WTFlux

Ever been there?  Proud of your little corner of the digital divide?  Just purely happy for your team, your guild - for their success?  Man, last night was that night for me.  Bobo’s House of Gank voted on what to do on Wednesday and people decided they wanted to go to SSC and kill trash for recipes, and random epics.  I got on late and was invited into the group.

We had 22 people in the raid, and killed the trash around Lady Vashj, Tidewalker, and Lurker.  The DPS was eye-opening.  I think we could actually raid SCC if you look at the dps alone.  The overall raid healing and fight mechanics are where we lacked, but it was a ton of fun.  We got a few drops - and I won a roll for the leatherworking pattern - Boots of Utter darkness, which is kinda a rogue item.  I like the hit and crit on them, and I think I’ll use them.

We tried Lurker, with about 2-3 of the 22 having ever seen him.  Strategy was laid out, deep breaths were taken.  I think something was off with my Deadly boss mods.  Or maybe I’m a n00b.  Both?  The spewing thing seemed like it wasn’t really when the timer said it was.  Then I was WTFpwned by it.  It lasted about 30 seconds total but with 22 people all but 2-3 inside SSC for the first time, some of them still in greens (including me) we got him to 91%.  Pretty cool if you ask me.  Then the raid ended and we all went our separate ways.  It was fun, laid back, and new.  It was Bobo’s.

BRK’s Top Ten Things a Level 69.999 Hunter Should Know About Level 70

10. Hitting 70 means getting a flying mount.  Check
9. Start an arena team and get your Vengeful Gladiator’s Waraxe.  Check
8. When you start doing heroics, consider respecing to get at least 17 points in the Survivalist Tree.   *
7. Get two pieces of the Beast Lord set, don’t settle for the Desolation gear.  WANT
6. Leatherworking rocks for hunters.  Check (225…grrr)
5. Get a cat/ravager/raptor pet for DPS.  Check
4. Cooking is the single most important and profitable generic-profession for hunters.  Check 375
3. Your ranged weapon is your life. If you’ve got less fire-power than a Valanos’ Longbow, get to the Auction House and buy one immediately.  Check (see armory)
2. You cannot put off learning the Jump Shot any longer. Check - got that one in the bag
1. Once you hit 70, the time has come for you to teach someone. Kinda done…**

* I don’t know how I feel about this.  So far my trapping in heroics (last night in Shattered Halls heroics) has been pretty successful.
** I helped a co-worker understand how to play a hunter and make some money…does that count?

I would love the Beastmaster helm and shoulders, I’m still rocking greens.  Other than that I’ve got a pretty good start.  Yesterday I got my axe and slapped a +35agi on it.  I’m sitting on 1400 unbuffed AP with about 5 greens still.  Progress has been made.

Well, we went 3-7 this week. My warlock buddy left me for someone else. I appreciated his help, but wish we could have done some more matches. I think I will have around 920 points after today, so I will need 1 more week of arena for mah epics.

My prot paladin buddy tried healing a bit with mixed results. He doesnt have any (ANY) healing gear, so healing is a bit of a struggle. He was being stunned and shield bashed? taking away his healing spells for around 5 seconds, in which people would finish me off. I die really quickly, if I’m focus fired, I get about 4-8 seconds before I die. I don’t know if it’s really just horrible gear, or superior opponents. Probably both. Arg.

Anyway - almost there, once I have the axe, I’ll probably stop playing 2s. It will be nice to be completely done getting gear for my ranged weapon and my melee weapon. I don’t think there are many better than the Sunfury bow and the Arena Axe.

It’s official, my 2v2 rating is now 1337. I pleaded with the general public loitering in Nagrand to join me for 10 2v2 arena matches. My pally buddy was not on. He did not answer his cell phone.

A guy - dotdottab, told me his resilience wasn’t really that great but he would join up if I wanted. I sent him an invite. We joined up and started in without many expectations. Game 1 - we win. Huh, pretty cool. Game 2 - two rogues, loss. Game 3 win. Game 4 win. Game 5 win.

Woah. This is officially fun.

Game 6 - Hunter/healer? - loss. We tried killing the healer first, and it didn’t work very well. I got killed pretty quick and that was pretty much it. The next game - we had the same team, killed the hunter - controlled the healer, we win.

Game 7 - Warrior/shaman - loss. Tried killing the warrior, never saw the healer. Warrior killed my lock. Game 8 - same team. We found, killed the healer - controlled the warrior. The warrior killed my lock again, but I was still alive and had trap cooldowns up and kept him at distance, killing him to win.

We ended up 7-3, giving me my leet rating. That was VERY fun.

WE WON 2 MATCHES!!!!! WOOOHOOO!!!!

Ahem…sry about that.  Yes, we did win 2 of our 10 matches.  Yes, they were against real live people.  We beat 2 warlocks (lol?) in the Ruins, then beat a priest/warrior combo in the Circle of Blood.  The warlocks went down smooth, kind of like A & W creme soda.  I think I heard Lexy purring after the match.  Our first ever legit Arena win! 

Then we came up against some rogue teams which we definitely seem to have a problem with.  I think everyone kinda has problems with Rogue teams though, so I don’t feel to horrible about that. 

Our second win was decided about 20 seconds into the match.  We saw a priest and took off right after him.  Bestial Wrath, Intimidation and some crazy shield stunning thing and the poor priest never had a chance.  We had him down in like 15-20 seconds, took a breath and started after the warrior.  This is about where the video started - I’m retarded and didn’t catch the whole thing. 

Anyway we had a blast and went 2-8. We ran up against the same Priest/Hunter team 2-3 times and couldn’t really deal with them that great.  Dark just needs better gear, respec to Ret, and to do more dps.  We could get the priest down, but by then the hunter would have me almost dead.  The priest would die, and get one last greater heal in and the hunter would kill me, then prance around the arena kiting poor Dark everywhere while King Bangladash was taking bite sized chunks out of my wee little dwarven pally.  lolz.  At least we had a good time, eh?

OK!  Here we go.  ARENA TIME BABAY!  Darkmatteroz and myself jump into the 2v2 arena.  Our SOLE goal is to get 1000 arena points.  Let’s see how we do.

Match 1 - Loss (no kills)
Match 2 - Loss (no kills)
Match 3 - Loss (no kills)
Match 4 - Loss (no kills)
Match 5 - Loss (I killed a pet)
Match 6 - Loss (no kills)
Match 7 - Loss (it was 2 vs 1)
Match 8 - Loss (no kills)
Match 9 - Loss (no kills)
Match 10 - WIN!  (they quit)
Match 11 - Loss (no kills)
Match 12 - Loss (no kills)

So there you go.  No I am not kidding about Match 7.  Rohh the rogue beat both of us, pretty badly.  ALL BY HIMSELF.  mmmmkay.  Time to go back to regular BG’s.

Something really cool happened last weekend.  I was doing some quests when an officer notified me via whisper:

Hey - they are talking about you in officer chat 

Oh great, thanks for that.  Did I do something wrong?  Offend someone?  WHO DOES THAT?  Then after a bit of agonizing silence, the GM whispers me and says:

Congratulations, we are going to promote you to officer of Bobo’s House of Gank! 

WHOA.  That was unexpected, but really really cool.  It’s nice to have people you don’t know in real life acknowledge your helpfulness, and value to a group of people.

And I dinged 70 with Carterpants.  BUT I’M AN OFFICER IN MY GUILD NOW!  WOOHOO!

Earlier that night I got the quests for Shadow Labs and started looking for a group.  A few guildies wanted in, and all I needed was a healer.  One replied in LFG channel and off we went.  A real life buddy was tanking so I wanted to inspect the priest to see if he was up to the challenge.  One look at him and I started giggling like a girl. 

Nearly full T6 holy priest.

We get into the instance and the priest says- “Just have the tank AoE tank everything, don’t worry about traps or CC just FF”.  Basically the pally tank would aggro everything and we would just zerg them all.  The freaking priest healed BOTH the pets and the entire group without any problems, zero wipes.  My first time fighting Murmur with Carterpants and this dropped for me: Sonic Spear.

So to recap in 1 night I did the following:
Got promoted to Officer in my guild
Got Sonic Spear
Dinged 70
Got my Flying Mount

…then my guild needed my shadow priest for Kara and I got 6 badges.  What a night.

( photo credit: Thomas Hawk)

BRK is a wonderful writer. He’s knows hunters forwards and backwards, and he’s done a ton of research on them. He’s also very funny, and can tell wonderful stories. To top ALL that off, the dude works at NASA.

Having said all that about him, I honestly think the best post he’s ever written was today - titled “We Love Lists“. He explains 10 things you should do when you hit level 70. I was skeptical at first, but after reading them and his explanations, dang…he’s right on target.

So. Go- read, and learn.

I’m still fuming over this.  I was in Terrokar forest questing by myself.  I saw a 70 horde hunter on his mount, and went out of my way to avoid him.  I went about questing.  Next thing I know he rode over to me and dismounted.  I didn’t really think twice, I tried to avoid him- but he pressed the issue.  I hit my mark/pet attack macro, and hit every instant shot I have, got off an aimed shot- and started a shot rotation.  When he sent his pet on me, I immediately feigned death and shrugged it off.  For some reason he never sent it back - so now Lexy is chewing on him, and I’m hitting a few good crits and kill commands are flying.  I look down, and notice I’m not dead yet - and I killed him straight up!  I was feeling pretty good about myself - this was my first 1 on 1 level 70 horde I’ve killed with Carterpants.

Then he resurrected.

Apparently the graveyard was basically next to his dead body.  I didn’t even have time to bandage, and he killed me.  I rez, go to my body and find he’s still there, eating to gain health.  I pop in, and lead with an aimed shot crit and KILL HIM AGAIN!  This time I did it without a pet!  Then his serpent sting ticks 1 more time and I die.   So now I’m up 2-1.

I think he’s probably learned his lesson, getting owned by a level 67 at 70 must suck.  So I rez and just start to quest again.  I accidentally aggro a warp stalker, and run away a bit to feign death.  Then he shows up again.  Hoping against hope, I stayed in feign death.  He rode over, looked around, circled back, looked around some more.  Stared at me.  Finally he jumped off his mount and I popped up and unloaded all my dps, but died (he was at full health, I was at about 40% since I had just rezzed).

When I rezzed this last time he was gone.  ARGGGG.

Hey Kittytrainer - I hope you feel good about that.  If I got owned by a level 67 when I was 70 straight up at full health, I’d probably want to kill them too, but l2take your beatings next time.  How the hell did you get those epic PvP rewards anyway???  LOLZ.

From the test realm 2.4 patch notes -

Multi-Shot: This ability will no longer strike any secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.

WOW! This is HUGE. How many times have you or some huntard in your group nuked the sheep with a multishot and caused a pull to be much harder than it already was? Mage’s and Rogues will like us again!

I can’t help but to think that Blizzard is trying to help raise the reputation of the poor huntard, and his bumbling ways. As a newly minted 64 hunter, I applaud these changes- but a part of me feels weird. It’s always been a sense of pride for me never to multi-shot break a crowd controlled mob, and now I don’t get to display that skill. Hunter’s can still break crowd control (as well as everyone else) with volley, and direct shots. This will definitely help with those tough 6 man pulls where you need as much dps as possible in a hurry.