Monday, September 27, 2010

Project Catalol

Hello everyone!
As we all know (hopefully), the next expansion for WoW is coming up in a not too distant future.

In an earlier post I stated that I rerolled to hunter till Cata and would be playing the very same char in the expansion. This wont be reality as I recently felt the urge of playing something else and feel some variation within my game.
I went for my old main from TBC, my druid. I respecced him from boomkin to resto in the leveling process simply cus I was thinking that there's a higher need for healers than dps in leveling instances - and I was correct, but I didnt really like the healing part as a druid. So, I respecced feral tanking and went farming from there. Things speeded up by alot and before I knew it, my druid was level 80 and ready for the fun part of the game - gearing!

When I got started with heroic instances, I found out that I didnt fancy tanking either as druid. Ive been tanking as warrior and paladin, so tanking again on a 3rd char just didnt cut it for me. I respecced again and this time went for feral dps with a tanking offspec. Very nice spec and I was excited to get going, but I didnt quite understand how dps'ing as feral worked out, so that made me read a few guides, for example the guide written by Tun of Ensidia.
The guide was well written, but it still wasnt good enough for me (I might be slow, what do I know), I felt like there was something missing which made it easier for me to understand. Then it hit me, Redmist, my old pal was playing a druid and apparently did a very good job. So, I went to youtube and saw his video about dps'ing as feral druid in random heroic instances, and I was fascinated. I instantly wrote him a message asking if he could help me out on how to do this druid thing properly - within 24hrs after my request there was a new video from him with a guide on how to dps as feral druid and what to do with the different abilities and timers and all that stuff :P very nice of you Red, cant thank you enough!

Now Im being tank in a guild on my druid, they fancy me as I am and for the job that I do. Ofc, being a tank wasnt what I wanted, but it is what they needed at the time, so its okay for me if that gives me a spot in the raids and that I can make it possible for them to get more teams going and get more experience within Icc 10man.
With that being said, my plan is ofc still to become a dps druid in the guild, and I had a chat with my GM about it. He say that for now the guild needs a good tank so that the teams can get going and, as mentioned, get more experience and work the teams together so that the players get more comfortable with each other.

When Cata hit the stores, Im gonna level as tank and dps and whenever I hit 85 (feels wierd to type 85 rather than 80) I will go full dps and not have a viable raid tanking spec anymore - if I dont have the spec, I wont be capable of raidtanking, tadaa.

Ive been looking a little on the new abilities feral are gonna get in Cata, and they seem interesting really, especially the spell interrupt thingy. It makes me think that we might wanna use more chars able to interrupt spells on bosses henforth? Who knows..

Well, thats enough for now, I'll come back later with some more stuff =)

Monday, August 23, 2010

Confusion

So uh, its been a long while since Ive posted anything here, fact is Ive been in doubt if I was even gonna keep this blog going anymore. It has helped me explaining myself and maybe some ppl would read it and find some of it interesting. To be honest, it sometimes help alot to sit down with your wonderings and write them down to see the light by the end of the tunnel :)

Well, lets get to it!
Lately I havent been much active in WoW, Ive reached the point where I cannot obtain anything useful from anything else than raids, so Ive been trying to keep myself away from the game a bit, simply to not lose the great feeling about the universe inthere. I see many ppl around the world (of warcraft) who take long breaks right now due to cata coming on the streets soon.

Thats where I dont wanna be, I dont wanna stop the gaming now and come back later on to discover that the game hasnt changed much since I left it. Ofc, a new expansion would have been added and the game itself would be changed totally when it comes to lore, content, mechanics and so forth, but the atmosphere and the feeling you have while running around ingame would still be the same I believe.

So, as I said before, I try to hold on to that I only go online when Im supposed to raid. That being said, I might need to explain what it is that Im actually doing :p
The guild I am in right now, only raid Icc25 2 nights a week, rest of the days are 10man normal and hardmodes. But, they have a stable group of players for the harmode team, so there is no way Im gonna be a part of that team anytime soon, which kinda suck tbh, but it is what it is. Its tough to get into a solid group of players who are used to play together and make things work their way, so its alright with me I guess.
In the 25man runs we go from the infamous Marrowgar trash to Sindragosa (or even further) over a night, and then we go for the King the following night.
The couple of times Ive been raiding on 25man with them, we have downed the King and gotten some nice loot and even an achievement and title for some of the guys who didnt have it, which is great! But it gets kinda boring to raid the same place on same difficulty with the same ppl all the time, I dont know if thats only me feeling that way tho, but thats how it is. I need to see some variations in the stuff I do, else I get bored and wont pay attention which will eventually end in a fatal wipe sometimes (has happened already sadly).

That doesnt look good on my personal sheet, that is also the reason I seek new guilds every so often, simply cus things bore me.

What do I do when Im not raiding then? Well, thats quite another story, or is it?
My hunter is on Silvermoon now and currently trial of Chaos, a danish raiding guild stuffed with great ppl and great raiders. That means that Ive left some of my other chars behind on Hellfire cus I cannot afford to move them all, and I dont wanna!
When I dont play my hunter, Ive still got my good old shaman which has been moved from Hellfire to Moonglade, an RP server. Im not too excited about being on an RP server, since I personally think RP in a game is bull**** and I dont wanna be a part of it, but I know a few friends there from real life who have been asking me for ages to raid with them. Well, they finally got me overthere, but then there's another problem. Their raidtimes doesnt suit me at all, they raid every sunday, which is one of the nights Chaos are running Icc25, which I see as more important since my hunter is my main, and that Chaos is slightly more serious than Warbringers (Moonglade Guild). Therefore I havent had the chance yet to raid with them, but I might do that tonight as they have moved their raid for me, to get me into the raid :p very nice!
When Im not playing shaman or hunter, Im still gearing my druid alt. Sadly, the druid is on Hellfire as alliance, which sucks if youre not a part of a guild and cannot attend planned raids in any way. Why dont I just find a guild for the druid then?! Well, I cannot possibly have 3 characters running in 3 different guilds and still hold up the good attendance AND not lose my willingness to play the game. 3 characters would be too much, and I love my shaman and hunter too much to let either go and let the druid be a replacement.
Anyway, as I was saying, pugs on Hellfire alliance sucks alot, most of them doesnt get any further than Saurfang and this is not cus of lacking gear or experience (especially not after the 30% buff which is too much if you ask me), its simply cus ppl cant get along for the 2-4 hours or how long it takes to get the place done.
They start arguing about stupid stuff like loot, MT vs OT, healing or dps numbers, and worst of all, gearscore.

Gearscore was nice in the beginning cus it gave me more time when making raids. Before it was made, I had to have a friend finding potential members and then I had to enter their name in the armory to check them. All this could take a while cus of the awesome names ppl have chosen for their characters. I remember one of them like if it was last night I was cursing the name, he was called Huhuhehehaha.. Do I need to explain the brilliance of sitting with 4 raiders asking for inv while youre trying to spell some of those names - sigh!
Anyway, it was nice and time saving in the beginning, but now its the worst invention ever. I mean, come on! I wasnt the maker of the addon, but Im sure the purpose with the addon never was to make ppl ask for "6000gs" for a boost in Deadmines.. Ofc thats not true, that has never happened, but some of the ppl in trade are insane with those requirements.
Here's a list of some of the things Ive felt like flaming ppl for:
Voa 10/25 - 5200gs+
Icc 10 - 5300gs+
Icc25 - 5400gs+
Naxxramas (weekly, its true) - 5000gs

Thats crazy in my eyes, if you need to have that kind of gear for those places, youre either a retard who cannot read tactics, dont know mechanics but want a fast run, or that you simply never have been to any of those raids and seen how easy they really are. I understand that you need some kind of gear to do hardmodes in Icc, but honestly, over 5000gs for a simple VoA is too much, and I dont even wanna get started on the Naxx run (he was luckely flamed in trade channel instantly lol). For some of those raids, if you actually meet the gearscore requirement, even by just a bit, then there will be basically zero items for you inside, so, why join at all?

That was kind of an offtopic nerdrage section there, so lets get back to what I was saying :p
Im gearing my druid but I feel stuck cus I cant be bothered to find a guild for that character aswell. The pugs on Hellfire suck, atleast on the alliance side, its very rare to find a nice raid who can work things out without arguing and ppl trolling like there is no tomorrow.
So right now, I basically just login on my druid to get the daily heroic done and get my 2 frosties, but I cannot get into a raid for the weekly if its Naxx or something similar, nono, cus if your perfectly correct gear would make the raid wipe for some strange reason, it would be fatal.
Here's a link to my armory Ashleaf the Druid
As you can see, its not the greatest gear and I cant really get it up right now as things are. Yes, I could spend a day or 2 finding a nice raid, but when that finally happens after hours of searching and insulting comments from leaders I would need to turn down, nothing drops for me anyway, or even worse, there's 3 other druids with same spec and role as me who will ofc win the rolls cus Im insanely lucky with my rolls on items (I bet you all know the feeling).

Yeah, I guess I didnt quite get to say what I wanted in this post, but now everyone knows what has been going on in my wowlife =) I am ALOT past my time here, soeh, thanks for reading and I'll see you lot next time!

Raihn

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

What to do?



So, what to do when servers are down for maintenance? Thats simple, browse the web for answers to your wonderings!

Personally I was reading a little on MMO-Champion and looked on a few hunters I know are better than me on the armory. Then it hit me, why are some hunters dual wielding rather than using a 2hander?
As you would know if you read my blog, I have a pretty decent staff from LK 10man normal which isnt too hard to get, especially after the +25% stat buff in Icc.
Yet I see many hunters dual wielding weapons like Hate-Forged Cleaver or Havoc's Call, Blade of Lord Lordaeron Kings. I cant seem to find threads anywhere about same question as mine or a thread explaining why this happen.
So I made my own on the European wow forums, asking why ppl dual wield.

I look forward to see what happens, cus again, I tested out the spreadsheet to see the differences between my staff and those weapons, and I see that my agility is higher when using 2hander aswell as my dps.

What do you think?

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Finally



As mentioned in the previous post, I went to Icc10 with guild last night with much excitement and hopes for my personal performance.
I ran inthere and I did above 10k dps on most fights, so Im very very happy to be honest :D

We downed Marrowgar, Deathwhisper and Gunship on heroic mode, but then one of our tanks had to leave due to some work stuff and that made us disband group for the night.

It wasnt all bad tho, cus I gained Chestguard of the Frigid Noose which had more Agi on it than what I had before, so Im very delighted. On top of that, I bought Band of the Night Raven for emblems and gemmed it fully with Agi - after searching in trade for a jewelcrafter, a hunter comes to me and go "hey, you are doing the gems wrong for that item mate" and I ofc didnt understand anything cus I just know that I need to stack as much Agi as I possible can obtain. But he told me, that if the socket bonus of a certain item is 6 Agi or above, I should try and get that bonus by using 2xDeadly Ametrine and by adding an Eternal Belt Buckle I can get a regular Delicate Cardinal Ruby in the prismatic slot.
By doing this combo I should gain a tiny tad more dps according to the spreadsheet I linked in the previous post, but only for yellow and red sockets, it wouldnt work for green or blue or such.

Anyway, Im completely out of time by now, so I will catch you next time!

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Testing and Tweaking



Ive been raiding for quite a while now and Im getting better and better, as it is now I feel like Im in total control of my hunter - but yet there are a few things that I seem to have issues about.

When I started raiding, I ran a few tests on Marksman and Survival to find out which I prefered and I ended up with Marksman. Now, most hunters seems to do fine in Icc even from the very beginning, but this isnt the case for me (love my luck), cus I dont have enough ArP to spec for Marksman yet - excluding the amount from gems, Ive got a total of 514 ArP on gear plus proc effect from Needle-Encrusted Scorpion. As all Marksman hunters should know, I need to have 1400 ArP minus the amount from trinket proc effect which is 722 - that means Im 208 Arp away from what I need to have.
Therefore I went for Survival as it seems easier for me to use for raiding until I can meet the requirements for making Marksman a good spec.

This being said, Ive read on some forums here and there that many Marksman hunters prefer gemming for Agi over ArP - that doesnt make any sense to me to be honest!
I have tried it myself on Sindragosa 10man, and I had a 6k dps output - that doesnt look too good does it? Later on that same boss I went for Survival to see if there was any difference between the 2 specs - and I ended up with around 7.2k dps this time.
As far as I can see, the numbers speaks for themselves - but why does some hunters go for Agi Marksman then?

My gear has changed alot, you can see it here. After I removed the 2set bonus from T9, my dps seems to drop a slight bit. Ive been doing some calculations on this spreadsheet which tells me that I should be doing roughly 10357 dps on a 25man boss fight lasting for 6mins with the gear I have now.
This is far from reality, cus Im "only" pulling around 8k when boss is dead which is far from the spreadsheet and from the other hunters in my guild.

I compared myself to this hunter from my guild, and thru the time Ive been raiding with her she has always been doing above 10k dps. Yes, our gear has quite some differences, but she had the same gear as me once, but yet she wa able to pull more dps than I am at this point.

I tell you, my head is knackered from the thinking, cus I dont know what to do really. All I could figure out was to simply stick to my Survival and try this spec as it is posted as the most damage dealing Survival spec, currently.
Im going to Icc tonight, 10man, and I gotta admit that Im really excited or even nervous about my performance. I wont have all the buffs as in 25man, but I should be able to do around 10k dps anyway with my gear.

One last thing before I need to prepare for raid - Ive started to follow this Survival hunter fella who has a blog and a youtube channel about hunters and how to do them. Really great info is found here, all the best to this guy.

Right, I'll catch you next time for some more hunter philosophy ;)

Raihn

Monday, May 31, 2010


Fall of The Lich King!

Tonight Fusion and I ventured into Icecrown Citadel to finish off the last few bosses we had left on this very last raid night of this reset. We were missing Bloodqueen Lanathel, Sindragosa and Lich King.

This time I could just relax and enjoy the graphics and mechanics within the instance, cus now I feel confident enough as hunter to allow myself to do so.

Before I got to think about it, we had downed BQ and Sindy and were now facing LK. Buffs went off, fingers positioned and Misdirection was clicked. A few tries later and I became Kingslayer as hunter, which Im very very pleased about :)

Before we managed to get LK down, we had to replace one of our mages and invite the main characters of GM and his fiancee. Until this point we had been wiping on P3 most of the tries, and now had all phases in our heads, so all we basically needed was a little more dps and ofc the infamous Bloodlust (the only correct name for the buff, period.), and just as we thought, LK was down at 10,5% health when GM screamed "dont die, dont die!" and I answered "we got him" - just as I said that, we all died and "congrats" was spammed in raidchat.

Few moments later, while the rest of the raid watched the movie, Co GM and I were talking about the loot, she linked it and if it wasnt cus of my strong need of a loo visit, I would be dancing!

Here's what I won from this amazing night of raiding with Fusion:
Tainted Twig of Nordrassil

Thanks alot Fusion for the staff and the nice kill!

Raihn