Introducing Buzzard, "pet" of Drottor who I introduced to you all over valentines, he hasn't gained a level since then but I finally got round to completing his pet taming quest, and now he's got a "lovely" carrion bird to keep him company. He wouldn't admit to Buzzard being his pet if you asked him, though thats a story for another time.
Drottor is a combination of an alt, a testbed for my ideas, and of course an RP character, I'll go into detail of his background sometime soon, suffice to say he's not a very huntery hunter.
Anyway I think I'll need to get him to roughly level 20 or so before I can get some real test work done on him, and that might not be too soon at current rate, I'm having real trouble sitting down and playing wow at the moment, so many things to do and problems to sort out, wow is (rightfully) low on my priority list.
Now this would by no means be definite, but at the moment I'd estimate Drottor is heading to this kind of build, if and when he ever reaches any kind of noticeable level anyway. maybe you can get and idea of what I have planned form that snippet?
Okay so I've been naughty and not said I wouldn't be posting, its kinda because I didn't plan to not be posting, I just didn't feel like wow for a week or so, sometimes we all need a break lest we get broken ourselves!
Still I logged back into wow for the first time in a week today, so its only fitting I give you all a quick update here, seems the guild has settled down back into place again, for those not int he know we lost our old raid leader/main tank due to not getting along with the guild leader, I should also mention that this was after I gave the guild leadership back to ones of the original creators of the guild, as to be frank, I didn't want it, I think it was half the reason I didn't feel like playing as much as I used to, every time I logged on it was some new problem, usually coming from two people who actually agreed with each other but didn't speak English fluently enough to understand that they were agreeing and such things devolved into an argument!
Theres a Kara tonight, might see if I can sneak in unnoticed and steal some gear, even if the gem prices are insane at the moment (100 gold for an 8 agility gem, I'll pass thanks). Otherwise I was just sampling the new dailies we have after taking the armory, lets see a kill and loot from chests, a kill X of Y creatures and a combination bombing run and kill X creatures. None of them are exactly landmarks int eh world of quests, but still fun and quick to do, and they help us get that armory built, its on 48% to the anvil now apparently, so I should probably try to get some of those tokens saved up if I want to sample some of the new loots.
Now if you'll excuse me I have a post Ive been meaning to get done for quite some time and it requires a reasonable amount of testing, maths and working with diagrams. Should be ready in a few days, I wouldn't hold your breath though, its not going to be too ground breaking for the most part.
Well Karazhan last night, took us a little while to get started, such is the way of our guild, plus it seems an oddly large amount of our extras list (non guildies who like to come with us) seem to think that if you have already been in a karazhan raid you can swap to someone else's raid so long as both raids have killed the same bosses! I really don't know where this rumor has come from, but this is the fourth time someone has said about it,
So just as a clarification: As soon as you kill a boss in a raid you are saved to a raid ID, as soon as you enter a raid instance where a boss has already been killed you are saved to a raid Id, if you are saved to a raid ID you *cannot* join any raid with people of a different ID, you need to make a group up of people with the same ID or who are not yet saved. Raid IDs reset every Wednesday (more often for Zul'Aman, and some of the old world instances) whereupon you become unsaved and the process starts over. Is that clear enough for everyone to understand?
Well anyway, once we got on the way we had 3 tries to take maiden (some odd strategy we were trying, it was a bad idea... her holy chain spell hit me for 14k damage once... that kinda stung a bit), took opera in one go (big bad wolf), Curator in two, and embarrassingly chess in two, someone who didn't know what to do took over the Warchief and just sat still for the whole fight. As for my performance... well I've done better, I did manage to get over 1000 dps against big bad wolf... before, in true hunter legend style, getting a feign death resist and going squelch. Everything else went pretty much to plan, I was second to our melee dps on Maiden, thats the bonus you get for being in her aoe constantly, and first on curator and the trash, 5th of big bad wolf due to being the only person to die, such is life death.
However more than merely another 8 badges to take to the bank, I also got a drop, my second Karazhan item Fiend Slayer boots, which are a very nice replacement for my old Wild Stalker boots, they even have the same hit rating, so it was an easy choice to go for the new boots, essentially I'm swapping raw attack power for agility, and then gaining 2 gem slots, ideal for a survival spec hunter, these boots are going to give me an extra 41 agility before taking my talents into consideration, so I'm more than happy with my new gnome-kickers!
Edit: finally got around to handing in the quest for killing prince, Dalaran is so out of the way, was pleased to receive 3000 rep for the violet eye, enough to bring me to revered, so a new ring and epic ammo await me!
Not everyone in WoW is a keen mathematician, for some people the idea of theory crafting makes them feel queasy, people have gone out of their way to help these people, with things like Cheeky's spreadsheet being very useful tools. Personally I haven't been bothered to use it, I tend to be happy to work things out myself, and my place on WWS shows me that at least most of my choices are being correct.
However I have struck a slight issue for myself, see I now have saved up 62 badges of justice, my only badge purchase so fat has been a cloak which I bought before I was raiding Karazhan and as such badges were a lot harder to come by. My plan was to follow this with some gauntlets, which at the time I needed for their great hit rating... Of course times change, gear comes and suddenly I don't need a big boost to become hit capped, in fact if I was sensible I'd swap around a couple of gems and be capped straight away.
Also Sunwell Isle has opened up, and with it the promise of some incredible badge of justice rewards,its of quality you will never find in a heroic instance or Karazhan, however the server does need to unlock them. Perhaps your servers have? Mine is still on 72% to taking back the armory as of this morning, and after thats taken quests need to be done to unlock the badge vendor too. Is it worth the wait, and the extra cost of the items? Well that all depends.
If you are doing a heroic once or twice a week, a casual player for which badge rewards are likely to be around half the pve epics you'll ever get your hand on, don't save up, while saving for these shiny and powerful rewards might seem like a good idea, it might well take you around 10 weeks to save for one of the new items, possibly longer if you go for the weapons, while the current items will take you around 3-4 weeks to get each, they might not be as powerful, but its a matter of quality vs quantity.
The turning point is raiding, if you raid even semi-regularly you probably are getting a good 10-25 badges a week without doing any heroics, the new items are almost a boost to the items you are getting for raiding, a guaranteed reward that doesn't vary on the items that drop, in this case you should consider what items you are least likely to get from raids and go for them (for example if you repeatedly miss doing curator, its probably worthwhile going for the gloves, if you don't get to see prince then go for a helm or the new crossbow)
How about me? Well I've decided to save, due to some unscientific, but fairly easy comparisons. First I strolled over to the Be Imba site, and there it comes up with all kinds of warnings about how I've messed up my character, for example I still have 4 green quality gems, I'm 0.27% away from being hit capped, I still haven't enchanted my breastplate, and crucially, I have two items that aren't of level 70 quality. While my hit rating can be capped by swapping gems around and getting higher quality ones and enchants can be gotten for my breastplate, upgrading to level 70 items is something which relies on luck of the drop *or* careful use of badges of justice. Well then, thats decided, I have to spend my badges on a ring and/or some leggings.
Now Leggings wise I have 2 choices and ring wise I only really have one, the other option has no agility, so that ones out the window, of these items only shifting camouflage pants are available at the moment, I could get the badges for these easily before the new vendor opens up, in fact its possible I could get them by the end of today if Karazhan goes well tonight, however alarm bells are ringing, and for good reason. These might be nice leggings but they have no gem slots, this isn't necessarily an issue, except my current leggings have 3, 2 yellow and 1 blue slot, if I were to upgrade to these leggings I would break the effect of my meta gem, which is bad news, I'm not going to pay 75 badges to *lose* agility and critical strike damage!
So lets look at the 2.4 badge rewards I could get, leg wise its Leggings of the pursuit, good agility, 1 yellow and 1 blue gem slot, allowing me to keep my meta gem working as well as a nice reward for using the right color gems (as opposed to the dodge rating my current legs give me) these will set me back 100 badges, but I do have time to save before the shop opens. IF I fail to save badges I can always opt for the ring Angelista's revenge however again the alarm bells are ringing as my current low level ring gives hit rating, while this does not, to keep my hit rating high it would be ebst to get the leggings first and then the ring.
So looks like I'm saving, I guess we have around 2 weeks before the vendor opens, though it depends, we got the portal to Sunwell isle open quite fast, but taking the armory just seems to take forever, I can only assume this if the fault of the honor-less alliance who keep trying to gank any of the noble horde who are trying to help save our world from demonic invasion. Especially that gnome who pyroblasted me, you sir, are the worst, especially since you started with a pyroblast and still failed to kill me!
There has been a lot of talk lately about pets, after the change to charge suddenly a choice that was previously practically made for you is now suddenly a lot more open ended and requires some thought and decision. Now I've already looked at what pets can step forward to do the boars old job, but now I'm going to say what I would like to see happen with the pet families. For a start the gorilla family needs an attack to point at the enemy and gain threat...
So, lets do this alphabetically;
Bats:
Fine as they are, a semi-viable raid pet and aoe tanker with good damage, though another skin or two wouldn't hurt.
Bears:
These need something, quite possibly a bleed effect, balanced so it could make them a viable dps pet so long as you are with a feral druid.
Boar:
Bar un-nerfing charge they are fine, 2 offensive abilities and 2 movement abilities is more than enough.
Carrion birds:
Fine as they are, choice of 2 focus dumps and bite is more than enough, they make quite effective tanks now.
Cats:
Plenty of skins, plenty of moves, already a raid viable pet, nothing needs to be changed for the lovable kitties.
Crabs:
Perhaps a sidestep ability, giving them a bonus 20% dodge chance for 5 seconds every minute, should make them a more considerable tanking pet, add a little threat to that move too while your at it, theres nothing more annoying than things that walk sideways!
Crocolisks
Okay whats with the tanking stats? Crocodiles are incredibly dangerous things, enemies shouldn't be surviving long enough to have to worry about its thick hide., they need a move similar to charge, charge might do itself, crocodiles move very fast for short periods of time both on land and in water. They also need something to represent their incredible bites which are over 10 stronger than that of a great white shark! Perhaps a second bite attack with a 15 second cooldown that does double the damage, or again they could be given a bleed attack to represent that, though I would like to see them as raid dps pets which would require a focus dump, perhaps "snap" a small, sharp bite for damage comparable to claw.
Dragonhawks:
Give them some stats and they should become bearable, at the moment they get +0% to every factor, consider that there are families with +7% to dps and 0% to the other two, thats just not fair, these pretty animals are off to a bad start. Maybe add some non caster ones at low level too... on second thought get rid of caster stats in general.
Gorillas:
How about reducing the cooldown on thunderstomp a tad, 30 seconds wouldn't seem unbalanced, it still has a high focus cost, and that would let you use it on every pull. Oh and see about adding a new rank of it too, you added hidden tallstriders in terrokar, it can't be hard to put in some secret gorillas somewhere.
Hyenas:
I'm really not sure what to give these smiley little things, perhaps a "grin" move that lowers the enemies hit chance by 1%? Or generates some bonus threat. unfortunately not much makes sense for hyenas other than dash and bite, and they already have both, perhaps they could share "snap" with the crocolisks.
Nether rays:
Almost every nether ray has some mana drain ability, that might be hard to balance into a pet, but an ability on a 5 second cooldown that burns 25 mana and deals 50 damage would seem about fair, just make sure it deals the damage regardless of mana being drained else they would be useless against a lot of enemies.
Owls:
Screech, claw and dive is suitable for owls, they are already competent pets, I don't feel they need any particular boost.
Raptors:
After giving them dash (one of the few changes blizzard have done pet wise) these are now a nice step between cats and ravagers, they don't lose as much health as ravagers, but get that little armor boost above cats, already a raid viable dps pet, so no change needed.
Ravagers:
Bar a serious session at the beauty parlor these things are "fine" the way they are.
Scorpid:
Again these have a nice racial skill that is of use and are quite viable for pvp (to keep stings up) or tanking, scorpids are about right now they made the full rank of scorpid poison last 10 seconds (making it easier to keep up).
Serpent:
Again they need some stat allocation, full 0% is not a good base to start from, and make poison spit a tad more powerful, perhaps a 2 tick dot over 4 seconds with a 4 second cooldown so it can be kept up constantly.
Spiders:
Now heres the big debate, do we give them a poison ability (perhaps similar to a rogues instant poison, a self buff that gives them a 20% chance on melee attacks to deal nature damage, or just a claw like attack that deals nature damage instead) or do we give them a web ability to ensnare the enemy. The former could turn them into a dps pet if done right, the latter into a pvp/tanking pet, after all even a short ensnare would make a huge difference when kiting foes. Personally I would like to see some kind of poison attack, but thats just because I hate spiderwebs.
Sporebats:
Come on 0% to all stats, the only flying family without dive and no offensive move, come off it blizzard you just made the worlds largest vanity pet! Give them a bonus to health, an aoe spore attack that leaves an area of the ground poisoned for a few seconds, I can't see a sporebat being a dps pet anytime soon, but they could be made into worthy aoe tankers without much thought, oh and give them dive.
Tallstriders:
Simple, give them kick with a 10 or maybe 20 second cooldown, deal 50 damage or so and interrupt a spell being cast, don't lock out any spell schools as that would be too powerful, but something with legs that long should be giving people a kicking!
Turtles:
Make shell sheild generate threat based on the turtles level, I'm talking about equal to the threat growl generates, and put it down to a 1 min 30 cooldown at most, come on theres no point having an invulnerable pet who can't get threat due to dealing literally no damage.
Warp stalkers:
Make them auto cast warp while in combat to get a back attack in and give themselves the dodge bonus, it makes sense, they do it against us when we fight them in the wild, why don't they do it when we tame them? Other than that they are quite good tank pets already.
Wind serpent:
They are fine as is, already being the raid dps hunter pet of choice for dealing non physical damage. They have a focus dump and dive, enough to make them quite useful.
Wolves:
I wouldn't mind seeing them getting claw, which would help them immensely, give us a new rank of furious howl too, there are already wolves in outland, so that shouldn't be a problem , oh and make the new ranks have a higher range, so rank 1 has 15 yard range, rank 2 20, rank 3 25, rank 4 30 and the new rank 5 would have 35 yards, enough for (non survival) hunters to be at full range and still make use of their wolves.
Now in my humble opinion those changes would make all pet families usable in some way shape and form, I'm sure some people will disagree with my ideas, some will come up with better ones etcetera. However unfortunately no matter how many ideas we throw at blizzard they never seem to actually pay attention.
We are begging you, please sort out the pets, no pet family should be obviously inferior to others ever again, if you are nerfing boar to attempt to stop 90% of hunters running around with pigs, they how about boosting the others to give them something else to choose from?
And dammit I want me a competent sporebat, NOW! you can put it in the new 4th or 5th stable slot you'll be giving us at the same time... oh and if you could half the cost of ammo, thats starting to get obscene too, we aren't really bothered about you fixing the old animation issues with hunters using throwing weapons, gve us something we can sink our teeth into!
This has been a rant on behalf of the pet owners of Azeroth.
There always seems to be something trying to drag me away from WoW, of course sometimes its healthy to take a break, I can't argue that playing wow 24/7 could be seen as an addiction, however my newest distraction is rather shiny... and large... very, very large. Presenting my new television, our old one packed up so my father happily got out his credit card, and then come Monday this showed up.
Now some people might not be too impressed, but for comparison, here is the TV we were using until yesterday, we've gone form a 24 inch, non wide screen non flat screen, (dust covered) piece of antiquity to a 42 " high definition and all that lark.
And you know the best thing? it has a PC port in the back, I already run my Pc through a 19" wide screen TV in my room, simply because my old monitor was a 19" non wide screen and had also suffered from some screen burn, but this thing is over 4 times the size, sure you BM think your pets are big huh?
Oh, right, WoW stuff, well today brings sad news for pig lovers everywhere as the charge + growl combo has officially been denounced as a "bug". Now I somewhat expect that Blizzard knew about this "bug" for a long time, much like they knew about all the pet families who are nearly useless, but weren't planning on fixing it because that would have taken undue effort, and since it doesn't effect pvp, which is where the most whining comes from, not many people were complaining that boars were overpowered due to their threat generation ability. So why fix it now? simple with 2.4 it got bugged, it was no longer working as it was prior to the patch for whatever reason, one bit of code in the wrong place, so now someone *needs* to go and look at whats happening, which means they have to expend effort to fix the problem, so now they are putting it back to the way they thought it ought to be.
However there are mixed blessings in this, it is an excuse to have people with more varied and interesting pet choices, expect to see more turtles, crabs and carrion birds running (or flapping) around beside hunters in the future. Now if only we can convince them to introduce new family skills for bears, crabs, crocolisks, hyenas, nether rays, raptors, spiders, sporebats and tallstriders while they are "fixing" the boars. Come on it can't be too hard, and the players have been filling you with ideas ever since you introduced the first wave of family specific skills!
The fashion police are on the lookout for this unidentified Elven woman spotted leaving Sporregar early this morning, the suspect ahs been seen with a gaudy-looking giant scorpid along with a minute sporebat which we suspect she may normally carry around in a designer handbag!
So this is one of the silly little things I simply *had* to do, if sporebats we in any way usable pets I would have one, but as blizzard refuses to do anything with them I'm stuck having a tiny noncombat version. now Sporregar exalted is fairly easy to get, its a repeatable quest for 750 reputation, and has been one of the main ways I've been leveling Telson, I couldn't bring myself to grind simply for grindings sake, but for the sake of gaining rep for a tiny prize, that I can do.
So next on this list? Scryer rep, I'll be killing blood elves for Telsons last 6 levels, hopefully getting myself to exalted to that when I also get shattered sun exalted I can use that necklace to the fullness of its abilities. Putting a rep grind together with an experience grind makes it a lot easier to accept spending so much time killing one type of thing.
The boar, once a proud, noble creature, who's porcine features disguised his crown as king of the threat, lord of the aggro, champion of the solo hunter, now... just an example of muppetry...I'm sure you've all heard it before, but in case you haven't, charge no-longer works with growl in the way it did post patch 2.4, now I can't give you 100% of the details on this, it doesn't seem to be everyone who is effected, I wish I had a boar to test myself, but as it is I'm still leveling Telson ( my scorpid, level 63 now, 1 more level and she can learn max scorpid poison and claw!) and grabbing a level 60 boar then leveling it to 70 would take quite some time. Now theres all sort of talk going around, some people claim charge *sometimes* works like it used to, some people claim that growl doesn't work at all anymore, and others claim that threat generation in general has gone absolutely bananas and they are pulling off legitimate tanks in raids for next to no reason!
Now a quick summery of what I've experienced: Faloranu, my windserpent, still seems to be holding aggro reasonably, I have to be careful, yes, but that is the cost of being survival, going all out straight away with a 30% crit chance is asking for aggro. Most of my time is spent with telson, who is absolutely useless at holding aggro, but then thats more the 7 levels she is behind me than any inherent pet issue. I have experienced an issue with Faloranu not trying to attack things from behind when she doesn't have threat, but the same issue isn't happening with either Telson or Sinbelore.
The main thing we need to know is word from blizzard, at the moment all we are getting is "threat generation seems fine to us" so does that mean this change to charge+growl is a permanent change? Is it a "fix" to a "broken" ability, I could see that being true, compared to other tanking pets boars were the undisputed champions, even SV and MM hunters could unload happily after their boars got a successful charge+growl in. However now, perhaps, its time to look at the other pets which can be a replacement for your faithful porcine friend:
Boars:
Well yes, boars are the first replacement for boars, for you see they are still good tanking pets, gore deals more damage (and therefore more threat) than claw does, they have high armor and health, both vital for tanking, and can learn 2 ways to get to the enemy, perhaps with charge being nerfed it might now be worth considering taking dash instead, dash costs less training points and almost half the focus, as well as being able to use it from any distance, or even to run away from things. However charge still grants a large attack power boost for your boars next attack, roots the target for 1 second to help if you need to kite and has a 5 second smaller cooldown. Even with charge not boosting growl its still an interesting move to have and boars remain powerful solo pets.
Bears:
Extra armor, a very nice boost to health, and claw as a focus dump, supported by having a diet only rivaled by your average trash can, bears are easy to use, resilient pets, however they lack a movement or aggro enhancing ability, I certainly could recommend these for new hunters, simply because you're just as likely to find something to feed them as random drops of enemies incase you forgot to pick up food in town, but if your looking for the premium in soloing pets you should keep looking.
Carrion birds:
Owls and Bats also fit into this category, I highlighted carrion birds as they get an armor boost instead of a dps boost, have the full choice of bite, claw and screech (bats only have bite and screech, owls only have claw and screech) and have a more common diet (fish and meat, perfect to swap around with a kitty), the disadvantage of carrion birds is the highest is level 65, while both owls and bats can be found at level 70. The skill we should be highlighting here is screech, i damages 1 target and debuffs others, both allowing your pet to keep threat on multiple mobs and causing the mobs to hit your pet for less, screech is also the cheapest focus dump available, useful if your focus generation is still on the low side, you might even get away wit taking your bird into instances, although they are a pain to target around and make a repetitive sound that annoys tanks, the advantage of the screech debuff is clear to everyone
Crabs:
Well they have incredible armor, rivaled only by turtles, and they can learn claw as a focus dump, however they cannot learn dash and actually have less than average hp! A low to the ground posture and diet including fish and bread does little to save the crab, unfortunately this will not be the new king of tanking that we are looking for.
Crocolisks:
Good armor, not crab good, but good, however once again they lose health! having a dps modifier of 0% is counteracted by having no focus dump ability and they also have no speed increasing effect, lets move on shall we.
Gorillas:
A dps and health boost gives these a nice start, they are quite large pets with rather picky diets and no movement enhancer or focus dump, their only real saving grave is thunderstomp, an aoe attack that damages everything around the gorilla for moderate damage, unfortunately the cooldown makes this unwieldy for long soloing compared to screech-using pets, perhaps gorrillas are for you, but they aren't to be crowned the new kings.
Scorpids:
Good armor and no health loss, a simple enough diet of meat and a low to the ground stance for easy targeting, scorpids have a lot going for them, you can find them at anywhere form level 3 to level 69 making them even more accessible than boars were. However all is not good for them, scorpid poison might be a great skill, however sometimes things go wrong, especially at lower levels and you might need to trap your target hastily, scorpid poison will happily eat away at a freezing trap, meaning you have to be careful and know when to turn the skill off, they also suffer from the lack of movement enhancing moves, solo work means speed, and speed means you want movement enhancing abilities. However the scorpid does earn points for being a pvp star, many 70 hunters will find them self with a scorpid for arena work, so this does save on taming a seperate solo pet.
Sporebats:
No... just no. I might find their pretty glowing ways act as a bug-zapper for me, unfortunatly this doesn't seem to work on mobs, alas like many pretty things, sporebats are fundamentally useless.
Tallstriders:
Movement enhancing ability: check, available for lowbies and 70's: check (so long as your not in your 30-69's) bonus to tanking stat: check (+hp) focus dump skill: nada. They make some of the gaudiest trophy pets, second only to sporebats, and are actually somewhat usable, however they won't be taking our crown today.
Turtles:
The icon of a tank, unfortunately turtles have no movement bonus (for once this makes sense) Turtles have a huge armor boost at the cost of dps, and then they have a special move that gives them 50% damage reduction at the cost of even more dps for 12 seconds. If your looking for a pet that won't die, you've found her here, however she doesn't do any damage either, she has no focus dump, and shell shield is on a hefty 3 minute cooldown, Turtles might be the hardiest pet around, but they lack aggro generation boosts from their lack of damage, so we'll pass over them for now.
Warp stalkers:
I've looked at these before, they didn't match up with boars back then and truth be told they still don't now, Warp is a nice move on a small cooldown for next to no training points and is only slightly more focus costly than dash, it can be uses during combat for its 50% dodge rate boost, however it won't do this on auto-cast it does have a slightly better range than charge. However it isn't charge, paying 25 focus for a 50% chance to avoid 1 attack made in the next for seconds is rather pricey, so you'll likely only use it as an opener, and while its not bad, and certainly fast, but the attack power gain from charge boosts threat generation even if its just on an auto-attack, threat generation is what made boars the kings and warp stalkers, though very much viable soloing pets, just don't have that boost to give them the crown.
Wolves:
An armor boost and dash makes these look initially promising, but the lack of a focus dump and the special move which is highly focus inefficient for soloing holds the fluffy doggies back I'm afraid, if you find yourself grouped with all the melee dps in your raids you might want to consider them, but for solo work you can find better choices.
In conclusion... well if anything is to take the crown of best solo pet from boars, its going to be the Carrion birds (or owls/bats if you are so inclined), these versatile birds generate more than average threat in both single and multiple enemy situations, with the only downside being their considerable size, flapping wings and the noise screech makes. Boars are still fighting to keep their noble placing though, and should the developers Fix and/or restore charge to its old workings they shall wallow once again in their muddy throne.
ps. Brk finally linked me, for this he can choose between Cookie's, Lager, Kibler's bits, for *the* kitty or his very own baby crocolisk!
pps prizes may or may not actually be awarded, any of the above items acquired via non prize-giving means may count as being the prize, crocolisk may bite, please do not flush the crocolisk down any of the folowing sewers: Stormwind's, Orgrimmar's, and definatly not Undercity's, you have been warned!
See him there? he's dead he is, filled with 249 of my arrows and dead, very very dead! However to spite me for murdering him he refused to drop any hunter loot, meaning in the 5 Karazhan bosses I killed this week, nothing usable by hunters dropped, such is life I suppose. Find the obligatory WWS report here I am Thetys and Faloranu is Sylvester, one again I was top, however for once we didn't have anyone managing to do worse than the tank, so mixed blessings with that one.
At least, not on the kill, our first two attempts featured a warrior offtank who knew what she was doing but was lagging, being why every shadow nova killed her, and a dps warrior who made no claim in his defence, I guess he just didn't fully understand the strategy, he did manage to survive the occasional shadow nova, though it may just have been that he wasn't crippled. for our third try we swapped both of theses out and then we had no problem (though admittedly our second try was largely a case of bad infernal drops)
So, whats a hunters job on Prince? Well the same as it is in most places mqosrdps as brk would say, and the key to doing mqosrdps is staying alive, prince has several abilities to kill people who are not prepared, and certainly some of them are pretty scary, the first thing you must avoid is his cripple and shadow nova combo, he casts this until he reaches 30% health, so for most of the fight this will be up, fortunately he will not cast cripple on your pets, and the nova only deals around 2k shadow damage (pets with avoidance and shadow resistance rank 2, probably looking at around 800 damage) to avoid it personally is simple, all you need to do is stand at max range, if thats 41 yards then perfect, if you have to be a bit closer because you didn't take those points in survival, well its not going to kill you, unless you decide to go in closer than your full range.
Cripple reduces its targets to 1 health, you are unhealable for the duration, this is pretty scary if you're not expecting it, shadow nova then is a 2 yard range or so aoe he casts about 6 seconds after cripple, this should never really kill anyone if all know what their doing, but hunters have no excuse to die to it. Now his next ability is to call infernals, once landed these cast an aoe that deals about 800 damage every second, they are immobile after landing, so this is where prince's luck factor comes in, sometimes you can go the whole fight without the infernals landing near you, sometimes the fight is a huge mess of running to the nearest safe spot while keeping everyone alive. It is greatly important to avoid infernals, if one lands near you you have about 5 seconds to move before the first aoe, this is especially important if prince is above 30% hp, because then he might cripple you and 1 hp isn't really enough to survive an infernal attack.
So far I've mentioned what he does before 30% hp, well after 30% hp he becomes a bit mroe raid unfriendly, his axes start flying around on their own and attacking people, he also casts shadow word pain randomly on the raid, also at this point he speeds up his infernal calling, meaning theres going to be less and less safe places to stand. Of these attacks only the infernals are really avoidable, everything else just has to be outhealed, of course you can do your part by bandaging if possible, its always preferable to have a live hunter than a dead one, and even when your healing yourself your pets still chewing on the enemy! Cripple stops at 30%, so in a way prince becomes a lot less fatal, you just need to step up your dps to kill him before your surrounded by infernals.
That leaves there only a few things to say: feign death often and keep scorpid sting up, the last thing you want to do is pull aggro on prince, he has been known to hit me for 13k crits (I didn't pull aggro, the rest of the raid died and FD was on CD). Scorpid sting is especially vital while prince's health is between 60% and 30%, at that point he does a lot more melee damage to the tank, and your tank will thank you for making that 5% less and helping push crushing blows off the agenda. Other than that, for a lot of the fight its going to seem like a standard tank and spank, there are harder bosses for hunters to have to fight and our range allows us to be doing damage constantly, so I want to see you all up high on those meters people!
Sorry for no posts the last couple of days, little it of guild drama, some IRL stuff down at the hospital (they took my blood... I needed that stuff!) don't worry nothing serious, on both counts, the guild is still running fairly smoothly and I'm not going to be dying anytime soon...
Well drama wise, one of the guild founders left on Tuesday, then rejoined... then left again on Thursday. Both times this happened when I wasn't online and it wasn't until Friday that I actually got the whole picture together. Long story short he got stroppy after a guildy caused them to miss a chance on killing prince, since a healer had to go in 30 mins and they needed to replace a dps with a healer to do the boss anyway, but the dps refused to leave until just before the first healer had to go. Anyway it was a silly thing that made someone leave for silly reasons.
In the cause of action about 10 people left, many because the guild founder was re invited after he left, we have most of those people back now, and any crisis seems to have been avoided.
With my business this week I've only managed to raid with the guild once, which was last night, Karazhan, curator, Illhoof, Aran and chess... Ironically the only one we "wiped" on was chess everything else we one-shotted. That little embarrassment came from the person controlling our war chief standing in one of te summoned fires and fighting the enlarged purple pieces *sigh* always make sure the person on the war chief knows what to do. We also had a couple of "attempts" on Netherspite, 2 of the attempts were mis-pulls caused by ressing from the first pull, and the first pull the tank pulled before half the group entered the room, so the door locked us out... you can guess how that went. Finally we had 1 attempt on prince, unfortunately the melee all seemed to ignore the stratagy for cripple, and so got aoe'ed to death, as did one of our healers.
As you can see I had a nice agility for this raid, shammy with agility totem, blessing of kings, potion, food and my normal high agility all combined, this shows in my dps over the raid the WWS report can be found here, and its a healthy 696 dps for me over the 4 hour raid (it really didn't seem to take that long). Some of the highlights from the report: over the raid we were 200 dps better than our second best previous raid, Faloranu now has 120 arcane resistance (rank 4) and took a third of the damage, meaning I got a lot more mana for dps and me doing over 900 dps on aran, illhoof and Prince. I don't know what changed in my gear thats made me get such big numbers, but I'm not going to complain!
All in all we did rather good since a lot of people were new on those bosses, hopefully tonight were going to kill Prince... and maybe we'll actually see some hunter gear drop... though I'd be happy just for the badges, I have 59 now, and the first thing on my wish list costs 60, though I am questioning saving for the new sunwell badge items...
A quick hotfix from blizzard, unfortunately not including the growl issues that people have been reporting (I've been leveling Telson, she's 57 now but still has 0 chance of getting aggro regardless of the supposed bug). So what did happen today? Some fix on Tranquilizing shot, I hadn't noticed this bug, but to be honest I can't recall when I last used tranq shot, its not exactly part of my shot rotation, I've heard its used on a couple of bosses here and there, so I'll use it someday... maybe.
The other changes were to the combat log, it now caps at 300 entries (so no longer will it scroll for 2 minutes after you leave an instance, also on that note leaving an instance won't reset the log anymore anyway), filter settings will now be saved properly. Lastly they fixed a sound error that caused lockups on exiting the game, I'd suffered from this a few times, so thats good news for me!
However the big news is the New molten core console game and the new Bard hero class in Wrath of the lich king, combining WoW and guitar hero in a most unique way, the bard class promises to be most unique.
These are ofcourse Blizzard's annual April fools jokes, I actually would like a sensible bard class, I kind of like the idea of using music to buff people, after all the right music can inspire people in real life, so when you start mixing magic with it it should be quite effective. Personally I feel it would have been nice if the time they spend producing the bard joke page was spent fixing the bugged chat log so I don't hae to reset my whispers every time I log on so they don't appear in all windows, but hey, such is life.
"Isn't it funny, how in the middle of chaos and terror, every little good thing gets magnified a thousand times, like how a candle only seems bright on moonless nights. Quel'Thalas is under threat from our former leader summoning some of the most powerful demons known to exist and it is this time that the Cenarion circle contact me, a letter made of interwoven leaves, I have no idea what the ink was made of, but it smelt distinctively fruity.
The letter explained how their studies on Telson were going, apparently they have gained great insight into the Silithid's method of Asexual reproduction, Creatures like Telson are part of an advance party or so it seems, they hatch from special eggs back in a main nest, and then burrow their way to a new location and begin laying eggs, these eggs then hatch into guards and more burrowers who then prepare the land for a full colony. I suppose this means the barrens is in more danger than we thought, apparently the Cenarion circle is dealing with that alone.
However in their studies they removed Telson's egg sacks sop they could examine the growing embryos inside, incredibly Telson survived this operation, and is now back to full health, whats more she's completely infertile, meaning she is no-longer the threat that she once was. The Cenarion circle have deemed that they learned all they can from her and after a quick flight to Nighthaven we were reunited.
And now I find myself much happier, We fight against the shattered sun's enemies together now, fighting for the defense of Quel'thalas once again. I've already watched my home go up in flames once in my life, I shan't let it happen again!"
Introducing Buzzard, "pet" of Drottor who I introduced to you all over valentines, he hasn't gained a level since then but I finally got round to completing his pet taming quest, and now he's got a "lovely" carrion bird to keep him company. He wouldn't admit to Buzzard being his pet if you asked him, though thats a story for another time.
