The grey period

So, in this time before wrath I find myself with a lack of motivation to do...well, anything really. I have played my alt druid a little (trying to somehow get to 70 before wrath - 63 now), but other than that...nothing. I have got rich on transmutes and my big sell off at least!

That seems to be my only real goal for wrath; get as much gold as I possibly can. I figure, gold will be needed for something I want! So, selling things off is really all I have tried to do. I realized I was a bag lady on like 6 characters. So, it was time. I did save my mining materials in case I ever get the desire to be a blacksmith. Unlikely, but if that changes...I'll be ready...

I will eventually start sharing my hunter findings and understandings...when i am 80! I see no reason to go much further than general takes on things. Like my post on explosive shot. That is really all I want to do for now. level 80 quests, arena and raiding to come, but for now...we are in the grey period! The period that has drained motivation and somehow made a zombie horde the most intriguing thing we have seen in the last month.

That and the crazy achievement system that has people riding around Desolace for 45 minutes. Am I the only person out there who isn't completely obsessed with achievements? I will tell ya, I enjoy seeing the many places of WoW for the first time...I do not intend to ride around aimlessly to see each spot just to show people I did it. If I get achievements doing things I like, great! If I have to do something annoying and tedious to get them, I will pass, thank you!

So, I figure I should have some wrath goals!

1. Raid as Survival, Marksman and Beast Master and find the one I like this time around. probably survival, but I make no promises. At the very least, I will be very well educated on all 3!

2. Be a part of a casual, fun and shenanigan filled 10-person raid!! With Delos and Caitles!!

3. Acquire 5 pets I truly love and enjoy to play with. Sadie stays, the rest are all going to have to battle for stable slot supremacy!

4. Give Death Knight a serious try. Likely get to 80 and see if I like the style. Then when I find out everything I can...go PVP and own the millions of Death Knights out there with my hunter!

5. Somehow level my paladin and Druid to 80...haha!

6. WTB1337hax - I will have 10k+ gold to offer for these! (one that allows me to have the Glyph: "Gives your arcane shot a chance to delete target players hard drive")

7. Lose Sadie in the snow...several times!

8. Find a new love for WoW. My desire has been fading and the expansion may be able to bring back the fun feeling of playing WoW...as opposed to the obligation feeling that has made me start to resent the game.

Well, that seems like a good base of goals. I am sure you all have fun goals too!! feel free to share!!

The Gold rush!

Occasionally I am inspired to write about items other than Hunter related topics. This is on of those times (sorry to you hunter loving hunter-er's). This post is about...MONEY!

So, I have for a while now, been thinking I wanted to go through all of my characters and do a cleaning house event! Take everything I do not need, won't use in wrath and have had too long to keep saying..."I am sure I will find a use for this eventually...". So, I did it!

Let me first say, gold is not usually something I have in abundance. I am a gear monger and a pvp monger. In addition, I am extremely meticulous about having every possible raid consumable I can find!! ALl that being said, i am usually broke!

My main income source is transmutation (Alchemy). I create a gem every day (sometimes more if I am lucky!) and sell it for about 150g. Wait a minute! In the patch...transmutation cooldown was removed! Holy crap! I have the materials for an insane amount of gems!! So, half hour later...I have 60 high end gems to sell! :)$:)

So, for the first time ever I was ready to make mass gold. To accompany the gems, I had my buddy Delos disenchant about 60 items on my bank character for me. Lastly, throw in all the junk of all my characters that I needed to sell, PLUS all my herbs since I will just get new ones in wrath and....

** 3k GOLD IN 1 DAY!! **

This may not be much to everyone, but considering my max amount of gold at any time has been about 5k...this is a pretty amazing day. Not to mention only half the gems have sold and I have a few more old items left over!

So...if you see me on a mammoth in Wrath...don't be surprised!! I mean, what else would I possible save the gold for!!??

Explosive shot...

"Wait, I will be able to set things on fire...for multiple seconds?? That seems very....interesting...and wtfpwnage-like"

So, as we all know...survival hunters can set people on fire now. Woot?...meh. I have to say, I was quite excited to set a few horde on fire as soon as I built my Survival talent line up. Much to my dismay, the climax was as eventful as a presidential debate.

Here is the low down. I have 2300 ranged attack power in my Survival build. Here are my hit results:

Non-crit:
300-500 damage per hit
900-1500 total damage

Crits:
775-925 damage per hit
2,325-2,775 total damage

In essence, I was doing from 900 to 2,800 damage per 6 seconds of cooldown. I was actually hoping for a bit higher number. I mean, 2300 attack power is hard to achieve...but what can you do.

Some important things about explosive shot:

- The AOE effect hits soft AND DOES break crowd control
- Each fire hit has its own critical strike chance, meaning:
You can hit for: 400 - 800 (crit) - 400. All on one shot
- If you can find a condensed group, the AOE does make for some impressive burst
- Explosive shot can easily replace arcane shot in your rotation

Some interesting things about my survival build (0/10/51 - 10 for the 10 crit points in Marksman)
- My crit rating was 35%
- My damage meter said I was criting 58% of the time!!
- The build seems focused on critical strikes and...well...that seems to be it. Decent trapping and cc ability with wyvern sting...but really all about critical strikes. That is gonna make those points to improve your feign death seem so much better in raids now without blessing of salvation!

The last item is kind of peculiar. I essentially could not find a chance to use steady shot in most instances. When I add Aimed Shot in wrath, I doubt I will ever need steady shot. It's personal, but between Multi-shot, serpent sting and explosive shot...I never had down time.

My tips:
- Watch the cooldown and use the shot every time
- In instances and raiding, make sure you actually wont break cc; this skill if used wrong will lead to a severe case of huntarditus, that will be detrimental to your raid livelihood

Though I was not impressed with the number, it is still doing more damage than everything else. So...I like the shot, but not enough to say survival is my end all spec in Wrath. I am intrigued by the Marksman tree and that will be tried next. Also, BM had such a great fun factor...I can see BM getting some miles in Wrath as well.

Don't fret though, survival will get it's fair chance in wrath! I will raid, instance and quest with it to try it out fully. Also, explosive shot was designed as a level 80 skill....so maybe I will like seeing 3 crits over 1k in wrath! :)

Edited after further research - 11/10

What did you do?!

Ok, so we all know that PATCH DAY!!! just came. :) So, what did you do? What did I do? Well, I tried 500 times to log in and then fell asleep! The next day though . . .

In order of Occurrence:

1st) Log into Nomakk, spec BM and start my hunt for some exotic pets! Let's be honest I love survival, but I play the hunter class for good times and shenanigans with my pets! So, it's off to Un'goro for a T-rex aka Devilsaur. Ironhide!! That's right, the big black dino that ate me when I was a young hunter gathering hundreds of crystals! "They are so shiny, how do I NOT pick them up!?"

So, the T-rex is mine! Some interesting things to note:

- He gets bigger when "Monstrous Bite" happens - This is a skill that damages the target and increases the Dino's damage by 3% (stacks up to 3 times) for 10s I believe.

- He is huge as a big red. I mean...like bury the horde mailbox huge.

- Turn your sound on! He sounds vicious! And blood drips from his mouth when he bites and gets the 3% damage bonus.

- Overall...I love him!

I have to say, I really enjoyed searching out the T-rex. There were all kinds of hunters in Un'goro and it was fun to chase and search. I started helping others find theres too. It reminded me why I play a hunter. It also led me to believe I could be BM and be happy in wrath...but don't tell anyone!

2nd) Go to Winterspring and get me a Chimera. Not nearly as fun...but it looks cool. I think tonight when I look for a cooler Chimera I will have a better time!

I did drag the Chimera through stormwind (fyi, the harbor is very well done, A+). Many people stopped to look and through some /cheer towards her (yeah, Chimeras feel like females for some reason). A few hunters even asked me "What else do you have?". Which of course led me to pull out my T-rex! Hunter adoration to the extreme!

3rd) Log off hunter, log on to Paladin. Time for the extremely over-charged retribution tree! I have to say, Divine Storm is probably the coolest ability (looks-wise) that I have seen in WoW. I felt under-whelmed, but i was also using a 1-h weapon + shield, which makes things hard as a weapon based dps class. Regardless, I loved the play style and design. I will surely be ret for pve in Wrath.

4th) Respec my Pally back to Holy. Shockadin time! So, the Holy Shock spell went from a 15s cd to a 6s cd...time to own faces? Kinda...I did some battlegrounds, but I found I was frustrated with the over-powered warriors hitting me with 2 2-h weapons. I thought it was quite lame that they could own me so bad. I used to eat warriors for lunch...now i am lunch...not fun at all.

Maybe my hunter should be able to use 2 pets? Or my paladin able to use 2 shields in 1 hand and a 2-hander in the other...yeah, that's seems fair. Sorry, i have slight hostility for watching a warrior kill my 10k hp in under 5 seconds last night. Let's see, I have over 10k hp, 350+ resilience...yeah, under 5 seconds. Hopefully he was lucky, but if that is the new design, WoW pvp will be a thing of the past for me.

5th) umm...this will be tonight? I think tonight is Survival or Marksman try night! Time to see what these new trees look like!

Some love for my fav's

Another picture I managed to capture!!









So, since I have never done this, I figured it was time. I would like to acknowledge the blogs I like to read the most!

Aspect of the Hare
She just got a new site and things are in full swing already! Consistent updates, quirky charm and a love for her class unlike any I have seen! Definitely an enjoyable read! Also, she has a superb guide built to guide you hunter's in hiding all the way to eternal glory (or level 70 at the very least).

One Among Many (Just a wow girl)
This is our resident altalicious pseudo-hunter! She would be full blood hunter-er, but she has defected to classes of Nature!! I will Aspect of the Wild her back to the promise land! Any who, she is fun to read and like to draw moonkins in the least intimidating way ever (aka, cute). Also, I play WoW with her from time to time...nothing like instant nostalgia!

Lienna's Log
A new one that I think will be a regular read from here on out. Can't tell you much about it except it is well written and intriguing enough to read beyond my normal 3 main blogs I check regularly!

Laser Chicken is always a good witty read...thought its hard to tell if he is retired from the blog world!

Arms and Fury is a nice warcraft + real life blog. Sometimes it is great to read about the in game and real life goals, side by side!

Two and a Half Orcs is charming and well written by like 35 people...or two. Either way, fun to read and a nice pleasant adventure to read along with!

Mirshalak's Lair Is another hunter lover who is in love with survival more than most! You want to talk survival? Then you want to talk to Mirshalak!

Turns out I like the females blogs! Who can argue with that? Regardless, I hope you all can find one or two blogs you may not have seen (and enjoy them of course)! Meh...no one reads my blog anyway, but it's ok to be sharing, right? :D

Hunters love and/or hate Paladins?!

I have noticed a trend in my Warcraft life...Hunter's with Paladin alt's! In many many occasions I have seen hunters on their alt while on my Pally....and they were playing a Pally too! I wonder what creates this trend? I have a few theories, as you may have guessed!

1) Blessing of freedom! Every hunter would love to be able to run free!!

2) Immortality! I don't know about you, but sometime in my 30-level pvp days, I fought a paladin who thwarted my killing efforts with his magical bubble! So, I asked around: "What can get past that bubble thing?" - "How do you kill a bubbled Paladin?" Do you know what the answer was?? You can DO NOTHING!! "Holy crap that's OP" I would cry in my sleep. Every hunter has moments where bubble would been stellar (true for all classes I suppose)

3) Kill difficulty. Ever tried to own a Paladin as a hunter...a good Paladin? One that used freedom, bubble and hammer of justice in a way that made your life truly painful? Yeah, it is those moments where you think to yourself: "I should either throw my keyboard through my screen....or create a Paladin alt and see what it's like!"

4) WTFHAX. So your in BRD, you walk into the main circular rotunda and someone just walks all the way in...Whoops!! Then you proceed to see "Resisted" when you click "Feign Death' and bloop, you die. Why does that Pally have green hands? Why did he just write in chat "Later jerks!"? OMG! He just stood in the middle of 9 guys and hearthed to safety! What a douc...genius! Oh crap...he dropped group! :(

5) Holy Shock. See Below.

So, in my days, I decided to "twink" my characters every 10 levels (get awasome gear for the top level of a pvp bracket, for you that are wondering "wtftwink?"). this desire comes from my extreme love for pvp. Now a true Twink spends hundreds (maybe thousands) of gold on a 'perfect' twinkage. Personally, I would just grab some blues and greens from the AH for lvl x9 (29, 39, etc.) and enchant is decently. Even my main went through this.

The ripple effect from this methodology is that when I twinked, I would park myself at that level, thus if I didn't want to PVP...see where I am going? The twink days led me to level an ALT. My alt was that Paladin I hated for being able to bubble and run free whenever he pleased.

This created a situation where I almost always had a twink and a leveling character at any given time side-by-side (a druid later joined the rotation when I maxed my hunter). In turn, I would also PVP with said Paladin constantly...probably 70% of the life of that Pally has been spent doing PVP. My build? Holy.

I have been in love with the idea of a Holy killer since I read about the Holy Shock ability. This type of player is referred to as a Shockadin. Which I have always been (I leveled from 55-60 as ret, but we will forgive that...it was post-BC). So, essentially I was a healer who could kill people. More importantly, I was a healer who could take the fight into his own hands, which in my battle group is very important.

One would think people would protect their healer (most times I would be the only one). No, it turns out. I would constantly get jumped and destroyed as my teammates ran away or ignored me to kill 1 pesky mage! This type of playing made it so easy to become an offensive Holy Pally at level 40 (the level you get Holy Shock).

For those of you who don't know, holy shock is a Holy Paladins only instant heal, BUT it can also be used to strike an opponent for Holy Damage! So, essentially, a Holy Paladin could judge Righteousness (an offensive judgement spell) and then Holy Shock an opponent in rapid succession (judgements do NOT trigger your global cooldown). At 49, I would hit people for 40-90% of their HP in a matter of seconds.

So, twinkage lasted a while, and then we are to today, where I am now 70! Inspect "Estario" on armory if you like! The lifestyle has survived! Shockadin in brutal gear!! Basically at 70 I buy mostly spell damage gear and then gem it for Healing (except the weapon, that +healing was too dramatic to make up and by god I am a healing class at the core!).

The final say - I love the Paladin for being a Hybdrid class. That may be why Hunters use Paladina as an escape. As my Paladin I can go out and be a straight up killer or sit back and heal the killers on my team who ignore me! I have a choice. My hunter, kill or go home, that is my job! To sum it up, I am a hunter and I love to play my Paladin!

I wonder how many hunters turn to druids, paladins and Shamans...

Have you Shockadin'd lately? Ever? Try it!