I said I'd top DPS on a boss by the end of the month, and here it is the 31st...

Thank you, Lurker, for being so good to BM Hunters.

I got a pair of Boots of Effortless Striking, which I sadly don't have the +hit to wear against bosses yet. If I ever find myself over the hit cap, they'll be a nice DPS upgrade, though. For a minimum DKP bid, I'll take 'em.

Strange, isn't it, that Edgewalker Longboots would be so good for so many classes, dropping as they do out of the very beginning of Karazhan?

Lurker and Hydross tonight went sort of slowly - we had to teach the fights to a few new people, which is a practice I'm getting really tired of. Someday I'd like to just, you know, kill the boss.

The Ranger-General's Chestguard dropped from Hydross tonight, and I lost the bid to the only Hunter with more DKP than me. My strategy of draining everyone else's DKP is working /rubhands.

On a slightly unrelated note, I stumbled upon an old guild app that had been rejected - I had applied on my mage, largely in blues at the time, to a much more advanced guild. They openly mocked my gem choices... pretty hurtful, yes, but not wrong. At the time, I was under the (mistaken) impression that socket bonuses were there for some good reason, and that they were worth gemming for. On top of that, I was saving every copper that came my way toward my epic flyer, so some of my gems were literally whatever was cheapest when I got a piece of gear. Embarrassing. Oh, how far we've come.

Of course, I still sometimes gem for socket bonuses... it's a hard habit to break. Generally, the logic goes "the socket bonus is something I need... and I can put gems in the slots that give me stats I need and still get the bonus... OK I'm going for it." I know, deep in the part of my brain that theorycrafts, that just dropping +agi gems into every slot is probably still better, but... free stats!

So, Blizz, if you're reading this, do us a favor - make some blue/green/purple gems that only have DPS stats, and give us socket bonuses that actually benefit our class.

A brush with celebrity, sort of.

I got an invite to tank Karazhan with a geared group, so I jumped in and found myself with some minor Arena celebrities.



It was a fun run - we brute-forced everything. We killed Netherspite with one tank, nuked the Oz event with one tank, and dropped Illhoof with no Warlock. It was a nice change from the slow, undergeared PuGs I've been stuck with for the past few weeks.

If you don't know who Aelli and Restorate are, have a look here and here:

Arenas! It's been a while.

It's been a long time since I've played Arenas - my usual Rogue partner has been really busy with work, so I've held off. Tonight, I picked up with a Holy Priest friend to try some 2s on Shabula in the high 1300s/low 1400s.

For those who aren't familiar with my attitudes about PvP, let's just say they're negative. But I'm trying!

I raid tomorrow, so tonight's specs were PvE BM and PvE Holy. No Scatter Shot, no Silencing Shot, but I did have Bestial Wrath! And that, friends and enemies mine, is useful

We went 5-5, and I could tell that my PvP skills and gear have improved dramatically - about 100 resilience may not be much compared to what serious PvPers are running around with, but it helps. I've picked up a couple of pieces from Honor - the Vindicator's Band of Triumph and the nice 2-minute Medallion of the Horde. Megatf sez 2-minute trinket! And boy, is he ever right... that thing is more of a help than I ever expected.

I also picked up the Crossbow of Relentless Strikes. Just a little upgrade, there.

More importantly than gear, though, I've been doing some actual PvP, mostly in Alterac Valley. AV makes me a terribly bitter WoWer - nowhere else can you see quite so much laziness, incompetence, QQing, and frustration all in one place. Despite all that, though, it's taught me quite a bit about the practice of killing other players.

On to the Arena matches!

What are we doing well with? Well, I'm very good at annoying and killing healers. My Viper Sting button got a workout tonight - I drained more mana than health, almost certainly. I'm also getting pretty good at 1v1s against Rogues. We faced a geared Warrior/Rogue team twice, and both times they killed my healer just slowly enough that I could burn the Warrior down and kill the Rogue. Given full health, any kind of mana, and the knowledge that there is a Rogue intent on killing me, they're not very threatening.

We faced two Shaman/Spriest teams tonight, in two games each. One of them went down like a house of cards - the first time we faced them, I burned the shadow priest down so quickly I didn't even have time to pop BW. The second time wasn't any better for them.

What aren't we doing so well with? If I was to draw a picture like a certain sushi-loving blogger, it'd be a picture of me floating in mid-air, screaming "FSCK CYCLONE!!1!" So, yeah, Druids were our main problem - we faced 2 teams involving a druid and lost both games. The first was paired with a Warlock, and the game was a 15-minute ordeal where I'd chase the Druid from one side of the Arena to the other trying to keep him from drinking long enough to kill either of them. It was nightmarish. Every time I got close, he'd Cyclone me, go travel form, and sprint to the other side of the arena. Naturally, he was healing the Warlock this whole time.

The second team was Rogue/Druid, and I have to say they were very well-coordinated - I saw them both in stealth and popped them with a multishot, but it did no good. The Druid turned into Invincibear (tm) and Feral Charged my healer while the rogue got up my narrow troll ass with both Season 3 maces. That Gnome has a lot of crit rating, I'll give him that.

The other team we lost to, twice, was a frustration - Elemental Shaman and Shadow Priest. The Shadow Priest wasn't particularly good or geared, though he did know how to hump pillars reasonably well. The Elemental Shaman, on the other hand, was sporting a title from Season 3 and gear to match. His Lesser Healing Waves during brief LoS were more than enough to keep him alive as he pounded my low-resilience Troll with Lightning Bolt crits. It was ugly.

All told, a decent night of Arenas - we crushed teams with similar gear, and got rolled by teams who were clearly in the bracket on purpose.

I'm developing certain 2v2 strategeries - if they seem unsound to you, please, help an Arena noob out.

1.) If there is a Paladin, make it bubble. Then kill other stuff. Making most Paladins bubble is really pretty easy... Viper Sting and an Aimed Shot is usually plenty to make a twitchy Pally toss up a bubble. Once that bubble is gone, they're toast.

2.) If there is a Shadow Priest, kill it. Squishy!

3.) If there is a Druid, mana drain it, put pet on it, and then do whatever else needs doing while he uses his mana up. Aimed Shot if there's time, but thanks to the Hunter's 5-yard minimum range, anyone with 5 working brain cells will just hop inside the safety circle. If they do that, Wing Clip 'em and make 'em spend mana to shift. :-)

4.) Dual-melee teams are pretty much a DPS race. Blow up whichever one I want to fight least once my healer is dead. Without healers involved, this is a race I win. Thank God, PvE gear is good for something.

5.) If the healer is getting focused, great! I can focus theirs, and my DPS is better. This will most certainly change... but for these low brackets it seems that leaving me alone to pew my best pew is a death warrant for at least one team member.

6.) No Aspect of the Pack/Cheetah unless certain that no one is going to hit you for a while. Self-CC FTL.

Advice? Tips? Strategeries? Let me know. I need all the help I can get.

Dear sweet lord, look at this video BRK posted...

It depresses me that terrible players can get excellent gear as easily as they do...

Take a look at this Recount report. This is for overall data through a Sunwell Plateau trash run; a quite profitable run, actually - 4 weapons dropped. There is exactly one DPSer who had Shivering Felspine during the run - can you spot him?



Is it one of the top 3 Hunters? Nope! #7, maybe he had an off-day? Nope!

Bad news.



Was he dead a lot? Joined late? Nah. He was there the whole time, and died only when the rest of us did.

When did this game start offering the best available loot to players who spec a Warrior 41/20/0 and then dual wield when they have Shivering Felspine?

Tragic.

In less-elitist news, I tried the 3:2 spam macro today. It ups my DPS and makes my hand tired. I'm going back to manual weaving.

Stuck on Solarian

Since killing Al'ar and Loot Reaver earlier this week, Havok has been stuck on High Astromancer Solarian for two days in a row - pretty ridiculous, if you ask me.

People blow up the raid... or ignore Omen... or don't heal during Arcane Missiles. We have the DPS - our top 10 are all well over 1000 damage per second. We have the tanks - all of our tanks are rolling over 17k unbuffed HP. And I believe we have the heals, though my knowledge of healing isn't really enough to comment on the healing situation. Despite having all the necessary components to kill this boss, we can't get her down.

It's turned an easy fight into a source of extreme tension in the guild.

When raid time came around tonight, 10 people from the signups were online. We eventually fielded a 25-man raid, but not before over an hour had passed.

After the raid, I joined a few members I like and trust for a heroic Slave Pens, which we dominated in about 20 minutes. If not for those few people, I'd be long gone by now.

Personally, the Solarian fight is an exercise, like counting to 10. Embarrassingly simple. Press 1 for Pet Attack/Hunter's Mark macro. Click cooldowns. Press 3 for Steady Shot. Do 1000 DPS. Run away when I turn shadowy.

Depending on 25 individuals to do their very simple jobs (if you are shooting lightning bolts out of your freaking head, run away from the raid) has apparently become unreasonable. It makes me want to take a break from raiding til Wrath to focus on leveling my alts and learning the PvP side of the game.

I have positive news related to gear and etc, but I'm too bummed to relate it now. Perhaps tomorrow.

Al'ar, Void Reaver down, no T5 shoulders :-(

Havok got into TK tonight and noobed it up on Al'ar for a while before getting together and killing him without further fuss.

Void Reaver was a two-shot - aggro issues kept us from killing him the first time. And by aggro issues I mean people kept pulling the boss off of the tanks and getting killed.

No T5 shoulders for me, but the list of people with more DKP than me is dwindling rapidly. Fingers crossed for next week.