Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Milam family guild

Apparently our family now has a guild. They are here I think.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

BRK forums

BRK has some great forums for hunter uberness. They are here.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Keyloggers!

The bane of the WOWer.

Read this horror story. And read this for tools to protect yourself. Go do it, now!

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Powerleveling Fishing and Cooking to 375

So I need to get my cooking buffed, and it turns out that fishing can go hand in hand.

Here is one such guide.

Here is another guide

This last
is probably the best.

Then there's the Elite Fish Vendor guide. This guy has a great deal going where he catches and cooks fish, and you can buy it using a web form. But Blizz wants him to take it down ;(

BRK list of enchantments (sorta approved)

From BRK, and i'm somewhat paraphrasing, but this is what hunters should have.

Melee 2h Weapon: +35 Agi or Savagery
Ranged Weapon: +10 or +12 Damage
Helm: Glyph of Ferocity
Shoulder: Honored Aldor/Scryer inscription
Cloak: +12 Agi
Chest: +6 All Stats
Bracers: +24 RAP
Gloves: +26 RAP or +7 Agi (+15 Agi is good, too)
Leggings: Cobrascale or Clefthide armor kit
Boots: +12 Agi

Update: Woot! BRK hath spoken. Sorry for the implication that his list was an 'official approved list'. But anyway I agree, this is a great list of enchants to have. Now as for the gear..tough call. Personally I'm going for a mix of arena stuff, Kara stuff, and BG stuff to replace my end-game quest blues/greens. The arena stuff is great for +sta, but I find myself unsatisfied w/ the quality of the BG stuff. The Arena season 1 stuff may be better. As for time, I managed to get 2.5k honor last night in an hour or so of work, and another guildy confirmed they got 7k (or maybe 9k, can't remember) from 5 hours of AV. So that's not too bad, but consider you need about 90k to get a full set of armor plus the gun (the Arena S3 ranged weapons are perhaps the best in the game).

Need More Loot

I want Terokk's Quillfrom Seth Halls (this is the quest link)

I also want Don Santo's Famous Hunting Rifle, currently at AH for 1200/1400 BO. I think i have half that amt saved up. Somewhat tough, since usually Kara runs will burn 100g per night in pots/repairs.

And this Glyph of Ferocity is a great enchant for headgear.

Warcrafter

The completely awesome WoW calculating site. It down ATM, server overload. But when its up, check it out. It will punch up your character from the armory, and (far more impt) will give you dps numbers on all your damage abilities, and the ability (i think) to swap out gear to ask what if questions, ie how much will this new toy really affect me.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Curator downed

In historic news, we managed to down Curator. We earlier last week cleared the first few bosses of Kara, and spent the rest of the week trying Curator. Literally. I think i was there Wed until very early in the morn, i skipped thur/fri/sat i think, and finally we all got together last night and brought him down. It's all kinda a blur, but after so much effort to down the boss, we were stoked. Of course the T4 Hunter/lock/mage glove token dropped, and we had 3 hunters and a lock and a mage. The lock won. Gratz to her, (even though it wasn't an upgrade) this person has been very helpful to me (and is the SO of the main tank/guild leader), and she's a great person really, so whatever.

Raid composition i think is key. we had:

Main tank - prot paly
healer: holy paly, holy priest
dps: lock (some type) mage (fire), 2 BM hunters, 1 MM hunter, 1 shadow priest.
Oh, and the retro paly (laugh).

I think all the ranged dps (6) was key, we were all sufficiently geared (all of us were near identical in dps output, I was #2 in whole raid, #1 was the other BM hunter in kara gear)

Chess event came, this nice leather belt dropped. I was debating rolling for it, but i saw the healer roll for it (a priest, yes i know priests cant wear leather), so i passed. And she got it, and she's basically flustered because she obviously misrolled so this epic equipment is now useless, she'll have to vendor it. Oh well, not sure how much an upgrade that would be, and its leather. Maybe good for arena though.

Anyway that's this week's kara. Time spent: prob 20+ hours. Gear obtained: zero. (but void crystal, dagger (useless), and sidegrade bracers from last week). I think my new policy is Kara 2x per week max (and be firm) and no later than 1am here (we finished 1:15 last night i think)

WoW again in news, unfavorably

Fox has a big flashy story about the evils of WoW and its ilk, mentioning several recent horror stories about players of the game and unspeakable real-life violence. I think all things should be done in moderation, and WoW can be as addictive as anything else. That said, it certainly isn't a breeding ground for wackos. But if there are 9 million people playing, then there are bound to be a few serial killers and other wackos. Its like driving a car, by demographics some car drivers will be wackos. I dont think the game is inherently good or evil, its what you make of it.

Friday, December 7, 2007

money making

In response to this article on WOWinsider

I'm pretty good at making money. That said, you need to do different things at different times to make gold. At low levels, you need to farm those mats such as small eggs, and definately have at least one gathering profession. Mine/skin is good for pre-outland. Herb is fantastic, not many do it, so there seems to be a benefit for that. Otherwise farm for mats that others need. Spider silk from ashenvale spiders (among others) is always in demand and sells for a gold or two each. All those green items that drop - sell em or disenchant em (and sell the mats you dont need). All the white items (white text), sell em on AH. All grey items, sell to vendor.

In OL, its a little different. Greens have a hard time selling on AH (for me), and skinning starts to suck. Mining is hugely profitable, and jewelcrafting becomes useful (but not profitable until youve sunk 1000s of gold for patterns). Herb is fantastic in OL, you can fly around to destinations, grab a herb or three, by the time you get there you have a stack which sells for 15g (on my server). Thus i strongly recommend herb in OL for that reason.

Further in OL there are things that will sell for alot, for ex rep grind tokens that are sellable (from scryer/aldor), coilfang armaments for CE, etc). Fishing and cooking also become hugely profitable.

I don't do much crafting but my guess is none of the crafting profs are actually profitable, nobody wants your lame crafted items. Crafters always make the mistake of selling for cost of mats alone. Its as cheap to farm for mats for pots, put it on the AH, and buy the pots from AH. This is probably due to a lack of understanding of economics by some (and those who do can't compete w/ those willing to lose money or break even on their crafts).

Thursday, December 6, 2007

'lock poem

From comment in WoWInsider (regarding locks and PvP)

'm jealous of every Felguard
Underneath the sun
I don't wish I had a Felguard pet, no
I wish that I WAS one.

Oh I wish I was a Felguard,
with bad teeth and spiky back
With a charge that doesn't miss
Whenever I attack

To be able to enter combat
With a bar full of blue rage
to start shooting off specials
the very moment I engage!

To wield a mighty 2H axe
without worry of the cost
A felguard isn't 'normalized'
so no rage there is lost

And to fight my foes half naked
without a speck of fear
Oh to be a felguard
un-dependent on gear!

Sure I'd be a warlocks slave
won't bother me in the least
No different than things are now
I'm shackled to a priest!

So Blizzard if you're listening
(Yeah right, we've no such luck)
I wish I was a Felguard
So then I could cease to suck.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Attumen, Moroes, Maidin, Opera downed

We downed the first 4 bosses of Kara last night, the first 3 were one-shots, meaning we didn't wipe on the boss at all. The Opera event was not Oz, but Little Red Riding Hood (LLRH), a fun event where the boss (the big bad wolf) randomly turns you into LLRH, you can't attack, you just have to run like hell (if you are a non hunter). If you are a hunter just FD. We took him down with 3 hunters, two BM (Llad and me) for the huge DPS output, and a survivalist. That undoubtedly helped.

Actually i found myself quite useful. First boss, well, not so much, we had to close in to the boss for complicated reasons, and I didn't do much damage. Thats ok. Second boss (Moroes), since I'm a dwarf i can get out of his garrot ability, which will kill you in 3-5 seconds, plus the survivalist and I team trapped an add for crowd control. Maiden i just DPSed like crazy, chugging a pot if she holy fired (and she did, but only once to me). Opera I did the FD trick and spanked.

Anyway really busy but very proud of our group. As of now we have first half of Kara on farm status. Tonight is the wipefest known as curator.

Monday, December 3, 2007

Heroics help

Heroics have rep-nerfed in 2.3, but they are still the most difficult 5man stuff there is. One hits on mail wearers is common. Anyway this thread at wowinsider has some help. Plus here is a guide someone linked in comments, and here is another collection of tips.

Borrowed and reprinted here is a table representing heroics from easy to hard.

Easy: Pens, Vaults, Mech, Ramps(1), Crypts
Easy-Medium: Underbog(2), Seth Halls, Furnace(3)
Medium: Botanica(4), Shadow Lab, Arcatraz (5)
Medium-Hard: Durnholde, Mana-Tombs (6)
Hard: Black Morass (7), Shattered Halls (8)

(1) Don't bring more than 1 melee DPSer, it's not worth the pain on Omor.
(2) Bring somebody that can CC elementals, eg hunter, warlock, or even mage (snare kiting). Can be done without, just painful
(3) Bring somebody that can CC things in combat for Broggok. Also have either a hunter or warlock in group for megahit demon packs before Kel'dan, which are nerfed in 2.1.
(4) AR on the tank for robot pulls- amended in 2.1. Some form of defensive dispel (priest, paladin, felhunter) is required for 1st boss. 3rd boss (Thorngrin the Tender) is doable but a major pain and not really worth the effort, fixed in 2.1. Shadow Priests trivialize much of the instance.
(5) Zereketh is very hard and SR on the tank is recommended. Bring 2 healers for Skyriss.
(6) SR on the tank for Pandemonius. Melee DPS is largely a liability on both Pandemonius and Shaffar. Bring tons of DPS for Shaffar, requirements hopefully eased in 2.1.
(7) Bring tons of DPS.
(8) Have 2 or more players who can CC. Bring a paladin, Limited Invulnerability Potions, or a group with KTM and impeccable tricky aggro control for the second boss, hopefully fixed in 2.1.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

In kara

For the past two nights our guild has assaulted Kara. I think this is only the 2nd or 3rd time the guild as a whole had enough 70s keyed to do Kara. So it's a special event. Further (and amazingly), the 10ish people we have keyed to Kara is a good enough group distribution to do it. From the top of my head, 3 palys, (tank/dps/heal), 2 priests, 2 druids, 2 hunters, 1 lock, 1 mage. Something like that.

Anyway! I did my usual share of massive screwups, running into places i wasn't supposed to and causing wipes. But only once per night. The other times I died was because I don't know how to trap properly.

Onto the bosses.

Attunmen. Attunmen was a pain getting there. First there is a trash respawn timer, so you have to move quickly. Oh, and my deaths didn't help matters, as the entire raid had to stop, wait for my rebuffs, move on. Anyway there was a 6 pull or something in the last mobs before Attunmen, i did manage to trap my mob once, and again, but somehow i screwed up and he hit me once and i was dead. This is the sort of thing that gear would help somewhat, the kara gear has much more armor and +sta that what i have now. Anyway, we get to the Huntsman, we take down Midnight his horse readily, get to Attuneman plus horse, and he randomly attacks me, I'm pretty sure i didn't grab aggro. Down i go. I spend the next 5ish minutes watching them down attuneman, without a major dps provider (me). Anyway, Attuneman is the easiest boss there, so it wasn't too hard. Lo and behold these drop [Stalker's War Bands] (13% chance of drop).


Next up is Moroes. Our guild has had much difficulty with Moroes, but we did manage to down him the first night. After muliple wipe fests, usually because my or the other hunter's traps would fail, we got a winning combo. We had two priests that shackled the adds. The other hunter and I would swap out freeze traps on one mob, this way we could FT it indefinately. We had an off-tank handle moroes himself, while everyone else wailed on one add at a time. The key is not having anyone die while the adds are being cleared, since we needed everyone for it to work. Shackle and FT are i think the only way to CC the adds. (Wiki says Turn Undead will work but its not a good idea). So we needed 2 priests and two hunters for adds, plus palys for healing and tanking. The other major issue was the garrot, but since I'm a dwarf i wasn't affected by this (stoneform ftw).

Moroes dropped Emerald Ripper and a shamy totem. Nobody else wanted the ripper, and it's a decent hunter weapon, so I picked it up. Now i have to figure out what to do with it. If i can get another one it'd be well worth it to upgrade from my Crystal Warforged Axe. The dagger has a 15% drop rate, and its basically the only thing i could use from that loot table. Note that's two epics in two bosses. Luckly the other hunter has run kara so many times he's got almost everything from it.

After Moroes came Maiden, this was on first night too. We cleared trash up to her, no major problems. There were a few pulls that required some CC but we used shackle on em. No need for FT thank god. We wiped on Maiden 2x at 50%, not even close. The holy fire gave us alot of problems. We called it a night at 2am .

Day 2.

Day 2 was late late late, we zoned in around 11pm, after waiting 3 hours to find another dps (the other hunter had network issues but got them resolved later). Back to Maiden, but this time we had a alchemist who had cleansing pots. So i distributed those. We finally figured out the proper strategy, have tank tank her exactly in middle of room, while everyone else is on inside face of pillars doing dps or healing. That way we're all in range of healers and can get cleansed easily. Healers plus pots meant we solved the prolblem, and after a long while she goes down. I only got holyed at the very end, and shook it off. Maiden dropped some non-hunter crap. i don't think anyone used it, some shamy things.

We cleared up to Opera (mostly easy, a few wiped), and we got the Oz event. This required a good bit of work on everyones part. Well, except me, i didn't do much. I just stayed in place and brought em down. There are four mobs, one which can't be tanked (dorothy). Somehow she managed to avoid not killing me. I think she doesn't have an aggro table, so she must of latched onto someone who could handle her. Anyway she went down, then lion, then scarcrow, then tinman i think. I dont remember much of the tricks we used, our mage (soon) tried to tank the scarcrow but that didn't work, i think it got OTed. Dorothy dropped some non-hunter junk, we DE one, and i won the void crystal. This was at 2am. I thuoght we were done but apparently not. Since we did 4 bosses, the most we ever did, we proceeded onwards towards curator. We cleared trash up to him, but bottom line we didn't get a chance to take him down before trash respawns. At 3:30 or 3:45 am we called it.

Anyway, that's my Kara story this week. Got total of 3 purples, but the one that's useful right now is the mail bracers, and they only gave a bit more stats and more armor (but the armor is impt for surviving the occassional add hit when i can't get FD up fast enough. Oh the first day my total damage rank was #4, because of all the deaths i did plus the AOE mobs we cleared. On the second day my damage rank was #2 just behind the lock. So, pretty good dps from me, 630ish according to WWS. Of course i can stand to improve, the other hunter is doing about 800 dps i bet.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Hunters post 70

This is basically a QQ post in reply to this missive at massively.

I am in almost exactly the same situation, but I have a guild. I leveled my hunter to 70 with a casual guild, we didnt' do much instances, as in 5 people of the same level. Further since I'm a hunter it was hard to find PUGs for anything. I ran ZA and ST a bit, and that was it for pre-BC instances.

Post BC, basically same thing, just did a handful of instances until 70. After about a week of /played at 70 I finally finished all the quests you can do solo. Finding a group for the 3,4,5 man group stuff is just a PITA, i have a good dozen of those quests in my queue that will probably never be done. Its so hard to find people at the exact same point of progression that it's just impossible to find a group. If you do find a group, then chances are most people inthe group won't get anything out of it, ie they dont have the quest, or have already done it. To do the Ogri'la stuff, you need to do 4 or so 5 mans, i did manage to get it done one night and spent like 6 hours doing it. At least you can do the skyguard dailies for a bit without requiring the group work.

To my mind, Blizz has really set a very hard barrier between people who want to enjoy the post-70 content, and those who will spend literally all day playing to get a few quests done (or really, waiting around to get group members to get quests done). It takes so much more effort at 70 to get the gear you need to advance, but the difference is huge. I think I doubled my dps, and I know I can double or triple it again, just due to gear. (think about that, a fully epiced player being 5 fold better than a newly minted 70).

Then there's the issue of the Hunter, where you are scorned and can't find a PUG to save your life (how many PUGs say 'just need hunter and gtg'), then you show up in the high end stuff and find out you have no idea how to play in a group, because you never played in a real group. For example, I ran some people through slave pits, it was a complete joke. We were doing stuff that would wipe you in five seconds flat in a heroic, but since you are basically 10 levels above the mobs, you can practically solo it. We finished in in about 30 minutes. Then you get to heroics, and wipe on the first trash mobs, and realize you have no idea how to play your class.

But fear not, there is a demand for hunters at 70. freeze trap becomes hugely important, in some cases you are the only method of crowd control your group has. And hunters are usually #1 in DPS, so without us the raid wipes because they cant kill bosses.

Anyway, long rant, but yeah end game is very hard, and a huge time sink if you let it. But if you can afford to play two days of 5 hours then you can run kara. You will need to find a guild who is willing to help you get attuned, there is no other way (in my mind) to do the attunement. But if you have at most 10 hours a week to play, you can do the high end stuff. It helps if you can find a group of similiarly minded people and make a firm schedule. Lastly note there is a ton of stuff to do at level 70, alot of it is repetitive but i urge you to check out PvP in battlegrounds, I found that to be alot of fun (especially AV). You just need to organize your time more, which is tricky.

So to sum, this is what you can do solo at 70.

1) Farm mats for profession leveling
2) Farm rep for certain factions (that don't require dungeons).
3) Play in Battlegrounds
4) Finish all those outland quests you didn't do (the new 2.3 makes it real easy to find quest givers, but beware that most quest chains have a point where a group quest is required (or several).

With two people, you open up a little more, now you can do Arena and 2man quests.

For raids, heroics, etc, you need 5 people obviously (or more).

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Running WoW on WINE/Ubuntu?

I think i'll try this option at some point soon, my win64 setup is getting increasingly slow (yes, i defraged, uninstalled, etc).

Anyway if anyone is in the same boat, here are some resources.

1) WINE WoW HOWTO

2) Article talking about commercial WINE offerings, plus link to #3 in list.

3) Ubuntu WoW setup guide

4) WINE FAQ (of sorts) for Ubuntu

5) Using restricted ATI drivers for WOW

6) WOW WINE HOWTO for Ubuntu

Unfortunately all of these are out of date by at least a year. Will try to find something more current.

Update: I did get this to mostly work, following the instructions to add the restricted ATI drivers for 3D performance. The game, however, lacked sound (eventually I fixed that in the OS but not WINE by disabling onboard sound and just using my Audigy SE). Further, the resolution was odd, showing as a window and not full-screen. Lastly and more important, my character seemed to be stuck in a circle, something about the keyboard controls was very screwed up. Further work wasn't able to fix these issues (and actually made things worse, now i can't see the OS at all due to display issues).

Update2: Thanks to commenter, i got fullscreen to work. Run winecfg, in graphics tab, deselect "allow DirectX apps", select "Allow windows manager", deselect "emulate a virtual desktop", select "allow pixel shader". Also like he said get the applytoforehead mod.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Monday, November 19, 2007

Minimum Kara specs

Found this little gem of a site listing minimum Kara specs. (via One Among Many, from BRK linkage)

Here are the reqs for Hunters:

Hunter

BM:
8000 hp, 6000 mana, 1450 ap, 17.5% crit, 75 hit

MM:
8000 hp, 6000 mana, 1750 ap, 17.5% crit 75 hit


For me, I have 7000 hp, 6000 mana, 1259 RAP, 19.8% crit, 48 +hit

Not bad, but RAP needs to go up (and +crit needs to go down i guess). Also +hit needs to go up. The problem is, the only place you can get this gear is heroics, everything else is a side-grade at best. And heroics will tear you a new one with this gear. So i pray arena season 1 stuff is released soon.

Found this discussion in looking for kara gear, may help some people. Also don't miss the BRK super-spectacular Kara gearing guide, although thats only for BOE stuff.

Also Kaliban's class gear list shows the best gear for the class. It's a bit limited, but useful!


Monday, November 12, 2007

Ogri'la attuned

Or whatever. I can do the Ogri'la dailies now. Last night we got a PUG and i dragged the best healer on the server, Red along. It took us something like 3 hours. Had to run 5 5man quests, pretty easy once you get there, but there's alot of running around. And waiting for ppl. At one point, two ppl took off to get to the video store, we spent 20' cooling our heels. What else could we do? I couldn't leave the grp, i needed the quests done. Anyway I asked Red if i could tip him 50g for wasting hours of his precious time, and he passed it up. So, yeah i'm all for tipping ppl, and I like the BRK note of throwing them a green or two (why i dunno, but it makes you feel good).

Kara Keyed

This went down on Saturday I believe. Anyway I was bemoaning my lack of a Kara key while everyone was in Kara. (just the day before a cry went out for dps ppl needed in Kara run). Long story short, the ringers came out (apparently a reference to boxing), Crazy the best tank in the world, Minnx, the awesome lock, my good friends Soon/Jalee (whom i'm close to, been w/ them for months now), and me, the little Hunter. Anyway, we did 18 rounds of badness. Crazy tanked the main. Crazy tanked the adds. Crazy tanked the bosses. It was phenominal. I just pew-pewed the main, and really anything Crazy was hitting. We did it in one pass (well two).

Why two passes? To clear the trash in the beginning (soemthing like 60 gators and other swamp diezens), Crazy goes on runs to gather up a bunch, then runs back to us. I lay down explosive trap (remember, Crazy is a tanking god paly, so he does AOE threat grabbing), and Volley. Soon does his fire storm. Eveyrone else just prays Jalee can heal Crazy. Well it went well the first time (and i've never seen such AOE, with about 20 mobs around crazy), but apparently they were too much for crazy, couldn't heal him quick enough. So down he goes. Then they eat Soon (squish mage). Then, they come for me, #3 on hate list. Before i can say "oh fuck", i'm dead, 1 sec max. And everyone wipes in similar fashion, and we all haev a good laugh, cause that's some serious shit, tanking 20 elite mobs at once.

Anyway, BM is over, and i swear i'll never run that freaking instance again. 3 bosses, nothing dropped for me (and like BRK said, i passed everything, and even gave Jalee my silk so she can make, whatever)

BRK is god, really. He's got this shit down. I passed everything on this run, bc I knew my guildies had other shit to do than run me around and get me Kara geared. So ppl got 3 nice shards, and a bunch of crap greens (i didn't look). I got my key, most important thing.

Friday, November 9, 2007

Got my helm of second sight

As discussed here. Getting the helm is no picnic, you need to finish the three Gorefiend's quests, the hardest of which is the Gorefiend's armor quest, which requires a 5 man group, and very careful positioning. You need to be at 71,81 in SMV, pull him using MD, and jump down to the left-side hill facing the valley with the denmother. Then you (hunter) can be actually useful. Then after these three quests, you have to defeat Gorefiend himself, which is fairly straightforward.

Anyway hopefully i'll do BM this weekend and start to run kara next week.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Not quite Kara keyed

Been playing too much WoW, so i'm cutting back. Didn't get the Kara attunement finished. Guild ran me thruogh slabs, SV, Arca to get 3 part key. Then i didn't realize i needed to do Old Hillsbrad before Black Morass, so I did OH. Tried BM, wiped on it many times. Gave up. So I'M STILL NOT KEYED!!! Argh. Oh well, it'll happen. Meanwhile i finished almost all end-game solo quests, meaning i'm out of money basically (was main source of income). So now i either need to level herb, find grps to do grp quests, do the 5man quest to start netherdrake attunement, run instances to get gear and rep, or..oh wait thats it. But yeah i'm starting to feel its the beginning of the end for my long time friend Gibbiex and Kenny, her faithful pet boar. I'd be happier to get her into a kara grp. I'll have to see how i feel about it after taking a bit of a break.

Get off the cross

This is pure win. From a field guide to bad paly's.



Delusions of Persecution Man

Management: Ask them why Blizzard would want to maliciously attack people who have been giving them money fairly continuously for years. If this doesn't work, suggest they get off the cross because the shamans need the wood for their totems.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

More hunter gear - helms

Another on my semi-random posts of good gear for 70 hunters.

First, this is the cream of the crop, at tier 6. You wont get it any time soon if you just hit 70. Forgetaboutit.

However, there's this pretty good quest reward from SMV (Stalker's Helm of Second Sight). Thottbot says its a pretty easy quest too (not a group quest), but dismiss pet before you kill the big bad.

And finally when in Kara look for this (Cowl of Defiance) and this (Steelspine Faceguard).

Interestingly, the total RAP from the quest reward (Stalker's Helm is just as good as the stuff from Kara. The kara gear has more INT, but the Stalker has 3 gem slots! So you can massively increase your RAP with that quest reward.

Almost Kara Keyed!

So last night, after much begging and abasement, my new guild ran me through Shadow Labs to get my first key. It was *long*, the key is at the very end of the instances. It took about 5 hours to completely clear it, but we did pretty well. We wiped a few times on trash 6-pulls, usually bc of a DC or a runner (which would aggro another set of 6 mobs).

I was the highest on the damage meter! I know we hunters shouldn't get too excited about that, but consider that all the others had better gear that me, and other ranged dps'er (a lock) had nearly full epics. I had a few blues but mostly quest reward greens. Think about that, if I was doing better at my job than a guy decked out in epics, then I will kick unholy ass when I get to kara and get a full set of gear from there (which may take a very long time, granted). Anyway, i've done half a dozen instances in the last week, and I'm getting much better. Not too much trap breaking. Not too much deaths (there were a few stupid deaths on my part though, those trash mobs really hit hard!). Once i got into the rythem i was pretty good. It also helps that everyone else knew the instances and knew the bosses. Surprisingly, the bosses weren't extremely challenging, we didn't do wipe after wipe on them.

Anyway after than, we ran steamvents briefly to get another piece of the key, so i just need arcatraz. I didn't get any boss drop blues :( The sonic spear, unfortunately, didn't drop off of murmur (very sad). I'll love to run SL again to try and get that spear though. Whats nice is that i'm the highest level hunter in the guild, which means, at least for now, any hunter gear that comes my way I can grab without competition.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Joys of PUGS

This is a great post on the ten commandments of PUGs by Kaestrel. Everyone should read this and heed.

I've been doing a few PUGs to try to get Kara keyed and get some halfway decent gear.
It usually doesn't go well, since there aren't enough experienced and well-geared people in the group (and there are 16 new instances in OL, I've only done 4 of them so far).

Example 1: Sunday morning, ran Shadow Labs (which I need for first part of kara key). We died at the first boss.

Example 2: Botanica in Tempest Keep, this group had it together mostly, but we wiped hard at the second boss, which requires you to melee the adds, I am of course not a melee person. We could probably do this with 3 melee types, me, and healer.

Example 3: Stek Halls (or something like that. This was a 65-68 instance (the others were 70 instances, designed for level 70 players), and was easier, but it was quite late, nobody knew what they were doing (first time through for all of us). We downed first boss but kept wiping on trash en route to second boss. Pulling, heck just being in this instance is very hard, lack of manuever room, tons of mobs together, etc.

Anyway instances are fun, but so far have yet to bear fruit. If i only had a guild that I could run instances with! (oh wait, i do, but they won't let me go...)

But something must be said about the greatness that is the voicechat in 2.2. Its so hugely useful I can't describe it. The divide between those who do and those who don't have a mic is vast. Its very hard to communicate effectively while running around and getting killed without a mic; you are too busy to type quickly. I actually think its a huge sign of the quality of teh player if they have a mic or not (and use it).

Here are my thoughts.

1) Dont' talk too much (i break this alot). People tend to be very focused in instances, and inane chatter may break concentration.

2) Don't chew and talk, don't chew while wearing mic. Easy and obvious.

3) Don't trash other people using mic. Its harder to be mean to people via voice than it is via chat text. But some are still asses.

Mics have rescued horrid PUG situations to enjoyable, fun events. Wipe 10 times in a row? At least everyone has commentary on it. :)

Hunter weapons at 70

Lets talk about the weapons, since that list is nicely available. As you can see,the weapons are scored based on a statistic (HAP) that indicates how useful the item is for hunters. There are three things that are useful for hunters: pet hit point/armor, which STA helps, mana pool, which INT helps, and ranged attack power, which AGI helps. STR is worthless, SPI is not really helpful at all. Avoid those two at all costs. The items you want to acquire depends on your purpose. If you want to go PVP, then a large mana pool is real useful, as is STA to some degree. (I'd take a large mana pool over RAP any day in AV).

So anyway, PVP - more focused on burst damage and a large mana pool, so +crit is good, +int is good. PVE - instances, you want +STA for your off-tank pet, you want +INT to not run out of mana, but mostly you want RAP, AGI, +crit, and +hit.

So with that in mind, how about the [Sonic Spear] vs [CrystalForged War Axe]

SS has great stats: +hit(24), +atk(62), +agi(35), and +sta(30). Great for increasing your attack power and thus DPS, and also helps you hit those 70 bosses. The total increase in RAP is ~160

CF Axe has huge +sta (50), but also +atk (80) and +crit (27)

Clearly the axe is inferior, but you can get at the AH, whereas the Spear requires Shadow Labs runs, which isn't cakewalk for non-kara geared folks.

Level 70 gear for hunters - overview

After you hit 70, the way to advance is through gear improvement. The difference between the well-geared 70 and the quest-reward geared 70 is about two-fold (which is huge). There are a number of paths to take to get this:

1) Arena (the arena rewards are quite good, but hunters are terrible at Arena play)
2) Battlegrounds (the rewards as far as I can tell are not great)
3) 5-man instances. These provide very good gear, but requires a group of 5 people. I found that its quite difficult to do this with PUGs (pickup groups) who have no idea what they are doing. (describe more fully here)
Anyway instances are fun, but so far have yet to bear fruit. If i only had a guild that I could run instances with! (oh wait, i do, but they won't let me go...)

4) Auction House. There's actually a good deal of gear at the auction house from bind on equip stuff that drops in the world. For example this axe looks good to me, and at 70g is a bargain. But its probably not currently in AH, since its a rare item. BRK has a whole (as usual excellent) post on Hunter gearing for Kara, using mostly AH stuff (or maybe all AH stuff)

Anyway this list has a bunch of hunter weapons and where to get them.

Monday, October 22, 2007

Days of yore?

Whats it with WoW Insider these days that they have so much fondness for EverQuest (EQ)? I played it and absolutely hated it, to the point where I didn't touch MMORPGs for 3 years.

Anyway here is what I wrote in response to this reminiscence

I played EQ for a bit 3ish years ago. I *absolutely* hated it. I finally quit when I was griefed to no end by a teenager. Remember those days where your body was stuck somewhere completely inaccessible? Yeah, no thanks. WoW is *so* much better. WoW is playable, I don't know how people got to love EQ; the graphics were terrible, the gameplay stupid, etc. Or maybe I didn't know how to play. Whatever. WoW is what EQ could never be; easyish to play, hard to master, lots of stuff to do with people who are nice and friendly. Didn't find that much at all on EQ. So, yeah, I don't know what Robin is smoking here, but my EQ experience was completely opposite.

I play on a RP server, and it is annoying that the chat is never in RP (never ever, really), nobody does RP, nobody even tries. I went there to escape the kids, I mostly succeeded I thinkk. My server is full of very nice, very kind people (there are some asshats but few and far between). Especially at 70, you don't get to that level, generally speaking, by being an ass hat (but I know a few...). I think once you get out of the starting areas and the 10-20 areas, the inanity dies out.

I wish there was more RP too, but what can you do if the community doesn't want to enforce it? You can't realisitically expect Blizz to have any sort of interest in protecting RP, its like trying to bail a sinking boat with a spoon. GMs have been very helpful to me every time I needed it though, so koodoos to the WoW GMs! (sooooo much better that EQ GMs, which were non-existent, not to mention the support, non-existent)

More Guild Drama

I also switched guilds, again. "Hands of the Light" just wasn't working for me, so I went with Jalee/Soon's guild, "The Ancient Ones". No hard feelings towards HOTL, but I couldn't get anything done. It took me on average 24 hours /played to gain levels (maybe less, but not much), because no one would help, everyone wanted run throughs, etc.

Ancient Ones is a end-game guild; there is nobody serious there who doesn't have a 70. They do Kara, but casually. So far a good group of people, but I just don't know many of them yet (but those i do know i like alot).

Guilds are like families, but you have to find your fit. For example, after I left HOTL, my old guild leader Votaire decided he wasn't happy there either (he had my first guild Force of Nature merge with HOTL, so he could step down as GL). So I asked if he wanted to come to Ancient Ones. He came, and left the same day, went back to his old guild FON (is GL of it now i guess). Meanwhile all the old FON people are split into four guilds; some which I don't like are in a guild I won't mention (b/c i can't remember and don't care), some are sticking with HOTL, some are in AO, and some are back at FON.

I'm glad i went to Ancients, its the only guild I've been in that is actually doing Kara and is serious about it. HOTL wanted to do old end-game stuff (which would be fine if we had already cleared Kara and couldn't do more, but it requires serious time investment to get attuned to those instances, as bad as Kara). FON is a leveling guild, strictly for 50s and below. That other guild, well who knows what they'll do, probably not much (because the GL is an ass and everyone knows it). Anyway, it's sad to split off from people i've known for 4 months, but I really need to move on, I haven't much time to spend with guildies when I don't get anything out of it, since I play with my wife and my RL friend (separately), I don't have much time to play on my main, and if I was stuck running instances, i would have zero time (which was the case for a good month).

ding

I hit level 70 this morning, so I'm finally done grinding XP for my main character (in Netherstorm, great place to level quick). Now i get to grind rep for Kara attunement and to get my netherdrake mount. I really, really want one. Anyway so i'll spend my time now doing that. (Here is the link for Nether Drake grind process).

Monday, October 15, 2007

no Hunter deadzone?

Wow, this is just huge. Well, i had a huge commentary on the issue that i posted, but i didn't get the confirmation email (with the comment) yet. So i'll post that later. But basically, yeah, this makes hunters much easier to play, esp. in instances where its often quite tight quarters. And i'm tired of hearing people say 'oh hunters suck', true there are a zillion hunters out there, and true they are easy to play. But we're pretty vital. My friend Faradhim (priest) says the game is much easier when i'm on (actually too easy, we can coast through any quest, and there are no red quests available). Anyway, this is a good thing.

Oh, here's what i said on WoWInsider.

68 hunter main here. I'm pretty good, but not BRK (but
who is?).

Deadzone, yeah I rejoice. But I also just got through a teaching a
training session explaining how our entire reason for being is making
sure mobs are at range. So now no deadzone somewhat nerfs this. But
I also thought, while doing the training session in ZF, that most
instances are pretty hard for hunters, with LOS and deadzone issues.

Almost impossible to kite like you do out in the open (by kite i mean
move around in a circle, not run away like in UBRS). So this will
mean kiting is so much easier in instances now. What most people
don't realize is that we still have huge issues:

1) Line of Sight (nuf said).
2) You must be standing still to place shots.
3) Our best shot, steady shot, has a 2 sec cast time. Means it can and will be
interrupted easily by PVP people or mobs.
4) We still won't be able to use ranged weapons in melee. We'll still get our butts kicked by warriors in melee, most likely.

Finally, yes this will make hunters easier to play, but its also very easy to distinguish good from bad hunters. Really, you can do it in 10 seconds. Do they break CC? Can they kite? Can they trap? What's their shot rotation? Are the serpent stinging trash mobs? Pretty dang easy.

Oddly, BRK has been silent on the issue so far.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Fun at Earthen Ring

My best friend and I are finally playing WoW on earthen ring, we're playing horde side. It comes at an opportune time as my guild in blackwater raiders is breaking up (slowly but surely). So its a nice diversion from my level 65 main and 3 alts there (bank alt, 22 druid, 12 warrior). Being second in command of the guild is somewhat laborious, particularly when it seems like your the only one who cares about keeping the guild running. Anyway time for a vacation.

Monday, September 24, 2007

WoW broken

For me...There is a system freeze issue I caught while upgrading my CPU/mobo/RAM combo on sunday. Went from Athlon 3000+ to Athlon X2 4800+. Nice jump, no noticable effect on WoW or bioshock, oh, except the former doesn't actually work for more than a few minutes. The symptoms include being able to load the game, run authetication, login to your character/toon, and then a few seconds or minutes later, it locks up, hard. Reboot required.

Anyway this has been reported here to Blizzard but no official response yet.

Here are some things to try for those with a similiar issue.

1) Change the config.wtf file

2) Update AMD X2 drivers (link to dual-core optimizer here)

3) Disable sound or run with one processor.

Update: these have done nothing for me. I also tried decreasing CPU/GPU speed in case it was a heat/power issue).

Update2: Sent the board back (Abit AN52), and got a crappy ECS board. It works fine. (go figure) So i'm happily WoWing when i have time.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Uldaman conquered

Okay, big deal, i'm level 65, the mobs are 40ish. But still. Some guildies wanted me to run instances for them, and I did. Rikku and I did Ulda for the first time on Tuesday, it took a few hours i guess. Rikku died a few times.

What was memorable is that since we were both first-timers we had to figure out how to open that secret vault area (pretty simple, you need a medallion from a dwarf NPC and a staff from a boss in the map room). Further, we had to figure out how to get to the last boss (Archaedas), finally I did research and figured out you need 3 people to summon at the altar in the room below him, and again 3 people in the altar room with the final boss. Of course poor Rikku didn't last long in that last boss fight.

It start with your party around the altar, in a circular room full of 50 non-elite mobs plus Archaedas himself, a level 47 boss. You summon him, and immediately he starts pummelling you with melee attacks. But that's not bad. Every few seconds, he activates another of his goons, so you have multiple mobs on everyone real quick. However, if you take him down, all the other mobs disappear!

I found this encounter very tough, I don't see how a 5 man party at the appropriate level could handle this. I one-shotted him when rikku and I went through, and i wiped the first time, but got him the second time when Rikku, Ela, and I went through last night.

To switch guilds or not?

So there I was, in the newbie channel, my first night of WoW (eons ago) and this message popped up "Forces of Nature is looking for members!". I replied, I figured out how to do that. I asked what the requirements and application was. He laughed and just invited me. I had joined my first WoW guild.

I steadily progressed through the ranks, and people came and went. Eventually I got the OL, and everything was mostly fine. There were several people my level, and two who just hit 70 (a priest/mage combo), so they could help us with instances. Then things blew up, drama ensued, the priest/mage ended up leaving.

I was torn. I really liked them, being the only other adult in the guild. However, at the end of the blow-up, I ended up second in command of the guild, with the power to promote or kick people out of the guild. And things went from there, that was a month ago. However, recently, my dwarf has been lonely in the outlands, no other guildies around who were willing to group or help out.

You see, our guild fractured, one part having nothing to do with me, and I have nothing to do with them. And there's that allure of the other guild, where the mage/priest left to, and supposedly that guild is a utopia of high level, mature adult players. The issue is I like the power, I like being able to run people through lower level instances without much effort (if only I could rez!).

So mostly my time on WoW is either playing with my wife (me - warrior, her - priest), shuffling bags around (i have too much loot), and running instances for low level guildes. My progression through outlands has halted, at level 65. Quests are hard to get and hard to do (for right now), and i have the best loot i could get without instances. But I'm somewhat broke (supporting multiple alts, plus guildies).

So i'll either a) switch to this new guild, b) start my own guild, bringing along my proteges (if they want) or c) stay in old guild, running instances for people. Tough decision!

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Cool resources

Random stuff here, i'll organize it later.

Kara attunement guide (from a feral druid perspective)



Warrior talent guide


Kaliban's class loot list for hunters

Quest addon

Exceptional quests

Guild addon

Guild rules

WoW Comic


Ramparts walkthrough

Soloing instances

The Steady Shot macro: (From here)

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/castsequence reset=3 Steady Shot, Auto Shot
/castrandom [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Enchanting level up guide


Hunter loot (also see here for discussion)

Places to go in Azeroth

Hunter UI

Guides: Alliance leveling guide 1-10 11-20 for hunters

Add-on repository

Best of BRK

Here they are, to me.

1) The first five commandments of hunterdom. (1-5)

2) The second five commandments (6-10)

3) Gearing up for Kara

BRK - Hunters useless?

BRK has another great post on the sad state of hunterdom. I've been here post OL, but I have never, ever seen a group say 'we need a hunter'. Usually it's 'no thanks, we need real DPS and CC' Instance groups rely on four things. A tank to hold the mob, a healer to heal the tank, crowd control to keep other mobs away, and DPS to pound the heck out of the mob which the tank is targetting. Now, we're pretty good, as hunters, but we're no tanks, and our pets can't compete in instances, where they make short work of pets. Anyway the real issue is that the class is so easy to play, and so many play it, that there is a real lack of other worthwhile classes. So we're almost never in demand. Unless people want you to run through instances 10+ levels below you. Then its' cake.

Welcome!

This is my new WoW blog. After seeing all the WoW blogs and doing WoW related forums for so long, i thought it'd be useful to create my own place to put down my experiences and so forth. I'm currently Gibbiex in Blackwater Raiders, for today of Forces of Nature guild. Enjoy!

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