Casual Huntering

Archive for the ‘Hunter’ Category

I’ve been meaning to write a post about some of the random keywords people have used to find my blog. Many of which aren’t addressed. So, I here I am addressing them.

“what level do you have to be to tame skoll”

Level 80

“any benefit to taming rare pets”

Yeah, they’re cool looking! What kind of hunter would have to ask this question anyways??

“at what age is it nerdy to play wow”

Depends on who you talk to, some would say it is always too nerdy to play WoW, but in my humble opinion you are never too old to be too nerdy. Oh wait, did that come out right? I actually think wow is a geeky thing, not a nerdy thing.

“can $30 internet handle world of warcraft”

When I started playing I was on a dial-up. So, it’s possible to play with slow internet, but you’re lag will be pretty bad. I don’t suggest it. Go buy yourself a WiFi card and play on your neighbor’s internet.

“can my kids use the same world of warcraft account as me?”

If you don’t ever want to play with your kid, yes. If you want to play alongside him, then no. Of course you’d then need another computer as well.

Mostly you’ll have to fight for game time, but you’re the parent, you can kick them off.

“can’t play wow at worl, how can i pas the restrictions”

Yes, Worl restrictions can be quite severe. You’ll have to jail break your worl in order to add a proxy WoW server in order to be able to bypass all of the restrictions.

“how many pets can a hunter have”

5

“how long will it take me to get to level 80 from level 40?”

However long you would like, that depends on how much you’d like to neglect real life, but its takes me way too long to do that kind of leveling.

“how to change your personal cultural bias”

Identify, examine, educate yourself, follow through. I don’t know if that really fits the scope of this blog.

“how to manage wow and real life”

Prioritize

“how to teach a child to play wow”

Throw them at a computer and let them have at it.

“i want to get my mom to play wow, what should she play as?”

A hunter

“i was in the snow for long time got fever”

Get out of the snow then.

“i wiped the raid hunter pet aggressive”

Take your pet off of aggressive /facepalm.

“ways death knights can make money”

The same way any other class makes money.

“what age kid plays mafia wars”

This depends if you are taking about the facebook app or real life mafia wars.

“what is rp & rl on twitter”

Well, for me rp=roleplay rl=real life, but I don’t know what other people are doing.

“where are the best place in nothend for hunters pets”

Well, I assume you meant northrend. And you’d be surprised to find animals to tame in every area. No really, it’s true. Depends on the pet you want.

“why teenagers shouldnt play wow”

Well, I don’t see why not, unless they are letting their play time destroy their grades. I say you should teach balance and moderation instead of complete abstinence. Now I’m referring to WoW and not other things teenagers do. Keep that in mind.

“why can’t i buy hourly game time in wow”

No, but sometimes I wish you could, cause it kills me that I pay the same amount for my 8 hours a week as my brother-in-law does for his 30+ hours. You can in Asia though.

“will expanded stables be released before cataclysm?”

I don’t think so.

So, there you have it, some of the random questions I’ve gotten in the last month. Of course since these were google searches, they probably just went to another website that did have the answers. But whatever.

Maybe if their lucky. I wasn’t sure if I would ever get one. But man, if you are hunting the spiritbeast, you should be prepared, at least somewhat prepared.

Could I have possibly do everything wrong? Just how many chances could one hunter get???

So, today I’m doing my dailies, and when I have to go get the snobolds in Stormpeaks. I’ve made a habit of going by Skoll’s spawn points, but I don’t expect anything. So, I’m not ready at all. But then my nifty little NPC scan dings with a nice little picture of the blue wolf in the middle of my screen.

Well, I guess I was at least in my BM spec, so that was good. But I totally already had a pet out. I dismiss my turtle. I get down and throw down a frost trap. YES, A FROST TRAP. Oh my gosh, hello?? What do I want to do slow him down? So, I start stumbling around for my tame beast spell. Oh course it isn’t out! Finally start taming him and I’m already half dead. /facepalm.

So, I feign death and start over. This time with the right trap. Everything is going fine and dandy, tame pet spell almost over. It ends with a “you have full pets” or some junk. Ha! I didn’t even have a pet slot available!!! I quickly do a call pet spell, and hit some button, I don’t know which. My mind was completely blank as to how to get rid of an unwanted pet. Then I remembered that you have to abandon it. Seeing how I messed around with the call pet spell, I was stuck with whatever pet I had for the next 5 minutes. It was my turtle, sad I know. I love my turtle! But he’s a whole hell of a lot easier to find than the spirit beast. So, I said goodbye to the turtle (well I didn’t really, I’ll go find him again once I get a chance).

Attempt 3 went smoothly, I was able to tame skoll. Yay!! My goodness how many attempts could I have had, thank heavens nobody else was round about! I honestly didn’t think I’d ever get a spirit beast.

The funny thing was I kind of had a weird feeling about flying around Stormpeaks, like I would actually find either Skoll or the Timelost proto drake. Strange. I knew where two of skoll’s spawn points were. I was debating about pulling them up before I even came out here.

Well, I’m feeling all sorts of jittery now. I’ve always heard the stories of those who have found spiritbeasts, how you get the shakes, I didn’t know how true it really was.

Okay, now I’m going to get back to my dailies. Happy Huntering!

There was a recent blue post regarding hunters and spirit beasts, you can find it on the forums here.

The Spirit Beasts were added as a way to capture that old feeling of having to hunt (which really means be very patient and very lucky) to get rare spawn pets so that you’d feel awesome and be able to show them off. Making those creatures actually more powerful than other pets goes completely counter to that design. If the frustratingly rare spawn is needed for highest possible dps, there would be a lot of exasperated hunters out there, and I think they’d be totally justified.

Spirit Beasts are the hunter equivalent of the Time Lost Protodrake. They are there for bragging rights, not max dps.

We’re not sure yet what we’re going to do for hunter pets in the future. I fear that even if the dps gain was marginal that hunters would still go for the highest dps pets, so really there only exists an illusion of choice. We could literally make all of the pet families do the exact dps and have rather watered down special abilities (because otherwise one of them might grant a 1 or 2% dps benefit and that would end up being the pet again).

In other words, I can see a design where pet choice is purely cosmetic and pet stats are identical or I can see a design where pet choice matters, in which case you don’t really have that many to choose from on content that matters.

Well, I agree with the spiritbeast. It would make it very difficult if you pretty much made it mandatory to have one to play. It would really take the fun out of the hunt, making it into a necessary chore instead. I admit, I haven’t found a spiritbeast myself, but that’s because I’m not willing to put the time/sweat/tears into it. Mostly because I just don’t have the time or patience.

They are right, we all flock to the favor pet for dps. If only maybe they made some pets better in these situations and some better in those. I guess they have already done that to some extent with the 3 pet trees, but maybe they could make it more fine tuned. Like having a pet you use during trash pulls and having a pet that you use during boss fights or something. Where you can pull the pet out at a whim, it wouldn’t be such a big deal.

I like what I read in a blue post earlier (I don’t know exactly where I read it and I’m too lazy to find the link, sorry). But they contemplated having a system in the future where you’d still only have 3 pets you can get to with your summon pet spell, but that you could store more pets in the stables. You could have all the spirit beasts, your original pet, your fav tenacity, pet, and so on. I’ve heard some worry that hunters would then become collectors of pets (like we do with vanity pets and mounts). But I think, so what. That would be cool! Aoirselvar has a ranch for his pets, it would fit his RP story to the tee, and it would be fun to do too boot. But that’s just my opinion.

Well, with the Lunar Festival coming soon to a close the Elders of Azeroth come forth to bear their wisdom. The shared topic from Blog Azeroth, given by Khi, was to share some wisdom with people just starting out. I’m not sure exactly how wise I am, sometimes I can be downright immature, but I am Elder Aoirselvar, and every so often I come up with some profound.

Okay, so you decided to create a hunter. You like animals and guns? Or it was random decision and you don’t really know what you are getting yourself into. Great!

Well, welcome, you have come to the right place. Hunters are great! They are fun, great for leveling, great dpsers, and usually down right good looking (especially the dwarven types).

As Thorgas Grimson, Dwarven Hunter Trainer said,

Tamer of beasts, master marksman, proven tracker – what else ya want to accomplish in this lifetime? All those things combined takes quite a bit of intelligence and a great deal of patience.

The path of the hunter ain’t an easy one, that’s fer sure. You’re gonna need lots of training if you wanna be as good as even our lowest ranking rifleman. But that’s why I’m here.

One thing you should always remember is that you gotta respect the world you’re livin’ in. The beasts that choose to fight along side you; the shine of your weapon; the weight of your ammo; the bite of the bitter wind; all these things you need to know intimately.

Now when you start playing a hunter at level one you’ll notice something is missing. That’s right you don’t have a pet, you have to earn it. Level one through ten is often known as melee hell for hunters. As you will soon find out, we hunters aren’t so good up close and personal. We usually like to keep our big mean pets around to keep people out of our face. We have personal space issues.

But… you don’t get to do the quest chain to get yourself a pet until level 10. However, there are a few tricks to keeping mobs out of your face up to this point. And there are some very important skills to be learned at this point.

At first you’ll have next to nothing. You’ll be able to auto-shot and hit someone with your sword. Your auto-shot is the most basic range attack you have, and it is awesome. You just have to normally turn it on and forget about it. We’re the only class I believe that has a range auto attack (some people aren’t too happy about that).

You’ll see that this auto-shot range attack takes a break between shots for two seconds. So, this is what you’ll do when you attack mobs at first. Target something you want to kill, get as far away from it as possible with it still in range. Your auto-shot spell will be white when in range, red when out.

In range.

Not in range.

Then start your auto-shot, while you’re getting ready to shot again walk backwards, turn around and run, or strafe to one side or another, just for a couple of seconds then stop facing the mob again to let the auto-shot do it work (the only crappy thing about auto-shot is that you have to be holding still for it to work).

So, continue to do this, auto-shot, move, auto-shot, move, and before the mob can reach you it’ll be dead.

For some mobs all you have to do is back up for a couple of seconds, shot, and back up again. However, this doesn’t always work and some of the tougher mobs will catch up with you quickly. In these cases you’ll want to strafe shot them. That is running away with either the “Q” or “E” button, to the side, gaining distance from the mobs during your cool down on auto-shot then ever so briefly turning around, holding still for just a slight moment to get an auto-shot in, then start running again. The goal is to keep your melee weapon skills as low as possible to show just how well you did at killing stuff before they got anywhere near you. You’ll start to get the rhythm of it. It’s almost like a dance. Shoot one two shoot one two etc etc. (I had a harder time getting screen shots of the strafing because it generally requires both hands.)

If you are having a difficult time judging when you can auto shot again there are mods out there. The one I am using is called Kharthus’s Hunter Timers.

This is a good time to note that it’s probably a good idea to make sure you know what’s around you. It doesn’t do any good to walk right into a mob while backing up attacking another mob. But it shouldn’t matter, from level 1-6 all mobs are yellow, meaning they’ll only attack if you attack them first. By the time we get to mobs that are a bit more aggressive we’ll be focusing on a new tactic anyway.

Now as you start to level you’ll get some nifty shots to help you with your anti-melee quest. At level 4 you’ll get Serpent Sting, this is a DoT (damage over time) shot. You’ll want to start with this shot now and continue your auto-shot/ move /auto-shot thing. Important to note, you no longer even have to click on auto-shot. It starts automatically when you shoot your Serpent Sting at the mob. Now they’ll die even quicker. Muahahaha.

It is also important to note that Serpent Sting in an instant cast shot. That means you don’t have to be holding still to get this shot off. It’s probably best to hold still for the first shot so you can get your first auto-shot in as well.

At level 6 you’ll get Arcane Shot. This shot, like Serpent Sting, is also an instant cast. Now you’ll be able to provide extra damage while you’re moving. There are a couple of other skills we should discuss now that you have Arcane shot. (by the way, you now also have the Hunter’s Mark, a very important hunter ability that we won’t go into here – just use it all the time, very important).

Now that you have a couple of instant cast shots its time to look at a new skill, the jump shot.

This is the coolest badest thing you’ll ever learn as a hunter, but it’s a little tricky. If you are a keyboard turner, then you’ll have to stop that to figure this thing out.

Basically, when you have a mobs attention, you run away, but you jump, then using your mouse turn mid air shot an instant shot and turn back around before you land on the ground. (you’ll have to use hot keys for your shot, so if you like to use your mouse to click on your spells, well stop that as well).

Sounds difficult right? It’s not that bad. The trick is to use your mouse to do quick turning mid air. Big Red Kitty (BRK), one of the greatest hunter teachers of all time made a brilliant video on how to do this. If you seriously want to be a hunter then I highly suggest you go watch it and several of his other training videos. They are outdated in several aspects, but the basic skills remain the same.

It looks as if I’m shooting backwards, but when I actually hit the button I’m facing the mob, it just takes a second for the animation to keep up, thus the U-turn shot.

Once you figure out this jumping shot thing, then leveling without a pet become enjoyable. It becomes a game to see how far you can make the mob run after you and if you can get him down before he gets anywhere near melee range. (And if you thought strafing would be difficult to get screen shots for, try getting them for the  jump shot. I had to enlist my wife to take the screen shots for me.)

This my friend is kiting, that is pulling your mobs along like a kite on a string. It is, in my opinion, one of the most fun things you can do as a hunter. You don’t get asked to do it very often, but there use to be fights here and there where you could. I use to kite the tinman from the opera fight in Kara in BC around the room to keep him occupied while the rest of the mobs were killed. Great great fun.

Soon enough you’ll get to level 10 and you’ll get your pet. Then it’ll all change. You’ll no longer be required to run around every where, jumping and straffing and such. You’re pet will keep the mobs attention. There is something that’ll be lost. You’ll find yourself, every so often tell your pet to just chill for the moment, just so you can kite a mob here or there. My wife got really enjoyed when I did this, dragging mobs all over the place. It’s good fun. Of course these are invaluable skills in PvP. In PvP kiting is a very important skill indeed.

But it’s in the first 10 levels you learn this fun stuff. That’s why we don’t get pets right away; it forces us to learn how to fight without them. I suggest you put your pet on passive ever so often and show off how bad @ss you are.

Happy Huntering

Another lack of Tuesday maintenance means a lack of blog posts here at casual huntering. I spent Tuesday morning trying to finish off the Lunar Festival on my Death knight. I had to pug every one of the northrend dungeons, but I finally got it done. I used random dungeon finder to jump into either the heroic or normal versions of the instances. I was either the top of the dps meters or on the extreme bottom (I only recently got good enough gear on my DK to be able to do heroics at all).

Well, all of my focus and energy has been on trying to get these holidays done. This morning I got on the computer and I didn’t know what the heck what to do. I spent like 30 minutes just trying to organize my bank alt’s bags and guild bank tabs. Wow its a mess! That’s what happens when you are trying to level jewelcrafting. I have jewelry all over the place. I have 4 tabs on my guild bank and they are all packed. I threw a few things on the AH, just to create more space. I’m such a pack rat.

Yeah, I then tried to work on leveling my druid, lost focus on that in like 5 minutes. I really need to get her to level 40 so I can get her epic mount. I was too impatient so I only did one quest and then jumped on my main character, my hunter.

So, I decided the SV spec on my hunter isn’t doing it for me. I am now experimenting with a MM build. I was suppose to try it out on ToC 10 last night, but our guild raid didn’t happen. So, this morning I did a couple of randoms. I’m really enjoying this spec more, but I’ve only done 2 dungeons so far, so the verdict is still out.

Other than that, I’m feeling a little blaa. Debating about going back to my altoholic mode that I was in before February. I’ve been neglecting all characters that aren’t on Deathwing (and several that are). Mostly only my DK and Hunter have gotten any attention from me. I’ve really enjoyed dungeons on my DK in Unholy spec so maybe I’ll play around with that. But the ever approaching gear respec makes me won’t to focus on alts instead. Oh, I probably should just pick something and stick with it.

Anyway, I’m trying to get this out quickly because I need to get back to work. So, I’m sorry about the typos that will inevitably show up somewhere.

There was another Q&A twitter session recently. It was very enlightening. I wanted to talk about some of the points that we discussed, but I’m definitely not going to go over the entire session. Go here if you would like to read it in its entirety.

Hunter (Of course I have to start with the hunter stuff.)

Q. The Hunter class has many odd and situational abilities such as Mongoose Bite and Aspect of the Beast – are there any plans for changes to these types of abilities?

A. Mongoose Bite is most likely a goner. Let us weep. We think Aspect of the Beast could have some cool uses for Beastmaster hunters.

I really hope that Beastmasters will be a viable raid spec again someday. /crosses fingers

Q. Are hunters likely to see more stable slots for their pets in the future? With the current variety of pets, the amount they have right now seems too small.

A. Arm-waving here, but a model I would love to see is dramatically expanded slots (so you can store all those Spirit Beasts) but have a smaller number of “active” pets, like 3. You could summon an active pet from anywhere in the world, when outside of combat. You would swap a pet from active to the stable at the Stable Masters.

This is a great idea!! I mean really do you use more than 3 pets at a time anyway? We always have several pets that we just can’t manage to say good bye to, and … who would ever say adios to a Spiritbeast for goodness sake. I think this isn’t such a bad idea. I hope it happens.

Death Knight (My only other level 80 character is a DK at this point, I’m enjoying the class thoroughly).

Q. Two-handed (2H) frost death knights was a really fun playstyle that died when dual-wielding (DW) was introduced. Are there any plans to make using two-handed weapons more appealing?

A. We can’t make every death knight tree PvP, PvE and tanking viable and also offer both 2H and DW options for all three of those. We are currently designing Frost as a DW-only tree.

Right now my death knight is a 2 handed frost spec tank and 2 handed unholy spec dps. Why?  Because I haven’t picked up one handed weapons yet, but I totally want to dual wield with my frost tank. I won’t say more to further demonstrate my noobness when it comes to this subject.

Raids & Dungeons (I admit I have skipped a lot of the questions here.)

Q. What have you learned from this expansion’s emblem system?

A. Having that many different kind of emblems is overwhelming. In hindsight, we wish we had done maybe 2 emblems: the current tier and the previous tier (Frost and Triumph at the moment). They also felt a tad too grindy when 3.3 first came out before all of the sources of emblems were available.

I’m glad that they are simplifying this; it was a bit too overwhelming, confusing, and complicated previously. I don’t’ want them to make it so simple that its almost stupid, but I think 2 tiers are enough.

Q. Are there any plans to allow cross-realm raiding?

A. If we can solve the problems with it, we might give it a try. One of the problems is getting the group back together, especially on the longer instances. Loot drama and stuff like that is always a problem. There is also the ongoing concern about the concept of your realm having less of a sense of community.

I personally don’t see how this can end up being a good thing. Our raid group does some puging for ToC 25, but they have a “good list” and a “bad list”. With random, you get what you get. There just seems for too much coordination that needs to take place and too much time required. With that being said, I think it would make raiding more accessible to someone who doesn’t have a raiding guild or don’t have enough people to do 25 mans. I agree about the loss of the community feel though. I’m all over pugs for 5 man, but this looks like it could go sour.

Q. Will we be seeing more Caverns of Time in Cataclysm? War of the Ancients, maybe?

A. We will definitely see another trip to the Caverns of Time during Cataclsym. You are going to have to ask Chromie for more details though. =)

I love Caverns of Time dungeons, the lore, the story line, the chance to go back in time, it’s all epic in my opinion. I’m glad they are doing that in Cataclsym.

Q. Why have we not seen World Bosses in this expansion?

A. They just have problems. It’s always a race to get to them, which tends to favor larger groups who are online often, and it’s hard to discourage or even prevent players outside the raid from helping or screwing things up.

A#2. World bosses are something that we have been talking about more as of late. We really like the concept, but there are certain design problems we would like to address before we bring them back. Stay tuned.

I’ve been wondering about this myself. I thought it was cool having random world bosses in different areas. (don’t go over there if you don’t want to be eaten by a dragon **head nod**). I remember leveling and visiting the center of Darkshire only to be quickly killed by the large dragon there. I didn’t like dying much, but it was cool to see it. But I see the problem here; I wouldn’t have a chance being as casual as I am with my play time. I’m a little curious what they plan on doing.

Q. With the advent of Heroic Shadowfang Keep and Heroic Deadmines, is there any likelihood of other older instances made Heroic?

A. Yes. We are hoping to do more than just these two, but it just comes down to time. We are focusing on getting the new Cataclysm dungeons done first and then we can look into doing more old-world Heroics.

I’m so stupid; I thought that it was odd that they were only doing Shadowfang keep and Deadmines. That will be awesome; with new patches will get new old school heroic dungeons. What more could you ask for??

Cataclysm (not everything, just the questions that interested me).

Q. Regarding Cataclysm, can you reveal any of the ‘major changes’ in Blasted Lands and how this will affect the lore?

A. I love the fact that one of our first questions is in regards to the Blasted Lands! We have big plans in store for this zone in Cataclysm. We will be revamping the entire flow of the zone so you can expect an entirely new experience here. Some of the big changes include an opening to the coastline for a new play area, as well as a large new worgen area in The Tainted Scar.

You know, I don’t think I did anything in the Blasted Lands except go through the portal to the outlands, maybe I should check it out before the expansion. (I probably won’t).

Q. Should players be concerned about what gear they pickup in this expansion, because of the gear overhaul that is coming?

A. I wouldn’t stress over it. You’ll probably replace that gear pretty quickly. Since we have 5 levels, we don’t really want players getting all the way to 85 without having upgraded at all.

Yeah, of course a gear reset is coming. Kind of makes me want to work on alts instead of my main for the next few months.

Q. With the Lich King defeated, in Cataclysm, will the Plaguelands be green and beautiful again?

A. Western Plaguelands will finally be free of the plague in Cataclysm. It’s hard for the Scourge to survive without their beloved Lich King. I guess this means we need to rename the zone?

I love it; I always thought the place was kind of ugly anyway. These kinds of changes that fit with the storyline get me excited. I’m going to be tempted to roll a bunch of new characters and start over. I’m sure a lot of people will be doing that.

Q. Will we get some info about the other zones revamped in Cataclysm, like Stranglethorn Vale or Tanaris?

A. Yes, we are hoping to do a few specific web features on a few of the old world zones and exactly what is changing with them. Stranglethorn Vale is seeing a large amount of changes so it is a great candidate for this.

A#2. A. Some Tanaris goblins wisely invested in desert real estate and reaped the benefits when it became beach-front property.

Oh, do I remember the days of STV leveling on a PvP server. Can I say gank city? I remember be camped on multiple occasions. I think it’ll be good for the area to get a face lift. Them goblins are so good with money. I’d be tempted to hire one as an accountant if I didn’t think he’d rob me blind.

Q. Will there be any type of water mount, like, submarines?

A. We actually have two brand new subs that we made for Cataclysm. These submarines will be used as transports. We have one for gnomes and one for goblins. The subs are huge too! Both are about the size of the Gunships from Icecrown.

Can I just say how full of win this is? Now I think I’ll work on leveling my hunter first before making a worgen or goblin just so I can get my engineering up to make one of these. I’m very stoked about this. (update: I thought about this more and more, what was I thinking, these are just going to be like the boats or blimps for massive transport, not a mount. /fail)

Miscellaneous

Q. Where is my moose? Did you see that Ghostcrawler?

A. That was so epic. I was sure the screenshot was shopped until we saw the actual video. I guess we’re going to have to do a moose now…

Yeah, where’s our moose??

This Q&A session got me really excited for up and coming WoW stuff. I’m pretty darn excited for Cataclysm.

Okay, I admit to all of you that I have a lousy memory. I have to give myself reminders constantly or I will forget important to-do items at work, at home, and during raiding. How many of you hunters have been guilty of forgetting to get out of Aspect of the Viper after your mana is completely replenished? I use to have a nice little addon for that called ViperWatch, but the mod writer stopped updating it. So, I tried to just remember on my own. Well, that has been a joke. The only thing that will cut down your DPS more would probably be dying early on in the raid. I don’t know how many times I would look at the dps meters and wonder why my dps was in the pits and then look up to see myself having perfectly full mana. It was a little embarrassing.

Consequently, I had to show my friend Dave that Aspect of the Viper is not the default aspect even if it’s nice because you never run out of mana. We had that discussion awhile ago. Turns out he did a lot of leveling that way. I can’t remember if I covered that in a Dave’s Hunter Guide or not.

Anyway, I always knew when to switch to viper because I couldn’t do anything but use autoshot, mana is completely gone. It’s just way too easy to keep on Viper too long… way too long. Really, you want to get back to Aspect of a Dragonhawk as fast as humanly (or dwarvenly) possible.

So, here you have it. This is the Aspect of the Viper reminder addon that I’ve found that works for Patch 3.3. It works beautifully. It’s called ViperNotify and it very simple. When your mana is back up it give an annoying “ding” sound over and over and over again until you switch it off. The last viper addon was too easy to miss, but you won’t miss this one. You’ll spend less time in Viper and more time DPSing the h3ll out of those bosses.

I’m sure many of you already have this figured out, but for those of you who don’t I hope this helps out.

Okay, so I’ll be frankly honest with you all. If we don’t have Tuesday maintenance server down time, I don’t and won’t post as much for that week. I love writing on here, but I also love playing the game. I use that down time on Tuesday mornings to write a little something something about the game. Otherwise, I’m playing. I gives me something to do related to the game at least you know.

Man, there probably should be more down time (even though I would be very upset about it). I might get more accomplished with my life. dishes, feeding the dog (wait, I don’t have a dog), exercising (well, I do exercise, but it takes great motivation, that of which has been failing me lately), etc. I don’t know…

So, I went raiding on Tuesday with my guild thinking I would be the bomb with my hunter, much better geared than ever before. Or at least I thought I’d do better, but no. My dps was pathetic, maybe worse. I know part of the problem is (as mentioned before) my focus in the game. I’m not super focused on getting my dps up to uber levels with my hunter. My younger brother has been bugging me about it. He wants me to go sit in front of the target dummies and practice my shot rotation and such. I will eventually but I can’t get myself to do it, not when there is so much else to do!! Of course part of the problem was also the fact that I was super tired and I kept dozing off. Not very good for dps when you just sit there like a bump on a log.

Besides lack of sleep, the main thing that has gotten me bogged down lately are holiday achievements. I’ve decided, now that Eliahna (my DK) is level 80, I want to get her started on the road to a pretty 310% speed violet protodrake as well.  And… I still have holidays to do on my hunter. So, I have double duty when it comes to this. At least we are on really easy holidays even if they require a bit of work. I just need to drag my sorry butt to all the elders all over the greater Azeroth. No PvP achievements at all in these holidays so we’re doing good. I’m dreading the up and coming Children’s week holiday. I love the holiday, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to get all of those battleground achievements. I probably should start practicing now, on my hunter, my dk, and my wife’s mage.

So, I should be playing randoms to get frost emblems; instead, I’m running around trying to complete holiday achievements. Thus neither of my end level characters are improving their abilities.

Even if the holiday was over though, I’d probably just be running around on alts or something. I can’t stay focused very well. (Which is why I’m writing the post right now instead of working like I should. )

So, I want to dual spec my deathknight to be a frost dual wielding tank for 5 man instances with family and guildies, and a unholy dps for 5 man pugs and farming. I’ve been tanking all of these really difficult instances, like the underbog, and hellfire peninsula instances. Well, okay, maybe not quite so difficult, but its been fun to play with my brother and his wife, even if my character isn’t yet getting anything out of it.

I really want to also level my kitty druid. Right now she’s sitting at level 36, and she’s been ignored due to holiday stuffs and whatnot. But I really would like to get her to level 80 before the expansion comes out as well.

Rutabaga

Sorry, I’m jumping all over the place on this post today. Randomness at its best, I guess that’s how my brain works and when you get a quick post about what’s on my mind, that’s what you get. Sorry about that.

So, I’ve been ignoring my druid, and I really would like to get back to my other Deathknights (on Duratan US and Earthen Ring US). I’m still trying to work up their professions, which seems like its taking … forever! Especially when one of them have a crafting profession. I’m really guilty about putting those off forever, but not this time, we’re going to level them before we enter the outlands with these characters by golly.

Man, it seems like I had a lot of other things to say. Maybe I need to think on it for a moment.

It’s been about a year since I’ve written one of these guides. You see my friend Dave took a year off of playing WoW. He’s a real good friend of my older brother and when my brother recently started playing again, Dave soon followed (at least that’s what I assume, maybe dave was just hankering to play).

So, Dave has recently joined our little 5 man team that we’ve been doing on Friday nights. I took Aoirselvar the other night with them and we did several Burning Crusade instances in Hellfire and Zangermarsh. My wife was on her level 60 deathknight, my brother on his level 68 priest, my sister-in-law on her 67 warlock and Dave on his 73 level hunter. I switched to BM mode and tanked with my turtle as a pet. That was the first time I had done any 5 man tanking with my hunter. I was a little rocky for one major reason. A reason in which I’ve decide to write a new Dave’s Hunter Guide. So, in today’s installment of Dave’s Hunter Guide we’re going to be covering 5 man instances, some basics dos and don’ts.

Dave’s Hunter Guide – 5 man instances edition

Before we get started here are some definitions.

• Pulling: Getting the attention of a Mob or Boss by saying such things like, “Hey ugly! Your mom is a fatty!”

• Tank: The guy who is saying such things as “Hey ugly! Your mom is a fatty!” and the one tough enough to get away saying it to their face (in our case the turtle, Ravlesrioa, just implied it).

• Hunter: The one who can either make it look like someone else is saying “Hey ugly! Your mom is a fatty” by a neat little thing called Misdirect. Or he shuts up and lets the tank tell the mom jokes.

• Misdirect: That neat little thing.

Now that we got those definitions out there, let’s talk about what you are expected to do as a hunter in a 5 man instance. As you would have guessed, you are expected to kill things. That what us hunter do best, right?

Oh, and sometimes we can help out like dropping frost traps and stuff. We’re not going to worry ourselves about that right now.

Okay, remember the tank? Yeah, the guy making unpleasant comments about moms. We usually like to let him get everybody’s attention (pulling), or better yet, help him get everybody’s attention (misdirect). He usually has better tools for getting everybody to attack him, and he can take it better. He has better armor, thus he gets damaged less. Remember, it takes a big man to cry, but a bigger man to laugh at that man. Your tank is that bigger man. Basically, you probably shouldn’t make fun of other people’s moms, unless you are big enough to handle it.

Even if you are several levels above, some people in the group aren’t. Tanks tend to have ways of making fun of whole groups at the same time, thus they can keep a whole gang of mobs on them. My tenacity pet has its thunder stomp, grabs everybody at once. Your cat pet has growl, only grabs only one. What do the rest of the mobs do? Well, they get pissed off and start punching anyone they can see, often times that’s the healer. You see, when you’re not sure who to go deck, it’s really easy to start with the guy in the dress. Can you hardly blame them?

Best to just let the tough guy go in there and then shoot the wimpy mobs in the back while their attention is drawn. Now, it is also a good idea to attack the same mobs the tank is attacking. You see if the tank goes to the left group, you should do likewise. Attacking a completely different group of mobs (the group to the right)? Bad idea, remember what happens, those mobs tend to go after the guy in the dress. We want the guy in the dress to stay alive because he’s making sure the rest of us are. You want to take nice care of the man in the dress. You don’t have to cuddle with him or anything, but if someone comes over and makes fun of his mom, or his choice in clothing, you’d better let them know that you won’t stand for it.

Okay, did we cover everything? Let tough guy make the wise cracks, don’t go after random mobs, and protect the man in the dress. I think that’s about it.

Oh, I forgot one thing, don’t put your pet on aggressive. Most mobs don’t like cats, letting everyone know that you have one with you is usually enough to bring the whole instance down on you. Its best to keep your pet on a tight leash, don’t let him do just anything he wants to.

Do this and it’ll be good times all around.

We did have a good time, but its a good idea that we have some higher levels or we’d be toast. And apparently I haven’t done a lot of BC 5 mans, seeing how I got achievements for several of these. (/facepalm)

Anyway, I don’t plan on always having my pet tank, but it was fun to mess around with. When we get closer to level 80 instances I’ll have my DK tank for our group. It was amusing having Dave pulling groups left and right, as well as my brother, the priest. The sad thing is that we wouldn’t wipe, only my brother the priest, or my wife the lower level DK would get killed. With the priest dying a lot, I would attempt to use my jumper cables to rez him back to life, and without fail… well, it would fail. I guess that would be better stated, with all fail. But it was good, and we’ll get better as we go. My brother is new to healing, I’m new to tanking, my wife is new to Melee dps, Dave is just having a grand all time, and my sister-in-law is loving the fact that she gets a challenge (pulling the entire room does that). Anyway, good times by all.

Now in my guild there are too many hunters who want to raid. We’re a dime a dozen I’m afraid to say.

It’s a popular class, and hey, why not?

I don’t know anybody who seriously gave the class a try who didn’t like it. Sure there were some that told me that it wasn’t for them, but honestly, I don’t think they ever made it to level 10 (and who didn’t hate the melee hell that a hunter faces before level 10????? Well the first time anyway. The second time for me was kiting and jump shot heaven).

Hunters are cool, why else would the class be so popular. Hunter’s are by far the easiest class to level (now that I’m leveling a pally, kitty druid, priest, lock, mage and a baby hunter, I can see this plain as day). When you are a hunter you get to choose your pet….. and name it!!! Uh, you get to shoot things with a gun? Duh! How could you not love to play your hunter???

So, as I was saying, in my home guild (Can of Aggro) there are lots and lots of hunters who raid. And what do multiple hunters offer?? Well, more cute pets? If you have a MM hunter then there’s a raid wide AP buff. SV hunters have a raid wide buff still, don’t we? BM hunters offer uberness and coolness (am I biased? Hmm…), but we don’t have any really neat special buffs like the druids or pallys do or whoever. We don’t have food, don’t provide ports, or summons, or lockpicking. I know I’m kind of reaching now. (Well, we should provide food, we are hunters after all – sorry I’ll try to keep tangents to a minimal).

Consequently I went out and built Jeeves so I could feel a little bit more useful. Of course it doesn’t matter because one of the other hunters beat me to it (probably so he could feel useful as well). No, we are only there for super uber manly (or womanly) monster DPS. We like to shoot things and have our pets bite things. We love to pretend to fall over dead and then hop right back up firing our guns, loosing our bows, triggering our crossbows, etc. If we could have semi-automatic weapons we would love it cause we like to make a big old mess out of the thing we are killing. H3ll, we’re not probably going to get much meat out of it when we are done, and we’re killing stuff that’s so freakin’ big we’ll never fit it in our garage freezer anyway, might as well have fun, right?

Well, enough of that tirade. We now have a good reasons (besides humor purposes) to have multiple hunters in a raid. That’s right! Misdirect is now stackable!!!! This is so awesome, now you have like 7 hunters going out and pulling stuff, often times it could be dead before it gets to the tank (well maybe not, but it’ll have a lot of holes in it). But seriously, this is awesome, have you guys tried it??

We all get to be out there at the beginning of every boss fight all blowing the h3ll out of whatever. Before it felt like, only the elite most uber hunter got to do misdirect pulls, whoever had the most dps. I was consequently excluded from all events. But now it feels like a hunter community, bringing down the destruction together, instead of watching that one guy do it all the time.

No longer are we going to hear complaining for having 1/3 of the 25 man raid be hunters. Of course I doubt this will dispel the myth of the huntard that we have to over come on a daily basis. But that’s another post for another day.

I’m very pleased to be a hunter right now. I apologize about wasting all this time playing with these silly alts. Now let’s get out there and kill something!