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Where In the World is Pike Sandiego
Those Rockapella guys were pretty cool. That was a pretty good show, really. I used to watch it every day alongside “Ghostwriter” which always had its biggest cliffhangers on Friday so I’d quietly go insane over the weekend. Poor lil’ Pike.
Anyways!
I generally try to keep this blog WoW (and specifically, hunter) related but I have been tagged by one Lassirra to participate in a “Where Were You When…” meme. So without further ado:
September 11 Attacks
September 11, 2001: I was getting a ride to school (I was a senior in high school at the time) from some acquaintances and they were flipping through radio stations. I heard for the space of about two seconds something about airplanes crashing into a tower, which startled me, but they kept flipping through those stations and I soon forgot about it.
Then I walked into school and knew something was different… kids were huddled around in small groups talking in hushed tones. I caught up to my group of friends and was quickly told the news: airplanes had crashed into both the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. On top of that there were about a million other rumors going around: there was a car bomb on Capitol Hill, there was a bomb on the Statue of Liberty, etc.
I really can’t remember my reaction other than the fact that I felt really bad when one of my most cheerful friends came up to us all bright-eyed and asked what was up. I felt bad because we had to be the ones to tell him that the world had turned upside down.
At 8:28 AM I went into A.P. Art, my first period class– CNN was on TV– and the very moment I sat into my chair the second tower collapsed, live. That was… surreal.
That entire day we did very little in each of my classes; in every single class we either watched CNN or had discussions about what was going on. Well– almost every class. Spanish class we did vocab.
One year to the date after it happened I wrote up a little document for myself so as not to forget some of the details of the previous year. Here’s an excerpt:
At first, when no one really knew what was going on, people were clamoring to compare it to something. Oklahoma City, they said. Then they knew it was bigger than that, much, much bigger. So they changed it. It was like Pearl Harbor.
Then they said it was even worse than Pearl Harbor, for several reasons.
At about this same time, people were wondering what to call it. The news channels on TV said, simply, “AMERICA ATTACKED” in big, bold, defiant letters. Sometimes they were called “The Terrorist Attacks on Tuesday,” or “The Terrorist Attacks on September the Eleventh.”
But it really wasn’t called anything. So people drew on Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was the day that would live in infamy. So this became “The Other Day that would live in Infamy.”
President Bush gave a speech that night. His main quote was “We will draw no distinction between those who carried out the attacks and those who harbor them.” It was a strong quote, but it offered no material to name “it,” as Roosevelt’s speech had done with Pearl Harbor.
A week went by and life was not normal. It would never return to normal, of course. So it became “The Week that would live in Infamy.”
Then, it was “The Month that would live in Infamy.”
Then, it was “The Year that would live in Infamy.”
And, finally, it wasn’t named after this quote from Pearl Harbor. It wasn’t named “World Trade Center” or “Pentagon.” It was given two names.
September 11; and, 9/11.
It wasn’t “nine-one-one” like everyone thought it would be at first. No. Nine-one-one is still associated with who you call if there is a fire in the building. This was different. This was “nine-eleven.”
From that point on, no one could get through the date of “11” without bringing it up. The months ending in “-ember” were worst. November 11. December 11. It sent eerily familiar chills up peoples’ backs; sent an ugly jolt of memories back to some obscure fragment of the brain…
Surreal to read that. I’m glad I chose to write it up. Solemn times, indeed.
Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster
January 28, 1986: I was two years old. I seem to have this vague, vague memory of sitting on the living room floor watching something about a space shuttle on TV and wondering when I could watch Sesame Street instead, but I dunno, maybe that’s a false memory my mind conjured up.
Hurricane Katrina
August 29, 2005: I don’t really remember what exactly I was doing when I first heard about this, but I do remember the aftermath; reading the newspaper in shock in the breakroom at Target (where I worked at the time). Oh wait, LiveJournal to the rescue:
Sep. 1st, 2005 at 11:00 PM
This whole Hurricane Katrina thing is just plain surreal. A major city wiped out (or very nearly so), pure chaos, no food or water, people getting raped and/or shot at, corpses in the streets…
You think “Wait, this is America. This type of thing doesn’t happen in America, except in movies.”
But look, apparently, it does happen in America. It’s happening right now, and it could’ve happened to any city or town in the country, or in the world for that matter. If not by a hurricane, than by something else.
Yellowstone National Park is really just one giant volcano, if it were to blow right now I’d never know because I’d be dead so quick.
Surreal.
That last word really defines it all for me I think; it was just this this big feeling of “unrealness”.
Reagan Assassination Attempt
March 30, 1981: Erm… I wasn’t born yet.
John Lennon’s Death
December 8, 1980: See above answer.
Kurt Cobain’s Death
April 5, 1994: This would’ve made me about ten years old I think. In all honesty I had no idea who the guy was at the time and thus no idea this had happened. You gotta understand that I was the oldest child in my family so I had no older siblings who were going through a grunge rock phase, and my parents were both of the Early-Metallica generation and from what I can gather thought Nirvana was some sort of imposter anyway, so I didn’t hear anything from them on the matter.
John F. Kennedy’s Assassination
November 22, 1963: Obviously I wasn’t around for this, heck, I don’t think my parents even remember this! I feel like a young’un.
Other Stuff That Wasn’t On the Meme But I Remember Anyway:
Princess Diana’s Death: I was in seventh grade. This was a big deal; my parents, siblings and I were watching the news until us kids had to go to bed and then my parents remained up long into the night.
OJ Simpson Trial: I was in sixth grade. I knew enough of what was going on to form my own coherent opinion that OJ was guilty as charged, only to have them come on the intercom at school to say that he’d been found innocent. Good times…
The Unabomber: Another thing that happened in sixth grade. See, this happened in Montana, which
happens to be where I live (I ride a buffalo to work. …ya know how many people believe me when I say that?) so this was a huge thing. News cameras all over the place.
Berlin Wall Coming Down: I was in kindergarten and the teacher was pointing out East and West Germany on a globe and telling us that they were now one big Germany and it was really historical. I didn’t really understand what was going on but took her word for it. And then went to recess.
Gore/Bush Election and the Subsequent Infamous “Recounts”: Even though I wasn’t old enough to vote yet this was a pretty big deal at the time. Big enough that the next year we got all new history textbooks: “New! Includes the Gore/Bush Election!” and then September 11 happened a few weeks later. Ironic. This election also resulted in me deciding I didn’t like the Electoral College, an issue which I have since waffled on (hey, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about “issues”! So when I actually do think about one it’s a big deal! ;P)
World of Warcraft Release Date: “Huh, so my brother has this new game. He’s a big cow named Dairygold. Oh look, he died, and now he’s… a ghost? Huh. Weird. *goes back to Starcraft/Final Fantasy*” (Perhaps ironically enough, he does in fact still play a cow.)
Well, there you have it. Where Pike was and what she was doing when history was being made. I hope you enjoyed the interlude, I enjoyed writing it up and it was interesting to look back on some of the stuff that has happened. Makes me glad I’ve always been a writer and journalist, a lot of this is stuff I don’t want to forget.
Have a great week and I’ll see you next time when we get back down to hunter-business!
Boom De Yadda
Ahem.
“It never gets old, does it?”
“Nope.”
“Kinda makes you want to…”
“Roll another hunter?”
“…well, that’s not where I was going, but…”
I love each of my pets
And I love Steady Shot
I love The Beast Within
I love more stable slots
I love my hunters
I think I’m quite obsessed
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda
I love to Feign Death
And Aspect of the Hawk
I love to bother rogues
I love when Frenzy procs
I love my hunters
And all their epicness
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda
I love my Choco-Bow
I love my Agi ‘chants
I love crit rating
And non-revealing pants
I love my hunters
I play them all day long
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda
I love to chain trap
And I love kiting things
I love the jump-shot
I even love my stings
I love my hunters
And all they stuff they do
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda
I love to Misdirect
And I love Kill Command
I love to Aimed Shot priests
And weave my shots by hand
I love my hunters
I really, really do
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda…
Pay It Forward
I’ve lately been playing my hordie hunter Lunapike quite a bit. She resides on an RP-PvP server, as opposed to Tawyn who is on a regular RP server, so seeing the game from the PvP-server side of things has been a bit of an adventure. I’ve been ganked by the obligatory level ??s who have nothing better to do, and I’ve reciprocated by raiding Southshore. I’ve learned to be wary upon seeing corpses of mobs laying around– might be the other faction, after all– and I’ve learned to rely oh so heavily on Track Humanoids. (Hunters have it easy here, I think.)
I have had to put up with not being able to go to Halaa to buy my arrows because the other faction has it, and I’ve rejoiced when we’ve put together a raid to take it back. (By contrast, on Silver Hand, Alliance controls Halaa about 99% of the time… so I never had to worry about it. Though in all honesty, VeCo Horde has it a bit better than VeCo Alliance in World PvP I think. Us hordies probably have it about 75% of the time when I’ve been there.)
I read once on the WoW website that, lore and RP-wise, Blizzard considers PvE and PvP servers to sort of be differing dimensions of the same point in history: PvE servers are where Horde and Alliance have established an uneasy truce, and PvP servers are where they are still actively at war. This, I have found, brings some depth to roleplay (nothing like getting demolished by a night elf druid after you have just killed a beast that is important to night elf druid lore) and offers a fun twist on a world that you have perhaps already explored PvE-wise… and makes for some interesting stories.
This particular story takes place in Blade’s Edge Mountains. I was doing a semi-long questline that involved putting on a gas mask, talking to a projection, killing some demons, gathering keys, and powering up some big obelisks. As I headed off to do the first step, an Alliance Shadow Priest, only one level lower than me, showed up at pretty much the same time.
She saw me and hesitated for a bit, trying to size up whether or not I would attack her, I imagine. I tend not to attack people first, though, unless they are being annoying in some way, so I went right past her and started attacking the mobs I needed. She did too. We stayed far clear of each other, each of us keeping a wary eye on the other as we turned in our first step in the quest chain.
Off we went to do the second step. About partway through, I noticed that one of my mobs had some DoTs on it… DoTs that weren’t mine. Shadow Priest had opted to make the first move and establish herself as “friendly”. So I reciprocated a few minutes later when she seemed to bite off more than she could chew and I helped whack the extra mobs off of her.
Still, we remained silent to each other. I have seen it happen in the past; people who do something to assert themselves as “friendly” and then conveniently change their mind shortly later. Despite that, I was getting good vibes from her, so we continued questing.
Then came the final part of the chain, where you used keys to activate five obelisks. Only one person can do this at a time and Shadow Priest got there first. One by one she activated them and I stood by and watched, waiting for my turn.
And what did activating those obelisks do? Summon a level 68 elite.
Shadow Priest was level 66. And alone. Well, alone except for…
She turned and saw that I was standing there watching. I like to think that we somehow communicated something there. Some sort of nonverbal and nonemote “nod”. She charged in.
After she got in the first hit I sent in my pet and away the two of us went at the thing. It was a long and hard fight and by the end of it, Shadow Priest was literally down to 3% health, but we did it.
She turned to me and /bowed, our first real communication, and I /bowed back. Then she sat to eat and drink while I went off to activate the obelisks myself. And on cue, the level 68 elite showed up.
I sent in my pet and started my attack. Shadow Priest was right there, tossing DoTs on it after I’d tagged it. This particular elite hits hard and my Mend Pet really wasn’t cutting it, but with aggro constantly bouncing back and forth between my pet and Shadow Priest, we somehow managed to do it. Like last time, it had been a close one, and my pet did die in the final few seconds. But, we’d done it.
Afterwards we /cheered at each other. Then she Mind Controlled me and gave me Power Word: Fortitude.
We went on our separate ways, having completed the quest.
Flash forward about an hour later and I was doing a different quest in a different part of the zone. Somehow I’d wound up with more mobs than I could take on top of me. I ran into a tunnel hoping to shake them off, only to unwittingly run into more. I was bracing myself for the final blows when suddenly the mobs were all feared. Feared?
I turned around. Shadow Priest to the rescue! It took a while but we managed to take down all the mobs. I /cheered at her again and she Mind Controlled me again and gave me Fort again before we parted ways.
Later I Armory’d her and found out that she has over twice as many honor kills as I do, and I have a lot– clearly she’s no “care bear”. Clearly she likes her PvP, as do I. But while a wise man once said “It’s easy to forget what a sin is in the middle of a battlefield”, you also never know what sorts of crazy alliances with kindred spirits you’ll make.
And I salute ya for that, Syphrilia of VeCo. /salute
So You Want to Play a Hunter? Part 9
Levels 31-40
Now that you are at level 30, your typical playstyle is going to go something like this: Send in pet/Hunter’s Mark, Intimidate if it’s ready (if you are pure Beast Mastery), open with a Serpent Sting, let a couple Auto Shots flow and toss in an Arcane Shot. Most mobs will be dead by then.
Isn’t being a hunter fun?
Let’s see what you’ll get in your 30s. And while you are in your 30s, don’t forget to stop by Hemet Nesingwary Jr. in Stranglethorn Vale. He and his buddies have a questline that culminates in all sorts of delicious huntery rewards. (If you are on a PvP server, do this quest at your own risk.)
Track Demons you will get at 32. Does what it says: tracks demons. It might surprise you who is a demon. Next time you see somebody innocuously walking a round Un’Goro or Winterspring telling you they love the weather, put on Track Demons.
No, really.
At level 32 you also get Flare. I don’t know about you guys, but leveling on a PvP server this last time around has at this point trained me to be rather deathly afraid of that “zheeeew” noise that happens when a rogue or druid nearby stealths. Now what Flare does, is expose all stealthed units within the range of your Flare. So next time you hear that noise and see a shimmer out of the corner of your eye– pop a Flare where you think it was and demand that they show themselves!
It is also one of your most used moves in battlegrounds when you are on defense. When I am guarding a flag/node/etc. I will keep some sort of trap refreshed (Freezing/Immolation/Snake, depending on my mood and what I am guarding) and pop Flare every time it’s up. The best way to beat a rogue is to catch them at a distance before they pounce on you and proceed to stunlock-stunlock-dead you. I mean it too, rogues at a distance are delightfully squishy.
Moving on, at level 34 you will learn Explosive Trap. This is your first real form of AoE (aside from Multi-Shot which I honestly don’t think counts too much.) This is useful when you are trying to kill large groups of things with little HP, and useful for raids/instances where they tell you “everybody AoE!” so you don’t feel completely useless. It can pull a lot of initial aggro so be prepared to Feign Death in that last situation there, unless you want approximately four thousand and seventy-three Phantom Guests pounding on you (before they all head to the warlock who inevitably dies. Don’t tell me this doesn’t happen to your raid too! /shakes finger).
And at level 36 you get Viper Sting. I love Viper Sting. This is when to use it: in place of Serpent Sting on mobs who have mana and annoyingly powerful Fireball-of-Doom abilities that remove half of your pet’s HP, and in PvP against casters/healers/other hunters. Using it on other hunters always gives me a sort of sick pleasure; please forgive me if you are Horde on Bloodlust (or Alliance on Nightfall) and I have done it to you. I can’t help it.
Always remember it’s situational though: if you need to eke out more damage then use Serpent Sting. If the raid boss has a mana pool of over 9 million (oh there I go with the horrible internet puns again) then it’s not worth it. Usually, anyways. I’ve seen some weird boss fights where getting the mana down quickly is key.
And finally you hit level 40! Let’s see what you learn:
Aspect of the Pack: it’s basically the same as Aspect of the Cheetah except it effects your party! Granted, now that everybody should have a mount, it’s not particularly special, but it can be nice for, say, running back to your bodies in an instance after a wipe. Be careful when you use it. If anybody in your party is attacked while under the effects of Aspect of the Pack that person will be dazed. Keep an eye out for your party and if you see something heading towards a member of your party switch to another aspect immediately. The same applies for when you are using this to help out the flag runner in Warsong Gulch.
And do not under any circumstances engage in pulls/boss fights/PvP with this Aspect on. The number of hunters I have come across in Arathi Basin who are trying to protect the flag with Aspect of the Cheetah/Pack on is staggering.
You also get Track Giants which, well, tracks giants.
And lastly, you will get Volley, which is your second form of AoE. Useful for all the previous situations that I outlined and for making cool visual effects in the middle of Stormwind. Do remember though that it is a channeled spell and damage done to you while casting can break it.
Depending on your talent spec, this is usually also where you will unlock access to your 30-point talent, unless you are Pike and always stick five points somewhere else first. Beast Mastery gets the famed Big Red Kitty Maneuver, Bestial Wrath, which makes your pet do some serious damage for 18 seconds and also makes him immune to… basically everything. Survival unlocks access to Wyvern Sting which has its fans and… not-so-big-fans; it’ll put something to sleep for 12 seconds and then put a DoT on it. Marksmanship gets Trueshot Aura which will buff the physical attack power of you and your party. Spoiler Alert!!: This talent is getting an excruciatingly awesome buff in Wrath of the Lich King. /spoilers
Well, that’ll do it for today’s edition of SYWtPaH. I may be speeding things up because there aren’t too many abilities left for you to learn (though many of the ones that are left, are important). Go ye forth and do huntery things!
Well… that's that.
I left my guild today.
The one I’ve been in for a year, the one I co-led for months and eventually led myself for a few months as well. The one I leveled with since Zul’Farrak. The one I ran Karazhan with, for the first time. I mouse over all my gear in Armory and don’t see loot as much as I see items obtained from heroics and raids that I ran with my guildies. Each item has a story to tell.
More and more of those people have left the guild and I don’t know, these past few weeks I’ve logged on, looked around, and realized I simply didn’t know anybody anymore. So it was with a deep breath and a final sigh that I one-by-one kicked my alts and then /gquit.
I don’t really know where I’m going next. I am, I suppose, a freelancer now. I’m not particularly interested in another guild at the moment largely because I am essentially unable to raid with any regularity, so I wouldn’t want to promise myself to a new guild. I’ve considered making a “Casualish Level 70 Hunter LF Guild, Willing to Transfer” post on this blog to see what sort of interest I’d garner, but I also have a hard time envisioning myself leaving Silver Hand and my friends there (though I’d never say never), and yeah, I think I might wanna fly solo for a while.
It was a good year.
But you know what they say about all good things.
Best of luck, Entelechy.
A Slight Diversion
I regret to inform my hunteryfriends that today’s episode of “So You Want to Be a Hunter” will be a little delayed because of some schedule changes. In the meantime, I invite you all to read a comic that the most esteemed Mr. Pike cooked up based on some jokes the two of us came up with while goofing around on some lowbies in Elwynn Forest the other day. If you think the ongoing day-to-day adventures of Guard Thomas and the Stormwind Guards by the bridge sounds amusing, let us know, and maybe we’ll continue the thing! =P
I Can Dream
(P.S. Yes Bear, I’m working on that gear guide for you.)
A Tale of Two Trolls
Tauren and Trolls are, without question, my favorite two races in the game. Anything that would come in third (probably gnomes; gosh I wish they could be hunters) are a very, very distant third. It is perhaps ironic that overall I still prefer the Alliance lore and aesthetics over the Horde lore and aesthetics, and I’ll always be a Stormwind Girl at heart, but when it comes to races, there is no contest; Horde win.
My love for Tauren (especially female Tauren! <3) has been manifested in my adoption of Thunder Bluff as my Hordeside home, making my blood elf character an adopted Tauren, and of course, making about a zillion Tauren characters such as Lunapike who is my Hordeside Main (and honestly, probably my New Main these days).
And my love for Trolls, well… wait a minute, I’ve failed to ever get a Troll character past level 17 or so.
I know, it’s horrible. My Troll characters, as much as I adore them, have all met bad ends for one reason or another.
One of the first characters I made was a Troll Hunter on Silver Hand. I named her Shantizar. I ran her to Dun Morogh when she was level ten so she could tame a Snow Leopard. I have a screenshot of her /flirting with my boyfriend’s main, who was like… level 30 at the time. That’s how long ago this was.
Unfortunately my initial impressions of Silver Hand Horde failed to catch my eye and that character sort of fell by the wayside. When I next gave Horde a shot, it was an all new server– The Venture Co.– and the server immediately gave me a “this is home” feel, the same one I get on Silver Hand Alliance. So basically all my hordies since then have been on VeCo.
Anyways, flash forward several months. I wanted to give the Survival tree a shot but I couldn’t bring myself to respec one of my current hunters away from my beloved Beast Mastery and on top of that, I think one of the best ways to really get a feel for a talent spec is to level through it. I considered resurrecting Shantizar of Silver Hand but she was broke and I wanted to give a boar a shot, so… I rerolled entirely. Shantizar the Second was born on a completely different server, she tamed an aggro-monster of a boar who she named Niels, and she got to about level 17 as Survival.
Then… things happened. Boars got nerfed (so sad, I loved Niels “Boar” /sniff), the server never really gave me the “home” feel that I look for in a new server, and I decided that as much fun as exploring a new talent tree was, spec’ing something other than BM is just hard for me to do. I can’t help it; I’m a pet fiend.
And so The Survival Project was put on hold and yet another of my poor Trolls never saw level 20.
But something interesting happened the other day. I logged onto Shantizar the First, with Scraps the Snow Leopard by her side– this character hadn’t been touched in months– and I got that feeling. The “home” feeling. The one that hadn’t been there when I’d originally made her so long ago.
So… I’ve started playing her again. Just a little, on the side. No rush, no pressure.
And I think I’m gonna respec her to Survival. And I think I’m gonna level her in the Ghostlands, a zone which I have never been able to get into before.
It’s about time I had me some jungle lovin’, right?
P.S. Someday I swear I am going to make a hunter named Schrödinger and tame the Ghost Cat.
Letting Go
When I first took over guild-leadership of my guild from my boyfriend, I was relatively certain I could do it. Unfortunately, as time went on, I found that it was not to be. Being a Guild Leader requires a lot of time and energy to devote to the guild, and I had neither; my work schedule makes it near-impossible to be online during peak hours and even on my days off I am prone to hanging out on different servers, alt’ing around– that’s just how I am.
It got to the point where I would log on and people would ask me about guild ranks, the guild bank, or other important stuff and I would have to say “…I don’t know.” It was rather embarrassing. The guild leader doesn’t know what’s going on with her guild? It was true, though. It worried me a lot; I felt like I was doing a poor job as Guild Leader. And on top of that, I have never been much of a “Leader” type person. All that stress was making it hard for me to enjoy the game.
So, not too long ago, I made a thread on our guild forums stating that I was resigning from guild leadership. A good friend and long-time officer has taken over for me. I’m glad that it was able to work out that way, because I feel that a lot of pressure has been taken off of me, but it’s also awkward to watch, at the same time.
The face of the guild has changed a lot in the past few months. People that defined the guild in the early days have left and new people have come. We have had an official “guild clear” of Karazhan now– which I couldn’t attend, because our raid times fall during my work hours– and now that I think about it I don’t think a single person who was in that recent “guild clear” was part of that initial group of us that started raiding way back in the beginning. It’s kind of weird and very surreal to think about.
My officers basically took over for me a few months ago when I made it clear that I wouldn’t be around very often, and now that I have stepped down, it has been made even more official: ranks have changed, guild policies have changed, this guild is no longer at least partially “my” guild the way it was back when my boyfriend and I were co-leading it. I’m not going to say it’s a bad change, and I do think the officers are doing a solid job– but it’s very different, and somewhat awkward to deal with.
It’s hard to say what Tawyn’s future is at this point; what the guild’s future is and whether the two of them will continue to coincide. A part of me would like to try to squeeze into more raids and at least get Epic’d out before WotLK hits, so I can say I did it; another part of me knows that will be hard to do with my schedule and sort of doesn’t really care enough to work around it. We will just have to see.
Now I promise it’s not all doom’n’gloom, in fact, mostly I’ve been having a blast. I still adore the game and my hunters and I am excited about the prospect of my second level 70. Thinking back on it, after the initial “Just-dinged-70-funk” wore off, the process of getting geared for Karazhan was one of my most enjoyable experiences in WoW and I’m looking forward to doing it again.
And in other news, I still don’t have a Beta invite yet. Not that I’m dying for one– in fact I feel like I have too much left to do in Burning Crusade to focus on Beta– (not to mention a lot of awesome hunter blogs have been thoroughly covering it already; I like being one of the remaining non-Beta hunter blogs) but gosh, I’m starting to feel like the kid Blizz picked last in gym class! =P