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.

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