How to be Eye of Eternity Geared and hit 3k DPS within a day of hitting 80.

My Druid Bluebear hit 80 a couple of days ago.  Within a day of hitting 80 WOW heroes recorded her as being geared for Naxx 10 and 25 man and Eye of Eternity 10 man.  The day after hitting 80 I went to Obsidian Sanctum 10 man with my guild where I was dealing over 3k damage on the trash (AOE) and 2.7k damage on the boss.  I am not writing this to boast, I am just writing it to say it’s possible, especially with an alt, and here’s how.

1.  Plan ahead.  I researched a pre-naxx gear list and a raiding gear list well in advance of hitting 80.  For druids, Grey Matter does a great job on both.

2.  Make money and gather mats with your main.  Most of Bluebear’s gear on stepping into OS was crafted or BOE blues and purples, either made by myself or friends with mats I had gathered, or bought from the ah.

4.  Follow the prices of your gear list on the ah and buy low.  I started looking for, and buying up, Bluebear’s gear from the time she was about 73.  This gave me time to find good low deals, and to spread my purchases, rather than having to spend all my cash at once.

5.  Get the appropriate gems, enchants and armor kits.  Too many people go into raids not appropriately enchanted.  Enchants make a huge difference to your gear.  I sent nearly every green I got when levelling to Anelf for disenchanting to stock up mats for my enchants.

6.  Learn to play your class.  Err, this sounds obvious.  Do some research on blogs like this one and Elitist Jerks etc.  about the best spec, stats, shot rotations, etc. for raiding.  Playstyle for raiding is often very different from that for soloing and grinding or even from 5-mans.  I respecced to my raiding spec at 78 and practiced it both when soloing (even though it wasn’t optimum for that) and on the target dummies.  Don’t forget practice on the target dummies with recount or a damage meter allowing you to measure your shot rotations.

7.  Get the appropriate raiding addons for your class.  For Bluebear, Squawk and Awe a boomkin addon allowing me to measure Eclipse cooldowns helps enormously, as does PowerAuras.

8.  When you raid ensure you have the right buffs, flasks, food, etc.

Now OK this might be a bit easier with some classes than others, there is an excellent range of BOE caster leather and cloth out there (BB is wearing a lot of cloth), but there are crafted epics and BOE pieces for most classes if you do your homework.

Hunter Bag of Tricks No. 2 – Tranquilizing Shot

Tranquilizing Shot, you say, I don’t even have that one on my toolbar.  It’s useless, right?  For most fights yes, but there are one or two situations where it can be very helpful.

As the tooltip shows Tranquilizing Shot now ‘attempts’ to remove 1 engrage and 1 magic effect.  In BC it was restricted to enrage effects, although it still had its situational uses.

In pve it removes enrage effects from a number of mobs, notably:

Gluth – Naxx – level 80 raid – I use tranquilizing shot constantly during this fight.

Fire elemental adds - Obsidian Sanctum – level 80 raid – I use it occasionally here – I am usually more concerned with either dpsing the boss, or MD and volley the adds to stick them to the tank, as some are running loose.

Kersistrasza – The Nexus – WOTLK instance/heroic

Aeonus – The Black Morass (Opening the Black Portal) – BC instance – I used to use it whenever he enraged in this fight

Anub’Ar Skirmishers – Azjol-Nerub – WOTLK instance/heroic (when they drop aggro and focus on the healer or a squishy, it’s actually an engage that can be dispelled.)

There are a number of others too, so try it on anything that enrages, and add a comment to this post, if you think there is a really helpful one I have missed.

Enrage attacks are temporary buffs and are those which tranq shot has always dispelled.  There are obviously a couple of boss fights where enrage is a central part of the encounter, these bosses are immune to tranquilizing shot.  Whereas it can be used on Gluth, whose enrage is a side show, it cannot be used on Grand Widow Faerlina, whose enrage is the main part of her encounter.

Tranq shot does not dispel frenzy buffs, which are triggered by low health or other conditions (e.g. timers), and cannot be dispelled.  It also does not dispel Berserk buffs – these are usually “the boss goes mad if you don’t kill him in ’10′ mins and wipes the raid” buffs – and cannot be dispelled.

In pve it also remove magic effect from mobs, however, I have found this less useful

I haven’t found any instance where I have tried this and found it useful.  When researching it, I also haven’t found anyone mention using it to remove a magic effect in pve.  Tell us your thoughts, do you have any good examples?  I will try it out on some mobs if I get the chance and report back, but as I don’t do many heroics on Tin any more, it may be a while before I find a use.

In pvp it removes enrages and all magic effects (buffs that show up as magic on the players character icon).

At one time the hunters offensive dispel was arcane shot, this was changed to Tranquilzing Shot.  Making the latter more useful, but making the hunter have to choose to use it, rather than getting a free dispel with their DPS.

Each time it is used it attempts to remove one random buff from the player (which is why people will go into arena with ‘trash’ buffs on them).  But it will also remove major buffs, such as all shields, e.g. Priests Power Word Shield, Ice Block, and Paladin Hands (e.g. Hand of Protection), fear ward, druid HOTs.  Sadly it will not remove the infamous Pally bubble.

Offensive dispels have been watered down a bit, they no longer remove some player spells such as mage armor or pally seals.  Blizzard felt that they were too powerful in previous seasons, upsetting the balancing of the classes, which was done on the basis that classes had certain spells available to them – spells which were being dispelled.  Classes who rely on a lot of magic buffs also now have 30% dispel resist.

I don’t arena or pvp much, and admit I haven’t really thought to try it when I have (I am too busy dying), but I might next time I BG.  I would be interested to hear from someone who does run arena regarding how useful they find it.  With an 8 second cooldown, you could potentially strip a lot of the buffs from your opponents, the problem is each shot takes 8% of your base mana, and how quickly would that contribute to a drained mana bar, if you spammed it every time it was available?  Researching it, there seems very mixed views on its usefulness (and the usefulness of dispells in arena generally), given the number of trash buffs, the RNG and randomness in which buff you will dispel, the high mana cost of dispels, and their global cooldowns.  Some people find them extremely useful, some are qqing about them (but what’s new there, huh?)

In conclusion:

Tranquilize Here

Currently, I mainly use this shot on Gluth and sometimes on the fire elementals in Obsidian Sanctum.  When I was of level for Black Morass, I used to use it will great success on Aeonus.  Next time I go into a BG with Tin, I will pay more attention to it, and try it out on a few pesky pallys and squishies.

Patch 3.1.2 live on US

A small patch dropped today.  You can find the patch notes to Patch 3.1.2 here.

Ghostcrawler also made an interesting announcement for hunters able to access the higher level end game content.  In order to balance hunter DPS in Ulduar, which has apparently been too low, and becuase they are scaling back their planned ammo changes, they are buffing the damage of ranged weapons with ilevels 226 or higher.  Ranged weapons with item levels under 226 are not mentioned, and therefore unaffected, so don’t expect your Nesingwary 4000 to be buffed.

You can read Ghostcrawler’s blue post here.  And a brief summary article on WoWinsider here.

Hunter changes:

• Disengage cooldown reduced to 5secs – presumably mainly for arena and pvp, but useful for kiting in pve too.
• Bug fix – explosive shots’ critical strikes now trigger go for the throat
• Bug fix – lock and load tooltip
• bug fix – Rabid tooltip

General changes of note:

• Equipment manager implemented
• Increased health and mana restored from Northrend food and drinks.
• Most scopes now have an item level requirement, and will bind item to which they are applied.

Looking for an upgrade? – BOE Hunter Epics ilevel >200

If like me, you are in a small guild focussed on 10-man content, or a guild not yet in Ulduar, you may be interested to know that there are a number of BOE epics out there, which should offer you upgrades.  Many of these drop from Ulduar or 25man content, or, in the case of braces, can be purchases with Emblems of valor.  A couple of them are created by Leatherworkers from new recipes added in Patch 3.1, which also drop in Ulduar.  These recipes are also BOE, so may very occasionally be seen on the ah.  The items will appear on your server’s auction house, and will not be cheap.  You will need to make money to buy them, but that is not so hard to do when you can net several hundred gold a day just doing the Argent Tournament dailies.

Note:  It maybe sometime before you see some of these on an ah near you.  Only a small number of guilds on your server may currently be regularly downing the harder Ulduar bosses, and then any BOE drops are also likely to be upgrades for someone in the raid.  However, some items are a bit more common, and keep watching the others may start to appear and prices may start to fall as they become more common.

I have also included leather pieces in this list.  However, remember that these are not optimized for hunters, will not have intellect on, and that mana will become an issue if you stack too many leather pieces.  A couple of them do have gem slots though, and it might be worth considering whether they would be a significant upgrade if you added Intellect gems to the gem slots.  Choose leather upgrades with care, sometimes they may prove a lasting upgrade for you, but often it might be better saving your money and waiting for the right mail piece.

As I am writing this for people like me, who may be stuck at the end of T7 10-man content, I am going to add in a common piece of gear in each slot just for easy comparison (in most cases this will be Tin’s own gear – OK so I admit this is mostly for my own quick comparison ).

Head

None

Neck

Nymph Heart Charm – Freya’s Gift – Ulduar (H)

Compare:  Pendant of the Outcast Hero

Shoulders

Spaulders of Egotism (L) – Instructor Razuvious – Naxx (H)

Compare:  Heroes’ Crypstalker Spaulders

Chest

None

Back

Shawl of the Shattered Giant (Cloth) - Cache of the Living Stone – Ulduar (N)

Compare:  Cloak of Mastery

Belt

Belt of Dragons – created by Pattern:  Belt of Dragons – Ulduar (H) zone drop – the pattern also appears to be BOE

Torn Web Wrapping – Maexxna Naxx (H)

Death-Warmed Belt (L) -  created by Pattern:  Death-Warmed Belt – Ulduar (H) zone drop BOE

Nimble Climbers Belt (L) – Auriaya Ulduar (N)

Compare: Veresa’s Silver Chain Belt

Bracers

Armguard of the Tower Archer – BOE – bought with 60 Emblems of Valor – these sell for around 1,500G on my server.

Bracers of the Smoldering Inferno – Razorscale – Ulduar (N)

Slime Steam Bands – Globbulus – Naxx (H)

Wristwraps of the Cutthroat (L) – BOE – bought with 60 Emblems of Valor – buy the Armguards of the Tower Archer instead if you can.

Compare:  Bands of Anxiety.  (I purchased the Armguards of the Tower Archer as I had three pairs of bracers, none of which were much good.)

Gloves

Gloves of Fast Reactions (L) – Sapphiron Naxx (H)

Rust-Link Spiked Gauntlets (ilevel 200) - I have added these to the list as there are no mail BOE gloves >ilevel 200 that I can find, and these babies are a little bit better than the T7 gloves imo.  Tin wears these currently.

Leggings

Darkcore Leggings – General Vezax Ulduar (H)

Proto-Hide Leggings (L) - Razorscale Ulduar (H) – note again no Int and has Expertise which is no use to a hunter.  However, does have a gem slot and bags of agility.

Compare:  Heroes’ Cryptstalker Legguards

Boots

Boots of Living Scale - created from Pattern:  Boots of Living Scale – dropped in Ulduar – pattern is also BOE

Footpads of Silence (L) – created from Pattern: Footpads of Silence – dropped in Ulduar (H)  - BOE

Compare:  Dragon Slayer’s Sabatons (my blue boots, better imo than anything epic I can get through pve or 10 mans).

Rings

Surge Needle Ring – The Eye of Eternity (N)

The 5 Ring - Tiny Titanium Lockbox – Daily Fishing Quest – no AP, Agi or Int but bags of Hit if you are not hit capped.

Band of the Kirin Tor – ilevel 200 – but worth including in a gear ‘rich list’

Compare:  Seal Ring of Grobbulus; Titanium Impact Band.

Trinkets

None

Weapons

No BOE Weapons above item level 200 available

Finally, a short side note (rant) on buying gold:  If you could find every item on this list the would set you back 1000′s of gold. Make the gold yourself.  Do not buy gold.  I have nothing but contempt for people who buy gold.  I don’t care what justifications you make for doing so, or whether it is ‘cheating’ or ‘not cheating’ the game.  What I do care about, is that much of the bought gold in the system comes from hacked accounts.  If you buy gold, you are buying gold stolen from other players.  You are contributing to the misery of other players and are the reason the whole parasitic industry, of spam gold adverts and computer viruses looking for ways to steal your account, exists.  Just think how devastated you would be if your account was hacked and you logged on to find your characters naked, all your epic armor and unique pieces vendored, your bank empty, and your hard earned gold stolen.  Here endeth the rant.

Hunter bag of tricks – No. 1. Misdirection

I thought I would write a short series of posts highlighting some of the hunters abilities and how to use them.  Hopefully, this will be useful to those beginning to get the most out of their hunter, and to people playing with hunters.  We start with Misdirection.

Hunters learn the spell Misdirection from their trainer at level 70.  Every hunter (level 70+) has access to it, and there is only one rank to learn.

The tooltip reads:

Uses:

1.  To reduce your aggro and increase the tanks aggro:  In a group, instance or raid, when playing with a tank, I always try to cast misdirection on the tank before he starts a pull.  This means that the threat from my first three shots on the target(s) will count for the tanks aggro and not mine, helping him build up aggro, and allowing me to start shooting straight away, without worrying about pulling aggro off him.

I also often use misdirection on the tank during a long boss fight, if I, or others, to seem to be creeping up the threat meter.  This gives the tank a little more threat relative to me or to other high threat members of the party, helping him to maintain aggro.  Although, I use feign death as well, if I can get away with a misdirection instead of the total aggro dump of feign death, I do so, as it is less of a break in the damage I am laying down.

Using Misdirection is particularly helpful in AOE fights.  A lot of fights in raids and instances nowadays involve the tank(s) running in and gathering the mobs together, and the group AOEing them down.  Sometimes it is hard for the tanks to maintain aggro on all the mobs, so Misdirect your Volley as often as you can.   It doesn’t matter how many adds the Misdirected volley hits simultaneously, I believe all the first tick’s threat will be transferred to the tank, but once it has hit 3 adds it will fade, so it will usually be consumed on the first tick.

2.  The hunter pull shot:  Sometimes you will be asked to pull for your tank.  You can use misdirection to pull the mobs onto your tank, even though it is you that fires the shot, the mobs will run for the tank.  A good example of this is when a line-of-sight pull is needed for a caster.  The tank can hide behind a handy wall, you misdirect onto the tank and then shoot at the caster.  The caster will move towards the tank to get line of sight.  This saves the tank having to run behind the wall while taking damage from the caster, having made the pull himself.

3.  Misdirecting adds onto the tank:  If you have a loose add, or adds spawning mid fight and running at the healers/squishes, use misdirection to help the tanks pick them up.  In fights like Noth the Plaguebringer and Globbulus we often have a hunter assisting the off tank with the adds.  The hunter can misdirect adds as they spawn onto the off-tank, and then help burn them down.

4. Maintaining pet aggro when soloing:  I use Misdirection on my pet when I am soloing to help my pet maintain aggro.  This is particularly important if I am AOE grinding, soloing in Surv or MM specs, or leveling a lower level pet.

How I Misdirection:

In a raid/group I set my focus target as my tank, or the person I will be misdirecting onto.  A player can only be affected by one Misdirection at once, so if there is more than one hunter in the party, agree who will MD onto the main tank and who will MD onto the off-tank, if there is one.

A Focus Target is a second stored target.  You can set a player or hostile target as your focus.  As I said, I find this most useful to set it as my main MD target.  To do this either right click on the players portait and choose focus, or make a simple focus macro, that you can press once the player is selected to set your focus:

/Focus Target

I then have another macro that Misdirects onto my Focus:

#showtooltip Misdirection 

/focus [modifier:alt] 

/cast [target=focus,help][help][target=pet,exists,nodead] Misdirection 

/clearfocus [button:2]

I stole this from someone else, after experimenting with MD macros to find one that would work in WOTLK.  It is messy and I don’t understand it all, but it works.

The one below, does the same thing, looks neater and should work too:

/#showtooltip Misdirection
/cast [target=focus,exists,nodead] Misdirection; [target=pet,exists,nodead] Misdirection

Scenario 1:  So let us say my main tank is Entrigan.  I select Entrigan and press my focus macro.  He is now stored as my focus.  I see his char icon halfway down the left half of my screen, as my focus target.  Entrigan needs to be No. 1 on the aggro list for the Patchwerk fight.  So, I target Patchwerk and hit my Misdirect Focus macro.  Entrigan starts attacking and a second or two later so do I, knowing my first three shots threat will be transferrred to Ent, helping him build up the aggro.

Scenario 2:  I am assigned to assist the off-tank, Soulsworn, on the adds in the Noth the Plaguebringer fight.  Soul stands in the middle of the room, adds spawn from the bone piles at the back, and run towards the group in the far corner working on the boss.  Soul and I have to grab the adds and make them beat on him instead of the healers.  I set Soul as my focus.  I MD onto Soul and then grab some adds and stick them on to him.  As MD comes off cooldown, I can MD again once new adds spawn, MDing either single adds or using it to help me DPS down all the adds with volley, without being in danger of pulling them off Soul.

Scenario 3:  The main tank dies near the end of the Maexxna fight.  The off-tank, Haqq, who has been dealing with the spider adds, has to pick up the boss.  Err, currently this is where I panic.  I frantically look down my raid list trying to find Haqq’s name to click on it, set him as my focus and MD to him.  The two hot keyed buttons are quick, it’s finding him or his name to click on that slows me down.  As I was researching this post, I came across someone who made this suggestion.  If you often have to change MD targets – hot key 2-3 macros like this:

/cast [target=Entrigan] Misdirection

/cast [target=Soulsworn] Misdirection

/cast [target=Haqq] Misdirection

I like this approach – it would allow me to switch MDs within a fight to help out the tank and off-tank gain aggro.  I shall try this this week.  See writing a blog, makes me a better hunter too  Thanks to Resstealth and Drakier on the tkasomething forums for this one.

A little trick with MD:  I didn’t tell my tank about this one  (Nowadays on the Four Horseman fight in Naxx, Anelf and I are usually the two people who go around back and keep Lady Blaumeaux and Sir Zeliek amused, while the rest of the group deal with the other two), but before that I used to use MD to help out my tank when he failed to manage the switch between the Thane and the Baron.  If you are familiar with the fight, the horsemen run to the 4 corners of the room.  Two groups with tank, healer and dps work on the Thane and the Baron, switching between them when they have stacked 3-4 debuffs.  To do this the tanks have to switch targets, running with their group to the new corner and taunting the target off the other tank and dragging the horseman back to his corner.  When we were learning this fight, one of our tanks kept missing his target, meaning that the other tank ended up with both bosses on top of his group, too many debuffs and consequently a wipe.  I tried MDing onto the tank to help him grab his target, but found that that wasn’t enough if he completely missed his taunt as well, given how much threat the other tank still had.  But I found a neat trick with MD.  I waited first to see if the tank successful grabbed his target, but if he didn’t I shot a Distracting Shot, which is the hunter taunt, onto the horseman (Distracting Shot no longer works with MD so I couldn’t do this onto the tank).  The horseman then charged at me.  I ran to the corner we needed to take him, away from the other tank, and then hit feign death.  This gave my tank another change to pick him up and it worked like a dream.  I felt smug – hunter saves the day

Call of the Wild – The Wolf in WOW

Wolves have always been one of my favorite hunter pets in WOW.  My second pet was a huge and beautiful Black Ravager Mastiff, from Duskwood, who I imaginatively (cough, cough) called Fenrir.  At the time, I trained him for his special skills, it being way before the overhaul of pets, when a hunter had to go out and search for upgrades to their main pet’s skills.

As I leveled up, I trained several wolves.  I spent hours and hours searching The Badlands for Barnabas without luck, and later tamed a similar looking Thunderlord Dire Wolf from Blades Edge Mountains, whom I named Red.  Red used to 5-man with me and even raid Kara, but he and other wolves were not usually my main pet, and I mostly raided with a cat, like almost everyone else in BC.

Before the overhaul of pets in patch 3.0 wolves looked great, but they were not the best pets, since their family skill Furious Howl, did not scale well.  Also, they could learn bite, but not claw, and consequently had lower DPS than a pet like a cat.  With the changes in 3.0 Bite became a focus dump skill, like claw, with no cooldown timer, a skill that can be used constantly as long as the pet has enough focus to cast it.  Furious Howl was also given a scaling boost, making wolves much more attractive.  The wolf was also classified as a ferocity pet giving it the same starting stats as a cat or other high DPS pets (since patch 3.1 all pets now have the same starting stats of +5% to armor, DPS and health, so these are now pretty meaningless).

However, it was the changes to Furious Howl in patch 3.1 that made the wolf the desirable raid pet it has become today.  Previously, Furious Howl affected your whole party, now it affects just the hunter – but – it now stacks with other buffs such as a Paladin’s Blessing of Might and a Warrior’s Battle Shout.  Previously, Furious Howl was overwritten by Blessing of Might or a Shout, therefore, if you had a Warrior or Pally in your raid it became a useless buff.  Now, it gives the hunter and the wolf an extra 320 attack power on top of any other buffs, for around 50% of the time (it is an instant cast – it lasts for 20secs – but has a 40secs cooldown – so it will be up for 20secs and then be on cooldown for 20secs).  The spell has a 100 yard range, so the wolf should never be out of range of his master when it is cast. 

Attack Power increases your base DPS for 1 for every 14 attack power therefore a 320 boost is worth 22.8 DPS, while it is active.  That is actually a very attractive boost.

Depending upon what you are reading, and how the author has calculated their data, the ranking of top DPS pets for raids might vary slightly, and there is not a huge different in the top 5-6 pets.  However, most calculations and tests put the wolf at number 1, especially for Survival and Marksman Hunters.

Elitist Jerks theorycraft list of DPS pets.

Family	Special
Wolves	Furious Howl
Cat	Rake
Wasp	Sting
Raptor	Savage Rend
Spirit Beast (Exotic)	Spirit Strike
Devilsaur (Exotic)	Monstrous Bite

There is another thread over on elitist jerks where people use Shandraras Spreadsheet (formerly known as Cheeky’s Shreadsheet)  to try to come up with the best combination of  spec, gear, shot rotation and pet to create the best possible DPS for each hunter tree.  In this one, before Patch 3.1 Raptors were the flavor of the month, hence all those raptors (including my very own Letin) you saw running around.  Since the patch Wolves come out as the top pet for MM and Survival Hunters, and Devilsaur’s for BM hunters (although remember Devilsaur’s are not always popular in raids due to their size, noise and large hit box).  Remember, these are theoretical min/max builds for 25-man end game content, but if anything that flat 320 additional attack power should be giving a bigger boost to a less well geared player (in terms of a percentage increase to their attack power) than to a very well geared play.

One place you will not see the wolf toted as the best raiding pet was the recent article on WOW Insider – Scattered Shots: Pets for Raiding.  Jessica Klein also used Shandraras spreadsheet for her analysis, however Jessica misses the main point of the Wolf – no-one is saying that the Wolf’s individual DPS is greater than a Raptor or a Cat – it isn’t – but the Wolf also buffs the hunter – it is the Wolf and the Hunters’ combined DPS that usually comes out as higher than that of the hunter and a cat or the hunter and a raptor.  (A quick note on raptors btw – their DPS is a bit more patchy than the other pets as it relies more heavily on crits – if you have a high crit rating and the raptor crits a lot during a fight it would likely out DPS a cat, but its DPS is more variable).

As I said before, the top few pets are still pretty close, I am not saying you must go out and get a wolf immediately, but that they are now either the best or very close to the best raiding pet, and if like me you have always loved them, you can embrace them and fill your stable with a pack of wolves

In fact, that is exactly what I have right now – one bear, one raptor, and three wolves, two of which I need to level up:  Hamfast 80 (Cavedweller Worg); Mithril 75 (Old Cliff Jumper); Mell 75 (Ironjaw).

Want a wolf – we haz wolves.

See Petopia for the full list of wolf skins.  Thanks again to the marvellous Petopia for the pictures and resource.

If you do not want the bother of leveling up your wolf the Cavedweller wolf is the best option, as you can pick a level 80 one up straight away.  

If you are happy to level a wolf, there are a number of great skins.  Wolves come in 3 main types and a couple of unusual additions.

The barking Prairie Wolf

There is the wolf/coyote type skin, often see at lower levels.  These guys look happy and keen when they run, they look like they are ready to have some fun.  And if you get a Praire Wolf from Mulgore, it will even bark when you click on it

 

 

Old Cliff Jumper

There is my personal favorite the Azeroth and BC worg skin.  These guys make huge pets, but have laid back loping run motions.  There are some attractive color skins and a couple of unique options.  Timber is the easiest pure white one to get.  He’s a rare but he doesn’t have a long respawn timer.  Black ones are easily available in Duskwood or Silverpine Forest. Ironjaw from Terrokar is a unique brown/grey/black wolf.  He is a quest spawn, so respawns quickly and very attractive.  But my favorite, who I finally tamed yesterday is Old Cliff Jumper.  He’s a unique grey worg, with some darker grey mottling, grey eyes and a purplish tongue.  Old Cliff is reported to have something like a 21hour spawn timer, though I have also heard 16 hour, so it’s hard to know.  I tamed him yesterday at 1.40pm PST/ST on Antonidas.  But since there was a server reset today with the maintenance I don’t think that helps much.  You can find maps of his spawn locations on the links from Petopia to Wowhead, thottbott and Allakhazam. 

The color-changing sentry worg

The other main type of wolf is the underfed Northrend Worg.  He’s skinny and long legged, shaggy and fierce looking.  My Hamfast once ate a whole Fish Feast, meant for a raid group, didn’t seem to put on any weight though.  A number of these like the Cavedwellers and the Sentry Worg change color when you resummon them.  These are currently the most popular type of wolves you see with hunters in Northrend, I supposed because they are the native Northrend wolf as well as being a new skin in WOTLK.

 

 

Demon dog

Ramparts wolf

Now we have a couple of unique looking wolves – the demon dog – Vargul Blighthound (74-75) from Zul’Drak, and the Saddled and spike collared hell fire ramparts wolf.  

 

 

Ghost-Wolf untamable

There is one wolf skin you will occasionally see a lucky hunter with, that can no longer be tamed, and that is the Ghost Wolf.  Hunters who were able to tame a Ghost Wolf during the short time these were tamable in Duskwallow marsh were allowed to keep them.  But this was fixed so that the summoned Ghost Wolves could no longer be tamed.  But, you never know, maybe the next spirit beast in the game will be a wolf skin, now that one I might try to camp and tame

Do you feel the call of the wild? Have I sold you on the wolf yet?  Or were you already there?  Tell us about your wolf pets.

Old Cliff Jumper

 

Tinuviel and Mithril (aka Old Cliff Jumper)

Just a quick post and a piccie of Tinuviel and her new pet, Mithril.

I tamed him today.  Until I renamed him, he was Old Cliff Jumper, a silver rare spawn from the Hinterlands.  He is the only worg with this grey skin type, and  I have always loved his looks.  With so many wolves around, particularly of the oulands underfed type, it’s nice to have a more unique looking one, especially one I have always wanted.  Now I just have to level him from 75 to 80 /groan.

I also have Ironjaw in my stable, another attractive and unusual worg skin, at some point I might have to level him too.  But Cliff Jumper is the worg for me.  

Good night for now, but I can feel a post on wolves coming up

Setting up a private in-game voice channel

In her Children’s Week post, Tin talked about setting up a private voice channel when you join a BG as a group. A lot of people we mentioned this to didn’t know how to do it, so I thought it was worth a quick post.

Obviously, if you have a vent server or something similar you already have a private channel, so you can stop reading now. For the rest of us who use the in-game voice channel – read on …

You can create a private in-game text chat channel at any time, simply by typing

/join ChannelName

where ChannelName is the name you want to give the channel. So for our guild, we often use 

/join sof

You then tell anyone you want to include in the channel to type the same thing – /join sof.

Now you have a text channel. The WoW interface assigns you a channel number (its normally 5 for me, but it depends how many other channels you already have active), so you can now type

/5 something I want to tell my friends

to say something you want to tell your friends in that channel. (Replace 5 with whatever your private channel number is).

Turning this into a voice channel is an easy extra step …

Let’s say you’re forming a group to join a BG as a pre-made. You’ve got everyone to ‘/join sof ‘or whatever. Turn on your in-game voice chat as normal. By default, it will join your party sound channel – you can hear all five people in your party talking.

Now find the little speaker symbol on your minimap. Right click it, and select your private channel. As shown in the screenshot.

Now you’re all talking on your private channel. Anyone who wants to join in the conversation can do the same thing. Even people who aren’t in your group.

Now join the BG queue as a group. When you zone into the BG, your group have sof as their voice channel, rather than battleground chat. 

Use your voice channel to coordinate your group in the BG, and you don’t have to worry about all those BG chat spammers joining in and trash talking because they can’t hear you.

As well as BGs, this is great for coordinating quests (like Amphitheater of Anguish) where you can’t form a raid, but a few extra people have come along to lend a hand.

Children’s Week Tips

I am not going to write a how-to overview for Children’s Week, as there are already a couple out there.  Instead, I thought I would write a couple of tips as they come up.  I have completed all of it except the pvp part so far.  I will update this post once I have completed that.

1.  You can collect an orphan from either the Matron in SW (near the cathedral) or the Matron in Shattrah in the lower city.  If you already have a pet from last years’ quest, you should already have an achievement Aww, Isn’t It Cute!  So you don’t actually have to do their quests, except you probably want some more pets  You don’t need the achievement Veteran Nanny (which takes 3 years of children’s weeks to get) in order to complete the meta achievement For the Children needed for the achievement What a Long, Strange Trip it’s Been, which gives the Violet Proto-drake.

2.  You can hand in your quests in sw and Shatt to get your new pets even if you haven’t completed the rest of the children’s week achievements.  Either Matron will give you another whistle anytime during the week.  So don’t worry about completing the quests.  Same goes if you delete the whistle for some reason, just go ask the Matron for another.

3.  The quest Daily Chores gives the achievement if you do 5 different dailies on the same day, despite what the description says.  I got this achievement on the first day of the event.  This was changed and is correct, it seems (The Children’s Week achievement “Daily Chores” has been slightly altered from the text you will see in the achievement window.  It now requires simply that you complete 5 daily quests with your orphan out. There is no longer an extra step in doing things over consecutive days. (Source)).  You don’t seem to have to have your infant out during the daily, just when you hand it in.

4.  Don’t forget to have your infant out when you are eating all the treats for bad Example.  I forgot and ended up spending another 14G on a Lovely Cake.  The lovely Cake provides 5 slices, you can collect them all and then give them to alts, share them with friends or sell them on the ah.  I shared my first one out to my UK run, hence the second cake purchase.

5.  You can make a lot of money on the ah selling either small eggs, mageroyal, Northern Eggs, Tasty Cupcakes, or Delicious Chocolate Cakes.  Or you can be nice and give them out to your guildies  Remember there are vendors selling the icecream outside Org and SW banks, you don’t need to go all the way to Thousand Needles for it.

Watch this space for an update on my BG experience – I expect it to be bad!!! lol.

Update!  Yeay!  I now have my achievement – thanks to a great bunch of guildies – Keeferblah, Neombra, and Anelf

Before I give some tips, I have to say I still think this achievement was badly thought out.  It makes you play a BG badly.  Playing to get achievements and even leaving when done, rather than playing as a team effort to win.  I don’t usually PVP, although I have in the past (to get my T4 set for instance).  And when I do, I try my hardest, even when it is a lost cause, so this goes against the grain.  But Blizzard set it up like this, and while I don’t like it, I jumped through their hoops like everyone else to get it done.

Apologizes to horde my tips are alliance achievements.

6.  School of Hard Knocks – is hard if you try and do it alone if you don’t have any pvp gear like yours truly.  I did my Arathi Basin achievement alone but it was not fun.  The Horde in our BG are strong and usually dominate the BGs (I’m a little alliance).  Two horde hunters repeatedly reminded me that I needed some resilience on my gear, a pvp spec, oh and a crab or hyena might be nice too.  I got it done – even capping the farm – but I was shouting in anger at myself by the end.  Later I grouped up with 4 other guildies.  The make up is not important, though a healer is always nice.  Just stick together, have a plan, and have a way of voicing.  We don’t have guild vent so we created an SOF channel.  We then joined that channel and set our in game voice to SOF, meaning we could talk to each other in the BG without being in the same groups in the raid.

7.  Arathi Basin – as a group we zerged the mine as soon as the gate opened – seemed to work quite well.  If a horde comes to up to an alliance base – let them cap it and then you can re cap it if you need the achievement.  Remember you need your orphan out when you click on the flag.

8.  Warsong Gulch – you need to return the flag – so stay in your flag room as a group – let a horde come in and grab the flag – then kill him and click on it to return.  Rinse and repeat until everyone has it.  The people in our BGs were cooperating a little, except for an alliance rogue.  One horde would run in grab the flag and we would kill him.  

9.  Alterac Valley – we had to do this twice to get it – but its not that hard just a bit of luck needed.  Suggest you make a beeline for Tower Point tower.  Try and be the first to cap it, and then wait for the horde to come and recap it.  Again don’t kill them (at least until they have capped the tower) then you can recap.    We chose TP as the horde tend to come past that one and assault it regularly so it was likely to change hands.

10.  Eye of Eternity – run run as fast as you can for that flag.  The easiest way to do it is to be the very first person to get the flag, and have your group escort you back (hopefully to the mage tower that has been taken by the alliance).  Bit of a scrap after the first flag is taken, but just stick together as a group.

11.  If you are veteran PVPer and killer player type you may have a lot of fun this week killing all use noob pvper in our squishy PVE gear.  Good luck to you