MMO-Champ has tons of Cataclysm stuff available, now that the NDA has been lifted. Here’s one quick thing:

Yeah, my druid is totally becoming a troll. And the paladin will be a Tauren, no more BELF!

Categories: Cataclysm, alts
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Who’s ready for the Warcraft Hunter’s Union event? Hesston, that’s who! To be honest, it was a little annoying leveling without heirlooms. Even so, it wasn’t hard getting to level 19 (the current cap). Wonder who we’re going to kill.

I’m ready for my closeup Mr. Frostheim.

Categories: Uncategorized, alts, humor, hunters
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So I’m in a new guild … of my own. Not wanting to leap right back into steady raiding (although what we were doing was far from steady), I decided to chase down lowbies for signatures and start my own guild to house the family. I still have to get someone who I can trust to join and make an officer so they can invite the entire roster, but that will be easy enough.

I think I’m going to take this time, between now and 3.3.5 and on to Cataclysm, to try to shore up some lame achievements, make money to be prepped for the expansion, and just again enjoy not having raid pressure. I don’t care much about hard modes or what not, or even killing the Lich King (though I wouldn’t mind it it), so PuG’ing raids once in a while is good enough for me. I’m sure once people get the hang of it The Ruby Sanctum will be easy enough. Perhaps I can even snag that new ArP trinket, which is like a marriage between DBW and WFS. Zomg!

That’s all.

What now? What comes next?

Categories: alts, guild
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Long time no blog. Yes I’m alive, and yes still playing WoW. Been trying to find new things to do to keep my interest into Cataclysm. The rogue just didn’t do it for me, so there he sits with crap gear and 20-minute queue times.

So my latest thing then, BEAR TANK! I’d wanted to try to bear tank, since I’d done the paladin and warrior thing already, and have a level-capped druid. I’d already had some pieces but wanted to get at least a full set before trying to tank. So, I slapped on the healing gear and hit the LFG hard.

About 50-emblems in I saw a call for a “quick” ToC25 forming in trade that needed a healer. It was hosted by a reputable guild so I figured it’d be an easy run and I’ve healed it plenty of times. Getting badges outside the monotany of heroics was fine by me, and I figured I might be able to sneak off with a piece of tank gear.

And oh boy did I ever. So this is how things panned out:

A) Only druid in the raid.

B) All the rogues (and hunters) were ICC geared.

C) We were allowed unlimited offspec rolls.

Results

• Northrend beasts: Legwraps of the Broken Beast

• Lord Jaraxxus: Vest of Calamitous Fate
• Faction Champs: Icewalker Treads
• Twin Val’kyrs: Twin’s Pact

Seriously, that’s ridiculous. No one else needed or wanted any of that for offspec. I went to ToC on my rogue and not one piece of DPS leather dropped, and I’ve never seen that damn staff on my hunter. RNG is crazy. We didn’t kill Anub because suddenly everyone just forgot how to play, but I didn’t care. In less than an hour I got a bunch of badges and 4 pieces of iLevel 245 gear. Enchanted, gemmed (I’m kinda broke now) and mixed with the other gear I now have a competent tank set for heroics and probably some 10man raids. I must say, gearing a bear tank is significantly easier than a plate tank. It’s all druid loots!

Hesston and The Space Bunnies

No, that’s not my new indie-rock band. The Space Bunnies are the guild I’ve been in for the past few months in ICC. We’ve been doing well but have been plagued by no-shows and attendance issues. Raiding only 3 days a week and for only 3 hours, every night counts. We’d open the week on a Tuesday downing 8/12 and ready to work on progression, only to have a fraction show up on the following days. Though most seem to have excuses, I suspect people don’t want to come for the non-farm bosses. Progression or having a night of working on a single boss scares some people.

We’ve been trying to recruit, but every time we get someone another drops or has real life issues. To top it off, one of the officers got hacked the other night and they emptied the guild bank and deleted his toons. Come on people, don’t go to the free pet sites, nothing is free. Get a frakking authenticator damn it.

After that happened, I caught wind last night from the GM that there could be a disband this evening instead of a raid. Pretty much blows my plans for being part of a good guild going in to Cataclysm. I might still be able to join somewhere, but right now isn’t a great time. Many guilds are set on their HM-ICC progression or have their farm groups set. To try and get established past a trial status in a new guild is going to be annoying. We might try and form some 10-man groups and keep the guild together that way. For the most part I like the people I’ve been raiding with and don’t feel like getting used to a whole set of new personalities and attitudes.

Oh well, thus is WoW life. I’ve been having fun raiding even if we haven’t downed the Lich King. I’m sure we could have if we’d only gotten a few more dedicated raiders. The ones that did show every night had the skills to do it, we just lacked consistency and coordinating with new people every night screwed us.

Regardless, Hesston is more than geared enough to tackle the first bit of Cataclysm. I imagine the early dungeons will be laughable for ICC-geared folks. I wasn’t a raider then so I came into Wrath pretty green (literally), and have no idea what UK and The Nexus was like for the Sunwell folks. I imagine that was easy too.

What next?
BEAR TANK! I’m going to spend some time learning to claw, bite, swipe and growl my way through content. The druid will become a troll come Cataclysm, and I want him to be a geared to level easily as a bear. Though I could always laser chicken my way through. I have also vowed not to level any more alts until the expansion, not only because it is kind of pointless but also so that I don’t get burnt out. I still want to have the desire to level a new toon or two when the experience is fresh and interesting. I’m thinking goblin shaman perhaps, a healer.

Now that I think about, hunters are the only DPS class I really like. Every other class I play I either prefer tanking or healing. My one other pure DPS class, the rogue, hasn’t been as much fun as I thought it would be. I haven’t had much interest in a mage or warlock. And to be honest, I’m finding I enjoy tanking more than almost every thing else, which is funny because I used to be terrified of it. So far warrior tanking is clearly the most fun.

So that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

For the Horde!

Categories: PvE, alts, raids
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Ding!

So that makes six level 80 toons now. Hmm, I bet I could sling my account on eBay now for a couple a bucks. I’m curious to see how much more difficult it will be to gear out a DPS rather than a healer/tank who have insta-queues in LFG. Regardless, this now gives me a wide range of characters to take to 85 in Cataclysm. However, despite my altaholism, I vow not to level anything else until then. Next up is a shaman or a priest however.

Time to get to work.

Categories: alts
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Gronnd! Gronnd! Gronnd! Gronnd! So, after little more than a week of relatively casual play, Gronnd, my warrior, has a WoW-Heroes gearscore of 2443 and has tanked all of the heroics except for Heroic Halls of Reflection.

To further prove my point how easy it is to gear up these days:

There are still a few more pieces he can pick up with badges, as well as a back piece and shield from regular HoR. And of course he needs to snag one of the better weapons to replace the globe on a stick. He’s got 552 562 defense rating and has been buffed up to 40K in a heroic. The point of all of this? It’s not frakking hard to gear up a tank, even a warrior tank.

Once I get those last pieces I’ll see if I can get him into a few raids to see if my tanking is worth a damn. I also need to work on an arms DPS set. Right not it is pretty awful and I’d like to see what kind of DPS he can do.

Now, which one next: Shaman, priest or rogue?

Categories: alts, heroics
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Dong!…uh, I mean Ding!

So I’ve got yet another level 80 toon. This now puts it at five, though the DK doesn’t count since he’s technically only level 25. Still, after reading a post on WoW.com about the pains of leveling new characters, I kind of laughed. I mean honestly, it’s not that hard.

I started a rogue over the weekend and he’s at 24 already too. I’m not a hardcore player, even would put myself in the casual category. I have a full-time+ job, a girlfriend that doesn’t play WoW, and yet I still find it easy to muscle a character through the lower levels. Sure you hit some walls once in a while, but I find it a lot of fun learning the new mechanics of different classes.

I’d been tanking regular dungeons on my warrior, and recently graduated to the beginning heroics. Warrior tanking is so much more badass than paladin tanking. It feels more visceral and raw, no silly holy magic. We’ll have to wait and see if I like it when I’m struggling to hold mobs with thunderclap and just begging for a consecrate. Their whole style is just to beat things until they’re mad enough at you to want to kill you more than anything else in the room. Rawr!

Speaking of learning class mechanics, and to spread some personal epeen. I hit 80 on Sunday, ran some heroics as a DPS to get badges, made a shield and picked some assorted blue tank gear and started to tank stuff. Self-buffed HP just cresting 28K, and landed on Old Kingdom with random LFG. The healer was skeptical, but said he’d go ahead with it despite my low gear score. “Why thank you kindly sir, I do declare…”

About half way through, and I haven’t lost aggro once, didn’t die and we are moving right along. Healer (a disc priest) whispers: “Dude, you’re really good tank. A lot better than I thought you would be.”

/cast Puff chest

We continue, I tank everything fine. By the end of the run, after some discussion with party about gearscore and how my tanking was proof that it was bullshit, or at least a poor measure to judge someone, he’s asking if I’d be interested in server transferring. “Why sir, you at least have to buy me a drink first.”

Personally, I will admit I didn’t think Gronnd could tank much. But I did know that being defense capped was more important than raw HP, so I made sure I was at least over the 535 heroic cap. Tanked HoL and OK just fine, so I think I can just continue tanking without having to resort to DPS to collect badges. As long as I have a good healer it goes fine, but lately healers in heroics don’t want to actually have to try so they bounce if you don’t have 40K HP.

Hesston will take a backseat again as I continue experimenting with the tank, similar to my druid. It literally only took me a little more than two weeks of casual play to have him raid ready as a healer. I bet I can do the same as a tank.

Next up: Rogue, Shaman and then maybe the priest.

Categories: PvE, alts
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Though I love my hunter, like most WoW players I have a decent stable of alts that I dabble with when I don’t have anything to do on my hunter (or DPS queues are ridiculously long). At first I was terrified to do anything but stand back and pew pew, but after growing comfortable playing my paladin I tried a druid, which I’ve talked about already. I love the druid, and healing on both classes is a blast as well as tanking on the paladin.

Through playing each of my alts, in raids, leveling and heroics, I’ve learned quite a lot about being a pure DPS and a hunter in general. Playing other classes helped me be a better player at my class because I saw how others of that class succeeded/failed. So, below is a quick rundown of my character roster and what each of them has contributed to me being a better hunter DPS.

Hesston – Orc Hunter (formerly of the Alliance)

The main man, the man (Orc?) with the plan, the hunter with mostest. OK, that was lame. While not the first toon I rolled, Hesston was the first one I went through all of WoW with. He began his career in the service of the Alliance as a dwarf, having only recently joined the Horde.

All of my biggest successes and failures have been with Hesston. Never in my wildest imagination when I was bumbling through Outland did I think I would be raiding at the level I am able to now. I was terrified of grouping, afraid that I would fail horribly and end up the latest version of Leeroy Jenkins. I remember somehow falling into a PuG of Gruul’s Lair, being decked out in only questing blues and store-bought greens. Yes, I was THAT hunter. My pet accidentally pulled the first bosses, forcing me to furiously type apologies while the group miraculously pulled through. On Gruul, I died about 45 seconds in; I had no clue what was happening. We tried Mags after, someone said something about cubes, and then I was dead again.

Clearly, I got better. But not without a fair amount of research, coaching from friendly players and the desire to never be THAT hunter ever again. It took more failures, but I think I’m there.

Minalias – Blood Elf Paladin

My paladin was in fact the first character I rolled. He too began his life as Alliance, and I leveled through Azuremyst Isle with the intention of smiting mighty foes one day. That lasted for about 20 levels and, after some frustration with the final quest in the zone, I tried something else.

Fast forward months later: WotLK is out, I’ve leveled to 80 and begun raiding on Hesston. I understand the game way better at this point and decided to go back check on my lowly paladin. I came to realize what was causing so much frustration was that my spec was all screwed (points distributed across all trees), gear was all wrong and I wasn’t using all of the abilities in my spellbook. I fixed all that, blew through the quest that had frustrated me so long ago, and began the journey to 80.

Fast forward again: I dinged 80, snagged some Northrend gear, and I begin learning to paladin heal and paladin tank. This is when I first learn how much bad hunters can screw up a dungeon. I encounter hunters that constantly pull aggro, don’t use their pets, leave taunt ON their pets when they do use them, and then complain that their pet dies.

“Dude, heal my pet. It makes up a lot of my DPS.” No, you’re pet is lowest on my healing priority. Sorry, learn to use Mend Pet pal.

Through my first forays into healing and keeping groups alive I learned that hunters (and elemental shamans) should, in theory take the least amount of damage. They stay out of range of the mobs in order to DPS yet wear mail armor. Mind you, I said in theory. By and large I learned that hunters seem to have the hardest time staying out of or moving away from fires, void zones, etc. I’m not sure if is the combination of trying to keep track of a pet, a shot rotation and possible procs or just straight DPS tunnel vision, but it’s very common. When I first noticed this I would scramble to keep them alive, thinking I was doing something wrong, and then the tank would die because he didn’t get heals.

Lesson learned: If the DPS (hunters) stand in places they shouldn’t, it is their fault for dying. Wow Rule #1 – Don’t stand in stuff unless told otherwise.

As far as what I learned from tanking on the paladin is that hunters looooove to pull aggro. Well, all ranged DPS seem to have a habit of this but hunters are especially good at it. People also seem to have a hard time targeting the tank’s target. I use a simple /focus, /tar focus /assist set of macros, bound to alt-F and alt-A respectively, to fix this while on ANY DPS class. I set the tank as my focus and bam, I can always switch to his target simply by pressing alt-A. It’s also helpful to have your raid frames show your focus target as well as your target’s target, so that you can get a quick overview of who is hitting who.

In regard to pulling aggro, again not limited to hunters but they do it a lot, is pulling aggro off the tank and then backpedaling as the mob runs toward them. Listen, if I’m tanking and you pull a mob off of me bring the bastard back. I’m not going to go and chase him, and you, down unless I am at fault. Besides, if you’re a hunter and you pull a mob and I don’t see you feign death or trap the mob, I am definitely letting you die.

Through playing my paladin I learned even more how I should manage my abilities as a hunter as well as respecting my tanks a lot more. Try tanking/healing some time, it’ll do you good.

Krakattoa – Tauren Druid

I had wanted to play a druid for a long time, ever since I learned that they can fill two different DPS roles, heal and tank. However, I hated Night Elves and couldn’t bear running around as one. One day I finally caved however, and leveled a Night Elf druid to about the 30s. Sick of the flipping and the floppy ears, and wanting to see the Horde side of the world, I Faction transferred him into a cow. Best decision ever.

Blasted up to level 80 as a kitty, tried kitty DPS in heroics (John-fucking-Madden!) and then decided to give druid healing a try once I’d collected enough gear for it. To put it mildly, I was blown away at how fun druid healing was. I said it before, but if someone had told me this a long time ago, I’d have had a druid far earlier. Seriously, healing on a druid is like DPS’ing on a hunter. Well, sorta; lemme explain.

As a hunter, I like to be mobile. Being able to run around, fire off my shots, move-pause-Auto Shot-move, move, move; that’s my kind of play. The druid heals similarly in that I can fire off my HoTs, shift to a new location, throw out more HoTs and deal with any other quick heals needed, and then move some more. I like fights with movement so being a class that can still do their job while being mobile makes me enjoy playing more. Though it was fun to put up big numbers, fights like Patchwerk always bored me to death. I’ll take a Grobulus, Gluth, Mimiron or Twin Val’kyrs any day over stand still and keep firing fight.

Oddly enough, my druid now has a higher gear score than Hesston. It’s amazing the things you can get into as a healer and how much easier it is to random LFG. Even more so if you are a good healer. Will probably turn this fella into a troll druid come Cataclysm, but maybe not.

Laramie – Blood Elf Death

Ah, the Death Knight. Everyone’s got a DK stashed away somewhere. Mine was made right near launch of WotLK, finished the starting area and then sat in Outland for a really long time. I used him to level Jewelcrafting and Inscription, but then realized I needed to get him at least to Northrend to get them past a certain level.

I began the long slog through Outland, discovered how amazingly easy it is to kill things on a DK, and then got him to 80 a few weeks later. The biggest thing I learned playing a DK is that people will hate on you even more than they will on your hunter. Everyone assumes you don’t know how to play (if you aren’t all decked out in full raid gear) or that you are 12 years old and using a sibling’s account. Seriously. Other than that, my DK usually just sits in Dalaran, does the JC daily and makes vellums for my enchanter.

Gronnd – L34 (as of now) Warrior

My latest project is my warrior, who is leveling amazingly fast. At the start of the holiday weekend, he was level 14. I just dinged 34 today in the Scarlet Monastery Library. Random LFG while questing is ridiculous. I eventually want to warrior tank, which I’ve heard is complicated but a lot of fun.

Already I am amazed at how many reactionary abilities the warrior has. Most hunter abilities are proactive, warriors on the other hand are reactive–and I like it a lot. Overpower, Revenge, Shield Bash, Execute; all rely on something happening in the encounter, which make me pay closer attention to what the mobs are doing. Now, since I am leveling this toon now it’s not really increasing my abilities as a hunter, but for those new on the block I’d suggest playing a warrior a bit to get a feel for how different of playstyle it is. It will make you appreciate how much more freedom we hunters have in controlling our DPS. Do eet!

Well there you have it, my entire stable of alts. One day I’ll add a shaman to the mix and perhaps a priest. I’d like to try healing on all of the healing classes just to get a full taste of how it all works and so I can understand how those classes work in raids a lot better. So hunter, if you want to understand your role better my advice is: Stop playing your hunter! Check out the other classes, understand how they work so you know how you can better compliment them in a heroic/raid situation.

Take care, good hunting.

Categories: alts, hunters
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So after not being part of a raiding guild, I finally, finally, finally got to do a full clear of 25-man TotC. I know, it’s content everyone else has been farming already and the new raid is out. But I still haven’t been all the way through, until now. A guild of that I know has skilled members was filling some spots in a guild run so I figured what the hell.

The group formed nice and smooth, everyone hopped in vent and away we went. Minus one wipe on Faction Champs, first four bosses went down without a hitch. The RL said that they didn’t plan on going after Anub’Arak unless the DPS was high enough on first four bosses. Interestingly enough, every piece of hunter loot that I could use dropped, it was amazing.

But oh, did I forget to mention? I was on my fracking druid healing!

That’s right, both trips to a full TotC clear have NOT been on my hunter. As you may recall, I main tanked a few weeks ago, something I did not think I was capable of right now. But yeah, this time I was druid healing. I totally dig my druid and had a blast, but I do want to see how my DPS compares to others in a raid. Hesston’s gun is getting rusty damn it.

On the positive side, we did go and decide to give Anub’Arak a shot. What kind of shot you ask? Well a mofo one-shot, that’s what. Not only that, everyone was alive. And not only that, check out the overall for the entire raid meter to your left. Now I don’t put too much stock in healing meters because they don’t take into account a lot of factors, but I’m still pretty proud of that shit. Hell, I only started druid healing not too long ago. And hey, I even got a new belt out of the deal, as well as met some cool people.

This was a good test to see if I can raid heal and if my gear is ready to move in that direction. I am thinking of trying to join a raiding guild to see ICC with, but as a healer and not on Hesston. This was and will always be a hunter blog, but for now I’ve just decided it is just too hard to get into a raiding guild as not only a pure DPS class, but one of the most hated on of the pure DPS classes.

Plus, hunter DPS’ing just isn’t that challenging anymore. I recently put together an Armor Penetration spec with Hesston. It’s ridiculous how easy it is considering that once you have all the pieces, you take a shot OUT of your rotation to do more DPS. What!?

Like I said, I still love huntering, but until Cataclysm comes out and I do the great goblin hunter adventure, this blog might focus less on being a hunter and more about the life of my alts and WoW in general (unless of course something changes and I can raid on Hesston, because I would do it in a second). We’ll have to wait and see.

Take care. Good hunting.

Categories: PvE, alts, raids, screenshots
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That makes a fourth level 80 toon. Kitty druids are fun to level, but I think I am going to focus on healing. Oddly enough however I’m only finding groups that need DPS, so I haven’t had a chance to heal yet.

Can’t wait for 3.3 new LFG, for Hesston too. I messed with it on the PTR and it rules.

Categories: alts
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