Going solo (or duo)

As Anelf mentioned in a previous post, our foray into running a guild was pretty short lived.

Actually, I’m pretty relieved.   While we have never been in a hard core raiding guild, we have been casually serious, organizing raiding for our guild, and raiding three or four times a week for nearly eight months.  For the most part, we’ve enjoyed it.  We wanted to organize the raids and work out the strategies, rather than been carried through content.  We’ve had a lot of fun talking over WoW stuff outside of WoW, and made several friends within game.

But in RL we have also only used our tent once, and our mountain bikes not at all this year.  Nearly every weekend we have stayed indoors, raiding. [Anelf’s comment: That’s what we call ‘casual’ raiding – weird huh! 🙂 ]. So we decided it would do us good to give raiding a break for a while, and I have to say I’ve been having the most fun I’ve had in a long time in WoW.  Once you get over the hang up that you don’t have to be up there ‘achieving’ at raiding and acquiring the top end gear, there’s a lot of other fun to be had with an eighty.

I’ve always liked soloing, exploring, revisiting old world content, mount and pet collecting, and the achievement system, so there is lots of stuff to do there.  I will be writing another post on it soon, but one of the most epic fights I have had for a while in WOW was soloing Onyxia on my Paladin alt.  I’d never been into Onyxia’s lair before, so it was great fun.  Anelf and Tin then went to duo it (as once Patch 3.2.2 comes out Onyxia becomes an 80 raid instance, and will no longer be soloable).  It was a simple thing to duo with two ranged DPS, one of whom could heal and the other who had a turtle tank. It was harder to solo with the Pally, because of phase 2, where Onyxia is airborne and becomes harder to hit efficiently with a melee class.  Next week I will try soloing it with Tin.

My 80 Paladin has also gone through some changes, as you will see in the Adventures of Piratejoe Part 1 (coming soon).  My male bloodelf Paladin, Piratejoe, has a dark secret…. he was once a plump female dwarf paladin called Hollie!  Going through a faction transfer has given me a lot to do with Piratejoe, a whole set of different mounts to collect, and achievements to go for.  I am also looking far forward towards the expansion, and thinking of building up resources on both sides, so my goblins and well as worgens will have a sugar daddy to help them out.  Anelf is enjoying leveling some of his alts right now, but I am hoping to persuade him to try duoing some other old world raids with me, and perhaps go mount hunting in ZG and MT :).

Where in the WOW is Tin?

Apologies for not posting for a while, I’ve been sick with bronchitis and asthma, spaced out on drugs, and not been able to string anything sensible together.  I’ve been playing WOW, of course, from my sick bed, but all I’ve been able to cope with is leveling up a new little alt.  And here’s a surprise, this committed night elf hunter, and occasional night elf druid, has fallen in love with…wait for it… a gnome mage!  I created her on a whim, I’ve never been able to get a mage, or a gnome past the doldrums of the mid 20s before, but this time I am flying ahead and loving every minute of it.

Here’s Verty at 45 (I know, not the sexiest gear ever, she looks like an Outland wannabe – it’s chosen for stats, not style).  Her main spec is frost for leveling, but I splashed out about purchased dual-spec at 40.  I got heckled by a guildie wondering why the hell I wanted to waste my money doing it, but here’s the thing;  I like to learn how to play.  I like to try different talent specs, experiment with the different trees and do the research.  I know that if Verty gets to 80 and runs heroics and raids she won’t be a frost mage, so I want to understand the other trees before I get there.  If you can afford to buy the dual-spec, its a great way to do it.  It allows you keep a main spec and experiment with the other, or run two specs side by side and test the difference.  My off spec is fire.  I originally off-specced in arcane, but realized that was a mistake before level 60, as you do not have your major arcane nukes in your arsenal before then, and so the rotation is nothing like your end game play style.

The’ boom boom mob is dead’ of fire is great.  I use that when duoing with Anelf’s shaman, Shambolic, or when soloing non-fire resistant mobs, where one can be pretty confident of pulling one at a time.  I can usually 2 of 3 shot mobs of my level, with my decent gear, which includes a number of bind on account hereditary items.  Frost, though, is great for survivability, for handling multiple mobs and for kiting.  Ice barrier is awesome sauce, and cold snap allows for a rinse and repeat of frost nova and blizzard when you get adds.  With frost nova, cone of cold, blink, and the slowing affect of your frostbolts you can kite mobs to your hearts content.

For someone who likes pure damage dealing from range, the mage has an awful lot going for it.  Watch out Tin, you might have competition from a little green haired gnome 🙂

500,000 Hits!!!!

A very big thank you to all our great readers who keep coming back to Steady Shot, you are the reason we write.  Together we reached 500,000 hits on the blog today!

Readers primarily come here for the factual guides on hunter specs, macros, gear, tips and patch changes, etc. We will keep that coming, but please let us know if there is anything else you would like to see more of.  You can either comment on this post or send an email to shakyshot-at-gmail-dot-com.  We do have other alts too, so if you would like more on druids or other classes we might be able to post on those too.

Do the happy murloc dance!

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 😉

Patch 3.1 first experiences

Raiding as Survival

The first couple of days of this patch were particularly bad for server crashes and guildmates being unable to log on.  We had to cancel our Obsidium Sanctum Sapp +1D run on Wednesday night, but we were able to get a 10 man Naxx run together on Thursday to check things out.  We hope to dip our toes into Ulduar tonight, although after Naxx last night I think the phrase, “you are not prepared!’ springs to mind.

My guild is a small guild, we don’t have enough people for 25 mans, but we do have 10man Naxx on farm, and it’s been easy for us for quite a while.  We haven’t got Malygos down yet in Eye of Eternity, but we are working on him, and OS is easy too although not with drakes, so we are working on that too.  Anyway, last night’s run to Naxx was no so easy, with so many changes to people’s specs, addons not working, or turned off in case they didn’t work, and a lot of people having sound problems and unable to speak, I felt like we were just starting this content for the first time.  Granted we didn’t have our strongest team out.  Almost everyone was from our main team, but three were on their slightly less geared alts, and shock (for us) we had no Pally with us, but that didn’t account for the couple of wipes we had on Anub’Rekhan of all bosses.

I am sure we will soon sort ourselves out, but it just brought home to me how big the changes were.  For my part, I had a completely new shot rotation, was having to try to stand still rather than stand far away, was using the vanilla UI instead of bartender and X-Perl and found my role change for a couple of fights.  

For Anub’Rekhan we used to rearrange the groups so that the tank, Anelf and myself were in gp1 with two people who could handle being dazed if hit by scarabs (i.e. not the off tank) and then I would help the tank kite Anub’Rekhan using Aspect of the Pack.  Well, you can’t do that any more.  Aspect of the Pack has changed it is now raid wide rather than group wide, and has a 40 yard range.  It dazes anyone hit by scarabs or crypt guards, not good if that is your off-tank, so we had to try and do it without.  The kiting didn’t work so well without the speed boost, and that plus our tank having a lot of problems with his UI and addons lead to a couple of wipes.  On the third attempt, the tank didn’t kite him at all and stood there and took the hits, while the healers healed through it, that worked just fine 🙂

I ended up with the following spec for me and this one for my wolf.  You can check our my gear on the armory.  My spec is a slight compromise on the one I posted as my recent gear upgrades have left me severely under hit cap.  I even had to pull out my Sphere of Red Dragon’s Blood trinket instead of my Mirror of Truth to make up the difference.  For my wolf I decided to take Heart of the Phoenix.  I was going with a pure DPS talent instead, but on further reflection I decided I had the wolf there for the AP boost to me from furious howl, something he couldn’t do if dead, and that there are a number of fights where it is very hard to keep your pet alive for the entire fight (Heigan, Sappharion, Kel’Thuzad).  It turned out to be a good choice when poor Hamfast hit the dirt on Anub’Rekhan.  

I tried out the shot rotation as I reported in my Survival Hunter – round 3 – patch 3.1 article.  It was certainly more complex than I was using before, as I was mainly sniper (rather than trap dancing), but now I am weaving black arrow into the rotation.  So a bit more akin to a Marksman’s rotation. One major problem I found was my mana conservation.  I was having to drink between almost every pull, and having to go into viper at least once on each boss fight, sometimes twice.  More recently as a survival hunter, I have rarely had to use Viper during fights.  Now, granted we had no Paladin with us, and sometimes our 10 man raids can boast three, with kings, might and wisdom buffy goodness.  Ours are not ret paladins, but there is still some mana return to the group.  We also didn’t have the other survival hunter with us, so I was the only replenishment for the raid.  I realized I need to change my rotation in those kind of situations, all that viper was hurting my DPS.  I think the big thing was Aimed Shot.  In a situation where mana is an issue, I think I need to not use it in my standard rotation.  It is too mana hungry, and while it gives a nice return, I suspect that doesn’t balance out with having to go into Aspect of the Viper during a fight.  So when there is lots of mana replenishment flying around from Paladins, shammies and others I will weave Aimed Shot, but otherwise I might just reserve it for those time you need an instance shot on the move, or maybe just in my Lock and Load rotation.

I have been introducing my addons back slowly.  Deadly Boss Mods, Recount, Omen, and OmniCC, and PowerAuras all seem to work.  These are my big five for raiding.  Anything else is gravy.  But I would find it very hard to raid without these.  Well, OK you don’t need recount to raid, but I like to use it to analyze how I can improve, and spot if my performance is a lot lower than it should be i.e. Tinuviel do you have your lucky fishing hat equipped or something else stupid?

In all I think my DPS was a bit lower than usual, but not surprising given the group makeup with fewer raid buffs, and learning the new rotation.  My wolf was lower DPS than my raptor, to be excepted, but what is harder to work out, given all the other variables, is whether his furious howl boost to my DPS is worth it over the raptors additional contribution to our overall DPS.  I think there are so many variables it is hard for me to test in game, so I might wait to see what the consensus is from the theory-crafters.

Beastmaster off-spec

For my Beastmaster off spec I went with this spec.  Remember, this is a soloing/ off-tanking type spec not a raiding or DPS spec.  It would be a pretty decent choice for leveling too, I think.  I think this was more or less what I reported,  except again, I took some points in Focused Aim to get closer to the hit cap.  I took these out of Mortal Shots, as this build is more about my pets damage and survivability than my own.  I haven’t done much in my off-spec yet, and what I have done has mainly been some grinding and dailies with my wolf not my bear.  If you are just hitting single mobs, having your ferocity pet with your is just fine.  I could not pull the mobs off the wolf even when I tried, beginning with an arcane shot before sending him in.  He still apprehended the rhino and grabbed aggro from it as it charged towards me.

Of Fishing Dailies and the Argent Tournament

I have also tried out the Argent Tournament and fishing dailies.  Both are a lot of fun.  My level 78 Paladin was also able to do the Argent Tournament dailies.  I think the minimum requirement is level 77, and you will need a flying mount or maybe a friendly warlock (there is a flight path up there).  You can find out more about the tournament from the links posted by a commentator on wowhead here.  I haven’t got as far as dueling another player on my horsey yet.  Haha, that scares me!  I hate dueling, because I hate to lose and look foolish, I just get cross at myself and embarrassed.  Apparently, a blue poster has said this will not be a pvp event.  So who am I training to fight against, NPCs?  I do want the mounts, pets, tabards and other goodies from the tournament though, so I will carry on practicing my jousting skills and try not to kill too many horses.  A couple of pieces of the gear look nice too – but most people will already have better than most of it (I certainly do).  It’s a bit disappointing when they introduce new content and a grind to earn an epic gun, which is the same DPS as that which engineers can sell on the ah to any level 80, or to a crossbow which is a fairly common drop in a low level heroic.

One quest I found a bit worrying was Jack Me Some Lumber.  That little goblin is sending thousands of mercenaries out to deforest Crystalsong Forest – talk about environmental destruction in the name of sport.  And what’s worse is an Anelf-look-alike pops out of the tree and tries to beat me up for killing his home.  Of course, I will probably keep on doing it, that goblin gave me 20G and Hollie my pally needs an epic mount 🙂

The fishing quest is lucrative too.  I got a porcelain bell in my bag of fishing treasures – a grey item which vendored for 100G 🙂

Bugs and stuff

Don’t forget to update your addons.  If you previously used wowmatrix, you may have to do it the old fashioned way, Curse and others have put a stop to wowmatrix accessing their files.  If you are having problems, turn off your addons and introduce them back slowly, to see whether one of your addons is the culprit.  

If your macros aren’t working, it may be because spells such as Kill Shot, which were previously off the global cooldown, are now on the GCD and cannot be in a /cast macro with another /cast instant spell.

The stable appears buggy.  I had a moment of panic when I thought I had lost my bear and got a clone of my raptor instead.  If this happens, visit a stablemaster and move some pets in and out of your stable, I found putting both raptors in the stable and taking my gorilla out, made the bear reappear in the stable – phew.  

If you want to preview your talents before assigning you need to click the button in the display settings of the user interface.  Though, I think Anelf manage to reset his talents doing this just after he has assigned them.

up and coming posts

I intend to write a post on power auras showing you how to add sniper training and black arrow to power auras.  Also, I will try and put something together with specs and shot rotations for BM and MM hunters in the next few days.  Keep reading, and keep the comments coming.  Let me or the tree know if you would like posts on any other subject.

OK, so that is my first day and a bits experience, besides all the world server crashes, how did yours go?

Comments from the tree

From a Resto Druid’s perspective, the Lifebloom nerf isn’t as bad as I feared. I was still able to roll full HoTs on one tank, HoT up the other tank before Maexxna’s Web Spray, and throw around a few extra heals without being in danger of going OOM. I specced for tank healing with talents aimed at using Nourish a lot more, but I didn’t get to use it  – my tank’s health was too high all the time for it to be worthwhile.

Our group is way overgeared for Naxx, but my first impression is that the nerf seemed to have taken me back to the Kara days, where I could see my mana bar going down during the fight and knew mindless spam healing would take me OOM. In pre-3.1 Naxx, I normally ended boss fights with more than 90% mana, and felt I could throw out as many heals as I liked without caring about my mana at all.

So let’s hope Blizzard have got it right. I still love my HoT healing, which is why I was QQing over an apparent forced switch to direct (Nourish) heals.

All Quiet on the Hunter Front – Tin’s got Pallyitis

I haven’t been playing my hunter much recently, except for raiding on weekends and getting the stupid Love Fool title (so that I am still on track for my proto-drake).  I’ve done most of what I want to do outside of raids for right now (well OK I have a nagging feeling I need to go into BGs, but I am avoiding that for now).  I have almost all the exalted reps I need and the pre-raiding gear (except from BGs and maybe the badge trinket).  The group that I mostly run heroics with has also taken a little time off, as Anelf and I’s partners in crime, Entrigan and Carys, have just had their second baby – major grats to you and baby Lucca guys – we wish you well!!!

So what have I been doing instead?  I started a Paladin.

First, I started a draenai paladin on a whim to keep Anelf company, as Anelf has rolled a new shaman.  But then I thought back to my original WOW character, a dwarf pally, and my love of dwarfs and goats, and inability to level a dwarf or get a slow goat mount, so I rerolled.  When I first started playing wow and played a pally I had no clue what I was doing, I never even used judgements as I didn’t understand what they were for.  I think if I worked out their were talent points, I specced holy, as I found myself running away and healing a lot.  It didn’t work out too well, and poor Weyland got killed off just before his 30th birthday.

My new dwarf pally is a female, called Hollie (I was feeling unimaginative on the naming front).  I’m speccing ret.  I’m already up to level 43.  I have my pally pony and 3 goats, and I absolutely love her.  She’s survivable, soloable, able to take on multiple and higher level mobs, has little downtime, and recently with talents has great cc.

It does make we think about how Blizzard balance the classes though.  I have always loved my hunter, but I have always felt that Blizz have overlooked hunters when it came to giving them things that would make others want to group and raid with them.  I think that even more now.  Hunters bring few group buffs to a party, some have been scaled back in recent changes (Call of the Wild and Expose Weakness), others don’t stack with other more powerful buffs, and others like survival hunters replenishment is also available from other classes.  Hunters used to bring the highest DPS to raids – their DPS was what justified their raid place.  With recent nerfs and buffs to hybrid classes, that isn’t necessarily the case anymore.  Hunters also used to bring CC.  But a couple of things have happened to CC.  Firstly, it is less required than it once was, with a lot more aoe tanking.  Secondly a lot more classes have it now.  And thirdly, the cc that has been given to other classes is generally better than a hunters cc.  Freeze traps are badly designed for purpose.  They have a 30 sec cooldown before another can be activated, and yet only trap a mob for 20secs.  That means there is a 10sec gap before you can chain trap.  Pally’s repentance (a ret talent) on the other hand lasts for 1min with a 1min cooldown, meaning you can chain trap indefinitely.  Now yes I know, freeze trap can be used on any mob, and there are ways of chain trapping without talents (I do it all time, but it slows the raid down to ask them to wait 15 secs at the start of each pull) and talents deep in the survival tree (that many people don’t take) to make chain trapping easier.  But still, where another form of trap can be use like sap, repentance, shackle, or hex it usually used over freeze trap.  

Anyway, enough qqing over hunters.  This is a salute to ret pallies, who I used to laugh at, but who now seem to be viable and great fun to play.  I only hope I can keep my dwarf going to end game, I would like to play her in heroics and raids, as well as maybe even enjoy some pvp!  I will keep you posted.  For now I am enjoying slaughtering pirates in Tanaris.

Tinuviel’s New Year (World of Warcraft) Resolutions

Anelf has some New Year resolutions, so I guess I should too.  

1.  Obtain the achievement What a Long, Strange Trip it’s Been and the violet proto-drake reward.  Aim high!   Actually, at the moment I am on track I have my Hallowed be Thy Name and Merrymaker titles, and have my Kodo and Brew of the Month membership for Brewfest Brewmaster so that I will be able to get that when it comes around in October.

2.  Level my Death Knight to 80.  Obtain The Argent Champion title for her to make up for her misdeeds; plus obtain exalted with the Knights of the Ebon Blade since she is one.

3.  Max out all of Tinuviel’s professions; plus Engineering on my Death Knight and Inscription on my Druid.  May also max out Jewelcrafting on my Shaman, but not such a big priority.

4.  Complete all the Northrend heroic 5-mans with Tinuviel. 

5.  Clear 10-man Naxxramas with Tinuviel and experience some of the other 10-man raids.

6.  Extend and improve this blog, returning to more regular posts and widening it to include information on other classes, especially the Death Knight, and more general information including professions and achievements.  Hunters will not be forgotten, and as I am now getting into heroics and raiding, I feel better able to write some informative hunter posts again.  Anelf will be continuing to post regularly, so the blog will be a join effort 🙂

7.  Improve the design of the blog, and possible change the title and address, to fit the new extended content. (May need some help from Anelf the IT expert for this one, hint, hint.)

8.  Apparently, I am spending less time playing WOW to go camping IRL.  Where Anelf goes I go.  Well, can’t let the resto druid go off into the wilds on his own without his hunter for protection, he might get et up by a bear.

70 to 80 – one hunters experience – part 1 Howling Fjord

I started playing Wrath on its release date and dinged 80 just over 2 weeks later on the 3rd Dec.  I didn’t rush, in fact for the first few levels I hung back, enjoying having an experience bar again and leveling my fishing and other professions.  Only from 77-80 did I really push to level.  I had a couple of free days to mostly play WOW and 80 was in sight.  I play most days, but I also work 4 days a week, so RL means some day all I did was my cooking dailies.

Questing to 75 was fun, often interesting, but fairly easy.  Anelf was away for the first week of Wrath, so I started in Howling Fjord solo, completing all the quests there, including the 2-3 man group quests and elite kills solo.  Bereg my gorilla died once or twice, but I only died once, when I tried to jump next to a quest giver sitting on the edge of a cliff and kicked my goat a bit hard.  Goat happily sailed off over said cliff, and we both met our doom on the rocks far below.

A couple of quests worth noting.  On the beta, I got confused by this one – The Jig is Up – where you have to go into a cave and kill Jonah Sterling the undead pirate and then Hozzer the bear, both elites.  At 30% health Jonah jumps into the bear pit and the bear eats him up.  I thought I had to try and kill Jonah faster, or kite or cc him to stop him getting ‘et up’.  Not so.  Let the bear eat him and then either jump after him, or being a hunter with a pet that doesn’t always jump, run around and kill the bear.  It can be tough, depending upon your class and gear level, but both Jonah and the bear are soloable.  You can then loot the quest item, Jonah’s spyglass from the bear.

The only quest I struggled with solo was March of the Giants.  This is a two man quest involving killing elite stone giants.  The giants put a stacking dot on your pet, so it’s hard to keep your pet alive through the fight.  I was finding my gorilla was going down at the same time or just before the giant, so I had to put the last few arrows into the giant as he lumbered towards me.  Still doable solo, just my gorilla was pretty annoyed with me.  I suggest if you are having trouble with this one, try either grouping up with someone, or kiting the giant more, perhaps while pulling your pet back for periods and giving him a chance to heal up and remove the DOTs with mend pet.  The other way of doing it, is how I easily soloed the supposedly harder elite – combine it with the quest The Rune of Command – which gives you a pet giant (in addition to your own pet) that can help you fight.

There are some fun quests in Howling Fjord, but the one that hints of things to come is one of the end quests – The Slumbering King.  The quest itself is straightforward, but the  scene at the end, where You Know Who shows up is cool.

If you follow the quests in a logical pattern (something I did with the help of Jame’s leveling guide) you don’t miss your flying mount too.  There are interesting and novel ways to move around, including a tauren canoe taxi-cab, cable cars, bi-planes, and surfing on a flaming harpoon.

I started Wrath in all purples – mostly Merciless Gladiator gear, some Kara and good BOE epics, and a couple of BOJ badge pieces (including the BOJ xbow).  I therefore did not find any upgrades in Howling Fjord, although there were a couple of nice trinkets that I have held on to, including the First Mate’s Pocketwatch from the Jig is Up. 

Howling Fjord is one of my favorite zones for the scenery and ambience.  I like the Norwegian feel to it, and the new huge humanoid mobs, like huge Norse warriors.  You revisit some of these themes in another of my favorite zones, Storm Peaks, later on.

After Howling Fjord, I did a few of the early quests in Dragonblight and Grizzly Hills, and once Anelf was back we duoed Borean Tundra together.  More of that later.

Ding 80!

After pottering around for the first week, I knuckled down and made 76-80 in 3 calendar days.

Here’s newly 80 me.

 

Tinuviel at 80

Now that I am here, I hope to write a few more posts with some hints and tips.  We’ll have a look at gear, quests, instances, zones, spells, shot rotations and more.  So stay tuned and poke me with a big stick if I don’t write every couple of days 🙂

Edit:  People are asking about the cat.  He is a Cursed Offspring of Hark’oa (76-77) from Zul’Drak in Northrend.  He looks like a low level night elf area cat, except for the glowing eyes and haunched over head posture.  His glowing eyes look particularly cool when I hit bestial wrath, and when he is stealthed.  When stealthed he also has a silverly sheen to his white stripe along his back.  I think, but I am not sure, that there might be an additional animation that his eyes flash extra bright on a kill or special attacks.  He is very cool, but I am not sure whether I will keep him or not, I also have Gwind (Shy-Rotam) and Gilgalad (Pitch – the Humar skinned black lion) in my stable waiting to be leveled up.  I picked up this one as he was higher level than either of those, and I was going into an instance.  I need to decide which of my 3 cats will be my raiding companion in future (until that is I find a spirit beast, and Blizzard fix its dps :>)  or I decide to give a devilsaur another go).

Happy Thanksgiving – Friend or Fowl!

Happy Thanksgiving from us to all our readers!  Here’s a picture of Anelf and Tinuviel with a turkey in Howling Fjord.

Thanksgiving turkeys (Anelf is the one on the left of shot)

 

The turkeys are located west of the Explorer’s league outpost at 69,64.  As well as being part of a fun quest line they are also the subject of the achievement Friend or Fowl?, requiring you to kill 15 turkey in 3 minutes.  Tab target and fire away with whaever aoe or instant shot you have.  The turkeys respawn pretty fast so its fairly easy to complete.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving day – we will – a whole day off to play WOW 🙂