Pox Arcanum Group- My new warrior

Ok, so I joined a Pox Arcanum group being made by Dax and other people. I was a little hesitant at first since the premise of a Pox Arcanum group is to level your character to 10-12 as normal, and then begin strictly running instances with a set 5 man group. You are not supposed to quest at all to lvl which kind of seemed like taking the fun out of WoW, but it is only a small time commitment per week so i went for it. I also have been getting a bit burned out in raiding since thats all I ever do. So I was the 5th member to join a group which is as follows:

Daxenos, Prot Pally
Healrender, Holy Priest
Unacha, Mage
Aliix, Boomkin Druid
Tayuya, DPS Warrior <---- This is me

Since I was last to join, the classes to choose from were a bit limited since i wanted to try something different with a different race. So I chose to make a DPS fury warrior that is a dwarf female. My professions are Blacksmithing and Mining since I hear warriors are a pain to level due to their large gear dependancy. I am currently lvl 10 and my skills are about 45-50 for each.

I have found the leveling of this toon to be of moderate difficulty. For example a hunter and a ret pally are so simple, whereas a rogue can be hard because u are so squishy. I have not died yet while leveling, but I came darn close a couple times. Warriors have this weird balance of needing health and rage. Obviously i cant do my damage abilities without rage which i get by hitting things or getting hit. But if i go single mob to single mob i will always be rage starved. So i try and take a couple at a time or go real fast between pulls to keep my rage stacking. This presents a problem if I am killing a group and get down to about half health onto to have another mob aggro while im rage starved. So i have little health and little rage so its bad. I have potted a couple times to save myself but it has been real close. Anyways, i just learned bloodrage or whatever which gives me a rage boost at the start of the fight so it is a bit easier now to generate rage for pulls.

So thats about it. Only two more lvls to go and then we will start on the deadmines quest chain next week. Hopefully it goes well.

When hard work and luck meet

So as you are aware, I have been hunting the spirit beast with great effort for probably the last week. Sure i have spent a lot of time prior to that looking and spamming macros, but i never really caught a scent of Loque'nahak. But times had changed over the past week starting with a couple sightings of King Krush, the big green devilsaur. I even killed him once to get my northern exposure achievement. That set in motion some hard core looking and hunting of the spirit beast since the rare spawns are thought/known to come in succession on a 6 hr repop timer. Knowing what time zero was, I had to come back at 2am to look. Alas, i only caught a blip of Loque with my macro before it was gone. I had continued for a couple days to look with great ferver spending a few hours a day/night in Sholazar Basin searching around the times when i estimated a spawn would be coming. I had even started to get my guildies involved who i think were beginning to pity me for looking so long without getting it. Now as you can probably tell, and see, last night at 5:40ish pm EST I was just flying around SB and spotted Loque. Its funny because i was not even really looking too intently on finding him. I was just kind of casually flying around killing time. Sure i was still hitting my macro, but i wasnt focused on it as a mission. Sure enough I see him in the location just south of Pitch (black lion) on the map. I starting shaking and flipped out. I came in to a land and didnt see a soul around. All my other sightings occured with someone killing it already or having just tamed it. So here I am alone with Loque, I hurriedly dropped a trap and dismissed my raptor. I was shaking so bad i even missed the tame beast button once. But i got it the next time and he came right in to my trap, and i knew he was as good as mine. I was geeking out pretty good at this point just watching the taming channel count down until he was mine. Thanksfully, a guildy Burritoman was in SB also herbing so i yelled over /g chat for him to come over and look. I had him turn on his speakers and everything so he could hear the roar and see the moonfire ability that Loque has. It was kind of nice to have someone else be there to share in that moment of trying out a new pet. Thanks Burr. After that i went to dalaran to parade my new pet around and taunt the horde a little by beastial wrathing by their bank. I pretty much told everyone i knew that i have it. Now I just need to get it lvled up to 80 so he can come to Naxx. I also havent settled on a name yet.
Additionally, we tried Malygos 10 man again. We wiped 3 or 4 times before giving up. I have at least seen all 3 phases now, though we barely got into phase 3 before the enrage. Stacking sparks and moving Maly seem to be hard, but im sure we will get it eventually. We will need to start focusing a bit more on 25 man naxx for some gear upgrades, but most of us are geared through 10 man naxx now.

Naxxramas Cleared

Ok, so my group which is group 3 of blood for bloods naxx 10 mans ran on saturday. I intially didnt know what to expect since we were planning to two heal it up through 4 horsemen and patchwerk as well as bring along a guildy who is a prot warrior but still low on gear. It worked out really well though since the prot warrior got a lot of big gear upgrades since our MT and OT dont need any gear. We cleared everything with relative ease and a decent pace and finally came to the 4 horsemen where through experience we know we require a 3rd healer. Fortunately, a leet resto druid friend of the guild signed on who only runs 25 mans, and he popped into the group in the place of the prot warrior and on we went. We two shot 4 horsemen then one shot the rest of the construct quarter. This was mind blowing to me since we had at least one pug mage in the group who was learning the fights, though he had real strong dps. Somehow we just kept going and kept downing bosses without any major highups. We then ported up to sapphiron and one shot that ice dragon for our 3rd key to malygos. Onto Kael'thuzad who our group had never downed before, and i had only attempted once. Now conceptually, this is not the most difficult fight. Simply survive phase 1, then once KT strikes you engage him and have two very simple rules. Heal anyone who gets iceblocked immediately, and stay out of the red void zones. Thats all you have to do. If you can do those two things and have reasonable DPS, KT will eventually go down. The problem is that the margin for error in those two things is very small. The window to heal an iceblock person is 3 seconds so the healers really have to fire off some flash instant heals. The red stuff you need to get out of real fast or you will instantly die. This is a huge problem for our raid members who have some lag. Needless to say, getting up to the learning curve took 4 or 5 times, but we got him. I think i gave myself carpal tunnel clicking buttons so hard those last 10% of KTs health. I was freaking out.
The night turned out well for me on the gear front as well. I got the Nerubian Conquerer as well as the Wraith Spear. Now I for the longest time as a NE hunter have mostly refused to use guns. I always thought it was too much of a dwarf thing and that the loud concussive banging would bother me. But if you look at the gear in Naxx, there really arent any good bows or crossbows as weapons, but only guns. So i decided for the first time to level my gun skill and use a gun as a ranged weapon. I know I dont play on a RP server, but sometimes i like to dabble in it. A NE would never use a gun, but this time it will be an exception. My bow strings simply can not withstand the frigid cold of northrend, so I had to move to a gun.

Also, I am still on the hunt for spirit beast and rare spawns in Sholazar Basin, and I finally got one. I spotted King Krush (large green dino) and nuked his big green butt down. It was a bit harder since i had recently tamed a lvl 76 raptor so with him as my tank holding aggro was a tiny problem. I did manage to kill King Krush relatively easily still, and got myself the northern exposure achievement. Unfortunately, I had to log back on at 2am EST to see what would spawn next for rare spawns at the 6 hr repop timer. So i logged back on and was circling. For one second my targetting macro went off for Loque'nahak and I spun around spamming my macro, but it was gone. I dont know if someone beat me to the tame, whether it was a pet of someone already who didnt change the name and mounted up, or what. But i got that huge adrenaline rush only to have it gone instantly. Oh well, i will find it eventually. It took me weeks and weeks just to see Krush alive, so i think i am getting closer and the hard work is going to pay off soon.

I also did my first Strand of the Ancients BG which was interesting. I expect now in full PVE gear to get obliterated by PVP players in season 4-6 gear. I simply cant match their survivability normally. But it was sweet that I actually managed to one on one kill some people. Sure it was normally a lock who wasnt looking and i would drop an intimidate on them and nuke. But it was good to do some PVP again. For those that dont know, when i turned 70 and was still a solo leveling noob, i was told i was too weak for heroics, so in order to get stronger i just did BGs and PVPed for what seemed like months at a time. I had full S2 gear, when that was still good, and had really gotten pretty good at it. Maybe i will regain some glory eventually. LOL, i even joined a guild 5v5 team. Hunters are notoriously bad at arenas due to the whole moving around thing, but we'll see. I have never done an arena, and dont have any PVP gear other then something i got off of Archavon. It will be painful.

Why do you torment me so spirit beast?

OK so as all 1 or 2 of my readers knows (if anyone even reads this), I have been looking for the spirit beast Loque'nahak for weeks if not months. So i am doing my usual flying around SB last night spamming my targeting macro when what do i see? My macro yells at me that it has found its target and i zoom in to find the spirit beast has already been tapped and IS BEING KILLED by a rogue who was just mining ore. At least they got the achievement, but god my luck sucks. The one time i fly the opposite direction of my normal route and i am 1 minute behind to taming this beast. This was like catching a glimpse of my dream just to have it being killed in front of me. Stupid rogue who will remain nameless unless you zoom in on the pictures. I have screen shots to document that i have at least seen the spirit beast. Unfortunately this is probably the closest that i will ever come. fml.

Naxx cleared by guild

Ok just some pics from my groups run of naxx showing us doing our first guild downing of Saphiron. We only have KT one shot since we knew people had to leave, and we got owned by ice blocks and red stuff. Not to be outdone, guild run #2 cleared naxx and took down KT. That group is mostly composed of Team Awesomesauce. Good job for them, soon i will clear naxx and now onto Maly.

There is no justice

Simply put, there is no justice in WoW. Here i have been searching for the spirit beast for weeks at a time and spending 30min to an hour a day, every day circling scholozar basin spamming a targetting macro to catch a glimpse of a rare spawn. And what do i see yesterday in dalaran, a freaking lvl 77 hunter running around with spirit beast. They said it was their very first time in SB ever and they saw spirit beast and got it. That shows there is no justice in WoW, no benefit for hard work, it is nothing but a game of luck. That is the last straw, and i am no longer going to be spending hours upon hours looking for a stupid pet that someone who doesnt even know what the thing is, is just going to tame or kill.

p.s.- B4B has cleared all 4 wings of naxx. Only sapphiron and KT yet to down.

longest boss fight ever

this will be short and sweet. So we took a 10 man group into naxx last night just to continue a weaker effort from earlier in the week. We were plowing through until we came to heigan the unclean. Now for those people who had been in naxx prior to the patch knew that there was a couple ways to sort of cheat the fight mechanic to avoid dancing. Unfortunately, those cheats have been fixed and you have to do the fight as intended with the tanks and melee dancing the entire fight and the ranged dancing during the fast stage. So on the first fast stage, everyone in the raid died but 3 people. Myself, the tank, and MT healer. 25 minutes later Heigan was dead. We actually 3 manned a Naxx boss!!! While doing the fight it didnt seem like it was that long of a fight, but it assuredly was 25 minutes long. It takes a while for one dps with a dead pet and a tank to do 9.3 million hp worth of damage. Geez i just looked that up, and didnt realize it was that high. Hmm, maybe that is from heroic, but whatever it is a heck of a lot for 1.5 dps to do. I feel bad for the people who died within the first minute, but we got him down.
As a guild we also did our first completion of the military quarter. We plowed through the first two bosses and came to the horsemen. After many immediate AOE wipes and some members leaving and new ones coming on or getting on healing alts we slowly started getting better. It then came all together and we downed them. It is a very neat fight mechanic stressing group coordination and movement over dps. I would have gotten the T7 chest if i didnt have it alreadt from probably and archavon drop. All in all it was a long, but good raiding night, too bad we did it the night before the reset lol.

Note- I am still BM since i love my pets damage and even post nerf i am still doing a decentamount of damage. Im not 2700+ like i was, but still 2200+ i think which is decent.

Hunter Specc

Thanks to BRK and his past two podcast with both Lienna and Nassira, I am now much more informed about how to put together all my hunter specs. As some people know, but mostly none of you do, i leveled 1-70 as MM and then switch to raid as BM for Kara and have been BM ever since. Now with the nerf to BM coming, I really do not want to have to respec to either MM or Surv. I can not imagine a hunting spec other then BM being the top DPS. It just doesnt make sense. The BM hunter is the definition of huntering. It is a hunter and a pet working as one to cause as most damage as possible. One is nothing without the other. Heck, my cat does almost 40% of my damage on some fights and if it was possible for my cat to be alive without me it would have no focus for its special abilities. Sure the other specs use pets too, but they are more of a superfluous addition and not incredibly important. I mean they really just use the pet for the stats they gain, not the damage a pet can do. So how a BM would drop in DPS below a Surv or MM is just beyong me. Please dont do it Blizzard. Hunters dont need to do arenas and be great PVP, dont nerf our PVE raiding to fix PVP. A little nerf is OK and needed, but if im getting killed by MM or Surv hunters you are going to force there to be no more BM hunters around in raids. And everyone knows they will miss seeing devilsaurs and spirit beasts tearing up the mobs.

Guild Update- Getting Some Stuff Off My Chest

Ok so lets get the more mundane out of the way first. I have gotten a couple of gear upgrades since I last posted. You can armory me or whatever, but I am up to 3 pieces of T7 gear now which is nice and I also bought a emblem belt. So I did manage to get the "superior" achievement for whatever that is worth. I really just need to get some new boots, the wraith spear from mexxna (lost the roll twice), and eventually get a new helm. I have the best hunter helm short of a full naxx clear so im not worried about that. Still looking for spirit beast, but according to BRK's blog Loque'nahak on the PTR is not despawning after only being up 10 min, but is there till tamed or killed for the achievement.

In other news, this weekend the guild decided to put one of the strongest groups we could together to try and down some naxx bosses we have never tried or seen. We were even fortunate enough to have Kabel, a great resto druid, join us. We were rolling there for a while after clearing the plague and spider wings in 2 hours. After that we went to patchwerk and crushed him even with only about 9 ppl since a melee took a hateful strike early in the fight. So this was about all i had previously seen. I have seen all the fights in detail on tankspot.com. I recommend people go there and learn about fights. So anyways, we spent about the next hour at least on Grobbulus. We were just struggling with the fight and we could get him down to about 500K then wipe. He starts doing his mutating injection twice as fast and it just got real messy. Anyways, we killed him last night after only like 3 attempts. I lost on a sweet ring roll to a DK. Since we struggled with grobbulus, we decided to move to the military wing and do instructor rezuvious. After an initial tank mishap wipe, we downed him pretty easily. Again this wing we had never done before. After that was downed Gothik in a one shot zerging. We owned him badly. Next was 4-horsemen. Now funny enough, hilarious even, is that I sort of became the explainer of these fights, just based on the videos i had seen. Admittedly we did not havea great group composition for the horsemen, so we died a couple times due to potentially some poor communication by myself, but then the crap hit the fan which brings me to the stuff I need to say.

First, WoW is a game that when i play i do not want to deal with infighting between members of the group. I understand personal interactions happen, but try to keep your personal feelings for another raider OUT of the raid. It just becomes a distraction to the group and crushes morale which is already fragile enough taking on new bosses and wiping late into the night. I am not trying to be insensative, but everyone is trying to have fun and progress as a GROUP, and when individual issues with another player prevent that it doesnt result in good things. Needless to say, we had a couple members leave the guild after that raid which was sad, but expect in all honesty.

Next issue involves PUGGING people for 25 mans. Our guild does mostly 10 man content since we do not have the numbers to put together a 25 man without filling several spots with friends or pugs. Friends in general are cool and some are basically honorable guild members, but unknown pugs are terrible. We were doing 25 man Arch and OS. Arch went well so we moved onto Sarth. During the clearing of trash, we had a couple members DC, and this is where the issues come up. 1) if you are a pug, consider yourself blessed to have been invited and keep your negative comments to yourself. NO, we will not pull more trash while a couple ppl have DC'd, especially one being the lootmaster/raid leader. And after the 5th time of explaining why we are not pulling, LISTEN to the reason. We heard you when you said you were in a time crunch and had to go soon, but you are the PUG in a guild run and we are not going anywhere without OUR guild members and the raid leader. If you have to go...go. The hard core raiding guild would not even tolerate that kind of complaining and vocalization, and to be honest i probably would not have either. Fortunately for them, we are in between casual and more serious so they were allowed to stay. Next issue with this pug is that we were trying our first attempt ever at keeping a Drake up while fighting Sartharion. We had a great healer from OOB with us who had done it and was explaining the fight. Needless to say, people were not listening so that idea had to get scratched and we eventually killed Sarth no problem.

Onto the next item of annoyance. YOUR DPS IS IRRELEVANT IF YOU ARE NOT GOOD AT FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS. Case study, this pug had you know some crazy dps that was 3500+ but oh...he got hit by flame wall FOUR TIMES. You can hit like a truck and have great gear, but if you cant move to stay alive you are worthless to the raid. I would much rather have an undergeared person that I know can follow instructions instead of someone who is going to go off as a lone wolf and crush the damage meter but end up dead. And do not think about blaming the healer for your own death.

Ok i think that is it for the basic rant, but seriously people, this is a game, but you are not the only one playing it. If you want to be solo then dont raid or even be in a guild.

just some random screen shots

First pick is from a FOR THE ALLIANCE achievement to get the black war bear mount where you have to down all of the horde bosses. I think this was our last boss having to kill the Blood Elf guy. This was more fun though since it was winterveil and we had a 40 man gnome christmas elf raid going on.
This next one was in naxx just showing the damage meter. I know hunters are supposed to be the top of the damage meter, but it is good to see. I have some epics but not all for sure so it is good to break 2k dps. Plus i could always send it to bigredkitty.net and he would be please to see. I think this meter was either for the whole run or just post Grand Widow Faerlina or whatever her name is. Boss #2 in spider wing

Clearly I Can't Dance

So we went back to Naxx last night to see if we could get anymore of it done having downed the arachnid quarter, noth the plaguebringer and patchwerk the night before. So we were basically coming in to wipe a ton of times trying to learn the Heigen dance with the exploding poisons. It took 3 or 4 wipes before at least the tanks and healers were surviving. Soon after people started following the tanks and another couple dps survived most of the fight. I on the other hand was never able to survive. I am not exactly sure, but i would get just clipped by the poison either in front or just behind. If you get hit you will die. So i was never grotesquely in the poison, but i didnt make it despite having watched many movies about it. I guess doing is different then watching, even when i try and stay on top of the tank. Downing heigen was a first for the guild so that was a good thing. After that we tried moving to Loatheb. This guy proved to be a problem since his necrotic aura prevents all healing from occuring at any time except for a THREE SECOND WINDOW. My dps was through the roof, near 2700 for that fight thanks to the spore 50% crit incease buff, but we still always wiped. After 3 or 4 tries people had to go after getting a late start including myself. Guild note- we need druids and shaman badly

On other notes, my LWing is nearly maxed out with only two remaining patterns to buy. I can make it all once i have those patterns. I also did manage to get my epic flying mount. I finally saved up enough money for the training then did icecrown quests till i got the 200g or whatever to get the epic flyer from SMV. Let me tell you, the epic flyer makes a ton of differenec. Still on a spirit beast hunt, but there has not been any sightings or it or even a whisper of its appearance. I have seen a couple hunters on the server one, but they certainly are not running rampant. Also with the coming nerf to cat dps, i will be leveling a devilsaur. I named it Unseen, i dont think she knows and it is probably for the best. :)