare epics” are implemented.

But gosh if there isn’t gonna be a tear in my eye as one by one, all the names of raid bosses that you currently see when mousing over my items turns on Armory turn into simply “Vendor”. =/

Maybe I’ll get something from Ulduar to make up for it…

(Closing Note: I know this is a touchy subject for some people, and as such I feel driven to add a quick reminder that while discussion in the comments would be quite encouraged, be sure to play nice. <3)

amusing anecdotes, guild, raiding, screenshots, Uncategorized

Tawyn Is The Champion My Friends…

August 18, 2009 Pike 16 Comments

…toldya I’d get Malygos before Oculus. >.>

Funny story behind this whole thing actually; I’ve been sitting around needing EoE and Oculus for a really long time now. However, I haven’t had much good luck with groups.

Enter my new guild, which– have I mentioned recently that they are all exceptionally nice?– has been really itching to figure out a way to get me into some raids since my schedule does not coincide with their current progression schedule very nicely.

And so, one night when I was actually online (as opposed to mornings, when I am usually online), the guild pulled together a Malygos run… pretty much just for me, and for some guildies’ alts who also wanted the title.

Now enter the funny story. They wanted me to use Ventrilo, which is fair; I typically use Ventrilo for any raid that isn’t OS/VoA. Ventrilo doesn’t work for me on Linux so I told my guild it would be a moment while I hopped partitions over to Windows.

…guess who hasn’t used Windows since the patch? Guess what needed to download? Oh, and then guess who ran out of space on her Windows partition and had to rearrange everything?

Needless to say it was about an hour before I was actually back in game. My addons were completely borked, but at that point I figured screw it, I’d already left my poor guild waiting so long.

And so, before long I was on Ventrilo, the subject of a rather amusing (and truth be told, ongoing) name debate: TAH-win vs. TAY-win. (It’s TAH-win by the way. >.>)

And Malygos went down quite nicely! I had a screenshot of the achievement but it primarily consists of my broken addons throwing error messages in my face (no, seriously. I named it “What Your Addons See When They Die”), so yeah.

Anyways, a couple days after that, aforementioned Really Nice Guild* went to Oculus with me so I could, finally, become Champion of the Frozen Wastes.

It’s a spiffy title, if a bit long-ish, and since approximately 97.5% of the WoW population is currently using that title, I’ll probably retire it soon until a few expansions from now, when it becomes rare.

But it’s nice to have it! <3 P.S. Guess who signed up for Ulduar this week! /excited dance --- * Really Nice Guild, as it turns out, has a blog. They totally aren’t expecting me to link them, but I’m going to because I’m devious like that. /wicked grin

beast mastery, guides, hunter kindergarten, talents, Uncategorized

Straight for the Jugular! Go for the Throat and Company

August 16, 2009 Pike 12 Comments

The discerning blog reader who has clicked around on my links and Armory profiles lately may have noticed something interesting; namely, my two level eighty hunters, while both Beast Masters, are currently sporting (slightly) different specs:

Tawyn is using a 53/11/7 build, and Lunapike a 52/12/7. It may look like a difference of one talent point on the surface, but it’s actually three. Let’s dig deeper and take a look.

Tawyn has: 3/3 Cobra Strikes, 1/2 Go for the Throat, and 0/2 Invigoration.

Lunapike has: 2/2 Invigoration, 2/2 Go for the Throat, and 0/3 Cobra Strikes.

First, we’ll take a look at Invigoration vs. Cobra Strikes.

Why the difference?

Short answer: Lunapike just hit 80, while Tawyn has been 80 for a while and has thus amassed a relatively decent set of gear.

Long answer: Cobra Strikes is a solid DPS boost. However, Invigoration should theoretically keep you out of Viper for longer and thus could also be construed as a DPS boost. Which one you want to take is situational.

Lunapike just hit 80, as I mentioned. At the moment she is mostly doing dailies, and five-mans and heroics where Replenishment may or may not happen. She also is still mostly in leveling duds and thus has a very small mana pool.

Tawyn has a larger mana pool and is mostly in raids these days, where there’s often a lot of mana regen being thrown around.

Guess who is going to want Invigoration, and guess who’s going to want Cobra Strikes?

Both are, in my mind, acceptable, though in general, I feel a level 80 hunter is going to eventually migrate from Invigoration to Cobra Strikes. Your mileage may vary, as always, so play around with it… but I sorta think this is a common sense one. /nod

Now, let’s move on to Go for the Throat, that lovely, lovely talent that all hunters everywhere of every spec should have at least one point in, because it’s such a DPS boost.

Lunapike has this talent maxed out. Tawyn only has one point in there… the “other” point is going to max out Cobra Strikes.

Why the difference?

Short answer: Lunapike just hit 80, while Tawyn has been 80 for a while and has thus amassed a relatively decent set of gear. (Why yes, I did just copy paste this from above.)

Long answer: Go for the Throat works off of critical strikes. The more you crit, the more focus you feed to your pet. Let’s compare the critical strike chance of our two examples, unbuffed:

Here’s Tawyn:

And here’s Lunapike:

Big difference in stats, huh? Especially in crit rating! Tawyn crits almost twice as much as Lunapike!

This, my friends, is why Tawyn can get away with only one point in Go for the Throat. Because she crits enough that she only needs one point in there. Actually, even Tawyn is barely squeaking by. The online hunter spreadsheet tells me that unbuffed, I could use another point in GftT, if I had one to spare. Fully raid-buffed, though, I’m good to go, so I feel fine with not having the extra point… it’s hard enough to find places to pull talent points from as it is; there are so many goodies out there for us to nab.

But can you imagine if Lunapike, with her mere 17% crit, only had one point in Go for the Throat? If the online hunter spreadsheet could have a stroke, it would. Of this I have no doubt. All the hunter theorycrafters of yesteryear would collectively roll in their virtual graves. It’d be a disaster, I tell ya!

Conclusion? Well, when it comes to Beast Mastery, there really is no set-in-stone spec. 41/20/0 and its rigidness has been nailed tightly in its coffin for some time now and in its place we have a little bit of flexibility. Having mana issues? Invigoration is the way to go. Not so much? Go for Cobra Strikes and scoop up the extra pet crits. Below about 30%ish crit? Two points in Go for the Throat. Otherwise, you can get away with just one.

But above all, remember to try things out, and see what gets you the best results. Heck, you may have the best results by dropping some of the points in Survival all together and distributing them among the talents we talked about today. Research: it does a hunter good.

And with that… hunterbots, roll out!

meta-wow, movies, screenshots, special, thoughts, Uncategorized

Pike's Top Ten WoW Moments

August 14, 2009 Pike 13 Comments

I recently wrote up a post over at my LiveJournal where I listed and posted movies of the top ten video game moments that gave me goosebumps. Anyways, I had a lot of fun writing that post, and I figured I’d go ahead and make a similar post, except focusing on World of Warcraft, which would let me get away with posting it here! I also figured I’d make it more of a “Top Ten WoW Memories” post to broaden the criteria a bit… oh, and add commentary in lieu of having a video for everything.

And so, I present Pike’s Personal Top Ten WoW Moments…

10. The Gnome Rogue: You can read the full story here if you haven’t already; this is one of my favorite memories of PvP, period. To this day, I swear to you that you could see the shock on the poor guy’s face.

9. Ice Barbed Spear: For days I lived in Alterac Valley. For days we lost. For days I would push back dinner if it looked like we were in a winning game, which always turned out to be false, of course. And, then, one day… we won. I went from completely Neutral with Stormpike to halfway through Friendly by the time it happened. But we won. I have never seen a battleground chat so filled with shock and cheers. And I, at long last, had My Shiny.

8. The Safety Dance: Most of you who have been reading my blog in its WotLK incarnation for a while know about how Heigan was my Ultimate Nemesis for weeks. Every time I would go doggedly into Heigan, and every time, I would die on pretty much the first glimpse of green fire. Dead. Kaput. Tawyn Flatbread. It got worse as before long, most people I knew were talking about how easy it was. Not for me. And to add insult to injury, “The Safety Dance” is seriously one of my favorite songs of all time. How embarrassing.

Then, one day, in there with a PuG, a friend of mine gave me some brief last minute advice before I headed in. “Just keep moving.” Five minutes later…

The achievement. And the first time I survived. At the same time. I was on a high for days.

Since then I’ve only died on that fight if the disease on me isn’t cleansed fast enough. My druid even got the achievement on her first sojourn into Naxx. What was once my Fail Fight has become my speciality. Miracles can happen.

7. “We’re Going For the Epics. Epiiiiiiics!”: The boy and I were level 40ish, questing in Hinterlands, when my comrade-in-arms let out a gasp. I asked him what had happened, and he said, “I just got my first purple drop… and… I think… I am going to give it to you.”

It was called Bow of Searing Arrows, and it was my very first purple. I used it with pride for a very long time.

6. Home Sweet Home: I know I’ve written before about the feeling of flying into Elwynn and immediately feeling that very cozy “home” feeling so I’ll keep it brief; suffice to say it was one of the major motivators behind upgrading my Trial Account to a full-blown paid account. Because no video game had ever made me feel like that before.

5. My Kingdom for a Horse: The other big motivator behind upgrading my Trial Account was access to a mount. I decided early on that I wanted a horse rather than the typical Night Elf Cat, largely because of Tawyn’s RP backstory but also partially because I just really dislike the look of the cat mount. And so I began my long climb up the mountain that is Stormwind rep. Fortunately for me, Stormwind is arguably the easiest faction OF ALL TIME to gain rep for, so I was exalted at level 37– this was back when mounts were at 40, remember.

The boy and I were smack in the middle of Stranglethorn Vale quests when the big 4-0 happened for both of us; he got his special fiery warlock mount and I got my Chestnut Mare, which I promptly “named” Buckles. Then, the two of us rode up and down the entire southern half of Eastern Kingdoms together, simply out of the sheer joy of being able to do so.

4. Healing Naxx: This PuG Naxx10 was basically the culmination of a project involving my only non-hunter character to ever get anywhere near endgame– the final exam, so to speak, of my decision to doggedly level a druid as 100%-pure-Resto. I’d never healed a raid before (that wasn’t “Kara with 80s”, anyway) so I was ridiculously nervous, and then I found out that this group wanted to do it with only two healers: a trade of faster boss kills at the cost of less room for healer error, which absolutely terrified me.

And yet, one by one, all the bosses that I was afraid of as a healer… Patchwerk, Razuvious, Loatheb… went down to the healy might of a scrub tree druid in blues and the nice holy paladin who coached her and whispered her tips. At the climax of it all was a Kel’Thuzad kill during which, after a few false starts, not a single person died to one of my worst fears: Ice Blocks.

Most of the memories in this post are of my hunter(s), and naturally and understandably so, however, my healing alter-ego is very proud of what thus far is probably her finest hour.

3. “ENTELECHY GLORIAM!”: I have no doubt my fellow Silver Handers will recognize the guild that is involved in this story: a Paladins-only super-hardcore RP guild that focuses on, well– zealous paladins. They’re pretty well-known on our server, and as frequently happens with really well-known RP guilds, everybody starts tying in their RP with them. Our guild was really no different at the time; although we made a pretty conscious effort to have “our own RP” it was hard to not have tie-ins with the biggest RP guild on the server.

So it was that we held our weekly in-character guild meeting on the steps of the Stormwind Cathedral, against the in-character wishes of the Paladin guild. It wasn’t long before several members of said guild showed up and demanded that our little group of ragamuffins left; we countered that the Cathedral was for everybody. Now our guild meeting had had a rather impressive turnout that day, and it wasn’t long before, a good fifteen- or twenty- strong, we all marched right into that Cathedral. Paladins were yelling at us left and right to get out, and we were /yelling “ENTELECHY GLORIAM” which was actually sort of a spoof of the paladins themselves (hey, you can have some fun when you RP!) and we had a little gnome making “Myek!” noises and Trade Chat was hating on us and it was all around one of the greatest things of all time.

ENTELECHY GLORIAM, NEVER FORGET.

2. The Gift: This one was the mastermind of one of my bestest-WoW-friends. He had a level 80 hunter long before I did, and I idolized him for it, but he eventually perma-switched mains to Tanky Warrior and that’s how we all leveled up together. Anyways, one day, when I was level 65 or so, he asked me to meet him out in Blasted Lands. Mystified, I did, and when I got there, he traded me a present, all wrapped up. I opened it and inside was The Gunblade— it would be Tawyn’s very first gun.

He proceeded to show me how to level up my gun skill (from zero) on those mobs that never die, and as I did this, he performed a little mini-ceremony that was half-RP and half-not, about how he was proud to present to me the same ranged weapon he’d used to get his hunter to 70 (and how he liked to pretend it was the same gun), and how I was the best hunter he’d ever played with.

That gun is in my bank, and it is never going anywhere. <3 1. Karazhan: I’m sure you all saw this coming. The raid that is all at once the mystical awesome-land that I only heard about in hushed whispers on Trade Chat as a nubling, and the setting for my favorite Warcraft novel of all time, and the weekly watering hole and training grounds of a bunch of friends who were having the time of their lives in Ventrilo.

Not long after that guild gave up the ghost, I pulled together a montage of the things we did in there together and made a eulogy video of sorts, one I can’t watch without my eyes getting misty…

And that, well, sums that up better than any words I say ever could.

Well, that and the Outtakes, of course…

Phew! That was a tough list to write. Seriously, I had so many things I wanted to put on this list, and trimming down to what would make the final ten was tough. And ya know what, that’s really the point. I dare you all to think about your top ten best memories in game– write ’em down if that’s your thing, or just think about them otherwise. I sorta hate to be the stereotypical “count your blessings” guy, but really, I think you’ll find that there’s more of those memories than you thought there were. Don’t forget that…

ding, i love hunters, screenshots

Am I An Addict Yet?

August 13, 2009 Pike 30 Comments

No? Two level 80 Beast Master hunters doesn’t make me an addict yet?

Don’t worry, I’m working on a third…

Edit: Got to admit, I dearly love my taurengirl. I love Tawyn, too, but she is a character whereas Lunapike is more, well… me. Honestly, if it weren’t for most of my friends being Ally-side, I’d seriously considering switching mains to Horde. Tauren for life.

Edited Edit: Don’t forget, I have a level 80 resto druid as well who I leveled as resto. So, I’m not *that* sheltered, right? I’ve branched out *hears groans in the audience* right?

battlegrounds, pvp, screenshots

All Your Basin Are Belong To Us

August 12, 2009 Pike 14 Comments

So feeling nostalgic after my last post, I decided to give Arathi Basin a whirl on my level 46 hunter. AB is arguably my favorite battleground; WSG is a sentimental favorite but it’s in a masochistic sort of way and I’m sort of afraid to go in there now that it’s changed, AV used to have that epic feel but has turned into a zergfest, and EotS… well, we won’t go there.

Turns out the Intimidation + Bestial Wrath combo on a clothie is just as fun as it was years ago, and turns out pouncing on an unsuspecting hunter and Wing Clip + melee’ing him to death while he stands there stunned is still absolutely hilarious.

Gosh I love PvPing as a hunter. Nothing else compares, really. Healing is funnish and a nice change of pace but it’s nothing compared to huntering. I always wonder what people are on about when they say hunters need a buff in PvP– to be fair, I know they’re talking about arenas, and I’m talking about lowbie bracket battlegrounds, and there is a huge difference– but gosh I feel OP, and I luuuurve it. I basically never die, even when taking on groups of people alone. Really the only downfall is that you run out of mana far too quickly, and then regenning mana takes pretty much twice as long. >.>

So yeah, this AB. I went in and we were getting the whole “Not enough players… this BG will end in five minutes” dealy. I looked at the scorechart; Alliance had a full 15 players and us Hordies had five or six or something. I contemplated leaving, anticipating a five-cap stomp, but then said “ya know what, screw it,” and ran off to Lumber Mill.

We took Farm and took Lumber Mill, and for several minutes I was the lone person defending Lumber Mill as everyone else ran off to Blacksmith. This is where I single-handedly took on groups of two or three Alliance who kept trying to come attack me and who all failed miserably. Did I mention I love being a hunter in battlegrounds?

Anyways, we were getting more and more Hordies by the minute and finally fulled out to a full 15 vs. 15 AB. We were on a roll at this point, Alliance had no chance. Like there were a good six of them defending Mines, so we did a two-pronged attack on them, two or three of us attacking from each side, and just nabbed it out from under their nose. By the time we won we had about double the resources that they had. It was hilarious.

Almost as fun as an instance, a nice break from questing, and you get XP. Yay! I love you Arathi Basin.

pvp, thoughts

Pike Vs. Player: A Tragic Tale

August 11, 2009 Pike 24 Comments

There are a lot of posts about PvP and stuff on the blogosphere lately and while I have no intention to touch on the “balance” debate, it has got me thinking a little about PvP in general and how my personal feelings towards it have sort of changed.

When I was leveling my first character, I liked battlegrounds, a lot. Anytime I got to a level that ended in 7, 8, or 9, I would effectively stop leveling for a good few weeks so I could spend lots of quality time in battlegrounds. It was fun. Alliance always lost. I loved it anyway. I did Alterac Valley over and over and over again for Ice Barbed Spear, it took like twelve games before Alliance actually won. It was exhilarating.

I got to 70 and while I was mostly doing instances at this point, I decided that I was sick of staring at Valanos’ Longbow and decided to grind honor and marks for a super shiny PvP bow. Later I found out that the bow didn’t have particularly good stats for PvE, but no matter, it was pretty and I was a noob, and I wanted it.

This is where my experience with PvP started to sour. See, not only does Alliance on Bloodlust absolutely suck at BGs (or did, back then, I dunno if they still do), but premades were rampant. 99% of the time you got into a game, you were against a premade, being camped in the graveyard or the little floaty island in Eye of the Storm. Now, because I was super stubborn and thought premades ruined the PvP experience, I never participated in them. Unfortunately, everybody else, well, did.

I got that bow. I got it after weeks of drearily being graveyard camped by premades. Weeks of dreading queuing up for another resounding AV loss that consisted of me repeatedly being demolished by people that were decked out in five million resilience. Weeks of queuing in and randomly winding up as the sole Silver Hand player in an otherwise “hardcore PvP server” premade and being taunted and spammed the entire time with “LOL RP SERVAR” which would often even segue into sexist remarks. It was an awful experience. I longed for the days of pre-70 battlegrounds which were fun and exciting. I actually did a lot of battlegrounds on low-level characters to make up for it, but it wasn’t the same somehow, because I knew that those characters would eventually hit level 70 and battlegrounds would die again.

I can’t remember when the new anti-premade change (aka BEST CHANGE EVER) came about. But I’m pretty sure it encouraged me to do enough PvP that I wound up with some Merciless Gladiator gear, for the express purpose of having PvP gear when I wanted to PvP. I figured, hey, if you can’t beat the people with five million resilience, join ’em! But by that point it was sorta too late. I was tired of PvP. My friends and I were having a blast in heroics and Kara and that sort of eclipsed battlegrounds as “my thing”. Once I had all my PvP gear, I actually PvP’d, like… twice, maybe. Once was in an arena and I hated it so never went back. But yeah, it was silly. All dressed up and no interest in going anywhere.

So then we get this expansion. I get to 80. I do a ton of Heroics and Naxx a million times. My “PvP gear set” was woefully outdated but I had absolutely zero motivation to grind for PvP gear again. But one day, I realized that I had tons of extra badges. I pondered what to do with them. Then, on a lark, I bought some entry level PvP gear, donned them and some pants I’d won out of VoA, and headed into Alterac Valley.

Much to my surprise, in the long, long months it’d been since I’d been in AV on that battlegroup… Alliance had figured out how to win. Back when I had been into Battlegrounds, this would have been the happiest day ever. But no… it was just “meh” to me. The magic had somehow gone out of AV. It was actually quite a tragic realization… it depressed me a little. Healing it on my druid was a little more fun and kept my interest for a few hours but then it just became “meh” again.

I’ve never been into Wintergrasp (other than for VoA) or any of the new battlegrounds; I’ve no interest. I know I’m going to get the overwhelming “OMG WINTERGRASP IS SO DIFFERENT, YOU’LL LOVE IT” comments, and it’s probably true, but… I dunno. I just can’t motivate myself to get in there.

Now I want to make one thing very clear, I don’t have anything against PvP, or people who are primarily PvP players, or anything like that. I respect good PvPers and wish I was among them, cause I’m not. And ya know what, the occasional battleground on my lowbie is still fun, especially now that you can get XP for it. World PvP I’m iffy on– I enjoy it if it’s a fair fight, and the whole “contested territory” thing is fun in a prickly-feeling-on-the-back-of-your-neck kind of way, but I don’t and never will understand “ganking”.

But yeah, I figured you all deserved an explanation on why I used to talk about PvP a lot back in the day on this blog, and don’t really anymore.

Someday, though, I maintain hope that battlegrounds will get that “spark” back. I have very fond memories of Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, Alterac Valley… and lots of lessons that helped shape me into the hunter I am today. Someday I’m going to go back and they’ll all be just as fun as they were the first time a scrappy little band of underdogs won AV. The first time we had 0/3 flags capped in WSG and Horde had 2/3, and somehow, an hour later, we’d won. The first time an AB game went down to the wire.

I’m eagerly awaiting that day…

Aspect of the Hare