And from the Onion

While wandering around the onion news network site at work I came across this article
And I completely understand where the guy is coming from, cus as a friend said years ago “Even dressed as a geeky nerd She’s Hot”. A sentiment I completely agree with!

Wisp 

Onyxia is Back but

patch last week contained the revamped, upped to lvl 80 Onyxia boss fight! And… I only have a small bit of disappointment that I’m not in a raid guild that’s going to go kill her. Maybe the guild wreckers broke my love of the game or maybe it’s just another temporary downward spiral of wow apathy? Who knows? Only time can tell.

Wisp

Shopping Outfits…

And for something just plain funny was a link from The Anorak to a blog called People of Walmart. Pictures people have taken of walmart customers, and cars in the carpark, in the states. Makes me feel less bad about walking around to sainsburys in a pair of baggy tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt!

And as ASDA has been owned by walmart for a few years now maybe I could go on a hunting trip and see if anyone here can be THAT BAD!

Wisp

Aion

This post was written a week ago! I was didn’t get around to posting it.

Pre-ordered this game on Sunday. Not really paid much attention to this or other upcoming MMO’s but with the untimely death of Elysium and some friends who had been doing the beta’s for this game I decided to try it out. Official UK launch isn’t till Friday but due to pre-ordering I’m in on a head start code.

Made my first character on the server we had decided on and played around for a couple of hours on Monday night, and the early levels are pretty much average MMO faire. 

The Tuesday after work I logged in and discovered a 7hour 20mins queue to log in! This prompted me to make another char on a different server. Which I took through to level 10 (got my wings). 

Skilling up crafting skills is interesting. You get work orders to make items that get handed in, most of the materials for which are supplied to you. Crafting doesn’t seem to be a fast process but you aren’t dumped with tonnes of junk items no-one needs. We will see how this progresses.

Tonight after work if there is no queue on the first server that’s where I’ll go! If on the other hand there isn’t I’ll start a new char on the second server. The reason is I don’t want to commit too much time to a char until I know where we will be settling for the long haul!

Wisp

Such is the way of WoW!

Its taken two weeks for me to get my current thoughts into words, and those who think mmo's are just games won't understand but tough!

Thursdays raid we went through and killed the just opened last boss in Trial of the Crusade and started onto the hard mode versions. Plus I got the first peice of the new set of tiered armour.

Friday I missed the raid because of a friends birthday.

Saturday I logged on to discover what had happened.

Most of the officers and a large group of the guilds raiders had split to form a new guild with some of the raiders from Eureka. So two guilds those 2nd & 3rd on the server alliance side die. 

And now the bit that may not make sense to those who don't understand, I currently feel like a group of people, including some I would have considered friends, have effectivly said "sorry you can't play this game any more". Yup I could join another raiding guild, and probably will. But I will have to move backwards and I've done that before and is pissed me off totally.

At the moment just logging into wow makes me depressed as hell, I'll get over it eventually but for the moment I am just fed up.

Wisp

Blizzcon

Just watched the class & professions panel and...

NO MORE MANA!!!

At long last hunters are losing mana for focus :D

Link Tooltips

Hopefully the link at the end of this sentence should have a tool tip! Siren's Cry.

And this is me on WoW Armoury Light - Wispcat.
 
Wisp

Argent Tournament Dailies

I’ve become a champion of Ironforge today completing all 5 alliance factions. Which means no more stupid Jousting. At least till patch 3.2 - Tomorrow.....

The reason it’s stupid? Well to start with I thought it was a cool idea and once I got over the idiosyncrasies it is also easy. But coming back after a long break from doing it I have been reminded of the bits that bug me.

1. The NPC’s do not appear to suffer from GCD. This means they can throw a lance and then instantly charge.
2. The NPC’s can do instant 180 degree turns, I have to turn in a circle unless I jump turn but even that is slow.

Now if the above two points didn’t happen it would probably be slightly easier, but it would be more fun if trying to out manoeuvre your opponents had a point.

Wisp

The Butterfly Effect

On Monday night, technically it was Tuesday morning, I watched an awesome film as per the name of this post. A kid grows up with quite a violent childhood but suffers from black outs where he can’t remember anything that has happened, usually at traumatic times.

He grows up and goes to college (that’s American college so in reality its University!), and his thesis is on memory. Well since an incident a long time ago he has been keeping a journal of his life and while reading a bit he finds himself reliving a blacked out memory. 

The kids dad was a nut case, and one of the scenes of his growing up was going to see his dad. There is a black out in the middle of this scene which jumped to his dad trying to kill him. After his flash back the kid (can you tell I’ve forgotten his name yet?) talks to his mum about his memories and it turns out his dad had found a way to…???

It turns he can go back in time to these black outs and change the past. The result is the rewriting of the future, and huge nose bleeds as his brain struggles to store years of new memories in a few seconds. But each time he goes back to try and fix some of the horrific parts of his childhood other new bad experiences happen to him or his childhood friends.

In time each of the blackouts from the earlier part of the movie get played out in his time travelling stunts, sometimes more than once and he ends up in a future where he didn’t make his journals, the reading of which is what sends him backwards, and in a mental institution.

The main focus of his attempts to fix things was his best friend as a child who had suffered from her sick fathers attentions. It turns out that when her parents split up she decided to stay with the dad who she hated because if her & her brother had gone with their mother she would never have seen the main character again.

So to the end of the film, where he has to watch an old home movie of when he met this girl, no journals in this reality, and he goes back in time again and rather than being nice so they become friends he tells her to never come near him or he will kill her mother. She then chooses to go with her mother when the parent split and time moves forwards where they didn’t know each other.

Years later they walk past each other in the street and both stop, he of course has memories of the various histories from 8 years ago, she only met him as a child. She turns to look at him and then turns away just before he looks back. Both then walk away.

The film was one of those that left me wheeling just sort of thinking WOW at the end, it is now very much on the list of films I need to have in my collection.

Wisp

Temporary Outage – Posts End Marker

The preceding three posts where written a week or so ago, but I’ve had a few internet connectivity issues and couldn’t be bothered to rewrite them!

Wisp

Two very useful rings…

In my experience of playing Elder Scroll games there are two very useful magical effects to have in items. Water breathing & Night Eyes. So a ring to cover each of these where my first creations.

Must admit the blue vision of night eyes is really weird, especially outside. And when hunting for dropped weapons I often take it off and cast a light spell!

On the other side my water breathing ring allowed me to clear out a largely underwater cavern of Argonian Tribesmen without having to worry about casting a spell every 2 mins! The number of Glass, & Ebony daggers I collected paid for a silly house in the imperial city and all its upgrades, plus a load of new enchantments on my elven & glass armour :)

Wisp

Oblivion

Well, it has been years since I played Morrowind and even longer since Daggerfall! Both awesome games. And Oblivion doesn’t fail to impress either. Most of my weekend just disappeared it really has been a while now since I’ve played a game that totally immerses me – Wow stopped doing that a long time ago!

So I may only be 3 years behind on getting this game but hey who cares now. My first character is a custom class I’ve called Blade Mage. Concept is simple Up close and personal it fights with a one handed weapon and shield using touch magic attacks. At range it uses magic to fight.

This time around I also decided to avoid the trap I fell in with Morrowind and that was Mods. You see After doing that game once I went looking for mods to improve the experience with new stuff. Unfortunatly in my hunting I founds tons of cool looking mods and I spent weeks trying to get them all talking together! Which being honest failed and a new game came along to play. So even though there will be loads of awesome player made mods for the game I have just installed the official Bethesda ones, along with the “Unofficial patch for the official mods”.

Well that’s about if for now I’ve just got into the arcane university and magic item making time has arrived :)

Wisp

Only Raiding ATM But…

I finally got my weapon upgrade from Auraya last Thursday - Siren's Cry.

And on Friday I picked up my T7.5 gloves giving me this nice little set bonus.

Maybe, I can dream you know :p, with the bonus proccing from steady shot, and the large amount of Armour Penetration from my Lotrafen, Beast Mastery may work. The primary attack is Steady which is physical and benefits from both. I think I’ll have to put some time into finishing levelling up Paper Cut then I will do some live tests!!!

Wisp

Temporary Outage – Posts Begin Marker

The following three posts where written a week or so ago, but I’ve had a few internet connectivity issues and can’t be bothered to rewrite them!

Wisp

Think it’s another burnout phase!

Over the last few weeks I’ve only really logged into wow for raids. This is because I’ve once again hit a stage of not really being interested in the game. Unfortunately this is putting a damper on my farming plans for “The Insane” but until I feel ready to hit the game properly again there is not much I can do about that!

So what have I been doing during this time? Well I brought a replacement copy of Starcraft and have reached the last Protos Mission, tonight I get to start on Brood War.

I’ve watched Seasons 1&2 of Supernatural with only 6 episodes left of season three. I have to admit that’s an awesome series. Also season one of Bloodlines, the final season of Battlestar Galactica and season 5 of Charmed are all waiting to be watched.

Well when I think of anything worth writing about I’ll add it here!

Wisp

I could be poet laureate…

At lunch in the heat I came up with the future* award winning poem, in lines of 8.

Suicides Storm
A shout that cuts across the air,
Voice as ever shrill and fickle,
The words a knife in my despair,
Blood now slowing to a trickle.

These twisting dreams of time and space,
The call of shadows echoing loud,
I fell them rip me from this place,
Beneath the thund’ring lightning cloud.

What truly lies beyond the veil,
A journey of eons seconds long,
But if I slip my heart may fail,
My tortured soul must learn the song.

*If you are unaware I live with my head in the clouds of my own little world.

Wisp

A Comment and a Plea

It has been way too hot for me this week, making it hard to concentrate at work. So on the times when my mind wandered I came up with the following bits of prose.

A Comment on Law
Twisted and warped by the greed of man,
Justice is nothing more than another commodity,
The rich can buy their so called innocence,
Thus making a mockery of our legal systems.

Storm Plea
This heat is dampening both mind and skin,
The very air it fights against my breathing,
So for my eyes of fire and nose of water, 
Give me a storm to rage all summer!

Wisp

Ravenholdt(ed)

After 10 trips back and forth from Southshore to the manor I finally reached exalted, and only a week behind schedule. (This was caused be getting bored with the grind and avoiding it for several days). And with one more quick trip after to max out the faction.

Now I need to get Steamwheedle back up from Revered to Exalted and collect another 92 DMF decks!

Wisp

The Zombies are Coming!!!

On the web there are many places to get hold of small time management type games to idly pass the time. One that I have been using for over a year now is Big Fish Games. I buy a credit a month and depending on my mood pick up a time management, puzzle or word game. Most are simple in that I complete them in 2-3 days and then move on but occasionally I get one that just grabs my attention and sort of swallows my time whole! In exactly the same way a full scale Roleplay or Strategy game can do. Well on Thursday last week a game of this time popped up – Plants vs Zombies.

The idea is simple you plant, plants into your garden such as the Peashooter to kill the waves of zombies before they can get into your house to eat your brains! So I’ve completed the adventure, all the mini games and puzzles, completed all the survival modes but still I’m spending hours playing the game!

I think part of it is the zen garden! As the play you can pick up plants for your garden which you just water and nurture until they are fully grown. So I’m repeating the adventure and survival games in order to pick up as many plants as I can, need them all!

Which I think partially explains why I’m doing this! The game is fun and I have an addictive personality when it comes to games….

Wisp

The 700th Junk Box.

On Tuesday night I was on standby for the raid and so made use of my time in collecting another 150 heavy junk boxes in Tyr’s hand, passing the halfway point in the process! I’m down to a mere 13 hours of farming left! so am expecting to be exalted with Ravenholt a week on Friday!

On another goal I made up my first Outlands DMF deck in time for this month’s Fair and put myself onto 0/12000 Honoured. From farming the materials for making the outland cards I have noticed the real slow down factor is the Primal Life. Even buying all the stuff on the AH it doesn’t keep up with pigment from the 50% herbs.

So the plan to deal with this is finish of Ravenholt and then get Sneakycat up five more levels to 65 so she can get Wrath inscription to make Northrend DMF cards. Once that’s done I will have a reason to get the Druid up to 78 for herb farming, It also means I can buy and mill the new herbs which have a much bigger supply on the AH!

Wisp

First Hard Mode Uldar Kill

Sunday we cracked Thorim hard mode after wipes at 5% then 7% then 2%. That fight was a seriously fun challenge, despite the loot being rubbish. I am now looking forward to next week when I’m hoping we get Hodir and Freya+1 done. Flame leviathan +4 would also be good but I think the plan is to just move up to +3.

Wisp

National Qualifier Season

So last weekend the qualifier season for the 3rd World of Warcraft TCG national championships stared. The format is slightly different this time round thought as there are two types of qualifier, local & grand.

In a local qualifier only the winner qualifies for the Nationals, where as in the grand qualifier it’s the top 4 players. In both cases the qualifier passes down if somebody has already qualified.

The next thing that’s important to know about this set of events is that until July when Fields of Honour becomes legal the format is constructed, then it gets switched to sealed.

I’m planning to hit at least one competition a week this time round starting with the first Grand qualifier of the season in Leicester on Sunday. 

My hero to start with will be Chloe Mithrilbolt but that is sure to change as the UK meta game potentially adjusts over the course of the month!

On Sunday when I get home I’ll post up the deck list and how that little Gnome tank faired.

Wisp

Emptying Scarlet Pockets

After the Yogg kill last night I spent almost an hour on the rogue running around and around Tyr’s hand. And the average number of junk boxes was about 1 per minute. So with travel time to a post box and run back I’m looking at 50 boxes an hour. 

With 1250 more needed for exalted, once I hand in the 50 from last night, that’s a mere 25 hours of grinding. Which on the scale of things, like the time spent on Steamwheedle rep, is absolutely nothing! So by the end of June I’m expecting to be Exalted with ravenholdt. It’s silly really In that levelling a rogue to 60 will have taken 3 to 4 time longer than the job I needed the char for!

Wisp

Who ordered Yogg(urt)?

Last night we downed this stupid ugly giant brain. The fight is intense taking almost 15 minutes but reasonably simple once the pieces fall into place. So now he is down I’m hoping that we as a guild start working on more hard mode achievements and kills because I want my 310% Protodrake mount! 

I do know Tuesday will be hard mode council as they are the only boss fight left in this save.

Wisp

Progress at Last!

I've not put as much effort into the achievement as I could have, but thats partly due to raiding Uldar, Doing stuff in the Argent Tournament. Plus Cards and being all over the place out of the game. But on Friday when my rogue reached 55 I decided that this weekend I will push it to 60 and then get started on my Ravenholdt and DMF rep.

So the rogue is now level 60, and Tyr's hand is a perfect place for farming junkboxes. There are a LOT of humanoids to pick pocket, and the place is large enough that by doing circuits the starting mobs have stuff back in there pockets when you get to them again. So 100 junkboxes handed in today - 1300 more to go... Will start timeing my circuits later on.

Also getting to outlands means Sneaky now has inscription over 325 allowing me to make outland DMF cards. So off went the druid to farm the trees in Skettis. 20 trees (5 circuits of kills) takes about 45 mins. I've only done two 45 mins trips, but grabbing any extra herbs its averaged out at 3 cards worth of ink & primals a trip.

So.. Progress is being made, its going to take a while but at least thinks are moving now :)

Wisp

So I got bored!

I have got Wisp back up to revered with the steam wheedle cartel. And then the idea of another Knot run made me shudder! So I switched over to levelling my rogue. Everything was going fine up to about level 45 when I got bored…

The upside of this is I spent a chunk of the two weeks off work for Easter avoiding playing WoW. I got through the majority of my unwatched DVD’s – Go the 11 episode straight marathon of Lost season 3 (season 4 now arrived and waiting...). I also found an online game/community site that ate up some more time, to be covered in another post, probably, maybe.

This means I’m a bit behind on my schedule and now that 3.1 has hit I have less time to work on The Insane. But I’ve not given up and the rogue is still levelling (its reached that seemingly really slow bit I remember from my main and two of my alts, between 40-55).

I’m not even going to put a time on things but the next DMF is in three weeks and I would love to have the 100 decks needed ready to hand in then…

Wisp

Accounting of Time

So last night I hit neutral with the goblins of the cartel and because it was only about 10:30 I pushed onwards to Friendly. So the halve way point has been reached and passed. The planed timeline is now:-

Wednesday – Minimum (3/6 Friendly), Best (0/12 Honoured)
Thursday – Minimum (0/12 Honoured), Best (3/12 Honoured)
Friday – Minimum (6/12 Honoured), Best (3/21 Revered)
Saturday – Minimum (3/21 Revered), Best (15/21 Revered)
Sunday – Minimum (12/21 Revered), Best (Exalted)
Monday – Minimum (18/21 Revered)
Tuesday – Minimum (Exalted)
Wednesday – Possible Patch Day but I hope not!

Ok these targets will take a lot of time, so only minimal Rogue levelling which is another reason I hope that patch isn’t next week! Now we are going to imagine that the patch hasn’t hit. It’s been a while since I levelled a toon to 60 and never in such a rush so I’m going to make some guesstimates on time to level. Up to 40 – 2 hours per level, up to 50 – 2.5 hours per level, up to 60 – 3 hours per level. Currently at level 24. 16 levels till 40 = 32 hours, 10 levels to 50 = 25 hours, 10 levels to 60 = 30 hours. Total 32+25+30 = 87 hours until level 60… This seems a bit high. Time will tell I suppose.

Wisp

The Race is On!

Ok, while on the phone to my parents I had parked myself outside of DM north ready for the next run. When I got off the phone I notice someone had typed “/s Race you to the insane!”

Interesting.. of course I wasn’t going to be the only NUTCASE working on it on the server. So I looked up this warriors reputation on the armoury and thought damn! Probably not going to beat him to server first. This individual was about 3k ahead of me on Steamwheedle rep, which is rather irrelevant as I’ll be exalted by patch day. The kicker was the fact he had already maxed out Ravenholdt and was a good 2-3k into revered of DMF.

But despite this I’m still going to try for it! I’m hoping the patch doesn’t hit next week because that will then give me at least the start of my two weeks off work to work on getting the rogue up to level 60 and farming junkboxes. If that happens I recon I can catch up on Ravenholdt and it will all come down to the DMF!

The other side effect of this is every time I arrive and leave DM I’m checking whose there and looking these people up on the armoury to see if they are competition. Maybe that shall be another post.

Wisp

Losing Sanity: The Endless Knot & Card Collecting

This post was lost in time! It has now re-found itself 2 weeks later…

Now I’m a Bloodsail Admiral its time to get back into the good graces of the Steamwheedle goblins. I have spent 4-5 hours in DM North so far with many more to go! The good news is that I’ve discovered that handing knot the mats to make a Gordok Ogre Suit is actually worth 75 rep each time! As I have a stash of Ogre Tanin already, and will get at least 1 every trip that’s a nice little boost to the grind!

Most trips into DM north will be quick, on the first hour I had hit the 5 instances and the hour cap after just 36 minutes. Some are unfortunately slow, having to kill almost every ogre to get a shackle key takes about 20-30 mins. So what do I do when I hit an instance cap? Well….

I have started levelling a rogue. Yup I feel DIRTY but it has to be done. This new char by the name of Sneakycat as I couldn’t get Ninjacat or Bubblegum, has two purposes. The first is to reach level 60 when it can pick pocket all those heavy junkboxes needed for Ravenholdt, the second is its an inscriber which is important for phase 3 and making of lots and lots and lots of Dark Moon Faire cards!

You see back in the day when the DMF first came along I went out doing all those gathering quests in order to get my 1000 or so, tickets for something I can’t even remember! What I discovered was once your rep hits friendly these quests will only give you tickets. So the answer was Darkmoon faire decks, at 350 rep a pop for turning them in. I did 4 or 5, because the Ace of Elementals used to be easy to farm and the rest of the set was cheap on the AH! But in the end though I gave up due to the expense! 

We move forward to the present day, the best way to get DMF cards now is from inscription. You can make, without cooldown, a random card from the original sets, Outland sets or Northrend sets. Get a set make a deck and sell it for a fortune on the AH or hand it in for 350 rep. Can you guess which I’m going to be doing once my rogue has a high enough inscription? There are other cards as well, the Rogues, Mages, Swords & Demons sets. These are made by lower level inscription recipes and you only need 3-5 to make a deck. The down side is they are worth only 25 rep each, but the upside is you don’t have to wait until the Faire is in town to hand them in. The last couple of days has found me buying cheap cards on the AH and making the rogue cards with my rogue.

So its maths time! I’m currently at about 2500/6000 friendly. So for exalted I need 36,500 more rep. With the small decks being 25 rep each I would need 1460 more hand ins, which is millions! So as far as buying these cards from the AH is concerned I’ve stuck a 4g a deck limit on how much I spend on a card. The bigger decks of course are worth a lot more rep so I need to get this rogue to 60 as soon as possible so it can max out inscription!

Wisp

Losing Sanity: Raising the Bloodsail!

One day behind schedule and I am now revered with Ravenholdt. I reached 11999 just before 1am within seconds of the album I was listening too finishing! A quick trip over to the manor to hand in the 5 boxes I had ready for 75 more rep and phase 1A was complete. It appears my numbers may have been wrong, which serves me write for trusting what someone wrote on wowhead! See 21000 rep at 75 per hand in is 280 hand ins, 5 boxes a hand in = 1400 total! So I need nearly 400 less than I first thought, Yipee. The boxes are phase 1B to run concurrently with phases 2 & 3!

So now its time to head on down to booty bay and start phase 2A, the death of 1800 Booty Bay Bruisers. Not sure how long this will take! I’ll know after an hour of farming, if only I could rope some friends into helping…. In fact I know a couple of Bloodsail Admirals who have not yet fixed their cartel rep.

Wisp

Losing Sanity: Ravenholdt

Yesterday before the raid I began farming Ravenholdt rep! Going from abuot 106/3000 neutral to friendly took me just under an hour. On that basis I'll do two hours tonight to get upto honoured and then over the weekend another 4 more hours to reach 11999/12k. After that I'll need about 1800 Heavy Junkboxes.

To get those I'll need a rogue... hopefully I can get people to farm em for me at 1g each, if not I'll have to level a rogue due to the AH being bare of boxes :(

Overall I think this grind won't actually be too much trouble especially as the syndicate mobs are worth 5 rep now up from 1!

Wisp

Wispcat's Formal Name

I was just curious what kind of name I'd have on Wispcat if I could choose to display all my titles at once! I've added comma's to group things together in a way I like.

Merrymaker Ambassador, Salty Chef, Elder Knight-Captain, Twilight Vanquisher Wispcat Jenkins the Explorer, the Argent Champion of the Shattered Sun, the Hallowed Champion of the Frozen Wastes,  the Seeker Guardian of Cenarius, the Exalted Champion of the Naaru,  the Diplomat Hand of A'dal the Lovefool

Wisp

Insane in the Membrane

The ultimate feat of strength is coming in patch 3.10! This feat gives the title suffix of “the Insane”. So what do I need to do to achieve this? Well…

Shen’dralar – Exalted …done
Steamwheedle Cartel – Exalted …done
Ravenholdt – Exalted …mmm ok
Darkmoon Faire – Exalted …that’s expensive!
Bloodsail Buccaneers – Honoured … FECK!!!

So on the positive side I can do Raven & DMF from playing the AH for lockboxes and cards. If I give Deathcat inscription I can even make my own cards. These two factions will take a while and probably cost a fair amount but with dailies etc the funds needed can be acquired.

The problem comes with the Bloodsail. You see to get rep I need to kill Booty Bay Bruisers which loses Booty Bay rep. And then once I have got Bloodsail rep up high enough I will need to grind DM for Knot releases to get back up from 0/36000 hated to exalted.

Exalted 999  
Revered 21,000 
Honored 12,000
Friendly 6,000 
Neutral 3,000  
Unfriendly 3,000  
Hostile 3,000  
Hated 36,000

So I am currently at about 6000/36000 hated rep with the bloodsail, so based on the chart above to hit honoured I would need 30+3+3+3+6 = 45000 rep. Each dead bruiser is worth 25 rep so I would need to kill 45000/25 = 1800 of them. 
That would be stage one completed but those 1800 bruisers would have cost be 125 Booty Bay rep each which is more than enough to drop my rep with them to 0/36000 hated.

Stage two is to get my Steamwheedle rep back upto exalted which from the chart is a tiny 84000 rep. To do this I'd need to make a couple of Knot runs to DM worth 350 rep each. Clarifying “a couple” gives 84000/350 = 240 trips. At level 70 I averaged about 3 an hour, from what I've been told at level 80 that should be upto 5. So I'm looking at 48 hours worth of farming in DM to get my rep back!!!

Well that is actually a scary amount of work so I had better get started! Bye Bye what sanity I had left.

Wisp

WoW Intervention

An amusing YouTube video about World of Warcraft players.

Wisp

To die a bit inside...

Ok, plenty of post to come, but this short one for now.

Since the patch I've been Survival, and guess who I found while doing my Oracle dailies? The one, the only, the rare as hell, the awsome looking spirit beast - Loque'nahak but not being 51 points into the Beast Mastery tree he was untameable... so I killed him for the Northern Exposure achivement and in doing so a part of me died.

Wisp

Patch 3.0.8 Hunter Fallout

So its been almost a week since the patch and I’m learning my rotations for survival. I’m not even trying trap dancing because until they give us a ranged option for more of our traps the very concept grates on my sensibilities.

Once again blizzard have altered hunters so that one tree alone is end game raid reliable. And what grates the most is that tree is out damaged by hybrid classes, which ones tend to depend on the fight but Death Knights, Fury Warriors and Elemental Shamans and Retribution Paladins are usually up there.

Anyway I’ve sort of got over the fact that in 25 mans on single target fight like patchwerk I’m no longer likely to be near the top of the dps charts. Its still really annoying but maybe it’ll be fixed one day…

I have noticed that with survival my burst damage has jumped and after almost messing up a 10 man patchwerk pull I have learnt that using Explosive shot with a Misdirection can be bad due to its ticks being able to crit! Survival is interesting and different and I don’t mind having to learn it that much, what I do mind is being forced into it.

Finally, volley was over powered and needed to have its damage reduced, it was insane that hunters could be topping the charts on AoE packs. But WHAT THE HELL where blizzard thinking? If there is a class that it makes even less sense to give huge AoE potential to it’s the Rogue. But lo and behold in 25 man Naxx I have been seeing Rogues put out almost the same level of dps as pre nerfed volley!

Blizz Get a Grip please, I’m begging you!

Wisp

Depression

So its happened, patch 3.0.8......

And BM hunters have been f**ked up. I did a 25 man VoA on the day of the patch, and my dps went from just under 4k to 2600......

So I'm trying a survival spec, its something new and currently is far better than what was Beastmastery. But trap danceing... I'll be honest I don't like it, why O why O why should a hunter have to move in and out of melee range to maximise their dps??? It is completly and totaly STUPID. We are a ranged class no a melee one! 

Any way another problem with with Survival is I'm geared up for BM, so I'm forced to spend gold on re-gemming AND all that mail armour that has been passed on an DE'd in the past I suddenly need to go back and get.

The argument from blizz was that BM hunters where doing to much damage compared to other classes.... Maybe to start with, but up until this nerf, and nerf is an understatement. I've been watching the mages & locks catching up. Our achivement gaining Patchwerk kill, I was only a fraction above a lock.

Now I get beaten into the ground by hybrid classes, DK's near the top, elemental shamens, boomkins, all of them beating me in the 25 Naxx I've just done. I was around 8th place on patchwerk a single target full out nuke fight. Something that hunters and rogues should be excelling at.

Blizzard got this patch very very wrong. Hunters needed a nerf to our AoE damage, but BM didn't need to be screwed on this scale, MM & Survival needed to be brought upto the same level as us. Mages & Locks in PvE where with gear catching up. Rogues needed bringing up in line Hunters.

Suppose atm, I am feeling really let down, disappointed and depressed. If I wanted to stick with BM and try it, I know I'll be way down on the damage these days and I'd have to swap my cat for an ugly looking devilsaur OR spend days doing nothing but camping the spawn points to try and get a spirit beast (I'm OCD but not to the point where I can't see progress as time passes).

Maybe the large bar of cadbury's will make me feel better, but currently I doubt it. I'll let my imaginary readers know.

Wisp

Damage Charts

I did write this the day after my last post! But forgot to sort of put it up. So Here is my view on where a hunter should be on damage meters. I know that Blizzards current policy is something about utility no longer being purchased at a cost to DPS, but I feel there should be limits especially if you include PvP. This game has two major sides PvE and PvP and the majority of players will do both, and so to give all the DPS classes/specs the same damage in a raid situation is in my opinion a bad thing because when you swap to PvP that gives the classes with added utility an unfair advantage. Just have a look at how over powered retribution paladins and death knights are at the moment in battlegrounds and arenas.

So below is a list of how I feel the DPS chart for at least ¾ of raid bosses should look if every one is equivalently geared and the players equally skilled. Then I’ll run through the different classes, but please be aware these are my opinions from observation and experience.

Damage Meters for Boss – Generic

1. Hunters, Rogues, Mages, Warlocks
2. Priests (Shadow), Druids (Feral/Balance), Warriors (Arms/Fury), Shaman (Elemental/Enhancement), Paladin (Retribution), Death Knight

Hunters – I know I’m a hunter but I do think we should be one of the classes topping DPS Charts in a raid situation. And this should be regardless of talent tree. The reason for this is a hunter is a damage dealing class, translated into PvP we are still a damage dealing class our only shared form of Crowd Control is freezing trap which has 100% chance of break on any form of damage. Then based on spec there is Intimidation which requires our pet to be alive and to hit and is a very short duration or scatter shot which breaks on damage and is also a short duration. Apart from that we have a few tricks for staying at range which can help against some classes but against others who have multiple stun, slow, cc options we are stuffed if our anti cc trinket is on cool down, or we are not a BM hunter with Bestial Wrath off cool down.

Rogues – Should be pretty much sharing our top spot. A rogue has weaker armour than a hunter and has to fight in melee range, which is an argument for them having more DPS. But they also have better damage mitigation in stupidly high dodge ratings and better CC options than a hunter. Vanish is also a much better get out of combat option than Feign Death. Taken all together these all roughly balance out.

Mages – When it comes to AoE and group mobs, like all 5,10 and 25 man trash fights seem to be so far in Wrath. Mages should be up there at the top along with the destruction type warlocks. For raid bosses, mages have much weaker armour than hunters and also stand at range. This may, like with rogues, be an argument for slightly higher DPS but again their utility in party and personal buffs as well as better CC options, ways of getting out of combat in PvP and off course their AoE abilities should balance that out.

Warlocks – Warlocks are currently completely underpowered in PvP, gone are the days of the joke “I beat a warlock and then the game credits rolled”. This was followed by or had replaced shaman, can’t remember which way around it was. Warlocks should really be sharing the spot with mages on the DPS charts, with those spec’d into direct damage being higher than those spec’d into DoTs. Warlocks have the same armour as mages and also fight at range. Warlocks like mages have good CC options but there other utility is in the fact they can have pets and put DoTs on lots of enemies at once. Apart from CC and run they are lacking good ways to get out of combat.

The Rest – One thing that the remaining classes have that the first four don’t is entirely different role options in the different talent trees. Priests can spec to heal or DPS. Shamans can spec to heal or DPS. Druids and Paladins can spec to heal, DPS or tank. Warriors can spec to DPS or Tank. Death Knights currently appear to Tank & DPS in all three talent trees. Because of these options the DPS specs of these classes should be behind Hunters, Rogues, Mages & Warlocks who are damage dealing classes in all talent trees.

How far behind is  probably a contentious issue, and my personal opinion is that it should be around 2%. Its not a huge amount, but to me it sounds reasonable.

Wisp

AutoHotkey

There was a major problem with hunters that existed at the end of TBC in the end content raiding. This problem stems from the need to maximise your dps and the use of a “button” mashing macro to achieve it. The idea was that you rapidly hit the key binding or clicked on the action button for a macro. Each press can only trigger one skill so by spamming the button it fires off the ones not affected by cool downs. Before Autoshot & Steady shot got decoupled they where two of the actions included in the button, the rest where usually pet related.

Now button spamming has a major problem, you are doing a repetitive action for sustained periods of time and this leads to injury! And it got that far with me on more than one occasion. The solution to this problem? Don’t use a macro, watch your damage drop and get shouted at for slacking on the dps? Buy a programmable keyboard, a solution I know lot of people use.

I didn’t have the money to justify this so in the end I found a little bit of software to do what I need, AutoHotkey. With this program I run a script on my PC while using wow. 

XButton1::
Loop ; Since no number is specified with it, this is an infinite loop unless "break" or "return" is encountered inside.
{
  if not GetKeyState("XButton1", "P") ; 
  break 
  ; 
  send 7
  sleep 200
}
return

This script is simple as can be, my left side mouse button, the one in reach of my thumb has been reprogrammed to press the 7 key on my keyboard 5 times a second. Number 7 used to be my hotkey for my old TBC Steady Shot spam macro, currently its just normal steady shot. I get the same effect of repeatedly hitting the key or clicking on the macro button, but without the risk of RSI.

Wisp

Hunter Specs

When I first started this game I levelled my hunter in the Marksman Tree. To me, coming from a pen & paper RPG background, the hunter was a ranger type character. The main attraction to the class was distance combat that wasn’t spell casting. From a lore point of view I was thinking along the line of the night elf sentinels, maybe they should give night elf hunters an ability to put an owl up a tree... And from the fantasy RPG side one of my preferred classes has always been ranged fighters of some form. Back on point, the pet part of the class was an interesting gimmick and not that important.

And so I level to 60 and started to raid still as marksman. The pets had started to grow on me a bit by now but due to their vulnerability back then I did instances and raids as much without my pet as with it. At some point while at level 60 I switched from MM to survival, I think it was while I was doing a lot of PvP as well as raiding.

Burning crusade came out and I was soon back to MM, well at least I think I was and I levelled up to 70. It was at level 70 when I started to raid the new 25 man instances that I began to look at optimising dps. In the old 40 mans as long as you knew your job and didn’t slack it seemed less of an issue. But now with only 25 people not only did you have to know your job and not slack but also try to optimise dps. So I started to investigate and for a while I stayed as MM but eventually, despite pets still being vulnerable I made the leap, and to me it was a huge leap, into Beast Mastery. I lost scatter shot!, I ditched silencing shot! I even sacrificed my extended range. Because I do a lot of solo as well as group content as well as play in battlegrounds every now and then this loss to me was HUGE.

A BM spec took some getting used to, having to try and keep my pet alive as well as dealing DPS. Back in the time when it seemed no healers realised how important the pet was, especially to BM hunters, and so the only heals it got was the old channelled mend pet. Seeing my pet die on any boss fight with AoE damage was depressing but I got used to it. Then as time passed I suddenly realised my view on the class had changed, my pet had gone from a gimmick to an integral part of what it meant to play a hunter. And from that point onwards I have been a Beast Mastery hunter.

Then the awesomeness that is Wrath came out and levelling to 80 with my gorilla being able to tank 3,4 & even 5 man quest mobs for me. I was tempted to level as a PvP orientated spec so I could practice a different style of play ready for Arena’s at level 80 but Beast Mastery had become for me the defining spec for my class. I tried various MM & BM builds for raiding but BM always came out top. I didn’t try Survival because since it was nerfed way back in early TBC or it could even have been before, my memory fades, I’ve considered it more of a PvP than PvE talent tree.

So here I am completely committed to the BM spec, dreading the host of nerfs threatened on the current PTR because competent PvE BM hunters have been blowing every other class out of the water. My views on these proposed nerfs and where a hunter should be on a DPS chart shall be my subject for tomorrow. And I listen to the latest BRK pod cast, this time he has an experienced survivalist hunter talking about survival raiding talents. Its well worth listening to, but got me thinking about once again trying an alternate spec.

As I see things the rotations for a BM hunter are the simplest to use > Put Serpent Sting on the target and then SS every 1.5 seconds until SS expires and replace it. The complexities come from managing your pet, keeping it alive changing aspects to maximise the gain from Bestial Wrath etc.

For a MM or Survival hunter the pet is a lot less important, if it dies your not going to lose 40-50% of your dps. Because of this it needs less micromanagement. These two specs have their complexity in the shot rotations and knowing when to use a special shot based on the procs of others.

Where as the specs of some classes like Paladins and Druids are obviously completely different most people don’t realise that different hunter specs are subtlety completely different and I would, just for my own ego like to master the different aspects of what it means to play a hunter expertly. Changing specs at 50g a shot doesn’t really help this as the gold is needed for other goals I have in the game and now I’m exalted with pretty much everything I don’t always bother with the dailies. So I think once dual specs come out it will be time to master the multiple ways of being a hunter as they exist now.

Wisp

Achivements

In the early hours of Sunday morning I reached 5555 achievement points. And as the number looks cool here it is!

It was a nightmare to get that last 10 point achievement to reach the 5555 goal! I thought to myself the hoard have Winter Grasp and I still needed the Leaning Tower achievement, so all I have to do is kill some hoard to get rank two and drive a siege engine up to a tower and level it!

Unfortunately in the WG battle around 3am the number of alliance in the zone ranged between 3 and 5, While the tenacity buff grew up to around 8. Taking down that tower while outnumbered like that was not easy, One of my siege engines didn’t even reach the tower, the one before got just a single hit in. But I persevered and eventually using a demolisher I got close enough for the last three shots needed to bring it down. Getting my achievement and somehow around 2000 honour for a loss……

Wisp

Naxxramas Pwnage

Last nights Naxx raid was amazing for a whole host of reasons. To start with it was our first one night clear of the instance which is AWSOME. During this amazing raid we did Arachnophobia again for those in the raid who still needed it and because it made clearing stuff faster. This was achieved the same way as the first time; through the treacle effect of lag.

Then moving forward in time to the last wing of the night – The Construct Quarter. This one is left till last because of Thaddius, normally lag makes things trickier but Thad tends to lag even if there is no lag elsewhere, these two can stack up making him almost impossible. By leaving him till last the hope is a lot of raiding groups have left.

So… getting back to the point, last week we killed Patchwerk is 3 mins 23, leaving 23 more to shave off for Make Quick Werk of Him. Well last night he went down in 2 mins 39 and I hit 5092 dps!  WWS Stats  of the fight.

And finally at the end of the raid looking at the corpse of Kel’Thuzad I found this lying around.

Now armed with the Envoy of Mortality I should go way over that 5k dps on our next Patchwerk kill! Even on trash in 5 man heroics I was pulling 3000 dps with the new gun :)

So as the title says last night was Naxxramus Pwnage!

Wisp

Achievements

There are those who hate them, claiming they are just another grind, and there are those like me who think they are a great addition. Some off them keep track of the things in the game that interest me anyway such as reputations!

So achievements are earned for all sorts of things and some of the harder one even come with bonuses like vanity pets, mounts and titles. Each achievement also awards achievement points, there is no use for these apart from as a measure of progression.

My personal land mark achievements so far have been.

• Complete 3000 quests – “Wispcat the Seeker”
• Complete the fishing achievements – “Salty Wispcat”
• Exalted with 40 factions – “Wispcat the Exalted”

Now as achievements are something I wish to complete all off!!!! I’ve added my current score to the counters on right side of the blog. 

Finally there is a web site that crawls the EU & US armouries for each characters achievement points allowing you to easily compare yourself! This site, Achievement Tracker, appears to update on every Sunday and I’ve added it in my wow links, pre-filtered to Aszune.

Wisp

Playing Warcraft Catchup Again!

Its been a very long time since my last world of warcraft post. Initially because I was a bit fed up at the time, and later because I can be a lazy git! Well as I said in my new year post its time to start talking, once more, to my imaginary audience. 

So in roughly chronological order here’s a rundown of what has been happening.

• Due to poor attendance the GM of Dice called a raiding break for the summer period…. Over the next two months, yup TWO MONTHS! People understandably left to guilds that where not taking stupidly long raiding breaks.
• Being the kind of person who has never left a guild lightly I stayed around until September when raiding was planned to recommence. But the guild was pretty much dead at that point. So I left the guild.
• Within a few days some friends invited me into “The Exalted”. Now the main members of this guild where key members of my second raiding guild “Exalted”, way back in the days when MC & BWL where the places to raid. Why a different name? well that’s maybe a story for another time. The plan was to do 10 man content once WotLK was released.
• A few weeks later I got a whisper from an officer in Elysium, I’d applied to join them ages ago. Well here was a chance to raid SWP to see and master the final raid of the Burning Crusade which I had almost given up hope for. So I joined Elysium.
• Once by one the bosses died, clearing up to Muru by the time patch 3 hit and all the mechanics changed in preparation for the second expansion. Muru and Kil'jaeden soon died. I have to say raiding then was a pleasure, this guild was mature and the raiding atmosphere was reasonably relaxed.
• While not raiding I started working on the new achievements and maxing out more factions to exalted.
• WRATH OF THE LICH KING
• A week off work to play wrath. And OMG Blizzard have learned loads. The quest lines flow together, you talk to an NPC about a quest and those around them actually listen and offer there own quests! Then there is the phasing technology, as you follow the story lines the zones change to reflect what has happened. This whole new way of doing things adds to the feeling of immersion, to the feeling that what you are doing has AN IMPACT. Unlike the Sunwell where the changing was server wide, this is done on a player by player basis.
• Level 80 was reached during that week off work, as per the plan.
• In the month and a bit that has followed we have cleared Naxxramus the introduction level 80 raid and the two single boss raids Eye of Eternity & Obsidian Sanctum. Hopefully the next raid Uldar will be more challenging! But while waiting for that content patch the achievement system gives ways of doing the raids in harder and more challenging ways for greater rewards and loot!

And that sort of brings me up to date. I’ll cover my new obsession, achievements, in another post!

Wisp

Happy New Year

I've been a completly lazy git since september by not posting but that will change.... as if!

Any way to all my Imaginary readers! WELCOME TO 2009 :)