and here the road ends

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...

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!

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

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

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

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

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...

...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

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

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

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

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

Rockin' the PTR

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.