LWing 440

So i hit LWing 440 which means i can now make all the epics. Well i can make the ones i have patterns for at least. Still going to take a lot more leather and arctic furs before i can get all the patterns. Just need to make myself the icestrike cloak and giantmain bracers and i will be good to go. Got some great legs out of Halls of Stone so i dont need the giantmaim ones anymore. I really need to replace trinkets and rings, but they are so expensive to get. Oh well, in time i suppose. I also got in on my first naxx run. It wasnt stellar by all means, but it was the day after christmas so our group composition was probably not ideal. We downed 3 bosses which is less then they normally get, but hopefully i can get in a couple more runs just to see more then the arachnid quarter.

I also hope that new patterns will come out. I think the patterns available now are for basic raiding gear, but i personally like the rare pattern drops also that came in some later raiding such as in The Eye. So basically what we have now is good for the casual player and those wanting to get into Naxx, but as content is added hopefully there will be some pattern drops or something to keep the crafters from getting bored.

p.s.- still working on the epic flying mount. I have about 4000+ gold so im getting close. Once i ge the training hopefully i can get a free mount from H-culling or a proto drake from the oracles egg or H-UP.

Level 80

So since i returned to playing on wednesday of last week, I have done some serious playing. I did a lot of leveling and questing finishing scholozar basin which i love for skinning, and then pretty much finishing everything in storm peaks. Now not to do any spoilers, lets just say i felt completely owned and like a douche once the story unfolds for storm peaks. Now I am level 80 and really trying to get myself geared up to join B4B in Naxx. To do this i have mostly been doing serious leather farming or heroic runs. LWing is up to 425ish and i would love to get up to the giantmaim pieces at 440. I got some new swiftarrow gear that replaced my T5 stuff, but dude it is like intro PVP gear. It has resilience and good stats, but has absolutely no hit point. My hit points are in the tank and that really needs to change. Plus none of my gear has sockets on it, and that sucks. So back to feeling crappy about being weak like i did for months when i dinged 70.

Additionally since i powerleveled 75-80 in 4 days the only pet i have close to 80 is my gorilladin sepharose. So zn additional thing i need to do is get on leveling or obtaining new pets. I have a worm which i can get a new one from storm peaks which will be like lvl 79. But my main need is as a dps class, to get a dps pet. Now i found it odd that there were no cats in the game according to petopia that are higher then 76. This was odd since i got a lvl 69 cat from skettish before. Anyways, so since im stuck with a 76 cat i might as well get a cool skin so i wanted to tame Pitch in SB. Funny thing, the frenzyheart still hate me and there are like 2-3 elites guarding Pitch. I did manage to fly to a raised area where i could trap him without aggroing them. So i have Pitch and he is 77 or 78 or so now. Of course the ultimate accomplishment will be spirit beast. So while i am farming leather i am absolutely /target loque to hopefully find it by accident.

All this work is to hopefully allow me to get some money. I NEED AN EPIC FLYING MOUNT. Ximera is my first toon and my only high level toon and as most new players can attest, it can be hard to make money at first. I still am monetarily challenged. I bought the cold weather flying so at least i can fly, but it is so slow. Storm peaks with a slow mount was painful. Anyways, as a result of the training being 5000g or something crazy still plus mount costs, i am praying for a free epic mount drop. I could really use a proto drake from either oracles, time-lost proto drake, blue proto drake. Something so i do spend all my money at once. I only have about 3k gold.

Also did a 40 man raid for the black war bear mount "for the alliance". that was fun too.

Anyways, this was really scattered so hopefully i can gear up, make money, and get pets to accomplish the above goals. And i will leave you with this thought. Where have all the healers gone?

im back

ok proposal is finished. presentation done and over. it went very well. now i can return to leveling since i havent been able to for the past near 3 weeks.

almost back

My committee meeting proposal presentation is tomorrow. It is kind of a big deal since it is the first time my committee has met and will get a chance to see what it is i am proposing. Hopefully that will go reasonably well. Tomorrow night though, i am back on WoW and will ding 76. Ximera is gonna be powerleveling like mad to 80 since im so far behind. Hopefully i can catch Loque'nahak on the way, but if not ill stalk her later. If you dont know what she is, you are clearly not a hunter. Ok so hope to see you all tomorrow night and i will resume in grizzly hills most likely before heading to the basin to really ramp up my LWing.

Nerfed to the floor baby...well not really

So as stated in BRK's blog, ghostcrawler has put up some nerfs that may be coming the way of the hunter which can be found here. Now to be honest, some of these are needed since especially BM pets are doing way too much damage. It is great to feel OP, but i know balance is key to the enjoyment of the game, so ill go with it. Just sucks to be knocked down, even if you were way up in the ceiling to begin with. I just hope since they decrease volley damage they better fix the volley damage issue otherwise weapons will be going even faster since we will be using volley even more.

OK that is all. I need to rewrite me entire research proposal tonight. Hope to be back on WoW by the 17th i hope if im not out celebrating my meeting being over.

Thanks Fal

So i havent played WoW in about 10 days, but last night was the first time i signed on and though it really wasnt efficient in how the time was spent, it turned out well. I am lvl 75 and i completed the dragonblight achievement so i thought i should move on, and sholazar basin seemed to be a good level to start except i couldnt find any quest givers. Someone said you may have to be 76 to get quests there and something about it starting in dalaran to send you there, but regardless i roamed around SB for a good amount of time without luck. So then i wentto dalaran to try and find said quest giver to see if i could go at 75. The only quests i found were for violet hold and in my nubishness i didnt realize it was the northrend version of black morass. HAHA i tried to solo a dungeon and wondered why the first elite mob out of the portal creamed my pet. So i ran towards the exit to find the door blocked, popped a feign death and just sat there till the dragons open the door and ran out. I followed and somehow i didnt die. that was so noobish. So wondering where i can go next, i decided to shoot over to grizzly hills since i hadnt been there. Popped over there and killed some elk for a quest, and who waves at me but Falromord, one of Graimerin's alts. I read on BBB's blog that Grai made him a couple savage cobalt slicers so i just asked what the mats were for them. He linked them and just said lets go find an anvil. He runs outside and bang bang bang he whips up 2 of them on the spot without asking for mats. And let me say, i feel like he gave them to me cheap. So i just wanted to say thanks to Grai again. These two will replace my legacy for the time being. I only duel weilded swords once before around level 60 so i need to get used to the look. Needless to say my sword skill was a bit low around 320 so i went to HF starting zone and just womped so of those continually incoming guys for a while. It was fun, i felt like a melee class. I set gorilladin on aggressive so was just charging all around dropped thunderstomps like crazy. Of course being 74 and the mobs on 68 or whatever, he was barely hurting. I would just run and follow and start swinging. Was a good time. Still need to get the swords enchanted, but i will have Camila do that later once i get mats and am back to playing. I still wont be on much due to writing my grant proposal for my PhD committee meeting, but oh well. I will power level to 80 as people are starting Naxx and probably get carried through like last time making vast gear upgrades on my first run. Here is the screen shot with the swords and sepharose my gorilla.

p.s.- if you ever see me on i will make any leather i can for you for free. Im level 405 now

Another break in the action

So i took last week off from playing and then came back with all my rest and tried to burn through it on friday, saturday, and sunday. I managed to get mostly through it, but i never got rid of it completely. I dinged 74, got a new worm pet from dragonblight, and have been hanging out in dalaran. LWing is lvl 404 or something. Kind of slow going since dragonblight doesnt havea ton of skinnable mobs. Anyways, i will again be taking this week off since i will be going home for the holiday and i have to finish the rough draft of my committee meeting proposal so my boss can look at it next week. Once thats done ill probably make my rested push to 77 or so i would imagine. Guess im going to have to start looking more at the quest reward gear now since im getting to that level where i may be swapping some stuff out. I also know i need to do a complete revamp of my abilites bars since they have basically been unchanged since well, forever. BTW, worm sundering armor plus aspect of the dragonhawk is a pretty sweet combo. Gorilla + volley = best leather farming combo there is. Oh also, the embossing LWing abilities are sweet. 114 AP on bracers, are you kidding me!! Thats amazing and i got it. Also made myself some nerubian leg armor since i never got the rep up for the nethercleft pattern. LWing is pretty sweet so far, just tons of patterns every 5 lvls it is pretty cool. Not that they will ever be used, but im starting to get into the blue patterns now and i also havea sweet druid cape pattern i think. I will do any LWing for free while im leveling so find me and its yours if i can do it. Anyways thats about it and the scattered observations so far. Its good. Dragonblight is a pretty cool place. Be back on when i can.

Taking a hiatus

OK so just a quick update here. I, like everyone else got into Wrath the first day it came out and did some leveling and just enjoying things. Let me admit, it is weird not knowing where the heck you are going in a place. I fell to my death a couple times just because i didnt realize how far down things were. Anyways, i did probably 1/2 of what howling fjord had to offer and 1/3 of what borean tundra has to offer so far. Im lvl 72 at the moment, but that is where i am going to stay for a while. I have to write a grant proposal for my thesis committee meeting over the next couple weeks so until that is largely done and my boss thinks im at least at a low level of compentence i probably wont be back. School has to come first on this one, so i know i will fall behind but i will come back well rested andf shoot up to 74 or 75 at least pretty fast. Pets are leveling as well. Got my gorilla and cat up to 71 and climbing i think, and i picked up a rhino for fun.

p.s.- i made a blood specced death knight on Kael'thas as well and his name is Heme. Yeah, its nerdy but its a solid name for a blood spec. Anyways thats it for now until i return to game in a week and a half or so.

Kael'thas Sunstrider is DEAD in The Eye

So this weekend I got a pst from a former guildy of Exiled Elite named Skystrider and he was in charge of putting a group together with Legendary as the base to attempt to finish Kael'thas in TK and Vashj in SSC. So being more then willing to help see content I had never saw, myself and some others from Blood for Blood decided to come along. With the group being a pretty big pug it was surprising how things ended up. Anyways, first up was Kael'thas in TK. This was a completely new fight to me and it was pretty awesome. We wiped several times mostly because of people not focus firing on the correct targets, Capernian conflagrating the wrong person and messing things up, or i think there was also a fire pit from Kael or something that killed all 4 tanks at once. I think it took about 4 wipes, but on round number 5 all things came together. What was so great is that once we got on Kael with our nice new stolen weapons, Kael is not that difficult. Another perfect timing thing is that tanks were slowly falling one by one and Kael was ticking down. Just as the 4th tank went down 5 seconds later kael was down. We said screw that phoenix and kill kael and down he went and all the people rejoiced. He are a few pics of the conquest and showing the inside of TK for those who havent seen it.
After TK we decided to go try and take on Vashj in SSC. Wow was this fight a lot harder then i thought it would be. Needless to say we continually wiped and never really got anywhere. This fight is just complex. You got elementals coming, striders being kited around, nagas running around, then u have to worry about killing tainted elementals. If you killed them maybe you got a tainted core which they you have to throw around to finally get it to someone close enough to smash onto one of those thingies. Bottom line, this fight was far beyond us and our group composition and was just mass chaos. It was great to see Vashj i wont lie, but dang this was the opposite of TK where the fight proceeds processively with Kael having talking interludes etc. Oh and did i mention that i got my first token period. Let alone gettting the sweet T5 chest token Rift Stalker Hauberk. This thing is money especially when i put exceptional stats and my ZA stam gem, plus 2 +5crit +10 AP pyrestones on it. This turned out to be a great time. Thank you skystrider, Exiled Elite forever.
After that we had a guild meeting which i think many things that needed to be said were said, but this isnt the place to discuss those things, so i will call it quits with that.

huntering observations

So there has been some changes i have noticed with huntering since the patch came out, and others seem to be bringing them up as well, so i figured i might as well give me two sense directly.

Ok so exotic pets are cool and all, but are they really that awesome as they are. I would say that the answer is only a conditional yes. If you are going to be fighting a lot of casters, corehound will own them. Just ask vadecent the boomkin. LOL. As far as DPS goes, devilsaurs are fine but a cat is probably just as good (i personally am holding off on a devilsaur). Everyone knows how awesome a gorilla is but thats not exotic. If the damage of the ferocity exotic pets was increased sure they may become more valuable, but then BM would again be the sole raiding spec and i dont think Blizz wants that to happen right now. I like having a MM and Surv hunter ina raid now because of trueshot aura and the expose weakness. Bottom line, have exotic pets is cool more for their abilities in certain conditions then they are for overall lvling etc.

Another thing which was brought up in Grai's blog was that pets seem to be running wild now in raids. This is mostly due to the altered "defensive" stance that pets have and not bad hunters. Previously a hunter would have to tell his pet to attack a target, but now the pet is more intelligent and will attack what you attack automatically so you do not have to continually be tabbing and resending the pet to attack. It will do it automatically. This is good except it seems that the pets get a little over zealous sometimes and start running after mobs they have no business attacking. During the nerf you can normally overcome those wrongful pulls, but with Wrath that will mean a wipe so i fully expect the huntard name calling to be back in full force. The three very good hunters in our last Kara run were all having issues with pets attacking targets before they were really supposed to be. I personally think that the improved defensive stance is much better when multiple mobs are there. It was just a pain to always have to tab, then send pet since it was running back to you after last kill, just to start shooting again. I had gotten to the point where once a mob was about down to 10% i would switch my pet and start shooting at the next target to avoid losing dps time for it to return and be resent. Now those issues are solved. So in conclusions, pets are smarter in attacking what you are attacking, BUT they sometimes need to be reigned in because they are more powerful now and can aggro a lot more then they used to. Example. You would think that a gorillas thunderstomp would be ideal when pulling large non elite trash mobs in the banquet hall before moroes to do max AoE damage. The PROBLEM is that pets automatically go behind the target, and unless the trash was pulled far enough down the stairs, that thunderstomp will generate a ton of threat and pull another group and then go running off into them. So in a perfect AoE fight i couldnt use my pets strongest AoE because it pulls too much. Ghostcrawler was even asking for peoples opinions on the new pet defensive stance which you can find the link to by going to maniasarcania.com.

On a side note, my gorilla (Sepharose) hit 70 last night after doing a bunch of dailies. So now i have 4 lvl 70 pets. DPS machine- Qiagen (cat). Tank- Sepharose (gorilladin). Tank on the bench cuz he is worthless- Blink (warp hunter) and Casters Doom- Char (corehound). My plan for now is to probably replace the warpstalker with a worm as a single mob tank since it sunders armor and will do much more then just warp at mobs. Also a devilsaur could be in the future as well but i may be content with my cat and pick up a Rhino since everyone knows, baby rhino= win and stampede would be fun in PVP. I may take a few days off from WoW just before the X-pac because i have some work to do thats needs to get done, but other then that i will be tearing up northrend.

Zul'Aman run

OK so as this is my first post I might as well introduce myself. My name is Ian, 24 year old grad student at Duke. Ive been paying WoW for almost a year now, so all i have ever known is the burning crusade. My main toon is of course, Ximera the NE hunter. I also have some baby toons like a lvl26 pally Shetank and lvl43 rogue Etec all on Kael'thas server.

Alrighty, so me and the Blood for Blood people went to ZA last night. Most of us had been there before and are pretty good with the first couple bosses, but some people in the raid had not cleared the entire thing before. None the less we stormed past the bear and eagle boss as expected meeting the timers and then moved onto the lynx boss. We used some nice shortcuts, took out the pats and approached Halazzi. We one shot halazzi with our OPed overhealed group withouth much trouble and got the third timer. This was a first for me to get all of them, since the bear mount in the 4th chest is gone now so i hear. From there we picked up the chests and i got a nice primalfury shoulder piece. Finally something to increase my RAP over my S2 gear. Im around 1930 with AoTH on. Next we finished all the needed quest chains that everyone needed so that they could all complete the needed chains. From there we took down the dragonhawk boss without much trouble. Tons of AoE plus controlled bird release equals win. Think only Laris the priest died at the very end. Next came Hex Lord and he too fell by the wayside without much trouble. Adds were CCed or taken down and then hex lord was cake. Finally came Zul'jin. Actually one of what i think is a conceptually easy fight if you understand the phases. He too fell to Blood for Blood without much problems. Unfortunately no Berserkers Call trinket or bow dropped. The nice thing about clearing the place was that once Zul'jin was down there was a dance party in ZA. Some crazy tribal drums and chanting started which was pretty fun. Finally the Amani Trolls have been vanquished!!!