Artists of Azeroth

lucky lucky

2009-06-22T18:00:00.001+10:00

I had a sudden urge to draw my old WoW characters yesterday.

This will also be the first post in this blog for something completely different. I've decided to use this blog for its original intended purpose. :D

More info later!

welcome to Ulduar

2009-06-06T04:04:00.005+10:00

And welcome to Tora's indecisive mind.

Yeah, I said I'd quit, but after posting so much about 3.1 I guess I couldn't help but take a peek.

And what a peek it was! I ran with a casual guild's Ulduar10. We only managed to get the first three bosses down (Flame Leviathan, Razorscale and XT) with attempts on two subsequent bosses - Ignis and Kologarn.

What I've seen so far is... satisfying, I suppose. I did this run on Tora healing, with barely any mods at all (as you can see in the screencap), since I'd deleted my WoW folder two months ago, but it was alright.

Still though, running through Stormwind at 1am leaves me with a hollow feeling in my chest. Raiding is really never going to be the same.

very belated notice

2009-05-02T18:32:00.003+10:00

If you're interested in following my art, go to these sites.

LiveJournal - http://darkyo.livejournal.com/
Zodiac Battle (my webcomic) - http://www.drunkduck.com/Zodiac_Battle/

and here the road ends

2009-03-28T03:14:00.004+11:00

The recent disbanding of my guild has made me come to terms with a lot of things. I've had a lot of fun in WoW these past few months, and sometimes I hate to admit it, but its ruined my life in more ways than I care to admit.

Given a choice, I would have happily played this game without a care in the world, roaming Azeroth with my boyfriend, as Tmiel and Toshimitsu. But alas, real life beckons.

Raiding has opened my eyes to what end game really is, and how fun it can be with the right mix of people. Unfortunately for us, that mix is now gone. We've been through all the good times and bad times to be had, and it's time to hang up the cloak on the wall and call it a day.

I'm probably not quitting the game for good, but now I see that I need a good long break from it. My only regret is not making this blog sooner.

When I come back, raiding will never be the same.

Maybe now I can use this blog for what I originally intended, instead of the bastard mish-mash of stuff I already have on it.

Several things...

2009-03-21T00:58:00.004+11:00

I haven't posted any art lately, so have a shot of my sketchbook.

There've been several successive guild dramas lately, and it eventually culminated in a mistaken transferal of GM-ship and said person then proceeded to ninja most of the guild bank about one hour later. Two of our best dps have left for another guild, our original GM may not be back for two weeks while they sort out his account, and the merge with that other guild has pretty much failed. The whole story is long and I'm not really at liberty to talk about it here. In short, I probably won't be raiding aside from the lucky PUG.

I can't say I'm too happy about this; but of course, no one would be. I told myself I'd post as little guild drama on this blog as possible, but because of the outcome of this recent spat, I find myself unable to raid and therefore possibly unable to maintain content.

My characters' futures are still currently unsure. I've long considered the current content "boring", so it may be worthwhile to take a break while things sort themselves out, and with patch 3.1 coming soon it may be the right time to do that. But if the guild doesn't reform itself, I may delve into arena or something else. But in the meantime I'm not sure.

In other news, I spiffed up Tora's UI a bit. It was largely inspired by one of Ishtara's old, unuploaded uis, but one which I've always really really liked. I finally managed to pin down that castbar-in-powerbar look too! And it really looks awesome. But sadly I may not be able to raid on it for a while. Who knows?

I have too many buttons!

2009-03-20T03:02:00.004+11:00

I see so many UIs (not even Hunter specific ones) that are cluttered with buttons, and I cringe inside. I'll admit it's no small feat to fit all your essential skills into two or even one and a half bars, but folks, it is possible.

That screenshot you see up there is one I had when I first dinged 70 and started raiding Kara for the first time. Fellow Hunters, you can probably make out what skills are on those bars. Looking back on it, I feel rather silly for having them there at all. Eagle Eye? Holy crap who uses that anymore?! See the icon next to Dismiss Pet? That used to be Ye Olde pet training window.

Later, when I was starting to look at minimalist UIs and reducing my buttons, one of the mods that helped make the transition easier was AutoBar. It works a charm right out of the box, with buttons for your Aspects, tracking, potions, professions and other things. Eventually as I got the hang of having less buttons on screen, I got rid of it altogether.

Of course, the one-button-tracking change from a few patches ago has helped with this. I'm not sure if anyone else remembers, but you used to be able to only change tracking from the buttons, instead of a drop down menu from the minimap.

Here's a few tips to help get your actionbars in shape.

Remove Auto Attack and Auto Shoot from your numbered bars. With Auto Shot being unlinked, you don't have to worry about clipping anymore!
Bind your most used abilities to where it is accessible with one hand. Things like Steady Shot, Serpent Sting, Explosive/Arcane Shot and Aimed/Multi Shot should all be within reach easily to facilitate an effecient rotation. It'll be easy on your hands too!
Get rid of things you don't use. Aspect of the Wild? Check.
Create bars that will only appear when you hover over them. Things you only use occasionally, but often enough to warrant a hotkey should come under this category. Profession panels, your Hearthstone, mounts and consumables are good examples.

UI ramblings

2009-03-19T22:34:00.004+11:00

I've been itching to make a new UI on Toshi recently, and last night due to sheer boredom, I finally decided to do it.

It's still got most of the elements in the same place, but I did change my raid frames to Grid (just for looks) and switched the layouts on the unit frames. It was inspired largely by Mutiney and Skullflower's UIs which I found from posts in WoW's UI & Macros forum.

I'm largely pleased with it, overall. There are a few things that bother me, like the cast bars, and some of the actionbar placements, but I have no idea what to do with them for now.

I also redid Tora's tanking UI, but it looks too much like her old UI which I got sick of, so I might not keep it after all.

Achievements

2009-03-17T00:16:00.003+11:00

No, not the kind that pops up on your screen and announces it to everyone. (Though those are fun too!)

I'm talking about things like soloing group quests, or collecting a full Tier set. Perhaps even class related things.

Here's what I want to get done.

Get a full Valorous Cryptstalker set. I'm 3/5s of the way there!
Finish the last Hunter quest for that epic quiver. I only need to kill Azuregos now. Damn dragon is never there when I knock...
Solo some BC heroics with my Gorilla. For rep, for fun, and just cos' I can.

Soloing BC heroics 101 - a feral druid guide

2009-03-13T02:43:00.004+11:00

I recently went back on my druid through some old Burning Crusade heroics, in order to get Badges of Justice for an Idol of Terror. (which, funnily, remains the best tanking idol) It was actually a lot of fun!

I didn't have the heroic keys for the Consortium/Lower City dungeons, so I could only do the Cenarion and Honor Hold ones. Most of the mobs in these dungeons can be stealthed past, except for a few guards which shouldn't be hard to kill anyway. I did a total of 3 and 1/4 dungeon's worth of badges in a day, which means 20 badges over 2 days.

The basic strat to bear-soloing is basically keep up Demo Roar and Faerie Fire. The rest is pretty much the same as usual tanking - keep up full stacks of Lacerate, and Mangle whenever possible. Having your panic buttons (potions, Survival Instincts, Frenzied Regen, etc.) at hand is also a very good idea. Don't be afraid to pop Frenzied Regen; 50% is usually a good time to do it. Berserk is also very helpful if you're clearing trash, or on bosses with adds, for the Mangle-spam extra damage. Barkskin is also very helpful.

It might take a bit of learning the mobs in the dungeons to successfully stealth past them - I died quite a few times when starting to solo Ramps because there was so many mobs that could see through stealth, and so close together.

I'm intending to grind some Lower City rep soon (I never did any quests while levelling in Outland... haha) so hopefully I'll be able to try soloing some Auchindoun instances!

Hunter gear best-in-slot list

2009-03-09T00:01:00.004+11:00

I've been wanting to do this post for a while. Here's a list of the best hunter gear in the game. I base the gear off three things - their stats, their sockets, and their green stats (crit, hit, etc.) The best gear on the list will usually have the highest stats, sockets (where applicable) and hit, crit and attack power as their green stats. I'll also list where the item is dropped, and the best enchant for that appropriate item slot.

While I understand Haste is important - especially for Surv and MM - I value hit and crit above haste. So, without further ado...

Head
Unfortunately, there is no helm with my three valued stats, so we'll have to look at a few.
Hyaline Helm of the Sniper - The only ilevel213 helm with hit on it, you'll want to get this if you're still working toward the hit cap. Drops from Sartharion-25.
Valorous Cryptstalker Helm - Tier 7.5... really goes without saying. Drops from Kel'thuzad-25.
Blue Aspect Helm - Highest itemlevel mail physical dps helm, disappointing that it has less agi than the previous two mentioned. It instead spends the points in lots of attack power. Would be great for BM hunters, if only the haste was hit. Drops from Malygos-25.

Enchant: Arcanum of Torment from Knights of the Ebon Blade

Neck
Favor of the Dragon Queen - Gemmed with a 16agi, it is undoubtedly the best physical dps neck for any class. Quest item from Sapphiron/Malygos-25.

Shoulder
Valorous Cryptstalker Spaulders - Tier 7.5, again goes without saying. Drops from Loatheb-25 or bought with 60 Emblems of Valor. Upstanding Spaulders comes very close though.

Enchant: Greater Inscription of the Axe from Sons of Hodir.

Back
Drape of the Deadly Foe - As with the neck mentioned above, the best in slot for physical dps. Drops from Kel'thuzad-25.
However, if you're looking for alternatives... Hammerhead Sharkskin Cloak is pretty good and bought with 25 Emblems of Valor.

Enchant: 22 Agi. Contact your friendly neighbourhood enchanter!

Chest
Tunic of Masked Suffering - The boatload of Agi on this one makes it the clear winner, even over Tier 7.5. The tiered chest does have hit though, so if you still need that, the tiered chest is a close second. Drops from Noth-25.

Enchant: +10 stats.

Bracers
Slime Stream Bands - All of my favourite stats, a socket, and it's BoE to boot! A real no brainer for this one. Drops from Grobbulus-25.

Enchant: 50 attack power.

Hands
A bit of a toss up on this one...
Gloves of Calculated Risk - All my favourite stats, but no socket compared to Grotesque Handgrips and tier 7.5. Drops from Patchwerk-25.

Enchant: 20 Agi.

Belt
Torn Web Wrapping - Another no-brainer, despite the lack of socket. Also BoE! Drops from Maexxna-25.

Enchant: Not an enchant, per se. Get the belt buckle and slap in a 16agi gem in there.

Legs
Leggings of Failed Escape - All the good stuff, even compared to the tier 7.5 legs. Gothik has been giving me grief over these for the past few months...

Enchant: 75 ap, 22 crit.

Boots
Boots of the Renewed Flight - Unfortunately, it wastes some points on the armor penetration, but otherwise, because of the amount of agi and ap on it, it's the best. Crippled Treads from Noth-25 is a good substitute though. (and they look better!) Drops from Malygos-25.

Enchant: 16 Agi.

Rings
Strong Handed Ring - Awesome stats on these, even with the haste. Drops from shared loot table from first bosses in all four wings in Naxx.
Surge Needle Ring - All my favourite stats, and again, another BoE! Great for if you hate doing Malygos.

Enchant: (assuming you're an enchanter) 32 attack power.

Trinkets
Darkmoon Card: Greatness - 90 agility flat out from this trinket... what's not to like? Be prepared to spend a lot of gold on this one though... even I don't have it. Created by Scribes.
Fury of the Five Flights - Once you get the stack up to 20, it will keep refreshing itself throughout the fight. It's practically a free 320 attack power! Again, not just the best for hunters, but all physical dps classes as well. Drops from Sartharion-25.
Mirror of Truth - One of the first epic trinkets you will probably get. No brainer, really. Bought with 40 Emblems of Heroism.

Melee weapon (otherwise affectionately labelled stat stick)
Black Ice - I like this one for its hit, mostly. Drops from Malygos-10.
The Undeath Carrier - Since patch 3.0.8 opened up druid staves as viable hunter stat sticks, we've had more options to choose from just the usual two handed swords and polearms. This is probably the best for Surv hunters, who can take advantage of the Stam to AP conversion. Very nice amount of crit on it too, compared to Black Ice. Drops from Heigan-25.

Enchant: 110 ap.

Ranged weapon
Envoy of Mortality - You probably knew this one already! It has the appropriate stats for its itemlevel, and has the highest tooltip dps. My only complaint is that it doesn't have any hit. Drops from Kel'thuzad-25.

Enchant: 40 ranged crit.

Hope this helped, feel free to email with any questions. ^^

Apologies...

2009-03-06T01:10:00.005+11:00

...for lack of updates recently. I've been busy with a few things, namely -

Watchmen! It's just been released here today, and by god it was awesome. If you haven't seen it, go watch it now! Even if you're not into the comic, watch the movie!

Raising gold on Tora and Toshi in preparation for dual specs! Yes, I like to be prepared. If you don't already have stacks of gold on your characters, be sure to go grind some dailies and get that 1000 gold ready!

Misc. real life stuff. Like a driving test tomorrow.

In the meantime, head over to QQ Pew Pew for some theorycrafting about the new Black Arrow talent and the nerfed Explosive Shot. (cos' he sure as hell does the math better than me!)

The Big Post of 3.1 Hunter Changes

2009-03-03T00:44:00.019+11:00

Taking a leaf from T&C's book, I've decided to compile a post detailing the 3.1 changes for Hunters. I've found one of the popular searches that turn up at my blog are pet changes, so I'll start with that.

Changelog:
6 March - Added changes from Build 9637.
8 march - Added changes from Build 9658.
18 March - Added links to Ulduar loot lists.

Pet Changes
A new tier of pet talents has been added, and are only accessible to Beast Mastery hunters who have the 51 point BM talent.

Wild Hunt (two ranks) increases your gear contribution for Stam and Attack Power to your pets by 40%. This talent is present in all three pet trees. At the moment cited to be a little overpowered, watch for that percentage to drop a bit before going live.

Shark Attack (two ranks), increases pet's damage with all attacks by 6%, and is the new last tier talent for Ferocity pets.

Silverback (two ranks), heals your pet for 2% of its health every time it Growls. New last tier talent for Tenacity pets.

Thunderstomp, the former Gorilla family special, is being added to the Tenacity tree. All Tenacity pets may now have the ability. One rank only, and has had a slight damage reduction but still confers the bonus threat. Pummel (similar to Warrior ability of the same name) has been replaced as the Gorilla family special. It has a cooldown of 30 seconds and is a 2 second silence.

General Hunter Changes

All ammo now stacks to 1000. Quivers and ammo pouches are being removed. This change is currently not yet live.
Call Stabled Pet, a new ability which lets you change your pets anywhere and implemented for the benefit of dual specs. Has a 30 minute cooldown.
Kill Shot no longer has a minimum range, and has its cooldown reduced by 3 seconds.
Haste bonus previously from ammo pouches/quivers has been incorporated into Auto Shot.
Aspect of the Pack now affects whole raid, and increased to have a 40 yard radius.

Marksman Changes

Piercing Shots now places a bleed effect over 8 seconds upon critical hits, instead of increasing armor penetration.
Ranged Weapon Specialization reduced from 5 ranks to 3.
Wild Quiver has a 2% increased chance of proccing at max rank.
Viper Sting has been changed - Stings the target, draining 4% mana over 8 sec (up to a maximum of 8% of the caster's maximum mana), and energizing the Hunter equal to 300% of the amount drained.
Chimera Shot mana cost reduced by 4%.
Rapid Recuperation now gives you 4% of your mana every 3 sec while under the effect of Rapid Fire.

Survival Changes

Explosive Shot has been nerfed - base damage reduced by 10%, attack power scaling reduced by 12.5%.
Black Arrow is the new 50 point talent, and is needed to take Explosive Shot. It increases your damage to target by 6% and deals damage over 15 seconds. It shares the trap cooldown and can proc Lock and Load. Trap Mastery, Resourcefulness and T.N.T. now all affect Black Arrow.
Lock and Load now only procs off traps and Black Arrow.
T.N.T. now increases damage done by Explosive Shot/Explosive Trap/Immolation Trap. (used to increase crit chance of Explosive Shot and chance to stun)
Trap Mastery moved to second tier.
Hunting Party now 3 ranks instead of 5.
Wyvern Sting duration increased from 12 sec to 30 sec. PvP duration reduced from 10 sec to 6 sec. Now has an increased cooldown of 1.5 minutes.

Graphical changes

Rapid Fire activation has a new animation.
Lock and Load proc has a new animation.
Improved Aspect of the Hawk proc has a new animation.

Ulduar hunter loot

Hesston over at Auto Shots has made a post compiling all the possible Hunter gear from Ulduar.
The Hunter's Mark also has a good article about the new Emblem of Conquest loot and what they can be upgraded from.

Bear tanking fun

2009-03-02T19:42:00.007+11:00

Well, not the druid kind. ;)

I hopped over to Eastern Plaguelands and got myself a cute lil' black bear, and went over to Hellfire Ramparts to see how he'd fare.

I went into Ramps on Heroic at first, and got to the first boss with a bit of difficulty. It may be that the bear was only level 75 still, and that the mobs hit pretty hard, but I couldn't down the boss at all. I did get his adds down, but poor Kyou couldn't take the boss's hits. So I went out and set it on Normal.

I know, I know, on Normal they're pretty much 20 levels lower than me. And clearing them was really easy. I even pulled the first boss with two or three add packs. But Thunderstomp plus Swipe made for great AoE damage and I didn't even need to Volley.

Got through the rest of the instance pretty quickly, the room just after the corridor was especially fun when I pulled all of them. ^^ I guess if you ever need BC enchanting mats* this would be a great way to get it. (do I smell a market for Mongoose?)

After that I headed over to Utgarde Keep to test him out against level 70 normal dungeon mobs. I had tried to solo a bit of this dungeon before (during the Valentine's event, I got bored of waiting for the boy to show up so I started clearing a bit with my gorilla) and it was a bit difficult. I don't know if it's just me now, or the new changes, but I cleared the first few mobs a lot easier than I did the first time I tried.

Ran into some problems at the forge, but after that it was smooth sailing. But the first boss... well I don't conceivably see how you can solo him. I did find a way to bug out the adds he summons though, so that could come in handy. But because you're only in there with you and your pet, you will inevitably get Ice Blocked. You can command your pet to attack the ice, but all the while the boss will be hitting on it with no heals. When 3.1 comes out I might go back in there with a level 80 pet and try again though.

And again, it's a great way to farm for enchanting mats*. I probably got lucky that time, had three greens drop and one blue. Heh!

Oh, and I found someone who got the new 81 spell power to staff done. Looks pretty cool!

I also noticed they added some changes to the UI. (well, honestly I'm not sure if they're new, as I hardly play with the default UI) As you can see in the screenshots, elite mobs' nameplates have the gold dragon border on their level. Also, there are two sounds that play which indicate you have 90% of the tank's threat, and another which indicates that you have pulled aggro. Pretty handy! Gotta commend Blizz on this sort of thing.

*Speaking as an enchanter, of course!

Swift Razzashi Raptor

2009-03-02T01:58:00.002+11:00

Mine... My... Precious...

I know I don't usually dedicate posts to loot... but I think this deserves a Hell yeah!

Rockin' the PTR

2009-03-01T04:05:00.001+11:00

Gonna test this out tomorrow with a croc or a bear, maybe try soloing some dungeons.

Woot, standing animation for hippogryphs! Now to hope they have a new walking/running animation as well, because otherwise they'd just be flapping on the ground like chickens.

I checked out the Argent Tournament areas, it all seems horribly complicated and buggy right now. But the mounted combat system looks very promising! I must say, your character with a jousting spear/lance looks really awesome.

Tier 8 art~

2009-02-28T19:40:00.004+11:00

Woohoo tier 8! I love how the new Warrior sets look, but is it just me or does Hunter t8 look like Death Knight gear?! I mean, down to the skulls even.

But the fist-claws are pretty cool. Rawr, Wolverine! The new melee weapons look pretty cool too. Those swords! So shiny!

New 3.1 changes

2009-02-28T14:23:00.005+11:00

Source - WoW Insider

Ammunition: All types of gun and bow ammunition now stack to 1000. All quivers and ammo pouches no longer provide haste. 15% ranged haste is now built in to Hunter Autoshot.
If my internet wasn't capped you can bet I'll be on the PTR testing that right now... *sigh*

Call Stabled Pet: This new ability lets the hunter remotely access the stable. 30 min cooldown.
Yes, we already knew that. But according to BRK, it has the potential to delete your pets. Use with caution!

Explosive Shot: Base damage lowered by 10%. Attack power scaling reduced by 12.5%.
Flat out nerf to Explosive Shot if I ever saw one. :(

Quite a long list of pet changes too!

Thunderstomp is no longer a gorilla-specific family ability and is now available to all Tenacity pets. It has been reduced to one rank.
I LIKE THIS. Pardon the caps. I've never been a huge fan of the gorilla as a pet, the only reason I got it was because it was the best tanking pet. But now that they've made the best pet tanking ability baseline, I can just go get a bear or something. Yay!

Furious Howl (wolf special ability) now stacks with Battle Shout and Blessing of Might, however, it only affects the wolf and hunter. Its effect and cooldown have been doubled so that it provides the same benefit but isn't up 100% of the time.
Very interesting. I've been tossing up for a long time over getting a wolf, since I have a spare stable slot. But since Furious Howl doesn't stack with Might or Battle Shout, I never did. Looks like I'll be heading to Storm Peaks for one soon. It'll be interesting to test dps between wolf and cat if you're Surv or MM.

New Talent: Wild Hunt: This new two-rank talent is available to all 3 pet trees. It increases the stamina and attack power inherited from the hunter.
Cunning, Ferocity and Tenacity pets now all have +5% damage, +5% armor and +5% health bonuses.
Hooray for Blizz trying to make pets more survivable in PVP! Not that I do much of it. But yay!

They've also added new last tier talents for pet talent trees, which look very promising.

A few nice glyph changes too...

Glyph of Explosive Shot: Increases the critical strike chance of Explosive Shot by 4%.
Glyph of Explosive Trap: The periodic damage from your Explosive Trap can now be critical strikes.
Glyph of Kill Shot: Reduces the cooldown of Kill Shot by 6 sec.

What do you mean I have to choose between my glyphs now?! What is this?!

Darion Mograine

2009-02-28T05:04:00.002+11:00

My favorite character in the Ashbringer comics... his WoW in-game model really doesn't do him much justice.

New header image!

2009-02-26T04:33:00.001+11:00

I'd call it a new layout, but that'd be a lie.

Also added an Email Me and RSS graphic.

How to: Solo the Raptor boss in ZG

2009-02-25T01:52:00.002+11:00

Been trying to farm this guy for a few weeks now, and since BM is a viable raid spec again I can do it without having to respec!

Undocumented changes (so far!)

2009-02-24T23:14:00.004+11:00

omg Ashbringer spoilers! Not. I do wonder what on earth that Argent Tournament thing is gonna be about.

*New Skill* Call Stabled Pet - A pet of your choice busts out of its stable and joins you no matter where you are, replacing your current pet. Cannot be used in combat. Instant. 30 min cooldown. Requires Level 80.
Hehe, I giggled a little when I read that... "busts out of its stable"... I have to draw something about that now. Of course, this is pertaining to dual specs. Which apparantly cost 1000 gold. Time to get farming guys!

Kill Shot no longer has a minimum range. It can now be used in melee range.
Die pesky rogues, die! /cheer

*New Talent* Black Arrow (Tier 9) - Fires a Black Arrow at the target, increasing all damage done by you to the target by 6% and dealing [ 10% of RAP + 785 ] Shadow damage over 15 sec. Costs 6% base mana. 5-35 yard range. Instant Cast. 30 sec cooldown.
Aforementioned Black Arrow which I'd never heard of. Is apparently the talent you have to get before getting Explosive Shot. Interesting trap, though it only procs from the dot component. If it didn't, and you combine this with that new fire-any-trap talent, it would be awesome for LnL proccing. I can see this trap being a staple in Surv's rotation due to the damage increase buff, especially since you can fire it from range with that new talent.

Improved Wing Clip has been removed from the game.
Lol, who specs into Improved Wing Clip?!

Click here for new Hunter talent tree.

Excuse Me Sir

2009-02-24T19:09:00.003+11:00

But I do believe the 3.1 notes are out.

(I tried to find a relevant picture, honest... but I couldn't, so just have some Lucario chargin his lazer)

Let's have a little look-see.

Improved Aspect of the Hawk now has a new spell effect.
Woot, about time. Hope it's good.

Piercing Shots re-designed: Your critical Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of the damage dealt over 8 sec.
We already knew that. Confirmation is awesome!

Hunting Party: This talent has been reduced to 3-points, and now increases your total Agility by an additional 1/2/3%.
H-H-H-Hot. I can foresee people putting full points into this even though they have high enough crit to keep Replenishment up with just 1 point.

Lock and Load re-designed: You now have a 33/66/100% chance when you trap a target with Freezing Trap, Freezing Arrow or Frost Trap and a 2/4/6% chance when you deal periodic damage with your Immolation Trap or Black Arrow to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo. This now has a new spell effect and sound.
Hmm. I don't really like that they changed it to periodic damage for Immolation trap. And did you guys forget about Explosive Trap, hmm? And Black Arrow? I do believe this is the first we've heard about it. Looking forward to the new spell effect and sound though.

New Talent: Trap Launcher: When activated, your next Trap will be launched instantly at the enemy target. 1 minute cooldown.
Seems our prayers have been answered! Sounds exactly like what people have been asking for too - a talent that lets you shoot traps like Freezing Arrow. Woot!

Trap Mastery: This talent has been moved up to tier-2, up from tier-9.
I lol'd.

Grr, hope the PTR character copy queue eases up a bit.

I would also like to wish Resto4Life's authoress Phae all the best. It is a shame that such an excellent blog is going to be shut down, but RL calls.

/salute

Grats on Malygos!

2009-02-23T22:11:00.005+11:00

Our guild Renaissance downed Malygos on 25man tonight! Congratulations, and good work everyone.

I also finally got my Favor of the Dragon Queen, of course socketed with a 16agi gem. However, this brings me below the hit cap once again... Seriously, WTB Black Ice.

Incidentally, I have also been running around as BM lately. Toshi didn't see much raiding action this week, as I was on Tora a lot of the time. I mainly respecced to farm ZG for that raptor, and to see how Spirit Beast dps is doing.

I'm quite happy to say that BM dps is good again. Not quite restored to its former glory, but competing quite well with Survival. It's taking me a while to get used to having to manage my pet again, heh.

2 sketches

2009-02-23T04:42:00.006+11:00

Many <3s to Pike for linking me on her blog today.

Our two MTs really need some lovin'!

Tora's UI

2009-02-22T02:40:00.008+11:00

Back when I first brought Tora into Northrend, she had a very drab, plain UI. Stuck at level 69, I didn't have much resolve to level her at alll.

Then one day, I saw a screenshot of a beautiful UI and it inspired me to make what you see here. I spent a lot of time on the eepanels, especially the Recount and Omen ones. To this day the OmenBorderTop still gives me problems and I have to change it every time I log in... but it's so worth it.

Oh, one of the mods I forgot to mention in the previous post...

OmniCC, for tracking cooldowns. I used to use CooldownCount, but found that OmniCC put the cooldown on debuffs in Pitbull as well, which is highly useful for timing Rake/Mangle/Rip reapplications.

Anyway, Tora finally (FINALLY!) got Staff of Trickery from Violet Hold tonight. The Naxx10 guild alt run we did was also pretty productive, I got me some shoulders, a kitty 2h mace, and a very nice chest. My avoidance is up about 2 or 3%, and health increased by 1k, which I am very pleased about.

Incidentally, I ran as kitty dps in the Violet Hold run that got me that staff. Pulled about 1.8-1.9k dps, came 2nd place just shy of the Death Knight, which I'm very happy about. All that reading about kitty dps rotations has really paid off, I think. Didn't do too well on Cyanigosa herself due to an actionbar malfunction though, but I'm really not too fussed.

Overall, Tora's feral dps and tanking sets are coming along awesomely. Hope next week's Naxx10 run is just as good. WTB set bonus! (legs, hands and helm would be nice) :3

Speaking of UIs...

2009-02-21T16:53:00.006+11:00

Pike's recent post about her UI just reminded me that I was about to do one of those eventually. I'm one of those who will spend hours tinkering with things like eePanels to get just the right look, so I take pride in showing off screenshots of them, usually.

And yes, I love the look of minimalistic UIs. I try to keep things as simple as possible, but at the same time trying to have utility and just the right amount of information avaliable on screen.

I've been running that UI (and various iterations of it...) for several months now. It started out largely inspired by Rayne's Burnt Black Cherry Lite in BC, and over the months I've changed little things about it but managed to have it retain the same general feel.

Here's a little "progress montage".

Anyway, here's a quick and comprehensive addon list.

Pitbull, the one UnitFrame mod to rule them all. When I first started adding addons, of course XPerl was the first one I went to for unitframes. But after looking at a few shiny minimalistic ones on various sites, I was drawn to Pitbull. It may not be as easy to configure as XPerl out-of-the-box, but it has a ton of features and configurations. You could literally spend hours figuring out what does what. And when it comes down to looks, it does so very efficiently.

MikScrollingBattleText, or MSBT. I was initially using SCT, until patch 3.0 hit and suddenly my screen was flooded with a floating wall of green healing text, thanks to the new Bloodthirsty pet talent. Our GM at the time was also talking about MSBT, so I decided to give it a go, and haven't looked back since. It is much more customisable than SCT, especially the size of the text columns, which was my problem with SCT. All in all, a very useful mod.

eePanels, the mod that lets me put that delicious 1px white border on my unitframes. I've been told to update to KGPanels, and I did try it once, but it had too many settings and I wasn't in the mood at the time. :P I may go back and give it a go, but for the moment eePanels is the one for me. If you're interested in trying out making some art with eePanels, there's a brilliant tutorial on omgphatloots.

SL Data Text, text mod that shows various stats. I've been seeing UI screenshots that had durability, gold, fps, etc. in text along the bottom and was wondering for ages what it was before I finally stumbled across a post that listed it. It's really handy in that you can put whatever data you want, wherever you want it. I can't have a UI without this mod.

As for the others, well, they're pretty standard really.
Dominos for actionbars
Recount, Omen and DBM
FuBar
Atlasloot
Chinchilla for minimap
Bison for buffs/debuffs
Prat for chatlog
Quartz casting bar
Aloft for nameplate modification
ButtonFacade
oRA2 for maintank targets
You'll be able to find all these mods over at WoWInterface.

I'll post one of my druid tomorrow, since she uses a completely different UI.

The BW that never was

2009-02-20T00:19:00.002+11:00

Ah, we can all dream, can't we?

In case you're lazy to click the image, here's the flavour text.
The Beast Within
When activated, the Hunter takes on all aspects of his pet, increasing damage by 300%. During this time he may only use his pet's special abilities. Lasts 20 seconds.

Clicky for full view! The preview doesn't do it justice.

Ulduar preview

2009-02-18T16:22:00.003+11:00

More on MMO-Champion, of course.

The bosses revealed so far - Freya, Thorim, Hodir, Iron Council.

Iron Council sounds kinda like Illidari Council/High King Maulgar... hmm.

But hang on a sec, Freya, Thorim, HODIR?? Didn't we help these guys out while questing? What's going on!

/confusedkitty

I was on the verge of quitting yesterday (got bored, sue me) and they throw this on me... @_@ Just hope the PTR comes out soon.

broken

2009-02-18T03:35:00.000+11:00

sketch dump

2009-02-17T17:22:00.006+11:00

Enjoy! <3

Torakitty

2009-02-17T03:50:00.000+11:00

More art coming!

Mickey Mouse is NOT amused

2009-02-12T02:12:00.001+11:00

Hey guys, remember what we said about removing ammo from the game in 3.1? Sorry! We were kidding.

Gemming for Survival

2009-02-10T00:56:00.004+11:00

In the Burning Crusade, gems for hunters went as such - Agi, Agi, Agi.

In the world of Wrath, where the old be-all-reign-all spec was BM, and where pet attack power scaled with its owners', BM hunters were encouraged to gem for Attack Power. Trueshot Aura now scaled to 10% of AP instead of giving just a flat 120.

Gemming for Survival is easy. If you're a BC-baby like me, you won't have any problems. Just keep stacking Agi gems like you used to. Spread out into other gems for Metas and socket bonuses if you must, but Agi conquers all.

Why? Agility is the reigning stat for Surv hunters. In BC, there used to be a minimum amount of Agi you needed before you could spec Surv to raid.

Expose Weakness grants 10% of our Agi in a fight whenever we have the buff up. (And if you have a decent amount of crit, it'll be up at least 98% of the time in boss fights) Agi contributes to Crit, which is what Surv is all about. Agi scales with Kings.

You could gem for Crit of course, but it's highly inadvisable and just plain silly.

Here's a list of gems that have Agi as a stat on them. I'll only include Wrath blue-quality ones here, since the BC gems are pretty much irrelevant now. If you want to look for the BC-era (or Wrath green-quality) gems, just plug in the name of it (eg. Delicate for Agi gem) into a search engine like Wowhead.

Red
Delicate Scarlet Ruby

Orange
Deadly Monarch Topaz (personal fav)
Deft Monarch Topaz
Glinting Monarch Topaz
Lucent Monarch Topaz

Purple
Shifting Shadow Crystal
There is supposed to be a blue-quality version of this gem... except Blizz apparently forgot to put it in the game. The best avaliable now is of course the Perfect version of this.

And finally, the gem that I really wish they didn't make - Tenuous Twilight Opal. I can understand Enhancement Shamans or maybe Ret Paladins wanting it, but with the ability to regen mana whenever we want (Viper!), I really don't think its a wise choice of gem for any hunter. And especially for Surv, where we get AP from Stam.

HUNTERS SHOULD NEVER STACK MP5.

Thank you.

Itemisation Talk - Crit vs. Haste

2009-02-08T23:18:00.003+11:00

NOTE! Keep in mind that this post is written from a very subjective standpoint. I have no head for numbers, and really don't care too much for such in depth theorycrafting. If you're into that sort of thing, I suggest paying the EJ Surv Hunter thread a visit.

I've "mentored" a few hunters in my time (in the game of course). One of the most common questions that come to me are - which piece of gear is better? *links two different gear*

Well folks I'm here to clear that up. In the era of Wrath, Haste has become a very commonplace stat on gear. It even shows up on greens from quest rewards!

The simple debate here is which is better, Crit or Haste? Let's look at several possibilities. Keep in mind that Steady Shot can only be hasted down to 1.4 seconds, and that the hunter global cooldown is not affected by haste whatsoever. Crit is, of course, always welcomed in copious amounts.

Say you're a BM hunter. With the Serpent's Swiftness talent, you will reach the haste cap without stacking it on your gear at all. In this case, Crit > Haste.

On the other hand, if you're a Marks or Surv hunter, you want to take a look at your SS cast time and your crit rating before making a decision. If you are a new-to-80 hunter with an abysmal amount of crit, you'll want that over haste. As you collect more gear, haste becomes more abundant and commonplace, especially on the Tier 7 sets. Put it this way, every piece of Tier 7 has haste on it. Several other hunter-centric mail have haste as a socket bonus as well.

From personal experience, the haste cap is not hard to reach even for Marks or Surv hunters, without even trying. My current SS cast time is 1.5 seconds, which really is not too shabby. With Heroism it drops down to 1 second, and with Rapid Fire it's 1.1 seconds.

So what's our lesson of the day?

Crit always > Haste

Gem and enchant guide for Surv coming tomorrow!

Hot Press - 3.1 Hunter Changes

2009-02-06T20:01:00.005+11:00

IMPORTANT: Please go here for the updated 3.1 news!

I just read the news on WoWInsider. Just to break it down, and give my own reactions...

Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game.
Can we get an OH YEAH? Can we get an OMG? Hells yeah! I can't be the only hunter around happy about this. This change has been a long time coming. Every hunter and their alt unite with me in saying THANK YOU BLIZZ!

About the haste on the quivers though, I'm interested to see where they'll be putting it instead.

A new tier of hunter pet talents have been added.
One of the reported buffs for BM in 3.1, this will probably be only accessible with the extra pet talent points you get with Beast Mastery.

Hunting Party – this talent has been reduced to 3 ranks and also grants a passive bonus to the hunter.
An interesting change to say the least, considering Hunting Party in its current form being 5 ranks. Any decent Surv hunter with good enough crit usually only needs to put in 2 or 3 points in it. I'm also interested to see what this "passive bonus" is.

Piercing Shots – this talent has been changed. Your Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of damage dealt for 8 sec.
Wow. A bleed effect! It currently just reduces armor on the target for Steady Shot. With the changes to feral druid and rogue bleed effects, I assume this can only be a good thing.

Sniper Training – this talent has been changed. After standing still for 6 sec, you gain a 2/4/6% damage bonus to Steady, Aimed and Explosive Shot.
A good change, as compared to getting a damage bonus a certain distance from the target. With the current raid bosses, this talent is highly unviable. The change is helpful, but on bosses where you're moving around in phases (Heigan, Thaddius, Malygos, etc.) it won't be that useful.

We are also looking to add additional trap functionality to Survival.
Finally. FINALLY. Am I seriously the only one who remembers GC saying Trap Mastery in its current form is still a work in progress? I have the point, yeah, but it's only filler so I can get Explosive Shot... it would be nice if it actually worked.

Overall, some nice changes, and of course the best one being the removal of ammo. I am looking forward to 3.1!

Raiding as a druid

2009-02-05T04:18:00.004+11:00

Apologies for the lack of posts lately. ^^; I've been busy and such.

Tonight I went to Naxx25 as a Resto druid, instead of on my hunter. To be honest, I was getting mind numbingly bored of Naxx. Each week it's the same old thing. So I thought I'd shake things up a bit.

In an ideal world, I would have gone as Feral and tanked my happy bear butt off. But no, we always have enough tanks. So I respecced Resto and went raid healing. I'm not a huge expert on it, but I figured, it can't be too hard right? Just watch some health bars. My experience healing Outland dungeons to level at least taught me as much.

Regardless, my noobish-ness and undergeared ass did fairly well. My best fight was Heigan, where I think I performed admirably. Being used to dps on the run already, it was a simple matter of spamming heals on the raid instead of instants on Heigan. So I'm pretty happy with how that turned out.

I got two pieces of loot tonight, Robes of Mutation and Shawl of the Old Maid. Well, not exactly Tora's first ever epics, as a few days ago I'd gotten her Bands of the Great Tree from Emblems of Valor, seeing as they're BoE. I also had Trollwoven shoulders crafted for her tanking set, which I will unfortunately now put in the bank, much to my disappointment. Well, at least they got to see some action tanking a few heroics and Sartharion. I guess the next time they'll come out is when dual specs are rolled out.

Overall though, my druid has been going fine. And Toshi, on the other hand, has been working on Elder. I got Elders of Eastern Kingdoms about an hour ago, gonna try and hit Orgrimmar early to finish up the Horde elders, and then we'll be running heroics the rest of the afternoon for the remaining dungeon elders as well as heroic dungeon achievements.

We're so close to the Red Proto Drake! I can smell it!

Dear BM brethren

2009-01-28T17:32:00.003+11:00

Rejoice and be glad.

Well... Soon. (tm)

Tanking gear to-do list

2009-01-27T03:42:00.008+11:00

My druid hit level 80 tonight!

I wasn't really sure at first what I'd want to do the endgame with on her, but I've finally decided that I'll make her a bear. I tanked, healed and dps'd quite a few instances while levelling, and of all of them, tanking was the most fun role. I'm already used to dpsing on Toshi, so I didn't warm up to boomkin very well. It is, however, a very fun spec for levelling and I must give it credit for that at least.

Reading the tanking gear post on Big Bear Butt, I've come up with a small to-do list to build Tora's tank set. Mostly for my own reference. :D

chest - Exotic Leather Tunic (UP quest), Crystal Infused Tunic (H Nexus)
feet - Slag Footguards (H HoL), Gorloc Muddy Footwraps (H Gun'drak)
legs - Gored Hide Legguards (H Gun'drak), Chain Gang Legguards
hands - Bile Cured Gloves (CoT Strat), Handwraps of Preserved History (CoT quest)
head - Shroud of Darkness (H VH)
neck - Amulet of Wills (HoS)
shoulder - Spaulders of the Careless Thief (H Nexus), Trollwoven (LW)
weapon - Enraged Feral Staff (H UK), Staff of Trickery (H VH)
belt - Sharp Barbed Leather Belt (H UK)
bracer - Bindings of the Tunneler (H UK)
back - Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions (rep)
trinket - Offering of Sacrifice (H Gun'drak), Essence of Gossamer (H AN)
rings - Keystone Great-Ring (H DTK), Band of Frosted Thorns (H Nexus), Ring of Earthen Might (JC), Iceforged Battle Ring (Storm Peaks quest chain)

Looks like we'll be running mostly heroic Gun'drak and Utgarde Keep for a while! Also not forgetting that Gal'darah drops a nice melee dps ring as well.

I'll probably try to gear up my resto set along the way as well, because I like healing almost as much as tanking. (this is why I rolled a druid!) But I did it through all of Outland, and halfway through Northrend, so I'm a little sick of it. Tanking is really what's getting my druid going at the moment.

You know BM is dead when...

2009-01-25T04:37:00.001+11:00

BRK makes a post about Survival dps.

I will be away celebrating Lunar Festival IRL, but hopefully I'll still have time to think up some posts. :)

World PVP rant

2009-01-25T00:28:00.004+11:00

It's that time of year again... where Alliance are forced to run into Horde controlled areas to complete achievements.

Toshi was camped by a mage and a druid trying to get into Orgrimmar to do the Honor Your Elders stuff. So I logged out and hopped on Tora.

The first mob I try to kill she was ganked by a 80 rogue in Naxx gear.

WHY CAN'T YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!

Now excuse me while I go watch some Death Note.

A/N: Yeah yeah, pvp happened, etc. We get it. It wasn't really my decision to roll on a pvp server. *grumble*

The demise of raiding BM

2009-01-23T00:53:00.006+11:00

As mentioned in my previous post, I respecced BM before tonight's raid to see how Spirit Beast dps would hold up.

And as you can see from the title, it's pretty abysmal.

The nerf to pet damage has really hurt the tree's raiding potential. I'm not sure it was really called for. Blizz should probably have chosen to either nerf Steady Shot (and in turn affect all three trees) or just decrease pet damage.

Compared to Survival, I was doing a good 300-400 less dps as BM with Loque. 2.3k dps on a target dummy is all well and good, but if you can't put out better in a raid situation, with all the mages, warlocks and shadow priests doing upwards of 3k, you can kiss your raid spot goodbye.

I'm not really sure if I should say anything else. I'm just really disappointed that I had to hearth out and respec before Sapphiron because I wasn't performing as well as I usually do.

Tora's Epic Flight Form Fund took a hit because of the double respecs in a day, but I guess I don't mind. I'm the class leader after all, I have to see what works best...

Sadly, tonight was probably the last time I take Loque out of the stables for a long time. At least, until we get dual specs.

Goodbye Bestial Wrath, though I can't really say I'll miss you.

Post-nerf thoughts

2009-01-22T01:55:00.004+11:00

So, Blizzard decided to nicely spring the patch upon us (I didn't see it coming... did you?). Wintergrasp and Northrend bugs ahoy! And is it just me, but am I seeing more loading screens lately? Namely, loading screens within Naxx? Crazy.

Anyway, so I raided as Surv again tonight. No changes in spec at all. I must say I miss the AoE component of the new Explosive Shot. And the nerf to Volley really hurt my trash dps, but I suppose it was needed.

Lock and Load procced a lot more than usual tonight, to my delight, so that's probably the extra 3% talking. Woot. But overall boss dps and damage seems to have remained the same. I noticed our locks are really catching up now. There were a few fights where they actually outdps'ed me (gasp!) but I was kind of expecting a bit of a slide down the meters, really.

Overall though, I came in the top 5 dps on bosses tonight, so that's pretty satisfying.

Oh, I forgot to post about this last week - I got Envoy of Mortality in our KT kill last week! Unfortunately I didn't quite get to test it out before patch hit... sigh. But it's still pretty awesome. And Mammoth Cutters are much cheaper to make too!

I might respec BM for tomorrow - Spider Wing, Sapph and KT. It'll be hell for Sapph, ugh. BRK's got some interesting numbers on the Spirit Beast and I'm really tempted.

Plus, it's been quite a while since I could do ZG for the raptor, since I've been lazy to respec. XD WTB dual specs please!

Surprise! Patch 3.0.8

2009-01-21T13:54:00.002+11:00

Thank you, Vader.

Full report coming.

Sapphire Hive Queen and PTR update

2009-01-18T14:20:00.007+11:00

It seems those who were able to tame the Sapphire Hive Queen before this patch comes out will be able to keep it. There's a slight bug with the stables though, and you won't be able to view her in the stables window.

The proc chance of Lock and Load has also been increased in the latest version of the PTR from maxed 7% to 10% from Serpent Sting. It's not as much as I hoped for... but it's better than nothing I suppose. I don't see it proc much more often than before, so I really don't see much difference. :\

Maybe the RNG gods aren't with me today. And I still think they should increase it to at least 50% and have some sort of visible way to track the cooldown. (Perhaps a debuff, like how Heart of the Phoenix places a debuff on you once you use it...)

On the topic of the PTR... gonna have a slight rant about huntards again. There was this guy in Trade complaining about how Explosive Shot sucked. I so happened to run into him at the training dummies, and of course inspected him... My god, he was rocking with the Armor Plated Combat Shotgun, Vereesa's Chain Belt with a 24 Stam gem, and a really, REALLY bad Surv spec. It had points in Deflection and Counterattack instead of Survivalist and Hunter vs. Wild, and no points into Hunting Party.

I kinda cracked, /facepalm'd, and went off at him saying not to complain about his dps because he had a bad spec and bad gear. So what does he do? He ran off, and copied my spec. Argh. God I hate it when people do that. When are people going to learn that spec =/= skill?

Art - The Survival Hunter

2009-01-14T01:06:00.003+11:00

Whoo! *wipes brow* Finally a nice, decent pic of Toshi and his main pet, Hige. You've no idea how much time I spent agonizing over those shoulders. *cry*

And while I did draw Tmiel with his Slayer of the Lifeless, believe me I did try and draw Toshi with Arrowsong, but damn... the details are too much for my poor brain to handle. Maybe some other time... T_T

Also avaliable with no background.

How to: Thaddius (heroic) video

2009-01-13T02:00:00.005+11:00

We finally downed Thaddius on 25-man tonight, along with Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad.

Sadly, no Envoy of Mortality for me yet. :( Also lost a roll on Drape of the Deadly Foe, le sigh.

Anyways, the video shows how I do things as Surv... because yeah, I stayed Surv for 25s this week, hehe. I wanted to see how it'd hold up against BM/Readiness, and surprisingly, it's pretty good. Notice the trap dancing on the adds. It would have been impossible to trap dance safely with the charges though, so the only time I can proc LnL from traps is to drop a trap when running from negative to positive side.

Thoughts about Hunter changes in 3.0.8

2009-01-11T16:57:00.006+11:00

I was bored this afternoon, so I thought I'd copy myself to the PTR and give it a whirl, maybe look at how much of a dps reduction I can expect after the next patch goes live.

(Note - Toshimitsu was flagged for a namechange, so for all intents and purposes in this post, Toraneko = Toshi)

Since I was pretty much free to do anything there (multiple respecs kgo), I tried out all three specs to see how the dps difference between them would be. And to my surprise, Survival is currently coming in with top dps.

Surv was the first spec I tried, and it was simply the same spec I'm playing with on live at the moment. The recount above is myself self buffed, no raid consumables. I did another pass a little later on with consumables (agi and int pots, and agi food) and surprisingly the difference in dps was negligible, only about 50-80dps difference from burst.

Suffice to say, the new cooldown on Lock and Load will be annoying to work with. For one, it completely eliminates the rotation of trap dancing, because if you are specced into Resourcefulness, you will be either waiting 14 seconds to get a L&L proc, or wasting 8 seconds waiting for the LnL cooldown to go off.

Next we have the Marks tree. I haven't been MM in over 3 months, so I might have been a bit rusty with the rotations. It seems to be holding mid ground in terms of dps on the PTR, which you will understand once I show you the BM charts. Overall though, the Marks spec is still probably very solid and has nothing unexpected. Aside from the change of mana to Arcane Shot of course, which is nice for this spec.

And here are the charts for BM. Hold on to your seats people...

That's right, BM is currently a whopping 200dps below Marks, even with a Cat. It seems the Cat is still by far the best pet, though the Devilsaur is coming in close. One way or another, I'd say you can take either one and put out the same numbers.

The numbers I got with the Spirit Beast however, were a bit disappointing. It was below both Cat and Devilsaur dps by about 50. It seems the Spirit Beast will simply remain a trophy, and nothing more.

Now, these numbers are not set in stone - I might be doing something wrong, I may be biased towards Surv at the moment, or maybe there's something up with the PTR. However, all accounts I've read are pointing towards Survival doing the most damage on the test realms.

All in all, I'm not sure how to react. I'm honestly not too fussed with the Steady Shot nerf, but this sudden upheaval in the hierarchy of the specs has me reeling a little bit.

Art - Protect The Ones You Love (complete)

2009-01-11T02:42:00.004+11:00

It's been a bit of a slow WoW day for me, so I had the opportunity to finish colouring this piece up tonight. It took a bit longer than I anticipated (mostly due to my being a bit rusty at openCanvas) but the results were better than I initially expected. ^^

Funny how I finish a piece of art that features my bf's character rather than mine first... Hunter armor is such a pain to draw. *tears out hair*

As with the previous piece, this is also available in a widescreen wallpaper.

Art - Protect The Ones You Love (WIP)

2009-01-10T18:41:00.005+11:00

I recently drew a really imba picture of the boy's Warrior, so I thought I'd scan it and colour it. The colouring bit is coming along slowly, but I liked the original ink so much that I made it all pretty and such.

Also avaliable in a widescreen wallpaper!

More experimenting with Surv

2009-01-10T03:35:00.005+11:00

As mentioned in a previous post, I thought I'd save 10mans for Survival testing. Well, tonight was the guild's weekly 10man Naxx, and I thought I'd try out a different spec from last week.

This week, I put in that one point in Go for the Throat (which in my haste last week I forgot to do) which was suggested on the EJ Surv hunter thread.

Instead of putting full points into Sniper Training and 1 in Imp. Feign Death, I decided to go Trap Mastery and Resourcefulness this time. Because this was a clean run of Naxx (as opposed to just two bosses like last week), I had more opportunities to use Explosive Shot's AoE capability.

My main rotation on trash would be to wait for tank to pick up and establish aggro, run in and drop an Explosive Trap, wait for Lock and Load to proc, use up L&L's charges, and then Volley until Explosive Shot is off cooldown.

Usually, after proccing L&L, you can just sit back and literally listen to the fireworks. It's like music.

What surprised me though, is that I topped dps for most bosses. (Of course discounting the fact that we'd taken a few undergeared people in to get some loots for them...) There were a few fights were our Fury TG Warrior out dpsed me, but that was by a rather small margin and so I don't really mind.

Since there is no WWS report tonight, I can't really tell how well Replenishment went for the raid.

See that Explosive Shot three in a row crit? Oh yeah baby...

I told myself I wouldn't...

2009-01-06T10:28:00.004+11:00

...but I got myself a wasp anyway. I thought, why not? Since this particular one is going to be untameable in the next patch.

Thoughts on Survival

2009-01-04T02:47:00.005+11:00

Against my better judgement, I respecced Survival for our guild's 10man Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad kills tonight. One of the new healers who'd just dinged - a CoH priest - was complaining of going oom halfway through the fight because we didn't have a Replenishment class. So I decided to take a dive into the deep end and throw dps out the window while I did so.

So I dragged my ass down to IF, respecced, and banged on the Heroic Training Dummy for a while, figuring out a good rotation. Right after that, I got asked on a heroic Halls of Lightning run, where I was mildly surprised by the dps output it was doing, especially on boss fights. (Hello, 10k Kill Shot crit!) Funny story... we actually killed Loken 5 minutes before the instance reset and I didn't manage to loot my badges, Stone Keeper's Shards or the quest item... boo!

Anyway, I rock up to Sapph, and we down him on the first try. I'd read some surv hunter reports that they'd run up to the boss and drop an Explosive Trap on their heads to proc Lock and Load. While it's not one of the most dignified things to be seen doing, especially on Sapph, it does result in a chain of Explosive Shots, and hey, more crits mean more uptime on Replenishment, right? Absolutely!

I even have a WWS report! It's my first time actually seeing one of these things in action, so bear with me if I'm a bit excited. According to WWS, my Replenishment buff caused our healers to gain an average of 14k mana. It's not stellar as far as mana replenishment goes, but I guess it's not bad? Forgive me if I have no clue how this works for healers...

I came 4th on damage, and 6th on dps for that fight. Not too shabby for damage, but a little lackluster for dps... but I was expecting that.

On to Kel'Thuzad. We wiped the first time due to an unlucky number of mana explosions on one of our druid healers, and an unlucky ice block on the add tank right before the adds came up, but we did get him down to 10%.

Anyways, second attempt went better. Here's the report for those interested. On this fight, Replenishment restored about 15k of healers' mana. I also switched aspects 5 times on the fight, something which is also interesting. As with Sapph, I was periodically running up to KT and dropping a trap. It was actually pretty amusing to hear our DK tank - who is formerly a hunter - ask if he should be doing anything, because he thought it was something the boss did.

Came 3rd on damage and 4th on dps, slightly better than Sapphiron. (It's the not having to move out of blizzards... I swear)

I wasn't feeling on top at the end of the raid, but after our resto druid posted the WWS reports and told me that Replenishment was actually helpful to him on those fights, I kinda feel better now. It is nice to actually have some utility other than just bring the huge numbers in, and I think I will be respeccing for guild 10s to Survival from now on. :)

Special thanks to the guild's resident grumpy resto druid for posting that WWS report!

Guide to Aces High! daily

2009-01-02T05:09:00.006+11:00

aka Practice for Malygos dragon phase!

How to unlock the daily:

Go to Librarian Serrah (33.5 , 34.4) in Coldarra
Obtain the quest [Corastrasza]
Deliver it to Corastrasza (29.5 , 24.8), she is on top of a platform -you need to fly
Get the daily quest [Aces High!] (first time you even get a blue item) and repeat it until you only dream about flying around doing this daily when you sleep!

Basically, you get a red drake with the exact same abilities as the drakes you ride in the Malygos encounter. The basic strategy to completing this daily is to HoT yourself up with Revivify, and then engage a blue drake. (Scalesworn Elite) When your health gets knocked down a bit, target yourself (this is important) and use Life Burst.

Here's some handy macros:
/target Scalesworn Elite
/castsequence reset=target Flame Spike, Flame Spike, Engulf in Flames
For the Malygos fight, just change /target Scalesworn Elite to /target Malygos.

The damage part of this is fairly straightfoward. You can spam that macro to victory (much like a hunter would be used to... but I digress) and just focus on healing yourself periodically.

Although the tooltips for the abilities say that they require combo points, they aren't really "combo points" as such. They're more like stacks of the ability. So 5 stacks of Revivify is the same as 5 combo points on yourself. 5 stacks of Flame Spike is the same as 5 combo points on the target.

The blue drakes also do a burst move called Arcane Surge which you have to shield yourself from. As long as you have one or more stacks of Flame Spike, and 25 energy, you can put up a Flame Shield. I've found that you can actually survive that without putting up the shield (it all came down to me being sloppy, but whatever) just make sure you HoT yourself up after you've taken the spike damage. Typically, it deals about 60-70% of your total health, so watch your drake's health closely.

Before you start, make sure you can see your pet bar. This is no problem if you use WoW's default interface, but if you have Pitbull or any other unitframe mod, make sure to double check. It is especially important that you are able to keep an eye on your energy.

For hunters and warlocks (classes which already have pets), dismiss your pets to prevent any sort of weird bugging which might happen. You may also want to have a separate unitframe mod to display the pet bar, because if you're anything like me, having to change Pitbull around is a pain in the ass. For example, I use Pitbull for my usual frames, and turn on ag unit frames for this daily/raid.

The raid encounter will pretty much be the same, perhaps with the exception that you don't need to watch your health as much, due to the presence of healer assignments. However, since you can heal yourself, it is always a good idea to keep an eye on the health bar anyway.

Another general tip for healers in this raid is to turn on pet frames for this fight. The dragons everyone gets are considered pets and it might be hard to heal the raid without this turned on.

Also, if your target's debuffs/auras are filtered, make sure you turn them off so you can see how many stacks of Flame Spike is on the target as there is no traditional "combo point" display as such. This might be a bit hard to identify in a raid situation, but you can always play guess! Anyway, I think Pitbull often places your debuffs first.

I know it might seem like a pain, but a few goes at this daily and it might actually be fun!

Happy New Year!

2009-01-02T00:27:00.002+11:00

Not much tonight, everyone's off getting wasted. Not really my thing, but I'm lazy tonight anyways.

Raiding on a new pc

2008-12-29T00:51:00.007+11:00

I got a shiny new pc for Christmas, so I was pretty excited to be raiding tonight. I'd previously been using my bf's laptop to play WoW, and usually in raids it'd be chugging with under 10 frames per second with all the settings on minimum.

There were a few issues with Error #132 and overclocking of the RAM, but I seemed to have solved that problem, thank god. WoW ran perfectly fine for about 5 hours. :)

We went ahead and tried for Less Is More on heroic Sartharion, and it went perfectly. Wiped once due to a mistake on positioning and aggro, and the flame adds overwhelming the dps a little bit. He was on 5% and everything! I was lucky enough to get Fury of the Five Flights to replace my Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood. Thankfully I'd gotten Fool's Trial earlier from Naxx25 to make up for the hit! So right now I'm sitting just under the hit cap and not missing.

I took the shiny new trinket down to IF to test it out on the training dummies, and it's probably one of the best trinkets I've ever had. The proc is up pretty much 100% of the time, because a new stack refreshes the duration on the buff. So pretty much the only time when you'd lose the buff is when you're not attacking anything. Holy crap!

And as of today I am fully epic'd out... except for a stat stick. =.=

Ye Olde 60% Mount

2008-12-28T16:17:00.000+11:00

Ah yes, I remember when you used to get it at level 40...

Marksman 101*

2008-12-28T15:29:00.009+11:00

With the Steady Shot nerf looming in the next patch, I thought it might be wise to put out something about expanding into the other two Hunter trees.

Although Beast Mastery has been by and large the highest dps output so far, that can potentially change. The main thing of note is that the BM/Readiness spec that is the most popular right now is getting nerfed to the ground.

And with that in mind, I'd like to talk about a heavy Marks spec for raiding.

Take this build for example.

On the first tier, we have Improved Aspect of the Hawk. Since the change to Viper in patch 3.0, any hunter worth their bow would have been switching to having Hawk all the time instead of Viper as was the norm in BC. This talent is now pretty much a prerequisite for any raiding spec now. While you don't necessarily spam Steady Shot as Marks, the haste bonus is still pretty nice and is worth spending the 5 points in.

Over in the MM tree, the top three tiers pretty much fill themselves in. Lethal Shots, Careful Aim and Mortal Shots are all extremely good talents to have for any spec. Full points in Go for the Throat and Rapid Killing are also not to be overlooked.

If you're not hitcapped, you can see about switching the 3 points from either Improved Hunter's Mark or Improved Stings into Focused Aim instead. Depending on what your hit is like, you might want to see how many points you need to spend in that talent. If you're unsure about what the hitcap is, especially in relation to this talent, here is a great guide by Drotora about it.

The rest of the tree is pretty self-explanatory, but I also took full points in Barrage due to Aimed Shot being a staple in my Marks rotation.

Over in the Surv tree, I've popped full points into Improved Tracking and Hawk Eye. Especially with the patch, they're improving the mechanics of Imp Tracking to make it better, which makes it pretty much an essential now. As for Hawk Eye, it is always nice to be out of bosses' AoEs. :D One of the comments in Wowhead noted that it is hard to go back to playing without it... and I agree. I levelled up with that talent, and I really miss having to run further toward my target just to reach it to tap it. This can be especially annoying when doing Sons of Hodir dailies... but I digress.

And finally I've also put in full points in Survival Instincts, for the same reasoning I put points into Barrage. Not only that, it also affects Steady Shot! Win-win situation.

I'd been using this spec to raid since patch 3.0 came out (with less points, of course), and have since topped or came in second for dps where before I was usually about 3rd to 5th on the charts. This was also the spec I used to level up. Before I read about how powerful BM/Readiness was, this was my raiding spec for a good two or three weeks after I hit 80. Compared with the BM hunter in the same raid with a Devilsaur, I was outputting equivalent dps with a cat. This tree is no longer to be underestimated!

My basic rotation was mainly Serpent Sting > Aimed > Arcane > Chimera and then Steady spam till the other abilities were off cooldown. Switch to Viper and pop Rapid Fire when you're oom (since Viper regens mana based on your ranged attack speed - the faster you shoot, the faster you regain mana), rinse and repeat. I usually pop Readiness after Rapid Fire so the cooldown can start counting down, but other than that, there aren't many "big" cooldowns it's useful for in the Marks tree.

Of course, this isn't the only option for MM specs. For example, instead of going down Surv to take the increased Arcane/Steady talent, one could opt going into the BM tree for Aspect Mastery, as illustrated here.

If I ever get the chance to try out a Surv spec - and I probably will after the nerf patch - I will post something about it. :D Was thinking about something like this...

*The following is based on personal experience... I don't claim to be an expert on this sort of thing. :P

First post!

2008-12-28T01:23:00.005+11:00

And how else to kick off a WoW blog than by ragging on a bad player!

To be specific, it was an 80 hunter (or should I say huntard) I ran into while questing on Tora. He had on a spellpower ring from Argent Crusade exalted. Of course, me being me, I immediately /s Signet of Hopeful Light you have got to be kidding. He later whispered me saying he needed it for the mana.

Why would any hunter in their right mind sacrifice useful stats for mana? We have Viper for a reason people. That was exactly what I told him, to which he replied "Viper decreases dps". Oh, sure. You know, you can always switch back when you're at full mana? Heck, half mana if you're so worried about dps charts! It's never been a problem for me or any of the other hunters I've run across.

/facepalm

My name is Tora... and I am very anal about huntards.

(It will get better, I promise.)