Tag Archives: screenshots

beast mastery, shot rotation

Beast Mastery Q&A June 2010

31 Comments

I haven’t raided since February. But I’ve done some heroics and testing/spreadsheeting.

Best Pet?: Elitist Jerks says Raptors (yay!) at very high gear levels. Wolves & Devilsaurs are testing out to be slightly higher for me in my ToC duds. By “slightly higher” I mean “about 20 DPS fully raid buffed”, whether or not that’s worth it for you is up to you.

Shot Rotation? Again, going by very high gear levels, Elitist Jerks says you can drop Arcane Shot. Spreadsheet tells me I can’t yet. Praise the light, I hate dropping shots, it makes me bored out of my mind.

Spec? I am still 53/11/7. I tried playing around with dropping Survival Instincts in favor of more points in Mortal Shots but the difference is minuscule (less than 10 DPS, fully raidbuffed). It might be worth a shot if you are better geared, however.

Is BM “viable” yet? Ah yes, that word with the nebulous definitions that people love to toss around. Ultimately this one comes down to you, what you are doing, and what your personal standards/opinions are, but I can tell you two things for sure:

One, Elitist Jerks says that at high gear levels the difference between BM and SV is now very minimal. Both lag noticeably behind MM, however.

Two, if I can pull this off on a single-target boss fight in a heroic as BM in oldschool ToC gear & freaking blue ammo:

…then anyone who makes fun of you for being BM in a heroic is, quite honestly, out of their looney little mind. And yes, you can tell them I said so.

screenshots, special, stories, Uncategorized

Every New Beginning…

70 Comments

…comes from some other beginning’s end. ( – Seneca. Or Semisonic. Whichever…)

The account has expired, and I’m done with World of Warcraft for the foreseeable future. Having done everything I needed to do on my “mains” last night, I was actually in the process of going around and double-checking my lesser-played alts today for any rogue items in their mailboxes when I was kicked off of the server.

So wait, you’re coming back, right? When?

I’ve hesitated to say for certain one way or another because I don’t want to make any guarantees. At best I want to give myself a few months to get things sorted out. If needs be I’ll wait until Cataclysm and see how things are looking then. Let’s just give it the ol’ Blizzard “Soon“™

What about the blog?

As I said, I will keep blogging. Probably in more than one place, because apparently I’m an addict like that (or a masochist, take your pick.)

I’ve thought about it for a bit and although I initially figured I’d just keep blogging here, I think I’d rather leave Aspect of the Hare “as is”. That way, people who want to continue linking to me for guides and the like can do so without worrying about people having to wade through non-WoW stuff. Plus, if/when I come back, I can just jump right back in to a ready-to-go WoW-themed blog.

What I’m probably going to do is set up a couple of subdomains here and then when they’re all set I’ll make another post linking you all to them. Gimme a couple days and I’ll get back to you!

Also, if you have a LiveJournal account and want to read my somewhat less-structured and more non-sequitor rambles I don’t mind if you friend me over there, either.

Commissions?

Will continue, send ’em my way! I’d like to think the fabled “Sitemeter Avatar Contest” will continue in some fashion also, though we’ll have to wait and see how things go once I get my “New Blog” all set up.

And now, roll credits:

Thank you…

…to BRK and Lassirra, without whom I would never have started blogging. Your blogs were inspirations that got me excited about the WoW-o-sphere and taught me how to play a hunter in the first place.

…to the WoW Twitterati for giving me one epic chatroom to rant, laugh, cry, and joke in, to bounce ideas off of, and inspire me to do crazy things like draw pictures or write books. I’ll still be around, don’t worry.

…to my guild, Order of the Rose, for being made of at least ten types of awesome. For dragging me around to their alt runs when I was an undergeared nub and then tossing me head first into their 25mans and hard modes, for passing gear and weapons to me, and for pulling together special raids just for me so I could get my Champion of the Frozen Wastes title– on not one, but two characters. For not just “letting” me raid as Beast Mastery, but for flat-out encouraging and challenging me to do so. Every outcast, non-flavor-of-the-month player should be so lucky.

…to my guild in Burning Crusade, the now-defunct but never-forgotten Entelechy. This is going to sound dorky and cheesy to the Nth Degree, but ya know what, I’m gonna say it anyway: you guys are some of the best friends I’ve ever had. I love that a good number of us have kept in touch outside of the game, via our forum or our nightly AIM chats, which is awesome because I know a lot of us have quit playing. I think back to the best memories I have of this game– Karazhan, countless Heroic Mech runs, opening all the graves in Zul’Farrak when we were all level 45, marching in on the Caelestis Templares’ cathedral twenty-strong– and I wasn’t doing it alone, but with you guys. May there always be Five Seconds to Evocate on Curator and may “Thundercats, Ho!” always ring through the hall before Shade of Aran.

…to Blizzard, for, well, making the game to begin with. I’ve been a BlizzHead since StarCraft stole my heart away in 1999, and it’s you guys and Nintendo more than anybody that have instilled a love of gaming in my soul. Being a citizen of Azeroth these past three years has been an honor and privilege. You guys are masters of making living, breathing worlds and characters. I was trying to emulate that solid real-ness when I was writing my book and inventing my own fictional world and characters, and if I was even half as successful as you with it, then I think I’m good. And if my book ever ends up published and with even a modicum of success then I’ll owe you a grateful hat tip.

…and finally, to my readers, for being the best readers that any blogger could ever hope for. It’s been almost three years of blogging and I can count the number of truly negative comments that I’ve received on one hand. And it’s because you guys are all amazing and mature and here to contribute to this little community. I have read every single comment ever posted here– every single one– and I wish I could go through and name names one by one and thank you all individually but it would take too long. Suffice to say if you have ever commented here I consider you a friend. Thank you for making me a part of your lives. I really didn’t deserve it.

If you’re going to follow me along to the rest of my blogging adventures, then I very much look forward to seeing you there. If not, it’s been a pleasure and I can only hope that something I said at some point made you smile or made you think. And I hope to see you again should I return.

—

Before I logged off of my characters last night, I tried to make sure I logged off appropriately. Tawbree, for example, is astride her new Epic Fiery Horse cause I did in fact manage to hit level 40. Tamaryn is in tree form, dancing away, with both trinkets activated and all of her HoTs ticking on herself.

And Tawyn pulled out Tux, her very first pet ever, and went on a little road trip. She went to Teldrassil, where it all began; she went to Azshara and explored the entire thing– including even more things I’d never seen before!– and then… then, she went home.

Bestial Wrath’d right before I logged out. That way she’ll be Bestial Wrath’d out there in Pixel-Land until I come back, and if I don’t come back, she’ll be Bestial Wrath’d until the servers go down.

I thought it was a nice touch.

—

Long past were the days when Medivh’s tower was much of a threat and adventurers flocked to the pass to donate their skills to the cause, but the few Violet Eye delegates that were holding out there did see the occasional visitor.

Archmage Alturus was on a first name basis with a few of these visitors, the night elf Tawyn being one of them.

“Back again, are you?” he asked, eyebrow raised.

“Ayep,” Tawyn replied tersely as she dismounted.

“What keeps drawing you here, really?” The Archmage was genuinely curious. “The time is past that we really needed you…”

Tawyn blinked. He may as well have asked her why fish swam and why birds flew. “Maybe it’s the ley lines under the place. I dunno. You don’t ask the gulls why they return to the sea.” She shrugged.

“Fair enough,” the mage replied. “And we could always use good scouts, I suppose. You never know if something new might pop up in there.”

“Good. I’m goin’ in.”

“Alone?”

“I’m never alone.”

It was then that Archmage Alturus saw the big gray owl with yellow eyes perched nearby in the shadows. As if in response, he took wing now and alighted on Tawyn’s shoulder as she opened the front gate. She stood there a moment, gazing inside, her eyes clouded a bit as if distracted. “We aren’t getting any younger I suppose, are we, Tux?” she murmured.

Tux hooted something in response and then the hunter and her owl went inside.

screenshots

The Biggest Baddest World You’ve Ever Seen…

20 Comments

…is smaller than a tear.”

(Betcha didn’t know the guy from Blues Clues writes awesome music now.)

So the other day I was doing Warlock quests, because apparently ‘locks get about five-million class-specific quests, and I found this area in Desolace that I’d never seen before:

As you can imagine, I was quite shocked by this revelation. Places in the game that I hadn’t seen before, after three years of playing? AWESOME.

Then I remembered that I’ve never seen all of Bloodmyst Isle. Ever. I fail at leveling in the draenei starting area, and this was my main’s view of the map:

Yeah.

So I decided to go check it out.

…then I got distracted by curling, which is the Greatest Thing I Didn’t Know Existed Until The Winter Olympics.

…so I waited to go check it out until this morning instead. /cough

Wash and I went exploring and I took about a dozen screenshots. Here’s the best:

A world of mushrooms. How peculiar! It was like something out of Alice and Wonderland.

Oooo, shiny floaty crystals.

This gave me awesome Tempest Keep flashbacks and made me happy. But it was only the beginning…

…because THIS was absolutely massive, and surrounded by elites. I was impressed.

This one was filled with little voidwalkers and reminded me of that Oshu’gun place in Nagrand. <3

Look, Krizzlybear! I’ve found the homeland of the fabled Big Red Water Elementals!

I liked the way this little statue thing was shaped like a dragon.

Topped it all off with a lovely sunset. <3 I don't think I managed to find every nook and cranny of the place, but I saw a lot of neat things, so I'm pretty satisfied.

raiding, screenshots

Favorite Things

8 Comments

I’ve been trying to get some raiding done before my account expires– gonna go out with a bang and all that!

10-man ICC is, I am very glad to say, not nearly as lag-erffic as the 25-man version. I did the first four bosses with Tawyn. I liked the Gunship Battle simply because it was airships and I like those (Pike’s Law: anything can always be made more awesome with airships), but the Saurfang battle directly afterwards made me even happier.

Cause I really wasn’t sure what to get and suddenly these adds came out and one was running toward me and without second thought I was Concussive Shot’ing, kiting, jump-shotting… oooh. It felt good. When was the last time we had to do that in a raid? Like… Gluth? (I hated kiting on Gluth by the way. Haaaaated. I always prodded the DKs into doing it.)

But yeah, it was awesome fun, and a great feeling.

Then yesterday I healed a 25man ToC with my Tree.

…apparently I’ve been using rank 13 Rejuvenation. For months. (15 is the max rank.)

I would like to thank the random PuG member with RankWatch for pointing this out. This explains a lot. *cries tree tears*

ToC got hilariously easy by the way, now that everyone pretty much overgears it. Aaaanyways.

I like healing. I’m gonna miss it. <3

raiding, screenshots

Lagcrown Citadel

28 Comments

Sooo I was chucked an invite to ICC25 today, for the first time ever. Originally I was asked to go healy on my druid, which sort of surprised me because my dear little Tree is still sporting at least two blues, but then we realized that we hardly had any hunters in the raid (for once) and I got to go on my hunter instead. (Five minutes after I logged onto my hunter, about three other hunters joined the raid group anyway, and we eventually wound up with a total of six. As opposed to two druids. Go figure.)

Now.

I’d like to sit here and tell you how awesome this raid was. I’d like to tell you that I was blown away by the fights and by the scenery and by the atmosphere. I’d like to give you all sorts of details on my thoughts on the fights from a huntery perspective. You know, the whole shebang. Unfortunately, I cannot.

Because from the moment I stepped into that raid until the moment I teleported out, I was never over 2fps.

…aaaand I frankly have no idea why.

I shut down all my other programs. I tried sans-Vent. I turned all my video effects down to zero (which meant that I could no longer see stuff on the ground). No dice. The second either a.) A boss or b.) more than one trash mob showed up on screen, I was essentially out of commission.

Now I know some of you guys are used to playing with poor computer setups and have learned to compensate for having a downright atrocious FPS, but I’m quite spoiled and I, well… haven’t. So at the end of every boss fight I’d pull up Recount, look at how absolutely horrific my performance was, and beg my guild to let me leave so they could replace me with someone who could actually contribute.

And my guild, bless their hearts, insisted that I come “see the new stuff” so they kept dragging my sorry butt all over the place.

We only did the first wing, for which I was grateful, because by that point I wanted to curl up in the fetal position somewhere and cry. Though, the Saurfang boss wasn’t too bad. Mostly because it was a Patchwerk-esque fight since I had a viable excuse to Not-Shoot-The-Adds (when you’re sitting at SUB-1-FRAME-PER-SECOND, you’re excused from shooting adds, I think.) So I was able to concentrate on my rotation, as much as I could for having, well, SUB-1-FRAME-PER-SECOND.

I gotta hand props to Wash here for picking up the slack. Lucky guy lives in the game world and doesn’t have to worry about this stuff. *mutters*

Needless to say I don’t think 25man ICC is gonna happen for me. It’s something in that dungeon, I’m quite sure, since I did an Ony25 just the other day with absolutely no issues.

Let’s hope 10-man is at least playable…

OH!

I got a new bow.

I haven’t used a bow since Valanos’ Longbow. Dead serious. The bow animation kind of weirds me out…

druid, guides, screenshots

Trees Do It With Flailing Arms – Leveling Tips For New Resto Druids

12 Comments

I have two Trees: Tamaryn, the level 80 Tree, and Songlark, the level 62 Tree. Both were leveled as Resto back when leveling as Resto was seen as being at best a little unusual and at worst downright masochistic and insane. Either way: these days, with LFG and the ability to level pretty much without leaving a city, it’s much more feasible.

So, in the vein of my instancing tips for new hunters, here’s my advice for new leveling sproutlings:

1.) Rejuvenation and Regrowth are your friends. They are your bread n’ butter spells until you get higher up on the tree ladder. Use Rejuv as sort of a blanket heal, and use Regrowth to fill in the gaps.

2.) But what about Healing Touch? Acceptable as a pre-Nourish flash heal if you glyph and talent for it, but doing so is not mandatory by any means. Just be aware that unless you’re flash-heal-ifying it, you probably shouldn’t be using it (until you get Nature’s Swiftness). The cast time is too slow. Regrowth is almost as good, is a quicker cast, and has a HoT at the end.

3.) Who Should I Be Healing? In an ideal situation, the tank should be taking the most damage and you should be concentrating on that person. Obviously, there are things like AoE damage and the like. At low levels, the best you can do for minor AoE damage is to toss a Rejuv on everyone… it will usually take care of it. When crap hits the fan, you will need to prioritize your heals, in which case keeping the tank and yourself alive is probably the most important. Speaking of which…

4.) Watch your own health bar. I know this sounds silly, but I have this in here because this is a common mistake among new healers and heaven knows I had this problem for the longest time. I would be watching my party’s health bars like a hawk and suddenly die because I forgot to check my own. Don’t feel too bad– a lot of new healers fall victim to this. It’s just something to practice!

5.) When should I be healing? Back when I was leveling Tamaryn, I had to be veeeerrry careful about not healing too early, or I’d pull aggro. These days, thanks to greater tank threat generation, that problem is pretty much non-existent, although it’s still worth knowing about. Don’t unload all of your heals onto the tank right at the beginning of a pull. Toss on a Rejuv just as he’s running in and then go from there.

After that, thanks to the magic of TreePower, you will find in many lower-level dungeons that you don’t have a lot to do other than let your HoTs tick. Don’t worry, if you like casting, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to Heal Like a Maniac in raids once you’re all grown up. (*cough Valkyr Twins cough*)

6.) Tranquility? Awesome for when AoE damage gets out of your control. Causes a ton of threat, but again– that’s not as big of an issue now as it used to be.

A note here, for when you get into raids: It only effects the members of your party. That is, the five of you that you see in your party and not the entire raid. Still, don’t immediately dismiss this spell just because you are in a raiding environment. I think I was once laughed at for using it in a raid (I say “think” because what happened was that somebody made a non-specific snide comment right after I used it.) Assuming that was directed to me, what that person didn’t realize was that everyone in my party, myself included, was taking tons of AoE damage. Tranquility was perfectly justified and I got the last laugh. So there.

7. Barkskin is Awesome. You get Barkskin at level 44. Put it somewhere prominent on your action bars and learn to love it. Mobs on you? Barkskin. You’re taking lots of damage? Barkskin. You get one of those random huge DoT debuffs that various mobs like to fling at you? Barkskin. A lot of new trees forget about this spell, but it’s amazing, so get in the habit of using it!

8. What Do I Do With this Newfangled Lifebloom Spell? Use it when you need an extra HoT. Use it when you anticipate someone taking a lot of damage in the next five or six seconds. Use it when Clearcasting procs so you get free mana back. Bellweather has some awesome Lifebloom tips (as well as hot pictures of Gambit) over at her blog.

9. Only YOU Can Prevent Forest Fires: I know we’ve all heard “Don’t stand in the fire” a million kazillion times before, but it bears repeating if you are new to healing because sometimes, we just get so zeroed in on staring at those health bars that we forget to watch our surroundings. Don’t let that happen to you! Remember– you’re a druid and as such you have a bunch of heals that you can cast while moving. Not to mention that a quick shapeshift will get you out of most snares, and you’ve got Cat Form + Dash at your disposal if absolutely necessary. Don’t stay rooted (groan) to the spot when bad things happen.

10. Dance Often. Because you’re a tree, and not dancing is a crime.

TreeTime

Need More Info?: I talk about Leveling Resto Specs here and about general Tree’ings here. Happy Healing!

fun, screenshots, stories

Fun Times in LFG

35 Comments

So, I love the new LFG. I think it’s one of the greatest things ever to hit WoW and I’m sure most of us can agree.

It has, however, led to a few interesting situations. My favorites thus far:

* Wound up in a group where everyone was speaking French. I’m not exaggerating. I couldn’t understand a word these people were saying. Oh wait, I understood one phrase. “Le boss”.

They were all from different servers, too, so it wasn’t like they’d all queued up as a group. Apparently I just managed to stumble onto the super-secret Québécois contingent of the North American WoW servers. I blame my Men Without Hats obsession.

I think they wanted to do more heroics afterward but I wasn’t sure, because I had no idea what they were talking about. So I said “thank you” and hearthed. Everyone understands “thank you” right? … hey, don’t look at me, I took Spanish in high school and Japanese in college, I have no idea how to say “thank you” in French.

I actually sent a ticket in to Blizzard asking if I’d somehow messed up my settings and was queuing up in another language without meaning to but apparently it’s a “known issue”. So. Now you know!

* Died about five seconds into Anub’arak in Azjol-Nerub (was one-shotted by the guy) and still got Gotta Go! Making it more impressive (and embarrassing)? I was the healer.

* Actually had to leave a Blackfathom Deeps group that I entered mid-run because I had no idea how to navigate the place and the group wasn’t coming back for me.

“But Pike, I thought you liked big epic sprawling instances!”

I do, when they meet at least one of the following criteria:

a.) are being led by somebody who knows where they are going
b.) are not being started in the middle with me stranded at the entrance portal
c.) are not a part of The Grand List of Instances Blizzard Designed Specifically to Annoy Pike.

The Grand List of Instances Blizzard Designed Specifically to Annoy Pike consist of the following:

Wailing Caverns
Sunken Temple
Blackfathom Deeps
Sunken Temple
Maraudon
Sunken Temple
Temple of Atal’Hakkar … oh wait.

(When BabyLock gets to the mid-40s, I think I’m just going to stop using LFG and quest until I hit BRD level.)

Ah, LFG. I do love thee, though.

In other news:

alts, screenshots

…and number four. And number five.

21 Comments

Sooo, I’m not gonna beat around the bush. I’ve kinda been on WoW hiatus lately. Hence the rather spartan blog post schedule.

It’s not that I decided WoW is boring or I don’t like it anymore, oh no. I love WoW. But I’ve simply found that writing and drawing is more fun at the moment. So other than logging on for a raid every so often, I’ve mostly been AWOL.

Then I realized something. Namely, today is the day my Recruit-a-Friend ends.

Dang. I wish I coulda somehow put that on pause through, ya know, ALL OF NOVEMBER when I was doing my NaNo. But ah well. It is what it is, right?

Sooo I promptly opened up two WoW windows, logged in, and ran around like an excited uromastyx (dontcha just love my similes?) trying to reach a little goal I had in mind with my main RaF project. The result:

AlthalorAndSonglarkDarkPortal

Man I love Recruit-a-Friend. Yesterday these characters were like, level 55 and 56 respectively, and here they are all-growed-up and headin’ to Outlands after a mere three quests in Silithus. (To be fair, all Silithus quests are “Kill a billion of these, and another billion of these, and each time you kill one something else randomly spawns”, so that may have had something to do with it, but you know.)

Umm yeah so this is another hunter and another resto druid. SHUT UP >_>

Anyways, I managed to hit the big “five-eight” literally a minute or two before the battle.net Account Management page told me my RaF would end (they conveniently tell you not only the date, but also the exact time and time zone). This was followed by the pleasant surprise, though, that Blizzard is apparently not super accurate with this so I wound up heading to Hellfire and getting to 59 (or very close to it) and still having RaF active. I was also able to do that “Grant-a-Level” thing and distribute free levels to a bunch of lowbie alts of various classes I had hanging around. Dunno if these alts are ever gonna see any playtime, but hey, now I’ve got a veritable army of Hordies all sitting between levels 10 and 15, and it’s kind of neat. One of them is a shaman and one of them is a priest and I haven’t played either class past level 8 before. Hrmm.

I considered continuing to plug away at Hellfire and see how long my luck would last with the mysteriously-tenacious Recruit-a-Friend, but I got hungry so I logged out to eat and write this blog post. Exciting! …sorta. *shifty eyes*

…well, that’s all really. It was TL;DR, I know. NEXT TIME: Pike’s Five Most Epic WoW Moments That Do Not Involve Boss Fights.

But for now… *scoots away to write n’ stuff*