Dear Horde of Azgalor,

Dear Horde Of Azgalor That Keep Fucking With Me While I Camp Loque,

Fuck off and die.

No love,

That BM Hunter

Dear Rogue That I Killed Even With My Level 76 Trash Pet,

Look, I know this is a novel concept for a rogue player, but try actually sneaking up on me, okay?  Don’t drop down in FRONT OF ME, then vanish, because then I’m just like “…” and  then I kick your ass.  Also, when a hunter starts kiting you in circles it might be time to walk away.  Just saying.

Loling At You,

The Fail PvP Hunter

Dear Warrior,

See note to rogue about when a hunter starts kiting you in circles.

<3,

Jamethera

Altitis Strikes Again. And so does NaNoWriMo.

Josh got it in his head to start leveling a rogue, so guess which infamous alt got brought out of the stables as company?

Fuck yeah!  And no, I’m not putting her in BoO.   Mai vanity guild is EPIC.   She has my hunter’s old BoA gear, so she’s Enh for now.  Yes, I’m playing melee that isn’t a tank and no, I have no fucking clue what I’m doing.  EARTH SHOCK!

In other news:

This blog is going to cease its 5 day a week schedule for as long as I’m not failing NaNo.  This could be anywhere from a few days to all month, so…be patient, people!

I will still post, just no promises about every day.

Hunter Flavor: Y’all Can Hate Me Now

It had occurred to me that, as a BM hunter, I should really have a Spirit Beast.  I mean…yeah, they’re not exactly the choice DPS pet right now, but…dude, Spirit Beast.   Every BM hunter should have on in their stable to play Pokemans with, right? 

I had looked for Loque a grand total of…once before and the others, never.  It being a Tuesday night, I figured that maaaaaybe it was a good day to look.  Maaaaybe.  So Jamethera hopped on her trusty Netherdrake and toured the Basin.  Nada.  Well, poop.

What the hell, I thought.  Let’s go look for the others.  I flappy flappy over to Zul’drak and swoop over Gondria’s spawn points.

At the last one, SilverDragon pings.

OH FUCK.

No really, that’s what I said.  “Oh, fuck.”

Naturally she spawned next to the shrine with the elites.  Sure enough, mid tame, one of them wanders over and smacks me to death.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

I run back.  Rez in a corner.  Drop the trap in the corner.  Start taming.

Watch a bear walk over to me…

“Fuuuuck.”

Tame completes before the bear goes OMNOMNOM on my face.

“WOOT.”

Now, for the hard part: a name!  EYELZRZ?   

My original snow leopard, companion through vanilla and all of my BC raiding, is Schneeflocke.  My Devilsaur is Omnomnom, because I thought that was the most hilarious name ever for a dinosaur (and still do).  The Core Hound is LootTheDog, for all of us former Molten Core raiders.  My wolf is Cúchulainn, a figure from Celtic mythology.  As you can see, I’m kind of all over the place for pet names.  We’ll have to see what “sticks”.

On second thought: another pet to level?  FUCK!

The Life and Times of an Alt Whore

So I’m on my priest, wandering aimlessly around  ”>Dalaran, in LFG for…some raid or other I don’t need to save for the guild.  I haven’t pugged a raid in aaaages.  Naturally they ask for my gear score-what the hell?  I don’t know what that is.  I settled for linking the achievement showing I’ve done it already.  I get invited and then…

…kicked for a guildie.

Kay.   They apologized, whatever, all good.

Next I see them asking for a pally tank.  I go, lol, I haz pally tank.  They say, okay!  So I switch toons and…

…oops they filled the spot.

>:|  >:|   >:|

…so then I flop over to my mage, and fart around trick or treating my way through 57.  Oasic asks me to tank the heroic daily.  Okay!  I flop over and…

…oops, nevermind, he has to do something else before raid time.

OMG WTF BBQ.

…I flop over to my hunter.   She still doesn’t have the rep for her helm enchant, fail!  la la la, Ebon Blade dailies, la la la, oh hey a heroic.  Let’s go do a he-

“Amber, can you do the ToC10 with us?”

Fffffsssssssss.  Originally they want a healer and a melee DPS-Lyrandre and Drake sound perfect, but I guess we’re doing ToC10 tomorrow?  Why the fuck are we doing 10s when we were just doing 25s?  What the hell is wrong with you, Steve?  …anyway, so Lyr is on reserve for tomorrow.  So that left the Most Fail Ret Paladin Ever, or my hunter.  Hunter it was, with Josh’s holy paladin. 

…my hunter, bless her undergeared BM heart, ended up #2 on Damage Done.  lolwaitwhat?  All of our DPS was sub 3k.  Since I’ve seen all of us, myself included, do more than that…so I can only tilt my head and figure that group synergy just wasn’t there.  It was definitely a pulled together group thanks to Steve forgetting it was his mother’s birthday (FAIL) and we ended up giving up on FC.  I had fun, though.  I wish I had the time and luck to give my hunter some more attention.  My pet didn’t die even once! \o/ 

It was actually hilarious when our beartank summoned me and then said something along the lines of, “Wait, what the hell?” at the sight of my trusty devilsaur, Omnomnom.  “Please tell me you’ll be using another pet.”
“NOPE.  That’s it.  All dino all the time.”
“But he’s huge!”
Josh, resignedly: “You get used to it.”
Andy: “But it’s funny because when he dies she’s all, Noooooooo, Omnomnom!” 
Which I totally do.  But anyway.  Good times.  Poor, unwitting bear…

In good news, we’ll be assembling an off night Ulduar10 to complete the instance.  Fuck gear, this is for those of us who want to say “I did Yoggy.”   We will extend the lock out into eternity until he dies.  Amber Approves.

I’ll be looking at tweaking my disc spec tonight, and perhaps I’ll post a report on how that whole heavy sp/crit thing is going, for those of you interested in the nuances of disc stats.  Not that I’ll really discuss nuances, mind.  I’ll just be like “here is what I do and look, I’m not failing yet.”

Random note: by the end of the night, I had spent time on 4 different characters.  :P

RAWR TANK

There was actually a little discussion on Twitter about gender and in game roles and why we just don’t see that many women playing tanks.  I’d rather not touch gender issues with even a 40 foot stick, but it’s an interesting observation none the less.  Oh they’re out there, to be sure.  And some of them are damned fine tanks.  But there’s not many of them, and/or some of them hide very well.   I can’t get onto Vent without wanting to yap, so no hiding for me.

Is it something to do with the pressure?  Tanking pressure is different from healing pressure.  Tanking, especially in a raiding situation, is more lime light-y.  I mean there’s 5 other healers…and 2 other tanks.  They are WATCHING you, man.  WATCHING YOU.  YES THIS FREAKS ME THE FUCK OUT AAAAH.

It amuses me to think that right this moment, in BoO, there are three women who play (healy!) priests who also have tanky paladin alts.  For two of us, these alts were our mains at one point.  What the hell is it with priests and paladins?  

Speaking of alts healers like to have in common: Back in BC, we wanted a hunter for Kara, so we asked who had hunter alts to swap out.  There were a few hunter alts, as it turned out-all of our healers had one.  No one else, of course just…all of the healers.     /facepalm

Anyway.  Last night was supposed to be a Naxx25 badge/lolgear run…and we had…er…12 people?  Maybe?  There were no pugs in site.  Naxx is officially a ghost town…deserted…the red headed step child of raiding instances, what have you.  We dropped it down to a 10, though, and proceeded to lol our way through that.  It was more amusing goofing off with 10 guildies than running many heroics with 5.   :P  That, and I got some more MT experience under my belt (though Loth is boring as ever) and made at least 2 pathetic shows as lolret.  Let me tell you, having someone on Heigan who has never tanked it before…and a ret paladin who has never been melee down there before…results in a dead retadin.  And a dead most everyone else, apparently.  Oh, DDR boss, how we hate you!  I managed to Not Fail Grobb, though.  Er, well, not badly.  Only Josh died…  >.> 

I did get JUST enough badges from it to replace my Naxx10 chest (!) with the badge one.  That should help me out a lot!  I should go pug VoA as a tank for more gear, but it scares me.  I don’t know why, but…it does.  Tanking in general scares me far more than healing or DPSing ever has.  I’m so terrified of screwing up in front of everybody! O noes!  And it’s hard to do a “guild” VoA run first to learn the fight…nope…gotta jump in there cold…ugh!

I am such a pansy.  I do love tanking though.  Of course I also love disc priesting, and shadow priesting, and BM huntering…  I might love retadining if I didn’t SUCK at it.  I can’t tolerate being bad.  :(  You know the kids who thought anything less than an A was a failure?  That’s me.  Being a disc priest is probably healthy for me.  “Oh look, I’m at the bottom of the meters…WHERE I AM SUPPOSED TO BE” vs “OH GOD THE OTHER HOLY PALADINS ARE BEATING ME WHYYYYY”. 

No, this post had no point.  I’m all silly and rambly right now, and distracted by Nano.  I think that, next week, I’ll start ToC Strats.  Woooo, actual content!

Random thought: The funny thing about being a known kidder is that one rare occasions where I’m feeling especially bitter, sometimes the truth comes out and everyone laughs unknowingly.

Monday Recap

I did a lot of raiding this week-far more than normal.  I don’t have a single 80 not saved to one or more raid instances, and I didn’t even touch Ony or VoA.  Jamethera went to Ulduar 10 and Naxx25, Ambrosyne went to Ulduar 10, and Lyrandre made her second foray into ToC 10. 

The ToC 10 was a guild run (sans one replacement for our DCing DPS warrior), albeit it an unofficial experiment before we head into it “for reals” later.  We’d done one off night attempt there before but gotten stuck on Beasts.  It resulted in lovely gems such as this one from one of our tanks:

We seemed likely to get stuck on it again, but after we replaced the aforementioned DCing Guy, we did alright.  In fact, we cleared all the way up to the Twins. And you know what?  Seeing the infamous Faction Champions for the first time, and post nerf at that I…I kind of enjoyed them.

Faction Champions: As Experienced by Lyrandre

/heal heal
/get aggro from the hunter pet
/fear
/heal heal
/get aggro from the hunter pet
/run in circles kiting the kitty and casting bubbles and dispels
/fear
/get aggro from the hunter pet and the DK
/panic and say GETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFF
/run in circles kiting the kitty and casting bubbles and dispels
/fear
/get aggro from the hunter pet and the warrior
/panic and say GETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFF
/run in circles kiting the kitty and casting bubbles and dispels
/fear
/wonder where the hunter pet is
/heal heal, dispel
/giggle and run into the middle of mobs and fearbomb

And that is how you Faction Champion as a disc priest.  Since the sight of me running laps around the room with a cat following me was highly amusing, it was therefore an awesome fight.  I admit to having an advantage, however: my tank is in the room with me to hear “GETITOFFGETITOFF” when vent is rather, ah, busy.

Come twins in ToC, however, we ran into issues.  The tank kept dying.  As the tank healer, this makes me QQ hard core.  The only reason I can think of for this tank to die on my watch was the fact that I had to move around a lot.  Let’s face it, I’m not an awesome mobile tank healer when my big spell is channeled and I’m primarily a crit/SP whore.  Haste wut?

We were trying the one-tank, everyone-the-same-color strat.  Which works in some respects, but without anyone of the other color around to sop up those orbs, I was doing a lot of orb dancing.  Steve said that he would occasionally eat one for the sake of healing, which is fantastic, but two orbs will kill me.  I don’t want to risk “eating” one orb only to have a second one sneak up on me before I’m healed.  I think I need to drive home the “STEVE I CAN’T MOVE THAT MUCH AND TANK HEAL” aspect with a bat, because he’s got a wicked case of “If I don’t have a problem there is no problem” disease. 

Guild hobbies: Picking on Huntres, calling Phaseroll a loot whore, healers plotting DPS deaths, picking on Lyrandre

Of course it doesn’t help that I make it easy to pick on me.  Last week in Ulduar I just walked straight into a pack of mobs, for example.

My second trip into Ulduar with Ambrosyne as a tank was…not bad.  I didn’t start to suck until Thorim, where I did Arena for the first time.  Lots of DPS died in there.  Mmhmm.  I guess I wasn’t moving around to pick up mobs enough-a fact that Steve didn’t share with me until after.  Thanks, Steve.  You’re supposed to point out my dumb sooner so I can fix it if it isn’t clicking in my brain, mmkay?  :P  Since I spent so much time in the gauntlet (or staring at green bars) I admit I hadn’t actually watched tank behavior in the Arena before.  Now I know! 

She’s not a half bad alt tank if I do say so myself.  She’s got some gear that needs replacing (just bought a badge belt!) but it’s a toss up between gearing her and the hunter.  A lot of who runs what will of course depend on what’s needed, though I did also finally dual-spec Ambrosyne ret.  She is wearing this lovely mix of epics and…greens, where I didn’t have DPS gear already. 

I didn’t have much in the way of threat issues outside of the Arena, so no complaints there.

Dear Pugs:
I don’t want to see that sort of nonsense, okay?  Okay.

And that’s that for my Monday Recap.  I’ll leave you with this little gem, explaining why my ill-fated, dead-every-ten-seconds level 80 wolf is named HarryOtter.

OT: Hunter Rant, Ho

ETA: blah blah, Amber can’t hunter, the point is made

So, I have a hunter.  Her name is Jamethera, and for a large part of BC she was my main.  I luffs her.

She was BM then, but not just because BM was the Flavor of the Month.  No, I’ve had a BM hunter since before the first hunter talent reset-my second character ever, in fact, behind my paladin Ambrosine.   Now that first hunter was actually a russet Tauren lady who sits at level 26 to this day, but my nelfy version is old in her own right.  She was my only other max level character in vanilla, actually, because those were the days when each toon took me over a year to level.  I r scrub.

Anyway.  I raided with her in BC, sponging knowledge from Olgas, a most marvelous hunter if ever I knew one.  This was before I knew of EJ and blogs and other such things, because I was the most non-hardcore hardcore raider ever. 

“What is the hit cap, Olgas?”
“What should I gem for, Olgas?”
“Is this peice of gear good, Olgas?”

…in hindsight, I’m terribly sorry, Olgas!  Anyway, I did manage to become a good hunter, usually at or very near the top of the meters.  I enjoyed raiding with Jamethera, and was happy when I got her to 80 a week ago.

Took her to Naxx…fine, fine.  Aside from the Dance Studio, nothing was god awful for my pet, and I felt that I could perform my job fairly well.   I missed my cat Schneeflocke, who had been my companion since level 12, but the devilsaur Omnomnom amused me. 

Then…Tuesday.  I wasn’t worried about the patch, really, until a few comments from other hunters on Twitter had me rushing home to test pet DPS.

And the wolf won.  We’re talking-in my specific case-a difference of 20 DPS, but still.  A wolf out damaged a devilsaur.

Okay, what?  I’m a BM hunter!  I can tame all these awesome, unique pets!

…and if I care about doing max DPS in raids, I need to use a wolf?  What fucking sense does thatmake?  It’s a mere 20 DPS difference for me, but it’s irritating none the less.  So here’s “slap in the face” number one.  I’m a BM hunter and my end of tree talent is pointless except for 4 mother fucking talent poitns in my pet tree.  What the HELL? 

Fuckity fuck fuck.  Since I convinced my poor guild to let me take my hunter into Ulduar, I went out and tamed one of those ugly tiny-waisted level 80 wolves and trudged on in.

Do you know how many times my pet died on Razorscale?  5 times.

Do you know how many times my pet died on Ignis?  3 times before I said FOR FUCK’S SAKE and kept him near me.  You know, not DPSing. 

Now I’m familiar with the concept of yanking my pet out of shit that hurts, but there comes a point where the shit that hurts is every god damned where all the god damned time and you spend more time moving your pet around than DPSing, and what the fuck is up with that?  Razor was especially annoying because I was on turret duty and not always aware of where my mutt was stupidly standing.

A pet is a major component of the hunter class-all three specs, not just BM.  So let me get this straight, it’s okay to render part of an entire classes mechanic bloody USELESS for large chunks of the instance? 

I’m struggling to remember BC, here.  You had to be quick on the pet controls for Aran, or they’d die, and there were some other fights (o hai, High King) where you had to be pretty aware of where the hell your pet was.   Attack this target, then this one, NOT that one, and here, pull them out of whirlwind.  But it was all doableand my pet was never out of the action for lengthy periods of time.  Even in Naxx, there’s only the one fight where he’s loluseless.

Now Blizzard seems to have grown madly in love with Bad Things On The Floor.  Razor?  Fire.  Ignis?  Fire.  Trash going to IC/Kologarn?  Pokeballs.    That’s already a significant chunk of the instance where I’m fighting to hit 2k DPS when I know damn well I can over 3k because I can’t fucking use this integral part of my class.  IC on easy mode wasn’t bad-he died due to my own inattentiveness once, but management on that fight is fine.  CCL and Hodir were fine, but uh…Mim?  Yeah I can see that going WONDERFULLY.

I left the instance having done subpar DPS and feeling generally terrible about a class and spec I used to love.  I tried to coax out tanks into at least keeping mobs out of fucking pokeballs, but I was basically told “Why?  The DPS can move to the sides and moving stuff more than you have to can cause problems.”   I have to wonder if that sort of attitude isn’t why we wiped so often on IC before-you now, not getting the bosses ass entirely out of the rune?  Yeah, that.  I could just be being bitter, though. 

I don’t really want to play my hunter anymore, and that makes me sadder than anything.  It’s one thing to choose a class that isn’t optimal but at least is FUN and supposedly not that terrible DPS wise, and then find out that due to fires on the fucking floor it’s god awful DPS AND not even fun anymore.

QQ…

Monday Recap!

Dear Fellow BM Hunters:

We are already the red headed stepchild of hunter specs.  Please do not enforce the bad stereotype by showing up to DPS a Heroic ToC with a tanking pet.  Also, “Is the paladin even holy?”  is not a constructive comment.

>:|

Worms R Not 4 Heroix,
The Hunter with the Devilsaur

Dear FailDK,

71 points in Unholy?

Really?

Is 71 points in ___ that EVER a valid spec for ANYONE?  For ANYTHING?

Baffled,
The Baby DK That Still Knows Better

In other news…

My darling boyfriend made it clear to me that up and coming holy paladins still struggle in 5 man content when he chucked his headset to the floor after several frustrating wipes on Paletress.  Now, Paletress can give my Ulduar geared Priestess hell if we’re lugging alts though, so I can imagine that a group filled with alts and fail pugs was…not exactly pleasant.   When we reformed a bit later with our progression MT it was magically easier.

It was also easier once someone told me I could tranq the renew off the summoned creature.  *coughsAmberisahuntardcoughs* 

Some more lolepix later and he will, hopefully, not be pushed into such rages again.   It’s all about geargeargear for the freshly dinged paladin-ironic, since the heroics to GET you gear will be hard if you’re not going through with people better geared than you.  I just kind of sigh because he two healed a Naxx10 just fine but H ToC was a disaster.  Aoe Damage + Freshly Dinged Paladin = FAILZ.  :(

My dear little hunter has come along nicely-3 days after dinging I broke 3k DPS on Sapph.  I still have a lot of work to do-she needs rep for her head and shoulder enchants, a new cloak, new trinkets (lol greens), a new ring, and the rest of my gear enchanted…but I am not total fail, at least.  There is a dearth of up to date information on raiding as BM for obvious reasons, so I am doing a lot of flailing around on my own.

Lyrandre has done fine so far in her heavy SP/crit, low haste build so far.  At least, we’ve been getting through progression content with me MT healing, and I can’t ask for a better test than that.  Mim was a mess!

Now…to prepare for Yogg!

80 #3: Huntar!

My hunter was, once upon a time, my most beloved character.  She was even my raiding main for most of BC, only being shelved when the hunter glut made it almost impossible to find a home post guild-asplode. 

I took a lot of pride in learning how to play, thanks to my patient mentor, Olgas.  And now I have to…relearn how to play.  Sans mentor, at least for the BM spec.  Meep!

Mere minutes after dinging, I was invited to the in-progress guild run of Naxx25.  I had remembered to train my 80 skills (Josh didn’t-ha!), but was for the most part unenchanted, ungemmed, scrub hunter with a pet who was…still level 78?  Fuck.  BoA gear to transfer XP bonus to pets, too, imo.

Of course, now she is a scrub hunter with a few epics, so this evening will be dedicated to gemming, enchanting, gear-buying and…running ToC into the ground.  Oh, and leveling my pet.  Silly devilsaur.  THEN I’ll have to turn around and level my wolf because I hate the Northrend wolf models.

I also managed to create loot drama by…trying to be nice.  Oops?  My recommendation is this: don’t do “limitless loot” runs when you have several alts looking for gear plus pugs in a raid.  Someone is going to have hot dice, and then everyone else will, if not be butthurt, at least be making sad faces as they watch a lot of gear go to a rogue who is barely beating said scrub hunter in DPS.  Seriously, I’m 3% from hit cap with a low level pet in a sub par DPS spec and I’M ON YOUR HEELS DPS-WISE WTF GO REROLL.

*coughs*

We’ll ingore the part where I ran out of ammo halfway through the last boss and went melee on Loatheb.

Yeah.  So.  Error in loot rules on our part (Andy, honey, WHY DID YOU NOT USE OUR NORMAL RULES) that will…not be repeated. 

Now I need to go…play with spreadsheets. 

/cower

Project Review Day

I have embarked on several WoW related “projects”.  I like multi-tasking, apparently.

Project One:
Fix Lyrandre’s disc gemming!

I robbed the bank and a guildie of four epic SP gems to replace the one in her helm (wtf, it’s my 8.5 helm why did it not have the epic version?) and to put THREE in her belt.  THREE GEM SLOTS IN MY BELT.  Dear crafted belt, I love you, so so much.  Every socket in her healing gear is now effectively red…

Project Two:
Fail less as a shadow priest!

We’ve recently imported a very awesome shadow priest from horde side, who is another co-worker of Mach and Zoja’s.  He totally puts me to shame, but that’s alright-I’ll abuse him as my mentor.  I’ve started tweaking my shadow gear and will sit in front of a target dummy and try a different rotation at some point…but it’s one thing to look at a list of BiS gear and another to stare at what I HAVE and try to optimize it.  Bleh!  Still, with our current bounty of excellent healers and a need to 2 heal some fights, it would behoove me to not suck as shadow.  

Project Three:
Prepare the huntard!

Jamethera the hunter, my raiding main for a large chunk of BC, is in Serious Leveling Mode.  Josh got a bug in his pants in regards to leveling his paladin, so we have every intention of hitting 80 this week.  Originally I had her in a leveling spec, but Josh flopped from ret to holy so I went ahead and threw myself into the current BM raiding spec. 

The only thing I did not account for was the lack of the hit talent in said spec.  Er…maybe that’s fine for those of you in epics, but for me starting out, not so much.  Oops!  She’s currently in a mix of blues and old epics, but with luck all of those epics will be gone by 80.  I’d hate to wear Kara gear into Naxx-I’d hate to be one of those lazy people going “lol carry me through Naxx plox and hand me epics.”

Actually, no, let me rephrase that.  I’d LOVE to be one of those people, but a sense of personal pride prevents me.  So heroics at 80 it will be until I can at least PRETEND I’m Naxx ready, and THEN I’ll be carried through Naxx and handed epics. 

I have every intent on raiding as BM because by the gods, I was BM since before the first hunter talent reset and I’ll be BM when I finally quit.  Some day, I’ll also show our other hunters how to top DPS meters without pulling aggro. 

/stares at them

Project Four:
Prepare the Warrior!

Lyestra is…still at 78.  She’s been 78 for weeks now, because I log on, get lonely, and then log off.  In between mad rushes of hunter leveling, I’ll get her to 80 on her new server (O HAI EARTHEN RING), improve her tanking gear, and…well, casually tank things.  If my friends on that server are welling to tolerate a scrub, I might even pick up a DPS spec.