Argh

Yep, still waiting for Loque’nehak to spawn.  Only been like 5 hrs waiting so far, so that’s not too bad, right?

Heal my pet! Please.

So the other night I had a discussion with one of my healers.  Let’s put it this way…  He basically didn’t see any reason to help heal my pet unless it’s our MT.  I say “help heal” because hunters have a little skill called “Mend Pet”, which is quite a powerful rolling heal for a single target (aka the pet).  Thus during fights which a pet is taking any damage at all, it should have Mend Pet on it 100% of the time – don’t waste your healer’s mana!

But anyway, back to why a healer should heal a pet.  First of all, a healer’s job is to heal the raid.  Granted, responsibilities are split between healers, but their job is to keep everyone (or as many people as possible) alive long enough to take down the boss.  Next, consider the fact that healers have to heal Mele DPS because of Boss AoE and such.  You also have to heal the OT.  So considering a pet is a Mele DPS that can easily OT (especially since 3.0.2….), it would naturally follow that you also heal pets.  Not convinced yet because you don’t like Hunters?  That’s ok, there’s plenty more reasons!

DPS.  Say it with me…   Deeee  Peeeeee   Esssssssss.  So you’re seriously going to tell a rogue they can’t fight with poisons because you don’t want to heal their poisons?  Or tell the DPS warrior to only fight with one sword because you don’t want to heal it.  Perhaps your druid DPS should fight out of form because you don’t want to heal boomkins.  No?  Ok, so maybe we should heal a hunter’s pet because according to stats, a hunter’s pet can do up to 50% of a hunter’s damage.  Look at the charts, in some cases, that could be 2k DPS that the raid loses during a boss fight all because the healer didn’t see any need to heal a pet.

Buffs.  Everyone loves them, most people have them.  Now, so do hunters.  Yes, a hunters pet can actually add DPS to a raid, help break through a boss’ armor, etc.  They also mean that the hunter (& pet) gain 5/10% more heals.  Thus, the pet is helping you do your job.

OHMYGODHE’SAFTERTHEHEALER!  Ok, this one only applies to groups with smart hunters, so this one may not count for all healers.  But for those who do…  Anyone ever heard of a skill called Intervene?  Charge?  Growl + Guard Dog?  Roar of Sacrifice?  Boar’s Speed?  Misdirect?  Catching my drift yet?  Probably the fastest ways to get a mob off a healer is with a pet.  Hand’s down.  Pet draws agro, becomes an OT (hmm, didn’t we mention pet as OT before?), pulls the mob back to the MT, and can then even dump agro after the hunter MD’s it back onto the MT, or hold it until MT gets agro, or holds it until the battle is over.  Lots of options.  Of course, if the healer didn’t keep the pet alive, everyone would blame the hunter because their pet died and they didn’t have enough DPS.  Or blame the tank because they didn’t keep agro.  Not blame the healer because they weren’t doing their job…  It’s self preservation guys!  Heal the Pet!

Everyone is nice to the tank who wears plate and gets beat on.  Yes, big repair bill!  I understand perfectly and I do the same.  I mean I wear mail and don’t get beat on very much (aside from wipes), so mine is half the cost.  Except when I’m using Mammoth Cutters to maximize DPS.  Or when feeding my pet his glorious food to keep him doing 125% DPS.  Or oh yeah, buff food?  I’ll take 2 of those please, since I need some as does my pet (which I have to use twice as much when the healer doesn’t heal my pet).  So cut the crap and heal my pet.  Call it ‘giving me the trash green drops for my repair bill’ because yes, that helps too.  Maybe I’ll post some numbers later to show how much a hunter’s repair bill is…  It’s a bit closer to a Pally/Warrior tank than you think.

Ok, so I’ll stop rambling.  I doubt there’s many healers reading this, so if there are and they still don’t understand the reasons to heal a hunter pet, let me know and I’ll tell you one on one.  Because yes, there’s more reasons.  And if you don’t believe me, here’s a link that my healer sent me today.  Ironic enough that he and I had the conversation a couple days ago and then he reads this on one of his blogs, lol.  But hey, he’s a healer, not a hunter.  I wouldn’t presume to tell him how to use his specific skills which is why I just say to heal the hunter pet, not how to.  And he understands now, so that is good!  Now let’s rock on, ALL together, including MyPally!

I haz prezents!

Yay!  I know they’re there, under the tree, but don’t have time to check.  Yes, in-laws will be here soon.  So I get to open IRL presents!  Yay!

Still curious what the in-game ones are, other than (SPOILER).  I’m guessing some food/drink and maybe another minipet J

Merry Christmas!

Yes, Merry Christmas to all!

I'm not sexist, racist or biased, so that means I wish you have a wonderful day, regardless of your beliefs.

'sides Ogre agrees...   lol.

LOL@ BBB & BRK & Mania

Ok, so holidays so I can’t get in to play much.  Though I did get my final 2 kills last night (that was about all I did, other than helping a guild-mate on a quest).  But I do have to mention that I enjoy seeing those 3 talk to each other through their blogs.  Most enjoyable, of course, is when BRK makes fun of BBB for posting more about his Hunter than Druid, lol.  But BBB usually gets him back.  For example, his latest post…  About Polearms and how Druids are becoming more like Hunters every day!!!  …   …  I mean…  How Druids might be able to train polearms soon, which means we can fight over loot…

OOG Holidays

OOG Holidays kinda suck.  I mean, yay, cool, see family, get presents, snow, days off of work, etc.  But it also means almost no WoW or time to yourself.  Yes, it’ll be nice to spend some time with family, but I must admit I’m not looking forward to how the only time I have alone (or just w/ my wife) will be between 2300 and 0800…  And somewhere in there, I still need to get 2 more honorable kills as a gnome-helper.

Funny thing though, we were afraid of not having any snow for Sthis’ family when they got here.  Well, over the last weekend we received roughly 3 feet of it.  Yeah, there’s a reason we have a 4WD Pickup… With chains, and a tow cable.  Though we haven’t had to pull anyone out yet this year, but it’s a guaranteed – happens every year.

Ahh, the joys of a lower-level run-through...

So my sister, bf & friend have these lvl 30’s.  We’ve done a run-through for my sister before, but the other two hadn’t.  Let’s just say it was rather entertaining – for all of us.  Apparently it’s rather entertaining to watch 2 lvl 80’s go into the stocks, round up the almost entire place, and then AOE everything down in a matter of 2 seconds or less.  But then there’s the comment by one of them “you mean we could’ve done the dungeon like this last night?”  Because apparently the night before, they ran deadmines with just the 3 of them.  Lock, Mage & Shaman…  Took them quite a while and they had hefty repair bills.  So since stocks only took like 10 minutes, we ran them through gnomer just for fun.

Ahh, Snow

Snow.  Fun stuff!  Especially when it means late openings for school or even snow days!

However, not quite as fun when you have to go in to work regardless of the fact that we got 6” last night and are supposed to get another 6” today.  But I suppose that for VT that’s not a whole lot.  I mean, we have this happen all the time, which is probably why the schools are just doing a delayed opening and the business world here just started as normal.

I do have to say that I love snow though.  I think it is very pretty and fun to play in.  I mean, you have skiing, sledding, ice skating, etc.  I honestly don’t even mind brushing the snow off the truck.  And I may be crazy, but I think it’s fun to drive in snow.  Of course, I wish everyone else would stay off the road because I don’t worry about my driving – just theirs.  But I’ve also grown up around snow, learned to drive in snow when I first had my permit, etc.  We’d drive to Lake Tahoe from San Francisco and my parents loved the fact that they didn’t have to drive, lol.  But I think my thoughts on snow can be better described by Calvin & Hobbes…

Snow Snow, High and Low,

Wherever we go, let it blow,

To and fro, hi de ho,

Snow Snow Snow.

Fete de la Winter Veil

I just have to say:

/cheer!

Yes, in-game holidays are one of the most fun aspects of the game to me.  It’s little things like ‘how many people have been to Nigel’s Point since they hit Outlands?’ or ‘when was the last time you saw the Ironforge bank area overrun?’.  And the only answer to questions like those?  In-game holidays.

Granted, we’re working on leveling some of our alts, and still trying for the raven lord mount (no, it didn’t drop this weekend when we tried again, and yes, Mypally tanks pretty dang well, lol).  So they slow things down a little, but that’s ok.  I mean, seriously, I’ve got at least a year or so before we’ll be seeing an increased level cap, so I have plenty of time to get most of my 14 or so characters to 80.

Oh, and btw, check out Wowhead if you want some cool giveaways…

Greatest Hunter Nerf of 2008!

Yes, all hunters alike are pining away since they heard the news.  I would analyze the nerfs to show you what I mean, but, well… here’s my two thoughts on that.

1.     75% or more of hunters are huntards.  They wouldn’t understand it, wouldn’t appreciate it, and it wouldn’t matter to them.

2.     BRK already did a VERY well thought out post on it here.  I might differ on one or two points, but he’s got it mostly correct.  Hopefully the other 25% of hunters will read his post and take most of it to heart.

But I do want to add my own thoughts to the mess, in no particular order:

·         This is, without a doubt, the biggest nerf the hunter class has seen.  We have a right to be sad/mad, no matter if it is needed or not – it’s a huge nerf to our class.  This many changes will mean a big change in gameplay and will no doubt be a pain.

·         Announced it in the forums?  Really?  Like, are you serious?  Wow.  Hey Bliz, do you need a communications manager?  I’ll even work from home to save you the cost of a commute to CA.  We can negotiate a salary, but just require any outside communication or announcement like this to go through someone before it’s just dumped.

·         Hunter’s, particularly Beastmaster are doing too much DPS.  Well, is it all hunters, or just Beastmaster?  If it’s just Beastmaster, then it’s probably solely because of the pets.  If so, nerf the pets.  Or, nerf the hunter.  Balance them out?  Do something to attack the problem?  It makes sense that a hunter pet should do 30% of a hunter’s total dmg.  So go off that ratio and try to fix that problem – not create new ones.  I don’t mind nerfing a class if it’s needed.  Just nerf the right things, not the wrong ones.

·         Aspect of the Wild is raid wide.  I don’t think I’ve ever really used this one… I mean, I trained it just cause, and turned it on once, and… yeah… it’s not on my bars or anywhere.  Why?  Generally the DPS put out by hawk or beast is more important.  If you want to make an aspect raid-wide, pick a useful one like Viper.  But back on topic – how does this help adjust our DPS to put us more in line with other classes?  Like seriously – think about it for a minute…  Wake up Bliz – it doesn’t.  Don’t include this in the same list of fixes to adjust our DPS – put it in the list of ‘oops, meant to make this raid-wide when we were doing the same with other talents across the board’.  Though I’m still not sure why it’s even in there.

·         If hunters are doing so much more DPS than the others, then ok, we need nerfs.  It was nice that the hunter class was finally useful despite all the huntards.  So thank you Bliz for making our class wanted again for a few months.  And now I’m going to go play my druid since you seem determined to make hunters the most hated class in the game.

·         I personally have not seen the need for nerfs, but then I haven’t had the time to do any lvl 80 dungeons, heroics, etc.  Been too busy with work and my masters.  So if we really do need to be taken down 20 pegs that’s fine.  Just please put a piece of duct tape over Ghostcrawler’s mouth…  well… hands…  so that he can’t break it to us by dropping a bomb in the middle of a city.  Let someone else put an official notice on the WoW homepage, an in-game mail to all hunters, put out a press release, announce it on TV, I don’t care.  Just something more professional than in a post on the forums.

So a list of real changes that need to be made for hunters?

·         Hunters are meant to be stealthy.  They stalk animals so they can sneak up and kill them.  They use traps so they can hunt while they’re not in the area.  Their pet helps them track the targets.  So why don’t we have a stealth skill?  I know, rogues (or druids pretending to be rogues) are the only ones allowed to stealth and move at the same time.  But why can’t hunters do it too?  I mean, it’s a rogues profession to do it, so they are able to do it faster/better.  But what if hunters could do it, but just move at only 25% speed?  Our cats can prowl…. Then they could prowl with us…  Wouldn’t that make sense?  And, I know that we can track things ourselves, but shouldn’t it be the pet that does half of the tracking?  Or maybe it boosts our tracking ability?  Perhaps it’s farther distance or higher levels, etc.  How about they can hear rogues coming, as long as we remain still?

·         Bigger pet bar.  Need more slots for when bliz messes up and makes things like cower auto-activate and we have to turn it off.  Or since they have more skills now, perhaps some of us like to manage which skills they use in the middle of a fight to maximize DPS?  Oh wait, that’s only 25% of hunters max, so scratch that one.

·         More pet stances.  Perhaps ‘defend group’?  I mean, it’s a pet we have trained that will literally jump off a cliff if we tell it to.  So why won’t it defend our friends too?

·         Passive Aggressive.  For the lazy bums out there that want the pet to auto-attack every time they do.  Give us back our Defensive stance.  Then the huntards can have their button and the rest of us can have ours.

·         Auto-delete-hunter-characters for any huntard uttering a phrase like “Misdirect?  What’s that?”.  Then lock them out of being able to create a hunter ever again until such a time as a hunter has reviewed their progress.  Then only give them a trial period, in which they are required to pass certain skill tests such as a successful Misdirect, successful chain-trap, etc.

 

So anyway.  If we need the nerfs fine.  Just do 2 things – announce it professionally, and make sure you’re nerfing things that need to be nerfed, not creating new problems.

Raven Mount

Ahh yes, Gorilladin rocks.

Last night we figured we’d try for the Reins of the Raven Lord.  We thought that we’d be pretty set with our boomkin-spec’d healer, hunter pet tank, and our lvl 80’s that are geared at about lvl 78.  Thus we invited a guildie tank with us for safety, lol.  He was busy initially, so we just started clearing trash and although it required concentration and coordination, we did it with relative ease.  Then our guildie joined us, and it was a lot easier.  Though we discovered that a lvl 80 gorilladin is a better tank than a 74 ret pally.  He was easier to heal, and kept agro w/ no problem, etc.  So we ended up keeping him as our MT.  And awesomeness of awesomeness, the reins actually dropped!  /cheer!!!  So now we just need to go back and do it many more times so that Sthis & Galoriar can both get a pair since our guildie won the roll, lol.

Goggles

Truesight Ice Blinders….

Ahh, my new helm.  Aren’t they pretty?  (wait, blinders = helm = plural?)

Sorry, just had to share with, well, no one.  I’ve had 6 people take a look at the site, and one of those is me.  So 5 people have looked and run away.  I s’pose I’d get more traffic if I actually advertised somewhere, but considering I’ll most likely stop the blog in another few weeks when I forget about it, it’s probably no big deal.

So back on track…  I must say that my Gnomish Army Knife is also awesome.  Save me many, many bag slots.  For an engineer, it is without a doubt the best tool ever!  Though I must rant for a second.  It says GNOMISH Army Knife…  G N O M I S H Army Knife…  Can I say it any clearer?  Goblin Engineers shouldn’t have access to it.  They shouldn’t be able to create it, they shouldn’t be able to use it.  Same thing with the GOBLIN Jumper Cables…  Now, in fairness to engineers around the globe, I can understand that once created, any engineer (of high enough level) should be able to use them.  But create them?  Come on!!!

However, since Bliz decided to make it so anyone can use them, I will definitely take advantage of that.  Heck, I made 5 last night for the 5 levels and sent one to many of my toons.  Sthis got one too since the Gnomish Army Knife is way cooler than a simple skinning knife, lol.

Hunter Farmer

Ahh, the joys of being a hunter while farming.

Here’s a quick 101 tip – create a hunter and level it to 80 if you need to farm.  Lol, I say this because I’m working on leveling to 450 Engineering for my chopper.  And while it’s taking forever and a ridiculous amount of mats, it’s easier for me than all the other classes.  I swoop in and start mining.  And if there’s a mob too close by that aggros?  Drop one of those nice little metal things that turns the mob into a block of ice!  Finish mining, jog a quick safe distance, feign death, hop on my mount and fly away!  I know, not rocket science, but definitely fun and fast.

So why do I give you that tip?  Because it can mean the difference between getting and not getting the node.  After last night, I’ve determined that the majority of players are just plain a-holes.  The trap-trick is what meant they couldn’t steal the node from me when I was aggro’d.  Now horde, I understand – I always try ganking nodes from them just out of pure principle.  I managed to do that a few times last night too and was very happy.  I mean, it’s fun to come in while a horde is mining and actually steal the node away.

Alliance though?  Come on – we’re on the same team.  A draenei came in while I was mining and tried to gank it from me.  WTF?  I mean seriously!  And it was Titanium too!!!  If it were a horde mining it, I would’ve tried my hardest to grab it from them, but IT WASN’T!!!  At least I kept it from him, but dang!

I came up on someone who was just hovering in mid-air over a mine.  I sat there for a second, assumed afk/didn’t care (since she wasn’t standing next to it, fighting next to it, or mining it), and mined the node, hopped on my mount, & flew off.  As I’m heading out I get the /say of ‘wtf?’ essentially.  So I wsp back an apology and explain I thought she was afk or didn’t care.  We then proceeded to have a productive conversation about engineering while both mining the same area.  See?  Cooperation!  Imagine that happening on the alliance!  It’s things like that which remind me that a few people out there are nice, but people like that draenei just make me mad.

So oh well, I’ll get to 450 eventually.  Right now I’m just so close to my Gnomish Army Knife I can almost feel it in my hands!  Then my headpiece & finally my ride…

Salty & 79

Ahh, a long joyous weekend…  And now back to work.  You know, I think we’d all live a lot longer if we had 2 day work weeks and 5 day weekends all the time.  Granted, Blizzard wouldn’t be able to share that time off because they’d have to work even harder to keep up with new content since many of us would play a lot more WoW, lol.

In any event, Sthis & Galoriar both earned their Salty titles and level 79 this weekend.  We didn’t play a whole lot, so that’s saying something.  Not to mention, I now realize how hard and time consuming the Salty title is.  Just to start, look at it this way – one of the requirements is you win one of the STV Fishing Extravaganzas.  They’re once per week.  Aka, if you’re on the original Bliz server, there would be a MAXIMUM of 208 people who could have won it.  And that’s even assuming that someone won it on week 1.  So figure the server we’re on has been around closer to 3 years and you’re looking at around 156 maximum people (give or take a few from transfers).  Of those 156 people, how many people have spent hours fishing up the coins from the Dalaran fountain?  Fished for the rare X-Pound fish?  Hit EVERY type of fishing node in the game?  Fished up the bosses in both raids (old world & Outlands)?  Done ALL of those?  Yes, the Explorer title took a while to get and I’m proud of it as well.  But I must say that the Salty title is harder and more rare.  So next time you see someone with it (assuming you ever do…) give them a courtesy bow – I know I will!

And level 79.  A terribly frustrating level.

·         71 – “Sweet, I’m past 70!”

·         72 – “I’m no longer a ‘noob’ to levels past 71”

·         73 – “Hah, I’m getting there.  Now let me hit 74 for the teleport… Oh wait, I had a friend pop me there so my HS is already set.  Oh well.”

·         74 – “I can officially port to Dalaran!”

·         75 – “Just kickin’ it hoss”

·         76 – “Yay, I can almost get my flying mount back!!!”

·         77 – “We’re sorry, but Galoriar is currently unavailable.  It appears he is busy exploring Northrend.  If you would like to leave a message, he’ll consider getting back to you after the beep.”

·         78 – “No longer a noob to flying in Northrend.  See?  That extra level means I didn’t ‘just’ get my cold weather flying!”

·         79 – “Damnit…  One more f’n level and I can finally start getting lvl 80 gear.  I’m still wearing half of my lvl 70 gear because I have yet to find better…  Of course, the Icier Barbed Spear from the Champion of Anguish quest is cool, but even that still just barely beat out my axe.  Soo yeah, still leveling, no new gear… I just wanna be 80 already!!!!”

·         80 – “Woohoo!  Level 80!!!  Uhhh, ok, time to finish leveling my alts to 80…”

So my guess is Tuesday or Wednesday we’ll hit 80.  Of course, we’ll then have to spend some time on the level 80 quests for some better gear so by the time everyone else hits 80 we can start working on the dungeons.  In the meantime, we’ll get our alts up so that we have more options.  Because even though hunter-pets can tank now, people still don’t believe it.  I mean, we’re sitting there on the 3^rd boss of the Champion of Anquish questline and Mypally is tanking the boss.  Balance spec’d Druid is healing and we’re doin pretty awesome.  Have to be careful and it takes a while, but then I see a comment “His pet is tanking?!?!”.  So the guy can see it and he still doesn’t believe it!  But then I remember the other hunters I make fun of in this blog and realize that most of them couldn’t come close.

The trick?  There really isn’t much of one.  I just send in Mypally, pop a MD on him every chance I get, keep aspect of the beast on except when I need more mana, and have a continual improved mend pet on him.  That’s good for most elites, and when going on bigger targets (such as in that circle) a couple rolling heals from a druid evens it all out.