Shieldbearers

So, I've now been running heroics for a good week or so. I've purchased miself the lovely epic tanking necklace for the new Badgers (everyone seems to be calling them badgers despite the rename, so I is a happy badger) and have built my engi tanking goggles, so I'm up to three epics. I'm also defcapped and have just over 22k health, so my gear is progressing nicely - I'm more or less prepared for the easier sections of Naxx, and it doesn't take much effort to give my health a HUGE spike, as my DK friend Talania proved yesterday by acquiring a nice tanking trinket from heroic Azjol-Nerub - with over 100 stamina on it where before he had none. That's a health spike of over 1000, folks, which I hope to repeat.

As to the title of the post, I am setting up a raiding guild named Shieldbearers. We intend to start raiding as soon as we're set up, and are recruiting everyone who can prove they have a mental age of over 15 and is above level 75. That means that I want you folks to have a looksee. It's on Moonglade, alliance-side, remember. The forum post is here.

Thanks for the attention!

Ding

I've hit 80 now, and run my first heroic at 80 in Violet Hold, netting myself some Epic Pants into the bargain, along with a Frozen Orb and some emblems(lack of badger jokes makes me cry). The run was fairly smooth, with only one death because of an overzealous ele shammy blapping the wrong target at the wrong time and getting nigh-oneshotted, despite my fairly shite gear, including two greens.

This has two sides to it; 1, I can get straight into heroics without thinking "But is my gear enough?"
2, obviously, is that it's too easy. That run was challenging for the healer, but for me? Utter piss; despite being colossally outgeared (already) by our DPS, I held aggro for most of the run without breaking a sweat. I worry that this extends to raids; I don't want every man (or woman) and his dog (or bitch) to be able to clear all the content. I loved pre-TBC raiding; not alot of folks raided, not everyone PvPed, and as a result most of the player population was wearing blues with maybe an epic or two, if they had been hugely lucky, had lots of gold or had managed to get into an MC raid. That meant it was -fantastic- when you got your first epic, because it felt like you were entering some sort of elite; getting my first 80 epic today was more "Cool, I got a drop." I want to be ecstatic at epix! They should be hard to get!

Of course, I can't say much about arenas yet - there's no arena gear just yet. Suckers!

Flyiiiiing

Nom. I've now reached level 77 on Daigeil, and damn is it good to have my flier back. I'm also at 450 mining (/flex), and so all ur titanium r belong 2 me. But good grief engineering takes some levelling! Only at 412 skill, despite using all the ore I've got through mining on it. I must've used at least 300 cobalt and another 100 saronite (ore, that is). But eh, I'll get there, and there's a lovely big motorbike waiting for me at the end.

Wintergrasp, my friends, is damned slick. It's exceedingly cool, and so far I've only been in games with 10-15 players a side - I can only imagine what 40-a-side or more games are going to be like. And the potential honor reward is crazy! In my first game, on the assault, we lost and I recieved over 2k honour in kills and rewards. However, one request to anyone going in there; when your vehicles are more-or-less capped out, don't build sodding catapults! Get Siege Engines and Demolishers! I haven't reached the fliers yet (if they really exist, I haven't seen any yet) - there aren't enough people about to get the ranks up before we bust through/fall back.

Icecrown is also fantastic, but if you're planning to head out there, try to get your epic flier until you do - catching the Skybreaker is a pain in the ass on a normal flier,and the zone is huge anyhow.

Sholazar is purdy.

Crystalsong is purdy but underused.

It's all, basically, purdy.

EPIC.

I will not say precisely what is epic. I -will- say that you should go to Dragonblight, head to Star's Rest, get the quest to go to Wintergarde Keep and follow the quests there - and the quests leading on from those - as soon as you reasonably can. DO IT.

Pure Awesome

Sorry for the gap, but I'm sure you all know why - Wrath and the leadup thereof. I would like to say first, to those who're already level 80, congratulations! I realise it can take alot of time to get there that fast, and if you're using mob tagging, well done for working the system out.

Secondly the new zones are -fantastic-. Howling Fjord is gorgeous, Grizzly Hills actually feel forest-y, and Dragonblight... Wow. Dragonblight is the most awesome zone I have ever experienced; for those who haven't seen it yet, go. Now. Head to Wintergarde Keep if you're alliance, and do that most awesome of quest chains. It's the earliest way to experience proper vehicle combat, GotA notwithstanding, so take advantage of it.

Finally, Death Knights are damned sweyt. Unholy is awesome for PvP with excellent control and burst, Blood is fantastic for levelling (literally zero downtimes), and Frost seems like a viable tanking spec with good damage. I love the starting quest line, I love thelore, I love the look and feel of the class.

It's just awesome, and anyone sayin' it's faillore need to realise two things. One, in stories, -things happen-. Things that happen are not usually predictable. They do not necessarily follow the rules of past happenings, and characters do not know everything. Since more or less everything we learn in-game is from characters telling us so, we can't say that that is absolute law (or indeed lore). Two, characters -have- to die, to keep the game satisfying. Raiding Black Temple would not be as satisfying if Illidan escaped. The Eye would not have been as satisfying if not for MgT and killing Kael once and for all. You get the point. We might get upset that our favourite characters die, but we don't protest to the author and say it's lore-breaking. So yeah.

Procrastination. Pro-crast-in-at-ion

Proooocraaastiiiinaaaation.

Yeah, I've got tons of homework, so this is a post of Proooooooocraaaaaaastiiiiiiinaaaaation. Procrastination. You get the picture.

Updates on my recent activities... I've now hit 69 with Draik (har har), but Arranath has stalled somewhat level-wise, as a direct result of my determination to solo Cruel's Intentions. Don't look so disbelieving; anyone who's clearing Hellfire should know that the quest is a five-man and therefore utterly infeasible. But anyone who's paid attention during that fight will also have noticed that he moves -very fecking slowly-.

So slowly, in fact, that I can kite him without using Aspect of the Cheetah. I kited him right down through the pools, using the Gorilladin to whack any adds that spawn, then along the road east, realised I was about to reach a camp full of orcs, so sicced my pet, feigned, ran past him and then kited him almost all the way back, going past the pools and almost reaching the Temple of Telhamat. Unfortunately, at about 2%, I thought (oh woe) "I'll just stop and finish him off..." and got one-shotted with pyroblast. I have not yet repeated this performance.

In leveling Draik I have also come to believe that, though BM always has been imba, Balance druids are imba as well. I'm levelling on mobs 2-3 levels lower than myself, and I regularly twoshot them with Starfire, or even Starfire and then Wrath, if they both crit. That's four seconds a kill and is flaming ridiculous. (Doublecasting wrath only needs one crit but takes 5.5 seconds) I also have crazy AoE these days, with Typhoon, Starfall and zero-cooldown Hurricane, not to mention that all of those can crit and trigger Moonkin form's mana regenerating effect.

Another slightly strange thing I've noticed is this; when I cast Wrath out of Boomkin form I deal about 200-300 damage, but in form it's more like 950. What the hell? I don't have that many talents that improve damage in moonkin form, and so this is quite perplexing. I need to look into it.

With Mirai I've been experiencing quite a bit of Raid success. Just the other week we cleared Magtheridon, Void Reaver and the Lurker Below, all three guild firsts, so I'm seeing quite alot of new content with the guild, which is good for securing my position within the guild as a fairly regular raider. We're going for a full TK run on Nov. 7th, so I'll fill you in on how that goes once it goes.

And, finally, I'm all itchy for WotLK. I wants it NAO.

Remember, that was a post of procrastination. Prooo-okI'mstopping.

Panzerkin: A Beginner's Guide

Arright, I said I'd do it, so here goes.

Panzerkin: A Beginner’s Guide

So. You’ve read my posts and decided you want to give it a shot, or you’re as crazy as me and have noticed that a lot of Druid Balance talents lean towards tanking. And as such you’re looking for a Panzerkin guide. If you can’t work it out, by the way, Panzer is German for tank – hence Tank-kin, but Tankin sounds silly. Here’s the first thing to know. It’s not difficult. Playing a Panzerkin relies almost solely on your ability to survive and, therefore, your healer’s ability to keep you up. Threat is not a problem.

Courtesy

THIS IS IMPORTANT. Do NOT be an arse about being a Panzerkin. Do NOT get annoyed because other people are hesitant to take you. You are intentionally playing an obscure tanking spec in order to make instances you already know and love more challenging and hopefully more enjoyable. You should not be surprised if the group gets upset about you insisting to Panzerkin tank. More importantly, tell them you're a Panzerkin. If you're joining a group, contact the leader and let them know that they should inform the others that you're a Panzerkin. If you're building a group, tell everyone you invite that you're a Panzerkin. The group is MUCH more likely to accept you if you sound happy that you're a Panzerkin, and if you sound confident. Good grammar is important too, but dis r no fkin inglesh lezun. Etc.

Spells: A look-over.

Single-Target Spells

Starfire

Slow cast, massive damage, ludicrous crit damage, high mana efficiency. This is your pulling spell when you don’t need to worry about speed, and can also be used in-combat under certain circumstances. 3.5k threat on a pull at level 65 is better than most “proper” tanks can manage, paladins perhaps notwithstanding.

Wrath

Fast cast, medium damage, low mana efficiency, although 900 damage in Boomkin form with just over 300 spellpower is not to be sniffed at. Never use wrath to pull, since it falls between the two stools of Fairie Fire and Starfire. Wrath should be used usually at close range, since it’s fast enough to not suffer too badly under pushback. It also generates threat much more constantly. If you have Moonfire and Insect Swarm on your pulled target before it reaches you, you can slot in a quick Wrath to help with damage and threat.

Moonfire

Instant cast, low-medium damage, low damage DoT. Low mana efficiency when spammed, very high mana efficiency when the DoT is maintained. Good for quickly picking up a bit of threat between Wrath casts, and the DoT should be maintained on as many targets as possible; you’ll see why later, because you’ll be pimping out that DoT.

Area of Effect Spells

Typhoon

Instant cast, medium damage cone effect with a pushback. Very useful, since it effectively hits everything with a slightly more powerful Wrath and the knockback can give you a good second if you’re quick to blast out another Wrath or refresh Moonfire and Insect Swarm.

Hurricane

Channeled cast, medium single-target damage, high multi-target damage, unlimited targets. Hurricane should never be cast unless you have Owlkin Frenzy or Barkskin up, and should always (almost always) be cast when you have Barkskin or Owlkin Frenzy. Be careful of Crowd Control, though. Hurricane is fantastic for holding aggro off the healer, and surprisingly very effective to hold off the DPS classes. We love Hurricane.

Starfall

Instant cast, low single-target damage, medium multi-target damage, 20 stars over 10 seconds maximum. Starfall can crit even if the damage isn’t that high, and has a fairly low mana cost. Generally speaking, with Moonkin Form’s mana regenerating effect, this spell will end up giving you more mana than it costs. You need to be –very- careful with it, however, as it’s indiscriminate in its targeting – it will quite casually pull three more groups onto you if they come within its thirty-yard range. Use with caution. Starfall is, however, even better for holding aggro from healers than Hurricane, because you don’t need to channel it. Used in conjunction, Starfall and Hurricane will hold aggro unless your DPS are fecking crazy.

Force of Nature

Instant Cast, summons 3 Treants under your command which attack targets. Since you’re taking Brambles, these beasties will hit very hard, considering, but they don’t add aggro to you so they don’t contribute to your tanking. Drop them if your group has low DPS in a DPS race, or if you need some fodder to soak up adds – such as on Vexallus in MgT. I haven’t tried tanking MgT yet, by the way, so that isn’t a “Yes, MgT is safe.” I’m not even 70 yet on Draik, although I’m getting there.

Utility Spells

Insect Swarm

Instant Cast, high damage DoT which reduces the victim’s chance to hit by 3%. This is very obviously critical, since it helps towards the hardest part of playing a Panzerkin as outlined earlier. With Improved Insect Swarm it also improves Wrath damage, which is well worth having.

Entangling Roots

Reasonably fast-cast, long duration root with a DoT effect. Can be used indoors thanks to 3.0.2, so if you’ve got a melee target you want out of the way, use Roots. The damage is also surprisingly effective. You can also use Roots to prevent a DPS target from constantly whacking you, by casting Roots and then moving away. However, because the roots break after a certain amount of damage, this isn’t hugely effective. The healer(s) might appreciate a breather, though.

Nature’s Grasp

Instant cast, 45-second duration self buff. 0 mana cost. Attacks against you can trigger the effect, casting Entangling Roots, but with only one charge. Nature’s Grasp can be handy if you need to reduce damage taken by getting some distance, but is incredibly unreliable as CC. Its primary function is just to cause a bit of free damage to a random target in melee range.

Faerie Fire

Instant Cast, 2-minute duration debuff. Reduces the target’s armour and prevents stealth. Improved Faerie Fire can make this worthwhile, but we’re going to be tight on talent points and 3% increased spell hit and crit chance won’t make as much of a difference as you think. However, if you do suffer lots of misses or find yourself running low on mana, by all means find three points to move and start casting Faerie Fire.

Gift/Mark of the Wild

High mana cost buff, improving your armour, stats and resistances with a 60/30 minute duration. Make sure you maintain it on your whole group.

Thorns

Relatively low mana cost buff, causing damage to anyone who attacks the target. Much shorter duration, so keep an eye on it. With Brambles, this is very useful once you’ve got threat for maintaining it. Keep Thorns up on yourself at all times – do NOT cast it on anyone else.

Innervate

Instant Cast, low mana cost mana regeneration buff. Innervate is your bestest friend, since it alleviates another of your main issues; running out of mana. This affects all mana-based tanks, running out of mana, so I didn’t mention it at the start. Innervate allows all spirit-based regeneration to continue while casting and adds 300% mana regeneration. This regenerates mana as fast as or faster than you can use it, so blow Innervate in tricky fights, boss fights or against especially tough mobs. If you have a second druid, have them ready to hit you with Innervate.

Healing Spells
Various. You can drop your HoTs before a fight in order to gain a little extra threat and to give your healer an easier time, but that’s up to you and not usually necessary, especially considering the mana cost of casting the spells and then Moonkin Form.

Moonkin Form

Yeah, this is obvious. Improves your party’s crit chance, improves your armour, and prevents you from casting anything apart from Balance Spells… Stay in form, yes? If you drop out, you will do three things: 1: Lose aggro.

2: Run out of mana

3: Die painfully.

Clear?

Gear

Panzerkin Gear can be problematic before level 70. If you play a balance druid, you are by now used to rolling on cloth caster items and being yelled at by the cloth casters. If you’re trying to gear up for Panzerkin fun, however, cloth is not wise, because of the obvious lack of armour. As such, you want to be wearing all leather (All Leather Fun! Sorry, in-joke). You obviously need spell power to improve threat, intellect for mana pool and spirit for mana regeneration, especially with Innervate. Stamina is also important for obvious reasons, and Mp5 is handy for longer fights. Defense and Resilience can also come into play; however, this is pushing itemisation to the extreme, and as such you should sacrifice these two in preference of other stats. Gladiator gear is the exception as regards to resilience. My order of stats would be:

Spell Power

Stamina

Intellect

Spirit

Mp5

Resilience

Defense

Generally speaking, you can compensate for low Spirit or Mp5 with another druid, a Shadow Priest, a paladin or even just by taking regular mana breaks and never pulling without full mana. The last is the least favourable, as it obviously slows you down a lot. Gems should also lean towards these stats; make sure you use them to fill up any holes in your gear, especially stamina, since leather caster gear with high stamina is tragically sparse. Solid Stars of Elune are your standard blue stamina gems, and should be used generally regardless of socket bonuses, unless those socket bonuses grant you more stamina. Runed Living Rubies are also useful if you do have plentiful stamina; usually if you’re wearing Gladiator Gear. Enchants are much the same, but, surprise surprise, unlike other tanks, you don’t want mongoose. Durr.

Speaking of Gladiator Gear, it is an excellent way to get the stats you need, albeit not as excellent as it was before armour was normalised. Pick it up as soon as you hit 70, and only replace it post-Karazhan. You aren’t likely to raid that far as a Panzerkin anyway, or indeed as any class, due to the impending expansion, but still. Gladiator still applies at 80; there’s going to be a new season and new sets, so pick them up.

Talents

Oh dear, this will take a while. Panzerkin talents are not, in my experience, a fine art. I’m no theorycrafter, so I can’t tell you what spec is ideal. I don’t know what’ll give you the highest threat boosts, the best survivability and the ideal mana regeneration. I do know that some talents are out of the question and some are vital.

Talents to Take to full

Balance

Obviously your main tree.

Starlight Wrath

Nature’s Majesty

Nature’s Grace

Moonglow

Vengeance

Insect Swarm and Improved Insect Swarm

Dreamstate

Moonfury

Moonkin Form

Owlkin Fury

Typhoon

Earth and Moon

Starfall

No, that’s not a lot of wiggle room. There are a few points I would say you can move around. Balance of Power and Improved Faerie Fire can be very useful but aren’t vital. Same goes for Improved Moonkin Form, but it doesn’t do a whole lot for your threat, because it improves everyone else’s

Feral

Thick Hide

This talent is a pain in the ass. It’s second tier, but there’s nothing we want from the first tier. It’s a choice you’ll have to make; is 10% improved armour worth 8 talent points? Up to you. Maybe, maybe not. If you have an excellent healer and quality gear, probably not.

Restoration

Nature’s Focus

Furor

Improved Mark of the Wild

Intensity

Omen of Clarity

It’s up to you which of these you take. If you have spare points, slam them in here. Come Wrathtime, this is probably where your points should go, but I don’t have Beta so I can’t really tell you. I certainly think Intensity will be useful.

Talents to Avoid

Balance

Nature’s Reach

Celestial Focus

First is fairly obvious, second is less so. Stunning your targets limits your ability to move them about in case of patrols, especially when the stun is highly unpredictable. If you need them to stay still, drop entangling roots.

Feral
Everything But Thick Hide

None of it helps enough to warrant the ridiculous point expenditure. Don’t waste your talents!

Restoration

Naturalist

Everything beyond intensity

Intensity is the last useful resto talent. Beyond that you’re sacrificing Starfall for the useful ones, and even Nature’s Swiftness isn’t worth that.

Glyphs

New for 3.0.2 and Wrath of the Lich King, glyphs can have a big effect on your play style. I would suggest Glyph of Moonfire, since the DoT is what we’re really interested in about Moonfire. Glyph of Entangling Roots can also be useful if you want to control a DPS target, since it’ll give you a little longer to move. Do NOT take Glyph of Insect Swarm. Glyph of Starfire and Glyph of Wrath are both handy, although Wrath less so, since you have your arcane backups if Wrath gets interrupted, and the spell is so fast a lot of the time that NPCs won’t interrupt it. For Minor glyphs, it’s mostly just convenience, so grab Glyph of Thorns, Unburdened Rebirth and maybe the Wild.

Pulling

Pulling is the Boomkin’s biggest strength. As the only ranged tanking class that’s even semi-viable, you can generate far more threat than anyone else with your pull, and as such it’s very important you get it right. Here’s my advice.

Pull with Starfire. A crit here will solidify your threat for most of the fight.

Hit Moonfire and Insect Swarm – you want to maintain them, remember.

Use Typhoon to extend your ranged time – you’re a ranged class, so use it.

Cast Wrath if you get a crit due to Nature’s Swiftness, and cast Wrath at the end.

Spell Rotations

This will be problematic. As I’ve said, I’m no theory crafter – with my rogue and warrior I use set rotations, but I couldn’t work them out myself. As there’s so little theory craft around as regards to Panzerkin, you’ll have to do this mostly by feel and the events around you, as opposed to a set rotation. Here’re some rules to lend a hand, though.

1. Maintain Moonfire

Especially if you have Glyph of Moonfire. Much easier with Glyph of Starfire as well.

2. Maintain Insect Swarm

You need to reduce damage taken, here’s how.

3. Regulate Mana

You don’t need to have a massive 20k threat gap between you and your DPS. If you get a huge chunk ahead, don’t keep blazing away with Wrath; slow down, use Starfire, and grow back some mana. Starfall is also a nice spell in these circumstances.

4. Wrath is your Friend

Wrath is quick and powerful. If you are short on threat, use Wrath. If you want to pull, use Starfire.

5. Area of Effect is Better Than You Think

Starfall, Typhoon and Hurricane are all very useful for holding aggro.

That’s basically all I can say. Good luck to you if you try it out, and I hope this will be handy. I hope I've spawned a lovely big generation of Panzerkins to apologise profusely to their group for not being bears.

Zoooombies

Jeeebus. Craziness since last wednesday. Spent Thursday as a zombie, taking over the entirety of Hillsbrad. Friday I spent some time frantically defending Booty Bay and running back and forth between the healer and the boxes. Saturday I wasn't able to reach the computer and Sunday was the same deal, until the late evening when I logged on as Daigeil and helped to hold out the Cathedral against the uber, 1-minute-incubation-period zombies. It was madness, since if a hit was landed and you didn't have a paladin or priest in the immediate vicinity, you were in trouble. And I'm a warrior. That got quite messy at times.

Anyhow. Less zombies, more raidin', hmm?

On Thursday Mirai attacked Magtheridon's Lair, and I attended as my first raid with them. I'm pleased to say that on trash I was 3rd on damage, only behind a pair of retridins which is unavoidable at the moment. However my damage record was somewhat ruined when they assigned me to a cube. That was where it all went pear-shaped; I was just fine clickin' the thing, but folks were too eager to damage and kept leaving their cubes, which meant I had to hang on longer, and the healers were too busy to hold me up, so I was on about 5k health for the next damned blastwave. Humbug. We didn't get him but we're trying again this evening. Wish me luck.

A quote from the zombie madness: "You shouldn't try to melee zombies unless you have a damn lawnmower. ...Bladestorm? Bladestorm is the world's BIGGEST lawnmower!"

And no, I've not written that panzerkin guide yet. It'll happen!

Yeah I PuG KZ...

Nom. Built a PuG group to Karazhan just yesterday, and thanks to 3.0.2, we cleared the whole damn place in just under 4 hours. And today I did much the same thing, but took 6 hours instead. This is on Daigeil, by the way; he's now wearing some shiny karazhan epics for tanking and arms raiding. I've applied to join Mirai, a raiding guild on my server, so expect to hear of progress post-Wrath.

On a totally different note, we've invented a game. Take anything you can link, talents, spells, achievements, items, whatever... And stick the word "anal" in front of it or after it. Ie, Anal [Freedom of the Alliance]. Or Anal [Lollipop]. And so on. Oh dear oh dear, we're sick. You may use punctuation, as well; Anal, [Check your Head], or Anal: [To Honor One's Elders]. There are some that don't even need anything adding, in that mindset. Check the classic reputation tab of Achievements. *evil grin* Have fun screwing your mind over repeatedly. We keep the mindbleach in a pot by the door.

Panzerkin HO

Last post I mentioned that I tanked with my level 70 healer friend as Draik, the Boomkin. I've done it again - Slave Pens with a 70 healer and otherwise standard group - and this time Quagmirran didn't bug, which was lovely. No loot for me, though. :<

Later the same day I tried it out once more, doing Ramparts with a totally normal group, noone except me above 62, with complete success. No actual wipes, although a few deaths took place along the way, none of them due to me failing as a tank, so it's confirmed that a Boomkin can tank an instance that's a little bit low levelled for them. I haven't tried anything of my level yet, but I'll keep you updated.

On the hunter front, my levelling has kind of petered out; Boomkin is too much fun, Arms is too crazy and I've been doing lots of achievements on Zul (Tricks and treats of Azeroth woo!). Bartimaeus, my devilsaur, says hi, but Modelviewer is fecked up so I can't really give you a decent screenshot. For those of you who're interested in the whole Panzerkin thing, I might write a short beginner's guide. Ciao for now.

Purdy

Ent the beasty purdy? I'm trying desperately to obtain this beautiful beast, which will take me at least a year. I need to do -all- of the Seasonal achievements, which will take all year, obviously. Wish me luck.

Delays

Yes, as you probably figured the delay for this post was due to me getting sucked into new content. For those of you yet to experience its majesty, by all means skip the rest of this post; it's spoiler-heavy.


So yus, 'tis awesome. I've been going through my mains, carrying out respecs and testing out skills, and I have to say I haven't been disappointed with -any- of them, despite what the class forums may say. Boomkin is fantastic fun; I can AoE grind now, with the changes to Hurricane and the added spells, and I found it is actually totally possible to tank, so long as you've stacked stamina or have a good healer (I chose the latter, since it was spur of the moment). I discovered that the only issue I had was with the 70 warrior who insisted on coming along - and on several ocassions I out-threated even him, which I was infiinitely proud of (Fury with Titan's Grip, obviously).

Next up is Daigeil's Arms spec. I've loaded him up with Bladestorm, of course, and it's totally crazy. Coupled with the updated recklessness, Shield Wall and Retaliation, Bladestorm is a monstrosity; every five minutes I pop recklessness and sweeping strikes, hit bladestorm and kill -everything- around me. Seriously; Blizz cannot possibly have thought it through. The possible DPS on these three abilities is, I believe, well over 10k, although I don't do Theorycrafting. Let's just point out the basics; each Whirlwind hits for 1k-ish, critting for about 2k tops. There are five whirlwinds in the move, so the DPS is more or less sustained for 5 seconds. Recklessness forces the next three specials to crit (yet to see if that's each hit from Bladestorm or the entire skill) and Sweeping Strikes causes yer next 5 swings to hit two targets. If you have 4 targets in range (the most whirlwind can hit), that's 8k damage from those (all critting due to recklessness, remember, unless the targets have insane resilience), and 8k from the sweeping strikes, which will overlap between them. The first whirlwind could crit for -16k-, and you've got four more of those coming, albeit without the effects of the cooldowns. Bear in mind that this is -my- damage, and I don't have any really special gear.

Thirdly we come to the Hunterspec, Beast Mastery, and I have to say... It's not as special as the other three. The actual Beast Mastery talent is very nice - devilsaur has crazy DPS - but there're no really amazing changes that catch your eye until you've got your pet to your own level - which I haven't yet. From Big Red Kitty I've learned that most pets can now hold aggro with the right gear, spec and petspec, well enough that you can spamvolley. However, until they're appropriately levelled the pets really aren't that amazing - and with the changes to 60-70 experience (it's more or less halved) I have this feeling my devilsaur and gorilla will never catch up. Admittedly the auto-levelling is nice, but... Hmm. We'll see.

Finally is rogue. Zul is currently Combat Daggers, as an experiment, and it's crazy enough without the consideration that I'd really be better as swords. Killing Spree is -absolutely nucking futs-, especially in 1v1 PvP or even against more than one. I'd just love to have three combat rogues use it at once and absolutely slaughter a few targets in a couple of seconds; it's that insane. You can't be stopped once you start, either, except with an exceptionally well timed blink, because you teleport after them unless they're more than a certain distance away. Mages get absolutely whacked, although I failed in my duels simply because I've not worked out my keybinds yet. With blade flurry and multiple targets I could see multi-target fighting being very fun indeed.

So.. yeah. And, naturally, I've had a haircut, leaped off a tall building and done various other obscure things (including hugging a corpse) in a desperate bid for achievements. I have no idea what the compulsion is to do so... but it's compulsive. DO IT.

Cuurses

Damned slow downlaod! Up to 82% now... I wants to get in there and tame my gorilladin, do mah respecs and stuff! Gah.

Patching daaaay

Patch daaaaaay!

Outland

So yeah, on Saturday I hit 60. Woohoo, I thought, I remember how Outland has really fast levelling! So off I set, all positive-like. I now have 3 hrs played time and about 6 bars to go. What the heck? Even 59-60 only took me two hours, tops. It has, of course, just occured to me why this is; the massive experience boost that was applied does not apply past level 60, and as such your needed experience from 60-61 is over twice what you need for 59-60, and while the mobs give -more- experience, it's not -that- much more.

Of course, part of the reason that 60-70 got a reputation for being fast is that those who were level 60 for a long time could remember how long it seemed to take to get from 59 to 60, and remembered it a whole lot worse than it was. Their memory seemed slow in comparison to Outland levelling, so they thought that Outland levelling was fast. Heck, this even happened to me with Daigeil.

Bluu. I'm off to put another hour in and get 61.

A Short Break

Phew. Level 60 now, so I've decided I deserve something of a break - gonna be playing around with my other characters for the rest of the day, or maybe mucking around on http://www.kongregate.com/, a nice Flash game website. Have a look, I'm sure they'll appreciate the plug.

So. As usual, I've encountered yet more BM stupidity over the last couple of days. The guide very much misunderestimatificated me, as it makes no mention of Araj the Summoner, a level 61 Elite in the Ruins of Andorhal, usually needing a three or four man group to take down safely, due to the absurd number of mobs around him; you need a few people to clear the groups of 4-5 mobs, and he himself is no cakewalk. You can see where this is going, right? With some careful pulling and CD-usage, I soloed him at level 58. The mobs around him were the only trouble, since until 3.0.2 it's quite tricky to have your pet tank 5 targets while you're mending pet. In effect you need to actively control the beasty, switching frantically between targets, until he's established a fair chunk of threat.

Araj himself was fairly easy; tanking and spanking, in effect. I had to kill off the two low-power adds he summons, but that was the biggest complication. Meh. My spec is absurd, so I feel less pride than I would've on, say, my rogue when he was at that level.

Oh, and I pwnt some level 59 nelf BM hunter as well, which does induce some pride. Close match.

More Beastmastery OPness, obscene levelling and blatant Zelda references

G'day folks.

The huntard levelling steams ahead - earlier today I reached level 58, meaning I can now access Outland if you didn't know - and I have experienced yet more proof to shatter what was an already fragile perception of hunters. While following the levelling guide I mentioned earlier, it says that Blazerunner - for the Linken quest chain (Linken is a gnome in a green hoody with a Sword of Mastery, hence the title) - is too difficult to solo, and you'll need a tank and healer to manage it safely. Naturally, since I -am- the most absurd levelling spec in the game, I decided to give it a shot.

Lo and Behold, I annhilated the git. Came out the other side with 50% mana, full health, and a pet looking only slightly battered. I was expecting a little bit more of a challenge, but no. BM truly is insane.


Oh, btw, regarding the macro I suggested on the mouse - I do realise that you can perform such a function with in-game macros, I have a macro that does just that (with some slightly more advanced stuff as well, actually), but I couldn't think of anything more inventive.

Oops

Small mistake on my part - forgot to allow folks to post comments. Fixed now, so you should be able to do so.

Anyways. Having now played around with the mouse, I can tell you that it -is- the awesome. I can assign two of the buttons to operate much like the standard two - ie, with keybinds - but more interestingly I can set up the rest of the buttons to run in-mouse macros. For an example, I could set up a macro that sent a ¬ keypulse (that's my pet attack button), paused for 50 milliseconds, and then fired off Big Red Kitty Button. If I wanted to, I could extend that to use Mend Pet, and, come the Pet Talent trees, Lick Your Wounds or some such. Basically, I can cheat. :B

Back to WoW. I'm now 56 on my hunter, and am now apparently in competition with Kazra, from Dancing With Matches. I have a bit of a head start, though, shall we say (10 levels, to be precise. <.>).

For those of you who aren't aware, I -am- a roleplayer, not the type who plays on RP servers because of the slightly lower numbers of E-peen kiddies, or the type who just wants to abuse RPers. As such, feel free to contact me in character, but not while I'm levelling. I might eat your face.

Mousage

Inne purdy? My new mouse, ordered a moment ago. With it, I hope to shoot as many people as possible. :B

Edit: By the way, it's a Razer Lachesis, the shiny top-of-the-range model from Razer. 4000dpi, for those who care, and for reference your average optical mouse is 1000dpi. It has a laser, too.

Muchos Levelling

So. As I've said, I'm presently levelling my hunter, Arranath, on Scarshield Legion. When last I posted, he was level 48; now he's level 54. Ridiculous?

In part this is down to the levelling guide I'm using; Jame's Horde Levelling Guide. But I think more importantly it's down to my spec, gear and the changes Blizz made in 2.3 a while back. For those who don't know, they cut the exp needed to level between 20 and 60 almost in half and radically incresed the exp you gain per mob/quest. To make the change even more extreme, most of the quests that used to be group/elite quests are now easily soloable. (ofc, that doesn't really affect a BM hunter anyway, who's effectively a tank and a healer rolled into one)

As a result of this, I can gain a level every two hours or so, faster if I'm quick enough. And people still claim that grinding is faster. It's only down to the fact that you have to know the right quests to use and they don't. So grinding is only faster if you can't take the initiative and find a decent guide. If you are that type, I've already given you a helping hand; the guide I'm using is available to the right, and it -is- free. It also has alliance sections, and though it's designed to be used from level 20 or 30, depending on your faction, you can jump in at a stage a level or two behind your own level and just ignore the quests you can't do because of prequests - it should level out by the time you catch up. Please, check it out.

By the way, I'm looking for a horde raiding guild for said hunter come WotLK. I'm currently considering transfer, since SSL is so shite, and as such any raiding guild on any RP or RP-PvP server is fine. I have pre-TBC raiding experience from MC, ZG and some very limited BWL experience, plus I've cleared Kara and Gruul's Lair more recently. Contact me in-game or on here if you've got a slot, or on Steam if you use it.

Effects of Musac

I managed to get a heroic Ramps group earlier today as Daigeil, and I can tell you that the group was more or less totally epixed except for me and the healer. The folks were fairly nice too. We suffered a couple of wipes, due to various absent-minded screwups, although the one I'm interested in at the moment was on the second boss, Omorr the Unscarred.

We pulled him, all went smoothly, but the adds - little mana-draining felpuppy bastards - weren't handled properly, so we wiped at 10%, when everyone ran out of mana (we had a warlock, a hunter and an eleshammy for DPS). At this point I was playing "No Quarter", a decidedly odd song by teh epic Zep. We tried again, and all went shape of the pear when the healer got interrupt-raped by puppies at 50%, leading to my death. Just at this point, the track changed to Kashmir, the far more epic Zep song. At this point all went a bit crazy - the warlock began blasting out DPS and took over tanking, the hunter started kiting all the adds and the eleshammy blew the shite out of the boss with the warlock, while the pala kept up his usual job, healing the whole group.

They killt him.

What the hell is with that? It was awesome, but it was like my change in music suddenly made them all epic. O.o

I shall have to experiment. *fetches guineanelf*

The Trouble with Expansions

Hum. This is frustrating.

My warrior, Daigeil, is level 70, and has been for a month or two. In that time I've been off him, basically; I do a few instances, I do a few dailies and so on. But what my actual achievements in that time amount to is The Gun (tanks should know what I mean), a shiny purple trinket, a full blue tanking set, and a reasonable PvP set. The trouble is that I'm now caught between two chairs, at the worst possible time.

I have just slightly too little gear to handle heroics or Kara. I have just slightly too good gear for non-heroics to be worthwhile. That means that I -have- to tank heroics with what is, for those instances, shite gear. In normal times, that'd probably be ok; there are usually enough groups looking for tanks and few enough tanks that they'll take just about anyone, so I could get into a group and tank a heroic or two, net myself a purple, maybe, and end up well enough geared to tank heroics properly. But noooo.

Because folks now have pre-WotLK blues (as in ill mood, not rare items >.>) they aren't as interested in doing stuff, and there aren't as many groups running. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to apply to tanks, quite possibly because of TankingTips.com advising tanks to run instances for experience wherever possible. As a result, groups can pick and choose their tanks, because they know another will be along in five minutes, even if they can't find enough DPS. Obviously, I'm unloved as a result.

So all I can do is play my rogue - who's on a dead server - level my hunter - who's on the same server and I cba to level all the time - or level my druid - see second trouble for the hunter. None of these really appeal to me, so I have nought to do on WoW. Bluu.

Hunters

Here I was, mooching along, thinking that hunters were more or less fair to fight. I was under the impression that they were a balanced, fair class, with reasonable talent balance and clear definition in the functions of the specs.

It would seem I was wrong in more or less every way.

Y'see, the reason for my skewed perspective, I think, is that my two main characters, Daigeil and Zul, are both melee classes. Every time I encounter a hunter in solo - that is, World PvP and not BGs, which are nearly never solo - I get the jump and take them apart in melee while they struggle frantically to keep me at range. As a rogue in World PvP I always have all my cooldowns. They die. As a warrior in World PvP (arms if I'm not instancing) I kill everything if I manage to charge and get Hamstring in. Which I do, almost without fail. (Ok, I said fair to fight. I meant "rapable")

The other day, I was informed by my caster friends, not to mention BRK (see right), that this is only warriors and rogues, basically. BRK also informed me that no, hunter specs are not balanced. Beast Mastery is the best. For everything. Raid DPS, it wins. PvP, it wins. PvE grinding, it wins. It wins. This is more or less without exception. As such, I decided to do the only just thing and start levelling my hunter, Arranath, on SSL again, in preparation for transfer if I enjoy playing him. Naturally, I could not do this with an inferior spec, so BM I went.

My few days playing about have been eye-opening. I have a kitty, the typical black-and-white-stranglethorn-tiger dude (mostly for my own amusement), and at present that kitty is level 45 to my 49. I figured I should try a challenge, to test my mettle. I assumed that Un'Goro, with its level 50-53 gorillas, would be a fair challenge. It isn't, basically. I sic the pet, I maybe hit Intimidation or BigRedKittyButton, I autoshot and ocassionally hit multi, arcane or concussive shot if I get aggro (remember the kitty is 4 levels lower than I). I mend pet if another aggros.

This is a formula for victory, and it comes down to a few things, I believe.

This is the first. Blizzard wants to keep classes balanced. That means the hunter class, a pure damage class, -has- to be able to keep up its damage, regardless of spec. Blizzard also wants people to be able to play their character in more or less any reasonable way - so it has to be possible for a hunter to make their pet powerful, and use themselves as a sort of heal bitch.

The trouble is that the DPS the cat and its pet need to put out must match other classes, to keep with balance, as I mentioned. However, 50-60% of the damage is automated, as it comes from the pet, meaning it's more or less constant and doesn't mess up, unlike a player often will. Fights therefore go without a hitch as long as the player isn't pants-on-head retarded, more or less automatically optimising the hunter's damage, mana usage and threat.

I believe - although don't know - that a truly optimised class of any type could match a BM hunter for grinding. However, a truly optimised character is a rare character indeed. Therefore, BM seems to be imba, and indeed, it is, as it gives equal reward for far, far less effort. The class is easily optimised, so fights are smooth and easy, and the hunter can handle challenges above his level that another class seems incapable of. End hypothesis.

More or less. Of course, if you were really listening, what I just said was that all classes can match a BM hunter as long as the player is reasonably good. Meaning I just said that all whiners are automatically shite. 'scuse while I run the fork away.

Class: Multiple

So. Introduction, hmm? Sounds good to me.
I'm Alex, or Boris, or Draik, Daigeil, Arranath, Boi or Zulmaran, or variations thereof. If you've found your way here, you might already know me. You might not. If not, you're almost certainly searching for "WoW Blogs" or "WoW {insert your class her} Class" or some such; you get the picture. And I suppose that tells you what I'm bloggin' about. This is a WoW blog.

Herein lies a brief outline of my WoW experiences. Feel free to skip to the bottom if you don't care.

I've been playing WoW for about 4 years, and Draik was my first character - a Night Elf druid on Thunderhorn. At the time I was sharing an account wit' my sister, who I may or may not point you to blog-wise at some point. As a result, when she wanted that last character slot on Thunderhorn, I had to remake my character, and did, reaching the giddy heights of level 48 by the release of TBC. Slow, eh? 2 years, I believe it took me. I just about got my mount in time. Of course, to level that slowly I wasn't levelling Draik alone - I was also developing my warrior, thence-named Brioche, who reached level 60. I was part of a raiding guild and picked up a couple of epixxxxx. I also had a multitude of alts, and I had RPed sporadically on Thunderhorn with the few other roleplayers on there.

Come TBC, then, I had a level 60 tanking warrior, a level 48 feral druid and a level 15 troll rogue. These are the only characters who really mattered, and they have gone on to become my mains, for the most part. At TBC, I started focusing on Zulmaran, as one of my friends was levelling a BElf hunter along with so many others on SSL. Zul and said Belf hunter reached 70 after several months, long before any of my other characters. Brioche hit 63 and stopped. Draik was without hope of getting to 50. I had a Belf hunter at 48 on SSL. I then proceeded to raid with Zul, and acquired a full set of Kara/heroics epix, along with Netherblade panties from Gruul. Gruul was cool. Anyhoo.

At this point I realised SSL had died somewhere along the line. Noone RPed except within their guilds, it was on the tinytiny Battlegroup and so BGs were impossible, we were among the last to clear... everything, and it was basically empty. This was problematic, as all my precious epics were there. As a consequence, both Draik and Brioche transferred to Moonglade (Brioche changing to Daigeil along the way) and have since become my mains alongside Zul, although Zul sees much less play.

In recent times, I have reached 63 on Draik and Daigeil is now level 70, with TWO epix. Zul sees next-to-no play, and my hunter, Arranath, is my current interest, and I aim to reach at least 60 pre-Wrath, preferably higher.

End personal history. Resume interesting stuff.

Now that my personal WoW history is out of the way, I suppose you want to know what this blog will be. I intend to catalogue everything that I do, basically. Wrath exploration, talent experimentation, raiding. There may be class/spec guides, if I bother. Speaking of spec, Feral, Protection, Beast Mastery and Combat. There may be instance "guides", in the form of my experiences and discoveries of what works. So.. yeah. Feel free to browse through. Expect no coherency.

~Draik