So That's What Gruul Looks Like...

In case you haven't already figured it out, I went on my first Gruul's Lair raid last night. Nothing really exciting happened, unless you count me getting my tier 4 shoulders, which coincidently is also the first piece of tier anything I've ever gotten. It was awesome, I was a little confuse on the Maulgar pull because I've never had to hold aggro on a mob while everyone else was alive, but thanks to my awesome class leader and fellow hunters all was explained and we killed him and his lackeys. Gruul's was a very fun fight, had 2 wipes and downed him on the third try with only 2 or 3 deaths i think. Here's a pic of me in my super uber new shoulders:

The Results Are In...

And the respec is a success!! At least in my opinion, and no complaints from the guildmates either. I started a post about what happened in a heroic UB group, in which I successfully kite/tanked 3 mobs (one at a time, thank Elune for multiple CC's) and more impressively kite/tanked the druid boss with the help of an extremely skilled paladin healing. Mrs. B3 was in the group as well and let's just say I showed her things she never thought possible of a hunter. (Just imagine if I was BM spec...). I'm sure I could have accomplished similar feats with my MM build, but nowhere near as easily. Went to Kara the next night, took Moroes down in 2 tries, but more importantly not once in the ENTIRE raid did I hear anyone comment on my traps being loose, except that time the lock doted one, but he was beaten severely about the head and shoulders by the other raiders and promptly swore to never do it again. Went back to Kara last night to take down Prince and Illhoof. Prince was a 1-shot, Illhoof was a 2 shot due to our priest being sacrificed twice in a row. Now that we're all on the same page again, the spec and the changes I've noticed:

-I'm a crit monster now, self-buffed I have almost 26% crit chance, higher crits, more crits, and more DPS from the pet with Kill Command.
-I don't sit at the bottom of the damage meters anymore, I'm usually in 3rd or 4th in raids & 2nd or 3rd in 5-mans.
-More health means less having to run around screaming when I aggro the critters (yanno the lvl 1 rats/spiders/roaches/frogs/etc...that's a joke btw) and I can actually take damage from the mobs without dying in 3 hits.
-Not having Silencing Shot or the bigger mana pool has forced me to rethink my general playstyle, so I'm more inclined to kite/joust mobs when I get aggroed instead of just die, and I have more flexibility when it comes to my traps so I use them more as well.

All in all, I am fairly happy with the build and will more than likely keep it for awhile, but if I do respec again it's going to be BM, I've wanted to try it for awhile now, but haven't been able to justify the respec to my class leader. Take care and happy hunting!!

Random Updates

The most notable of these being my recent respec. Before you crucify me or try to pull my hunter license, remember it's my character and I'll spec as I please. I am more than willing to accept constructive criticism, but I'll happily delete any comments along the lines of, "You're a freaking retard, that spec is stupid!", and so on. Now on with the post! I've decided to give this spec a try to see if it increases my functionality in a raiding situation. If it doesn't I'll respec again. If it does, I'll keep it for awhile. No other really exciting changes, Temoa is almost level 40 and I've made another hunter, Kreiger. I plan to level my new dwarf hunter full BM just to see how much different it is than leveling a MM hunter. So far so good, he's only level 8 at the moment, but I've been busy with raiding, dailies and such.

On an entirely different note, I'd like to highlight a very interesting Blog I've been reading as of late. Saber Squadron, is about a team of hunters being 5-boxed by 1 person. The blog chronicles their advancement from level 1, as well as techniques and other info on how to multi-box multiple characters. Interesting stuff, and something I don't think I could ever do. Check it out if you get a chance.

That about sums it up, I'll post again when I have more to report. Until then, take care and happy hunting!

Casual Farming (No gold farmers were harmed in the making of this blog)

Money may not make the world go round, but if definitely greases the wheels. Hunters are probably one of the most expensive classes in the game, so financial burden is a problem I see often in the hunter community. Here is my first attempt at an informative blog, rather than rambling on about my misadventures all the time.

One of the best ways I've found to make money is daily quests, It takes me no more than an hour and a half a day to complete the 6 daily quests that I have unlocked, and it nets me about 70g plus another 10-15g from trash drops and leather I acquire in the process of completing them. In order to unlock the daily quests in Ogri'la you will need a 5 man group to complete the quests to unlock the dailies, but all 4 of the quests can be done in about an hour with a solid group. The link will tell you where to get the quests to unlock the dailies.

Another way I make money rather successfully is farming the ravagers in Hellfire Peninsula for [Ravager Flesh] and leather. Southwest of Honor Hold is an area known as Razorthorn Trail, this area is covered in ravagers, both big and small. I usually don't even get off a full shot rotation before they die, so you should be able to kill them in mass numbers with very little effort. In 30 minutes of farming them I can usually net a full stack of [Ravager Flesh], full stack of [Knothide Leather Scraps] (LWers can use these to make knothide leather which sells for significantly more on the AH), about a half stack of [Knothide Leather], and they also drop [Fel Hide] and [Fel Scales] (a full stack of these sells for about 15-20g on my server), and I usually make about 4-5g off vendor trash. (If you don't have the AutoProfit addon I highly recommend it). The ravager meat is also used to make [Ravager Dog], a very nice stat food to keep on hand as a hunter.

Another good area to farm is the western edge of Zangarmarsh, where you can kill the basilisks and sporelings for meat and leather. The basilisks drop, you guessed it, [Chunk o' Basilisk] which can be turned into [Blackened Basilisk], I've seen stacks of the food on the AH for 5-10g so if you have a high enough cooking skill you can make the food or just sell the meat, of course they also drop your typical varieties of leather and vendor trash. The sporelings drop leather and 2 types of spores, we're going to focus on the [Strange Spores} because these are used in cooking to create [Sporeling Snack], the only stat food in the game for hunter pets (Anthies swears by them), granted they won't increase your pets happiness, but the extra stamina and spirit they provide is still nice to have.

These 2 areas should net you a decent amount of stuff to sell on the AH (provided you have skinning for the leather, but zangar is a good place for herbs too), mats to make stat & pet food which you can use yourself or sell on the AH as well, with a minimal amount of effort. Hope this helps and maybe in the near future I'll post some farming areas for those more enterprising hunters out there. Take care and happy hunting!

*I apologize for the white text on item links >.<

Karazhan: The Return

So I'm running around Netherstorm doing quests for gold (that [Swift Red Gryphon] isn't going to pay for itself you know) when I get a /w from the Raid Leader asking if I wanted to go to Karazhan. I informed him that I did not have the necessary consumables (if you'd like to know what I consider necessary post a comment and I'll post a list of what I take to raids), and he assured me that they could make an exception this once and he sent me an invite. WOOT! I'm back in Kara!! Bring on the purples!!

/dancecheeromgwtfbbq

We clear the trash to Attumen without a hitch, and down him without a problem. One of our tanks got the [Vambraces of Courage] that he had been after for quite some time, and I don't recall what the other drop was, pretty sure it was druid leather. Moving on...We clear to Moroes and set up to start the fight. The strategy we use is to keep 2 of the 4 adds CCed until Moroes is down, and kill the other 2. This means that the fight is very dependent on the hunter's ability to keep his/her target chain trapped & the priest to keep his/her target shackled. Do not make the mistake of assuming everyone in your raid understands the mechanics of chain trapping. After 2 pulls I had to explain to the tank that I needed to know at least 30 secs before the pull was to take place so that I would have enough time to lay my first trap and let the CD tick long enough to allow me to place my second trap before the first one expired. Once we got everyone on the same page the third pull was significantly better, but by no means perfect. I'm not sure what caused it, but my traps were being broken, thus taking away the time I needed between CD's to chain trap. My 2nd trap broke after about 10 seconds, leaving about 10 seconds of CD before I could place my next trap. I managed to Scatter Shot and buy myself the time needed to place another trap. 3rd trap breaks early and now my trap & scatter shot are both on CD, forcing me to kite him until one of my CD's finish. I managed to get a trap off right before dying and trapped him. Once that trap expired a tank picked up my mob and they finished the fight without another casualty. I still felt as though I had done a poor job of CCing, but was happy that they managed to down Moroes. [Idol of the Avian Heart] & [Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch] dropped, priest took the idol and I think the watch was DE'd as all the tanks had it already. Next came Maiden, wiped on the first attempt downed her on the second. There was a rather heated argument over a pair of cloth bracers that dropped, but I was in the kitchen getting something to drink so I missed the bulk of it. We moved onto the Opera event and got Oz. I prayed for [Legacy] to drop, but was denied. We one shotted the event and received [Ruby Slippers] and some leather legs...We killed the philanthropists for some gold to ease the cost of repairs and called it a night...aside from the Moroes incident I don't think I did too bad. I'm hoping next time goes much better though. Take care and happy hunting!

The Hits Just Keep on Coming

I should probably go buy a lottery ticket considering all the good luck I've been having lately. This morning I asked if anyone in the guild wanted to do a BM run, and it just so happened a guildmate needed to finish off their Kara key quest chain, so a group was formed almost immediately. So far so good, we actually had more than enough people volunteer for the run (did I mention I love my new guild?) We zone into the instance, everyone grabs their beacon and we make short work of the wildlife that populates the zone so as not to have any unnecessary adds while we kill the dragonkin that spawn. The portals start opening and the mobs pour out and die shortly afterwards. Chrono Lord Deja appears, dies, and is rapidly forgotten about. Temporus decides to stick his head out of his portal, and has it promptly removed. I turn on AotV and have a sit to drink and regen mana when my wife asks me if I'm ever going to loot him. "Sure!" I reply and run to his corpse and right click him and am rewarded with [Hourglass of the Unraveller] OMG! I can finally replace my [Power Infused Mushroom]!! If memory serves me, it's the last thing I needed to upgrade to be allowed to raid Kara. I did remember the warrior saying that he was after the trinket as well, so I whispered him and asked him if he wanted to roll and he declined (awesome...he's getting a Christmas card this year) so I got it! WOOT! The rest of the run went off without a hitch and we got another guildie Kara keyed. Let's just hope the good luck continues in this fashion.

UPDATES!

So it's 12:54 am and I have to work tomorrow, but I can't sleep due to the incredibly uncomfortable head cold I seem to have developed, so I figured I'd chug a few cups of green tea (antioxidants and what-not) and tweak the blog some. After about 20 minutes of searching I finally found the BRK blog about Favicons & iFrames and decided to give the iFrames thing a whirl. After inserting the html in about 15 different places and causing my blog to look like I did it in the dark...with a hammer...I finally found the proper location for the code and am hoping I can get the link right so that you'll actually see the window pop-up when you mouse over item links (I'm not currently planning on updating previous item links for the record). So here goes...

I went on a regular Botanica run to help a guildie get rep for her heroic key and Warp Splinter decided to part with his [Jagged Bark Pendant] Now to save the changes and check to see if it worked...brb IT WORKS!! Sort of. The pop-up window didn't go away when I moved the mouse away from the link
back to the editing window. Modified the code, testing in 3,2,1:

/grumble

That didn't fix it, why you ask, because I deleted a letter in the code. Double check your code kids, the life you save could be yours. Saving and checking again. It works!! This does, however mean that I have to start linking items from Allakhazam (wth decided to spell it like that anyway...seriously) because I'm not quite fluent enough to figure out how to do it using Thottbot, but hey...I rolled a hunter, I like a challenge.

I received a whisper from the guild raid leader asking if I was interested in raiding shortly after the run and replied that I was still in the process of upgrading gear to meet raiding requirements. Then I got a whisper from the hunter class leader asking the same question. I told her the same thing and she said that she was going to look over my armory profile and we'd discuss my gear/talent spec/schedule and see about getting me into Karahzan. She also informed me that she was happy to see that I had a desire to improve & took an active interest in wanting to raid. Hunters in my guild seem to be a bit lax in my opinion, but then again I think most of them are alts. SO! I might just get to venture back into Kara and get my hands on some more gear in the very near future! Stay tuned & go check out The Hunter's Den and let Galamar know what you think and see if you've got any advice for him, he's very gracious when it comes to accepting criticism (he takes it from me and I'm a nobody). Take care and happy hunting!!

Beast Lord Leggings

Sorry no picture today...I'm sick and didn't feel like trying to find one. I'll update it later, maybe. Anyway! After my 147,332nd run through Steamvaults, Warlord Kalithresh finally decided to part with the pair of Beast Lord Leggings he's been holding for me! Pretty much the only thing left for me to do to get cleared for raiding is replace my Power Infused Mushroom with Hourglass of the Unraveller from the second boss in Black Morass. I've managed to get my unbuffed hp's up to 7k and my RAP (with AotH & TSA) is 198o, which is technically 20 points shy of what it needs to be, but I was told they'd make an exception since it's so close anyway. I'm still doing dailies and farming in the hopes that I'll get together enough gold for my first epic flying mount. I've thought about dropping skinning and picking up herbalism, but I doubt I will due to the fact that I really don't want to go through the same thing with herbalism as I did with mining (e.g. running around hinterlands for 2 hours and only getting 3 skill ups from mithril and truesilver ore). Off to work now, take care and happy hunting!

Anthies: A Tribute

Antheis (pronounced an-the-es), has been my pet for quite sometime now, long enough for me to forget how long it's been anyway. We've seen some pretty amazing stuff together, from Netherspite to that 63 hunter we saw in Hellfire Peninsula wearing Herod's Shoulder (no joke) among various other lvl 40 items. We even got in a rather heated argument with our best friend about why he was my primary pet. I finally won the argument when I explained why I chose this particular pet and named him Anthies.

A long time ago there was a game much like WoW, only you couldn't play it on a computer. Come to think of it, I didn't even own a computer back then. This game was played using massive amounts of notebook paper, calculators, a stack of books that would crush a minivan and dice. Some of the older generations might know this game, for you young'uns it was called AD&D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons...go ahead and laugh, but it was still fun). Joey, a very good friend of mine, played a human warrior named, you guessed it, Anthies. Anthies suffered all kinds of misfortune at Joey's hands, yet he just wouldn't die, no matter what the DM threw at him. Joey unfortunately wasn't so lucky. About 2 years ago Joey was killed by a drunk driver a week before his 22nd birthday. He was like a brother to me and losing him devastated me and the rest of our circle of friends.

While questing in Terrokar Forest I recieved a quest to find and kill a wolf named Ironjaw. I tracked him down and immediately thought of Joey once I saw him. I'm not sure why, he just reminded me of him & Anthies. I killed him for the quest and then waited for him to respawn so I could tame him. I didn't use my normal trapping method of ice trapping then taming to avoid taking as much damage, because frankly Anthies never went quietly into anything, and after being reduced to about 25 hit points I got him and promptly named him. We've been together ever since.

He may not be the highest damaging pet, he may not be the coolest looking pet, but I think every time he gets a killing blow, Joey smiles and brags about how he is still the uberest gamer in history. He's just my way of immortalizing someone that changed my life, and the lives of everyone who came in contact with him, and I don't see him getting replaced any time soon...unless I can tame a dragonling...