The Daily Grind

It's been drawn to my attention how important images are when doing posts. So I'm going to try to have a "related image" for every post from now on. Today, I'll be talking about daily routines - but not just any daily routine, my own personal daily rotation in WoW.

As everyone knows, WoW is my primary de-stresser. I play the game most every day for an hour or two after work to relax and calm down, and I generally do exactly the same thing over and over.

My first stop is Tol Barad - the interior if Alliance is in control, the exterior if they aren't. And I'll queue for the battle if it's coming up - no turning down that extra 3 Commendations. I need to grind out 400 of the dang things as quickly as possible so I can get the Drake mount and the Fox Kit pet before the area becomes essentially abandoned with the hit of MoP.

The next place I head to is quite a long way away - Dalaran. From there, I fly to the Argent Tournament grounds. I'm already exalted with every faction, but still grinding the Crusader's Marks so that I can collect all of those mounts. Tomorrow, I'll have enough to get the Argent Hippogryph, and I already have the Silver Covenant version. Then I'll have all the Hippogryphs that are available within the game without TCG mounts and the like. But I still have 5 faction mounts and all the pets to go.

My first stop at the Argent Tournament grounds is the Silver Covenant Pavilion, where I pick up the 3 daily quests there. Then across the grounds to grab the Argent Crusade's and the general Tournament dailies. I have a well worn circuit for completing the entire set within half an hour or so, given that I don't have to wait for anything to respawn before I can take it down.

Once I return to the tournament grounds and turn in all the quests, it's time to move on to the chance-based parts of my day. I fly back to Dalaran, take the Stormwind portal, and go right through the portal to Blasted Lands and into Outland. I hop a Gryphon to Shattrath. While I'm in flight, I set my dungeon difficulty to heroic. And when I land, I take off again for Sethekk Halls, going after the Reins of the Raven Lord mount.

So far I haven't had any luck with Anzu dropping my pretty raptor-esque mount. From there, it's back to Shattrath and through the portal to the Isle of Quel'danas. With my dungeon difficulty still set to heroic, I then run Magister's Terrace - which I was quite lucky with today. After less than ten runs, today I got the achievement above - and made the Swift White Hawkstrider mine. :) I'll still be running it awhile longer - I don't have the phoenix hatchling pet that drops from the same boss. No need to do it on Heroic anymore, though. So that's nice and fast.

From there, I take the portal at the end of the dungeon to get back out, and fly from the Isle south down to Northpass Tower - the closest flight point to the Service Entrance of Stratholme. This dungeon doesn't have a heroic version - I run it four or five times a day, trying to get my coveted undead horsie - Deathcharger's Reins. Call me morbid, but the bone-collector in me LOVES the look of the undead horses, and being Alliance, this is the only one I'll ever get a chance to own. (I own all the default ones on my Troll druid, though. ;) ) This mount has been my holy grail for awhile - a couple of years, I've been after it. In that time I've never seen it drop - with the new Account Wide mounts and pets, I'd be happy to win it on a character that's of level, but it just refuses to drop. My bony unicorn.

When I'm done there, then I decide what I want to do next, but Stratholme is the final stop for my daily grind in WoW. And as proven today with my Swift White Hawkstrider, it pays off in time.

So that's how I know - one day, ONE DAY, the Deathcharger will be mine!

Sublime Elk Overture

So I play this excellent hunting game that I've talked about before. Only recently, though, have I gotten into the site wide competitions. I've placed a couple of times in the top ten, and that's made me feel awesome. But I really would like to win. There're some awesome prizes. And right now, the competition I have my eye on is arguably the most difficult one in the game.

The challenge is one of distance and the power of a firearm. Your score is based on your distance from the animal in question upon firing, but it also has a lot to do with shot placement, because you see, the challenge is to hit an elk (cow or bull) in such a way that the bullet penetrates both lungs and the heart. This is where the power of a rifle comes in, as only the high powered rifles (the .300 or the .308 - which I use) have the stopping power to penetrate all 3 organs from 100 feet or more away.

So I have the right firearm, we know that. My biggest issue is that I'm shooting at what's usually a moving target, and trying to hit an area that is ultimately about the size of my fist.

Here, have some visual aids. :P





As you can see, in order to make this shot, I'm aiming for a spot only a hair behind the front leg. Too far forward, and the leg bones will catch the bullet. Too far back and I hit the lungs but miss the heart (or, more likely with my aim these days, I hit the gut and wind up chasing the dang thing for two miles before it dies). The heart is the bullseye in a target that's very tiny for the size of the animal I'm aiming at.

Anyone who's ever seen an Elk can tell you - they're very large deer. VERY large. Not as big as Red Deer, but still very large. But for their size, their hearts are actually fairly small, and not placed as far forward as some other deer species. (I make heart shots on Whitetails all the time - not just with a rifle, but with a compound bow. The elk is MUCH more difficult.)

First of all, in order to even aim properly to take this shot, you need to get the elk broadside to you. The game is programmed that, when the animals respond to your call, they come straight at you. So every time I call, I then have to inch around, keeping my eyes on the animal and reacting to any time it pauses or looks around to make sure I stay hidden. I have to monitor my distance via a rangefinder (and I usually have the competition leaderboard open in another window so I can see the distance I'm trying to beat, too), make sure the animal doesn't see, smell, or hear me, and get into position so that I'm on flat ground with the animal broadside to me.

Then the really hard part. I can't lie prone on the ground, which gives my gun it's highest stability, because then I'm shooting UP, and the bullet will hit the lung and liver instead of lung and heart (yes, I've made this mistake before. :( ). I have to be crouching, which means my gun isn't as stable. To make matters worse, my hands shake when I get excited, so my hand on my mouse is sometimes actually trembling. I wait for the animal to stop moving. I aim, and I wait - in order to get the best shot, I can't fire while the animal is standing still. I need it to move the foreleg that's facing me to take a step, leaving the area just behind and above the elbow wide open for the shot. Once all of these conditions are met, I fire.

I've made the shot once. Only once. And it wasn't enough for me to win the competition. However, I'm trying to do it constantly now, even when not in the competition, as training, basically. I try for heart shots on any animal I hunt now, because that's a requirement of the sharpshooter competitions, too. And I wouldn't mind winning those, either.

Basically, if you fire and the elk falls, right then and there, you have a good chance that you actually pulled it off. Because if the bullet glanced off the leg bone or a rib, or buried in the gut, the elk will run. So when they run, I curse, chase them down, claim them, then go off to start the whole process all over again when I can find another elk. When they fall, my heart jumps into my throat and I wonder - did I do it? Was this the shot? Is this the elk that wins me the tournament?

And yet, time and time again, it isn't. But I'm getting better. I got 3 pure heart shots in a row yesterday, and one that COULD'VE been an entrant, except that I was a little too far away for even my .308 rifle...I got one lung and the heart, but the bullet didn't have the power to penetrate the second lung. That was the one that hurt. :P

But, I WILL get it. Some day soon, Sublime Elk Overture will be mine. Expect a blog gloating about THAT when it happens. :P

Glitches Galore AND Trolled?!

We've been raiding fairly regularly now for the last couple of months. Since the first time we downed Deathwing, we've completed the raid every week, once. Until this last week. We had quite a bit of difficulty with the second half of the raid - a couple of wipes on Ultraxion, so many wipes on Warmaster Blackhorn that we decided to call the raid for the first day there without finishing it. On Saturday, we managed to get Blackhorn down, but not until after several MORE wipes. Then we proceeded to wipe repeatedly on Spine of Deathwing as well, until finally we hit on a winning combination of DPS and skill and took that down as well. We know Madness of Deathwing very well at this point - in fact, every time we've taken it down, we've done it with me as the single tank for the encounter. This means most of our DPS have to be pulling at least 30,000 damage per second in order to kill the Mutated Corruption before it can impale me a second time (an unavoidable death). We haven't had any issues with this, though we have cut it close. This week, however, things started going a bit...cockeyed. It started with a glitch we've had before, in which an enemy refuses to focus on me despite me throwing every taunt I've got at it (Growl AND Challenging Roar), and slamming it with every bit of damage I can muster. This causes the aggro to go everywhere, and the party wiped twice because of this glitch. However, as I said, this is a glitch we've had before - if we keep "resetting the fight" by wiping the party, eventually the mechanic works properly again and I gain aggro immediately upon tossing my Growl at the enemy. And that was true - the third or fourth time through, it worked properly...and that was when we started to see the evidence that something was strange and different with this particular dungeon run - besides other things being a bit more difficult than they usually are all the way through. We had most of our DPS ABOVE 30k damage per second. In fact, four out of five dps were doing over 40k. So why weren't we able to kill the Mutated Corruption before the Elementium Bolt came down? On ANY of the platforms? This wasn't player error - everyone was focused on exactly what they were supposed to be focused on. Everyone was damaging everything they were supposed to. Throwing everything they had at each threat in succession - and no matter what we did, the corruption wouldn't go down before that Bolt came UP. Now we're all good players. We did what we were supposed to do. Another common glitch wiped the party, though. During this last fight, each of the Aspects gives the party a buff to help them through the battle. Thrall is simultaneously the most useless and useFUL one - he gives you the ability to leap between the widely spaced platforms with a gust of wind at the right time to blow you across. The down side to this being that when Thrall's buff fails, which it does occasionally (and it isn't SUPPOSED to - that's the glitch), the player effected by the glitch is dropped to their death...and they are NOT within reach of any battle rez in the game. In a 10 man raid, every bit of DPS counts. Losing one player to a Thrall glitch means we are going to hit the Cataclysm timer on the last platform and the entire party will die. So during that run, though we did everything right, we still died, thanks to Thrall dropping our Warlock in a dramatic fashion as we lept toward the last platform. It was at this point on the second day that we decided to call the Raid again. We had a glitched instance, obviously - if it wasn't one glitch, it was another, and it wasn't getting easier. Tempers were flaring, and the last thing you want is to snap at people because of a game. So we let it go and the raiding party broke up for the second time. We got together again to try one last time - it hurt so bad to have the raid sitting there within fifteen minutes of completion and NOT completing it. So we got the group together AGAIN. Now all five of our DPS were pulling over 40k. We were failing to get the Mutated Corruption down before the second Impale. After the second time, we decided to go with the classic way for this to be performed - we dual tanked it. The idea being that each tank can take one Impale, and before a third goes up, the Corruption will be dead. That worked, and we progressed. Still, though, that last platform was SO HARD. The corruption wasn't down, the Bolt came out, forcing everyone to switch from the Corruption to the Bolt before it killed everyone. The Corruption was still up when Hemorage came down, but we got past THAT. And there we were, blasting everything we had at the Arm Tentacle, trying desperately to finish. The timer for Cataclysm - the party wiping mechanic that goes off if the Tentacle isn't killed in a certain amount of time - was ticking down. We were all focused, we were good. We killed the tentacle with 3 seconds to spare on the timer. The timer didn't stop. Cataclysm went off anyway. Mumble erupted with everyone shouting and cursing at the game - THAT glitch, after all we'd done, that was INTOLERABLE!! It was horrible! How could ANYONE be expected to get that thing down ANY faster?! We BEAT the timer and we STILL died?! Ok, that was it. We were done. The Raid broke up for the final time and we all slunk off, licking our respective wounds and growling about how unfair the game was being. Later on, those of us in our Guild were talking about it. Forget the Cataclysm glitch - there was NO WAY with our DPS numbers that we shouldn't have been able to single tank that fight. So why were the Corruptions staying alive so long? Why was everything so hard to kill? A theory was hit upon, but none of us wanted to believe it...See, since Dragon Soul came out, the Raid has been "nerfed" (made easier) several times. At this moment, all of the enemies in the Raid both do 20% less damage over-all, AND have 20% less health than when the Raid was originally released. At the beginning of the Raid there is an NPC standing by that will allow you to "turn off" this nerf, and make the Raid as hard as it originally was - for those people who feel their guild is prepared for that challenge. The trick is - ANY member of the party can talk to that NPC and "un-nerf" the Raid. There's no warning that it's been done. And right at the very beginning of our Raid, on Friday, we got a couple of jerks in the pick-up part of our group who hated on us for (of all things) using Mumble instead of Ventrillo (both are VOIP programs that allow all of us in the Raid to hear and talk to each other for ease of communication and a lack of a need to type anything). We have a paid-for Mumble server, thanks to a wonderful member of our Guild, so we use Mumble. The jerks insisted Vent was better and refused to use Mumble, then left the group. The thing is - we were already inside the instance. Just inside the portal. Right next to that NPC. You see where I'm going with this, no doubt. The theory we came up with was that just before they left, one of the jerks talked to the NPC and un-nerfed the dungeon on purpose to troll us. There was, of course, no warning or notification that this had been done. Of course, this was just a theory - but the extra 20% health would explain our inability to kill the Corruptions before the second Impale, as well as just how HARD everything kept hitting, with the extra 20% damage from everything. Lona sent in a trouble ticket about it, asking if there was any way we could check and find out if our group had been un-nerfed. Several hours later, our theory became fact when a GM confirmed that our raid lock for the week was to an un-nerfed dungeon. On top of all the glitches, the game itself had been set to "hard mode". No WONDER we hadn't finished it! Yes, we were angry at the jerks for having done it. No there was no way for the GM to find out who in the party did it, because it works as a party-wide thing. However, suddenly not finishing the dungeon seemed like almost more of an accomplishment than it normally would have. We went through all of Dragon Soul, all the way up to the final boss, at it's original difficulty - without even KNOWING it until we got to that point. Our Raid team has come a LONG way from where we were two months ago, barely knowing what we were doing. SO yes, we were plagued with glitches, and ultimately the trolls won the day. Still...I'm very impressed with our performance. This week, we'll take the whole thing down in it's nerfed form in one day - no problem. After all - now we know how much harder it COULD be.

Kalitri, Destroyer's End

This last Friday, I completed a current content regular difficulty 10-man Raid in WoW for the very first time. I wasn't DPS, you know I don't heal - that's right. Not only did I complete the raid (in five hours, with Lona, Nyx, Kata, and our friend Zach by my side), but I TANKED it. I could go on and on about how it was, I could exult over having done it - and I AM very excited that I did. But I think it'd be more interesting to see it from the perspective of the character who did it. I give you Kalitri - a Worgen Druid. And she now proudly carries the title... Destroyer's End * (*Contains spoilers for the Dragon Soul raid bosses and key events within the Raid.)

The Alluded To Gaming Update

So when I did my TAE blog yesterday, I said a lot had happened in my gaming life, too. So I figured I should probably update this blog section as well! The only real question is...where do I start?

I'll start with the raiding jump - and my subsequent confidence jump that came along with it. Along with a nice side helping of drama.

A few weeks ago, my best friend and my brother fell in with another guild who's name I won't post here because of the drama that later ensued, and I'd like our sever to continue to be the nice, calm place it is. They ran regular difficulty level Dragon Soul with that group and didn't get past the 3rd boss. They were figuring it was probably some mechanic issues. The next week they asked me to come with - in fact, a lot of potchkeying was done to make sure I was ABLE and available to come with them, to get around my work schedule. And this was all because they needed a tank - and I am a very, very good bear.

How did someone who used to be incredibly terrified of dungeons at ALL find themselves tanking a regular difficulty end-game raid? Well...I learned, to put it mildly. And I researched. I owe quite a bit of what I know to WoW Insider's Shifting Perspectives column, and it's wonderful advice on everything from rotation to optimal use of cooldowns, to guides and walkthroughs of specific bosses. Here's the main problem, however...

I don't particularly like tanking. Which is weird, because honest, compared to say, kitty DPS, bear tanking is an easier rotation. There are less things to monitor, and with our Guild Mumble (thanks Zach!), I can respond immediately to someone telling me to move or do something. But I really enjoy kitty dps...More than I enjoy my hunter, these days. It's making me glad for account wide mounts and pets are coming in Mists Of Pandaria, because it means I can switch mains completely without feeling the guilt of not having all the pets, mounts, and achievements I've worked so hard to GET on Des.

However, as I've learned, when it comes down to what you want versus what your guild/pack need, the needs of the many definitely outweigh the wants of the one. (Yay for a therian reference and a paraphrased Star Trek quote in the same paragraph.) So I'm a dedicated raid tank these days. And don't get me wrong - I enjoy it. As long as I'm doing it well.

I was so afraid, going in to tanking Ultraxion the first time on reg (having only tanked him one other time on LFR difficulty). I was sure I was going to miss a Fading Light, or an Hour Of Twilight, and I was going to get flattened...but I didn't. In fact, we took him down the first try. I was EXULTANT. I was high on that for hours afterwards - the one fight might not have seemed like a big deal to anyone else, but to me, it was huge. That was the last hurdle I had. I wasn't afraid of Warmaster Blackhorn, despite the chaos of that battle, or Spine of Deathwing, which is a total timing, mechanic, and DPS check, or Madness of Deathwing, which is all in figuring out the order of the platforms so you keep the Aspect's buffs you need the most until the very end. At most, you usually die 3 or 4 times before you figure out what works properly for you. I know once we get there, it won't be long before I have my Destroyer's End title. Which I will wear with pride - because I will have gotten it off of current content, and for the first time I will feel like a real raider.

But as in any situation where there are multiple people, things get in the way. During last week's run, the other guild brought in a tank that...well, he said he was ready. But none of us in the group but him suffered from that delusion. He'd never even raided before, and he wanted to tank it....Yeah. I was main tank, and I ended up calling out instructions to him in Mumble during every fight that had anything for him to do at all. And when it came down to it, and we really needed him to pull it together for Hagara's trash before the boss...he lost it. Repeatedly.

Now, keep in mind - nothing overt was said to him in voice or chat. But after we wiped a couple of times on the chat, one of their guild members remarked to my brother that that he "owed him five bucks". Because the two of them had been talking privately earlier and my brother had said, based on the off tank's reputation, that we'd make it to Hagara and then wipe on the trash. There was nothing to show what he was talking about - he could've been talking about a bet that we wouldn't get through half the raid in one day. Or really anything. It could have been ANYTHING.

The other guildmaster spoke to my brother and asked him what it was about. My brother answered honestly, in private, telling him about the comment and what it was in reference to. The guildmaster then took that and kicked our friend out of their guild for "badmouthing a guildmember" or something like that. Nothing was done in public, and it was very obvious that his GM had been looking for a reason to kick him. They were both ex-military, different branches, and butted heads constantly. So what did we do? We invited the newly un-guilded guy into our guild. :)

Now my brother's building up a hand-picked raid team for us that will meet this Friday and hopefully get at least through Hagara in 2 hours. Then on Saturday we'll meet and tear through Fall Of Deathwing, and come out with our respective "Destroyer's End" title. And I will have tanked an entire raid.

In other game news, I play Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds on my phone...and on my Nook Color. I play Castleville on Facebook when I'm not overwhelmed by the sheer number of quests...and I've recently re-upped my subscription to my favorite hunting game, TheHunter, which has added a whole new area with gorgeous scenery and new species to hunt - Roe Deer and Wild Boar. I can't wait until I have a morning to set aside for a proper hunting expedition.

I think that's it for my gaming news update. :) Expect more posts soon as I can find the time to type!

The Call Of The Horde

Maybe I should've called this blog "the siren's song," however I suppose it isn't really.

I've been playing WoW for several years now, and while I've max leveled 2 (almost 3) characters, they've all been Alliance side. Given the pressure that's coming up on the Horde vs. Alliance conflict in the upcoming expansion, Mists of Pandaria, I've found myself again being drawn to seeing the Horde side of things.

It isn't that I don't have any Horde characters - I do. Quite a few, actually, and a couple that I really like. I'm thinking of devoting some time and trying to get at least Ionaria, my Troll Druid, up to max level, so that when the expansion is released, I'll be able to see the escalating conflict from both sides.

Why am I drawn to Ionaria? Well, druids are essentially meant to be neutral. And in being so, I feel that perhaps Kalitri, my Night Elf-turned-Worgen druid and my troll druid might actually know each other. Playing through Pandaria's new content on both of those characters would be an interesting experience, to say the least. And as we get closer and closer to Pandaria's release, I'm feeling more and more the need to witness the other side of the coin, as it were.

For a time, I thought perhaps I was getting bored with WoW, but I had a minor epiphany today while reading a blog on WoW Insider that talked about the conflict already apparent in the beta of the new expansion, and I realized that I wasn't tired of the game - I was tired of it being one-sided. There's a whole other world in Azeroth, a whole other storyline that I've not experienced.

And I think perhaps now is the time for me to do just that. Expect future posts on differences between Alliance and Horde, as I level Ionaria up to cap, and find the truth behind the myths the Alliance have built up around their enemies - all the while discovering exactly what the counterparts are from the other side.

I'm answering the call of the Horde....

Elune, save me.

LFR Conqueror & Other Updates

I've come a long way since I was afraid of dungeons in WoW. Admittedly I haven't come far enough that the concept of going into a dungeon that I've never been in before alone isn't something that scares me, but I've still come a long way.

With the recent WoW patch, the "Endgame" portion of Cataclysm was introduced. The last three major dungeons that set up the final raid in which Deathwing meets his end and the threat he presents to Azeroth is averted. This patch also added something completely new to the game - the Looking For Raid feature. It works much like the random dungeon finder, but on a larger scale, building a group of two tanks, five healers, and seventeen DPS to create a 25 man Raid Group, and then you go through a simplifed version of the Dragon Soul raid - the Deathwing fight.

Since it came out, my brother's been running it on his awesome Mage, Skyfox.  He knew the fights, knew what we needed to do - it was just a matter of the other three of us getting proper gear from the new Heroic dungeons so we would have access.

Within the last week, Nyx, Lona, and I have all gotten enough Heroic gear that the Raid Finder would let us in. And so began my first raid.

The Dragon Soul raid is broken up into two seperate pieces - the seige of Wyrmrest Temple, and then the Fall of Deathwing. We did them in order, doing Wyrmrest first, taking down a bunch of mini-bosses, flying on drake-back between them. It was quite epic, and within the first few moments I realized I needed to down-grade my graphics settings. Everything was freezing and the lag was throwing my timing off. My computer was built to handle normal WoW at Ultra settings, but put in the high-particle density situation of a 25 man raid, the computer said "no". I put the settings down to their lowest level, and then everything was fine. In the first half of the Raid, I didn't even die.

In the second half, thanks to a miscommunication from a Raid Leader ("Hunters - taunt the drakes down!" ...but...we don't have a taunt... He was talking about using Distracting Shot to pull the flying drakes down to the tanks. But he wasn't clear, and Kata hadn't even experienced that before. The raid wiped, and people were angry - annoying because Nyx and I were two of the four hunters people were yelling at. But obviously none of us had known what to do, so we didn't feel SO stupid), we had some issues at the beginning. But after that? It was beautiful.

We parachuted onto Deathwing's back, working tirelessly to remove some of his Elementium and Titanium armor so that Thrall could take aim with the Dragon Soul and take him down. Deathwing fell into the Malestrom. Just when we thought he was defeated, he reared up - even falling apart, dying, he was still trying to destroy the world. The final phase of the raid involved forcing him to unhook from the rocks around the Maelstrom so that he could be destroyed for good. The only bit of him that made it through was a hunk of his jaw.

Now, I have a special relationship with Deathwing, of sorts. And even as we entered the raid, I made sure to pay him as much respect as possible. I /bow-ed to him, and /saluted him a few times through the course of the fight. My respect seems to have paid off, as I won the roll on my Best-In-Slot weapon that dropped from him after the fight. It made me very happy, and really the raid wasn't very much worse than a dungeon - not even a heroic. Though I admit I'm not finding Heroics nearly as frightening as I used to. Now they're a way to gain valor and level the Guild.

The awesomeness continued however, as the next day the five of us (Kata, Nyx, Lona, me, and our friend Colten) decided to see if we could 5-man Obsidian Sanctum to get the black drake mount to drop. Turns out we not only could do it, but we did it incredibly easily - we had that dragon down before his first lava wave came all the way up. We took him out in about 20 seconds, which has me wondering if we can pull off the version that's designed for 25 man, since all that's different is that his health is higher - two and a half times higher, which means we can probably take him out in about a minute. I say we try it. :P

Last weekend (so much gaming news to catch up on!) I leveled my Druid the last five levels to hit 80 and enter Cataclysm content. I prioratized her over my DK only because I've leveled her from level 1, and it seemed cheating to have my 2nd 85 be a class that starts at L55. Today (my birthday) I get to game during the day, and I plan on working her up higher - maybe even hitting 85 today. Or at least in the next couple of weeks.

Simultaniously I finished the next-to-last World Holiday that I needed for the Long Strange Trip meta achievement, and my purple proto-drake. Love Is In The Air started, and I only had six more achievements to complete in order to get my drake. As of today, that's down to 1. And I have everything I need for it. It's just a matter of actually DOING it, which I'm going to do when everyone is available to come with me (so they won't have to worry about doing this on their own when they decide to go for the holiday achievements, and so they'll be with me when my two years of work comes down), which will probably be tomorrow evening. In the mean time, I have plenty of other things to work on in-game. I'm actively "Tol-ling the Barad," as my brother says, once again working toward the two mounts that I can get that way. I'm also finally working with the Oracles in Sholazar Basin to get the Green Proto Drake (unless I get lucky with my first few Bear Tank Call To Arms rewards, that is), and spending a bit of each day farming Lovely Charms so I can do the Love Is In The Air dailies and save up to buy the Love Bird mount...AND at the SAME TIME, I'm gathering Darkmoon Faire tickets to save up for those mounts and pets.

So yeah, gaming gives me lots to do. :P And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what I do for FUN. :P You can only imagine what my work is like.

So, happy birthday to me today. I'm 29 years old. One year to 30. :D I'm excited, and I'm sure interesting things will happen over the course of the next couple of days. :D

I already got a wonderful birthday present from my mom and dad - they got me a new bike with all the accessories! Now I can exercise in a way that won't hurt me, even when I'm not at school. :D It's wonderful and I love it. Thanks mom and dad!

There'll probably be another birthday summary post at the end of the week, but considering that I started writing this blog last Friday, I think I've stalled enough. In other blog news, still working on the new series in my spare time, and I hope to post it this summer. :)

Dungeoning In Your Sleep

I’ve heard many WoW gamers say things along the lines of, “That dungeon? I could run that in my sleep.” But, while I’ve dozed off many times while playing WoW (the problem with it being the end of my day thing to do – I doze while mining in Uldum quite a lot), I’ve never actually PLAYED the game in my sleep. Continuing to fly in a straight line and ending up in Tanaris when I was trying to mine the Uldum border is a completely different thing than actively playing the game while I sleep.

I’d also like to point out that I do not play any healers – I tank (Death Knight, Bear, Warrior, and Pally), and I DPS (Hunter, Cat, Rogue, ect.), but while I’ve played classes that can heal (Pally and druid, respectfully), I’ve never been interested in actually taking on the role myself. It’s a little too much responsibility for a game I play to relax. However, my brain seems to have other ideas because this morning I healed through Deadmines on a druid healer that doesn’t exist. How is this possible? Well, we go back to my original issue – I was playing the game in my sleep. That is – I dreamed the whole thing.

I apparently know the regular Deadmines instance well enough to run it in a dream, and I know the healing spells a druid gets well enough to cast them and even have one of my gaming epiphanies while doing so. In the dream, Kata was tanking on a Worgen Warrior that looked like a combination of my warrior, Betamus, and my rogue, Jerichò. Nyx and Lona were with us, as a DPS Mage and Warlock, respectively. Looking back on the dream I realize that I don’t know which was which – both were Human and had similar builds and looks to the characters, but in the dream I knew that one was Nyx and one was Lona. There wasn’t a fifth party member with us. I don’t remember now if we’d had a random 3rd DPS and decided to dump them at some point during the instance, or if we’d come in with the intent to 4-man the dungeon. Either way, it was just the four of us, and I was healing.

Somewhere along the dungeon I had the epiphany that I needed to “heal proactively” to use what I said to them over our headsets (we were using a Google Hangout as we do when we dungeon together sometimes so even those of us in the same room have no problem hearing each other). At the start of the instance, I’d only been casting a heal after seeing the tank take damage, and casting a Heal Over Time (HoT) on him before he ran in to pull. I’d been healing reactively, for the most part. As we reached the next to last boss, I suddenly realized that I needed to be proactive. I know the boss. I know the fights. I can anticipate when the tank is going to take a lot of damage and start casting the heal before he actually takes it. The result was that Kata spent much less of that fight close to dying than he had any of the previous fights. And when it was over and we’d also taken down the last boss, he said to me, “I’m not sure what you changed in those last two fights, but keep doing that. I barely had to Victory Rush at all.”

I was happy, as I always am when Kata gives me a compliment on my gaming, and decided that the epiphany was worth the annoyance it’d taken me to get there. I thanked him, then as I was moving to drop party and log out of the call, I woke up.

I’ve had dreams like this before, but usually I’m at least playing a character or class spec that I’m familiar with. This is the first time I’ve ever dreamed a healer, and it made me wonder if perhaps my subconscious is hinting that the next character I make should be a healer. Perhaps it’s time to try out that role. Though, before I even think of that, I want to get the rest of my characters to L85. Seeing the L72 and L73 sitting there beneath my L85 Hunter is becoming annoying.

The next time I’m dozing while gaming, however, I’ll look back on this and remember a time when I not only played in my sleep, I played WELL.

Happy Thanksgiving! Virtual Venison For All!

I haven't had time to get together my thoughts and get them down on paper regarding the next 3rd of my two week roadtrip, but as today is Thanksgiving, I thought I'd just do a silly little gamer post about something I'm thankful for.

I'd been having trouble, when playing The Hunter, of only finding does. Now does are nice, and my tracking and shooting has been skilling up quite well. But... well, does aren't trophies. Not really. So I made a post on the Hunter forums asking where the heck all the bucks were. Thanks to some advice from the forum people, I finally have begun taking actual awesome trophies. Allow me to share them with you now, and be thankful for all the (virtual) venison, elk, bear, and pheasant with me!

(Can't link pictures from my site's flash gallery here, so check out the original post to see all the pretty food- ah, I mean, animals. :P )

A Bit Of (Irrational) Guilt

Might take a break from playing The Hunter again after today. However, first I have to share with all of you the beautiful pictures and live shots I took today. (Yes, even live deer! Mostly... That's where the guilt comes in. I'll explain in a bit.)



I was taking some basic shots. Something about this stump really made me happy, so I decided to take a nice shot of it and practice my Rule Of Thirds (leftover from Photography class). I like how it came out. While I was framing this picture, however, I heard several mule deer call. I responded with my imitation call, and headed toward the sound.



For the last couple of days, I've been following this herd off and on. Always too far away to see them, and by the time one comes into view, it's isolated and I usually try to take it as a trophy. Today, I managed to catch a distant picture of the herd. Two deer can be easily seen, and there were four others, however they're mostly behind trees.



Later on, again following calls rather than tracks, this lovely girl and I came face to face as she climbed over a pile of logs. She froze, I froze. I had two choices - gun, or camera. I chose camera. Right after I snapped this picture, she turned and bolted over the logs... and here came the moment of guilt.

The Hunter is an incredibly realistic hunting game - down to the fact that panicked deer can injure themselves. After this beautiful girl bolted, I went around the logs to challenge myself and pick up her trail. I wanted to see if I could track her down a second time, knowing the general direction she'd run.

On the other side of the logs, I found a trail - but not the one I'd expected. I found blood.

I hadn't fired a shot, except for the camera, but the flash had scared her. In going over the logs, she hurt herself. I started following the trail of blood spatters and hoofprints, until I found her less than half a mile from the pile of logs.



She was laying in a pool of blood that you can kind of see in this picture. I walked around and her head followed me as I walked, watching me. She was breathing in quick, shallow pants, but her eyes were bright. In my moving around her, I saw what was wrong - the hip she's laying on is a bit mangled - it isn't surprising she didn't get too far.

Like a horse, when a deer breaks a leg, there's really nothing to be done. And that I was in a hunting game and couldn't exactly call wildlife services or anything, I only had one choice.



I pulled out my rifle, whispered an apology, aimed carefully, and shot her in the head. I put her out of her misery. But the way she was staring at me... I've never had a game feel so real that I felt shaken up afterwards. I feel that way right now. I wandered for nearly half an hour after "bagging" her. I ignored tracks, I ignored calls. I spotted a Feral Hog through my binoculars, and spooked a couple of pheasants into flight.

Through my wandering, though, I found something lovely, and it's the last thing I did before logging off of the game.



This is probably modeled after a real place, but it's beauty took my breath away. I released my guilt over the doe and let it float away on the wind as I took several photos of this beautiful vista. Then I closed the game and logged out of The Hunter.

It got a touch too real today, and I'm still shaken up. My guilt is COMPLETELY unfounded - the doe was nothing but a mass of pixels with a wonderfully designed AI that mimics the behavior of a deer. I can't turn the flash off on my in-game camera, so my only other choice would've been to shoot her anyway. Either way, it turned out the same, and I got the trophy. It's only a game.

So why do I still feel just a bit sad?

Morning Stroll

I recently reread the book Merle's Door by Ted Kerasote, one of my favorite books of all time. As usual, it awakened in me a need to get out into the wild and hunt. However, despite what my taxidermic collection might say, I am not a hunter in real life. I satisfy this craving through video games for right now.

If I'm in the mood for a quick run, I play Hunting Unlimited 2009, or Deer Hunter 2005. Sometimes I'll play Carnivores or another more fanciful hunting game. But this book awakened a need for something realistic, so I went for the most realistic hunting game I know of: The Hunter.

Now, I have a free account, so all I can hunt are Mule Deer, but that's fine. It's the area and he feeling I love so much. I hunted for over an hour today, and while I spotted a doe, I was so shocked to see her that I couldn't get a shot off in time. Instead, I spent time tracking a couple of deer, and enjoyed the lovely views.



I started the hunt at six am, game time, and enjoyed the sight of the beautiful pink sunrise that greeted me.

Within an hour, I was caught in a sudden downpour that made tracking difficult. I lost the deer I'd been tracking in the resulting mud, but I was left with a gorgeous image as I looked to the sky.



I loved this image so much, it didn't matter to me that I didn't get a deer. I saw a pheasant and tried to get some pictures of it, but I couldn't get close enough for it to be defined on the camera, so I won't share those photos of fail with you. However, I feel refreshed and calm, as if I really did just go on a nature walk. I'm going back into the game now, and perhaps this time I will bag a deer. More photos to follow - I will probably edit this entry. :)

EDITING!

Went hunting again and finally got the hang of tracking. I still have yet to even see a buck, but I bagged 4 mule deer does, and managed to get a couple of good pictures of a live pheasant. :D



This was the first deer I took down. I didn't think I'd hit her at first (I forgot to hold down space when firing, which causes your character to hold their breath and therefore steady your aim), but then I found blood on the ground and tracked her a few hundred yards to where she fell. :D



The second deer I managed to hit was a stomach shot, and had it been real I would've seriously apologized to it for that. It walked a very long way, almost a mile, before it laid down and died. It took me nearly 20 minutes to find it. It looked so peaceful laying there that I aimed my camera carefully to get the best shot.



This was the only deer I hit that fell where it stood. Inspection showed I'd taken out one of it's neck vertebrae, and death was instant. I angled the shot so the entry wound could be seen.



This deer didn't walk nearly as far as the second one before it fell, but it did walk far enough that it laid down and died. Again, I angled the picture carefully so it looked to be resting.

And now for the live shots!

I'd been tracking the 4th deer in the above set, after having shot it, when something moved in my peripheral vision. "No way," I thought. "I hit that in the lung... it couldn't still be walking around." I brought up my binoculars and looked. I was shocked to see a pheasant, walking calmly in low grass. I crouched and moved closer, expecting it to flush at any moment and fly away. But it stayed, and I kept getting closer. Eventually I dropped all the way and belly crawled toward it. The following shots are what I got before it finally noticed me and flew away.







A very pretty bird and I was very happy to have seen it. I don't have a license for pheasant or it would've been a trophy for sure, as close as I got to it. However, I loved seeing it walk around. So far I haven't been able to get any photos of live deer - they're always too far away and spook before I get close enough for a good shot. But some day, I will just lay in wait and get a nice picture.

Not of the first buck I see, though. He's going in my trophy collection for sure. :P

Brewmaster of Disappointment

Wow's Ocktoberfest-alike, Brewfest, ended this past Wednesday. One of the mechanics of the holiday is that there is a "holiday boss" accessable through the Dungeon Finder. On your first kill each day of the holiday, you receive an extra "treasure" contained in a "keg-shaped treasure chest." In this chest, you can find one of five things - a dagger, a mace, two unique mounts (Brewfest Kodo and Brewfest Ram), or.... nothing. Or, rather, not nothing. But a few Brewfest tokens, the holiday currency, and around 25 Justice Points - average for killing a boss.

Being the mount-aholic I am, I dutifully went every single day of the holiday, killed the boss, collected my reward, and opened it. All but 1 day (on which I received the dagger - ironically the day after I'd gotten something better than it and so couldn't use it anymore), I received the latter prize - that is, tokens and JP.

Now, this could just be luck-of-the-draw - and in all honesty, it is. However, I'm a BIT steamed. See.... Everyone else I know got a mount once during the holiday. There were people in chat complaining of having gotten the same mount 3 days in a ROW. Lona got the Ram, Nyx got the Kodo, Kata got a Ram, my friend Enya got a Ram.. But no mount for me. Now I'm happy for Lona, who I know is working toward the 100 Mounts achievement (more feverishly than I am, honestly, as she has the Nether Rays, which I don't yet, and she will have the Tol Barad drake in another day or so)... But it just felt unfair that I didn't get a mount.

Yes, I am complaining about a random number generator that refused to generate a number in my favor. :P NO, I'm not actually angry, and I know there's always next year.

In the mean time, I look forward to this month's holiday, Hallows End, and I hope to lay my hands on the Headless Horseman's mount which will drop from HIS treasure chest (I predict "pumpkin shaped". :P). Every mount I get is one step closer to the Blue Dragonhawk that is my eventual goal. I know I'll get there eventually. But the way I'm going, Lona will be tooling around on hers months before I get there.

Then again, I only have 4 steps left on "What A Long Strange Trip...", which will reward me with something I've long sought after: a proto-drake. And I'll eventually work up the patience to camp the Time-Lost Proto-Drake for days and days until it decides to show itself to me. And I'll keep leveling Archaeology in the hopes of obtaining the fossil raptor mount (seeing Lona with hers makes me jealous - I'M the paleontologist, dangit! :P ) And I'll eventually grind up the patience to finish the dang Sha'tari Skyguard grind for the Nether Rays (at which point, I swear, I am NEVER going into Outland again if I can help it... not unless they do something to streamline it or whatever... as it is, it's my least favorite area and makes the slog from L60 to L70 absolutely intolerable for me - which is why my characters seem to get stuck there since I don't like dungeoning, and if I want to get through that 10 levels without questing, that's kind of how I have to do it).

All things said and done, I'm still making progress on that achievement... and there may be an Ancient Eyes post later this weekend, because a LOT of stuff has happened since my last post and I feel the need to catch up. But right now, I'm going to go back to my homework. Blogging was a nice break, but right now Stats has my attention and priority.

And that, at least, is a certain probability. ;)

Druidic Versatility and Heroic Confidence

OK, right now, it is SO official. I am changing my weekly posting day from Monday to Friday. So look! Now this post is early instead of late. :)

That being said, the events described in this blog happened earlier in the week. I apologize for any inaccuracies if anyone involved happens to read this. :P Also, I'm doing some further organization on this blog - new subcategories have been added under Tooth & Arrows, so that people who only wish to read my WoW blogs can do so, and people who are interested in the other types of games this blog is about can just look at THOSE if they wish! (This doesn't effect you if you're reading this on Blogger or LJ. Blogger already keeps the sub-blogs separate and LJ... well, I THINK I've done a good job tagging all entries!) It'll be a couple of days while I go back into the archives and properly sort all the T&A blogs into their respective new categories, though. Please pardon the dust while I remodel.

That being said, on to the meat of this blog!

I've recently started playing Kalitri, my previously mentioned Worgen Druid, on WoW again. Perhaps it was this month's holiday, Brewfest, (Des has another title now!) and the chance to get a couple of rare mounts and pets that has spurred me on, but for whatever reason, she's gone from L61 to nearly L65 in the last two days, and I only stopped playing her because I ran out of "rested." I'm going to be playing Reyune (my DK) while she has a chance to build up her rested status again. I want her and Rey both to be 85 as soon as possible. And fast leveling means one thing - dungeoning. Both characters are tanks, so this should be easy, except that I still have my aversion/fear of tanking to a point.

That makes this kind of difficult.

However, something happened two nights ago that has given me a huge confidence boost in my tanking ability. I was queuing as DPS so I could do other things around waiting to dungeon, and I had the time to do so. I got into The Underbog for Kalitri's first time after less than half an hour wait (nice, for DPS), and was looking forward to trying out my new "assist the tank" macro. I focus-targeted the tank... and waited.

The tank didn't move. It was a human warrior. The mage got jumpy and started bouncing around. The priest healer tossed a few heals over time (HoTs) on the tank, trying to spur him to move. I /poke-d him. Nothing. Then when he started moving... he was walking. The rest of the party shot ahead.... then came back. The tank slowly sauntered up to the first mob and FACE PULLED it (face pulling = walking up to the mob and getting it's attention via your very presence, instead of using any ability to generate threat and actually try to keep it ON you - not something any tank should be doing on purpose, and something all non-tank characters should do everything they can to AVOID).

I don't know if the mage didn't notice that the tank had only face pulled, or if they were just so jumpy and impatient that they didn't care... But they laid down their ice AOE (area of effect attack - an attack that hits all mobs in a certain radius, usually chosen by placing a "target circle" on the ground that only the caster can see) around the mobs that the tank had annoyed... And of course, with the tank not trying to gain threat, the mobs went straight for the mage. The tank slowly walked back toward the mage as if to take aggro away from him, but by then, the mobs had decided to leave the mage and pounce on the healer. I reacted the only way I could - I shifted to bear form, I hit Enrage, and I Challenging Roar'd the mobs onto me, gained threat with a Demoralizing Roar and two Swipes, and tanked the pull. The healer immediately shifted to healing me, and the DPS focused on the mobs. By the time the walking-tank had gotten back over to where we were, the mobs were dead.

I asked in party chat, "Tank, why walking?" I didn't get a response at first, until it was echoed by both the healer and the mage. We got one response, "Stuck. Can't stop. Lost keybinding." So the mage goes, "Look it up? Fix it?" The tank didn't respond to that... and instead started walking toward the next set of mobs. After a repeat of the previous pull (with the exception that this time, I didn't LET the mobs get on the mage or the healer before I yoinked them onto me), we vote-kicked the tank for being a troll. I mean, really? He couldn't change his keybinding? Look it up in the settings and fix it, then toggle walk OFF? It would've taken us about six hours to go through the dungeon at that pace... assuming I was able to keep everyone alive.

We requeued, with me again selecting DPS, and hoped to get a new tank. After a few minutes, a tank hadn't showed up, and the mage asked me if I could just tank it a bit while we wait, and the healer said yeah, he didn't have much time and would like to get as far as he could. So I tanked, we did small pulls... and we made it 2/3 of the way through the dungeon before our new tank showed up.

The new tank was a blood DK, who showed up mid fight and tried to steal aggro from me. I can't blame him - it must've looked like he got pulled into a mess or like we had pulled accidentally or our previous tank had ditched mid-fight. But we finished up that pull, and then he went RUNNING ahead, not giving us time to loot.

I shifted to cat and hit dash to keep up with him. He got out of line-of-sight of our healer, and died. I once again had to shift to bear and gain aggro to keep the party from wiping. (Now, to make matters worse, I had shifted talent trees back to my cat tree after the tank had shown up, so now I was tanking in my DPS spec, so I lost a lot of my armor boosts and other things I have talented in my bear spec.) I was focused on keeping the mobs off the other party members.... and I got out of LoS of the healer, and I died. But the mage was able to AOE down the last two surviving mobs, and we didn't wipe. I couldn't help but notice that the healer rezzed me before rezzing our new tank, who had been dead twice as long. :P Favoritism, much? :P

Right after that, our healer said he had to go and apologized. The mage and I wished him well, and he dropped party. The tank became dungeon leader, and requeued us to pull a new healer.... then took off running. I said, "Where are you going?!" He responded, "Drood heals."

Drood is a fairly derogatory way to refer to a druid, but I let it go. I chased after him in cat form. "I'm dual Feral, DPS and Tank. I'm not spec'd for healing!" But it was too late, he'd already pulled. I wasn't interested in being part of a wipe, and the other two dps (the talkative mage and the hunter who was so silent he might as well not have been there) had no way of doing anything, so... I shifted into caster form, targeted the tank, and started healing.

I've never healed before. Ever. To me, it's the most stressful role in the dungeon, though now both Nyx and Lona have told me otherwise. I can't change how it feels to me. And I kept remembering the things I know about druids.

First thing's first - a druid of ANY spec (Feral, Balance, or Restoration), can technically perform any role up until level 60, limited only by player skill. At that point, the talent trees and the talents gained from them start to become mutually exclusive. This is why, at 60, I changed my previous dual spec (Feral/Balance) into a Feral/Feral, with my secondary feral specialization gearing toward the bear talents and my primary gearing toward the cat for DPS and questing. As a dual feral druid, my armor stacked agility and stamina, and I was gemming for dodge and crit, so that (until endgame level, at least), I could have one armor set that could perform both possible roles. As much of a pain as it is to build the two sets at endgame level, to try and do it WHILE LEVELING is almost impossible, since you level past items almost as fast as you acquire them.

The point of this being that I could either tank or DPS in dungeons, but I didn't have intellect or spirit on my gear - I wasn't talented to heal. Yet here I was. To make matters worse, the tank didn't wait for me to regain mana after the fights - he just kept going. Thank goodness I had some dropped mana potions on me, and the druid's ability of Innervate to renew my own mana supply (though that ability isn't nearly as good as it used to be, and I really was feeling that particular nerf).

Anyway, I fell into a rhythm and relaxed. Between my limited healing ability and the fact that the tank was a blood DK which has a lot of passive self-heals, no one was dying and we were still moving. Just as we got to the last boss, the new healer finally showed up. A nelf Priest. I relaxed and shifted back to cat to DPS the final fight (I was going to finish the dungeon in the role I'd originally selected, dangit!).

Mid way through the fight, the tank died. I guess the healer lost sight of him around the boss' legs or something, or maybe the healer had to sneeze. I have no idea. All I know is that once again, I had to step up. I leaped backwards (I WISH cats had the Hunter's Disengage ability!), targeted the tank, and hit my in-battle resurrect spell (SO glad I carried reagents for Rebirth). I tossed a heal on him, then shifted to bear and pulled the boss off of the mage and hunter who'd been bouncing him back and forth between them. The healer threw off a "WTF?" but I ignored it. When the DK could tank again, I shifted back to caster and started healing him. The healer that had come in "WTF"'d again, and I said, "We've been through most of the dungeon like this. Just... dps it." And with the healer's "whatever," he and I officially switched roles. I healed the tank, and the healer DPS'd the boss. We finished the dungeon, the healer left immediately, the tank waved at me and left... and the mage told me I was awesome. The hunter /bow'd to me, and I took a bow of my own.

Druids are versatile. I knew this from the very beginning - they're one of only two classes in the game (the other being Paladin) that can fulfill all 3 dungeon roles. But I'm fairly certain that Paladins become rather talent-locked early in their leveling lives, as I've gathered by both playing my pally and watching Lona play hers, whereas, as I've said before, druids can fulfill any role until L60. And apparently, in the right situation, until L64.

I am more confident in my tanking abilities than I ever have been before, and this experience has made me want to roll a druid healer at some point, just to get an idea of what I'd really have been capable of if I'd been properly geared and talented for what I was doing.

In other news, last weekend, Destylae ran her first heroic in which I was NOT in a guild group. I did good, reliable damage, no one complained, we CLEARED Halls Of Origination, and at the end - I won the roll on the Chaos Orb. That's one down, five to go toward making my new gun. :D I'm confident in my abilities as a Hunter, finally. And Kalitri keeps reminding me just how GOOD of a druid I make. Honestly, I can't wait to play Reyune some tonight... Let's see if I'm getting to be a better DK as well!

Catbird

It's monday.... and I'm bringing you a Tooth & Arrows instead of a These Ancient Eyes post. Why? Well, because there hasn't been a T&A post in awhile, and also because I wasn't sure where to go with the TAE post I'd been writing. So, without further ado, a bit on love for a catbird.

I tried valiantly to get Kalitri, my feral worgen druid, to L60 last night, only to pass out about four bars from finished. However, a situation arose that brought up to me just how far I’ve advanced since I was having so many issues with her back when she was a Night Elf (pre Cata, as I remade her Worgen the day after Cataclysm came out).

I started playing Des because Kalitri’s original form taught me that I didn’t have the focus necessary to play a melee class, or so I thought. Questing through Darkshire, I would find myself with 2 mobs on me and be very suddenly dead. The mobs were even lower level than me. I’d just get so caught up in what was going on, and I’d switch targets, not knowing who I should focus on… and then I’d be a dead little nelf kitty. I essentially ragequit the character in frustration, though I didn’t delete her – she was my first character, no matter how upset I’d become with her. And one day I would figure out druids.

In the meantime, I rolled Des, who would eventually become my first level cap character, and started several others. Then Cataclysm was launched and the worgen were released. I played through the starter zone on a hunter the night it launched, but quickly discovered I had no interest in leveling yet ANOTHER hunter. I was looking at my character screen and my eyes settled on Kalitri. The nelves allied with the Worgen and helped them. What if one of their envoys was bitten?

The story continued in my head until even the worgen’s human form was explained – a nelf, cursed with the Forsaken plague, would turn into an undead human (as we all know, there are no non-human Forsaken). So during the battle, she was cursed. But before the plague could fully pull her into undeath, one of the quick thinking Worgen bit her, hoping the power of the wolf would fight off the plague. It worked – but at the cost of her original species. She was now human/Worgen instead of Night Elf… and even her forms had changed.

No, I didn’t pay for a character change, though I thought about it. But then I realized I’d just be stuck where I was, with a Worgen instead of a nelf. I needed to relearn the class, now in my much more experienced state. So… I clicked the delete button on the original Kalitri, and immediately remade her as a worgen. By the time I’d left Darkshore, I already had a much better handle on playing the class than I had when she was a nelf. I’d even tanked a couple of dungeons as a bear. (Another big deal for me, as I’d never tanked anything before.)

It seemed very quick that Kalitri got to L40 – even with me playing most of the time on Des to get to L85, and playing through all the new Cata zones. But then she just kind of… stuck. I wasn’t having trouble playing her so much as playing her took a lot of focus, and I wasn’t in a place where I could do that. As a Hunter, I can tab off the wow window and do something else at any time. If I look back and something’s attacked me, my pet has usually taken care of it and my only frustration is that I lost out on loot. On any non-pet class, however, you get yourself distracted with, say, writing a paper for school, or responding to a friend’s text, and you click back on to find yourself dead. So… I stopped playing her for a while.

From the moment I’d created the original druid, what I’d looked forward to the most was L60 – the flight form. No mounts to fly, no need! Just leap into the air, become a bird, and fly away. Never mind that it’s one of my favorite real life daydreams – I would actually be able to DO it as a druid. And it was even cooler for Kalitri who, until recently, used no form of transportation other than herself. She used Running Wild as her mount, or simply dashed around in cat form. Also, the ability to cast flight form while moving will make for some awesome saves. Being chased by something through Howling Fjord? No problem! Turn, leap from the cliff, insta-cast Flight Form and you’re in the air! An excellent way to drop agro – which is the one thing the class is lacking, as far as I’m concerned. But I’ve been spoiled by my Hunter’s Feign Death.

So recently, as the only thing I’ve been doing on Des is rep grinds, I started playing Kalitri again with the decision to A) learn to focus better – clicking buttons should not make that much difference in speed from hitting hot keys. And B) to see some of the higher level Cata-changed zones. So began her quests. I started in Desolace, finished that zone, and then moved on to Burning Steppes and then Blasted Lands. I can now reliably take on up to 3 enemies at the same time that are at least 2, if not 3, levels above me, and win. I’ve mastered shifting out of cat form to heal myself, but keeping the DoT of thorns and Rake on the mobs at the same time, so sometimes they actually die while I’m still healing myself. This was put to the test in Hellfire Peninsula last night with dramatic results.

I was sent into a Fel Orc encampment to mark their sentry towers with smoke signals so they could be bombed from above by the Gryphon riders of Honor Hold. This isn’t too hard – I Prowled into the middle of the camp and no one even saw me. I neglected to realize that when I used the item it would take me out of stealth mode, however. And that’s when it got fun. The 3 tower guards came down on me. It was only then that I noticed they were L61. I was L58. THAT was a bit of a level difference. I freaked out, and I don’t even have my panic button anymore of shifting to bear form and tanking them with the extra armor, since I had to split my DPS spec from my tank spec at L50 – the talent trees start to get mutually exclusive at that point – so I was throwing everything I had at them. I pulled Tiger’s Fury, I Ravage!’d, I Raked, I Mangled like there was no tomorrow. I put up Thorns and Nature’s Grasp, shifted to caster and leaped back to heal myself as they were grabbed by the Entangling Roots proc of Nature’s Grasp and therefore were out of range while I healed myself, then I shifted cat and Feral Charged right back into the fight. I almost died several times, but I finally pulled it off, and the 3 mobs lay dead at my paws. I looted them and realized in shock that I was fine – I was better than fine, actually. My last round of healing me had stuck, and I had full health and full energy. I stealthed again and headed for the next tower. But this time I Feral Charged in the moment I was within range.

A repeat of the previous battle occurred, except that it went faster because I’d had time to hit myself with a heal over time and put Thorns on before I initiated. Two more times, I repeated the fight, and by the time I completed the quest, I was impressed. Gone was the druid who didn’t know what she was doing and died to 2 low level undead npcs could easily kill, and here was a seasoned feral warrior able to take down three mobs that were each three levels above her.

Tonight, Kalitri will ding 60 and finally gain her illusive flight form. What I’ve been working towards on her since creating the character originally. Onwards to 60!

Heroic Leap

Trying to fix 85 levels of bad habits when gaming on Destylae lately is my big focus, along with my usual reputation grinds and the new Molten Front dailies (I want that Hippogryph!). I spent all of the game focusing on armor when I should’ve been stacking stats, and now at the end game level, I’m paying for it. Grinding for justice points to purchase gear I should’ve already had the equivalent of through normal leveling – but I picked up whatever gave me more armor, no matter what stat it effected… and recently I was so bad in dungeons I was doing less than 4k DPS.

But you’ve all heard me complain about that before. The point being that I’ve now gotten my iLevel up high enough that I can get into L85 Heroics, though PlayerScore says that the difficulty for me is “light,” I have other things to say. Heroics aren’t called heroics because they’re easy – they’re called heroics because it’s more than just item level or gear – it’s skill and teamwork that gets you through them. And now, having been along on the completion of Stonecore, Vortex Pinnacle, and now The Lost City of the Tol’vir, I have to say – I’m not entirely certain I have the skill level to be running Heroics yet.

The thing is, though – sometimes I’m damn good. It’s performing consistently that I have an issue with. If I eat my agility boost food, and use an agility scroll, I can pull DPS as high or higher than Nyx. But if I screw up, for even a few seconds – if I pull too much agro and have to run to the tank to avoid getting my little Draenai tail handed to me on a plate, or if I do what I did last night and accidentally pull a mob because my hand just happened to hit my “Target-FIRE” macro button while we were talking about the fight (thankfully that didn’t happen in a heroic, and it wasn’t a boss, but my point still stands) – then my DPS drops by more than half and I wind up doing so low that I spent the rest of the dungeon trying desperately to catch up to Nyx in overall DPS. Then I have the problem that my eyes are so much on the DPS meters that I forget the mechanics of the fights.

Now, last night, I actually don’t think it was specifically me that screwed up at any given time other than the ones I already mentioned – agro pulling and the one shot botch I somehow managed to do – but it still stands that… Well… The Lost City of the Tol’vir, on regular, takes a good group about 20 minutes to burn through. On Heroic, the average time to rip through a dungeon is doubled or tripled, because you can’t skip individual mobs in most places and so spend longer killing the trash on the way to the bosses. But last night – we were in Lost City for nearly 3 hours.

Given the normal ratio, it shouldn’t have taken us more than an hour at most to complete that dungeon – and that’s on the long side. We had a good group, all five of us knew what we were doing… and yet it still took 3 hours and a lot of character-shuffling on the part of our 3^rd DPS as we tried to find a good fit for us. His Warrior pulled too much agro off the tank, his healing Pally was instance locked and couldn’t come help us, he wasn’t practiced healing heroics on his Priest… eventually he wound up pulling in a pinch hitter for us on the last boss, and he sat the fight out while she healed. She and I were the only two to die in that final battle, and we finally got our pattern down. But it doesn’t change the fact that it took us 3 hours to get through what should’ve been a  1 hour dungeon, and part of me wonders if it’s my skill level that’s contributing to the problem. I wasn’t really on my game last night, I admit. Not like other nights.

Last weekend, we spent the day doing random regulars. And I was on the BALL that day. My DPS was high, my focus was good, every time we ran through Halls of Origination, I easily pulled off the “jump-pull lever-run from snakes-reenter fight” sequence on the first boss – something I usually get confused by and wind up running around down in the snake pit looking for the stairs – every single time without fail. I CC’d when my Frost Trap was needed, and I didn’t miss. I kept control over Hatari (who has now been joined by Nzuri, a white Hyena who I’ll probably talk about in a later blog), and I made sure I knew where he was at all times. I timed my shots and my Kill Commands perfectly. I was a damn good Hunter that day, and my low agility didn’t even seem to matter.

But last night, I was out of it. And it translated into the real world, even, when I managed to burn the pad of my right thumb badly when picking up a hot dish, after we’d finally finished the Heroic. I was struggling to stay where I should be on the DPS charts, I ran out of agility scrolls and had to fight that much harder – I lost nearly 400 DPS when I ran out of scrolls. And now I need to make more agility food, which means I have to go fishing in Uldum along the coast for Fathom Eels. I haven’t gotten around to that, yet.

To sum up, while I’ve taken the “Heroic Leap” (an actual Warrior ability, but I thought it was an appropriate title anyway), I worry that I may have jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. But only continuing to do it will I learn. Especially since, when I cap my engineering skill, I’m going to want those Chaos Orbs so I can make myself a better gun.

So, with more in front of me, I’m just going to keep trying. In the wise words of the Eleventh Doctor – GERONIMO!

Still Kicking...

With all my WoW blogs, you'd think I don't play anything else. But that's not true - I play many other games. WoW just tends to be the only thing in which anything interesting enough to blog about happens. However, that changed today.

I was playing Hunting Unlimited 2009, my usual "play me for five seconds to calm down" hunting game. I chose to go after a group of Bison. I'm very good at sniping and getting head shots on larger prey (bison and elephants, specifically), so I did that from a distance. I watched the bison I chose and shot stagger and fall.

However, watching it through my rifle scope as I prepared to mount my horse and head over to collect my trophy, when I noticed something strange. The downed bison's leg was still twitching.

Ok, so maybe that was a glitch. It was about 300 yards away. I figured it'd have stopped moving by the time I got over there. But no - it hadn't.

In fact, when I got up close to my trophy, I could see that it was quite literally not a glitch.

The bison was still alive.

It was on it's side, mouth opening and closing, trying to struggle to it's feet over and over, and it kept falling back down. I stared at it for a long moment. I've killed hundreds, maybe thousands of creatures in hunting games - never have I seen a virtual animal go DOWN and still be alive. Usually when they fall, they're dead.

I walked around the Bison and gave a close look at it. The bullet had entered the head behind one ear, and exited the other side in front of that ear, cutting cleanly through the brain.

But the Bison was still alive. Standing right next to it, the "claim" button wouldn't work, because the trophy was still... kicking.

I walked around in front of the bison, leveled my rifle at it's head, and the next time it fell back to the ground in it's struggle, I fired. Right between the eyes. And then, only then, did I get the "Head shot!" exclaimation, and the bison stopped moving.

I pulled it into my bag, then went out into my trophy room to get a look at it, and I took the following screenshot.

The bullet wound in the forehead is the kill shot. The wound on the side of the head is the initial bullet wound that felled but didn't kill the bison. The trophy itself isn't that impressive (I have much more impressive bison trophies), but I will NEVER let go of it for this reason.

I spent an hour or two after this trying to recreate the situation with other creatures as well, unsuccessfully. Near as I can tell, this was a one in a million shot, and I don't think it'll happen again... But that doesn't change that it was... kind of awesome.

Oh, THAT'S Why...

So Nyx and I did some comparison today after I once again had crappy DPS in a dungeon, and we finally, FINALLY figured out what is wrong with me- my global cooldown is MUCH longer than hers. If she called out the rotation and I followed, I would run out of focus, trying to keep up with her, despite the fact that my haste was more than hers. It makes me wonder how slow I'd be if my haste was as low as hers.

But the ultimate culprit? My agility sucks. And I mean horribly. It was 2k below Nyx's. No WONDER I couldn't get off the DPS she could. Working my rotation on a single target, I was doing really well... but in the dungeon there're these long moments when I'm just not firing because I'm out of focus or everything's on cool down. I could do burst damage and cap out high, but then my DPS would crash, and for a lot longer, it would be low while I waited for my cool downs to reset.

So I've started gemming and enchanting my gear for agility - we'll see how I do in a dungeon in another couple of days. I also made a note of gear I want to buy when I finish getting Exalted with the Cata factions.

So! Perhaps it isn't a skill issue at all - perhaps I do NOT suddenly suck at being a Hunter... I can't wait to see the DPS I'll do in BM as well once I get my agility up where it should be.

Endgame? Please. I'm just getting started. :D

Ganked By An NPC

A warning for those who will read this who have NOT played through the Death Knight starter area, in Wrath Of The Lich King and beyond. Here, there be spoilers. Skip the block quoted part of the post to avoid them.

I've talked about Ionaria, my Troll Druid, and how she's the first Horde character I've ever had that I really liked. Well, now I have two. At Lona's suggestion, I decided to make a Death Knight on the same server, solely because they start at high level (55) and come out of their starting zone geared in blues for Outland, and I would be able to make some quick cash to help bankroll the server. The problem is, while I've made multiple Death Knights in the past, there's only one that I've ever felt like playing beyond the starting zone, and that's Reyune, my Worgen DK on Galakrond. And that's because I put so much thought into creating him and his design and personality and back story that I not only fell in love with him as a character, but he's the first WoW character that I've bonded.

Therein lies the problem, however - I didn't like the way any of the Horde races looked as DKs. The Worgen DK... well, he was a nightmare coming at you, twice cursed, huge fangs... I mean, what's more terrifying than a super-powered undead werewolf? Then Lona suggested I build a story for my Horde DK as well, so I'd enjoy playing her. And then she made the best suggestion I've ever heard - Why don't I build the DK as whatever class/race combo she would've been BEFORE being a DK, and then click the DK class button to convert that? Suddenly, creating her became SO much easier.

I built her as a Tauren Druid, and already a story was building up in my head. She was Exalted with Cenarion Circle, and one of their advance guard sent to replant and clear the Scourge's taint from the Plaguelands. However, in doing so, she was killed in battle and her body taken by the Scourge.

I clicked the "Death Knight" class button, and her whole life ended... and was reborn. Reborn as a DK, she was under the thrall of the Lich King, her connection to the Earthmother severed - that is, except for a tiny Cenarion Hippogryph Hatchling that followed her wherever she went - the hatchling baby of her mount that had been killed in the same battle where she lost her former life. (I went to the mail box that's a PITA to get to the moment I created her, pulled all my BOA pets out of it, and summoned the hatchling immediately when this part of the story came to me.)

If the Death Knight, Koratana, saw the hippogryph, she paid it no mind. Though in the story, it was constantly hiding. The Hippogryph mounts are incredibly intelligent, and being born of the Cenarion Circle itself, this one sought to reestablish Koratana's connection to the Earthmother. Slowly, the Lich King's voice quieted in her mind, and the more people she killed and hurt, the more some part of her began to cry out in desperation. So when she reached a certain quest and had to take the life of a certain NPC, that was all it took to all but snap the Lich King's hold over her mind.

Now we reach the part of the story where the player, IE, me, made a decision that the character wouldn't have made. And herein lies the spoilers.

During the battle for Light's Hope Chapel, I normally do what my conflicted character would do - I hide. Nothing the player does can make the battle go any faster - it's dictated by numbers and the NPCs massacring each other is more than enough to cause what is going to happen to happen. And as all DKs are in the part of their progression where they're shaking off the Lich King's control and remembering the heroes they once were, it isn't a hard jump to imagine that the DK "Champion" of the Scourge would get as far out of the battle as they can and hide while the last vestiges of the Lich King's control over their minds is shattered by the Light itself.

This being said, I normally hide in Light's Hope Chapel during this part of the storyline. But this time, I decided to participate in the battle. So I followed one of the Scourge Highlords around and attacking anything he attacked.

So then, there I was, at the end of this "epic battle," when the mock cut-scene takes over and you get the last of the DK story, basically. However, the last NPC I'd been attacking remembered me for some reason. During the actual battle, you have a huge health regeneration buff on you, so even if you're being beaten on by five or six Elites, you actually have a fairly good chance of killing them before they kill you. But the moment the counter reaches the correct numbers and the battle ends, you lose that buff.

However, this particular NPC remained pissed at me. I walked over to kneel where I usually plant a DK character during this sequence... and the NPC leaped up out of where he'd been kneeling for his OWN part of the cut scene, came running over, and killed me with a single blow.

Huh, I thought. That's weird... I walked back to my body, rezzed... and he immediately jumped up, charged me, and killed me again. I blinked. I tried rezzing from further away this time - and he still came running up and ganked* me. It was as if I was in PVP and had annoyed another player to the point that they were corpse-camping* me and taking every opportunity to kill me. I realized by the 3rd time that I was caught in some sort of glitch, because there was no way that this was supposed to happen.

The person you turn the quest that all of this is a part of was standing right next to my nemesis when the cut scene was over. It took four more deaths before I could turn the quest IN, and get sent back to Ebon Hold to finish out the zone. Normally, I would have simply used my Death Gate spell to return there, however the NPC still had aggro on me, and the DG spell is a lot like a Hearthstone or mounting - you can't do it if you're considered by the game to be "in combat." And because of one NPC who apparently was holding a grudge against me, I couldn't do any of those things. So I went with the time-honored tradition I practice regularly on my main (which has lead me to get the strange compliment recently of being "really good at surviving") - I ran away.

But the NPC kept chasing me, and even when he STOPPED chasing me, I was still under constant aggro warning. So I couldn't mount, I had no speed boost, and it was a damn long way back to the Scourge Gryphons, if they were even still THERE given that I'd phased out of the zone at that point. So I did the only thing I could do - I kept running.

In case you're wondering - no, this was not part of my character's story. She witnessed the events the way a DK is supposed to, then Death Gated on to her next quest after reuniting with the hippogryph hatchling, who finally came out of hiding when she was free of the Lich King's taint. She still cannot channel her former Druid abilities, and never will again - something she is in emotional agony over at the moment... but the little hatchling is a reminder that the Earthmother is still there, even if she can no longer feel her, and Koratana is determined to find a way to feel nature again, the way she should as a Tauren and a trained Druid - she refuses to be nothing but a blind instrument of death, no matter what happens to her. I plan on her story to include befriending Ionaria (who I had to log into to send her 10 gold by the end of all the times the NPC killed me, by the way - she'd racked up that high of a repair bill, and definitely didn't have that on her - I pity anyone who has this glitch where a DK is their only character on the server), and slowly learning how to reconnect to life and nature, despite her Death Knight status. She will become exalted with the Cenarion Circle again, and will ride a Hippogryph - at which point the hatchling following her will have grown up, and have a hatchling of it's own.

Ultimately, it was a fun and interesting situation and now I have another DK that I enjoy playing and who's story I enjoy greatly. I haven't bonded her... yet. I say yet, because I spent last night dreaming about Taurens and things that I think were her living-world past. Either that's a bond in formation... or just the writer in me filling in the gaps. I'll know which depending on if she starts commenting on things in the next few days. :P

Massacre - A DK Tanking Experience

Reyune is my 3rd Death Knight. On the same server. Yes, I know, you can only have one per server. :P The other two have been deleted. One without ever even getting out of the starting zone. But Reyune is different. He's a Worgen, and... He's awesome. I love his facial customization, I love his attitude... I really love him. I built him carefully, using a dual spec of Blood and Unholy, so he would be capable of tanking should I get up the nerve to do it. But, until last night, I hadn't tanked at all as anything other than a Druid.

Then, again, my fiance nudged me. :P She had a healer who was right at Rey's level range, and she's working on leveling her currently. So she asked me to tank for her. I was freaking out at first, but she urged me. She's been tanking on a DK at that level for awhile, so she gave me some quick pointers, we partied, and we queued.

I freaked out at first, but... No one died. And when I did die, it wasn't my fault, it was actually that Lona hadn't healed in awhile and she had some issues. Another time it was because she got silenced by a mob, but we actually never completely wiped. I was thrilled.

She then pointed out that she was a couple of levels above me, and I should probably do a little catching up before we continue, and get used to other healers so I wouldn't be afraid to play the character without her. I agreed, we disbanded the party, and I queued solo.

I did just as well with the other healers! And, over the course of the night and several dungeons, I had a Hunter and a Warlock who insisted on pulling around me. And a Rogue that stealthed ahead of me and pulled - and I kept working well. I got stuff off of them, I held aggro, I Death Gripped things when they got too far away... I was GOOD.

I can now Tank as a DK and as a Druid... I'm actually impressed with me. 0.o Warrior's my next learning curve, but I want to get my DK to L85, and my Druid to L60, as well. I have a lot of goals. It's exciting. :)

Flame Warden Destylae

Last year, when Des was only around level 50 or so, the Midsummer Fire Festival hit. I saw the Honor The Flames achievements and thought, "That's what I want. I can use these to help me get Des closer to the Explorer title!" And so, I set out on an epic journey.

I died. A lot. Running through high level areas - nowhere was harder than Outland, though. I was ten levels below where I should've been to be running around out there, and the Path Of Glory was my death SO many times.... But then I'd done it. I had all three achievements complete... Though I hadn't Desecrated any of the Horde's flames. I felt quite accomplished.

This year, as I'm now 85 and actively working toward the What A Long Strange Trip It's Been achievement, the Midsummer Fire Festival was the next achievement and title in line for me. Remembering the hell it had been to do all that traveling last year, I wasn't really looking forward to this. This festival contained a Holiday Boss, something I'd never been able to participate in before, as well as a hell of a lot of traveling AND deliberate assaults upon the opposing Faction's main cities. I expected this to take the full 2 weeks of the festival, honestly.

Imagine my shock when I came out of my first day doing the Festival with the title of Flame Warden... as well as the title of Assistant Professor, as during my wanderings to honor and desecrate the fires of the world, I also found a rare archaeology item and earned THAT title. As well as the ability to, ah... encase myself in amber for five minutes at a time, for no reason other than that it's amusing.

So yeah, as my fiance put it - this is the easiest Holiday ever. :P Another step down on the path to What A Long Strange Trip... and all the more to show for it!

On another note, I noticed something that I feel is awesome, as a Hunter, when the latest patch dropped. Now, when I mount on a ground mount, my pet doesn't despawn - he stays and runs beside me! This is something that existed in Vanilla WoW that I'd wished they'd bring back, but didn't see a way to in these days of all-world flying... However, they did! The moment you jump on a flying mount and take to the air, it acts as it always did, with your pet despawning and respawning when you dismount. But for ground mounts? Hatari never leaves my side now.

It's an encouragement, to me, at least, to take the slow path of the ground more often. I don't think I'll ever tire of seeing him at my side. :)