Time to Breathe

     I just wanted to do a quick post to reassure those of you who read this blog that I have not abandoned it again. I've just had an extremely busy week. The blog, and my WoW time both suffered as a result, hence the lack of content. Don't worry though, I've still got plenty of ideas, so there will be more articles in the future!

Guild Update
     I guess it isn't really an update since there isn't anything new to report, but oh well. We are still waiting to see what our tank situation is going to look like. I am still raiding on my hunter in the mean time, though we've run into issues and ended up cancelling a couple of runs since I made my last post. I will update as information becomes available. If anyone happens to play, or know of a player on the Thrall server that is looking for a guild, have them contact me in-game, on Saerath or just use /who Shots Fired and ask to speak with an officer. If all else fails have them send me a RealID friend request, my Battletag is WhisperBlade#1988.

The Blog
     I am still planning on moving my blog over to Wordpress, but I would like to get my site graphics designed and everything setup before I make the switch. The main delay is my serious lack of graphic design experience (or ability for that matter). I'm hoping I can teach myself how to use GIMP, or find someone that would be willing to assist me in the graphics department. I've considered selling an organ and purchasing the Adobe Creative Suite, but I'm on the fence about which organ would bring me the most money at this point. Again, I will update as the situation develops.

     Thanks again for reading, happy hunting and respawn responsibly!

Best Laid Plans

Saerath earns the "A Test of Valor" achievement 

I'm a big fan of making plans, very in depth plans at that. I'm constantly making lists and outlining projects that I'd like to complete. The problem with making plans is you can't really plan for every contingency. I believe the saying goes, "No battle plan ever survives first contact." Which brings me to the reason for this post.

One Door Opens
     One of our tanks in my guild's progression group found out yesterday that he got a new job offer that he was planning on taking. While this was incredibly good news for him, it left our raid group with a potential problem. He will be working the graveyard shift once he starts the new job. Our raid nights are Monday through Wednesday from 9:00 PM to 12:00 PM, server time. There is a very good chance that his work schedule will conflict with our raid schedule.
     This means that I will most likely end up benching my Hunter in order to fill the vacant tank spot until we recruit another tank. I don't mind bringing my paladin in to tank, but I am really enjoying raiding on my Hunter. I've put in a lot of time and effort into getting him caught up to the rest of the raid team, in terms of gear. I was also looking forward to downing Garrosh on him, since we are 13/14 on 10-man normal.

Anthies helps Thrall escape from Durnholde in the Caverns of Time instance

Enter the Paladin
     In the event I do end up filling the tank spot, there may be a decline in Hunter related content here, but I promise it won't go away entirely. I may post some paladin stuff in the interim, but I do plan on keeping my Hunter as my main. I'll update as soon as I know something concrete regarding the switch. It will be nice to spend some time tanking again also. I personally feel that playing a tank helped me be a better DPS. I have more insight into what goes on during an encounter. Boss positioning, cooldown usage, and add control were things I never had to concern myself with as a DPS so I never gave it much thought. Now I try to assist in these duties on Saerath whenever possible. Whether it's using Misdirect to funnel adds to the boss during the Dark Shamans encounter in Siege, or taking out mines using Deterrence during the Iron Juggernaut encounter.

Vs

The Blog
     There are changes planned for the blog also. I realize I just started it, but I was just really excited to start writing again. I got my start on the Blogger platform, though it was known as BlogSpot back then. However, I feel that WordPress is a superior platform, and I will be moving the blog there in the near future.
     The problem with moving to WordPress is the site address that I want is currently taken. I had hoped to get shotsfired.wordpress.com, but it is taken already. As a result, I have to decide to change my blog name, or use a site address that doesn't match my blog title. I considered changing the title to One-Eyed Troll, due to my love of the Malefactor's Eyepatch that Saerath wears. I'm still on the fence about that one though. I am open to suggestions though, so don't hold back if you've got one.

     In closing I would like to say that I appreciate those of you that take the time to read my blog, and I hope you continue to do so. It is terrible luck on my part that I'm having to make changes so soon in my renewed blogging career, but if you are willing to come along for the ride, I'll try to make it worth your while. Happy hunting, and always respawn responsibly!


   

The Long Road Home

"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it."
     - George Augustus Moore, The Brook Kerith

I suppose this is a homecoming of sorts. This was my first and most successful blog, though that depends on how one measures success. It was certainly my most active blog. Most of the time I couldn't wait to publish a post, even if it was just a random topic I decided to write about.

Things changed though. It wasn't that I didn't like writing anymore. I never lost the desire to write. I simply became afraid to write. I began to take myself a little too seriously. I obsessed over every little detail, and was hyper-critical of anything I wrote. Not long after I stopped writing for this blog, I was given the opportunity to write for The Hunter's Mark, a well-known Hunter blog. I published 3 articles before I quit, convinced that I had no business writing for a blog that popular. Never mind the fact that my articles were well received by the blog's audience. My second article was even discussed on the Elitist Jerks podcast. I walked away though, self-doubt being the only real reason for quitting.

Dusting off the hunter;

     I stopped writing my B3 blog during Wrath of the Lich King, but I continued to play my Hunter though out the Cataclysm expansion. Towards the end of Cataclysm was when I transferred to the Thrall server, and Aerislan, the Night Elf, was reborn Saerath, the Troll. While Cataclysm changed the face of Azeroth as we knew it, Mists of Pandaria changed our characters in much the same way. I had a hard time adjusting to the changes, and as a result I retired my hunter. I made Anthies, my Blood Elf Paladin, my main and began my transition from DPS to tank. It was a nice change of pace, and I enjoyed it for awhile, but life got in the way and I ended up taking a break from the game. During my break, the guild I was in had a civil war, and a new guild was formed. The new guild began under the name Meridian, and was recently changed to Shots Fired, as a bit of a joke. Shortly after the guild was formed, my wife ended up taking over as Guild Leader, and talked me into coming back to tank for the new raid team. Not long after I came back we had a ranged DPS spot open up, and I began the task of gearing my Hunter, who hadn't been played since the beginning of the expansion. 

Besieging Orgrimmar

     It took me getting carried through a few flex runs, and a lot of wasted bonus rolls, but I've clawed my way to a respectable spot on the DPS meters. I've come to terms with the fact that I have to manage my Focus, and that I won't get my seemingly infinite mana pool back, and I've even learned a few new tricks along the way. 

     As a guild, we are currently 13/14 in 10-man Siege of Orgrimmar. There is talks of moving on to 10-man Heroic content once we kill Garrosh, but nothing set in stone. We also have some members who are very active PvPers who are trying to form a Rated BattleGrounds team, which I plan to be a part of, as well as doing Arenas every chance they get. 

The Future

     Most of the content on this blog will have something to do with the Hunter class. I'm sure there will be some stories about my guild also. We've got a rather interesting collection of personalities, and most of our raid chatter is drowned out by someone laughing over mumble. I've got some guildmates that I may get to do some guest posts, or something to that effect. I've debated on setting up a Twitch.tv account to stream, but I'm still on the fence about it. I am planning on providing consistent content, even if it is just my opinion on something I read on WoW Insider, or something to that effect. I also have no problem with readers emailing me post requests, or topics they would like discussed. Reader interaction is one of the tings I love about blogging, and is actively encouraged. Also, if you are an old reader, welcome back! If you are a new reader, nice to meet you! I'm looking forward to seeing this blog active again, and telling my story. I stumbled across this quote today, and found it very true:

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

                                                                         -Maya Angelou

Thanks for reading, and respawn responsibly!

     

     

Changes...

I'm not going to start off talking about the leaked 3.1 patch notes, I'll get to them later. I'm still not sure how I feel about some of the proposed changes yet anyway.

As I stated in my “Grand Reopening” post, I've become a little more involved in the PvP community than I once was. I'm still working on getting my pvp gear together. Currently, I'm using the Swiftarrow gear that my wife made me on her druid. My total resilience is a whopping 299! Yes, I know that is a horribly low number, no need to point it out to me. If you've looked at my armory page you'll also notice that I'm in a 2v2 team now as well. The team consists of my wife's resto druid, myself and a night elf rogue friend of mine. We basically just take turns getting our 10 games in for the week. The first week I participated in the arena matches we ended the week with a score of 2-8. 2 wins, 8 losses. This is mainly due to our rating being higher than our gear range. The following week my wife and I did our 10 games and finished up 7-3, much better than the previous week. I'm hoping to get into a 3v3 and maybe even a 5v5 team to get more arena points. In a few weeks I should have enough arena points to start getting an actual pvp set together. It'll be much faster than grinding the massive amounts of honor needed to purchase the pvp gear with just honor points. I've currently got about 53k saved up.

Another interesting development, I've finally been all the way to Kel'Thuzad in 10man Naxx! This last run got me my Wraith Spear, and my T7 shoulders!! (I'm going to be overhauling the site soon so I should be able to get my item links and stuff working again...) I really need to do more heroics and try to get the rest of my emblems of heroism so I can get my t7 chest piece. At the moment I've got 51 emblems of heroism, and 10 emblems of valor. I'm seriously debating on trading in my 10 valor for heroism. I don't really get to do much 25man content, aside from Sartharion and Vault. Still on the fence about the trade off though.

Ok, the patch notes. Here is how I feel about the possible upcoming changes:

“Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game. Arrows and bullets no longer stack, but are not consumed. Ranged attack speed bonus gained from quivers and ammo bags will be preserved in a different capacity.”

Wow. This reminds of back when I played EQ and finally got my Endless Quiver ability. I had one super arrow that I kept in my ammo slot and that was it. I had others that I carried for their elemental damage properties, but they rarely saw action. Prior to gaining this ability I had an item that allowed me to summon arrows, and it took forever. I'm interested to see how they implement the ranged attack speed increase from quivers/ammo pouches, but all in all I've got mixed emotions about this one. On one hand it will be nice to have that other bag space available, but I don't really miss it. Not once have I complained about my bag space compared to that of my DK.

“A new tier of hunter pet talents have been added. In particular, this allows Beastmaster hunters to improve their damage per second (DPS) with their 51 point talent.”

I'm glad to see that Blizzard realized they tried to beat the BM hunters to death with the nerf bat instead of the usual love taps they typically passed out. The new tier of pet talents, which will really only benefit BM hunters with their 51 point talent is supposed to give pets a fairly decent DPS boost, no word on the tenacity tree though. Yes, I'm sure non-BM hunters will be able to get into the new tier, but it will take some serious point shuffling to get into it, and probably not enough to justify spending the points. They are more proposed changes to the BM tree, but this is the only consistent change I've seen, and I'd rather not post any more misleading information than necessary.

“Hunting Party – this talent has been reduced to 3 ranks and also grants a passive bonus to the hunter. Sniper Training – this talent has been changed. After standing still for 6 sec, you gain a 2/4/6% damage bonus to Steady, Aimed and Explosive Shot.”

I'm not sure if the change to Hunting Party is going to be a buff or a nerf at this point. The passive benefit, depending on what exactly it is, will be interesting. Currently I've only got 2 points spent in this talent and I usually get about 75 mana per tick. I might just go ahead and max it out after the change and drop that point I've got in IAotH. The change to sniper training is definitely going to hit PvPers with this talent where it hurts. I rarely get the change to stand still for more than 2 seconds in PvP, especially arena matches. It may very well end up being an overall PvE nerf as well, as many boss fights don't allow you to stand in one place for an extended period of time. I guess it's a good thing I've been practicing my trap dancing.

Piercing Shots – this talent has been changed. Your Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of damage dealt for 8 sec.

I haven't been deep enough into marksman in a long while, so I'm not really concerned about this one. Rogues won't like it, but then again rogues don't really like anything about hunters. I'm personally going to stick with my Wyrven Sting. It will however give MM hunters a nice boost in PvE as well.

I can only hope that the upcoming changes will actually balance out the class. I've never really liked the “one beat-all” spec. I'm enjoying my time as a Survival hunter, but I resented the fact that I had to spec that way to be a viable choice for raid DPS. If we actually get our Dual Specs in patch 3.1 I'll most likely have a BM build and a PvP build. Only time will tell. Till next time, take care and happy hunting!

Respec?!

The BM nerf seems to be the hot topic since patch 3.0.8 went live, and honestly it's the first nerf that I ever actually felt full force. I went into 10 man Obsidian Sanctum with my 51/15/3 spec (which I had only started using about 3 days before the patch) and noticed a severe decrease in my DPS. I came in about 6th on the Recount meter, not far down from my 2nd or 3rd spot where I typically sat. What bothered me was the fact that the other hunter in the raid out DPSed me by almost 2k DPS. Something had to change! So I went and respeced to a 9/15/11 spec and went to 10 man Naxx. The difference was only about 300 DPS. I only moved up the DPS chart on spot, and the other hunter still did almost twice as much DPS as I did.
I'm fairly certain that part of the reason the change wasn't very significant is due to the fact that I was having hell getting my shot rotation down. I kept missing Arcane Shots, forgetting to reapply Serpent Sting, etc. I was also in a bad mood and very frustrated so that wasn't helping either. After the raid I logged off and played my DK for awhile. When I finally got back on my hunter I went back and respeced back to BM, back to a variation of my original 53/18 BM spec.
A day or so later I went to a 25 man VoA PuG and gave my BM spec another try. This time I stayed in the top ten. My lowest ranking was 7th, for the most part I started in 4th to 5th place, which is a feat for me. I don't have any fancy graphs or reports to post comparing the specs, yet. I'm going to have to do some homework and see if I can get WWS to work for me. I've never tried using it before, and I'm hesitant now because I don't want it to drag down my game performance. I guess I just need to sit down one day and give all the specs a thorough run on the training dummies and see what kind of numbers I get. I haven't even touched Survival yet. Who knows though, maybe I'll give it a shot. Till next time!

Grand Re-Opening!!

Well, I'm back!! Just to introduce myself, or to get re-aquainted with those of you that used to read my blog, I play a level 80 Night Elf Hunter on the Turalyon server. I'm currently in the guild . A rather interesting group of individuals to say the least. I recently came back to WoW shortly before WotLK was released. After playing a bit of catch-up on all the changes that were made, I respeced Beast Mastery and have been slowly climbing the progression ladder with my fellow guildmates. I'm also more involved in the PvP community than I was before, so perhaps I can provide some insight there as well.
Some changes that were made out of the game are the fact that I'm now pursuing a criminal justice degree through the University of Phoenix. Maybe all these essay writing classes I'm having to take will improve the quality of my blog writing. Another interesting tidbit since last time I wrote on this blog, my daughter turned a year old this January, and my wife and I discovered about a week ago that there will be another baby on the way. So things are probably twice as hectic now, but definitely more interesting.
I look forward to actually writing this time around and I'm hoping to get at least one post a week. Keep your eyes peeled and don't be afraid to offer any advice or criticism. I can handle it, I promise! Till next time, take care & happy hunting!

Comeback Tour?!

I've been mulling over the thought of coming back and writing my blog again. I had a lot of things happen that caused my extended hiatus. Those things have been resolved so I'm thinking about giving this whole blog thing another shot. So the three of you that actually read this thing when it was live, feel free to suggest whether or not I stay here, or resurrect my WordPress blog that I deleted. Hope to hear from you!