Low moan – Whu? … No.. go away. Head splitting… want… sleep… shouldn’t have… guh… too much Fiery Festival Brew…

Whu-wha? Oh no… Kiaara’s gonna kill me. –groan- Actually, could you, please… really… not feeling so good… I… I’m gonna crawl back into bed now…

-

As you may have noticed, I don’t really do Holiday events. I’m really not someone who goes out of their way to get Achievements – especially not the holiday ones, which tend to be boring and grindy. But I really wanted the title from this one. Flame Warden. Isn’t that just perfect for a Shaman? I think so!

Thus, I dragged myself all around Azeroth and Outlands to both Honour and Desecrate bonfires. Kalimdor resulted in some frustration when I was ganked by no less than three Hordies when I was desecrating the Mulgore flame. Seriously, come on. Three on one! /golfclap. Of course, I was destroyed by far bigger groups than that when going for City Fires, but that’s understandable, what with invading the heart of their nation.

A few of us from Soul Haven also put Ahune in his place – four times. We were quite lucky with drops – apparently, on normal mode, the Enchantment and the Scythe are 3% drop rate, but we got both over the course of four fights. Yours truly snagged the Scythe!

Looks snazzy, eh? It’s also pretty strange in that it gives “Spell Critical Hit Rating” despite the merging of Physical and Spell Critical into one stat back in October! Also, I now actually have the tabard I’m depicted with in the avatar that Pike did for me.*

After splurging all my blossoms on the outfit, I spun round one of those poles, and earned my title!

Edit: There we go, added a much better “Flame Warden” picture, as promised!

Unfortunately, since this is the last event till Brewfest, I can see a lot of people sticking with Flame Warden and the Horde equivalent for quite some time, so I won’t be a unique snowflake. But I’m extremely pleased that I now have a title that I feel truly fits my character.

-

*If you’re following me on Twitter, you’ll have seen this quite a lot for the past couple weeks. Snazzy, eh?

Edit: Ohh, and I have to put this in. Yimi is awesome.

Finally!

I am free – free of the tyranny that is doing daily quests!

That’s not all I got today, oh no. Let’s see…

Talk about overachieving! The amount of achievement spam was only half planned – I didn’t intentionally raise my Darnassus rep to the level where this would all happen at once. I just noticed that I’d be one commendation badge short of Exalted by the time I was finished being a valiant for Stormwind, so I grabbed one and used it when I handed in quest.

Ahh, I’m just glad I don’t have to do those quests anymore. I did enjoy the jousting aspect (when my mount wasn’t bugging out) but I just… don’t like dailies. Doing the same quests every single day for the past month was such a pain.

Now, I’m just waiting for patch 3.1.2 to drop, so I can use all those seals I saved up to get a cheap Turbostrider, two pets, and hopefully fixed Gnomeregan Tabard (City Tabards from the tournament currently display as your guild tabard.)

(Siiigh. I like to take screenshots. You know on WoW Insider it says “Why did the Rhino cross the road? I have no idea, but I bet BRK filmed it.” or something along those lines? Well, I’m the same, but for screenshots. I’d take a screeny at key points of it’s crossing. So if I don’t deal with my screenshots immediately, I end up with far too many on my hands.)

Ding! Level 80!

Ding! The big eight-zero!

Plus! World Explorer! (Note that WoW can only display two achievements at once?)

World Explorer!

The road to 80 was pretty fun. I rounded off as many of the Zul’Drak quests as I could (only Ampitheatre of Anguish left for the achievement.), including soloing Malas the Corruptor. With Erethia. Winnar! Ran Gundrak with a PUG, and it was the most succesful instance run I’ve done in the expansion. Priest made a little mistake and died at the start of the instance, but aside from that, we breezed through it in 40 minutes. I dunno what that says about Kazura and Yuanjia! /grin

Gundrak Clear

Was a fun run, though I didn’t get the Bow I was hoping would drop – Ah well. Had I got it, I would be totally decked out in Blues. I bugged one of Kazura’s college mates to make me some Swiftarrow (Not all of it… Farming Eternal Air makes me die inside. Will get most of the set made for basic PvP utility, though.), which was a nice upgrade.

Ran through the huge questline to open up Sons of Hodir in Storm Peaks, which was good fun. The Drakkensyrd quest, which melee classes and casters universally love… was not so hot for me. It’s an absolutely brilliant quest, but it is VERY hard to kill anything with ranged attacks before they get out of range, so you have to melee them. Doesn’t help I was missing TWO ranks of Raptor Strike in an attempt to save a little bit of cash. Ouch. When I got the hang of it (abusing the GCD-less Aspects – switching between Beast and Dragonhawk, quickly throwing in Mongoose Bites when Beast was up.), I was able to take them down relatively quickly by trying to fire an Arcane Shot and a Serpent Sting before engaging in close combat.

-

I’m 2 days from Honoured with the Sons at the moment – can’t wait until I get my shiny belt and Shoulder Inscription. And about 3 or 4 days (it’s late, I can’t be bothered counting out Rep /grin) from Revered with Oracles. Not sure whether or not to replace my Swiftarrow with the Toothslice Helm. Lose out on a small amount of Agi and Crit, but gain a nice bit of AP, Int and Stamina.

Now that I think about it, my leveling from 77 has really revolved entirely around getting rep. I spent the latter half of 78 and all of 79 in Icecrown, where I did far too many quests for the Argent Crusade and the Ebon Blade. I’m currently about 5000 Rep from Revered with the Crusade, and 7000ish from the same with Ebon Blade. Revered with both means all sorts of nice stuff. Zombie Sweeper Shotgun from the Crusade, plus the Cloak of Holy Extermination I got at Honoured. From the Ebon Blade, I’ll get Spaulders of the Black Arrow and Arcanum of Torment.

-

I had a lot of fun doing the quests for those factions. Firstly, the quest The Air Stands Still seems to me to be a little bit bugged. On the first boss, my horn didn’t work all three times I tried it, and I somehow managed to solo an elite with 182k HP – probably by keeping Mend Pet going at all times, dropping AP Enhanced Gifts of the Naaru, and an Intimidate every 42 seconds, and he eventually died. Second boss I teamed up with a Druid, and again, the Horn didn’t work for either of us. Final boss, the horn failed twice, and then worked the third time, much to my dismay, as me and Erethia were doing fine.

Another feat of endurance was at Malykriss, near Icecrown Citadel. Either the respawn rate there is crazy, or the patrols are, but either way I fought twenty-two enemies in a row before I got out of combat. Was kinda fun though, even when there were 5 enemies on me.

... the corpses begin to pile up.

The final stretch was done in a group with a DK, Warrior and Shaman, when we did all the quests from Not-So-Honorable Combat up to the end of the Valhalas fights, during which I dinged.

-

Thus completes the leveling journey… Now what?

Well, for starters, I have two level 79 pets (more on that later), and three level 75 pets to get to 80. After Erethia gets 80 (she has been accompanying me on my dailys now, as Moko can’t hold aggro to save himself.), I’ll probably level my new Rhino, and then Moko. There are still a good few lower level Northrend instances I haven’t run yet, so I might take advantage of things like Azjol-Nerub to level him. I don’t plan on even trying Heroics until he is 80.

I’ve also got to try and get my gear sorted. Yes, I’m getting some decent gear from rep, but there’s a few things that could do with upgrades (trinkets immediately come to mind.) And… enchants. Should I be enchanting my stuff? I think I should be… but it’s so expensive. Well, I have, what, 3.7k on me at the moment? So that’s plenty, to be honest, but still. I’m one of those people, that the more money I have, the less willing I am to spend any of it! In fact, as much as I love the armoured snowy gryphon, I’m putting off buying it until I’m exalted with Kirin Tor. I must save myself an extra 300g! What do you mean, “tight fisted?” Me? Never, I just – Oooh, I just found 10 copper on the ground! Joy!

So, current goals are looking like: Level pets and sort my gear. I’m quite pleased that I am all Blue (bar Ranged Weapon… only the most important part >.<) right now, though some of those could definately do with an upgrade to a better blue. Oh, and get four more Nerubian Chitin and twenty (nuuu!) Icy Dragonscales, and get someone to craft me a Quiver and Ammo Pouch. I’m not paying the obscene AH prices! Going to see about getting me a pair of Savage Cobalt Slicers, too. I love my gathering skills – if I want anything Hunter-y made, I can farm up my own mats.

-

Yeesh, this post is getting long, isn’t it?

That’s what I get for going, bah, I’ll not update until I am 80. Oyyy…

Final WoW related topic: Rhino!

"Someone's been beaten by the ugly stick," said the Rhino to his master.

Tamed this guy at 79, though I’ve not been able to come up with a name for him as yet; Niflheimr (Zaea’s suggestion) is quite good though I’ve not really given anything else much thought yet, since he’s not seen any use in combat so far.

Since pet respecs are so cheap, he’s currently got a pretty solid leveling spec, just to make that last level go by quickly. I’m thinking of something like this for 80 though, which is about 80% Survivability, and 20% Damage. The Rhino is going to be my big BG pet, since the idea of stampeding 20 Hordies amuses me, and as he is such a big target, and Stampede so annoying, the stamina and armour talents are no brainers, as are Avoidance and Grace of the Mantis.I didn’t take Great Resistance, as I tend not to fear casters much as a BM Hunter. (Just wait – I’ll soon eat my words, no doubt, when Warlocks start raining shadowy doom and Boomkins call celestial burnination down upon me.)

The Active skills I took are meant to improve our survivability in a pinch, and Intervene serves two purposes – first and most obvious, to reduce the damage I take, but also to quickly pull him back to me if needed. The offensive skills are limited to Charge and Boar’s Speed, so he can move about the battleground a bit quicker, and one point in Cobra Reflexes to give a slight DPS boost.

Now, I have no idea how that’s gonna work when it actually comes to doing an AV or a busy Wintergrasp, so it could get a lot of tweaking later, or I might give up on the idea of my stampeding panzer altogether. Though I doubt the latter, as even if it’s not practical, Rhino Bowling with Horde Skittles is just too fun a thought!

-

On an amusing RL note… Work’s Christmas night out was a laugh. Nothing quite like one of the older, female staff going around with a big bag of presents, which ranged from perfectly innocent lolly-pops, to not so innocent lolly-pops, to festive thongs. I got a thong, with Santa’s face on the front, which I promptly donated to another colleague who proceeded to wear it first on his head, then as one would a pair of dungarees. Also, Manager trying to give out awards to drunk staff whilst drunk herself is rather fun, too.

I can sum up the entire expansion so far as:

Death Knights are awesome.

Northrend is laggy.

But I feel I should PROBABLY write more than that (in between hopping onto all of my characters to collect Frosty! He is brilliant, hehe. I love the wee noises he makes.)

So, let’s split this into three for the sake of simplicity.

Northrend:

We haven’t spent too much time in Northrend yet. To begin with, we took the boat from Stormwind to the Borean Tundra. We didn’t really intend to quest there, but Yuanjia found a quest that gave him a feral staff that blew the one he got from Ring of Blood the night before right out the water. (Oh, and, late congrats to Yuanjia on level 70! Just in time, he got there literally 2-3 hours before Wrath went live!) It also gave me a nice bow upgrade, though I now miss my old Valanos‘ Longbow , which served me well in the few weeks between dinging 70 and getting Wrath.

From there, we wandered up along the coast, to the Tuskarr village Unu’pe, where we hopped on a Turtle to the Dragonblight, which, being the name of our realm, we were honour-bound to explore, at least a little bit.

Well, at least as far as the Azure Dragonshrine, when we decided that it might not be a good place to hang around, eheh.

Then it was another hop on a turtle from Moa’kai harbour over to the Howling Fjord, a run to town there and…

That was it! There was actually no lag between towns. In towns… even in Howling Fjord, which was practically empty, there was just a lot of lag.

We aren’t going to actually level till next week, as we’re all busy at different times this weekend (Kazura is working tomorrow, I have a party at night, on Saturday I have work and then a meal after that, and Kazura doesn’t play on Sundays), so we aren’t really gonna get much chance to level together.

I already really like the Howling Fjord though, I think it’s just got this nice sort of… relaxed feel about it, like, yes, it’s a freezing cold forest, but, it still has a sort of muted beauty.

Or am I just rambling? I do that a lot.

So Northrend adventures so far… Not very exciting, though I fully expect they will be when we do some proper quests.

Death Knight:

Death Knight is pure, unadulterated, win.

I’m not sure if this is the “Oh, it’s the first new class for WoW, omg, yaaay, we all love it, woo, woo, woo!” or if Blizzard just made an exceedingly good class, but… I love it. Kazura loves it. Yuanjia loves it. I repeat : KAZURA LOVES IT.

Kazura loves a melee DPS!

I never thought I’d see the day!

Ah, but I digress.

I’ve made myself an Unholy specced Draenei – I had to. I cannot live without Gift of the Naaru. Well, I can, my Druid does fine without, and Ella never uses it, but they don’t count, they have their own big heals. As it stands, I’m not… entirely happy with how I’ve specced. I think it’s less a case of “Oh, I don’t think that’s a good talent”, it’s more a case of “Oh… I don’t actually know what talents are actually good.”

I actually spent two of my points completely on a whim on On a Pale Horse. The combat aspect of it as actually kinda useless for me right now. And the speed boost, while certainly handy, isn’t necessary… though I really do love zipping about at 120% speed. On the other hand, Faulsey feels like a total snail now.

That said, Death Knight is a blast. The early quests are just amazing, and the way the area works, with the Phasing, is kinda cool. Also, despite being a sort of dark, bloody questline, has a few funny moments.

Firstly, when you have to steal a horse, and ride it back to an NPC, before you can summon your Deathcharger? Well, there are horses… and then there are colts. I used a colt to get my Deathcharger… and it was hilarious, this huge, black plate armour clad Draenei riding this tiny horse about, and seriously handing it in for the quest.

So that tiny horse became this…

I think I got a good deal. Yupyup!

Another funny moment was when you hide behind a tree to ambush a member of the Scarlet Crusade.

I lol’d.

But, all too soon, the fun that is the DK starting s="blsp-spelling-corrected">quest line came to an end… and the fun that was doing 4 man ramparts with a 59 Blood DK (Kazura), a 58 Blood DK (Yuanjia), a 70 Feral Druid (Wraigth), and myself as a level 58 Unholy DK. So no real healing capacity. Which meant that when Kaz and Yuan went wild on the bosses, they died. However, they survived long enough that me and Wraigth didn’t… Which shows how much damage they were managing to throw out before kicking the bucket.

It was insane.

Given the lack of playing together time for the next few days, I’ll probably actually get quite far on DK, which I’ll hopefully get the hang of soon… I had the hang of it for the first few quests, then you start getting talent points… first a trickle, then a flood, and bam, you’ve suddenly got 4 more abilities and you have no idea what to do with them.

Collector’s Edition Bonuses:

Mouse mat : Automatic win for me.
Concept Art Book : Beautiful.
Soundtrack : Acceptable (let’s face it, MMO’s aren’t MEANT to have great soundtracks.)
Other Extras;
Frosty, the insanely cute Undead Whelpling! : Automatic win!
And those non-combat pet size increasing biscuits – 50 of them. They will be getting saved for special occasions, though we gave them a try when we got them. : Fun.

Not had a look at the behind the scenes DVD yet because… well… I’m too busy playing the game to watch something about it, meheh.

Whoa, look at that time… I need my bed.

So, in summary, Wrath so far?

Win!

Edit: Actually, I think if I actually said actually one more actual time in that post, I might actually have melted your actual brain. L2Diversify, I can has it?

I hadn’t tried to upgrade.

Computer is delayed, no idea what the ETA is, so early Wrath of the Lich King is going to be even more of a lagfest.

Also, I did 16 Daily quests today – not a lot, really, but between the cash rewards themself, and vendoring junk that I picked up in doing them, I earned 171g, which isn’t to be sneezed at. Had I not went through the whole upgrade debacle, I might actually have enough money for Epic Flight by now!

Ah well – I wouldn’t really see much use of my speedy mount until 77, so it’s not a huge loss. I have one more set of Daily quests left before Wrath, then I don’t expect to be seeing my gold count go up much, as any wealth we do earn whilst questing will be shared between me, Kazura and Yuanjia.

Besides, I’m not even Honored with Skyguard (Tomorrow, though!), so a Nether Ray is MILES off, and I don’t even want to think about the Nether Drake. Oy…

Nulinator is leveling at a steady clip, now that I’ve caved in and am levelling him in Ashenvale. I expect I’ll be level 25-6 before Wrath hits, after which he’ll be put in a box until I’ve tired myself out with the new content.

I am having a small issue at the moment with my Nature’s Grace Talent. It’s a pretty handy talent, cutting 0.5 secs off the next spell cast after your Crit with a spell – which reduces Starfire to a managable 2.5 second cast. However, when I’m at the Wrath stage of battles (mob health has taken a jump it seems – or I’ve just been fighting lots of Warriors.), I tend to have one Wrath in the air or crackling on the enemy, and another Wrath mid cast – by the time the crit has landed, and the buff has shown up on my screen, I’m midway through a 1 sec Wrath cast, and don’t react swift enough to cancel it, which is just a bit of a waste, as it’s below the GCD.

Just shows I need to slow down on my Wrath spam… I’m so impatient. I like to mow mobs down as fast as I can – so used to them dropping like flies on my Hunter. Pew!Pew!Pew!Pew! needs to become Pew… Pew… Pew… Pew. I mean, it’s not like Entangling Roots is going anywhere in a hurry.

Speaking of Hunters, I have made a second Hunter on a PvP server (Aggamaggan), where Kazura has a lowbie Undead Warlock – just for fun. When level 10 rolled round, and seeing as it was a PvP server, I thought, you know what the most fun pet to get would be?

A moth.

So I hauled ass all the way to Azuremyst, and I was surprised to find I didn’t get killed until I was actually on Azuremyst… and that was just by the NPCs guarding the way into Ammen Vale. Once there, it was a simple task to tame a moth, and it didn’t take too long to get her to catch up with me.

I automatically started sticking points in Beast Mastery on this new Hunter. I’m not really sure why, hehe. As soon as some gold from Mining comes in, I’m gonna respec Survival. Or Marksmanship. I’m not sure.

If they bring in this Dual-Spec idea, I’m quite interested in making Survival my second spec on my main Hunter (oh, the confusion of naming both Hunters Faulsey.) It’s kind of odd, I’m not sure where this random urge has came from, but I really want to give it a try.

Marksmanship I view as being slightly less exciting, simply because the focus in that tree is ranged attacks. I’ve done the whole ranged attacks with little spice on FFXI as my Ranger (though WoW Hunter is a bit more complex.), so I’ll probably give it a miss on main Faulsey.

Closing note for this entry… Goodbye, Burning Crusade, hello Wrath of the Lich King!

Thursday is gonna be hell. /grin

Leaving poor Kiaara as my only friend stranded on the ground.

-cackles-

XD

Popped on briefly tonight for the big moment:

Woo!

You know whats really great about this?

She can’t complain if I fly when I’m helping her level.

If I help her level before Wrath.

Y’know, computer all to pot and all that. (Final attempt at sorting – an IDE to SATA converter, to confirm whether or not my suspicion that the IDE slot on the motherboard is garbage, should arrive tomorrow. Fingers crossed. I highly doubt it will work though, so it’s a good thing it was cheap.)

And that’s not her only new form…

-GASP!-

DUN, DUN, DUUUUUNNNN!

Yep, that’s Kazura… as a Moonkin.

She took advantage of the free Druid Respec in 3.0.3 to spec to Balance until 80.

It’s really wierd to think she’s not gonna have her tree form for a long time now. I’ll get used to it though, but will she? She really misses Swiftmend, apparently.

Blargh!

So I got everything up and running, installed all the drivers, all that boring crap.

And all seemed well.

For about TEN MINUTES.

Since then, WoW has been following some “lag patterns.”

Sometimes, the game has 5 seconds of smooth running, 5 seconds of horrific lag. Other times it’s 20 – 5. Still other times it’s 2 – 10. Occasionally the game runs completely smooth for a whole ten minutes!

But mostly the lag is unbearable.

I naively assumed that any mid price card would be able to run a four year old game better than my six year old card.

WRONG.

On paper, the card can play lots of lovely games.

In practice I might as well have stuck a fried egg in the PCI-E slot, and it would have run WoW better.

I did some research (that I really should have done beforehand), and it turns out the card is absolutely CRAP.

Fortunately, PC Worlds returns policy means I can just wander along to a PC World with the card, and get it replaced.

I’ve ordered yet another card though, that SHOULD work (I googled it to make sure >.>), this time from Amazon. If it DOESN’T work, then I am royally screwed, as you can’t return to Amazon.

Fingers crossed.

As it stands, I am going on to do a couple of Skettis daily quests every day, but that’s all my WoW until the new card arrives.

I could, in theory, just hook up all my old stuff so I could play WoW, but I really can’t be bothered.

Hey, at least that proves I’m not an addict. If I was I’d be curled up gibbering about the fact the new card wasn’t working, and I would most definately be hooking up old stuff to play the game! XD

Suck it, Kazura! :3

Anyway, I do have a bit of an update from before everything went to pot.

I am exalted with the Kurenai!

It was actually a particularly easy grind. Ogres themselves give 10 Kurenai rep, and of course they drop Obsidian Warbeads, effectively worth 50 rep each. It only took about 3 grinding trips, none of which could have been longer than an hour and a half, to reach Exalted. It may have taken so little time to grind because I was also helping Kazura with Nagrand quests outside of the grind, which of course involved killing Ogres and Murkbloods.

I immediately bought myself two talbuks. I couldn’t resist. As nice as the Cobalt Talbuk was, I also had to get a White one – they look pretty awesome themselves, and of course, I had to keep with my little theme!

I decided just to go for normal riding talbuks for two reasons; Firstly, it’s a sort of lore type thing – I don’t think a Hunter would want his mount to be encumbered with armour, instead preferring the greater mobility offered without it, and second, the plain riding Talbuks were cheaper. Only cost me 112g for the pair!

I’ve also been slowly working towards a PvP belt reward from Halaa, which isn’t particularly easy to get these days.

Attacking Halaa on your own is unlikely to turn up any marks unless you have a daft level 65 hordie trying to defend the place. Instead, you are likely to be greeted by an level 70 Epic Mage… with no idea of epic tactics, fortunately. I managed to get mounted and fly off whilst only suffering two frostbolts, taking a steep dive into the Halaani basin, and making a sharp 180 degree turn, to watch in glee as the mages tracking dot moved at epic flight speed on my original heading, bwahaha.

Another time, me and Kazura joined a small party on the defence of Halaa. Somehow, we had FOUR defenders, which the Horde soon overpowered, and their forces continued to grow to about 15 players by the time they captured Halaa. I decided then that the Alliance characters in Nagrand that night had Halaa-pathy. Even Kazura’s calls of “COME DEFEND HALAA, YOU GET MARKS, OOOOH, LOVELY LOVELY MARKS!” didn’t get them to join the defence… /grin

I did laugh at a level 67 Warlock, who got complacent after we stopped attacking Halaa (despite me and another level 70 Hunter hovering just above on our mounts), and decided to have a DUEL with one of his team mates… You can bet your ass I dropped out the sky and one shotted him for a mark!…

I’m going to hell. Still, in the words of Pigeon, Duelganking, whoever wins… one really loses.

On the Druid front, I believe I’m going to retire Ilthiran. As much as I love my Tauren Druid, it’s just so boring to level without anyone to talk to. So I, for the first time in ever, made a MALE Night Elf to serve as my druid.

I hate male night elves.

They are hideous.

Fortunately, I managed to avoid the more ridiculous hairstyles, facial hair, and massive eyebrows.

Unfortunately, the first set of leather legs that I got as a quest reward were a pair of shorts, so I looked like a male prostitute for my first 10 levels.

I’ve decided to take Nulinator (HORRIBLE name, I know, but it’s an old variation on Numinator, and I was stuck – SO STUCK! – for a name.) in a different direction from Ilthiran. My closest WoW friends are all druids. Kiaara, Yuanjia and Wraigth are all Feral. Kazura is Restoration. My tauren was Feral. I’ve always wanted to give BOOMKIN!!! A whirl… So I’m speccing Balance!

With regards to the patch, and all the talent and skill changes that came with it, now that I’ve been on and getting used to it, I really love all the hunter changes.

Firstly, my pets… They don’t need fed! Erethia keeps herself going with her Bloodthirsty Talent, which procs one 20% of her melee hits, restoring 5% health and happiness. Ella has Carrion Feeder, allowing her to eat practically any enemy we defeat, and gain large amounts of health and happiness from that. And finally, Akshiran’s Guard Dog talent means he is content just to growl, granting him 10% happiness. Death of a pet isn’t a huge issue either, as in that case I simply get them to fight the nearest monster – they quickly return to happy, after having growled/bitten/eaten, as required, the opponent.

I do have one issue with the pet changes though… the spellbook bugs. Fortunately, they are easily remedied by putting skills you DON’T want on auto cast on the action bar, but it was frustrating until I actually did so. Having cower on autocast is just not fun for leveling – one steady shot, and BAM, Clefthoof up in your face! And of course, every time, I’d forget for the first few mobs that I had to turn it off, so there was a fair amount of zomgfeigndeathNOW! moments.

With regards to my own skills…

Aspect of the Viper is just… awesome. When I get to around a quarter of my mana, I simply flick that on (sometimes with Rapid Fire – I never really use it otherwise.), get myself back up to about 80% Mana, and Hawk goes back on. I hear tell this is being changed, but is supposed to return about the same amount of mana. Since it seems it’s getting a PvP buff, I can’t complain, though for PvE, I LOVE how it works. I rarely use Rapid Fire, so over the course of 15 seconds I can easily regain a huge portion of mana simply by activating that in addition to this aspect.

Steady Shot… I’m not sure on. I know it’s a brilliant ability, but I’m not sure how much I should be using it. I guess it’s fortunate I’ve been spared having to learn to “weave” it, but even so, given the easy availability of mana due to Viper, I’m not sure if this is something I should just be spamming, or instead using conservatively.

The Hunter glyphs are looking quite snazzy. When all three of my Majors are available, I plan to have Hunter’s Mark (Currently equipped – 20% bonus to the skill is quite nice.), Freezing Trap (30% reduced movement speed for 4 secs after my trap breaks? Tasty! Also got this one.) and Beastial Wrath (20 sec reduction on cooldown… plus what I’ll be getting from Longevity… -Churchill voice- Ohhhhh yess! I haven’t even seen one of these on AH yet – they need 375 skill, I think.) Minor Glyphs I’m not so sure… they aren’t particularly exciting, though they are only minor.

Talent wise, I’ve been able to drop 2 of my points that were in marksmanship, and invest them in Beast Mastery. The two points in question were from Rapid Killing, which while beneficial, I didn’t feel was as good as a constant boost to my AP based on Intellect. It’s actually somewhat of a relief no longer having it, as before, I used to feel sort of pressured to make sure I actually used the buff, which meant charging into fights with low mana when soloing, and when paired with Kazura, running off ahead of her to fight enemies – when I actually got the killing blow, and not her – darned Moonfiarr!

As it stands, by the time I’m 70, I’ll actually have 4 less points in Marksmanship than I would have with the old tree, which gives a few more to put into my main tree, and unlock various goodies there. I’m passing up on the common Spirit Bond (a talent I actually find laughable, from a leveling point of view – admittedly, I don’t know much about it from a level cap point of biew, but come on… 2% of your health every 10 seconds? 20% bonus healing? Whoo! I’m not meant to get hit, Akshiran comes with a tasty +40% as it is, and if I need extra healing for my pet, I have Gift of the Naaru, which has also been considerably buffed.) and Beastial Discipline (As it stands, Go For the Throat is generating more focus than I can easily dump) talents, as they simply don’t seem that useful to me. While some have suggested Invigoration is not terribly useful, as it won’t proc that often, believe me, I see PLENTY of crits from my focus dump skills, and a bit of extra mana when your pet crits is always a nice thing.

The actual Beast Mastery talent itself is going to wait until 76, which is a pet talent point level, and thus I will gain 5 points that level with which to splurge on goodies. I feel sort of backwards, as the vast majority of Hunters I’ve seen since the patch (well, post 60 hunters, obviously.) have had exotic pets, and those few without haven’t been Beast Masters.

However, I love my normal pets far too much to abandon them in favour of an exotic pet, which, to be totally honest, I find pretty ugly overall. Core Hounds are abominations, apart from the Kurken. Devilsaurs aren’t too bad, I must admit – and they have a white skin, which is bonus points for me /grin. Worms? Yeurgh. Silithids? Ugly bugs of doom! Chimeras? Horrible two headed reptile birds. I could go on and on. In fact, the only Exotic pet class I like the look of is the Spirit Beast – and that looks like a more magical version of Erethia!

I have to admit, I’m possibly a bit odd for a male hunter. Not to generalize or anything, but I feel that to a lot of us, we judge our pets based on attributes such as “cool” or “fierce” or “powerful”. An example of such a pet would be a Ravager. Powerful? Yes. Fierce? Most definately? Cool? It’s an alien, what’s not cool about that?

I judge my pets on… well, “beauty” is perhaps the best word to use. My two favourite pets – Erethia and Ella – are what I would describe as gorgeous. Ella in particular is (in the words of one of my non WoWing friends) “classy”. Despite the general ridiculousness of her attempts to stay aloft whilst stationary, she could be called “elegant”, with her creamy white feathers, and long, flowing tail. Erethia is a bit more of the “fierce”, but with a typical feline grace about her, and her sleek, spotted coat.

Akshiran… well, Akshiran is my “guy” pet, as matching the description above. He just looked to cool not to tame! He’s not exactly pretty though. Even so, he is the best looking warp stalker – the other types are some seriously nasty shades of grey and green – Do not want! To be fair to him, his ugliness compared to my other two pet’s can’t be helped – the Tenacity typing is meant to take damage, and in doing so, they are bound to be the biggest, ugliest creatures out there!

Of course, this is just me sort of generalizing. I’m sure plenty of other male hunters tame their pets based on beauty, and I’ve seen many a female hunter with some ugly ass pets. Another thing to take into consideration are the players who aim at all times in the game to be the best – the kind of player that prior to 3.0 you’d see with a Boar or a Ravager that they’d tamed simply for the awesomeness of Boar’s Charge or Gore. While I respect that some players get their enjoyment from this game by being the best, to me, aesthetics are of the greatest importance in my pet.

For leveling, all pets are perfectly viable thanks to the removal of caster stats, and I’d rather take a pet with a someone useless leveling family skill (Ella’s snatch does help against humanoids, but even then, not all humanoids carry – or use, in the case of casters!- weapons.), that looks good, than take something that’s gonna be AOE tanking or reducing armour. (Though, damn, I want a wasp – they are too cool.) In particular, I actually find gorilla’s to be somewhat disturbing. Gorilla’s are relatively close to humans compared to all the other pets, and I’m pretty sure they are actually capable of complex emotion – I recall a story about a Gorilla in a zoo, that had a baby that she rejected, and she then had another ba
by that died, and she mourned it’s passing, so to me, the idea of taming such a beast, even in a game seems quite… wrong.

Whoa, even randomer tangent than usual, there! Ahem, getting back on topic!

Even when I finally DO get Beast Mastery, it’s a talent to enhance my current pets. With those 4 points, I can unlock every one of the final tier skills for my pets, and all the more useful talents, greatly enhancing those pets. At 76 to 79, I won’t be taming any exotic pets – unless I do so for the novelty. Erethia, Ella and Akshiran are my permanent companions, and none of them will be gotten rid of.

However, I understand that beauty is not what end game content requires. End game content requires you to maximize your potential. If the DPS buff for exotics goes through, I will most definitely be taming a couple of exotics if I get involved in raiding. The aforemented Kurken or white Devilsaur would be my choice of Ferocity, and for Tenacity, well, it’d HAVE to be a Rhino, though he’d be for PvP. Ella would be for small scale PvP – WSG and AB. AV would see me busting out the Rhino, battering dozens of players about the place. I’m not well versed in Eye or Strand to have any idea which I’d use there, to be honest.

I’ve yet to test Ellaria out on any battlegrounds, but I got a Glyph of Frost Shock on the cheap, which will increase the duration to 10 seconds… Muwahaha. That should actually be enough to kite someone with Frost —> Flame —> Frost —> repeat. We’ll see how that actually plays out in BGs.

I’ve still yet to actually try Ilthiran and Numinator in actual, factual combat, as I’ve been so busy leveling Faulsey.

And here’s some reasons why, as they relate to my classes:

General:

Mounts and small pets no longer taking up any space = WIN!
Same deal for BG marks and the like.
Achievements are fun.
Stormwind Harbour looks really snazzy.

Hunter:

Steady shot at level 60 (formerly 62).
Aspect of the Viper at level 20 (formerly 65ish?)
Deterrence … is now 40, I think? (Ok, not that good, but it was formerly a survival talent, and it could come in handy in ZOMGIISGONNADIE! situations.)
Pet overhaul is just awesome.

Ella, my Bird of Prey (Formerly Owl family.) is gonna be a BITCH in PvP, with her Snatch ability disarming for 6 secs, and as such, I am speccing her with PvP in mind.

Erethia, who I mentioned has died a LOT recently, can now bring herself back to life once every 10 minutes… If that isn’t awesome, I don’t know what is.

Shaman:

Wind Shock : Cheap spell interrupt! At level 16!
Shocks in general: Shamanistic Focus now reduces cost of all shocks by 45% – Used to reduce next shock by 60% after a critical hit. So, saving a lot more mana overall now, though I’m no longer the crit-juggernaught!
Water Shield: At level 20 now… Though that makes it hard to pick which shield would be more useful in PVP.

My biggest problem in PVP was running out of Mana – Shocks were expensive! Now, I can see myself lasting a lot longer in fights without having to rest, or dying due to running out of mana to Shock people with.

Druid:

Faerie Fire; Feral : Now a learnable skill at like level 18… awesome!
Revive: Shiny, cooldown-less, reagent-less resurrect!
Nature’s Grasp: Trainable as opposed to talent… and usable in Feral forms!
Survival Instincts (11 point talent in Feral) : 30% extra HP for 20 secs.

Try killing me now, when I can put up natures grasp for free to entangle one enemy, use survival instincts for an HP boost, and dash away from combat!

Paladin:

Seals: Now last 2 minutes… No more rushing to next enemy so I can judge a seal on it!
New Judgements: Judgement of Light, giving a chance to restore HP, and of Wisdom, for Mana… Could come in handy.
Protection Tree could actually be of use in PVP… Though I will probably still spec ret for that.

On downside on Paladin, however, is that Seal of the Crusader is GONE… And it was one of my most used abilities.

Ah well, I’m sure I’ll live.

I’ve yet to try the barbers (on orders from Kazura NOT to go without her ON PAIN OF DEATH ), but for me so far, this patch has been all win.

To Dragonblight’s trade channel, I say this…

Less QQ more pewpew, kthx.

Ahhh, finally, Outland! It took us long enough, but finally, me and Kazura reached level 58, and were able to go through the Dark Portal to Outland.

Group photo (Yuanjia had to be there to see his little protegee though the portal, hehe )

Going through the portal, we were greeted with the sight of a lovely big demon, and his hordes of underlings, constantly assaulting the stalwart defenders on the Stairs of Destiny.

Cool!

Ehehe.

From there, there was the usual flight to Honor Hold, and the introductory, wander around town getting introduced type thing, and then, the proper quests… Quests which granted some insane gear, compared to the woefully inadquate gear I had. Attack Power and Stamina have since been greatly increased with the aid of various shiny bits of gear, and Agility and Crit Rating have seen some nice boosts too! In addition, Kazura now looks the part of a Resto druid; Tasty spellpower gear, with a very druidic look to it, and a nice crystal staff.

After we’d done a few of the quests and upgraded some of our gear, the next stop was a trip to Shattrath, through the ghostly Terrokar Forest.

Even with our very quick dash through the zone to get to the city, I’ve decided I really like the forest… With the mist, it has a very otherwordly feel to it, and the music is very soothing – I really look forward to questing here. Shattrath itself wasn’t particularly exciting, though it didn’t take long for me to have my first lag induced Aldor Lift Death. One thing that did interest me was the little show with the Tauren Chieftains in the tavern, which was a laugh, and something a little different.

Level 59 didn’t take long at all to achieve, with the wealth of new quests and their rewards giving me plenty of EXP quickly. 59, as I’m sure it always is, was a rather uneventful level, so I pressed on with my 172000 (give or take a few thousand?) EXP to level 60, dinged, was rather chuffed with myself, and then had to pick my jaw up from the floor when I saw my EXP TNL was 494000. That’s more than 300k more exp (durr )… Ouch!

Fortunately/unfortunately, the next patch is reducing that by 30%, supposedly, so leveling will be much faster… While that means less time farting about with grinding, it also makes me worry I might miss out on a lot of quests; I really like doing a lot of the outlands quests, simply because they always take me someplace new and exciting… and usually deadly.

Anyway, we all know what level 60 means… Epic Mount!

Mmm, lovely Swift Frostsaber-y goodness! It feels so much faster zipping about on this new mount, even if she isn’t as nice as my old Striped Frostsaber. Given the price of Epic Mounts, I decided to pass on buying an Elekk from the Exodar, as I find them ugly, and I wasn’t paying 85g for one. No way. (Still not exalted with Exodar… hehe.) I might, eventually, purchase the Black PVP Elekk, just to sort of go, well, yes, I am a Draenei, I DO have an Elekk, now leave me alone to ride my tigers!

On the topic of mounts, one thing I still have “squee! ” moments about are the flying mounts in Outland… damn, are they cool! Every time someone swoops past me (I saw someone with the Phoenix mount in Shat! ) on one, I think, whoa, how cool… I want one!

I know this might be shocking, but level 60 also brought my first proper instance. Yup. Level SIXTY. I know, it’s terrible. Whilst leveling, I avoided any quests that took me to instances, because:
A. I am quite anti-social, and don’t like trying to put together groups.
B. I don’t like spending time in dungeons when I can just get quests elsewhere and level faster anyway!

However, the rewards from a quest leading into the Hellfire Ramparts were just too good to pass up, so when I was given an opportunity to join a group, I snapped it up.

Needless to say, I was a bit apprehensive that I might be a “Huntard” – You know, the (apparently) useless majority of hunters, who have no idea about anything beyond solo grinding. However, I think I managed to do fairly well for myself. I only pulled aggro a couple of times, Erethia was kept on a very tight leash – Always passive, told to stay when necessary, and whilst moving, constantly on prowl, and (though we lacked a consistent marking system) I was able to contribute to CC with my freezing traps. Also, when we very nearly wiped I was sort of quasi able to kite a mob using frost traps and concussive shot.

The party consisted of myself, a Shaman, a Warlock, a Rogue and a Warrior (I think fury spec, but tanking admirably). I didn’t get a look at the specs, as I was too busy going “omg, omg, what if I’m really bad, what if I make a bad impression, what if we fail terribly :s ” to remember to do such things, haha. For the most part, the instance went quite well, though we had two little hitches – 3 of us dying towards the beginning, and then almost an entire wipe (yay Feign Death ; later, when we managed to pull an entire platform of enemies.

The first boss, Watchkeeper Gargolmar, dropped some very nice mail legs for me, with tasty bonuses to Stamina, Agility, Intellect and Attack Power, that were a sorely needed upgrade to the level 40 mail legs I had.

The second boss was pretty easy – He spawned a few non-elite Felhounds, which were quickly dealt with by myself or the warlock, and went down pretty easily himself, unfortunately with no drops of use to any of us.

The third (and fourth?) boss(es?) were the most difficult, and the coolest by far. A powerful Fel Orc, on the back of a huge Nether Drake, was
the first opponent, who fought us on foot as his mount circled us. This part of the battle was fairly easy, but when we got his health down low, his mount, Nazan, suddenly landed on the platform to join the party.

This bit of the battle was a lot more hectic, after we downed the orc, the tank had to keep the dragon facing away from us, so that it didn’t turn into “one big BBQ”, and while we did get a bit roasted, we were able to keep him under control, and down him, netting a nice little ring for the Shammy, and the final item for the quest that sent most of us there, which rewarded me with a pair of very nice mail gloves, that FINALLY replaced the -LEATHER!- Marauder’s Handwraps that had been with me for well over 20 levels. Eugh, I feel like such a crap player, but most of the gear I had was serving me well, so I didn’t see any cause to pay for upgrades (Except my bow of course… speaking of which, I’ve not found an upgrade, anywhere – quests, drop, AH- to upgrade from my lackluster level 50 bow…).

Overall, my first proper instance experience was loads of fun. It was my (very late) introduction to instance mechanics, got me some nice gear, and, most importantly, introduced me to some really cool other players. As I’ve said, I’m terribly anti-social on WoW, so my only friends before then had been people I knew IRL and Wraigth.

Today (again, different day from post day, yay drafts.) was just hilarious. I spent most of the day grinding my way slowly through 60, doing all the fun Outland quests, leveling my professions, and my pets! Me and Erethia died Soooo many times – I think it’s safe to say that in levels 57-60, Erethia has died twice as much as she did from level 10-56! Thats a LOT of death, haha!

Given the difference in playtime, me and Kazura have (unfortunately) stopped duoing. It was fun while it lasted, but I was itching the whole time to go faster (not when we were actually playing – we rocketed through levels when we were online), as Kazura’s commitments to work and college obviously mean she doesn’t have a lot of playtime, whereas I, on a long, boring gap year, with only work to fill my time, have a lot of spare time on my hands to play games. Believe me, if I had ANYTHING else to do during the day, I would do it before WoW. Anything! But most of my friends are at college or uni, so, there is little to do, but play lots of WoW.

Anyway, I did help Kazura get to 60 (most of the time was spent outside a party with her though – else I’d have hit 61, and I DO want to do some AV with Kaz before I start going ZOOOOM! through the levels.), for her Epic mount, which, like me, was NOT her native mount… No, today, Kazura spent some time grinding her way to Exalted with Stormwind, to unlock the option of horse mounts! While she was a bit short on gold, a little loan (and I do mean little, maybe 50g max, total.) from me and Wraigth meant she was soon galloping about on a snazzy Swift Brown Horse. I, myself, had been busy grinding rep as well… This time for Ironforge, as I was “only” 15k from Exalted.

I had quite a hard time actually leveling it, as in my push to get exalted with darny before 40, I’d done all of the Wetlands and Loch Modan quests- and STILL found it hard to get exalted… I just dunno how that works. I eventually had to go to Westfall, Darkshire and Redridge to get the rep I needed, but finally, I was exalted with IF… And here are the fruits of our labour!

Ahhh! I must admit though, the epic rams aren’t quite as nice as the standard rams, though they do still look quite spiffy. Of course, my mount is white. I have a thing for white animals… My first mount, was the striped frost sabre. My main pet, Erethia… a snow leopard. My secondary pet, which I fell in love with, Ella… is a snowy owl. My next planned pet? A white warp stalker. My Epic mounts? White. My planned first flying mount? Snowy Gryphon.

I don’t really know why, but I just find the white mounts and pets to be the most aesthetically appealing, so I always end up taking them. One thing I don’t get though is the epic mounts… Why does green go with white? I’m not up on my fashion and matching colours, so I dunno wtf is up with that… I just don’t like green! Bleh! Haha.

With our super speedy epic mounts to hand, me, Kazura, Yuanjia and Wraigth had some fun tonight… Racing!

All speed boosting items were removed, and we lined up outside Honor Hold… The first race was a simple race to where the road meets the Path of Glory and back – Which Yuanjia won, blargh! The second race was much more fun… we decided, totally on a whim, to race to the Stairs of Destiny.

By mount, of course.

A deadly idea, if ever we did propose one, but SO much fun. Yuanjia cheated briefly, tempting his stormsaber with a carrot, but we broke through two lines of elite demons without a scratch.

However, a third set proved to be our downfall… Kazura took aggro, and didn’t last even a second. I soon followed the exact same fate, followed a bit later by Yuanjia… Wraigth, wonder druid that he is, managed to get past those demons, aggro the Pit Commander, take only two hits from him, and survive up to the steps, clearly winning the race, whilst me, Kaz and Yuan were busy rolling on the floor, laughing.

Our return attempt by mount was very slightly less disastrous… While Wraight and Kazura ran straight at the Pit Commander, me and Yuanjia nipped round the sides, and up the road, dodging demons, surviving to make it to Honor Hold, whilst Kazura and Wraigth were splattered beyond recognition. Muwahah!

Once we were all back at honor hold, and having run out of Duel scenarios, we decided to make some hordies… Some Tauren, to be precise.

Ilthiran: Me, Druid (Hm
m, familiar? I had to be druid though, as they are all main druid, so thats just no fun for them ).
Kazura: Soupershammy, Shaman. (No rly?!?)
Yuanjia: Enceladus, Hunter
Wraigth: Bullshnit, Warrior.

Four Tauren… tearing up Red Cloud Mesa, mehehe. Enemies dropped within seconds, and our first few quests only took so long as we had four of them to feed, heh.

We took them to level 4 for now, as it’s mostly just a novelty thing we did to pass some time, but it was a good wee half hour spent doing crazy stuff XD Me and Kazura just could not stop laughing at one of her characters jokes… “I once laughed so hard I milked all over the floor.”, which, given how late it was, had me in tears. I’m not hard to make laugh when tired.

Yes, yes, long post, but too much happens in such short times for me to churn out posts, hehe!

One final note I leave you with… be careful at the edge of the Warp Fields, or you may find yourself on a ledge you cannot get off of, with your hearthstone on cooldown, and a VERY thin spit of land between two sides… and in a desperate attempt to escape, your Frostsaber makes one wrong step and…