There Ain't No Sanity Clause

Last night, I made my long-delayed entrance into Icecrown Citadel, and lo, it was good. Well, pretty good.

Being that it was in the midst of the holiday weekend, this was something of an impromptu event, with only a handful of signups and the rest made up on the spot. There had been two full raids earlier in the week, which meant most of our raiders' mains were locked out, leaving about half the raid to be filled with slightly less well-geared alts. I'm fairly sure this was what determined the upper limit of our progress for the night.

In broad overview, we successfully moved through Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, and the gunship event; we put in several very good attempts at Saurfang, but ultimately couldn't take him down. I found all of the encounters so far quite enjoyable. I don't believe any of them are difficult in terms of execution, but they do require everyone to pay attention, making for some engaging, interesting fights.

The Deathbringer Saurfang encounter is definitely a gatekeeper for the next segment of the raid. Last night our gear was well and truly checked, and found... wanting. The guild has taken him down in previous weeks, with our best-geared raiders, but that gear margin is clearly the difference between success and failure here. By our last attempt, we had what I feel is a sufficiently tight strategy: slowing the Blood Beasts with a frost trap while focusing fire on each, one at a time, kiting with everything we've got - Distracting Shot, Concussive Shot, Disengage - yes, hunters, rejoice, for this fight makes us specifically useful! The problem we ran into was the amount of time it took to kill each Beast; by the time the first was down, the second had made its way to a delicious healer. If there had been two hunters in the raid, I'm sure we could have kept them both occupied, but as it was, our DPS just wasn't sufficient. We ended the night on our best attempt, with Saurfang at 15%, and his mighty cleave dropping me to 0%, the bodies of my comrades strewn about the terrace.

Still, I'm happy with our effort, and looking forward to killing the bastard for many weeks to come.

If You Can't Beat 'Em

Since my gaming PC is out of commission, I've been reduced to hunkering down before the glow of my laptop, so raiding has been put on hold. However, after getting used to finessing the latency, I've found 5-mans are within its capacity, and have been exploring the wonderful world of cross-server PuGs.

My experience so far has been about what you'd expect; groups have ranged from casually-paced and chatty, to dead silent and chain-pulling like there was a prize for clearing the dungeon in under five minutes. Many have been perfectly competent, and while some groups have ultimately failed and fallen apart due to unfamiliarity with the new Icecrown dungeons, I have yet to encounter any true incompetence. Don't worry, I'm sure it'll show up sooner than later. I think I can give no better endorsement than to say that I'm going to be using this thing every day, whereas I never used to run with PuGs. ...all those extra badges may or may not have something to do with it >_>

The new dungeons themselves have been fun, with some interesting mechanics. Bronjahm is quite possibly the coolest, both tactically and musically, while the latter half of Halls of Reflection is suitably demanding for everyone, especially tanks, which reminds me...

I love new Misdirection! No more DoT ticks using up the effect before the trash actually reaches the tank! I did prefer the original animation, and I'm not sure why it was changed, but eh...

Ok, finally, the mammoth in the room: the new ammunition engineering schematics from the Ashen Verdict faction. The Iceblade Arrow schematic requires Gnomish engineering, while the Shatter Rounds requisite specialization is Goblin. There has been much head-scratching concerning the explanation for segregating ammo-crafting in this way. For one thing, among end-game ranged weapons, bows and crossbows significantly outnumber guns. This makes one specialization much more desirable than the other, both for hunters who happen to be engineers themselves, and in terms of market value for non-hunter engineers. Granted, as a dwarf hunter who strictly runs 10-man raids, the best weapon available to me happens to be a gun, and I'll be putting my Goblin engineering to good use. Still, I can understand the frustration of 25-man raiders and non-dwarves generally.

No... You Guys Go On Ahead...

[2.GuildChannel][AwesomeTank]: Hey, need 1 more DPS for a run through all three new heroics!

...time passes...

[ReallyGreatHealer] whispers: Would you like to join our hFoS group? :)

Eidtalheg sighs

So, why am I sitting here, writing a blog post, like some kind of shut-in Twilight fan? Why am I not laying down a whithering hail of artillery upon the minions of the Lich King?

It is because I sinned against the gods of Geekdom in purchasing, rather than building, my newest PC, which has been nothing but an unstable hulk of silicon and various conductive metals since the day it arrived. As we speak, it is in the shop, where even the most highly-skilled technicians are at a loss as to how so much suck could be concentrated into a single machine.

In other words, if Arthas is victorious, and the civilizations of Azeroth are reduced to shambling mockeries of their former glory, you'll have only Gateway Computers to blame.

Don't Worry, Li'l Buddy

I'm a vegetarian.

New Directions, Shameless Plugs

I haven't had much of interest to comment on lately, though I fully expect that to change once 3.3 goes live and the guild starts hitting Icecrown. We've been spending a lot of time gearing people up in Ulduar, and farming ToC and Onyxia.

As there is little in either raid in the way of upgrades for Eidtalheg, and to avoid burnout, I've been spending quite a bit of time running heroics on my Death Knight, whose Armory link I've added to the sidebar, and learning the intricacies of tanking. It's fun! With luck, I'll be bringing her to an Ulduar gear-up night soon.

I've made a few changes to the blogroll; a couple of much-loved bloggers have decided to move on to other things, and I wish them the best. I've also added a few DK-centric blogs I enjoy.

Finally, I want to draw your attention to a webcomic drawn and written by tabletop-gaming cheerleader, guild-leader emeritus, and rather nice guy, Shawn Gaston. It's set in the grim dystopian steampunk future of a fantasy world, and features a mix of action, intrigue, and humor. You go there now!

From Hell's Heart, I Stab at Thee!

Yes, at long last, I've gotten my very own Yogg kill. Even after clearing the next tier of raiding content, and knocking out a number of Ulduar hard-mode encounters, finally beating He Who Haunts Orthodontists' Nightmares was still a supremely satisfying experience.

The night began with our guild's first attempt at the Assembly of Iron's hardest mode, killing Steelbreaker last. After learning and mastering the frantic shield-tranqing and add-killing of medium-mode over the past couple of weeks, the general impression was that taking down Steelbreaker last is, well... pretty easy. Yes, he has a 100% chance of killing whoever tanks him, but realistically, with fair DPS, he will go down soon after the first tank explodes.


We then made our way through Mimiron (within seconds of a death-free victory) and a repeat of Hodir and Vezax hard modes, and moved on to the endgame. This fight really comes down to execution on the part of the brain-room team; as long as everyone on the surface can stay alive and sane, getting to phase three well before the enrage is entirely a matter of pounding on Yogg's brain, and after a couple of false starts last night's group performed admirably.

Upon seeing phase three for the first time, my first impression was, "gee, there are a lot of Immortal Guardians!" This was followed quickly by, "gee, there are a lot of dead raiders!" But, with fewer missed portals during phase two the next time, and better damage allocation between Guardians and Yogg himself, our victory was secured.

Does Anyone Else's Pumpkin Smell Like Tangerines?

...I licked mine...

We're Coming For You, Giant Constellation Man!

Last night's raid was a thing of beauty. Now that we'd got a handle on Yogg, it was agreed that there was no time like the present to begin pushing through the requisite hard-mode boss fights to unlock Algalon, as well as those needed for Glory of the Ulduar Raider along the way. So, with some trepidation as we were lacking a couple of key raid buffs, we undertook the initial task of retrieving the Archivum Data Disk from the Assembly of Iron. It took a few tries, but once we saw how Molgeim's adds behaved, we realized they could be AoE'd down before they had a chance to do much damage. Step one...

...complete!

Next up was Hodir. Since this hard-mode simply requires defeating the boss under a certain time limit, it is much like its normal counterpart - only moreso. Stacking all of the available buffs is non-optional. It is also necessary for the raid leader to know when to call for a wipe, to avoid accidentally killing Hodir after the timer has expired. Again, after a handful of tries...


...bam! We were rolling now.

Despite our newly-inflated confidence, we weren't quite intoxicated enough to push the Big Red Button, so after dispatching Mimiron the old-fashioned way, we decided to spend the last half hour of the raid on Vezax and the Saronite Animus. Without saronite puddles to stand in, mana efficiency becomes even more important for healers, which also means that not getting hit by life leech and shadow crash is even more important for the rest of the ranged. We gave it several attempts, the clock ticking ever closer to midnight, until, on what would have been our last attempt:


Victory!
/dance on a big dead lobster

So, yeah.

Gang of Miscreants Declare God is Dead!

When reached for comment, Friedrich Nietzsche said "told you so!"

Yes, after eight weeks, and at least as many hours, worth of attempts, The Pig and Whistle Society of Kirin Tor has defeated the Old God of Death!

...I was not present for this raid. FUCKING HEADACHES.

But nonetheless! I am profoundly proud of my guild. Where some might have jumped ship in frustration, we went back, week after week, until we got it right. And it never became a matter of banging our heads against a wall; every week saw marked progress. We went from wiping on phase 1, to wiping due to missing the brain-room timer, to making it well into phase 3, until finally... we just didn't wipe at all.

Now, on to hard modes!

You Are Going to DPS Very, Very Slowly...

Some might call me a masochist, but sometimes it feels like a victory just isn't worth claiming unless it's been preceded by hours of futile, mind-numbing failure.

That's what we encountered in Onyxia redux Tuesday night. We had enough interest to put together two 10-man raids, each led by someone who was at least familiar with the encounter at level 60. And, truth be told, our strategy seemed sound: phase 1, burn the dragon while standing well away from her huge ass; phase 2, group up around two tanks to AOE the whelps, dodge Taco Breath, and kill the Guards from range to avoid their Blast Nova; phase 3, burn the dragon while positioning ourselves so as to avoid being feared into the pits-of-many-whelps. E-Z.

Only, not. We spent three hours regularly dieing at the phase 2 -> 3 transition. From my perspective, it seemed that we were losing too many people to Blast Novas and Deep Breaths. This led to an overabundance of adds due to lack of DPS, or, when a healer or tank was the victim, well, we know what happens then. Eventually, we just had to give up.

The odd thing is, when we gave it another shot last night, with many of the same people from Tuesday and a basically identical strategy, we took her down in one try. The only difference I could detect was perhaps a marginal increase in DPS over night one, as the Guards seemed to be dispatched slightly more cleanly than before.

Anyway, after banging our heads against a wall all night, victory was that much more glorious once we found the door. Now, mount farming!

How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Ever since the Blizzcon '09 announcement that, in Cataclysm, "focus" will be replacing mana as the resource that Hunter abilities draw upon, there has been much speculation and commentary in the Hunter blogging community about what this will mean for our shot sequences, talent choices, and overall DPS. As with most changes that have ever been announced for this game, the reaction has been overwhelmingly negative.

Now, I'm not about to say I'm totally confident that the developers will be able to implement this change in a balanced way right off the bat, but there are a few things I'm keeping in mind that have kept me firmly at "wait and see" on the RAINBOWOFOPTIMISM <--> SLAPINTHEFACEWHERE'SMYPONY spectrum.

First, the majority of complaints about the proposed system are based upon the assumption that the key abilities of each talent tree (i.e., Explosive Shot, Chimera, etc.) and their relative power levels will remain the same as they currently are, and we will be dependant upon the sub-optimal Steady Shot for focus regeneration. However, it has been stated that talent trees will be massively overhauled, as part of a trimming of passive-bonus talents. So, why should we assume that the primary abilities we have now will remain as such? And with five more levels and a tree-pruning, I can easily see room for re-scaling attack-power coefficients, to say nothing of the possibility of new abilities. Steady shot will likely remain a 1x or 2x filler shot, only now it will be recovering focus rather than killing time during cooldowns.

Now, admittedly, I generally welcome changes to the game; the opportunity to learn and optimize under a new set of conditions is one of the things that keeps the game interesting for me. At the same time, I can see that a change of this magnitude won't appeal to everyone; the same kind of playstyle preferences that lead players to choose Beast Mastery or Survival or Marksmanship will likely divide those who prefered being cooldown-constrained to being resource-constrained.

But I don't think focus is going to sound the death knell of the class.

Inching Ever Onward

Saturday night saw us take on (and one-shot!) the last boss in ToC10, Anub'arak. Like most of the Trial's encounters, this one incorporated some interesting mechanics, but was not a significant challenge. Ice bubbles were popped, adds were dragged onto frost patches, and the peasants rejoiced.

Immediately afterward, we decided to try Heroic mode, just to guage our prospects. It was established fairly quickly that we are probably slightly undergeared (being in mostly normal Uld10 gear), and will have to better coordinate healing assignments (e.g., more than a single healer paying attention to the tank).

After a couple shots at Heroic Northrend Beasts, we headed back to the Ulduar run we'd begun earlier in the week, with only Yogg left stand- er, floating. We spent quite some time working on the fight, and by the end of the night had mastered phase 1, and gotten well into phase 2. The group assigned to stay outside Yogg's head gradually got the hang of sticking together as we moved around the room to take down tentacles. I wasn't with the portal group, but there were apparently a few timing issues with people getting out before going insane. There are few things so terrifying as staring down an angry moonkin.

The tentative plan for this week is to utilize the raid lockout extension, and then lock ourselves in Yogg's room until he surrenders <_<

Mmm, Tastes Like Crow!

A real man can admit when he's been wrong.

...
...
*cough*

So, anyway, last week's ToC10 group hit a rather nasty snag with the Horde Faction Champions encounter, and it was beginning to look like this week would be a repeat failure. The fairly random nature of the enemies' target-selection and immunity to crowd control caused us to repeatedly succumb to the general chaos before we could bring even one healer down. Gradually, though, through several tactical iterations, we hit upon a successful combination of DPS allocation and kill order to finally take them down - at least with this particular team matchup. Still, I think our throw-everything-at-their-best-healer-first method should be pretty generally applicable.

Next, new encounter! I have to admit, even though the Twin Valkyr aren't exactly hard (assuming one isn't dyslexic), they are fun, which the Faction Champions are decidedly not. In fact, we were having such a good time, that it came as something of a punch to the gut when our entire raid was unceremoniously disconnected when we were seconds away from one-shotting the encounter. Garrosh is behind this, I know it.

Anyway, it was a good night overall. Even if I'm somewhat happier with the level of difficulty presented by ToC's later bosses, I'm still ambivalent about the design of the raid in general. While foregoing trash can make for a fairly quick run, the gladiatorial arena schtick still comes across as a lazy way to implement raid content.

That's all until next week, when the floor unexpectedly collaps- aaaaiiiiieeee....

The Bleeding Edge

Or, I Cut Myself Raiding.

As is obvious, I haven't been writing much lately. This isn't really for lack of raiding progress, so much as lack of anything very interesting to talk about. Although we have yet to beat Yogg (here's hoping for this weekend), we've easily taken down the two Trial of the Crusader bosses introduced thus far.

Too easily. Really, after Ulduar, ToC just feels like a design cop-out and ramping down in difficulty. Hell, it barely feels like a raid. I'm holding out hope that the remaining encounters will be somewhat more interesting, but at this point I'm much more interested in pursuing Ulduar hard-modes and ultimately Algalon.

Rock Lobster - Down!

With Vezax having smugly rebuffed our attempts to crack open his carapace and eat him with butter during last week's regularly-scheduled raiding, last night we initialized the Emergency Last-minute Boss Owning (ELBOW) protocol, and took on the last two regular-difficulty bosses in Ulduar.

It took a handful of attempts, but everything finally came together, and Vezax fell over. That left only Yogg-Saron and his crazy girlfriend.

Our best attempts saw us make it to the beginning of phase two, where we were overwhelmed by an excess of Guardians of Yogg-Saron. We had some trouble with people hitting clouds, and Guardians blowing up before they could be herded to Sara. We finally called it a night after... a lot of tries... but, we killed a new boss and saw a new encounter, which makes it a good night in my book.

Because Unlike People, Animals Are Never Jerks

I've been meaning to mention this for a while, and I'm sure if you're reading this then you're already aware of it, but Brajana of the blog Mend Pet, who is obviously more organized than I will ever be, has put together a donation drive for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Now, I've had a number of pets in my lifetime - two dogs, a cat, countless goldfish - and I've also worked in retail. It has been my experience that animals are more considerate, understanding, and simply pleasant to be around than most people. The least we can do is try to provide them with a decent standard of living.

Rock Lobster!

Last week's raiding saw our first serious attempt on General Vezax. We ultimately weren't successful, but we did learn a few things; we all agreed that the fight isn't hard, but simply a matter of getting used to the correct positioning and movement patterns.

First of all, avoiding players afflicted by Mark of the Faceless is the number one responsibility of all ranged players. It heals Vezax for a huge amount per second, and, as with most boss fights, victory is a matter of ending the fight before your accumulated mistakes reach critical mass.

This brings us to the matter of bursting the Saronite Vapors. After a couple of attempts in which we had assigned a single ranged DPS (read: me) to Vapor duty, it became clear that this inevitably led to crossing paths with Marked people who were trying to avoid the rest of the raid. Simply having whoever happened to be nearest to a spawned Vapor take care of it was much more effective.

Finally, regarding Shadow Crash, move farther away from the impending impact point than you think you need to - 10 yards can be an unexpectedly broad area >_>

Theorycraft From the Comfort of Your Browser

My guild-leader and fellow hunter has just brought to our attention something that should be of interest to the hunter community: Shandara's Hunter DPS Spreadsheet is now available for use in-browser, no Excel necessary!

D-emblem-ocratization

I've been putting off commenting on any Patch 3.2 changes, in anticipation of further revisions rendering anything I might say obsolete, but I feel I can at least throw in my two cents on a topic that's been the focus of much angst among raiders: the consolidation of pre-Triumph emblems, allowing players to purchase up to tier 8.5 gear by potentially running nothing more advanced than heroic 5-man dungeons.

The argument against this is that it devalues the accomplishments of raiders who successfully progressed through Ulduar, by giving the same gear to people running hNexus every day. Now, I would have agreed with this point if the change were implemented before a new tier of content was opened. But the fact is, is hasn't been - on the day that Conquest gear is available to the unwashed masses, all of the serious raiders are going to be diving into Triumph-tier gear.

And I'm cool with that. Progress through the current endgame content has always been the metric by which the relative hardness of a player's core is measured, and that isn't changing. So, my fellow elitist jerks, catch you in the Coliseum.

Making Friends

Egads, what a weekend.

Beginning Friday night, we cleared both the Siege and Antechamber, getting our first Orbital Bombardment in the process (Two emblems of conquest! Only ten more weeks, and I'll be able to buy something!). We are now beginning to hone our runs down to a level of efficiency at which we should be able to do a full clear in two nights of raiding, ala Naxx. I am especially proud of our progress in light of the fact that we have something of a rotating cast of raiders, with at least one or two Ulduar-virgins every week.

Saturday night was no less rewarding. We finally repeated our first Hodir kill (ok, so you don't actually kill any of the Keepers...), and even managed an accidental I Have the Coolest Friends. We then moved on to Thorim, who we had only faced once before, and not successfully. But, after a couple of attempts in which we got the hang of taking down the constantly spawning adds in time without pulling aggro off the tank (ahem... >_>), we defeated him quite easily.

Next was Freya, who none of us had actually attempted before. Our plan was basically to get some easy emblems from the three Elders, and then put in some time learning the main encounter. We went about clearing the trash (protip: according to one of our Paladins, the dragon mobs are immune to Repentance) and the Elders without much trouble.

The first couple attempts on Freya herself were indeed learning experiences; Snaplashers killing tanks, Gifts of Eonar not getting cut down in time, etc. But on try number three, everything just clicked, and, well...

(Protip #2: since the Snaplashers won't attack melee who are not on top of their threat list, Hunters can hit them with a distracting shot once their debuff roots them, allowing melee DPS to continue hacking with impunity)

Finally, we moved on to the Spark of Imagination (a.k.a. Mimiron's workshop, a.k.a. coolest trash pulls ever. I'm not going to spoil it for you - it was a neat little surprise for all of us :D). We rode the bullet train (You heard that right. Seriously, Ulduar really does get more awesome the farther in you go.) to Mimiron's inner sanctum, said hi, and were promptly vaporized. It was after midnight at that point, so we called it a night, content in the knowledge that the Old Gods and their minions will soon fall before us.

And, because I know you care, here's the weekend's hunter loot haul: Belt of the Blood Pit, Boots of Unsettled Prey, and Shawl of the Shattered Giant.

Being Frozen Blows

Or, "Raid Composition Matters".

Last night we spent two hours wiping on Hodir, getting him down to 14% on our best attempt. Seeing as last week's group succeeded in taking him down, the task at hand is to isolate the factors which caused our difficulty.

1. There were a couple of people who had never seen the fight before, and were unclear as to how the Flash Freeze/snowdrift mechanic worked. However, this was soon explained and became less of an issue. Last week's group had at least one newbie as well.

2. Ok, the elephant in the room - the types of healers we had. The Hodir fight is a ludicrous piling-on of raid damage; between frozen blows and biting cold, toasty fires notwithstanding, everyone is taking damage all the time. Now, last week's group was ideally staffed to handle this: they had a priest for various AOE heals and a big ol' stamina buff, and a shaman for, well, what shamans do. Last night, on the other hand, we had a druid and two paladins. That means very little multi-unit healing, and two healers who have to stand still to do anything.

That being the case, I applaud our group, and especially our healers, for getting as far as we did. But I must also resign myself to the fact that beyond filling a role, sometimes class still matters. At least until everyone so outgears the encounter that it doesn't anymore.

Back in the Saddle

In which our hero returns to the villain's lair, and leaves dragging a sack of loot.

Night one of this week's Ulduar was positively overflowing with win. First, it was an official Night of Hunter Loot (TM) - there were three of us, and we each left with at least one upgrade. Myself, I finally replaced the old Nesingwary with this piece of Titan technology, not to mention these imitation tier 8 shoulders!

Even more impressive (as if anything could be more impressive than hunter loot), we scored three deathless boss kills and one o' them cruel and unusual punishments, bringing us that much closer to classy titles and rusty dragons.

Tonight - the Keepers!

Of Snowmen, Infernal Machines, and Meta Achievements

/wave

Hello! Yes, I'm still here, just lacking much of substance to post. Some hardware hiccups kept me from raiding this week, which means, sadly, I wasn't present for our guild-first Hodir kill!

But, far from being frustrated, I'm actually very happy, and not only for the success of the group that actually took him down. I'm happy because now I can feel confident that Hodir will not be the brick wall to our Ulduar progression that it appeared he was becoming. It seems that last night's group put in several attempts on Thorim afterwards, but never quite made it. Hopefully, I'll be along to describe the situation in grisly detail next time.

And finally, it appears my little blog has reached 200 unique visitors! I hope everyone who has stopped by has gone away better informed, or at least mildly amused. Ya'll come back now, ya hear?

In Before De-claw

It was reported today that, among other things, the latest PTR build has seen the threat of Auriaya's Sentries' Savage Pounce, arguably the most difficult aspect of the fight, cut in half. I could question, as many others already have, the logic behind nerfing content that everyone already seems to be progressing through rather swiftly, but I won't do that.

Instead, I will glory in the knowledge that my Guild and I two-shot the bitch on the first night we attempted it! /flex

After a false start in which our DK tank didn't get behind his pillar quite fast enough after dropping a Death and Decay in Auriaya's path, we went on to achieve a textbook execution of the fight - no one got pounced, no Feral Defenders were left to void zone it up in inopportune places, and everyone stayed bunched up on her crotch like an eager boyfriend.

Hodir... didn't go quite as smoothly. At first, a lot of people couldn't seem to grasp the whole "don't stand in the big circ- NOW! NOW IN THE CIRCLE!" mechanic of avoiding Flash Freeze. Everyone eventually seemed to get the hang of that, but we were still taking too much damage from Frozen Blows for our healers to deal with. It seems frost-resistance gear may in fact be called for.

Overall, for a two-nights-per-week raiding guild, I am quite happy with our progress. I expect us to be knock-knock-knockin' on Yoggy's door three or four weeks from now. Or next week, if Blizzard doesn't get off of their knee-jerk nerfing kick...

Our Raid Brings All the Dragons to The Yard

And they're like, "rawr rawr rawr rawr."

Last night's Ulduar run was an ambivalent mishmash of highs and lows. We began the night by easily clearing through Flame Leviathan and Deconstructor in order to get in as many attempts as we could stand on the Assembly of Iron. Unfortunately, we never got farther than phase two (doing the normal-difficulty progression); Overloads, and later Lightning Whirls, were just beyond our ability to keep under control. We did, however, do much better than last week, and I wish we would have tried a bit longer last night. In any case, I fully expect us to get them down next time.

But, we finally retreated, and swung back around to clear Razorscale and Ignis. Over the course of the night, we ended up earning a handful of unexpected achievements through sheer badassery. In addition to the dragon murderin' noted above, we also got

Tonight's plan is to do Kologarn again, and then continue working on new content with Auriaya and, depending on how that goes, Hodir.

What Treachery is This?!

No, your eyes don't deceive you, that's a Beast Mastery at the bottom of that there tree!

I've decided it's high time I experience the one Hunter spec I've never tried. I leveled as Marksmanship back in vanilla WoW, and have been Survival ever since I returned during the latter part of Burning Crusade. Yes, even during its heyday, I just wasn't interested in trying Beast Mastery.

But now I feel the need for a change. I want to see just how different the BM playstyle is from that of SV. As a Survivalist, I treat my pet like a weapon: I basically fire him at the boss and let him do his thing while I focus on my shot rotation and maintaining my DoTs. Beast Masters, on the other hand (at least as my uneducated mind imagines them), treat their pets as extensions of themselves: the pet is responsible for a greater proportion of overall DPS, so keeping it alive is of much greater importance.

I purchased dual talent specialization, so my SV spec is still ready at hand for raiding (at least until I feel supremely confident with BM), but I'm excited to try my hand at some Big Red Pet wranglin'.

And seriously - Spirit Beast!

We Passed

Last night's Ulduar run was a thing of beauty.

Wednesday night's attempts (which I was unable to attend) saw the guild taking down Razorscale in two shots, but hitting a wall with Ignis. So, we went in last night expecting to work on Iggy until we got him, and then make a few attempts on XT-002 Deconstructor just to learn the fight.

Instead, we proceeded to one-shot Ignis, and deconstruct XT in three. Then we spent half a dozen attempts figuring out how best to position ourselves to deal with Kologarn's lazer vision, but he, too, did fall. In the end, we couldn't beat Moe, Larry, and Curly, but we learned the fight, what to expect, and how to deal with it (Brundir can be silenced? Are you shitting me?).

*sigh* Sometimes I wish we did progression raiding more than two days a week. I can't wait to get back in there.

*chirp*

So, yes, I'm "tweeting" now. Or as I like to call it, "microblogging" - like microcredit, only less useful for empowering third-world women through entrepreneurship.

From Now On, We Raid in Style

Behold!

Now, don't get me wrong - I've never been a real tech whore. My PC for the past 4 years had been a DIY job, periodically upgraded to squeeze a modest level of performance out of the cheapest parts possible. But in the end, it was quite the cobbled-together monstrosity, and after its most recent heart attack, I had to admit defeat.

So I splurged! I fully expect this beast to last longer than I do, and I am positively giddy in anticipation of stepping into Ulduar on this thing. Who knows - you may even begin seeing videos on this here blog... (the screening of which would probably be a great incentive to improve my own performance. Ah, public humiliation: the great educator.)

Out of Mana? Have Some Replenishment!

Cheers to the lovely and always entertaining mistress of both PvP and cutting-edge raiding, Megan at http://outofmana.blogspot.com/, for shooting me some blogroll linkage. May your Exorcism continue to affect enemy players, unannounced changes be damned!

I Can't See a Damn Thing in This Tin Can!

So, after tonight's regularly-scheduled lich beating, we decided to give EoE10 a few shots, mainly just to test out our druid's new Key to the Focusing Iris - honestly, you'd think Maly would have changed his locks by now.

We walked, nay, swaggered into his domain - and were repeatedly vaporized. We gave it three good shots, making it to phase three almost flawlessly each time, but we definitely need more practice on the drake riding bit. Also, on the final attempt before our healers had to split, we encountered a bug which ejected us from our mounts, only to re-mount us a few seconds later. Needless to say, that pretty much blew any rhythm we had going (and have I mentioned how much I HATE "vehicle" combat? Unwieldy, buggy, contrived vehicle combat? Occulus, EoE, that storm giant in Zul'Drak, and yes, even Flame Leviathan can all go die in a fire).

I was, however, quite pleased with my DPS and overall performance. I consider this the first meaningful test of my spec and gear post-3.1, and it saw a moderate damage increase, and possibly even better mana efficiency than before (perhaps due to 3/3 rather than 2/4 Hunting Party).

I even managed to pick up two new pieces from Naxx: Heroes' Cryptstalker Headpiece and Claymore of Ancient Power. Very slight upgrades, but upgrades nonetheless.

And shit, they look cool.

Blizzard Has My Back

The very day I conclude that my DPS would benefit from shifting a few talent points around, BAM! - free re-specs.

So, ever since 3.1 dropped, I've been snubbing the new Sniper Training - Ulduar, and even much of Naxx, just has too many fires that must not be stood in, and I believed those points would be better spent in Entrapment, mainly for kiting Gluth's zombies.

I still stand by those basic assertions, but now that Naxx is slowly being phased out of my regular raiding schedule, Entrapment is looking less appealing, whereas the extra crit to Kill Shot, especially in conjunction with its glyph, is pushing Sniper Training ahead. My only concern regarding the loss of Entrapment is controlling the adds during Ignis, but I'm hoping the interplay of 3/3 Trap Mastery and 2/3 Resourcefulness will allow for a constant ice sheet to keep them in line.

This is all just theoretical right now, as I won't be testing anything until this weekend at the earliest. As always, if your experience contradics my suppositions, tell me how wrong I am!

Prioritizing

Well, I broke down and shelled out for it. Now I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine! ...in about two weeks, when the Faire comes 'round again, anyway.

So, I'm basically back to square one as far as attaining my Chopper but, well, vanity mounts don't help kill bosses.

Don't You Wish Your Profession Got Loot Like Me?

I almost forgot!

Engineers - tired of getting useless gray items from "mining" mechanical corpses? Here's what I got from Flame Leviathan last night: 3 eternal Shadow, 2 eternal fire, 6 overcharged capacitors, and 19 saronite bars. It was totally unexpected, and I offered to roll to split it up after the fact, but hey - that's a lot of bullets. :D

Don't Let the Cinematic Trailer Fool You

Varian Wrynn was afraid to go to Ulduar! Yeah, His Surlyness just wants to go back to farming Naxx until Armageddon drops.

But we - the unknown, the unappreciated, the unaccountable for our actions - have answered Brann's call! Man, poor guy must be really hard up for help...

So, yes, last night was the guild's first look inside Ulduar. It wasn't our first official run; that comes next week. This was merely an attempt to get a feel for the first 3-4 bosses, seeing how far we could get.

And let me tell you, for anyone worried that Blizzard would not live up to their promises of more difficult content: Ulduar is HARD. Razorscale and her two-shotting fireballs. Ignis and his codpiece hellfire. And the trash! My God, the trash! Fire giants that Silence your healers, iron dwarves with magnifying chain lightning, fire elementals that hurl fire tornadoes that have a knockback and will chase you!

When you feel you've accomplished something after clearing a couple trash mobs, you know something's different. I know I'm excited.

One final note for my fellow Survival Hunters on slowing/rooting the iron constructs during the Ignis fight:

You may very well have Entrapment - that's good!
But remember, all of your traps share a cooldown with Black Arrow - that's /facepalm

*Gaaasp*

Now that I've stopped holding my breath in antici...
...
...pation of patch 3.1, I think I can feel fairly confident in where I'll be assigning my talent points later tonight (I'm slightly less confident that the servers will actually be up and stable later tonight...).

It's fairly similar to my current spec, with the most significant difference being that I'm foregoing Wyvern Sting and Noxious Stings to allow for the new 3-point Trap Mastery, and an additional point in Resourcefulness; the damage bonus during Black Arrow uptime is twice that of what Noxious Stings provided for Serpent Sting, so I really can't rationalize not buffing its DPS/mana ratio. Also, without the mana-discount from its glyph, I'm shunting Aimed Shot out of my rotation.

I've already covered the glyphs I'll be using, and my thoughts haven't changed on that front.

Sadly, although it still lingers in the patch notes, the proposed change to T.N.T. allowing Explosive Shot to refresh Explosive Trap seems to have never materialized (Confession time - I haven't been on the PTR much at all. I just can't justify spending my limited playing-time on something so ephemeral; huge props to all of you out there who have been testing and exploring the upcoming changes for the rest of us. Anyway, my point is: if the Explosive Shot change, or anything else I've covered, is incorrect, let me know! I'm running on rumors and innuendo here!).

Ahhh. It feels good just to think about playing my Hunter again. We're comin' for ya, Yoggie!

Forecast for Tomorrow is Patchy

With a 70 percent chance of content accumulation.

The pundits are all pointing to tomorrow as the day that 3.1 will descend from the heavens, and I, for one, hope they're right. I haven't done anything with my Hunter (other than buying Mysterious Eggs from the Oracles - c'mooon protodrake) in almost two weeks; not even dailies. I have all of the rep rewards I want, and my time has been better spent leveling my Death Knight.

I'm looking forward to learning the ins and outs of the new Survival tree, to say nothing of getting in on the ground floor of Ulduar raiding (should my work schedule choose to cooperate, he said pessimistically).

Anyway, maybe it's just the absence of any significant changes on the PTR in the last week or so, but it sure feels like the patch is coming tomorrow. My trick knee is actin' up, after all...

Requiscat in Pace

A long time ago (the 70s, man!), in a land far away (Minnesota!), one man thought it would be cool to pretend to traipse through a dungeon, killing monsters and taking their stuff.

May all your rolls be natural 20s, Dave, wherever the astral winds may take you.

This is the Greatest and Best Blog in the World...

Tribute.

As you should have heard by now, the bar-setting, internal-dialoguing, mass-marketing, pod-casting frontman of the Hunter community, Big Red Kitty, has made the hard, but undeniably right, choice to turn away from WoW for his wife and family.

BRK's was the first WoW blog I regularly read, upon returning to the game a year ago. He never went into the same obsessive depth of theoretical exposition as some other bloggers (and Lord knows, I loves me some math-craftin'), but he presented important fundamentals of the class in a highly entertaining manner, and I credit him with my Hunter becoming my main, rather than my Warlock, all those months ago.

Good luck, BRK. I'll raise a cup o' raspberry latte to ya.

Heart Attack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack

Like anyone who deigns to publish a blog, I'm a fairly narcissistic person. So, of course I have a hit-tracker to tell me all of the who-when-where of visits to my blog, and I'll occassionally take a look at where my visitors are coming from (Hint: overwhelmingly click-throughs from my comments on other blogs, and woefully few hilarious Googled word strings).

With that in mind, it was with great surprise and a rush of endorphins that I just noted not just one, but two hits from the storied blogroll of the inimitable Pike. Indeed, I am still hyperventilating into a paper bag.

Thank you, Pike. If I don't recover, it will still have been worth it.

Ti-i-i-ime Is On My Side

It is... finished.

After arduous weeks of pain and interminable struggle, I have attained my lofty goal, so long held just out of reach. I have achieved...

The Oracles

Wait, what? Hang on... ah, here we go -

The Fall of Naxxramas

Yes, three weeks after downing K'T, my schedule finally allowed me to join my guild in clearing the Construct quarter, hence all the bosses in Naxx10. Some of our members will be giving Maly a shot this weekend, but for me, alas - WORK.

Just as an aside, tonight's raid composition gives a humorous insigt into our guild's overall makeup - out of the ten of us, there were 4 paladins and 4 hunters :D

Oh, no you di'n't!

Oi, what a week.

The guild was hit hard by a rather unexpected dramasplosion, when a simple disagreement over loot procedures brought long-simmering personal differences to a head. Things were said. Prominent members left. Mistakes were made.

That being the case, we are no longer able to put together 25-person Naxx raids, as we had just begun to do, which leaves many of us in the unexpected position of basically stagnating until Ulduar (Malygos and various iterations of Sarth notwithstanding).

So what am I doing? Well, leveling my Death Knight, for one - we're perpetually short on tanks (some of the best of which left in the schism, along with some great healers). On my hunter, I'm mainly just doing dailies for gold (soon, my precious, soon) and rep achievements.

Still, Naxx isn't entirely barren of upgrades - just tonight, I finally replaced my Spaulders of the Black Arrow with Heroes Cryptstalker Spaulders, finally scoring me the 2-piece set bonus, for what it's worth.

I'm hangin' in there - more to come, no doubt.

Mr. Dwarf Goes to Washington

Ala Hillary or Bill.

Yes, after many hours of massacring Ogres for Draenei, Naga for Sporelings, and Furbolgs for other Furbolgs, I have finally been recognized for my skill as a peacemaker.



Who knew diplomacy involved so much mindless killing? Though, on second thought, if the most effective way to make people respect you is to wipe out their enemies, then the ongoing tension between the Alliance and Horde becomes a bit more explicable...

Trap Two-Stepping

The latest PTR update has some intriguing changes for Survival Hunters, namely:

* Entrapment redesigned: When your Frost Trap, Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Snake Trap are triggered, you entrap all afflicted targets, preventing them from moving for 2/4/6 seconds.

* T.N.T.: Gives your Explosive Shot a 33/66/100% chance to refresh the duration of your Immolation Trap effect on the target.

* Trap Mastery: This talent has been moved up to tier-2, up from tier-9, and is now a 3-point talent.

* Trap Mastery, Resourcefulness and T.N.T. now all affect Black Arrow.

It seems as though they are trying to make traps a more significant part of what the Survival tree is all about, rather than simply a desultory string of talents on the way to getting the most powerful shot in the game; I approve.

And the new Entrapment is going to make kiting Zombie Chows during the Gluth fight a lot easier :D

The RP In Your MMOG

So, in case you didn’t know, the realm I play on, Kirin Tor, is an RP realm. Yes, yes, I know – Goldshire lol.

Anyway, a few of the WoW blogs I read are written by players on RP realms, and I've noticed that many of them are much more active in their in-game roleplaying than I've ever wanted to be. You see, I never actually roleplay with others in-game; it's just too reminiscent of the freeform roleplaying chatrooms that I long ago learned to shun. Rather, I seek out in-game superficialities that reflect my characters' personalities and backstories, even if I’m the only one who is aware of them. This includes everything from particular pets, to choice of professions, to titles – needless to say, the achievement system has really been a boon to my enjoyment of the game.

The practical effect of this approach is mostly a matter of how I spend my “non-progression” time in the game: whenever I’m not running instances or grinding rep for better gear. In this off-time, I’ll work toward acquiring the titles, tchotchkies, and even rewardless achievements that I feel reflect my character’s… character.

So basically, playing on an RP server is just a miniscule aid to the immersiveness of the experience – fewer people named Gankor and Jaknicklezon breaking the fourth wall. The only roleplaying I do in WoW is in my own head.

What about you? Whatever flavor of realm you play on, how far do you take your roleplaying? Do your characters have personalities, or are they just cartoon projections of yourself?

If You Can't Join 'Em...

Things were pretty slow around here this past weekend. Work kept me away from raiding (another successful Naxx clear!), so I just spent my time doing dailies and farming up the last of the mats I'll need for my sweet ride. I have nowhere near the gold I'll need for the vendored components, but I'm nothing if not patient... *twitch*

In other news, I've also leveled my Death Knight up to level 61, and it's been a lot of fun so far. I've never seriously played a melee class before, and it's an interesting change of pace; I look forward to having a new class to learn the ins and outs of.

With any luck, I'll be able to try my hand at tanking some Outland dungeons with guildies' leveling alts before long :)

I Can't Read Your Crazy Moon Language!

Among other things, patch 3.1 will be changing the outlay of glyphs available to Hunters, both introducing new ones, and changing old ones. For your convenience, here they are:

· Glyph - Aimed Shot -- Reduces the cooldown of your Aimed Shot ability by 2 sec. (Old: Reduces the mana cost of your aimed shot ability by 20%)

· Glyph of the Monkey -- While Aspect of the Monkey or Aspect of the Dragonhawk are active, each time you dodge you gain 30% increased movement speed for 6 sec. Can only occur every 20 sec. This speed does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects. (Old: Glyph of Aspect of the Monkey -- While Aspect of the Monkey or Aspect of the Dragonhawk are active, each time you dodge you gain 30% increased movement speed for 6 sec. This speed does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.)

· Glyph of Wyvern Sting -- Decreases the cooldown of your Wyvern Sting by 6 sec. (Old: Decreases the cooldown of your Wyvern Sting by 15 sec., but decreases the damage it deals by 20%.)

· Glyph of Snake Trap -- Snakes generated by your Snake Trap take 90% reduced damge from area of effect spells. (Old: Your Snake Trap creates 2 additional snakes)

· Glyph of the Hawk -- Increases the haste bonus of the Improved Aspect of the Hawk effect by an additional 6%. (Old: Renamed from Glyph of Improved Aspect of the Hawk)

· Glyph of Chimera Shot *new* -- Reduces the cooldown of Chimera Shot by 1 sec.

· Glyph of Explosive Shot *new* -- Increases the critical strike chance of Explosive Shot by 4%.

· Glyph of Kill Shot *new* -- Reduces the cooldown of Kill Shot by 6 sec.

· Glyph of Explosive Trap *new* -- The periodic damage from your Explosive Trap can now be critical strikes.

· Glyph of Scatter Shot *new* -- Increases the range of Scatter Shot by 3 yards.

· Glyph of Raptor Strike *new* -- For 5 sec. after using Raptor Strike, you take 20% less damage.

Obviously, your choice of glyphs will depend upon your spec, style, and whether you’re focusing on PvP or PvE. That being said, I have some initial thoughts:

· The fact that Glyph of Aimed Shot no longer reduces its mana cost by 20% would seem to invalidate it as a regular part of most shot rotations. The only thing Aimed Shot seems useful for now is its healing reduction effect, so reducing the shot’s cooldown below that effect’s duration is pointless. I know I’ll be dropping it.

· The 20 second cooldown on Glyph of the Monkey is certainly a nerf to its PvP efficacy (I imagine – I don’t use it, and I only occasionally PvP).

· The revised Glyph of Wyvern Sting and new Glyph of Scatter Shot, on the other hand, might be more worthwhile for PvP.

· Glyph of Kill Shot: Yes, please. Especially in 25-person raids, where that last 20% can last a while.

· Glyph of Explosive Shot: Yes, please. Now that we don’t get a crit boost from T.N.T , this looks like a good choice.

For myself, I’ll probably be running with Glyphs of Explosive Shot, Kill Shot, and Steady Shot, come 3.1. What about you? And hey, Marks Hunters, is Glyph of Chimera Shot going to be worth it? Spec-curious Hunters want to know!

We're Taking This Ziggurat to Panama!

This past weekend was a raiding watershed for my guild. It was the first all-guild full-clear of 10-person Naxxramas. Now, for a serious raiding guild, only just now completing Naxx would be an embarrassment, not an accomplishment. But we are not a serious raiding guild.

We are, first and foremost, a bunch of friends and people with similar interests, who are in the guild to socialize and draw upon a reliable, competent player base for running heroics. We are casual – raiding is entirely optional, an opportunity that guild membership presents as a kind of bonus. People must be sufficiently geared, of course, but groups for heroics (not to mention advice on gear, enchants, and talents) are easy to come by.

Yes, we’re casual, but those of us who choose to raid take it seriously. We’ve been doing Naxx10 two nights a week for maybe a month and a half, now, along with Sarth and VoA10, and even a sprinkling of 25-person raid nights with some allied guilds. We have slowly but surely gotten past the phase of getting everyone geared up, to the point where we really had a shot at defrosting Kel’Thuzad’s freezer. And last night, we did it.

Friday and Saturday were our regularly scheduled raid nights. Friday saw our always-shifting cast of guildies (minus myself; work, work, work…) breeze through the Arachnid and Construct wings, and Saturday we did a similar job on Military and Plague. The night was young, and we weren’t about to leave Sapphiron’s bones undisturbed for another week. We proceeded into the Frostwyrm Lair – and a fight none of us had actually participated in before. Say what you will about the relative lack of difficulty in the current endgame (and I’ll probably agree with you), but I still largely attribute the fact that we killed Sapphiron (and don’t get too comfortable, Maly) on our second try – ever – to a raid leader who is very on top of things, in terms of both strategy research and in-battle direction, and some totally kickass healers.

We were feeling pretty damned good at that point, and charged (as circumspectly as one can charge, anyway) onward to Kel’Thuzad. We gave it three good tries that night: first attempt, we got him to about 45%, even though our ret Pally disconnected about two minutes in. Second attempt, Pally’s computer completely dies, with similar results. We called in a warlock to pinch-DPS for one last try, and got him down to 19% before we wiped. By now it was late, we were tired, and we decided to call it a night, research the fight some more, and come back the next day.

Fast forward to last night. We established that Saturday night’s group composition may have been suboptimal – we’d been running two healers and two tanks, one of whom would pick up the Guardians of Icecrown when they showed up. This seemed to inevitably lead to one of the tanks getting caught by the chaining Frost Blast, and either the Guardians or the lich going wild. So, last night we had one of our Paladins switch from Protection to Holy, and handle tank healing. Bingo – we took him down in two tries.

And oh, mercy, it was a hunter-loot-stravaganza. We’re talking Helm of the Lost Protector, Nerubian Conquerer, and, eh… Staff of the Plaguehound. As much as I wanted that gun, or even the helm, to make wearing my Heroes’ Cryptstalker Tunic closer to an actual upgrade, I passed; I’d won some nice boots and the aforementioned chestpiece the night before, and there were three, count ‘em, three other hunters in last night’s group, two of whom were significantly less geared than me. Remember what I said earlier about my guild? A bunch of friends? Yes, I meant that. Congratulations, Pig and Whistle Society!

Hunters, Grab Your Napkins!

Because it’s time for some math.

So, as you’ve probably heard by now, Blizzard’s imprecise language regarding changes to ammo and the removal of quivers was just that – the 15% ranged haste still applies to steady shot.

Things look less rosy for Explosive Shot, however – the reduction to base damage and attack power scaling will cut the shot’s damage by a little over 11%, a gap that will become fractionally larger as attack power increases.

As much as I hate to agree with a nerf to my own spec, Explosive Shot probably was a bit overpowered compared to talents equally deep in other trees, like Chimera Shot.

Now hand me that napkin, I need to dry my tears.

*ahem* "Fire!"

Ok, I've been working all day, so just a quick post tonight before I fall asleep at the keyboard.

The latest round of updates to the 3.1 patch notes have been released, and among other things, many of which had already been noted by other sources, two changes in particular regarding
hunters immediately caught my attention:

Ammunition: All types of gun and bow ammunition now stack to 1000. All quivers
and ammo pouches no longer provide haste. 15% ranged haste is now built in to
Hunter Autoshot.

The important thing to note is that the 15% haste now only
applies to Autoshot. This means that Hunters who were previously haste capped for Steady Shot now may not be. Secondly,

Explosive Shot: Base damage lowered by 10%. Attack power scaling reduced by
12.5%.

I haven't even run the numbers yet to see just how much this will cut my
damage by (tomorrow, tomorrow...), but this is a pretty significant throttling.

That's all I've got for now. Has anyone on the PTR been able to confirm these changes?

The State of the Hunter...

...is in flux.

So, as Broxigar seems to have stabilized, and I'm able to play for more than five minutes without crashing and losing all of my keybinds, I've been able to do some very cursory testing and comparison of my DPS in the current patch build versus the live realms. My testing build looks like this, and here is a representative sample of my DPS in 3.1 (no comments on my DPS as an absolute value, please :P - this is strictly for purposes of comparison):

This is using a shot qeue of Aimed Shot, Explosive Shot, and Steady Shot, while maintaining Serpent Sting and Black Arrow. Compare with my current live build and DPS:

Here I'm using a similar shot priority, albeit with Immolation Trap to proc Lock and Load, and of course lacking Black Arrow.

A few things of note:

• My new DPS is within 75.1 of what I'm pulling now. Not an insignificant decrease, but not game-breaking.
• My Explosive Shots are critting exactly as often as before. This leads me to wonder if the change of the T.N.T. talent from a crit- to a damage increase has actually been implemented yet.
• Finally, and most troubling to me, is the fact that I ran out of mana in almost half the time on test as I did on live. Lock and Load may not account for a huge DPS boost, but without those guaranteed procs, my total damage (before I would have to go into Aspect of the Viper) is more than cut in half. (It is worth noting that some of this mana inefficiency is due to the fact that Glyph of Aimed Shot no longer reduces its cost by 20%, and I simply don't have the gold to pay the obscene prices that glyphs are demanding on the PTR.)

So, that's how things are looking right now. Any thoughts? Have I overlooked anything obvious?

The Rug Beneath My Feet, It is Yank-ed

So, after days of refreshing the character copy page, and hours of downloading and installing the PTR client, Eidtalheg's alter ego was finally settled into his new home on Broxigar. Now, let's spend those talent points, and hit up the training dummies!

This program has encountered a critical error and must shut down.

What the? Ok, don't panic, let's try this agai-

THE WORLD SERVER IS DOWN.

...

Really, I will be posting my initial perceptions of patch 3.1, I promise - any day now...

Future's So Bright...

...I've gotta use cliches.



Hello, and welcome to Improved Tracking! It is my hope that this blog will become a source for commentary and discussion of all aspects of the game World of Warcraft, with a focus on the Hunter class.

I've been an avid browser of the WoW blogosphere for quite a while now, and I've gotten frustrated with not having a central hub at which to contribute my own thoughts on the hot topics du jour. So now, with patch 3.1 right around the corner, I feel the moment is rich with opportunity to dive into the blogging scene. The new content patch, in addition to the Ulduar raid instance, is bringing a world event, sweeping changes among all the classes, and, who could forget, new achievements to... achieve - and I plan on covering it all!

I do hope you'll choose to join me on this adventure.

Cheers,
Eid