Milestone

Amelioration ran two Kara groups this week for the first time. We're going to miss out on our SSC target but the fact that we can now run 20 people through Kara and have people on standby speaks volumes of our progress to bigger and better things.

Group 1 had some issues with Maiden the first night. One dispeller = hard times. They got her down but it took to long and they had to call the raid. Night two they rocked the opera house but had some drama on Curator and had to call it. Night three, no one wants to talk about night three. They didn't drop a single boss though.

Group 2 on other hand kicked major @$$. One shot on Attunmen, Moroes, Curator, Aran, and Chess. The Opera event was Romeo and Juliet. I think that only three people had ever seen this boss so it took us three (four?) attempts to drop them.

Hunter Loot? The vial out of Opera and the ring from Curator. Our OT/MS/Fury warrior took the vial and Arigg stole our ring. Although I can't remember the last time I missed so we're not mad at cha.

Prince was again controlled by our own personal GM and dropped us everytime. 11.4k health on our best attempt, which also happened to have the worst infernal drops. I really don't get this fight. Either we can stand in one spot the entire fight and Prince hits like a truck, dropping our tank faster then the heals can flow from the priests little fingers. Or he hits like a pansy and lets the infernals kill us. He can never hit like a girl and drop easy infernals..... I hate him. And he still has my bow. Damn it.

Amelioration

First the big news. As you can see from my character sheet on the top of the page, I'm no longer a part of Savage Desire. The split occurred on Monday night as planned. Almost half of Savage Desire came with us. I'm now in the process of getting the hunters spec correctly since Lite (our new GM) has given me full control over them. Same deal as in Savage Desire. Prove your spec and you can keep it. If not, I'm changing it. Amelioration will be in SSC by the end of the month. Lite and myself are going to make sure of that.

We had to leave a few friends in SD that are loyal to the Guild Master and the old Raid Leader there, we wish them the best and hope run some Heroics with them from time to time. In the end though I think we've made the right choice.

Kara was a pain this week. We knew it would be because of all of the shuffling we lost a few core raid members and Dezzi has been AFK for work. It took us two night to hit Opera. Next week should be better though as are main group will be back in action and we can start gearing the under geared. Should 25 people show up tonight we're going to go wipe on Lurker a few times for sh!ts and giggles.

Smaller news, I got my boots finally! Yay me! Now to find some purple pants and collect 41 honor badges.... cause that's easy. Pray for 2.3 to come out on Tueday. I start my nine day vacation then and would love to have my druid go from 30 to 60 in that time.

On the Move

For the past month and a half I've been very happy with Savage Desire. Ever since Crisis' computer lost it's magic smoke and Median took over Raid Leader duties I've had nothing but fun. The problem is, and many in the guild feel the same way, is that we are not progressing as much as we'd like to be. The last few weeks we've geared people out from Kara and then the bounce to a guild that is farming Gruuls or SSC.

A few nights ago Dezzi and I were running Heroic Steamvaults with a rogue from Strange Brew. He asked me if we were looking for a new guild and for the first time that I can remember I didn't give a firm "no" answer. Other then progression in instances a major problem with Savage Desire is the GM. We found out through a third party that she is taking a voluntary leave of absence until the middle of November. That's all well and good except that even the top officers have minimal control on the Admin side of things. Leaving your guild without clear directions or interim leadership is just wrong.

We haven't decided to leave Savage Desire just yet, but we did put in an Application with Strange Brew in case we do. They've already welcomed us with open arms and even offered to let us form and lead Kara Group 3. The only person in Savage Desire that I've told about this is Median. He's told me that he is fed up with SD as well and is considering forming a guild of his own. No plans are set in stone just yet but it's quickly becoming apparent that that SD will be losing a good bulk of it's raiding force if things don't start to change.

Upgrades!

For three nights Lleu has been trying his hardest to get into a Heroic, any heroic, to get one of the three Primal Nethers that he needs to make his Ebon belt and his Boots of the Crimson Hawk. Last night we finally found a group for Mech. But the mage wasn't keyed and the Rogue had already ran it. Lleu was the only one in need of the Nether and it slipped though his fingers.

Then we found a Slave Pens group that was looking for DPS and Heals. Dezzi and I joined. A rogue was also in need of the Nether and wouldn't let me buy it should he win a /roll. Lucky for us He DC'd and we replaced him with a Mage from Savage Desire. So now Lleu has his belt and a 101 hit rating. All we need now is the ring off of Curator and we'll be close enough to the 142 hit rating that we'll stop looking for hit gear.

Tonight we're spaming LFG for a Mech group. If we win the Nether there and down all five bosses we'll have the Honor badges to buy the final Nether. Then we'll burn some cash to get the 10 Primal Airs needed and do a little dance in our brand new shoes.

Kara is not going according to plan this week. Aran didn't want to die on Tuesday and we won't be back until Sunday. The plan is Nightbane if our tank isn't squishy, Aran, Chess, and Prince. Prince will die. Prince will drop our bow. The masses will cheer because we'll stop QQing all over /g every night.

Group 1 SNAFU

This week Group 1 decided to burn through to Prince as quickly as possible on Tuesday night. In about 30 minutes we were at the door for Opera. It won't open. Barnes (is that his name?) says that Mr. Moroes won't allow the show to start..... sh!t. Backtrack to Moroes we go. I'm not sure what happened this week. Most weeks he's an easy one shot. This week it took us four attempts.

Back to Opera. Big Bad Wolf was a one shot. Curator was a two shot because the last ball wasn't killed and was allowed to sit on top of our melee DPS AEing them to death. Aran barely had a chance to sheep us. With much embarrassment I tell you that we lost chess the first round. After chess we called the raid because three people had to get some of that "sleep" that I've been hearing so much about lately.

The second raid night was much worse. We started with Nightbane. Four attempts later we got him to 75%. Our tank was to squishy, our Hunter MD'd (that Lleu guy is such a n00b at times!) to the fury warrior on the second attempt. Then our Healadin DC'd and never returned. We decided to go take down Attunmen. On the first attempt the MT missed Attunmen and our tree got chopped in half. For the second attempt the first horse had respawned so he had to kill it before the Midnight dropped to 95%. Easy kill, Lleu gets the Crossbow.

After that we thought we'd go try to down the animal boss. After wasting 45 minutes killing the trash we finally got the Bat to spawn and it kicked our butts three times before we called the raid.

Not the worst week yet, but certainly not the best. Our MT can't raid the rest of the week so we may just take the next few nights off and start fresh on Tuesday.

On a side note I was looking at BRK's armory and realized that My DPS is higher then his..... wow. He has more crit and hit then I do so he'd still beat me on the Damage Meters. For someone that admittedly sucked before reading BRK though it's a huge accomplishment that I've caught up to him.

Promotion!

Last night Lleu was promoted to Hunter Class Officer. We take this very seriously and have already made a list of changes that our hunters will make. There will be complaining, there will be crying. Then there will be Mass Quantities of Sustained DPS. I am not going to require anyone to change their spec right away. If you can pull off the DPS with your 1/40/20 build, then by all means DO EET!!! But know that the Guild officers and Guild Leader have given me the power to change your spec if you can't hold it down. The one exception is Combat Retardedness..... er Experience. If you have this talent, you better have the 10g to respec out of it. Put those points anywhere else. If you need help, ask me and I'll help you decide where they could be better used.

Gear is another issue. I will be a gear nazi. Things I've seen wrong already include pure stam gems and STR enchants. These will change. If they don't then feel free to find another guild. Savage Desires leadership wants us to transform into a raiding guild. It's my job to make sure the hunters pull their weight. If you look bad, I look bad. Lleu doesn't like looking bad. Horrible things happen when Lleu looks bad.

Weekend Ramblings

Leather working from 350-375 is stupidly hard. 4 Primal mana and 4 Primal waters for one point? You're kidding right Blizzard?

If your gear has sockets and you don't have gems in them, you are wrong.

4 of 10 hunters in SD are wrong. This will be resolved tonight.

This is why SD needs class officers.

Lleu is going to need more stam gear if he's going to tame the first boss in Zul'aman. First reports are that he hits chain for 10k and bleeds you for 3k a tick. Ouch.

When you're in an instance with people that wear plate, cloth, and mail; leather will drop. Blizzard should pay you for the inconvenience. We will accept primal nethers and honor badges.

To all the Horde on Spinebreaker that are selling Knothide leather for 10g per stack, eff you.

To the guy that put his up for 50s last night. Thank you. we're 351 LW thanks to your generous contribution.

Prince down. No bow.

Late night raid last night. We said "hi" to nightbane and Slappy got a nice big leg bone to sharpen his teeth on after a quick one shot. Curator, Aran, and Chess were also one shots. Phat lewt for our off tank and mage on all of them. We *almost* got the one shot on Prince. 1% again.... infernals all around up and then the last one decided to drop in and say hello. We lost our Off tank/MS warrior on the second enfeeble though so we knew we could do better.

Round two. Lleu beat a hole in his [Drums of War] OT/MS warrior stayed up a bit longer. Prince took a nice long dirt nap. Mage got her T4 helm (and T4 gloves off of Curator) she also picked up a cloak. The warrior snagged a dagger for his Fury set and we hearthed out.

I'm a bit disappointed that my bow didn't drop. The fact that nothing was sharded tonight makes it worth it though. I'm so proud of Savage Desire right now. We've made vast improvements the last three weeks. We've gone from running Kara 4-5 nights a week to being so confident of a full clear that we're taking the weekend off for farming and heroics. Group 1 is quickly becoming a cohesive unit.

This is the first week for Group 2. They made it to Curator at my last check. After a bumpy start on Tuesday they seem to be pulling together nicely. At this rate we'll be ready for a serious Gruuls attempt in a matter of weeks.

Bittersweet week

Savage Desire has made three trips into Karazhan this week. Day 1 Attunmen, Moroes, and Maiden fell. Opera was Oz. We wiped twice and called it a night. Day 2 Opera, Curator, Aran, Chess, and Illihoof dropped. With the exception of Opera the first night and a small bit of miscommunication on Attumen we one shotted everything. Day three was Prince. We had a ton of problems with Prince. Rogues were pulling aggro, mages were pulling aggro, I pulled aggro..... twice. And these were the pulls that we had good infernal drops. We had him down below 10% on three occasions and couldn't drop him. The closest was 1%!

On that attempt every single infernal made range team 1, range team 2, or the tank move. Finally the infernals push us to the far wall, surrounded the DPS teams then the last one dropped right on top of us. I think I saw Malchezaar wave Sunfury at me. He's such an @$$.

Loot? It was a Hunters week again. Beastmaw Pauldrons from Oz (LEGACY dropped too but we already have it.) Demon Stalker Gauntlets from Curator, and Sky-Hunter Swift Boots from the first boss in Sethekk Halls to replace my last green. All and all it was a fun week of raids but now we're burnt out until Tuesday when we'll do it all over again.

PRIIIIIINNNNNNCCCCEEEE!!!!

SD dropped Prince again last night with out Lleu in the group. It's the third time SD has killed Prince and the second time Lleu has not been in the group. Both times Lleu has missed the raid because at the last minute the Mrs. Lleu deemed the evening Date Night. Both times Lleu has missed the raid, the Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix has dropped. Now we're not complaining, we like spending time with the little lady. We're just mad that the bow has dropped twice and we still don't have it. The can't really relate to are frustration so we put it terms that she could understand. "Imagine that The Rolling Stones, George Strait, and Wham! go on tour together. Your best friend won tickets the night of the concert and wants to take you, but your cell phone is dead and you volunteered to work late. Then the next day she tell you about it. That's sort the feeling I've got right now." Now she understands.

UPDATE: It turns out that Dezzi is a dirty liar and Prince still stands. We've already cleared a raid time with the boss and will be there tonight for the Prince funeral.

Obligatory patch day post

Yes we know we're late with this post. Slappy apologizes profusely. Me? I'm to tired to care. We all know the patch day dance. Log in to WoW excited to play with your new toys. Get a LUA error. Log out. Pray that there is a update. /cry when there isn't. Turn off that Add on. Rinse. Repeat. Most of my add ons worked in some capacity. I had lost all of my tool tips for anything in my bags. After dealing with this for a few days it started getting really annoying.

Instead of starting small I started big. Let's delete the WTF file, that'll fix it! um, wrong? We logged back in and Slappy looked at me like I was an idiot. Fine, let's go digging elsewhere. I finally found the culprit, LootLink. I updated this on day one which actually cause my problem in the first place. Now there was a fix for it. Yay for tooltips! I can tell what how long I have left on my hearthstone cool down!

Now for the bigger issue. I really wish I could blame Blizzard for this but it's my fault. Remember that WTF file that we deleted, and that look that Slappy gave us? Well now we know why. Press F5 to mount up. Space bar to take flight..... why are we still on the ground? Slappy stop looking at me like that!! What the heck is go.... oh yeah. The WTF file holds the profiles, my hot keys are gone. We've become very good at quickly binding keys. Five minutes later we're in the air flying towards Ogrila to bomb the nasty demons and capture their souls.

We land and press F2 to send Slappy in with our pet attack macro. Seriously, Slappy, if you look at me like that again you're not getting anymore sporling treats. Now go get the demon. Oooo, my macros are missing. I don't write my own macros. I find ones I like on the intartubes then copy and paste them. Across all of my characters I've got at least 15. Now I have to go find them all again. I grabbed all the ones for the hunter off of BRK's site, quickly finished Simon Says, and headed back to Shattrath where I sat for close to two hours hunting down all of my marcos. Moral of the story: When troubleshooting, start SMALL

Karazhan. Savage Desire. Pure Suckage.

SD headed to Kara again last night. We got owned. We got owned hard. We quickly cleared the trash to Aran and wiped. We wiped three times. Finally we decided to burn him all the way and not stop until Slappy had a big [Shade of Aran Leg Bone] to gnaw on the rest of the night. It was a race to 40%hp/20%mana. 5 seconds after the Elementals despawn we get sheeped. Aran eats dirt SD /dances, Slappy is a happy cat. Both loots(some boots and a wand) go to Dezzi to help his healing. He has like a gajillion +healing now, we guess that's good.

Anywho, back to Kara. We lost a rogue to disconnect so we picked up a mage to replace him. Two people went out to summon and got camped by two Alliance groups for a good 15 minutes. Finally we were all back together and on our way to Netherspite. This was my first time at Netherspite and now I understand why people hate this fight.

Netherspite has two phases from what I could tell. The first phase he summons three portals. Each portal shoots a beam to Netherspite that you have to intercept. Red decreases your damage taken and increases your threat, HP, and melee damage done. Blue increases the magic damage you take but increases the spell damage you can do as well. Green increases your ability to heal but drains your mana. Thinking logically The Red will be taken by a tank, Blue by a caster (preferably a Warlock since that can Life drain) and green by a priest or druid. The Healadin needs their mana for the next phase that we'll discuss so they don't get to play in the beam. Netherspite also drops the little black void holes from the first boss in Arcatraz. Stay out of those. Remember Baron Rivendare from Stratholme? Remember the really annoying Aura DoT that would hit everyone? Yeah, that's back for this fight too. The first time we fought him I though I was doing something wrong because it wasn't mentioned in the pre-fight explanation. Turns out Netherspite just hates being killed.

For the second phase Netherspite does this banish thing and everyone but the tank and a healer (the Healadin) run to the walls and hope for the best. Netherspite shoots a bunch of breath attacks at different areas of the room. If you're bunched together you're dead since the healers won't be able to top everyone off.

The toughest part of this fight are the voids. The smallest bit of miscommunication here can cause a wipe. If the beams hit Netherspite he gets a buff. The longer the beam is on him the stronger the buff becomes. We wiped five times and called the raid. We couldn't do chess because our Druid needs gear off it and he wasn't around. Maybe tonight we'll get that and Prince done. Lleu wants his bow.

Karazhan. Savage Desire. Pure Ownage.

The raid was going to start at 5. Lleu was sad. We couldn't get on until at least 8. Logging in we see that the raid time has been changed to 10(ish). Crisis, the Raid Leader is on so we send him a quick /tell asking him if we will have a spot. Money is tight and if the raid is full we can't be wasting it on pots. He tells us not to worry about pots but to be ready in case they need us. Suddenly we're having flashbacks to the last time we were "on the list"

This time is different though, Lleu and Slappy are the second DPS to get invited. Woot! We killed the trash to Aran without incident (the raid took out Curator on Friday night). Aran was two shotted. The first go at him a few new people weren't in Vent and didn't know to run from the Explosion. On the second attempt I don't think anyone even died. He dropped the DPS cloak and necklace. Both of which we're defaulted to your truly because all the other DPS had the items or had better.

Chess was a one shot (shocker! :P). Plate and Leather.

Prince. Prince is a B@stard. Rather, his infernals are B@stards. We tried 6 times to down him. All 6 times infernals dropped right on top of our DPS/heal stack. I'm not sure what we did different on the last attempt but Prince went down hard. Some sort of caster dagger dropped. It's purple so I guess it's good. Caster stats confuse Lleu. Dezzi has tried to explain them to us but our eyes just sort of glaze over. The second purple was for the Hunter/Mage/Warlock helm. 1 hunter and 2 locks in the group. Without thinking I /roll 100 and win with a 57. Well Actually I lost but one of the locks was playing on a shared account and didn't realize they had the helm already. So again it was defaulted to me.

This really made the other lock mad. "Oh come on!! Lleu already got 2 epics tonight!!" "He's right I did.... I'll pass on the helm" Lleu hasn't been in 'tell hell' like this since his Shadowbane days. Everyone in the raid sent me a tell saying that it was a better upgrade for me then him and that I better take it. Even the Druid that we've been debating with yelled at me to take it. So Lleu over vent says "yeah I'll take it. It's to much of an upgrade to pass on." Lleu's inner conversation is more of "ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME?! THREE EPICS!!! WOOT!!!" /dance /hugself /passoutcauseitstwohourspassedyoubedtime.

I when to Ogrimmar to socket the helm but though better of it. I was fighting to keep my eyes open and would probably add a +spell damage gem in my current state. So tonight I'll be doing dalies to get the cash to proper socket my helm As well as collect the mats for a +12 AGI enchant for my new cloak.

The issues I've had with Savage Desire seemed to fade away last night. Even the Raid Leader said we kicked @$$ on DPS. The Druid and I had a friendly conversation. Maybe we've finally moved passed all of the BS and can get down to the business at hand: getting Kara on farm status and moving to bigger and better things.

We've stopped trying....

In my last post post I mentioned running Heroic Mech with a Warlock that was in all epics. I don't know his spec but he was launching shadow bolts like nobodies business. After the run I posed a question to my guild. "A BM hunter and an epicced out Lock walk into Heroic Mech. Who does more damage?" Responses ranged from "The Lock, of course" to "Depends, are we counting the Hunters pet?"

My answer "YOU'RE ALL WRONG B!TCHES!" and I post the following:
That's right, Lleu blew the Lock out of the water. Was the Warlock holding back? Most definitely, although he did comment that I was doing a ton of damage. So Lleu does 49.8% of the overall damage. What's the first comment from my guild? "GG" or "Jebus that's a ton of damage!"? Nope. "you'd do more if you were MM." Says a druid.

I'm sorry what? His reasoning is that my gun does more then my pet and I'll get bigger crits with MM. What he fails to realize is that as BM your pet more then makes up for the loss of ranged damage. Above that, with Ferocious Inspiration everyone is doing 3% more damage. Now Lleu isn't a big numbers guy so what do I do? The same thing any good hunter would do in this situation. We tried to send him here. If by some miracle you found this blog via something other then BRK, go read his training list now. And take notes. There will be a test at the end.

He refused to go read and look at the theorycraft because he's "played the game for a really long time and every hunter in end game is MM/survival." Every hunter except for, you know, BRK, Annai, Me, and countless others that have seen the light and are speced for damage.

At this point I kindly told him that I was done with him and if he continued to complain about my spec I would take my cat and go to a guild that likes DPS. I play this game for fun and defending my spec while topping the Damage meters every run is not my idea of a good time.

Let me mention that at no point have I ever said the BM is the only viable option for hunters. I'm a huge fan of trying new specs and looking like a total fool. What I've said is that BM works for me. If you want to run around Kara trying to quad trap without your pet out that's your deal. But to tell someone they have to respec because "everyone else is MM/surv" is wrong. Not everyone is. In fact, there are a lot of specs for all classes that I look at and think wtf is that guy doing?! but it works for him so I happy that he's happy.

Will Lleu stay with Savage Desire? Will he start a guild of his own? Will Slappy rip out this druids throat and piss on it bloody carcass? Stay tuned for the next installment of As the Guildies Turns!

Super mega gear time!

Lleu gets one day a week where his wife takes care of baby BRC and he gets to game. This week we decided to get as much gear as possible before hitting Kara hard again since we're still getting flak from a couple of guildies about being BM spec. We haven't had a marathon like this in some time: Durnholde, Arcatraz, Steam Vaults, Black Morass, Steam vaults again. Through all of those Lleu saw no drops at all.

Finally Backpacks logs in and we get a Heroic Mech run going. After a bit of character shuffling we finally get going with Lleu, Backpacks, Dezzi, a Warlock, and a Holy Paladin. The Warlock was in all epics, but more on that later. We were there for Sun Eater for Backpacks. Instead, Handguards of the Steady dropped. We'll take it!

Ok, Lleu is tired and is going to bed. What's that Dezzi? You've got a Durnholde group? Fine I'll go but it has to be quick. The second boss dropped the Greaves of Patience. Yes, yes Lleu does need those. Thank you. Last boss down *now* Lleu is going to bed.

"Hey Lleu, you still need Steamvaults right? Cause I've got a group for it." Dezzi says. Hmm, it's 12:45am. Mini Me will be up in 6 hours.... Plenty of time to run Steam Vaults!! It was by far the worst group of the night. Then tank was only a tank by name. Slappy took more damage and got more heals. After several wipes on the first boss we almost called it. Dezzi wanted to hang out and hit revered though so we stayed. Last boss, o....m....g. The Beast Lord Mantle!!!

What Dezzi? Now you've got a Mechanar group?? No. We're going to bed.

With all the new gear we actually dropped in DPS and was a bit bummed about it but our crit went up so we felt it was a good trade of. Waking up yesterday we realized that the assault enchant on our gloves, Cobra armor on our legs and the attack power enchant from Aldor on our shoulders were all gone. After putting those back on Lleu is sitting at 304 DPS unbuffed and 317 with AotH. With an extra 1.5% crit. Slappy is doing 155 DPS. If our damage now doesn't impress the naysayers we're going to stop trying.

Mechanar tricked me.

We ran Mech last night..... again. I really thought that Beast Lord Helm would drop. Everything else was hunter gear. The Cache contained an AGI and Stam cloak. The boss upstairs dropped Stellaris. Calculator..... gave us 2 caster items. Stupid calculator. They wree both put to good use but Lleu is getting sick of running Mech. Good thing we hit Revered on the run or it would have been a total bust. Backpacks and I will be looking for heroic Arc tonight.

Is Kara really worth this headache?

Let me preface this post by saying that I like my guild. The people are great, the GM is cool as hell, and I'd love to run SSC and Gruul with them in time. However, the raid leader must die.

Let's go back to Wednesday night shall we? Leadership had scheduled a late night Kara run. Starting a 10PM with invites going out at 9:45. Lleu and Slappy login at 9 to start preparations. 10 AGI elixers, 10 mana pots, 15 heal pots, 20 AGI scrolls to buff the DPS for bosses, and band aids are all ready to go. 9:45 /g Lleu: Lleu is outside Kara and is ready for his invite!

Lleu is told to wait for healers to show up. 10pm... still no raid. We knew one healer would be late so he's not mad. 10:10 the late healer is on. Still no raid leader. 10:15 the raid leader shows up. Invites go out. Lleu doesn't get one. "Sorry bro I forgot you" is what he's told. Still no big deal. He's first on the waiting list, doesn't really need Curator, and had already found a group for Shadow Labs.

During the Shadow Labs run another hunter says he needs Murmur and wants to swap out. I tell him sure, just let me get some rep. At the same time we down Vorpil, the raid makes it to Aran. I swap in the other hunter and I'm ready, just in case they need more DPS for Aran. And they do.... but Lleu's spot is offered to a Warlock that the Raid Leader knows IRL. /g Lleu: Um.... Lleu needs Aran please. Over Vent the Raid Leader "SH!T!! I totally forgot you Lleu, ok you're in..... Dude, why are you in Shattrath. If you're on the waiting list you HAVE to be outside waiting, play a twink or something but you've got to be ready to go."

Lleu is about to lose his freaking mind. "Hey {Raid Leader} I really don't want to be a d!ck about this but I was an hour early for the raid, outside Kara when invites were supposed to go out. I've got pots, band aids and AGI scrolls for dps. You on the other hand were 30 minutes late and convienitly forgot to invite me, now your trying to give my spot away again. So don't try to preach to me about being ready to go."

His reason for being late to the raid? "I was watching Friends. But I'm aways on time and bring my A-game" Friends.... effing FRIENDS!! To top it all off the Warlock that he tried to get in the raid instead of me took the same blimp as I did Grom'Gol. So the waiting for me argument is out as well. When I politely mention that fact I'm called an elitest and should just chill out. About this time I get a whisper from dezzi "shh" is all he says. Dezzi has followed me from game to game, from server to server, and at times to different guilds so I don't think this is an outlandish request. I bite my tongue and head for Kara.

We didn't down Aran but we got close. On the last pull, Slappy got caught in the door and it wouldn't let me unsummon him due to LOS issue. I think we would have dropped Aran if she was there munching on his ankles.

I don't know if I'm going to stay with Savage Desire or not at this point. I understand why Dezzi wants to stay, phat lewt is fun to get. He can tell that I'm frustrated as can the GM. She sent me a tell right after the raid apologizing for the RL so that helps a bit.

More Karazhan Please!!

Last night was the first time I've every had a *good* Kara run and only my second time in there. We struggled on Attunmen at first, wiping two times. Then we got a third healer and dropped him quick. Being the only mail wearing in the joint defaulted the Stalker's War Bands to me. They now have an Assault enchant (thanks Dezzi!). Kill kill kill now Moroes. One shotted. Nothing for me of course but I'm still filled with glee over my new bracers. Kill kill kill "Ok everyone hope for anything but Crone... we DON'T want Crone." Says the raid leader. Guess what we got? Yep, The Crone. Two Wipes and a quick check on Wowhead and we down her on the third shot. The Raid leader links some ring and says that's it. He tells everyone to move to Curator and then tells me to roll. ZOMG LEGACY!!!!! Sonic Spear comes off, Legacy goes on and now has a +35 agi enchant. Curator rolled us three times, the last wipe he was at 7% but it was late and we called the raid. I was tops on the Damage meters barely edging out a rogue with better gear.

Now in my last post I mentioned that the my new GM was happy to let me try BM in Kara. The Raid Leader last night *really* didn't like that and was constantly testing me by giving me casters to trap, pulling before traps were down, anything he could do to trip me up he tried. At the end of the night when I spammed Damage done where I was top, and healing taken where I was last all he could really say was "damn.... you can stay BM I guess." I think I'm going to like now that we've got that out of the way.

One last thing, I *have* to give a shout out to BRK. Without his indirect guidance from his blog I'd still have points in CE and be rolling on Stam gear over attack power. Thanks for the help bro. Feel free to make a horde toon on Spinebreaker. i'll even let you touch [Legacy] :P

How to handle spec change requests.

When I went looking for a new guild several of them wanted me to change to survival/MM spec. Here's how most of the conversations went.

Officer: We'll need you change to a 0/41/20 spec, is that ok?
Me: Actually, I'd like to stay BM. I play my hunter for max damage and changing my spec will lower my damage output.
Officer: Your job will be to trap and scatter shot. Leave the damage to the mages and rogues.
Me: I'm sorry, you're guild is looking for something that I can't provide.

Finally I found Savage Desire are conversation was a bit different.

Officer: We'll need you change to a 0/41/20 spec, is that ok?
Me: No.
Officer: Huh??
Me: No. I'm a hunter. I do damage. That's my job.
Officer: Your job will be to trap and scatter shot. Leave the damage to the mages and rogues.
Me: I'll make you a deal.
Officer: What's that.
Me: Let me run Kara one time as BM. If my traps breaking early cause a wipe or if I'm less then 3rd place in the damage meters against similarly geared players I'll respec.
Officer: Fine, I'll invite but you still need to talk to the GM.

A few days later I spoke with the GM.
Me: So Officer say I'll need to respec to a MM/Surv spec. Yeah, I kinda refuse to do that. My traps should be fine as is. Is this going to be a problem?
GM: Well I don't really know anything about hunters so as long as you feel that you can pull your weight in Kara, do whatever you're most comfortable with.

/sigh of relief.

This easily could have turned into a bad situation. If the GM refused to budge I would have left. If the GM had said "Let's try your spec and we'll go from there." I would have stayed. Tonight is my first Kara run with Savage desire. If I n00b up the place I will gladly do what's best for the guild and switch to a spec that I hate (sorry guys, just personal taste). Why? Because it's the right thing to do. However if I rock the joint and become the adoration of squishies everywhere, I will dance with every boss that we down in Kara tonight.

So whats the point of all this? Bend, but don't break. If you're looking for a new guild and they request something of you, try to compromise but that them know that you're in control of your spec. Be polite but firm about it. Be willing to change if your spec doesn't fit their strategy. Remember there are 9 other people running Kara with you. You're there to help everyone get phat lewt, not just yourself.

How not to run heroic Ramparts.

A Prot Warrior(Backpacks), a BM Hunter(Me), one Holy Priest(Trep), and two, yes two Shadow Priests(Hez and Dezzi) walk into Heroic Ramparts. No one walks out alive. We should have taken the first pull as a sign of thing to come. The pull itself was flawless.

/cast Arcane Shot(rank 1)
/stopcasting

Backpacks grabs the skull, square gets trapped.... for approximately .05 seconds. WTH?? Did he resist?? No time to worry about it now, I'm in position for trap 2. Frozen and broken again, in .05 seconds. I pulled Kitty back to help tank, Kitty takes two hit and is down. I'm down. Dezzi, being the over zealous priest that he is nukes the square to unholy hell, Hez says run, dezzi is down, Backpacks is down. Trep and Hez get out. Rez rez rez and we try again. this time the traps hold and we down the two. I won't bore you with a pull by pull account but atleast one person died every pull all the way to the top of the stairs where we called it quit.

Do not, I repeat NOT try this at home. BRC dies so you don't have to.

A pet to tank with Part 2 - Save the Squishy!

A defensive pet has three jobs in an instance. Off tank, Save the Squishies, and don't die. Of those duties, saving the squishies is the most important. In part one I mentioned that Kitty can OT a caster with a mend and a renew. He can also OT a ranged elite and a non-elite. So we already know that he can get aggro, hold aggro, and not die.

In Part one I started off by stating that I wanted a turtle. In my opinion Turtles would make the best off tank because of their armor bonus and Shell Shield (50% damage mitigation for 15 seconds). However they are severely lacking any movement bonuses.

Pets have three skills to help them cover ground quickly.

Dash
Charge
and Warp.

Dash at rank 3 give an 80% bonus for 15 seconds. Charge is well.... charge. It also stuns. Warp gets your pet from point A to point B instantly as long as Point B is no more then 20 yards away from Point A. In an instance that rarely happens. When you need to stop your healer from gettin beat on, or save an over zealous Shadow priest from certain death it's all about getting to them and getting to them fast. As you can see, in an instance dash and charge will get you pet to it's off tanking duty faster but nothing will beat Warp when you're trying to stop a clothies face from being eaten.

A pet to tank with Part 1

I used to want a turtle. I'd QQ every time I saw a level 70 hunter with a turtle. I didn't have the forward thinking to pick on up early on and now it makes me sad. Until 70 I never ran many instances and the ones I did never really required an off tanking pet so I stuck to DPS pets. The Rake until 34, then Brokentooth to 63. Then I picked up a Ravager for damage. At 70 Skippy was dying almost every fight in instances. Something needed to change. I tried to level a turtle from 56 to 70. He made it to 57.5 before I said f**k that. I tried wolf from Burning Edge but I didn't feel that bond you need to have with a pet. That bond that makes you want him or her to survive the fight.

I started looking for *any* defensive pet that was already 70. While I was doing my daily quests for the first time in Skettis I saw a Warp chaser that fit the bill. Warp Chasers have +5% armor. Not the 13% that turtles have by any means, but still a good defensive bonus. I flew back to town, put Slappy (my new cat) in the stable and went back out to get my new tank.

Kitty is now Rank 6 loyalty and has Natural Armor Rank 11. Unbuffed he has 12k armor. With a Prot Pally giving him protection aura he's close to 16k armor. He also has Stam rank 8. With a priest stam buff he has close to 9k health. We've been running Shattered Hall every night so I tossed on Fire resist Rank 2 as well. Kitty will tank a caster in Halls with little more then a pet mend and a renew.

On a few occasions I've had him OTing two mobs (a sharpshooter and a non elite) and more then once my tank has commented on the amount of aggro the Kitty accumulates. This makes us happy.

New guild

On Wednesday night Dezzi and I left Dirty Horde after much deliberation. Inactivity was cited as the reason for our departure. We may have been in a bad mood after looking for 2 hours for a Hall group so we could make Revered and start running Heroics. But when there is a Boomkin, a Tank, and a Warlock wanting to run Heroic Furnace and can't find 2 more to go. And a hunter and priest from your guild are pleading to be run through Halls one more time for rep so they can run heroics, you should run them through instead of saying, "I guess we'll go run Bot instead" Then everyone gets epix and we all win. We left under good terms and look forward to grouping with Thechicken again soon to take down some more of those pesky skulls.

So now we're in Savage Desire on an interim basis. I have to talk to the guild leader and explain why having me respec to 0/41/20 would be bad. If I wanted to run as a MM/Surv build I would have named my blog doubletrap or some other crap. As BRK says hunters are all about massive, sustained damage. If I can't do that, have Kitty OT a second mob, and keep a third trapped then I should just go roll a rogue and spam Backstab.

First Karazhan run!

Yesterday after noon I got this crazy idea that Dezzi and I should find a Kara PUG to join. A quick text later and it was decided that he'd start looking for one about an hour before I logged on at 8. Around 8:15 we found a guild called Lords of Aggrothat was in the process of running but had lost a few members. We joined and got a summons to Kara. They were on the way to Maiden when a few other PUGGERs dropped group.

The first pull went really smooth, it was a big group of non elites. The tank, a feral druid over vent says "oooo the hunter knows to misdirect" *grin*

The second pull was a single elite Valet. I send in Kitty and mark using my pet pull macro

/cast hunter's mark
/petattack

And prep for my aimed shot. At the same time me gun goes *BANG* the druid says "valet is immune to growl.... watch your DPS everyone." I start thinking "please dont crit.... aimed shot never crits for you, it won't crit." So of course it ZOMGWTFCRITZZZ for 2k. No problem, I'll feign dea.... nope that's a real death. Lleu was one shotted for close to 10k health!! Yes, that's a wipe.

After that thing went well, until Maiden. Maiden owned us. First pull the main healer got the Repentance, that's a wipe at 60%. Second pull Maiden was down to 40%, Warlock pulls aggo while standing next to the main healer. Main healer stands in the AE and goes down. That's a wipe. Third pull, I'm not really sure what happened but we wiped at 90%. At this point I ask "hey should we skip Maiden?" Someone else agrees and we go to Moroes.

I go to look up Moroes and see that he is the "keystone" for the dancing mobs. Killing him will stop the respawns. Wow, wish we would have know that before. Especially since no one was really looking for gear off of Maiden.

On Moroes we had the Shadow Priest, Prot Warrior, and both Pallies. We trapped the Ret Pally, the Shadow Priest, and shackled the Prot Warrior. DPSed the Holy Paladin down. Our shadow priest was to high on the threat meter and was dropped. Then we DPSed down the Shadow priest and that was all she wrote for us, our tank dropped and Moroes had 10 more people over for dinner. Two more attempts fail even worse and Lords of Aggro call the raid.

We learned a lot about the small amount of Kara that we saw and that's a good thing since Ash told me that we'll start doing guild runs in the near future. We've got a couple of guildies that have more experience then we do in there but every little bit of info will help.

What would you do?

We were running Shattered Halls two night ago. 4 guildies (Backpack, Dezzi, Amalore, and myself) +1 Warlock that we picked up. On the pull before the second group of mobs training off to the sides we were feared, Slappy ran behind me with the MoB he was off tanking chasing after him. I popped Bestial Wrath to stop him from running and he happily went back to eating his target's face.

Fear wears off and his Succubus is fight dangerously close to a group of 5 MoBs. After about 30 seconds the group on the left side aggro'd and we wiped. Backpacks asked "what happened?" To which the Warlock replied "the hunters pet got feared into the mobs." Now here I have two options. I can let it go or I can make a big stink about it and tell the Warlock where he can go stick a soul shard. I choose the former since we're in there for rep and I *really* need to start running heroics. Luckily all the guild members were in Vent and I let them know that the 'Lock was a dirty liar. In a PUG I don't think I could have held back. This douche was using hunter stereotypes to get out of taking the blame for not being able to control his pet. Did his statement hold any weight with my guild? No. Would it have in a PUG? Probably yes, I'd have 3 angry players thinking they're grouped with yet another huntard. What would you have done in that situation? Hunters, would you have let it go as I did? Non hunters, have you ever placed blame on another class for a wipe that you caused?

And if that Lock is reading this, man the eff up and admit when your wrong bro. The next day I wiped a group three times and took the blame everytime. Like everyone, I make mistake but I can admit mine..... or blame Slappy at least. Sometimes that cat has a mind of his own!

Two days, four new items and an enchant

My quest to become Kara ready is nearing an end. Tuesday night I got the Master Key and the hourglass from Black Morass. Woot! But the gear train didn't stop there, not even close. A Shattered Hall run yielded another cloak upgrade. (I've stopped keeping of track of the names since I seem to get a new one everyday!) Then I purchase the Pathfinder ring and the Gale Force belt. Finally we ran Mechnar where I got the Abacus. When we got back to town a quick shout in Trade found someone to install a savagery enchant on my Sonic Spear. My DPS is now over 300 with Hawk on!!

I'm also closing in on my Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer. It's been much easier then I thought to gather the mats. After finding a awesome deal on the 20 khorium bars I went out to Skald to farm motes of fire. To heck with the Elemental Plateau. Go to Skald in Burning Edge Mountains for all your fire motes! They drop less often off the elementals there but you don't get ganked or have to fight with others for kills. They're also lower level so they die faster. Lleu is all about quick killing. In 2 hours I farmed close to 4 Primal Fires. A quick lap around Burning Edge and Netherstorm for Fel Iron and Adamantite then it was back to Orgrimmar to fill in the gaps in my materials. Only 112 motes of air to go! My plan now is to farm the Air Elementals in southern Shadowvalley until my new Warp Chaser hits Best Friend status and then purchase any primal airs that I don't have.

A big thanks to Dezzi, Backpacks, and the rest of the Dirty Horde crew that's helped me get keyed and geared for Kara. You guys have really made this hunter feel welcome in his new home.

Dead Zone

For those of you that don't know, hunters have a "Dead Zone" This is the area between 3 and 8 yards where a hunter can't do squat. Casters can happily sit in this area and nuke us all day long. Sure we have methods to get to distance but they don't always work or they're on cool down. So what's a hunter to do when a mage is reverse kiting us? ( I just made that up, you like?)

By reverse kiting I mean running behind us using instacasts as we try to distance ourselves to pop a Concussive or Arcane shot. Intimidation? That'll work if they've used blink to cover the distance and get into our Dead Zone. Wing Clip? Sure that'll work, it'll also get you a nice bif Frost Nova for your troubles. How about using TBW with that wing clip? Now you've got the cast snared but how to get to range? Cheetah right? Mage blinks and you're right back where you started. Traps? Any good PvPer will miss your trap so that won't work.

Non MM Hunters are the only class that has this dilema (MM's have scatter shot to help them out). Every other class has a way to close the gap of get some distance. Do I want the dead zone to go away completely? No, I'm convinced that if it wasn't there Hunters would destroy everyone in PvP and would out DPS all others by an even greater margin. What I would like to see is a slight modification to the Dead Zone. Instead of dropping our DPS to 0 in that area, how about a 1/2-3/4 reduction of damage done with a higher chance to resist Concussive shot? Do you think that would be a viable option. I'm not looking for ways to keep us doing max damage, notice I said nothing about ways to get us away from Melees. If a rogue can get to me then he deserves the shot to kill me. I'm looking for ways to ensure we can continue to do damage even when our counter CC abilities are on cooldown.

Call me Hunter

Ah, the obligatory first post. Who am I? My name is Lleu, 70 Tauren BM hunter on Spinebreaker. What do I do? Laugh as my kitten rip offs your face. Oh, I also top the damage meters in a group without batting an eye. Why do I do this? Because I can. BM baby, total ownage on all levels (you know, unless you're in melee range or my dead zone [DAMN YOU BLIZZARD WHY MUST YOU TAUNT ME SO?!])

Plans for the blog? mmm nope, not really. I've wanted to start one for a while but never got around to it. We'll mostly cover my adventures as a hunter but I'm rolling several alts during my downtime so I'll talk about their progress as well. If you have math questions go see BRK, he's a friggin genius. I'll do my best to answer any questions you may have, I've played most classes so I've got at a decent amount of knowledge most of them. Feel free to ask about specs and gear but don't expect math problems and such.

Thanks for coming, kick your shoes off and stay awhile!